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Romans 12, How to Live Together, 5.5

19 Sunday Dec 2021

Posted by in Church Conflict, Incarnation, Romans

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The Incarnation

5 Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, 

                        “Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, 

but a body have you prepared for me; 

            6           in burnt offerings and sin offerings 

you have taken no pleasure. 

            7           Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, O God, 

as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’ ” 

Hebrews 10:5–7.

There is a tendency among human beings to either deny there is a soul, or to deny the body matters and the spirit is all. But the Scripture will have none of that.

The importance of the human being is seen when consider the most spiritual topics, God. While God does not have a body like a man; the Son of God became incarnate as a man (while in manner being degraded in any manner as God). The Incarnation is a mystery beyond all mysteries. But is also the basis of how we must understand all other things:

The incarnation of God, therefore, is the supreme mystery at the center of our Christian confession, and no less at the center of all reality. Consequently, all conceptions of reality that fail to see and savor that all things hold together in Christ, and that he is preeminent in all things, can never be anything but abstract conceptions of virtual realities—that is, invariably hollow and ultimately vacuous concepts pulled away from reality.

John C. Clark and Marcus Peter Johnson, The Incarnation of God: The Mystery of the Gospel as the Foundation of Evangelical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 12.

There are many things which could be said of the Incarnation, but one thing which must be understood is the profound importance of the human body. To battle on our behalf, it was first necessary for the Son of God to have the body of a human being, and that the human body was the location of that conflict. Consider this verse:

14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, [he shares our nature]

that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, [he destroys death from the position of a human body]

Hebrews 2:14. Think of how the Scripture speaks of our Savior. His announcement into this world is an announcement of being born a human being:

30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 

Luke 1:30–33.  Jesus is born. He is wrapped in cloth. He is laid in a manager – and at the end of his life he will again be wrapped in cloth and this time laid in a tomb. 

The crucifixion is the killing of his body. And the resurrection is the resurrection of his body.  And he is Ascended, reigning forever in a body.

The proof of the Resurrection is that his body is no longer in the tomb:

5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” 

Matthew 28:5–7. When he proves to the Disciples he has risen, it is the proof of his body:

24 Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” 

26 Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” 

John 20:24–29. That body is the residence of all our blessing:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

Ephesians 1:3. Indeed our salvation is bound upon with the identification of our body with his:

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrectionlike his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:1–11. Our life is a participation in the life of Christ, in his death, in his burial, in his resurrection.  

The presentation of our bodies in a living sacrifice is premised upon this union with Christ. We can offer no sacrifice apart from him:

24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. 

Hebrews 9:24–28. The sacrifice of his body is the only sacrifice for sin; a sacrifice never to be repeated. It is a sacrifice rendered “once.” 

We can only understand the sacrifice of our body in light of the sacrifice of his body and our union to that sacrifice. 

Indeed, it is in our union to Christ, a union which is not merely some intellectual proposition, but a sort of union which involves the body of our Ascended Incarnate Lord and our body is the premise of our sacrifice:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” 

John 14:6 We cannot offer something to the Father but in the life of the Son. We know the Father in knowing the Son. “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” John 14:9. Now these are deep waters in which it is very easy to get lost and drown. For our purposes we need merely assert that our approach to God is only in Jesus Christ, not around him. 

Jesus has made a way for his by taking our nature, by being found in a body which was offered as a sacrifice – and which was received for the forgiveness of sin. We participate in that life, that sacrifice, that resurrection. To participate in that life entails a life our body.  

What you must understand, the human body is the battlefield upon which God defeated his enemies. We participate in that victory in the identification of our life in this body with the life of the Incarnate Son of God. This identification is so great, that the Church, the sum of the redeemed are referred as the Body of Christ. 

The logic of Paul’s argument of how we are to live—and that manner of life is the nature of the “living sacrifice” commanded—is wholly premised upon our identification in the body of Christ. 

The Incarnation makes the life of the Church possible and is the basis for that life.

Seeing more clearly how the life of our body is joined up with the life of Jesus will be the next point.

Romans 12, How to Live Together, 5.3

15 Wednesday Dec 2021

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The Body as Evidence

In Matthew 9, a paralytic was brought to Jesus. Rather than immediately heal the man (which we assume the hope of the paralytic’s friends), Jesus says, “Take heart my son; your sins are forgiven.” Matt. 9:2.

This immediately provokes outrage in the scribes. How could Jesus claim to forgive sins?

Jesus then asks them a question, “For which is easier to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?”

It all depends. If Jesus is a charlatan, then it is easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven.” That spiritual status does not produce a bodily state which is immediately visible to all. Thus, if he is lying, the lie cannot be seen.

However, if Jesus is telling the truth, then the forgiveness is the more difficult status. God alone can forgive sins; and such forgiveness will be purchased by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus (“Jesus our Lord, who delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” Rom. 4:24-25)

Jesus heals the man, as a demonstration of his power over the effects of sin (since death and disease are the result of sin’s influence in the world). He does so without a prayer that God would work at his request, but upon his own command.

From that display of over the body, one can infer Jesus’ power over the unseen spiritual status of sin.

That parallel exists in the case our life in the church. We Christians so easily profess our love for one-another. Our pastors speak of the “beloved,” when addressing the congregation. We speak of the unmerited and free forgiveness of others, just as we have received ourselves. We say we believe that we will, “forgiv[e] each other, as the Lord has forgiven” us. Col. 3:13

But those ideas which we so praise so often fail to materialize in the body. We say these things, but we do another. We praise humility and say that we would never blow a trumpet that others would see our righteousness, and then proceed to make the world knows our pious intentions and thoughts.

It is easier to be a hypocrite in practice, to profess an unseeable spiritual state, than it is to enact in the body humility and love and forgiveness.

Actual life in the body, both our own bodies, and the Body of Christ is what Paul requires here in Romans 12. We are to enact and embody this humility and love and forgiveness in the most flesh-crossing manner.

The world will stand by like the scribes seeing the paralytic before Jesus. They will say, this is crazy, you do not really love your enemy. You can say that, but unless I see love in action, embodied love, blessing given against your best personal interest, we will not believe you.

But Romans says, your body must be the visible place of this work.

By fully considering the depth of what is meant by the “body,” we will see just how rich a display of God’s glorious work is meant here in Romans.

The Body as a Physical Location

The connection between “body” and “sacrifice” would be immediately known by any First Century reader in a visceral manner that eludes a modern reader. I have known gone to a temple with a garlanded goat and watched a priest slaughter the animal and then divide its body.

I one was taken on a tour of a then-empty slaughterhouse. The steps in dispatching the dismembering the animal were explained and the implements for each task were displayed, but the actual “rendering” of an animal I did not see.

My experience goes no further than cleaning a fish. But there is a fundamentally different experience in slaughtering a large mammal. And that is an experience which all people in Paul’s time would have immediate knowledge.

A sacrifice entails the presentation of a body for slaughter. And so, when Paul says we must “present our bodies,” it would come not with a metaphorical distance but with an immediate revulsion. The sensation to be understood is the ransacking of my skin and bones.

Paul qualifies his instruction with the oxymoronic “living”, a “living sacrifice”. But whatever else Paul is demanding of the Romans, it is a matter not of metaphor or idea, it is a matter of flesh and bones.

What does this matter for us? Whatever Paul commands in this passage is not something we can hold at arms-length. He is commanding that we be physically present in some painful process. The emphasis on the body is a recognition that this will entail more than just thought, but will entail the visceral reactions of the body, the churning of emotion. And when we think of the circumstances which Paul will present in these few verses, we can see this may be a disturbing thing.

In short, I am calling you to be there at the place of potential conflict, at the place of humility, in the place of these other believers. This is not a matter of idea, it is a matter of life.

How to Live Together, Romans 12, Chapter Three “Jesus Loves Even Me”

01 Wednesday Dec 2021

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Chapter Three

If there is only one song I can sing

When in his presence I see the great King

This will my song for eternity be

O what a wonder that Jesus loves me

Jesus Loves Even Me

Jesus Loves Even Me

Friends on the Beach

After two hours of flight, the jet lost power. Kept aloft by the power her massive engines, the mass of metal and plastic stuffed with hundreds of human bodies lost its will to fly. All those human beings experienced terror which they could not have imagined; the complete helplessness of being alone with gravity overtook their minds. 

The pilots who somehow kept their wits, managed to bring the airplane to a sort of landing along the beach. 

When the missile came to a halt, broken into pieces, scattered over half a mile, the dead stayed silent. The wounded moaned and cried in pain. The living untangled themselves and poured onto the beach to find the other living souls. 

At first, they have a profound basis for fellowship, they talk of their experience in being saved from death. They work together to rescue others. Even though in most areas of their lives they remain perfect strangers, in this one new world they are connected in ways which transform how they understand one-another. 

Those who watch a concert together or cheer for the same sports team have known something of this intimacy. But here, it is deeper: we have together comes to the gates of death and were not taken.

This creates intimacy which they would not have otherwise gained except for years of friendship.

Then overtime, the overwhelming sense of joy and terror which had thrown them together begins to fade. The differences which had kept them strangers before begin to resurface – only this time it is mixed the intimacy of having shared an escape from death.

By being both extremely close and strangely distant, the distinctions which are unimportant among strangers become matters of the gravest consequence. Things which would be overlooked among those who had never spoken become the basis for the sharpest quarrels. 

Cliques develop; the divisions of live from before the airflight become the basis for new divisions among those who survived. 

This is the Church—only it is far more vicious among the church, because we can justify our prejudice and our unkindness with the thought, I am serving God: you are working against God. 

If only we kept in mind the unspeakable grace of our salvation, the depth of sin and despair, the greatness of God’s mercy, how different would be the life of the church. But when we forget how we came to be here; when we begin to take our salvation for granted; when we fail to see the end will be glory; then how easily we slide and how dangerous we can become.

The Mercies of God

If a look at human madness is grim, an eye upon the mercy of God is unmitigated joy. To consider ourselves without God is a matter of profound sorrow and hopelessness:

remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

Ephesians 2:12. 

But to be in Christ, to be reconciled to God, to know the mercy of God, that is a matter of joy:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Romans 5:1–2.

This hope in the glory of God is focus of our lives. To open a Christian hymnal is centuries of praise for mercy of God, And Can it Be, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, There is a Fountain. Anyone who claims to know Christ and is not constantly struck by the wonder: How could Jesus love me? What endless depths of love must the Father have to give his Son? How can the Spirit so patiently work upon my heart?

There is mercy in God, a mercy which lies beyond all compare, a mercy which produces in our heart, “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” 1 Pet. 1:8

So just as we cannot understand the commands of Romans 12 without a clear understanding of the persistence of indwelling sin, so also, we will never be able to fulfill the commands without a certain knowledge of the boundless mercy of God.

As we will learn, one of the chief reasons commands to not think of ourselves too highly, and to bless those who persecute us, seem unreasonable, even impossible is because we do not rightly esteem the mercy of God. 

The mercy of God begins at the Fall of Adam.

The command was unambiguous and without appeal, “for on the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” Gen. 2:17 How Adam understood death, when it was not a thing he had experienced, we can only imagine. For us who have watched a parent or child or friend die, the finality and darkness of death is unquestioned. Once one has stood at the side of a grave, or closed another’s eyes with heartbreak, we know death.  It is our inheritance which the executor will always convey.

But something happened when Adam sinned. There was certainly a death, because the relationship to God was severed. But the curtain of bodily death did not fall in an instant. Instead, God pronounced judgment, inflicted penalties, and drove the first pair from the Garden, but he did end Adam’s bodily life in that moment. 

In fact, in the midst of that judgment, God showed his love toward all his creation. Notice the scene: There is the Serpent who we will come to know as the Arch Rebel against God. There is Adam and Eve fresh from their rebellion. God without question could have ended the existence of all three of them, but he does not:

God’s willingness to preserve the fallen spiritual creatures in spite of their rebellion is matched by his desire to keep the human race in being. This is a mystery that can only be explained only by his deep love for his creatures. Looked at in a purely rational light, it would not have been surprising if God had decided to wipe us out and start again.

(Gerald Lewis Bray, God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2012), 473)

God then begins to pour grace and mercy onto his creation. He makes a promise in the midst of his first judgment:

       I will put enmity between you and the woman, 

and between your offspring and her offspring; 

                he shall bruise your head, 

and you shall bruise his heel.” 

Genesis 3:15. Someone will come and bruise the head of the serpent. God is thereafter lavish in mercy. He calls the idolator Abram to a knowledge of him and showers promises upon Abram. Gen. 12:1-3. He redeems Israel from Egypt because he wants to. He choses David because he wants to. 

When Israel rebels with the Golden Calf, God relents at the intercession of Moses. Moses then in awe of this God seeks to the glory of God. God grants his wish – as much as Moses can bear—and passes by Moses proclaiming his name:

5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. 6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” 8 And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. 

Exodus 34:5–8. The accent is upon the mercy, the forgiveness of God. As James will write, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” James 2:13

When Israel finally becomes so stubborn in her rebellion that the northern tribes are gone to Assyria and then Judah taken to judgment in Babylon, when it seems that the mercy of God has failed, he promises a new and better covenant:

31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” 

Jeremiah 31:31–34.

It is that New Covenant which Paul proclaims in Romans. We can only think about the barest outlines. First, grants blessing received by faith, not earned by work:

4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 

       7        “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, 

and whose sins are covered; 

       8        blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.” 

9 Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. 

Romans 4:4–9. Paul will insist elsewhere upon the utter graciousness of this gift:

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 

Ephesians 2:4–9.  Faith is the means by which one grants love and friendship to another. If someone promises you friendship, you can only receive it by faith and trust. If a young man bursting with love were to tell his beloved of his inmost heart and if she were to disbelieve him, no love would come to her. 

Among friends, among those who love, this rarest of gifts is exchanged by faith. One’s wrath does not need to be believed, by love must be received. 

No God faces an insolvable problem when he seeks to bestow mercy upon those have sinned against him. If God were merely to forgive, God would be unjust. If God does not forgive, God is unmerciful.

But God is both just and justifier, both perfect judge and full of mercy. He does this by an exchange whereby God, God the Son, obeys on our behalf and pays the penalty on our behalf:

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. 

Romans 5:6–11. And the proclamation of this exchange Paul saw as the key to his ministry:

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 

2 Corinthians 5:16–21.

There is astounding mercy: We utterly wretched, dead in our trespasses and sin, rebels, zombies a life in death, have found mercy and made righteous by life and death of Christ: a life and death credited to us; while our sin and misery are credited to him. 

Would you die for a friend? Would die for an enemy? Would you die to save someone who hated you? Would you give you son to do for your enemies so that your enemies would reconciled to you. Do you even begin to understand what that means?

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” 

John 3:16. Once, when my infant son lay near death, I thought how I would willingly give my own life to save his. I thought further how I could give anyone else to save him. And as I had this thought it struck me, that the Father gave his Son to save me—his enemy. Do nothing to soften the depth of that gift. You cannot say, He is God and I am human. The Father loves the Son more than we love anything. The Son is worthy of more than any son of ours. The degradation to the Son to submit himself to the law, to be saddled with sin, to be struck in death, are things we cannot understand.

Glory Makes Reconciliation

The mercy of God is a movement from election to glory:

29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 

Romans 8:29–30.  If you have been redeemed, you will be glorified. If you are in Christ, nothing in creation can keep you from being forever with Christ:

38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Romans 8:38–39. If you have received mercy from God in Jesus Christ, that mercy cannot be lost. If you are in Christ, you will without question receive “praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” 1 Pet. 1:7.

One thing which will make the commands of Romans 12 seemingly impossible is because not one human being upon this planet can begin to fathom the depth of the Father’s love as shown in his Son. We lack the capacity to contemplate so things as they deserve.

And yet God calls us to think of his love and mercy. He welcomes our poor musing. 

We contemporary Christians are in such a hurry to do something for God that we never take the time to think about this wonder: not to do something, but just to gaze upon this mystery and be humbled. 

And then we have the greater mysteries: Why did God choose me? It is not because we have earned a thing. We do not value this mercy. Why did God not save the one next to you? We think ourselves so clever in complaining that God does not save all. That is nothing. Why did God save any. But God has chosen “to the praise of his glorious grace.” Eph. 1:6. This is a love which nothing can end, no power can sever. Rom. 8:38-39.

Until you have settled in your mind, the depth of your sin—even now persisting—and the unfathomable mercy of God, continuing uphold you, you will either reject or twist the commands which Paul gives for the life of the church.

So when you look to this commands and you see your flesh pinched by “I don’t want to do that,” or “I don’t think I can.” Think to yourself: Ah, there is my indwelling sin; there is that sin which continues to dog me like a cough which one cannot shake, an infection of the soul which will never ease. When you feel yourself rebel at these instructions, think, God loves me and has shown such mercy to me and all that he asks is that I love those for whom Christ died and that I show mercy on those who continue to rebel against the will of God. You must think, I will love not because this human deserves such love but because Christ deserves such honor. The mercy I have received is the mercy I will show, even to my enemies.

1. Stop and take the time to merely think about the mercy of God. Contemplate the love of the Father in the death of Christ. When you look upon the cross, think to yourself, this is how deeply the Father loves me.

2. How many times has God shown mercy on your sin, today?

3. How often have you refused to show mercy to others? Think of one occasion.

4. Memorize the words of this hymn, And Can it Be:

  1. And can it be that I should gain
    An int’rest in the Savior’s blood?
    Died He for me, who caused His pain—
    For me, who Him to death pursued?
    Amazing love! How can it be,
    That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
    • Refrain:
      Amazing love! How can it be,
      That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
  2. ’Tis myst’ry all: th’ Immortal dies:
    Who can explore His strange design?
    In vain the firstborn seraph tries
    To sound the depths of love divine.
    ’Tis mercy all! Let earth adore,
    Let angel minds inquire no more.
  3. He left His Father’s throne above—
    So free, so infinite His grace—
    Emptied Himself of all but love,
    And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
    ’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
    For, O my God, it found out me!
  4. Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
    Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
    Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray—
    I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
    My chains fell off, my heart was free,
    I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
  5. No condemnation now I dread;
    Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
    Alive in Him, my living Head,
    And clothed in righteousness divine,
    Bold I approach th’ eternal throne,
    And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

How to Live Together, Romans 12, Chapter Two, “The Emperor of the United States”

30 Tuesday Nov 2021

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Chapter Two

       The heart is deceitful above all things,

      and desperately sick; 

      who can understand it?

Jeremiah 17:9

The Emperor of United States

Note: The purpose of this chapter is not to discourage but to diagnose. An accurate sight of our disease is the first step in a cure.  What must be kept in mind is that God has provided a remedy, and that the purpose of Romans 12 is to present and apply that remedy. 

Also, the topic of this chapter should help you be sympathetic with yourself and with others. As you come to realize just how powerful and dangerous are the world, the flesh, and the Devil; and come to see how disordering sin is to the human heart; you can look at yourself and others and think, Yes, sin can lead even the “best” of people into a very bad place. 

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Rom. 7:25a. There is rescue, “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven.” Ps. 33:1a

John Newton writes:

You have one hard lesson to learn, that is, the evil of your own heart: you know something of it, but it is needful that you should know more; for the more we know of ourselves, the more we shall prize and love Jesus and his salvation. I hope what you find in yourself by daily experience will humble you, but not discourage you: humble you it should, and I believe it does. Are not you amazed sometimes that you should have so much as a hope, that, poor and needy as you are, the Lord thinketh of you? But let not all you feel discourage you; for if our Physician is almighty, our disease cannot be desperate; and if he casts none out that come to him, why should you fear? Our sins are many, but his mercies are more: our sins are great, but his righteousness is greater: we are weak, but he is power

John Newton and Richard Cecil, The Works of John Newton, vol. 2 (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1824), 140–141.

Norton I

In 1859, Joshua Abraham Norton presented himself to the world, most particularly the people of San Francisco, as Norton I, Emperor of the United States. He issued currency, awarded titles, and dissolved the United States of America on July 16, 1860.

His delusion, which followed an ill-fated attempt to corner the rice market in California, was a matter of amusement to the city and seemingly of little harm to him. San Francisco played along and continued honor their monarch even after his death. 

Joshua Norton was completely a mystery to himself: he was no monarch; he was an immigrant to tried to strike it rich only to be thwarted by ships filled with rice coming from Peru. And yet, to himself he was king of the country. 

He is little different than the poor, deranged people who frequent the bus stop across the street from work and engage in extended conversations with the air. He seems to have been far more genial than most lunatics, but his error was equally as profound. He simply believed much that was wrong about himself.

Yet his trouble did not end with his confused self-assessment: he was wrong about the world around him. He thought the people of San Francisco his subjects, when they were merely his audience; and participants in a quite different play than that imagined by Norton.

Whether it is especially pertinent that only Emperor of the United States was a madman I will leave to others; but I will press one point: his fault is common. To take a phrase from the poet Dylan Thomas, the fault is “commoner than water.”

It is a fault which inflicts everyone: we are all born quite wrong about ourselves, and wrong about the world: 

This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

Ecclesiastes 9:3. We are all born “in Adam,” who is the source of all madness in the species. Rom. 5:19.

Think of the madness of Adam. He could not claim that he was uncertain of God; that he lacked “evidence.” He could not complain that God must be defective because there is evil in the world. The conversation with God was unquestionably clear; the instruction plain. Gen. 2:16-17.

And yet, despite the plainness of his direction and unquestioned instruction of God, Adam took the advice of his wife who had gained her knowledge from a serpent. Granted the serpent was subtle, but we must marvel at the absurdity of the whole. 

Adam given lordship of the creation, direct conversation with God, and no want of any sort, fell for the instruction snake. 

God had spoken to Adam, Adam had communicated to Eve. A snake had spoken to Eve and Eve communicated that to Adam. 

If the result were not the death of every descendent of Adam, not the ravage of disease and war, not the plagues of pestilence, and the sorrow of a mother as her infant dies; if the result were not the endless evil which flows through history like sewage, the story of the serpent would be comical. 

But it is not funny in the least. It is a horror of sorrow. The absurdity makes it even more bitter. 

And so, Cain murdering his brother, and the brothers selling Joseph, and viciousness of Sodom, and the murder of the infants by the Pharoah who knew not Joseph, and the corruption of the time of the Judges and the thousand other horrors of history all flow from the moment with the serpent.

God cursed the serpent and brought judgment upon the humans: The relationship of mother and child would be pain, husband and wife would be contest; work would be on the vicious terms of sweat, boredom, unending; the very ground itself would become an enemy. The ground by nature grows that which we cannot eat; it takes tillage to keep an apple tree or a tomato vine in suitable shape. 

We are people subject to incurable madness, madness among people of incurable madness, in a creation we were created to rule and which escapes our control at every turn.  Our bodies decay. Our senses deceive. 

Even our minds: the very way that we think has been subjected to the ravages of Adam’s sin. 

You see to be born is to be born under the law and under the curse. The sin of Adam put everyone born on the planet under a death sentence. We are fragile creatures, beset on every side; and we are under a curse. We are born under the wrath of God.

This is too much for anyone to bear. Who can truly know the wrath of God and rest at ease? No one rests as a volcano explodes. No one rests when a lion attacks. No one rests as they swim in the ocean knowing a shark is near. No one rests knowing we are under the wrath of God. 

And so, we suppress:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Romans 1:18 This is no rare condition but the default response of our race. John Calvin begins his Institutes of the Christian Religion with the observation that, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 35.) And, “[I]t is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.” (Id., at p. 37) We do not know God and so we do not know ourselves (and from there, we know nothing correctly).

The results have been catastrophic. It begins with this refusal to concede the principle point of reality: God is, and we are under his condemnation. Much like a Jenga tower where a key block has been removed, the whole mechanism of human psychology plummets with the refusal to see ourselves in the right relationship to God:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Romans 1:21. Paul then details our descent into madness:

They became futile in their thinking.

The futility is that by rejecting the truth of God, we can never think rightly about God:

It is in the “reasonings” of people that this futility has taken place, showing that, whatever their initial knowledge of God might be, their natural capacity to reason accurately about God is quickly and permanently harmed.

(Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996), 107.) Our lives will be marked first and foremost by the nature of our relationship to God.

If we cannot think rightly about God, then we cannot think rightly about ourselves—or about anything else.  We will be deformed human beings if we are not in right relationship to God:

Every sinner is aware of the discomfort in his environment. The existentialists, and those psychologists and psychiatrists who are ininfluenced by them, have described this awareness as alienation and an undifferentiated angst .3 But the unbeliever fails to articulate the true nature of the problem. He knows something is wrong in himself and in this world, but the very thing that creates the problem—his separation from God—also makes it impossible to conceptualize the issues in those terms. The unregenerate man is an uncertain man; he has no absolutes, no standard outside of himself and his ever-changing opinions and values. Down deep inside he is never sure about the life he lives; he can’t be because his basic antagonism with his environment constantly unsettles him. He is unhappy and uncomfortable in his environment because he finds himself at odds with it. 

Jay Edward Adams, A Theology of Christian Counseling: Introduction to Nouthetic Counseling (Grand Rapids, MI: Ministry Resource Library, 1986), 39–40. And so, being alienated from God:

Their foolish hearts were darkened.

The heart is what a human is: it not limited to body, to thought, to emotion, or to soul. It is that which makes us as we are. But this central control of the human life is here said to be (1) foolish and (2) darkened. 

To begin to understand this clause we can consider what Paul writes elsewhere:

17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 

Ephesians 4:17–19. Whatever else this foolishness and darkness may mean, we know that it pours forth as sinfulness. It does not love what should be loved; it does not shun what should be shunned. It runs to its own destruction.

Nor can we trust in our conscience: “Conscience is sometimes deceived through ignorance of what is right, by apprehending a false rule for a true, an error for the will of God: sometimes, through ignorance of the fact, by misapplying a right rule to a wrong action. Conscience, evil informed, takes human traditions and false doctrines, proposed under the show of Divine authority, to be the will of God.” James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 13.

Having fallen to this state, we fall still further. Rather than worship God, by nature, we worship the creature. We set up idols based upon our own deformed desires. We give ourselves to these images, destroying ourselves for honor or fame, money or love, power or revenge, and so on. Not all idols stand upon a fixed altar. The most dangerous idols are those erected in the “factory” (to use Calvin’s apt phrase) of our foolish hearts. 

And from here, the steps fall further: we do not know right, we do not think right, we do not love or fear right, and so we are given over, given over, given over. 

This degradation ends unspeakable horrors:

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. 

Romans 1:28–32. And just a bit further, in chapter 3 where Paul rightly says this anatomy of sin has infected us all (Romans 3:23, “for all have sinned”), he sums up human character, outside of God’s redemption as follows:

9 What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, 10 as it is written: 

                        “None is righteous, no, not one; 

            11          no one understands; 

no one seeks for God. 

            12          All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; 

no one does good, 

not even one.” 

            13          “Their throat is an open grave; 

they use their tongues to deceive.” 

                        “The venom of asps is under their lips.” 

            14          “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” 

            15          “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 

            16          in their paths are ruin and misery, 

            17          and the way of peace they have not known.” 

            18          “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” 

Romans 3:9–18

At this point, you may think to yourself: that is all fine and good, but what is that to me? I have certainly passed beyond that madness and sin. 

At this point, return to Romans 1:28. One of the results of the madness of sin is a “debased mind.”  The word here translated “debased” is the Greek work a-dokimos. There are a number of words which Paul could have used, and here he used this peculiar word. This matters because Paul uses the related word dokimos in Romans 12:2:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 

Romans 12:1–2. 

The root idea of the word has to do with testing: Is something true or fit. As a verb it means to test or try. In Luke 14:19, someone wishes to “examine” his new oxen. Proverbs 27:21 in the ancient Greek translation speaks of silver and gold tested by fire.  A man who is such, has been tested and found fit. 

In Greek, placing an “A” before a word has the effect of “Not”: a theist believes in God; an A-theist does not.

We are given over to a mind to a heart which is not trustworthy: it does not know how to value anything rightly; and it itself is tested and found wanting. 

Look earlier in Romans 1:28. The clause “just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God” contains this same word, to test: “see fitto acknowledge”. We do understand God rightly, therefore, we are unable to understand anything correctly. We do not worship God; we will worship sticks and stones. We do not love the life offered by God in Christ; we will love our own death and destruction. We cannot know our ourselves, because we do not know God: therefore, would mind is worthless, and it cannot rightly test anything.

Think of just worthless the mind of man who does not rightly know God will be. They murdered Jesus, “None of the rulers of this age understood this, for it they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” 1 Cor. 2:4.

In a word, we are mad: We do not know who we are (because we do not understand either ourselves or God) and therefore we do not understand anything else correctly (worshipping the creature rather than the Creator).

There is a great deal which could be said of this mind, but for us we must see one thing: The “debased mind” given in Romans 1:28 is in the process of being renewed as shown by Romans 12:2. 

This renovation in Romans 12:1-2 is the reversal of Romans 1. 

Here is where the trouble then arises: the human being so brutally laid out in Romans 1-3 is to put to an end, that “old self” is crucified with Christ. Rom. 6:6 But we also know that this crucifixion is not the end but only the beginning of a transformation.

Upon salvation, we do not immediately shed our foolish thoughts, or wicked habits, or sinful desires. We may have shut the door, but we can still see the Tempter through the window. 

We have not achieved the reason and sobriety which will one-day be ours. We are like a carpenter who has purchased a rotten house and board-by-board replaces the planks, resets the doors, puts on a roof. In the end, it will be the same house, but not the same house. And someday “we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.” 1 John 3:2. But today, we are being renewed into that image. Col. 3:9-10.

We must keep this infirmity in mind when we consider the instruction given Romans 12. A due since of our frailty and infirmity, of our absolute dependence is critical to reading these words correctly. 

We will always be tempted to think we have judged all things rightly and that the one with whom we have conflict is wrong. One thing I have learned by experience, is the most just is usually the one must ready to see his or her own sin, to seek reconciliation. The one who is smugly certain of no error, who is convinced of his own perfection is the one who is most mad and furthest from command of God. If you are not frightened that perhaps I may be in sin here, then you are most certainly in danger. 

And so, to end, we are born mad: We misunderstand ourselves and our God. This foolishness of heart, which reaches thoughts, and desires, and behaviors, make loving God and loving neighbor seemingly impossible. 

Ask yourself the following questions: Perform an examination of your own heart and life.

And do not be discouraged when see that you have cause to repent. In repentance, we renew our love to God. In repentance, we defeat the Tempter. In repentance, we are forgiven of all sin. The most dangerous sin, is the sin for which we will not repent. Look for the sin, that you may drag it from its hiding place and give room for God’s blessing.

1. We are commanded to love our enemies. Without trying to weasel out of the word “love” and without pretending like there are none who have hurt or of whom you are fearful, can you say you love them?

2.  We are to drag the log out of our own eye before seek the speck in our brother’s eye. When you have conflict, do you begin with your own repentance? Do you begin with a clear sight of the enormity of your own sin (and to sin as a believer is worse than to sin as an unbeliever, because you sin against light)?

3.  Paul was willing to die for the Gospel and the glory of Christ. Are you willing to be inconvenienced for the Gospel? 

4.  Peter writes of a servant being wrongfully misused and suffering unjustly at the hands of a cruel master: and to do so without revenge. When you are mistreated by another, do you suffer it gracefully? Do you bless those who persecute you?

5.  When you minister to others and do some good, do you make sure that everyone knows how righteous you are? Or do you seek to hide it and wait for God to give you a reward? If you did good and another got public credit, would you fume or would you graciously commend the whole to God?

We continue the same through the commands to not sin: Have you lusted, coveted, envied, gossiped, harbored bitterness?  Have you believed false reports about another? I am here looking at those sins of the tongue and mind which are so easily excused as a “prayer request” or easily concealed because they take place in your heart beyond the sight of all.

Surely you see how much remanent sin still clings to you. Surely you see how great your own fault.

Or one last test. What if your entire live since coming to faith were displayed for all: Every word, every deed, every thought, every desire, every intention, every glance. What if your heart were laid bare?

Only if you can see the continued horror of sin as it still pours out of your heart can you begin to comprehend the next clause we will consider, 

The mercies of God.

From The Valley of Vision

SOVEREIGN LORD,

When clouds of darkness, atheism, and
        unbelief come to me,
I see thy purpose of love
  in withdrawing the Spirit that I might prize
    him more,
  in chastening me for my confidence in
    past successes, that my wound of secret
      godlessness might be cured.
Help me to humble myself before thee
  by seeing the vanity of honour
as a conceit     of men’s minds,
    as standing between me and thee;
  by seeing that thy will must alone be done,
    as much in denying as in giving
   &nbsp  ;spiritual enjoyments;
  by seeing that my heart is nothing but evil,
    mind, mouth, life void of thee;
  by seeing that sin and Satan are allowed power
    in me that I might know my sin, be humbled,
      and gain strength thereby;
  by seeing that unbelief shuts thee from me,
    so that I sense not thy majesty, power, mercy,
      or love.
Then possess me, for thou only art good
  and worthy.


Thou dost not play in convincing me of sin,
Satan did not play in tempting me to it,
I do not play when I sink in deep mire,
  for sin is no game, no toy, no bauble;
Let me never forget that the heinousness of sin lies
  not so much in the nature of the sin committed,
  as in the greatness of the Person sinned against.
When I am afraid of evils to come, comfort me,
    by showing me
  that in myself I am a dying, condemned wretch,
  but that in Christ I am reconciled, made alive,
    and satisfied;
  that I am feeble and unable to do any good,
  but that in him I can do all things;
  that what I now have in Christ is mine in part,
  but shortly I shall have it perfectly in heaven.

How to Live Together, Romans 12, Chapter 1, “Therefore”

29 Monday Nov 2021

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Chapter One

Therefore

Therefore

Romans 12:1

The Christian Church is a strange thing. It brings together those people who never would otherwise never be in one place. The church has been the church of the master and the church of the slave. It is the church of the wealthy and the impoverished. It is the church of the well-educated and the uneducated. It is the church the sophisticated and the unsophisticated. The drug addict who had spent years on the streets sits with the eminently cautious and respectable. Every ethnicity under heaven is equally welcome and has come under the shelter of the great Lord’s wings.

These people who by nature would have nothing to do together as friends and equals are brought together and told to love one another and confess their sins to one another and to bear one-another’s burdens. No matter who we were before we came in, we are called as equals in salvation:

27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

Galatians 3:27–29. And:

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

Colossians 3:11. This is a matter which is beautiful in contemplation, but in practice … in practice, it is often lacking. In the end, we will all praise the Lord in perfect harmony. Rev. 5. But today we are in transition. We move fitfully. We begin well, and fail miserably. We pledge our love and friendship, and then turn with the unkindness which can only be exchanged by those who have been friends and family.

The most foolish of petty distinctions, the least cause for pride, the slimmest of prestige can bring out the worst in human nature. The desire to be esteemed by men, and the desire to get vengeance upon those who hurt us (whether that hurt is real or merely perceived by an excessive pride), are fertile ground for sin to overturn the work of God. 

Most of can easily give a catalogue of those who have wronged us, but we are given no instructions to force others to reconcile with us. There is something wrong with so many churches – but we cannot start with the wrongs of others. We must start with ourselves:

Judge not, that you be not judged. 2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. 3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. 

Matthew 7:1–5.  Only when we have a clear view of our sin and failure can we go to our brother to remedy the wrong:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 

Matthew 18:15. How we will make that approach will be considered later in Romans 12. For now, our attention begins ourselves. 

To paraphrase Kierkegaard, when we read this text we must realize it is written to us and it is about us: you must think, this is written to me, and is about me. Paul is going to make extraordinary demands upon the church, but he makes these demands upon all those who are in the church so that he can heal the breach which has arisen in Rome. 

If we are suffering from a breach in the church, then this chapter gives us instruction on how to heal that breach. If we seek to avoid a breach, then this chapter tell us what we must be if we are to avoid a breach. 

The whole begins with  the  idea: “therefore”. 

Therefore

Romans 12 begins a new section of Romans and is marked by this “therefore.” What has gone before is generally theological propositions: an extended explanation of the power of God to rescue the damned. Paul begins this declaration of God’s good news with the word:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 

Romans 1:16. And having begun with the power of God, he ends with praise to the wisdom of God in exercising this power:

33 Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 

            34          “For who has known the mind of the Lord, 

or who has been his counselor?” 

            35          “Or who has given a gift to him 

that he might be repaid?” 

36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. 

Romans 11:33-36. If read this story of God’s salvation and do not end with a burst of praise, then we have not understood it aright. 

If we understood what God had done, then what would naturally flow would be the death of sin. (Rom. 8:13, Col. 3:1-7) Our lives would be conformed to Christ. (Col. 3:9-10) We would blossom with the fruit of the Spirit:

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 

25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. 

Galatians 5:22–26. But notice there in verse 25: Paul having spoken in the most glowing terms of what the Spirit will do in our lives issues a warning

Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. 

Why is that necessary?  And this is not simply something to do with Galatians alone; nor is it merely Paul. Consider this is Peter’s first epistle:

22 Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, 23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; 24 for 

                        “All flesh is like grass 

and all its glory like the flower of grass. 

                        The grass withers, 

and the flower falls, 

            25         but the word of the Lord remains forever.” 

And this word is the good news that was preached to you. 

1 Peter 1:22–25. The glorious work of salvation which flows out in love and purity. But Peter immediately issues a command for the believers to not harm one-another:

2 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—

1 Peter 2:1-2.  The apostle proclaims the unspeakable joy of salvation, and then pivots immediately to the believers: stop hurting one-another. Stop your lying. Stop your hypocrisy. Stop you envy. Stop your slander.

The new life in Christ is utterly incompatible with the gossiping, envying, slandering tongues we acquire as standard equipment at our birth:

            The wicked are estranged from the womb; 

they go astray from birth, speaking lies. 

Psalm 58:3. And so that you don’t for a moment think that applies to others and not to you, consider the words of David in his great Psalm of repentance:

            Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, 

and in sin did my mother conceive me. 

Psalm 51:5. We are brought forth in iniquity. By the sheer grace of God, we are saved. But sadly, we fail to automatically live a life “worthy … of the gospel of Christ.” Phil. 1:27. 

The day of salvation is a day of birth. John 3:3. Salvation is a good seed in the good soil. The day of salvation is the beginning, not the perfection. As John Newton was to write to an unknown person on March 18, 1767:

Remember, the growth of a believer is not like a mushroom, but like an oak, which increases slowly indeed but surely. Many suns, showers, and frosts, pass upon it before it comes to perfection; and in winter, when it seems dead, it is gathering strength at the root.

John Newton and Richard Cecil, The Works of John Newton, vol. 2 (London: Hamilton, Adams & Co., 1824), 141.

We will not be effortlessly transformed into that which we are called to be.  It will be rough work, flesh killing work.  When grown, we will be the perfect rose shimmering with dew in the morning sunlight, pure and undefiled. But today, we are not the rose in bloom, but the seedling breaking through the crust of the earth, and straining toward the light:

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 

1 John 3:2. Here, in this world, we still need instruction. Adam needed instruction in Paradise; sadly, he refused what he was told. Israel needed instruction when she was rescued in Egypt. And we today need instruction. We  will circumstances which will force us to love those who have sinned against us. We will need encouragement. And we will instruction on precisely how to perform this work. 

When you come to these words of Romans 12, you be tempted to draw – just like the Israelites drew back when God called them to enter the promised land filled with giants. It is for this reason that the writer of Hebrews, who calls for us to strive for peace and holiness, applies a warning to us:

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, 

                        “Today, if you hear his voice, 

            8           do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, 

on the day of testing in the wilderness, 

            9           where your fathers put me to the test 

and saw my works for forty years. 

            10         Therefore I was provoked with that generation, 

                        and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; 

they have not known my ways.’ 

            11         As I swore in my wrath, 

‘They shall not enter my rest.’” 

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 

Hebrews 3:7–12. You could think of yourself as an Israelite rescued from Pharoah, called to enter the Promised Land.  But here in the “wilderness of this world” (as John Bunyan calls our home), we are in danger. We are freed from the dominion of sin, but not its presence. We are freed from captivity to the madness of sin, but our minds must still be renewed. Are hearts by nature are monsters in rebellion against God, but we have been brought into the household of God and our rebellious hearts must be tamed. 

And so Paul in Romans, having unfolded the manifold wisdom of God in salvation now turns to the Romans and calls them to be transformed:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:1–2.  Since you have been rescued, you are called upon to learn to live in this in this humanity, this new family. The implication of the Gospel is this new life: That is why Paul joins the implication to the doctrine, the application to the knowledge. 

But we will not rightly understand this application if we do not have it firmly grounded in the Gospel. We must rehearse a two points which Paul emphasizes in these transitional verses: “the mercies of God,” and “the renewal of your mind.” 

We will take those two ideas in reverse order, because we need to understand the nature of the difficulty in rightly understanding and praising the mercies of God. Also, Paul in Romans begins with the trouble of our mind, and then moves himself to the mercy of God.

The Unique Challenges of Managing a Church (or other Christian organization)

27 Wednesday Jan 2021

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This is an early draft of the introduction to a series of courses which will cover issues related to Church Administration. In this section I try to explain why church management face issues which simply are not present in any other equivalent enterprise. If anyone has a comment or correct on the direction which I intend to develop the course work, please comment. I am attempting something I have not seen dealt with elsewhere in this manner:

INTRODUCTION

Having spent decades sorting out conflicts within and between businesses, families, landlords and tenants; and having had decades experience within multiple churches (inside leadership and with outside counsel), I have concluded that the complications and difficulties faced by the one who “runs” a church organization are far greater and often more insolvable than the problems which face the CEO of a corporation or the manager of an apartment building.

These difficulties lie in the seemingly inconsistent obligations which confront the church as a public entity, as an internal structure, and which arise in leadership. 

Some of these problems can only be faced and resolved when they arise. Some problems “come out of nowhere” and cannot be anticipated. (We will speak about how to prepare for the unavoidable and unforeseen problems during this coursework.)

We cannot prevent the unavoidable; but we should avoid “self-inflicted wounds.” Many of the problems faced by a church were problems built-into the original formation of the church. Churches begin as some sort of “plant.” The planted church must make a number of decisions. Often these decisions are made without much thought and without any training. 

The pastor who plants the church approaches this task with a seminary degree which has prepared him with an overview of church history, doctrine, and certain practices such as prayer, preaching, evangelism. He has been trained to do the primary task of shepherding, but comes to the work with little or no knowledge of business formation, managing employees, leasing a building, or responding to threats of lawsuits based something said from the pulpit. 

This understandable ignorance leads to poor decisions which create future problems. The lack of knowledge in these areas will lead to poor responses to arising problems. The result will be new problems. And because these problems arise in a church, the latest management advice cannot be received and implemented in the same way it could be used in a hardware store. In fact, many churches have failed because the leadership ran the church as if it were any other business. (And other churches have failed because they ignored the very same issues.)

We are going to provide you guidance through these troubles. We will start at the beginning with business formation issues. We will also try to provide some direction about how to restructure and resolves issues which are present at an existing organization where you have come to work. 

Up until this point, I have spoken of problems in the abstract. If you have experience in the leadership of a church, you have already begun in your mind to list problems you have experienced (and if you have been the leadership of a church for any length of time, you have unquestionably faced serious questions). If you are new to church leadership, you had best be prepared for sorrow.

Some years ago, I was speaking with a pastor friend who was facing a problem which threatened to destroy the entire congregation. He was looking for help with this problem. He said the problem was so bad, that he was looking for a Clint Eastwood character from a spaghetti western with a scar on his cheek and an ammunition belt slung over his soldier. 

There will be days when it seems that only such a character could help. But we trust when you complete this coursework, you be able to avoid the need for such extraordinary efforts. 

A Quick Overview of the Problems Faced by Church Administration

The problems faced by every organization

There are legal and financial duties owed to the various levels of government where you work. It will not be unusual if you must consider differing obligations to the city, the county, the state, and the federal government. These obligations begin with the business structure you create. And, as you will learn, that if you try to avoid this problem by merely starting a congregation without making a formal decision about business structure, you have actually made a decision about business structure. 

You will owe tax records to the state and federal government, and you must prepare tax records for all employees, independent contractors, and donors to the church. 

You will need to make contracts, whether for purchase or lease of real property. If you meet in a home, you will need to consider laws and general obligations respecting permissible conduct in residential locations. 

This course is being written well into the Covid Crisis, which caused churches to face extraordinary public health restrictions which baffled the best Christian minds, brought out a variety of responses, and even resulted in sharp critique of one-another (even conflict) between those who came to differing decisions. 

You will owe legal duties to your employees. The employee duties and obligations within a church are similar and very different than those owed by secular organizations. You provide a working environment which must comply with some standards for all businesses; and you must provide an environment which comports with your duties as Christians generally, as leaders specifically, and as a church. 

You will have the problems faced by every “business” which is open to the public – except that you will be open to and have oversight over infants and octogenarians. There are very few businesses which provide toddler care and instruction, while also providing food to the poor, solace to the wounded, correction to the wayward, instruction to willing. A private day school for 3-year-olds has no duty to care for the child’s great grandmother. 

Those Problems Unique to a Church

The leadership of church cannot be measured on the same ground as business tycoon. Consider the following obituary of the CEO of Scott Paper and Sunbeam:

Swagger, arrogance, ego, “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap had them all. 

The corporate raider — turnaround specialist, if you prefer — boasted about laying off workers. He blasted his corporate brethren’s incompetence for necessitating his slash and burn tactics. He’d name names. 

Hot tempered, he was known to yell at subordinates. 

“If you want to be liked, get a dog,” he was fond of saying.[1]

While this may have made for a good CEO, it would make a failed church leader.

Christians must live with one-another in love:

34 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” 

John 13:34–35 (ESV). In the “High Priestly Prayer” of Jesus recorded in John 17, the Lord prays:

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

John 17:20–21 (ESV) . These are not abstract principles or bare aspirations. It is a duty incumbent upon every Christian and a duty which adheres peculiarly to the Church as a witness to and in the world. Francis Schaeffer explained the importance of this duty in work The Mark of a Christian:

The church is to be a loving church in a dying culture. How, then, is the dying culture going to consider us? Jesus says, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” In the midst of the world, in the midst of our present culture, Jesus is giving a right to the world. Upon His authority He gives the world the right to judge whether you and I are born-again Christians on the basis of our observable love toward all Christians.

That’s pretty frightening. Jesus turns to the world and says, “I’ve something to say to you. On the basis of My authority, I give you a right: you may judge whether or not an individual is a Christian on the basis of the love he shows to all Christians.” In other words, if people come up to us and cast in our teeth the judgment that we are not Christians because we have not shown love toward other Christians, we must understand that they are only exercising a prerogative which Jesus gave them.[2]

If we professing believers do not demonstrate visible love to one-another we give the world the right to (1) say that we are not Christians, and (2) say that Jesus was not sent by the Father. In short, if we who lead churches or professing Christian institutions and do not exhibit love we have failed. No CEO has ever been judged a failure because he did not love the sales staff, or accounting, or the administrative assistant. He may have been thought a jerk, but he still could be revered and honored.

Look at the kind of love we must show, “as I have loved you.” John 13:34.

You may think this is going far afield from what is entailed in Church administration: I need to know how to form a non-profit, how to file tax returns, create an employee manual, et cetera. And all those things you must do. But all of those tasks must be completed with the end to fulfill the duty of being a Christian and being a public congregation of Christians[3]. 

We as Christians, and peculiarly as Christians gathered and presented to the world, have a duty not merely stay open and “make money” (which is the duty of a “normal” business). Christian organizations have a duty to act as a witness to the world. This duty involves demonstrable, actual love among the members of the organization. No CEO has ever been presented with the obligation of seeing to it that all the employees love one-another. 

I want you to consider these words on “love” which Paul addressed to the Church at Corinth. But as you consider these words, I want you to note that the first three verses each list some element of public display which someone could raise as proof that their Christian ministry was a success, and to note that these marks of success mean nothing without love:

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

1 Corinthians 13:1–3 (ESV).  We could add, If I publish and distribute 6,000 books a month and have conferences attended by 10,000 people a quarter and have not love, I am making a lot of noise and collecting a lot of money – but I am nothing. 

Now, I want you to seriously consider the following words and realize that the operation of your church ministry must not only be efficient, professional, effective (as must all businesses), but it also be operated in such a way that it exudes this sort of conduct:

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

1 Corinthians 13:4–7 (ESV). Or look at the words which Paul addresses to the assembled congregation of Colossians:

8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. 

12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put-on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 

Colossians 3:8–14 (ESV). These are characteristics which must in the “culture” of your leadership and the culture the employees. It also must be the culture which you must engender among your “customers”. No manufacturer of glass bottles ever had the duty to encouraging meekness among its customers. 

You must understand that as we work through the issues raised in the various employment, financial, and legal matters which we will address throughout this course work, that we must keep in mind the aim of each of these tasks. Paul in his church administration instruction to Timothy wrote that the end of work is to be “love that issues from a pure heart.” (1 Tim. 1:5). 

When you work through materials on non-profit corporations, you will not find instructions on love.

This is what makes Church administration different from running a small business or even managing a non-profit. You will have to do all of the things which are required of any business owner or charity manager. But you also must do this with an eye toward the goal of being a witness to Christ.

The CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation does have the duty of making sure his employees avoid “foolish talk” (Eph. 5:4) or “slander” (Col. 3:8) or “gossip” (2 Cor. 12:20). But we do. No District Manager has ever been written up for failing to make disciples of the Lord (Matt. 28:18-20), but that is our job description. 

If we fail in this, we at the very least face the prospect that all our work will be “burned up” on the Day. (1 Cor. 3:12-15).

Our goal in this course work is to train you in the dual responsibilities of operating within the law of the state, but also to comply with the law of God. These are not things which you will learn from the Nolo Press book on “Non-profit Corporations” nor from a community college course on accounting. 

This course work is unique, and we trust it will be valuable to you.

[1] Brink, Graham. “Remembering ‘chainsaw’ Al Dunlap, Ruthless Corporate Cost Cutter and Big-Time Fsu Donor.” Tampa Bay Times, January 29, 2019, www.tampabay.com/business/remembering-chainsaw-al-dunlap-ruthless-corporate-cost-cutter-and-big-time-fsu-donor-20190129/.

[2] Francis A. Schaeffer, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, vol. 4 (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1982), 187.

[3] By referencing “public congregation of Christians”, I mean to include not only churches proper, but para-church ministries such as apologetics ministries, teaching ministries of various sorts, services provided under the promise of being a “Christian” practice. 

Bruce Baugus: The Disease of Ambition

18 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by in Church Conflict, Uncategorized

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I suspect we do a poor job distinguishing between the two types of ambition or recognizing the perversity of eritheia. Selfish ambition, at least to a certain degree, is not only an acceptable sin in our culture but a seemingly necessary one to succeed in the world. It may also be incentivized in a church culture caving into the temptation to elevate the public image of success above qualities like quiet and steady faithfulness in relative obscurity, a work-ethic rooted in giving and helping rather than getting and keeping, and a willingness to go without and sacrifice for the good of others.

We cannot esteem worldly success without neglecting godliness and overlooking spiritual maturity. Worldly success is not a bad thing, but it is not to be confused with being above reproach or enjoying a good reputation and it may indicate little more than selfish ambition–the disease of greatness. In ministers and congregations it may even dress itself in claims of kingdom growth, public witness, administrative acumen, evangelistic fruitfulness, entrepreneurial spirit, and so on. These are all highly desirable objects, but sin can twist each one into a pious-sounding cover for eritheia.

I suspect this is the primary root of most church conflict: There is selfish ambition which dresses itself up as something good and spiritual. Read the whole thing

Church Conflict and Robbers

13 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Ephesians, Uncategorized

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The great preacher John Chrysostom was asks what is it that destroys the bond of peace, the unity of the Spirit, the expression of Christ’s love within the church? It is love which destroys love: When love becomes twisted and seeks that which destroys, there can be nothing but sinful conflict:

Now then, what impairs this bond? Love of money, passion for power, for glory, and the like, loosens them, and severs them asunder. How then are we to see that they be not cut asunder. By seeing that these tempers be got rid of, and that none of those things which destroy charity come in by the way to trouble us. For hear what Christ saith, When iniquity shall abound, the love of the many shall wax cold. Nothing is so opposed to love as sin, and I mean not to love towards God, but to that towards our neighbour also.

But how then, it may be said, are even robbers at peace? When are they, tell me? Doubtless then when they are acting in a spirit which is not that of robbers; for if they fail to observe the rules of justice amongst those with whom they divide the spoil, and to render to every one his right, you will find them too in wars and broils. So that neither amongst the wicked is it possible to find peace: and where men are living in righteousness and virtue, you may find it every where. But again, are rivals ever at peace? Never. And whom then would ye have me mention? The covetous man can never possibly be at peace with the covetous. So that were there not just and good persons to be wronged and to stand between them, the whole race would be torn to pieces. When two wild beasts are famished, if there be not something put between them to consume, they will devour one another. The same would be the case with the covetous and the vicious. So that it is not in nature that there should be peace where virtue is not strictly practised first. Let us form, if you please, a city entirely of covetous men, give them equal privileges, and let no one give his assent to be wronged, but let all wrong one another. Can that city possibly hold together? It is impossible. Again, is there peace amongst adulterers? No, not any two will you find of the same mind.

John Chrysostom, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, and Homilies on the Epistle to the Ephesians, vol. VI, A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church (Oxford; London: John Henry Parker; J. G. F. and J. Rivington, 1840), 208–209.

Conflict Springs From Justice

25 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by in 1 Samuel, Church Conflict, Uncategorized

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This is the (draft) introduction to first chapter of a short book on Church Conflict. The goal of this book will be to train a congregation to avoid conflict. And, while nothing can perfectly protect against sin, there is a great deal which can be done to encourage a congregation in patterns of behavior and thought which can make conflict more difficult to maintain and easier to resolve.

We will go very wrong in thinking about conflict in the church, if we think that conflict is necessarily and always evil: even though the conflict we experience is almost always evil.

Conflict springs from a desire for what is good: It begins with the love of some-thing, and then the desire for the protection and promotion of that-object.  Since we are fighting for what we love, we are fighting for justice.  When we rightly love what is true and beautiful, our defense of that thing, that person, that right is just. Conflict springs from the apparent love of justice.

But sin has perverted our loves and has perverted our sense of justice.  Sin has taken something good (the desire to protect the good, true and beautiful) and turns it into evil.  Conflict is powerful and destructive because it is the misuse of something good and necessary.

Conflict also covers itself with the language of virtue: If you are fighting for what is right, you are fighting for virtue. When conflict comes within the Church, it uses spiritual language: conflict takes on sin, love, God, et cetera. Therefore, our opponent in church conflict can easily be portrayed as the enemy of God!

The church at Corinth fell into terrible fights among factions, with each party claiming to be most godly:

11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. 12 What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” 13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 1 Corinthians 1:11–13 (ESV)

When love of justice and the language of God’s side come together it not surprising that conflict can take deep root in a congregation.

 An Example of Righteous Conflict

King Saul’s story in Scripture is marked with conflict. His first official act as King was an instance of righteous conflict, instigated by the Spirit of God. First, there was a problem, a foreign King, Nahash the Ammonite threatened the city of Jabesh-gilead with slavery and the lose of each citizens’ right eye:

5 Now, behold, Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen. And Saul said, “What is wrong with the people, that they are weeping?” So they told him the news of the men of Jabesh. 6 And the Spirit of God rushed upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled. 7 He took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces and sent them throughout all the territory of Israel by the hand of the messengers, saying, “Whoever does not come out after Saul and Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen!” Then the dread of the Lord fell upon the people, and they came out as one man. 1 Samuel 11:5–7 (ESV)

Here there conflict – there is open war. But the conflict is wholly just on the side of Saul. Our text tells us that Saul’s anger, aroused by his sense of justice, was stirred by “the Spirit of God”.

This instance teaches that conflict is not necessary evil – at least that it is not necessarily the case that both parties involved in a conflict are wrong. Here, Saul was wholly just in his anger and the conflict against the Ammonites was a righteous act.

 

How Sin Hijacks our Sense of Justice

But not all conflict is righteous. The conflict which troubles us is unjust conflict, particularly the conflict where both parties are in sin. As explained above, conflict springs from a sense of offended justice. Where sin hijacks our sense of justice and leads us to seek to protect that which is evil, our participation in conflict is itself sin.

This is the first step in sinful conflict: our sense of justice, of right and wrong is altered. Do do this, sin hijacks our desire and our language. We see both perversions in the life of Saul.

In 1 Samuel 15, God commands Saul to destroy the perpetual enemy of Israel, the Amalekites. Saul brings the battle, but he does not utterly them. He spares “best” from destruction:

9 But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them. All that was despised and worthless they devoted to destruction. 1 Samuel 15:9 (ESV)

Those things which Saul (and the people) desired as “best” – the objects of his lust – these were kept alive in direct disobedience to God.  Saul desired something more than the glory of God. Perversion of desire is the first step in sinful conflict.

Saul then takes the next step, perversion in language: rationalizes his sin (which makes Samuel out to be the one who is contrary to God):

13 And Samuel came to Saul, and Saul said to him, “Blessed be you to the Lord. I have performed the commandment of the Lord.” 14 And Samuel said, “What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears and the lowing of the oxen that I hear?” 15 Saul said, “They have brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction.”

1 Samuel 15:13–15 (ESV)

Saul uses spiritual language, the language of justice and virtue to dress up his sin. And, if Saul’s opponent had not been a prophet of God, Saul (who made a decent argument and who argued from a position of power) would have won. At the very least, Saul would have been able to prosecute the conflict for quite a while (as Saul did in the case of David).

Below, we will examine the details of how conflict perverts love and justice to sinful ends.