Pounding, Pounding, Pounding

 

Pounding, Pounding, Pounding

July 6, 2026

R. L. Withers

 

Pounding, pounding, pounding!

The mock scepter strikes a blow!

Blow upon blow, blow upon blow!

How deep will the Crown of Thorns go?

 

Crown Him, yes crown Him!

Weave the crown of thorns for His Head!

Beat it down, beat it down!

Strike harder, strike harder – beat it down!

 

Who shall strike the hardest?

Which soldier shall it be?

Let me, let me!

I can pound it with more force than you!

 

Let the blood run, let it run!

Who can make it run the more?

Embed the crown into His Head,

Shall anyone take it off again?

 

Enough for now

More is to come

Remove the royal robe,

Put the scepter in the fire

 

But leave the crown,

O leave the crown!

For a royal crucifixion will be done

And a king shall be enthroned!

 

Pounding, pounding, pounding.

Pound the nails through His flesh,

Deep into the tree drive them deep.

Who can drive them the deepest?

 

Pounding, pounding, pounding.

I cannot sleep tonight.

A good day’s work was done indeed

But the pounding now haunts me.

 

Deeper goes the pounding

Into my heart and soul.

What have I done today

That there is pounding so?

 

I cannot sleep

And so I run

To the room where we

Wove the crown of thorns

 

I cannot sleep

And so I run

Back to that Hill

Where we drove the nails

 

I cannot sleep and so I look,

Look for His Body.

Where did it go?

Who took it?

 

Three days!

Three nights!

The pounding will not stop!

Sleep flees from me!

 

What’s that you say?

You were guarding His tomb?

An earthquake, an angel,

You ran away, deserting your post?

 

Where am I going?

Why I’m going to find Him.

I must find Him –

The pounding must stop!

 

My commander, my leader,

O he was so right when he said,

“Surely this is the Son of God.”

He was right, and I was a beast.

 

O Jesus, O Jesus,

Have mercy on me.

Let me find You!

Find me! Find me!

 

Now dear reader

You may write the ending –

What of this Roman soldier?

What of you?

 

The Hour Has Come

 

“Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You” (John 17:1).

 

The Upper Room begins with, “Jesus, knowing that His hour had come” (13:1). The first section of the Upper Room begins with “hour,” and the concluding section also begins with “hour.” The heavenly clockworks have a movement that resides in the depths of God, we may sense it at times, we may respond to it (and let us pray that we do), but only God knows how the hours will unfold and knows their timing.

 

“But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matt. 24:36). (I consider “nor the Son” to be an Incarnational mystery and temporal in nature, in line with the kenosis of Philippians 2:6ff. However we understand this, Jesus and the Father are One and Jesus is fully God.)

 

The Scriptures give us patterns and trajectories, they are not written to satisfy our curiosity, they are written to reveal Jesus Christ and bring us into koinonia with the Trinity and with one another.

 

John introduces us to the theme of “hour” at the wedding in Cana, “Woman, what does that have to do with us? My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4). This “hour” appears to be the hour in which Jesus is to begin working His signs of attestation and revelation which we see unfolding in John. Therefore John writes, “This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him” (2:11).

 

In 7:30 we read, “So they were seeking to seize Him; and no man laid his hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come.” This “hour” appears to refer to His betrayal, trial, and crucifixion. I write “appears” because there may be other facets and I want to leave room for them.

 

Similarly, John writes in 8:20, “No one seized Him, because His hour had not yet come.”

 

However, the hands of Divine time change when we arrive in Jerusalem for Holy Week, and in John 12 Jesus says:

 

“The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.

 

“Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.”

 

“Then a voice came out of heaven: ‘I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.’” (John 12:23 – 28).

 

John 12:20 – 50 is a prelude, of course, to the Upper Room. As we ponder the above section (12:23 - 28) of this extended passage, we see a penumbra of the Upper Room.

 

Jesus speaks of His hour having come, He speaks of His death and resurrection, He says that we must lose our lives and follow Him, He tells us that we will be where He is and that if we serve Him that the Father will honor us. We see all of these elements in depth in the Upper Room. Following Him encompasses self-denial, obedience, loving as He loves, laying down our lives for others, suffering persecution, living in Divine oneness with our brothers and sisters; being where Jesus is (as I hope we are seeing and will continue to see) means being with the Father in Divine koinonia, both now and forever.  

 

We have seen these things in chapters 13 – 16, and we will continue to see them in the Holy of Holies of Chapter 17.

 

Our purpose in coming into the world is to glorify God. We fulfill this purpose only in Jesus Christ, and in Jesus Christ we experience the Cross, suffering, rejection, and resurrection. As with Jesus, we must, in Him, learn what it is to fall into the ground and die, so that others may live (2 Cor. 4:12). Jesus extends the Father’s calling to Him to all of us. “As the Father sent me, I also send you” (John 20:21).

 

We may ponder the crucifixion hours upon hours, but we must move beyond pondering and into living it out in Christ – lip service must be translated into life, the Cross must be lived. We must live in the Cross and the Cross of Christ must live in us. As we have seen in the Upper Room, Jesus says that if we follow Him we will suffer – but we will also live, O my how we will live!

 

Jesus knew when the hour had come. He knew that He had come into the world for that hour. There was an hour for Jesus to begin showing His glory and teaching and doing His signs of attestation, then there was an hour for Him to fall into the earth and die, so that you and I might live in newness of life in Him.

 

In John’s Gospel, we have an hour that begins at 2:1, and another hour that begins at 12:23.

 

As we see in 12:28 and 17:1, the purpose of the “hour” is to glorify the Father and the Son. This, my friends, is the purpose of our lives, this is why we have come into the world, to glorify God and to enter into that glory with one another – the glory that Jesus bestows on us (John 17:22).

 

O that we would see who Christ is in us, and who we are in Christ!

 

What do the hours of God look like in your life?

 

Do you sense Divine clockwork in your life? Are you living in an awareness of Psalm 139?

 

Do we know the hours of our lives?

 

There is another dimension to “hour” in the Gospel of John, and we will return to that in the next reflection the Lord willing. Can you see what that dimension is? Can you locate it in John’s Gospel?

Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Part II – Reflections (14)

 

Let’s continue to consider what Bonhoeffer writes about what I’ll term intercessory suffering. I’ll quote Bonhoeffer from our previous reflection:

 

“Even though Jesus Christ has already accomplished all the vicarious suffering necessary for our redemption, his sufferings in the world are not finished yet. In his grace, he has left something unfinished in his suffering, which his church – community is to complete in this last period before his second coming” (page 202, italics mine).

 

We “are permitted to bear what others are spared …There is a specific amount of suffering which has been allocated to the body of Christ” (page 203).

 

In Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, F. F. Bruce writes, “He [Paul] seems to have held that the more of these sufferings he personally absorbed, the less would remain for his follow-Christians to endure. “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake," he writes to the Colossians, “and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Colossians 1:24). To the same effect he tells his friends in Corinth that “if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation (2 Corinthians 1:6)”” (page 139).

 

Intercessory living and suffering is very much the theme of 2 Corinthians, and it is indeed the theme of Christ Jesus, in His life, His death, His resurrection, and His Presence within His Body, His Church, His Temple. The Suffering Servant of Isaiah, such as we see in 52:13 – 53:12, continues to live within His Body. If we are indeed joined to our Lord Jesus in organic unity, ought we not to expect His Nature of self-sacrifice and self-giving to live within us and through us?

 

“God so loved the world that He gave…” God gave, and God continues to give, and as He gave Jesus, so He gives us. Jesus says, “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you” (John 20:21). What is it about this we don’t understand?

 

The theme of intercessory living is found throughout the New Testament, yet we don’t see it. We read Colossians 1:24 and gloss over it. We read 2 Corinthians 4:12 and gloss over it. We read 1 John 3:16 and promptly ignore it. Galatians 2:20 might as well be written in Martian, it is so alien to us.

 

For you see my dear friends, if these passages are not realities within us and our congregations then we would be better off if they did not exist – for they represent our high calling in Jesus Christ, to know Him in the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His suffering (Phil. 3:10) – if they did not exist we would not be guilty of rejecting them.

 

To teach a vicarious understanding of the Cross and Atonement, without teaching a corresponding vision of our life in Christ, of living and suffering with Christ, in Christ, and through Christ for the sake of others, is to present a truncated message of the Cross. The Cross is our sacramental portal into the koinonia of the Trinity, as individuals and as God’s People. To confine our teaching of the Cross to Jesus dying vicariously for us, is to teach less than what we see in Scripture. (Consider the dimensions of the Cross in Romans, especially from 5:12 – 8:39.)

 

We cannot understand the mystery of the Cross anymore than we can understand the mystery of the Trinity. We can touch the Cross and be touched by the Cross, we can live in the Cross and the Cross can live in us. As we follow on to know Jesus Christ in His depths, we will all (I do believe) have experiences and moments when we see things and hear things which we may, with Paul, term, “inexpressible words [and images and ideas], which a man is not permitted to speak.”

 

In his sermon, The Wonderful Tree, Geerhardus Vos says concerning the soul and God, “There is an inner sanctuary of communion, where all else disappears from sight, and the believer shut in with God gazes upon his loveliness, and appropriates Him, as though outside of Him nothing mattered or existed. These may be fugitive moments, and they may be rare in our experience, but we surely must know them, if God’s fruit-bearing for us is to be a reality in our lives” (Grace and Glory, page 26, italics mine).  

 

A doctrine of the Cross without the experience of the Cross, without living the Way of the Cross, is dead letter, a tragedy indeed. As Bonhoeffer has written, the Cross frees us to suffer for Christ and others, it gives us the liberty to lose our lives so that others may live.

 

In the American church, we have become so far removed from the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ, we have become so pleasure oriented and self-centered, we have so bought into individualism, that what Bonhoeffer writes, what Paul writes, and what I am writing, seems like a different Christianity, a different Gospel – why we might even say that it goes against our entire way of life of consumerism and pleasure and striving for the self.

 

Yet, I can recall as a lad hearing men and women still talk about these things, still value them, still call others to follow Jesus and respond to Him by losing their lives for His sake and the Gospel’s (Mark 8:34ff).

 

Biblical Christianity is partaking of the Divine Nature through and in Jesus Christ. Biblical Christianity is, in its essence, supernatural – it is Other than we are, or we might say that it is Other than we were, for we are being transformed into Christ’s image and we are new creations in Him. It should not surprise us if we experience things, such as suffering on behalf of others, that we cannot understand – we are learning a new Way of living in Jesus Christ and with one another.

 

We may not understand Colossians 1:24 or 2 Corinthians 4:12, but we can ask God to make them real in our lives, we can ask God to teach us to know the koinonia of the sufferings of Jesus Christ, we can ask God to teach us intercessory living and intercessory prayer, we can ask God to teach us to bear the suffering of others in our hearts and minds and souls and in the depths of our spirits. We can ask God to implant the Cross in the core of our very being. (And in our congregations!)

 

If we do these things, if we desire these things, then let us not be surprised if the Holy Spirit prays and intercedes through us “with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26) for we will have crossed the divide between religion and the Kingdom, between childhood and sonship, and we will be learning to follow the Lamb wherever His goes, including to the sacrificial altar we know as the Cross.

Treasures of the Cross

 Treasures of the Cross

Growing up in the D.C. area with a mom who was a teacher, not just by training but a teacher in her heart, meant that the Smithsonian was almost as familiar to me as our local playgrounds. While I gravitated toward history and my brother Bill toward science, I was fascinated by the mineral, stone, and gem collection in the Museum of Natural History.   

This was a long hall with displays on the right and left of many-colored and textured rocks, minerals and gems, presented in ways to help the observer best appreciate them. Some were exhibited in dark boxes with just enough light to highlight the beauty and colors of the piece – I recall a yellow piece (a rock or a mineral?) in a black velvet display with a beam of light shining on it, the contrast was striking. 

The journey down the narrow hall progressed in terms of the value of the items displayed, moving into the precious gem section, until at the very end of the corridor you arrived at the Hope Diamond. Many people came primarily to see the Hope Diamond with its many facets. While it has been decades since I’ve visited the Smithsonian, and while my old man’s memory is fading, that hall of gems and precious stones remains with me. 

There is a sense in which the Cross of Christ, though made of wood, is the hall of gems and precious stones for the Christian. (Note the many precious stones found in the New Jerusalem, Revelation 21:10 – 27; there are also precious gems, representing the People of God, associated with the garments of the ancient High Priest, Exodus 28:15 – 21.)

Do we realize the many facets of the Cross? Do we see its treasures? 

If I were to ask you to tell me about the Cross of Christ, of why Jesus died and rose again, what would you say? If we were to ask a typical congregation this question, how would the people respond?

Would we hear about our dying with Jesus on the Cross? About our “old man” being crucified with Him, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin (Romans Chapter 6)?

Would our brothers and sisters tell us about dying with Christ on the Cross to the Law, so that we might be married to Christ and freed from our marriage to the Law (Romans 7:1 – 6)?

Would other professing Christians speak to us of there now being no condemnation, of us being set free from the law of sin and death? Would we hear about our glorious sonship in Christ, whereby we cry, “Abba! Father!”? (Romans Chapter 8). 

Is it likely that congregations would tell us that the Cross of Christ crucifies us to the world and crucifies the world to us? (Galatians 6:14). And if we did actually hear this, what would it do to our priorities? What would we do with our Nehushtans and Golden Calves? 

How many professing Christians would speak to us of Galatians 2:20? “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Is this our Way of Life? 

Would we hear about the Cross of Christ judging Satan and breaking the power of darkness? (Colossians 2:15; John 12:31).

How many would speak to us of being buried with Christ and raised with Him into the heavenly places? (Colossians 2:9 – 14; Ephesians 2:1 – 10). 

I have a book by John Stott titled The Cross of Christ, it is 351 pages. What might this tell us? In other words, how deep does our understanding and experience of the Cross go? Three pages, twenty pages, 351 pages? 

Or do we make it a paragraph or a sentence? “Jesus died on the Cross so my sins can be forgiven?” This is true, but it is one facet of the Diamond of the Cross that contains many facets, and it can’t be deeply appreciated without the other facets – they complement each other. 

The Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ is to be our Way of Life. There is no area, no facet of life, that ought to be outside the Cross of Jesus Christ. The very form of our lives is to be cruciform – it is to display the Cross. 

On this Good Friday let us ponder the treasures of the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ. In Christ are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). 

Let us enter into the Cross and allow the Cross to enter into us. Let the Cross be the home in which we live, our heartbeat, our center of gravity, our portal into the Holy of Holies, the place where we are known and where we know the Trinity and one another. 

There are unfathomable treasures in the Cross, for in the Cross we know Jesus; we walk with Him and talk with Him and come home to our Father.

“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). 

“And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23). 

Let us enter into the treasures of the Cross and allow those treasures to enter into us…in Christ, always in Christ. 

Our Last Battle (9)

 Nine – The Turn

Alone, abandoned, tied to a tree, struggling with doubts and fears, reflecting back on all he had ever heard about Aslan and the history of Narnia, pondering the tales of children from another world, Tirian arrives at a forlorn hope. Even hopes that are forlorn are nevertheless hopes. 

The King cries, “Aslan! Aslan! Aslan! Come and help us now!”

The narrator tells us that, “The darkness and the cold and the quietness went on just the same.”

Tirian continues, “Let me be killed. I ask nothing for myself. But come and save all Narnia.” 

We are told that things on the outside stayed the same, but that inside the King a kind of change began to occur, and that a flicker of hope moved within Tirian. 

“O Aslan, Aslan. If you will not come yourself, at least send me the helpers from beyond the world. Or let me call them. Let my voice carry beyond the world.”

Here, my friends, we have the crux of Our Last Battle. This is the nexus of the book, The Last Battle, and it is the nexus of Our Last Battle. All of life either flows to this point, or from this point. This is our life in Christ. Without coming to this point, and without continuing from this point, our lives have no point. 

Tirian not only had to come to the end of his anger, he had to come to the end of himself. He not only had to come to the end of himself, he had to offer himself on behalf of others. 

This, my dear, dear friends, is the Christian Life, and there is no other. 

This is what it means to follow Jesus. It is to belong to Another and to live for others through Him. It is to leave our agendas and anger behind, surrendering ourselves to Jesus, laying down our lives for others as He laid down His life for us (John 15:12–13; 1 John 3:16). 

Had the Narnians known the character and Nature of Aslan they would not have been deceived by the Ape, by dead lion skins, and by the blasphemous notion that Aslan and Tash are the same. Had Tirian not been disoriented by his anger, he may have recalled the true Nature of Aslan and realized that, as Roonwitt said, the reports of Aslan appearing were lies. 

Tirian’s selfish anger blinded him to the True Aslan and to his call to serve others. 

In order to find freedom, Tirian needed to be beaten and tied to a tree. Then his heart could grow tender as he considered the welfare of the Mice, the Rabbit, and the Moles. Then his pride could be humbled as he put others before himself, and he remembered his People. Then, and only then, the King could cry, “Let me be killed…but come and save all Narnia.” 

Does this not take us back to the Stone Table of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Aslan gave His life for Edmund and Narnia, and now Tirian learns to give his life for his People.

And so Paul writes, “Death works in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:12). 

Do we know what it is to experience Galatians 2:20?

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” 

Our lives are to be living sacrifices, and once placed on the altar they are to remain there, every moment of every day, into eternity (Romans 12:1–2). 

Our Last Battle is about the Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross. Will our lives be irrevocably cruciform? Will they be in the image of Jesus Christ, and Him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2)? Will our congregations be collectively crucified with Christ? Will our arms be outstretched to suffer with Christ, to suffer for others, and to embrace the suffering of others? Will we bear the burdens and sorrow and heartache and sin of others, that they may know Jesus Christ and His healing and wholeness and Life and Love? 

Will we cry out to our Father, “Take me, not them!”? Will our churches cry out, “Take us, not them!”? 

O friends, can we see the dead lion skins that entice us with promises of our best life now, with promises of safe religious lives that require nothing of us, that allow us to continue in our self-centered pursuits, that make Jesus a concierge rather than acknowledging Him as our Lord and our God, that would make Jesus a show horse rather than the Lamb of God slain for our sins and raised from the dead, the Victor over sin and death? 

Can we not see that just as the Ape made the Narnians slaves to his agenda, that just as Shift propagated the lie of Tashlan, that we are being enticed to serve the agendas of this world, a world opposed to our Lord Jesus Christ? How is it that we have been made captives of Tashlan? 

Our Last Battle is whether we will say, “O Jesus. Bring me to the Cross, bind me to the Cross, let the Cross be embedded in my soul, and let Your Cross radiate from my life.”

Our Last Battle is whether we will daily cry, “Take me. Save others!”

“That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His sufferings, being conformed to his death” (Philippians 3:10). 

Abiding in Jesus, Living in Him (15)

 

 

“…and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:2b).

 

As we continue to ponder the pruning of our Father, let’s remind ourselves that His purpose in pruning is that we might be conformed to the image of His Firstborn Son and that this pruning need not have anything to do with sin. Because of our preoccupation with sin in much of the professing church, I cannot over emphasize this. Not only might pruning not have anything to do with sin, hopefully a time comes in our lives when it seldom has anything to do with sin.

 

Please understand that this is not making light of sin, it is rather highlighting the glory and power of salvation that Jesus Christ has brought to us; it is living in our inheritance in Jesus Christ. It is also learning to live in the Cross of Christ and in the Christ of the Cross.

 

“For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:10 – 11). Why do we insist on speaking as if we still are who we were instead of speaking and affirming of who we now are in Jesus Christ? Paul tells us not to do this!

 

There are things deep within our souls that require pruning, but which can only be touched as we know a deep and abiding security in Christ – otherwise we could not stand the pain and we would interpret the deep working of the Holy Spirit as rejection. These are mysteries, and while we may not understand them we can experience them in Jesus Christ.

 

“Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And having been made perfect, He because to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation…” (Hebrews 5:8 – 9).

 

Now friends, we know that Jesus was sinless (Heb. 4:15; 2 Cor. 5:21), and yet we see that there was a process, a journey, a pilgrimage of maturation and of learning obedience. In Philippians 2:8 we see that Jesus became “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Here we have the mystery of the Incarnation, Jesus was fully God and fully Man – we do not understand this. We can experience the Incarnation because we are joined to Jesus Christ; we share His Divinity and His Humanity – we share the unity of His Nature; but we really cannot understand these things and we speculate to our peril.

 

The immediate point is that if Jesus had a maturation process that had nothing to do with sin, then as we learn to live in the fulness of the Gospel – especially those dimensions we find regarding our identity in Christ (Romans 5:12 – 8:30) – that we ought to anticipate that the Father’s dealing with us, His pruning, is focused on the Person of Jesus Christ and our conformation into His image, rather than on a preoccupation with sin. Healthy plants are pruned to enhance their health! (The Lord willing, we are going to circle back and take another look at sin in a deeper dimension before we move on from our passage on pruning.)

 

We see the journey of obedience and maturation in Jesus Christ consummated in Gethsemane and on Calvary. “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done…And being in agony He was praying very fervently.” (Luke 22:39 – 46). “Father into Your hands I commit My spirit.” (Luke 23:48).

 

In John chapters 13 – 17, the Upper Room, Jesus draws us into deep koinonia with the Father, with Himself, with the Holy Spirit, and with one another. The love to which He calls us is a cruciform, that means that it looks like the Cross, it is rooted in the Cross, which is in the depths of the Trinity, and its manifestation is the Cross. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13).

 

Jesus speaks to us of knowing Him in the koinonia of His sufferings when He says, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you…If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you…an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is doing a service to God.” (See John 15:18 – 16:4).

 

The Cross is the great pruning shear of our heavenly Father, for in the Cross we learn that Christ is life and that life is Christ. In the Cross all that is not the image of Jesus Christ is removed, chisel and hammer stroke by chisel and hammer stroke.

 

When Paul writes, “I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified,” (1 Cor. 2:2) he is writing about our Way of Life; the Way we think and feel and imagine and speak and make choices and do things. This is the context of the statement, what precedes and follows the statement is all about Jesus Christ being our source of wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.

 

Our glorious calling is to know Jesus, to share life with Jesus in His Cross; to share this life with one another, and to offer this life to the world.

 

“…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the koinonia of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” (Phil. 3:10).

 

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Gal. 2:20).

 

“But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Gal. 6:14).

 

There is no pruning apart from the Cross. There is no life in Christ outside the Cross. There is no spiritual formation not birthed and shaped by the Cross.

 

Friends, I don’t care if it is a book on marriage, on parenting, on pastoring, on church “growth”, on preaching, on spiritual gifts, on conflict resolution…on Christians in business, on “leadership” – if it isn’t centered on the Cross of Christ and the Christ of the Cross, we ought to question its Biblical roots.

 

It is the Lamb who has been slain who is seen in the heavens (Rev. 5:6), not a bunch of slick preachers and entertaining Sunday programs and self-centered books and boutique coffees and pastries that we can enjoy while our brethren elsewhere are suffering persecution for their witness for Jesus Christ…and while believers a few miles or blocks from us may be homeless or without food or a safe place to live.

 

The pruning of our kind heavenly Father means that we die not only to sin, but we die to ourselves – so that we might live for Christ and for others.

 

“For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” (2 Cor. 5:14 – 15).

 

“…and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me…”

 

“…Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:27).

 

A Holy Place - Isaiah 53 (1)

 

There are some passages, I think, that we ought not to teach or preach until we are soaked with them through and through; until we have read them again and again, prayed them, pondered them, bowed our hearts and minds and souls before them and in them – and have seen Jesus the Lamb in His terrible beauty and glory in them. Isaiah 52:13 – 12 is such a passage.

 

Of course, if we don’t begin the climb somewhere by teaching and preaching and speaking of the passage, we’ll not learn the depths of Christ’s invitation to us, so we will teach and preach the passage, we will speak of it to others – but let us learn to do so with our faces to the earth as we prostrate ourselves before Him who sits upon the Throne and before the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

 

We can no more fathom this passage than we can fathom what occurred on the Cross of Jesus Christ, and yet we can be touched by the Messiah in this passage, and we can touch Him – we can die with Him and be raised to life with Him, and by God’s grace the Holy Spirit can display this passage to others through our lives, individually and as the People of God.

 

If we pick the passage up in verse 13 of Chapter 52, we see, “Behold, My servant will prosper, He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted” (NASB). But then we have, “Just as many were astonished at you, My people, so His appearance was marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men.”

 

We begin with the end, with the telos, the purpose, the goal, the fruit – and then immediately are plunged into the depths of the Offering, the Sacrifice – the One who will be “high and lifted up and greatly exalted” “has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him” (53:2b).

 

This sequence of seeing the exaltation before seeing the suffering that precedes the exaltation is found in Paul’s words to the Philippians (3:10), “…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death…” In Hebrews 12:2 Jesus sees “the joy set before Him” and endures the cross and despises the shame. We might say that by keeping our eyes on the prize we begin at the prize and then experience the pilgrimage, the race, the sufferings – always keeping our eyes on the prize, the goal, the finish line.

 

Again, in Romans 8:17 - 18, “…and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” We see the glory of our inheritance in God and Christ, followed by “if indeed we suffer with Him.” We see the telos, the end, the goal – and then we drop back and see what lies between “then” and “now.” We see the ground over which we must traverse.

 

If we follow the narrative of Isaiah 52:14 – 53:10a we may wonder if the Suffering Servant will see the light of day, we may wonder if we will see the light of day as we walk with Him, but then we come to 53:10b; “He will see His offspring [seed], He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of Yahweh will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied…Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong…” (53:10 – 12 passim).

 

If we continue into Chapter 54 we discover, “Shout for joy, O barren one, you who have borne no child; break forth into shouting and cry aloud, you who have not travailed; for the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous than the sons of the married woman, says Yahweh…And your descendants [seed] will possess nations and will resettle the desolate cities.”

 

The Suffering Servant and the barren woman show us that things are not what they appear to be; the woman who was thought to be desolate and the Servant who was thought to be desolated beyond hope, have brought forth offspring as the stars of the heavens. Hence Paul writes:

 

“But the Jerusalem above is free; she is our mother. For it is written, ‘Rejoice, barren woman who does not bear; break forth and shout, you who are not in labor; for more numerous are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband.’ And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise.” (Galatians 4:26 – 28).

 

We are the seed, the offspring of the Suffering Servant and the Barren Woman, we are the fruit of the One who is “high and lifted up and greatly exalted.”

 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24).

 

Are we dying with Jesus Christ so that others may live?

 

Can we say with Paul, can we say with Christ and as the Body of Christ, “So death works in us, but life in you”?

 

 

A Kingdom of Priests (4)

 

In 2 Corinthians 5:16 we read that because of Jesus Christ and His glorious work of salvation that, “Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him in this way no longer.”

 

Sadly, for the most part, we are trained to evaluate others, and indeed life, according to the flesh, according to what our natural eyes see. We are trained to see ourselves not in the Light of God’s Word and Jesus Christ, but according to naturalistic understanding, according to the world, the flesh, the devil…and O so sadly, according to much of the professing church which is mired in the gravitational pull of the earthly and not the heavenly.

 

What is it to “know Christ according to the flesh”? It is to know Him other than He is revealed in Scripture, and this “other” is myriad. We can know Him as a good man, but of course, that cannot be so; as C.S. Lewis articulated (building on those who had gone before him), Jesus is either Lord, liar, or lunatic; Jesus Christ did not give us the option to consider Him a good man.

 

We may know Christ as an American, but not just any American, but most certainly as belonging to our own political party. We may know Him as an economist, supporting our personal economic theories and agendas. We may know Him as belonging to our racial and ethnic heritage. We can know Him according to the flesh any number of ways, but the most dangerous way to know Christ according to the flesh is to know Him according to our ideas of righteousness and religion, allowing them to be the interpretive lens through which we read the Bible and think about Him, ourselves, and others.

 

As the Pharisees and scribes demonstrated, when we see and know Christ according to the flesh, according to our natural instincts and way of thinking, the assured result is that we will kill Him, we will put to death the revelation of Christ in the Bible, in our hearts, and most tragically, in the hearts of others. And here is a frightening thing, our thinking can look so good, for it can focus on good works, on self-improvement programs, on sociology; we can be like Peter on the Mount, “Let’s make three tabernacles!”

 

Think of Paul, the man who wrote 2 Corinthians 5:16; here is an example of someone who was O so righteous when seeing Christ and His Body according to flesh, persecuting the Body of Christ, being complicit in Stephen’s murder; yet Paul would come to a place when he would write, “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ” (Phil. 3:7).

 

Let’s ponder two examples of what it looks like to see others beyond the natural, the flesh, and to see them as God sees them, we’ll take an example from Paul and one from our Lord Jesus.

 

Suppose you were asked to speak to a congregation that had split into factions, was tolerating sexual promiscuity, showing up drunk for worship and fellowship, and creating chaos during corporate worship. What mental picture would you form in your mind as you prepared to speak on Sunday morning to these people? How would you “see” them? How would you begin your sermon? Paul faced a similar situation, the difference being that since he couldn’t travel to speak to the congregation, he wrote a letter. How do you suppose his letter began? How did he set the stage for dealing with the above problems? Let’s read what he wrote:

 

“Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,          To the church of God which is in Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

“I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, just as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you eagerly await the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:1 – 9).

 

Paul calls the Corinthians “sanctified” and “saints.” He thanks God for the grace they have in Christ Jesus and says that they have been enriched in Him in everything, “in all speech and knowledge” and that they are “not lacking in any gift.” Paul is confident that Christ will “confirm them to the end, blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

 

Does Paul’s approach make any sense? How can he write these things to a congregation so messed up?

 

He can do it because what he is writing is based on and in our Lord Jesus Christ, it is about the marvelous and miraculous love and grace of God in Jesus Christ, as especially manifested in the Cross. This does not mean that the Corinthians are not accountable, it does not mean that they do not need to repent of their present sin, it does not mean that they do not need to grow in their love and understanding. In fact, much of the rest of Paul’s letter is taking them to task for their immaturity and their sin, and instructing them in godly living in Jesus Christ. But first Paul sets the stage by affirming Jesus Christ in them and them in Jesus Christ – Paul does not address them as sinners but as saints.

 

Paul desires that they live in Christ as who they are in Christ, and thus the letter begins with affirmations of the work of God in the Corinthians, a reminder of who God is and of who the Corinthians are in Him. This is not the way we would normally think but it is the Way of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

There is a sense in which we can only say hard and difficult things to our brothers and sisters when our brothers and sisters are secure in their relationship with Jesus Christ. There is a sense in which God can only speak hard and difficult things to the depths of my soul, to the depths of who I am, when I am secure and assured of who He is in me and of who I am in Him. Without an assurance of God’s love for me and of the perfect and complete work of Jesus Christ on the Cross I will likely interpret God’s conviction of sin and disciplines in my life as His rejection, when in fact it is a manifestation of my Father’s love for me.

 

Paul was not viewing the Corinthians “according to the flesh” but seeing them in the Holy Spirit as who they were in Jesus Christ. Paul was not basing his ministry to the Corinthians based on appearances, but rather based on Jesus Christ and the Cross (see 1 Cor. 1:30 – 2:5).

 

I suppose I should say that for Paul to have written the first nine verses of his letter and then to have kept going in that vein without exposing and dealing with immaturity and sin would have been an example of the false teaching that we see today, a teaching that wants to seduce us by having us feel good without the Cross, without repentance, without obedience to the Word of God. Paul was not ignoring the chaos and sin in Corinth, in fact, he was writing because there was sin and chaos. 

There is also a sense in which Paul ends his letter the way he begins his letter, for in 1 Corinthians 15 we have the theme of the resurrection, of our glory in Christ and of our being taken out of Adam and into Christ – a reminder again of who we are as Paul directs our attention to our consummate destiny.

 

In the next post in this series we’ll consider an example of Jesus Christ saying things that, according the flesh, just don’t make sense.

 

Heavenly Mindedness (62)

 

“It is characteristic of faith that it not merely desires the perfect but desires the perfect as a work and gift of God. A heaven that was not illumined by the light of God, and not a place for closest embrace of Him, would be less than heaven. God as builder and maker thereof has put the better part of Himself into his work. Therefore those who enter the city are in God. The thought is none other than that of the seer in the Apocalypse:

 

“I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. And that city has no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God lightens it, and the throne of God and the Lamb are therein: and his servants shall do Him service, and they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads.”  G. Vos [see Revelation chapters 21 & 22]

 

May I gently ask, how often do you read and meditate on Revelation chapters 21 and 22? If I ask you to please close your eyes and picture these two chapters, are you able to do so? What do you see? If you were with children, how would you describe these chapters?

 

Consider that these chapters are the conclusion to a letter that Jesus Christ wrote to Seven Churches via the Apostle John. Also consider that these churches were suffering persecution and dealing with apostasy. In writing to the Seven Churches, Jesus Christ wrote to all churches, or better yet, He wrote to His One Holy Catholic Church that transcends time and space, having its roots in eternity past and its trajectory in eternity future. Finally, it cannot be accidental that these chapters form the conclusion to the canon of Holy Scripture, they are the final words within the Word, the eternal image that is without end in our life in Christ.

 

Is it any wonder that Vos leads us here, to the Holy City, in his message on heavenly – mindedness? Where else would we anticipate the pilgrimage of Hebrews 11 to lead us, but the very City that the patriarchs sought with all their hearts and minds and souls?

 

There is a sense in which, I think, this is what we experience beyond the veil that Jesus Christ rent in two on the Cross. Can this be so? Can this be not only what lies before us in its fulness, but also how we are to live today in Jesus Christ and with one another? Do we not have the melding of John 17 with Revelation 21 and 22?

 

Let’s ponder what Vos has selected from these two chapters:

        

“I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof.” Are we not to live in Christ today? Is not the Holy Trinity to be our place of abode? Doesn’t Jesus tell the Woman at the Well that God is Spirit, that true worship is not a matter of geography, but rather of transcendent Spirit and Truth? Do we not see the phrase “in Christ” again and again in the New Testament? Can we see that we are the Temple of God, the dwelling place of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19 – 22; 1 Peter 2:4 – 5)? God is our Temple and we are God’s Temple, is this not what we see in John 17?

 

“Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them…” (Rev. 21:3). Can we see that this is a continuation of John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”? Can we see that this is an extension of John 12:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”? Do we have eyes to see the manifestation of this City and Temple in Acts 2:4, “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit…”? He who was from eternity past, touched earth in Bethlehem, then in Jerusalem came to abide in His People, and will have His fuller manifestation on that Day we see in Revelation 21 and 22. (I do not say that this Mystery will have its “ultimate manifestation or expression” then, for who can grasp what koinonia with the Eternal One has for us? I do not think that “ultimate” is a word we can use in this context.).

 

“And that city has no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God lightens it…” We also read in Revelation 21:23 that “its lamp is the Lamb.” If the Lamb will be our lamp then, if the glory of God will be our light then, if we will not need the sun or the moon then – that is, if we will not need “lesser lights” then; why, O why, do we think we need lesser lights now? Is not Jesus Christ the Light of the world? Does not the Father emphatically say, “This is my Beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased, hear Him!” (Matthew 17:5)?

 

We are to glory in Jesus Christ, not in ourselves, and not in lesser lights, whether those lights be philosophy, doctrinal distinctives, traditions, nationalism, politics, sectarianism, Gnosticism in various forms – including pseudo-Christian forms, the social “sciences” with its myriad therapies and healers, worldviews, religious experiences…nothing, nothing, is to stand alongside the Person and Light and Life of Jesus Christ.

 

We only need to ask a question or two to determine whether we are dealing with a lesser light, or indeed, even dealing with false teaching. “Where is Jesus in this? Do I unambiguously see Jesus Christ portrayed? Where is the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ? Is this designed to draw me closer to Jesus Christ and His Cross? Is Jesus Christ the center of what I am hearing or what I am reading?”

 

Dear, dear friends, if you apply the above to much of what passes for Christian teaching and writing, you may find that you are seeing and hearing lesser lights, and in some cases false teaching, that has nothing to do with the Cross of Christ, the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, and the exclusive claim on our lives by Jesus Christ. Do not be deceived, the message of the Cross is an offense for it lays bear our sinfulness, our utter inability to attain to righteousness, and our spiritual and moral and ethical bankruptcy. When we come into a relationship with Jesus Christ our dependency on Him is total, complete, and unequivocal – for without Him we can do nothing, absolutely nothing (John 15:5).

 

If the City of Revelation chapters 21 and 22 is our eternal home, ought we not to begin to live in that City today? Ought not our congregations to portray that City? When the world looks at us, are they seeing citizens of that holy City, the City of God?

 

We’ll continue with this section from Vos in the next post.

 

Heavenly Mindedness (42)

 

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

 

“The inspired writer tells us that the two most momentous events in sacred history, the giving of the law on Sinai and the end of the world, signify the removal of things that are shaken, in order that such things as are not shakable may remain. And the second shaking is so radical and comprehensive that it involves not only the earth but likewise the heavens: it will sweep the transitory out of the life of the people of God even in the higher regions, and will leave them, when the smoke and dust of the upheaval are blown away, in a clear atmosphere of eternal life.

 

“But in this sense also faith is not purely prospective: it enables to anticipate; it draws down the imperishable substance of eternity into its vessel of time and feeds on it. The believer knows that even now there is in him that which has been freed from the law of change, a treasure that moth and rust cannot corrupt, true riches enshrined in his heart as in a treasury of God.”   G. Vos.

 

Pondering the second paragraph above (we considered the first paragraph in our last post); this idea of faith, of heavenly – mindedness, drawing “down the imperishable substance of eternity into its vessel of time” and feeding on it, is central to Vos’s message. Can we hear Jesus saying to His disciples, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about”?

 

Consider Paul’s words to the Colossians (3:1-2), “Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Fix your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.” In Ephesians 2:6 Paul tells us that God has “seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

 

Being seated with God in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus is not a theological fiction, it is not something sterile and theoretical, but rather an actual organic living event originated by God, animated by God, and sustained by God. Christ Jesus is to be our biosphere, the heavenly places in Christ are to be the air we breathe, what Vos terms ‘the substance of eternity” is to be where we live in Christ, as we draw “down the imperishable substance of eternity into its vessel of time.” In other words, we should be living in the heavens and the heavens should be living in us. We are called to feed on the heavens in Christ as we live on this earth.

 

This in turn frees us “from the law of change.” This “law of change” is ultimately all corruption, including the corruption of our body, for a Day will come when the fulness of our redemption will be consummated in the Resurrection (Romans 8:18 – 25; 1 Cor. Chapter 15). But let’s think about this from a more immediate perspective.

 

I can think of no better example of the law of change than the 24/7 news cycle. The American church is in bondage to this cycle, as the past few years have amply demonstrated. Rather than having our lives anchored in the Rock which is Christ, rather than meditating on God’s Word, rather than being led by the Holy Spirit in sacrificial living; “Give us our daily bread” now means that we feed off news, whether that “news” is true or false.

 

We have become slaves to the immediate, to the temporal, to what has become the law of daily and hourly change. Those who learn to live in the heavenly places in Christ as a Way of Life come to see news cycles for what they are, they come to see political and corporate and academic and science leaders for what they are (well-meaning but limited at best, wicked and evil at worst), they come to see this present evil age as passing away.

 

Dear, dear friends. If we live subject to the law of merciless change how can we help those around us? If our hearts and minds are filled with the anxieties and uncertainties of the surrounding culture, if our souls are daily diminished and poisoned by words and images of swirling insanity – including political insanity – how can we live as ambassadors of Christ (2 Cor. 5:20)?

 

We have been seduced to trade the treasures of heaven for treasures that have the life of a Mayfly. This is wickedness.

 

Vos tells us that we can have “a treasure that moth and rust cannot corrupt, true riches enshrined in his heart as in a treasury of God.” Christ has entrusted His treasure to us, will we not only preserve it, but will we share it? Sadly, we barter away this treasure for the corrupt promises of this present age – this must be a source of great sadness to heaven. Are there angels weeping? Our Savior gave Himself for us, and in return we give ourselves to the false and wicked promises of the present evil age.

 

Let me gently remind us that wickedness often disguises itself as morality, as progress, as common sense, as pragmatism, as idolatrous nationalism, and as Christless Christianity – a Christianity that has all the trappings and language and even the doctrines of Biblical Christianity, but without the Jesus Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Jesus Christ, without the anointing and vitality of the Holy Spirit.

 

To follow Jesus Christ is to have one treasure, for which we sell all that we have (Matthew 13:44 – 45; Jesus sells all for us and we sell all for Him); in which we lose all to gain all (Mark 8:34-38). To follow Jesus Christ is to treasure Him and our inheritance in Him above all else in the universe – we draw down the imperishable substance of eternity into our vessel of time and feed on it.

 

We enshrine the true riches of Christ in our hearts as in a treasury of God. We treasure the Lamb of God. We treasure the Word of God. We treasure the People of God. We treasure the Holy Trinity. We treasure the holiness of God. Doing so we are freed from the tyranny of the corruptible and ever - changing age in which we live.

 

You see, dear friends, this is not about us, this is about Jesus Christ and others. This is about being heavenly – minded, about being consumed by Christ and for Christ and with Christ. God’s love was so consumed with us that He gave His Only Begotten Son – how can we live other than to be consumed with love for Him?

Psalm 56 – Excerpts from Augustine

 

Psalm 56 – Excerpts from Augustine

(Updated with some paraphrase by R. Withers)

 

“Held in a winepress is His Body, that is, His Church. What does it mean to be in a winepress? It means to be subject to pressings. A grape on the vine doesn’t experience pressing, it appears whole, but nothing flows from it. When the grape is thrown into a winepress, it is walked on, stomped on, it is pressed down; it appears as if it is being harmed, but this harm is not barren; if fact, if there had been no harm, if no pressure, then that grape that appeared whole on the vine would have been barren – nothing would have flowed form it.

 

“Do not fear because man has pressed you down; let wine be produced, in fact, you’ve become a grape in order that you might be trodden down in the winepress.

 

“The first cluster pressed down is Christ…Let His Body likewise say, looking upon its Head, “Be gracious to me, O God, for man has trampled upon me,” [Psalm 56:1a]…If you look at your life and don’t have troubles, if you cannot relate to this passage and image, then perhaps you have not really begun to be a Christian…If you have not yet suffered any persecution for Christ, you should be concerned whether or not you have really started to live a godly life in Christ [2 Timothy 3:12], you should be concerned whether or not you have entered into the winepress of Christ; prepare yourself for pressings, do not be a dry grape, for then when you are pressed there will be no juice flowing from you.

 

“A grape I was, wine I shall be.”  

 

This was true of Christ, let it be true of me. This was true of the Head, so it will be true of His True and Faithful Body.

It sure seems as if much of our preaching and teaching is about avoiding the Cross of Christ, avoiding suffering for Him. Are you living your life avoiding the winepress? Or, are you embracing the Cross of Jesus Christ? Are we living in the winepress? Are others partaking of the wine of the Head poured out through His Body? Are we, in Christ, broken Bread and poured out Wine?

 

Mark 8:34 – 38; Galatians 2:20; 6:11 – 16.

Faithful Cross, Above All Other

 By: Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus (c.530 – 609 A.D.)

 

1 Faithful cross, above all other:

one and only noble tree!

None in foliage, none in blossom,

none in fruit thy peer may be:

sweetest wood and sweetest iron,

sweetest weight is hung on thee.

 

2 Bend thy boughs, O tree of glory!

Thy relaxing sinews bend;

for awhile the ancient rigor

that thy birth bestowed, suspend;

and the King of heavenly beauty

gently on thine arms extend.

 

3 Praise and honor to the Father,

praise and honor to the Son,

praise and honor to the Spirit,

ever Three and ever One:

one in might and one in glory

while eternal ages run.

Heavenly - Mindedness (8)

 

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

 

“As to its negative side, the feeling of strangeness on earth, even in Canaan, the writer could base his representation on the statement of Abraham to the sons of Heth: “I am a stranger and a sojourner with you,” and on the words of the aged Jacob to Pharaoh: “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years : few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”

 

“As to the positive side, the desire for a heavenly state, there is no such explicit testimony in the narrative of Genesis. None the less the author was fully justified in affirming this also. It is contained by implication in the other. The refusal to build an abiding habitation in a certain place must be due to the recognition that one’s true, permanent abode is elsewhere. The not-feeling-at-home in one country has for its inevitable counterpart homesickness for another. The writer plainly ascribes this to the patriarchs, and in doing so also ascribes to them a degree of acquaintance with the idea of a heavenly life. His meaning is not that, unknown to themselves, they symbolized through their mode of living the principle of destination for heaven. On the contrary, we are expressly told that they confessed, that they made it manifest, that they looked for, that they desired. There existed with them an intelligent and outspoken apprehension of the celestial world.

 

Vos point that while “there is no such explicit testimony in the narrative in Genesis. None the less the author was fully justified in affirming this also,” is something that, the Lord willing, we’ll reflect on in the next meditation.

 

Vos writes of the Patriarchs having a “feeling of strangeness on earth” and that a “not-feeling-at-home in one country has for its inevitable counterpart homesickness for another.” Vos is writing of feelings; a feeling of strangeness, a feeling of not being at home, a feeling of homesickness. How we “think” is important, how we “feel” is also important. Yes, we can have unreliable feelings, but we can also have unreliable thoughts. I suppose I’ve known just as many folks who are prisoners of questionable thoughts as I have known who are prisoners of questionable feelings. Can we really separate the two?

 

The Church Fathers, believing that we are made in the image of God, did not think that we can fully understand our own inner persons, our own inner workings (if you will), anymore than we can understand the Trinity. Yes, we can obtain glimpses, we can touch and experience dynamics, but we can’t really and truly comprehensively understand the mysterious goings – on within us. This is one of many reasons we are called to surrender to the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, so that the Divine work of transformation into the image of Christ may be accomplished in us (Hebrews 4:12 – 13; Romans 8:26 – 30; 1 Corinthians Chapter 2).

 

This acknowledgment of the mystery of being made in the image of God ought to caution us against adopting a static approach to the inner – person; we simply cannot produce a schematic of who we are internally anymore than we can produce a schematic of the Trinity. We are not machines, we are living beings created in the image of God, and there is more to life than a “garbage in, garbage out” mechanistic view of humans. I’ll leave you to consider the implications of this in the areas of counseling and pastoral care.

 

The Psalmist writes, “I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me” (Psalm 119:19). Peter appeals to his readers as “aliens and strangers” (1 Peter 2:11).

 

Have you ever visited a culture different than your own? There are cultures within the U.S.A. that are different. We’ve lived in New England and we’ve lived in Virginia – those are two different cultures. Northern Virginia has a different culture than Central Virginia. Eastern Massachusetts has a different culture than Western Massachusetts. When I lived in Baltimore, Little Italy had a different culture than the Polish section of town. Cultural changes can be, of course, more pronounced when one travels abroad, especially when not understanding the language. Coming home is often associated with coming back to a place of comfort, of familiarity. When we take a road trip outside Virginia, it is always nice to cross the state line back into Virginia. When we travel outside our country, it is always nice to go through customs when we return – to be back home.

 

But now for a question, “Are we, followers of Jesus Christ, comfortable in the world in which we live? Are we comfortable in our culture? Are we comfortable in our nation?”

 

If the answer is “Yes”, then how can this be? Have we become so enculturated that we have lost the sense of our identity, that we are no longer strangers and pilgrims on earth, that we are no longer living the “tent – life”?

 

It has been observed that the Church has its most effective witness when it is countercultural. When we are “not of the world” (John 17:16) we can better be a blessing to the world. I frankly think that the idea that we can be “so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good” is an insidious lie that causes us to be embarrassed at the notion that we (like Jesus!) are not of the world, that we are strangers and pilgrims, citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20).

 

To accommodate ourselves to the world is to avoid and negate the Cross of Christ. Any way of life, any “Christian” movement or teaching, that is not centered on Jesus Christ and His Cross, that is not cruciform in its pattern and fashion, is simply not Biblical. “But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

 

Where there is no Christ of the Cross, and Cross of Christ, there is no Biblically – Christian message. That is, where Christ and His Cross is not our way of life, there is no Christian way of life.

 

Well, I wanted to touch on the “desire” of the Patriarchs that Vos speaks of above, but this is a blog and I’ve written enough. Perhaps next time.

 

Late Saturday Musings

July 18, 2020

 

Psalm 18 is part of my readings today. I have long loved David’s words to God, “Thy gentleness has made me great.” Have we come to know our Father in this way? Can others say this about us? About our churches? About professing Christians in general?

 

I admit that I often cringe when I hear the words “Christian” and “Evangelical”. Until I hear the context, I don’t know what they mean.

 

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Can someone explain why, if tragedy or upheaval happens in central Africa or in the Amazon, that no one in the United States writes a book about the “End Times”? Cannot we see how self-centered we are? Everything revolves around us in the States.

 

Can we not see how shallow our thinking is?

 

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An African – American woman who loves Gaelic dancing has been accused of “cultural appropriation”. Don’t we see that we have so much more in common than we realize? We love music. We love dancing. We love food.

 

Does this mean that Joe’s Diner at the corner of Park and High streets can no longer serve tacos, hot and sour soup, and pizza unless Joe has authentic ethnic cooks?

 

I’ve always, and I do mean always, loved getting to know folks from other cultures – why even from New England and the Deep South – imagine that!

 

What are we doing to ourselves? Too each other?

 

Well lassie, I’ve got a good bit of Scot in me and I say, “Dance, dance, and then dance some more!” Maybe I’ll give a sword dance a try myself.

 

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God says that He will shake all things, things in the heavens and on the earth, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Jesus tells us a story about two men, one built his house on the sand, the other dug down and laid his foundation on a rock. Until the storm came with the storm surge, both houses looked the same from the outside.

 

How often do you visit a friend in his house who says, “Let me tell you about the great foundation my home is built upon”?

 

What is the foundation of your life built upon? Humanism? Agnosticism? Atheism? Cheapo cultural “Christian” religion that has a Cracker Jack – ‘n – the Box Jesus with prizes for everyone and your very own flavor of cotton – candy?

 

Those who follow Christ are not from Blue states or Red states, they have a citizenship that transcends the chaos of poisoned humanity, they know there is no hope in the things of this world – but they will live their lives for the blessing of the people of this world, indeed, for the benefit of all of God’s creation.

 

Jesus Christ came and died and rose again so that He could cross the greatest aisle of the universe, the great divide, the immense chasm – so that He might plumb the deepest abyss imaginable – the gulf between God and man – so that God might draw us, in Christ, back to Himself into a loving eternal union as His sons and His daughters in Jesus Christ.

 

We who call Jesus "Lord" now have the incredible honor of following Him and His Cross, loving all, giving to all, making peace with all in Christ – being God’s light in Christ in a confused and dark and toxic world. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man [or woman], He bids him [or her], ‘Come and die.’”

 

Mark 8:27 – 38; Galatians 2:20; 6:14