sons by grace and adoption

Jesus consistently described himself as God's Son.

In turn, he called God his Father.

He used this term not as a simile (God is like a father), nor even as a metaphor (using the word in an unusual way in order to highlight aspects of his character that might otherwise pass unnoticed).

Instead, he regarded it as his personal name; this is the proper way to address God.

This is in stark contrast to the image of God as a mother, which is used as a simile on occasion in the OT but never as a metaphor and does not recur at all in the NT.

This is revolutionary.

No Jew would think of speaking of God like this. Indeed, Jesus' opponents accused him of blasphemy and took up stones to stone him.

Jesus' defense was not that he had been misunderstood but that he was innocent of blasphemy, sine he was telling the truth...

Because of this, and the fact that we are united with Christ, we, too, can call God "our Father."

This is to be the customary way to pray (Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2) .

It entails adoption as sons and continuing sonship thereafter. It is sharing in the unique relationship that Jesus has to the Father.

He is the Son by nature; we are sons by grace and adoption.

- Robert Letham

homosexuality and the Bible

Worth 20 minutes of your day, this was an interesting exchange, and will probably be of special interest to friends from my church after the sermon this past weekend.

I wish I had a resting face as cool as Andrew Wilson...

 

- via

a flat contradiction

Long before I believed Theology to be true, I had already decided that the popular scientific picture at any rate was false.  

One absolutely central inconsistency ruins it...  The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts.  

Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears.  

Unless we can be sure that reality in the remotest nebula or the remotest time obeys the thought-laws of the human scientist here and now in his laboratory -- in other words, unless Reason is an absolute -- all is in ruins.  

Yet those who ask me to believe this world-picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming.  

Here is a flat contradiction.  

They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.  

The difficulty is to me a fatal one; and the fact that when you put it to many scientists, far from having an answer, they seem not even to understand what the difficulty is, assures me that I have not found a mare's nest but detected a radical disease in their whole mode of thought from the very beginning.  

The man who has once understood the situation is compelled henceforth to regard the scientific cosmology as being, in principle, a myth -- though no doubt a great many true particulars have been worked into it.

- C. S. Lewis 

Who God is/What God does.

When evangelicals lose their sense of proportion, they begin to talk as if they no longer care about the character of God unless they get something from it.

The best defense against this has always been the doctrine of the eternal Trinity itself.

Pondering the eternal, essential Trinity is the most concrete and biblical way of acknowledging the distinction between who God is and what he does.

God is eternally Trinity, because triunity belongs to his very nature.

Things like creation and redemption are things God does, and he would still be God if he had not done them.

But Trinity is who God is, and without being the Trinity, he would not be God.

God minus creation would still be God, but God minus Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would not be God.

So when we praise God for being our creator and redeemer, we are praising him for what he does. But behind what God does is the greater glory of who he is:

Behind his act is his being.

In the sentence "God saves," God is the foundation of the predicate.

- Fred Sanders

Can you hear them singing faintly?

So Friday night we attended another outstanding concert at @crisschinfrey's high school.

The women's choir sang this song, and for me, concert quickly became worship...

Hark, I hear the harps eternal
Ringing on the farther shore,
As I near those swollen waters,
With their deep and solemn roar.

Refrain:
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, praise the Lamb.
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Glory to the Great I Am!

And my soul though stained with sorrow,
Fading as the light of day,
Passes swiftly o’er those waters
To that city far away.

Some have crossed before us safely
To that land of perfect rest.
Can you hear them singing faintly
In the mansion of the blest?

 

some are already there

Upon hearing about Dalllas Willard's death, I was taken back to that day in 1999 when my friend Brian asked me if I had ever read this book, and that if I hadn't, I should.

Well, I did. And thanks, Brian.

This morning, I paged through it, renewing myself in Willard's insightful and delightful way with words.

And in this book, the front and back blanks spaces are filled with the quotes I copied out of the text because I wanted them all together in one place for quick access.

Perhaps my best tribute can be Willard's own confident and creative words about a faith that for him has become sight. His words make me think not just of his place in Paradise today, but of Pat's and Kurt's and my sister Marie's and so many other's...

So as we think of our life and make plans for it, we should not be anticipating going through some terrible event called "death," to be avoided at all cost even though it can't be avoided.

That is the usual attitude for human beings, no doubt. 

But immersed in Christ in action, we may be sure that our life- yes, that familiar one we are each so well acquainted with- will never stop.

We should be anticipating what we will be doing three hundred or a thousand or ten thousand years from now in this marvelous universe...

At this present time the eternally creative Christ is preparing places for his human sisters and brothers to join him. 

Some are already there-no doubt busy with him in his great works. We can hardly think that they are mere watchers.

On the day he died, he convenanted with another man being killed along with him to meet that very day in a place called Paradise. The term carries the suggestion of a lovely gardenlike area.

Too many are tempted to dismiss what Jesus says as just "pretty words."

But those who think it is unrealistic or impossible are more short on imagination than long on logic.

They should have a close look at the universe God has already brought into being before they decide he could not arrange for the future life of which the Bible speaks.

Anyone who realizes that reality is God's, and sees a little but of what God has already done, will understand that such a "Paradise" would be no problem at all. 

- Dallas Willard

a solid grasp of heresy

When I first became a Christian, I found myself in a tradition which held that one should only read orthodox books...

Indeed, one should only read books with which one already agreed.

I understand the logic of this position, and I appreciate the concern which it embodies to protect believers from being misled.

Some of the most brilliant and persuasive people in church history have been heretics, and people can be led astray by reading them.

Yet those called to be teachers in the church need a solid grasp of orthodoxy, and that demands by its very nature a solid grasp of heresy.

That is why I teach heresy in my classes...

And why I make sure I do justice to the legitimacy of the questions which underlie nearly every heresy of which I can think...

For it is only then that I can truly explain orthodoxy to my students.

And I also get a perverse pleasure from using heresy to do that which heretics most despise...

Promote sound, biblical, historic orthodoxy.

- Carl Trueman