The Left’s Obsession with Fascism and Nazi’s and Donald Trump

The Left’s Obsession with Fascism and Nazi’s and Donald Trump

Jul 17, 2024 | America, Uncategorized

I finished this piece prior to the assassination attempt on President Trump, and I had no idea how timely it would be: July 13, 2024, another day that will live in infamy. I added his name to the title because he is the quintessential example of the obsession. God clearly saved Trump’s life, even as another young man, Corey Comperatore, gave his life to protect his family. This is what you get when you call someone Hitler for nine years. To the left, Trump is an existential threat to Our DemocracyTM, an authoritarian tyrant that must be stopped, and one could go on. You can hear these three alone every ten minutes on MSNBC. I don’t want to believe this was intentional, but is there really another explanation? The only other option is complete and total incompetence, and I’ll be waiting for evidence and mea culpas, max mea culpas if that turns out to be the truth.

None of this should surprise us because the left has been obsessed with Fascism and Nazi’s for a very long time? Everyone who opposes them are Fascists and Nazi’s, even as the tactics they use against their enemies are fascistic and worthy of Nazis. They are skillful and shameless in their use of projection (accusing others of doing what they do) and hypocrisy, having turned it into an art form. This piece I saw the other day from some leftist is a perfect example: “Why Aren’t We Talking About Trump’s Fascism?” And the dude is serious! I’m convinced now they really believe it. There was, of course, zero evidence of fascism from Trump in his four years in office, but so what. He’s a Fascist! And if they can they are going to put him in prison on trumped up charges, as they’ve done to his followers, just like actual Fascists. That is projection. We’ll see where the lawfare goes after they almost killed him.

Have you ever noticed that this obsession is reflected in the products that come out of Hollywood? There are a zillion, give or take a few, movies and TV shows either about Nazi’s or where Nazi’s are the bad guys. If it’s not the actual World War II Nazi’s, it’s Neo-Nazi’s, who are of course the personification of ultimate evil, White Nationalists. Oh the horror! By contrast, the world champions of butchery and genocide, the communists, are rare in Hollywood productions. Why this obsession and contrast? We have two German scholars and their reaction to World War II to thank for this, Theodor Adorno (1903–69) and Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979).

Anyone interested or engaged in the 21st century culture wars needs to know about the Frankfurt School. In 1923, a group of Marxists established the Institute for Social Research as what we call today a “think tank” associated with the University of Frankfurt in Germany. In due course it came to be referred to as the Frankfurt School, out of which the world was given what we now call cultural Marxism. We can thank Adolf Hitler for bringing the cultural Marxism wrecking ball to America. If the Institute for Social Research had remained in Germany, cultural Marxism may have stayed isolated in Europe. However, when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 with many in the school being Jewish, it relocated to New York City in 1935 and set up shop at Columbia University. It shouldn’t surprise us that Marxists would find a welcoming home at an American university in 1935—secular academia always welcomes subversive ideas first.

The primary insight of the cultural Marxists wasn’t that class-based economic oppression didn’t bring the fruit of revolution Marx promised, but that the revolutionary consciousness required would clearly not arise spontaneously; it must be assiduously cultivated via culture. They recognized Western societies produced cultures that were almost completely resistant to revolution. Marxist revolutionary consciousness had to find its way into the worldview of the average prosperous Westerner, and that could only happen through the transformation of the culture.

What the economic and cultural Marxists had in common, though, was their antipathy to Christianity because it stood in their way. Christianity and its cultural influence must be taken down, specifically through the eradication of traditional norms and institutions. The purpose of the Institute would be to unmask all the institutions and organs of culture that promoted and maintained the shared value systems responsible for the public support of those institutions and culture, most especially the family and religion. Paul Kengor in The Devil and Karl Marx identifies the strategy to accomplish this:

Rather than organize the workers and the factories, the peasants and the fields and the farms, they would organize the intellectuals and the academy, the artists and the media and the film industry. These would be the conveyor belts to deliver the fundamental transformation.

The film industry was captured by the cultural Marxists, and thus we get Nazi’s everywhere.

The process of transformation would be helped tremendously by someone who came between Marx and the Frankfurt school who had a profound influence on the continuing secularization of Western culture, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Marx didn’t have the discipline of psychology which developed later in the nineteenth century, nor Freudian teaching on sexuality, but the cultural Marxists did. Kengor calls what the Frankfurt school developed a kind of Freudian-Marxism, the worst of the ideas of the nineteenth century wedded with some of the worst of the twentieth. Both the older and newer Marxists believed religion, i.e., Christianity, and the family had to be “abolished,” as Marx put it, but the old way just didn’t work. The Soviets did everything they could to snuff out both, including murdering tens of millions of their own people—religion and the family, however, just wouldn’t go away. Bishop Fulton Sheen said communists failed to convince the world there is no God. Rather, they succeeded only in convincing the world there is a devil. 

Repressive Tolerance, Adorno and Anti-Fascism
After the war most of the faculty went back to Germany to re-establish the school, but Marcuse decided to stay in America. Adorno returned to Germany as well but returned to America in the early 50s for a time in order to not lose his American citizenship. Although he returned to Germany after a time, he had a significant impact on the culture wars in America. Marcuse though was the most significant figure to come out of the Frankfurt school. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1940, and is most famously known as the father of the “New Left” and the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, he was influential in the growth of political correctness and the wokeness of our time. The “Old Left” were those who embraced the old orthodox forms of Marxism, and especially that as practiced in the Soviet Union. Young Marxist radicals by contrast were disaffected with Soviet Communism and looking for new ways to bring down the capitalist West, and the cultural approach of Frankfurt would come to dominate American Marxism through the pen of Marcuse. 

His essay, “Repressive Tolerance,” is the inspiration for what we now call “cancel culture.” Only certain accepted speech can be tolerated because actual tolerance is “repressive.” Written as part of a book called A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Marcuse argues that “tolerance today is in many of its most effective manifestations serving as a cause of oppression.” From the perspective of a cultural Marxist, of course it is. The perverse logic of Marcuse as a cultural Marxist has to be read to be believed. In this upside down, inside out world, tolerance “actually protects the already established machinery of discrimination.” Free speech and the First Amendment are considered dangerous; a common trope on the left is “speech is violence.” If that is true, of course it must not be tolerated, and we’ll see why from Marcuse’s perspective.

Part of his argument will serve to introduce us to Theodor Adorno. What Adorno did in 1950 allowed Marcuse to develop “the Nazi argument.” It was a diabolically genius move paying cultural dividends to this day. First Marcuse lays his cards on the table:

Liberating tolerance . . . would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the left.

How convenient, but we’ll see why he says this when we get to Adorno. Then he gives us the punch line:

In past and different circumstances, the speeches of the Fascist and Nazi leaders were the immediate prologue to the massacre. The distance between the propaganda and the action, between the organization and its release on the people had become too short. But the spreading of the word could have been stopped before it was too late: if democratic tolerance had been withdrawn when the future leaders started their campaign, mankind would have had a chance of avoiding Auschwitz and a World War.

It’s a short trip from this to “speech is violence,” and by definition it can only be speech from the right. This led to a common phrase the New Left used in their protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s, “No free speech for Fascists.” Thus what we know as cancel culture is a necessity to keep the right from doing what Fascists and Nazi’s always do. Not cancelling people on the right and their speech would be a dereliction of duty, the First Amendment be damned. Of course, all the political violence is on the left, but that is justified violence because it’s used against the Fascist right. A group using violence today can be called Antifa, for anti-fascists, with a straight face. You can’t make this stuff up!

Adorno was the one who made this connection in his 1950 book The Authoritarian Personality. Dinesh D’Souza in his book The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left has a section titled, “The Deceitful Origin of ‘Anti-Fascism.’” He writes that after World War II, “Nazism became the very measure of evil. So Marcuse and Adorno knew that anything associated with Nazism or fascism would automatically be tainted. They set about putting this obvious fact to political use on behalf of the political Left.” Fascism in this distortion of reality would now be associated with capitalism and moral traditionalism, which as we’ve seen must be “abolished.” 

D’Souza argues persuasively that Marxism and fascism are ideologies of the left, but because of Adorno they came to be associated with two different ends of the ideological and political spectrum. In his book Adorno introduced the F-Scale, in D’Souza’s words:

The basic argument was that fascism is a form of authoritarianism and that the worst manifestation of authoritarianism is self-imposed repression. Fascism develops early and we can locate it in young people’s attachments to religious superstition and conventual middle-class values about family, sex, and society.

So a la Marx, religion and the family must be “abolished.” The book and ideas were swallowed hook, line, and sinker by an already liberal academia and media, becoming the accepted perspective that fascism was a phenomenon of the right. It’s a complete lie, but that’s what Marxists do. Through the 1950s and into the 1960s, Hollywood was blatantly patriotic, but when the New Left exploded on the scene brining its cultural Marxism with them, it was only a matter of time until the Nazi’s were frequent guests on the big and small screen. Keep in mind, from the perspective of the woke leftists who make movies and TV shows, all references to Fascism and Nazi’s are a reflection on conservative, religious, traditional, patriotic, dare I say, MAGA Americans. That is how they see you, and me, as threats to Our DemocracyTM.

Wokeness Takes Over American Culture and the Solution
In a well-known exchange in The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway wrote: “‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked. ‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually, then suddenly.’” Gradually and suddenly perfectly describes the apparent suddenness of woke ideology completely taking over American culture the last handful of years. Like most people I was surprised but I shouldn’t have been. Not only had the Frankfurt School and cultural Marxism come to America in the 1930s, but as it took root with the leftist radicals in the ‘60s and ‘70s, those people went into academia and brought their cultural Marxism with them. From there many went into education and programmed a generation of children who are now adults into the woke Marxist worldview. This process has been going on for decades and it was only a matter of time before we experienced the cultural and governing effects we now have.

The modern-day cultural Marxists, the wokesters, have been programmed, or more accurately brainwashed, into Marx’s dialectical worldview of critique and crisis—or conflict theory. In a nutshell according to Marx, those with wealth and power try to hold on to it by any means possible, mainly by suppressing the poor and powerless. A basic premise of conflict theory is that individuals and groups within society will always work to maximize their own wealth and power. It’s an ugly view of reality which creates ugly people. All relationships are power struggles. Vladimir Lenin argued that the oppressed cannot of their own accord sufficiently understand the depths of their oppression and, therefore, need an intellectual class continually reminding them to be angry and feel hated.  Leftists push this emotional narrative of outrage which becomes axiomatic and unchallengeable—those who do must be silenced.

Wealth and economic power are no longer part of the oppression equation because the left, the cultural Marxists, are incredibly wealthy and have all the cultural and political power. So the “poor and powerless” of Marx are transferred to the culturally oppressed which has nothing to do with economics. There are many in the parade of victims we’re familiar with, including “people of color” which makes white people, especially males, the oppressors. Religious minorities are oppressed as well, which makes Christians (in the West) the oppressors. The most popular of the oppressed are the sexual minorities like lesbians, homosexuals, transgendered, etc. which makes heterosexuals the oppressors. There is even something comically evil called intersectionality which creates a hierarchy of oppression. At the top of the oppression scale would be white heterosexual Christian males, the worst of the worst, especially those married with families. Next in line would be heterosexual women again married with families. Single women regardless of their sexuality are always lower on the scale (meaning they are more easily oppressed) than married women. Any person of color regardless of sexual preference, marital status, or religious conviction is always lower on the scale, and so on. In addition, in the woke narrative any form of inequality is equivalent to oppression, and the full oppression matrix is the means to the end of total societal transformation into a Marxist Utopia, or whatever. In practice there is no such thing, so perpetual revolution via perpetual criticism is the result—misery forever. 

How do we counter wokeness and the cultural Marxists? It has to happen on three levels simultaneously: the political, the legal, and the cultural. If Christians really want this to change, it is going to take more than complaining, which we are all really good at. It is going to take work, involvement, and as the great Steve Bannon always says, action, action, action! Thankfully, since Trump and the Great Awakening we’ve been experiencing, conservatives and Christians are getting this like never in modern times, and it is extremely encouraging. We must remember, however, this secular, Marxists takeover of Western culture has been several hundred years in the making, and we are not going to change the direction of this massive societal ocean liner overnight.

Unfortunately, Pietism has had a pernicious influence on too many Christians who think engaging in politics and cultural pursuits is not “spiritual.” Too many Christians think supporting one particular political party perverts the gospel, when what really perverts the gospel is thinking it only applies to our personal, religious lives. Too many Christians think engaging in the “culture wars” is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (I heard a pastor at a church we attended once say exactly that!), a diversion from saving souls and doing the true, spiritual work of the kingdom. This is the same kind of pernicious piety that truncates the gospel and Christianity as if it applied to only a narrow slice of life. It was the great Dutch theologian and statements, Abraham Kuyper, who rebuked such narrow-minded Christian thinking, famously saying:

There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!

Cultural Marxism and wokeness lead to misery and societal decay, as we see all around us, while Christianity and God’s law leads to blessing and societal flourishing. If we want America to flourish again and God to bless our land, we will take Christ out of our churches into every square inch of existence, including all that is political, legal, and cultural.

 

Christians Granted on Behalf of Christ to Suffer for Him: To What End?

Christians Granted on Behalf of Christ to Suffer for Him: To What End?

Jul 10, 2024 | Theology

Nobody likes to suffer. Nobody likes pain. Discomfort discomforts us. Why do we complain? Because we don’t like something. Why don’t we like something? Because we only seem harm in it, not benefit. We are under the impression if everything in our lives is going our way, is to our liking, then that is good. When things don’t, that is bad. Why do we think this? Because the stuff that is not good is generally unpleasant, and unpleasant is well, unpleasant! When we become Christians, however, this way of thinking, a worldly, secular, God-less way, should stop. Of course, we can’t go cold turkey because we’re used to seeing the world this way, and complaining comes naturally. Take a look at the Israelites after God brings them out of the bondage of their Egyptian slavery. They complain about dying of thirst and hunger in the desert, and long to go back to the “fleshpots” of Egypt. We mock them for such stupidity, as if we would do any differently. We would not! We’re complainers too. It’s one of the features of being a sinner.

What is the most common question in the history of humanity? Why God? And because there is no answer outside of the truth revealed to us in Scripture and in Christ, we think the only answer is, just because; deal with it. Because people don’t get the answer they want, many get angry at God and reject him. I have the answer though, and while it doesn’t make life any easier, it’s a wonderful way to live.

I’ve only been at this Christianity thing for 45 or so years, so I’m just getting started, but God has taught me a few things along the way, the process always a version of pain and frustration, mostly little and petty, sometimes more than a little. Some time ago I was speaking to a family member about the travails of his life, and an apt phrase came to mind I’d never heard before that I remember. I told him, what you’re going through is the “pain of sanctification.” That, brothers and sisters, is called life. I hate to break it to you, but if everything is going well, and life is easy, that’s not good. We learn nothing floating downstream. There is no sanctification in ease. It is the natural friction of life that builds spiritual strength. Life is like climbing a mountain, mostly up. Just when you get to the peak and take a little breath, you look up and notice there is a higher mountain up ahead. Ugh.

This seemingly unfortunate fact of existence is why we are enjoined throughout Scripture to give thanks, sometimes exhorted, others commanded. It won’t surprise us that the word thanks or thanksgiving is found most often in the book of Psalms. The one verse that convicts me most is from the Apostle Paul in I Thessalonians 5:18:

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Although Paul is often blunt, this is unusually blunt. And he prefaces this command with two others, “16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually.” Those are three pretty all-encompassing adverbs! All, always, continually. Doesn’t leave us much wiggle room now does it. We get a magazine from Voice of the Martyrs every month, and these commands take on a different hue at that level of suffering. For most of us who live in material prosperity and liberty, we’ll never know that kind of suffering, but Paul’s commands apply to all of us equally no matter what God calls us to or he allows or causes life to throw at us.

I started doing down the sanctification rabbit hole when I read Philippians 1 earlier this year, and parked for a bit on verse 27 where Paul says, “conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” I wondered what Paul meant when he wrote those words, and what he was thinking what such a manner looks like. When I got to verse 29 is when I took the dive:

29 For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, 30 since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have.

Is there, I wondered, some connection between living in a worthy manner and suffering.

John Calvin Gives the Answer
That name does strange things to some people, as we say nowadays, triggers them. For those of you who might be guilty of that, just ignore the name and focus on the content. Most people who don’t like Calvin or Calvinism have never read him, and if they did they would be pleasantly surprised when he doesn’t at all fit their negative stereotype. Sorry, but I had to defend my man Calvin because so many think they know what he believes, and they have no idea.

Anyway, I’m reading very slowly through Isaiah with Calvin. The morning I read Phillipians 1, I also read a passage as he is working his way through chapter two. You’ll notice reading through Isaiah that God’s judgment against Israel is a consistent theme. We tend not to apply it to our lives because, after all, we believe in Jesus, and as Paul says, we are “in Christ,” so God’s wrath and judgment was fully poured out on him for us. Correct, but we’re still confronted with the inconvenient fact of our sin, which as we are all aware doesn’t go away, at least not easily or without a struggle. That process is the pain of sanctification.

Isaiah 2 is a magnificent Messianic chapter, and depending on your understanding of the term, “last days,” will determine how you interpret it. Being postmillennial I see it as having commenced when Jesus rose from the dead, ascended to the right hand of God, and sent his Holy Spirit at Pentecost. I believe these stirring words from this chapter were fulfilled on that day:

2 In the last days

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
    as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
    and all nations will stream to it.

3 Many peoples will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
    so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He will judge between the nations
    and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore.

5 Come, descendants of Jacob,
    let us walk in the light of the Lord. 

I don’t have the space to argue the postmillennial position here, but if you’re curious why I would think something so counter intuitive to modern Evangelicals, read The Millennium by Loraine Boettner and Victory in Jesus: The Bright Hope of Postmillennialism by Greg Bahnsen.

The fundamental fact of redemption is that Jesus accomplished all this in his first advent, and the working out of that redemption of His people and His earth applies not only to the church, but to the entire world. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. Remember, John tells us that God so loved the entire world, the cosmos, so not just the individual people who make up His body, His people. And as we know, God is never in a hurry, and his working redemption in history is a very slow incremental process, like a mustard seed becoming the biggest tree in the garden, and yeast working its way through a huge batch of dough (Matt. 13). We’re only 2000 years in, but my what God has accomplished so far is magnificent. Imagine what he can do in the next 2000!

Which brings us to judgment and Calvin, and the purpose of it in the Christian life, or sanctification. Calvin takes verse four specifically to be about this fact, that God is judging “between the nations” to bring peace on earth, good will toward men, a reminder of yuletide. Calvin tells us the word rendered “settle disputes” means to expostulate, sometimes to correct, and likewise to prepare. He continues:

But the ordinary interpretation is most suitable to this passage in which the Prophet speaks of the reformation of the Church. For we need correction, that we may learn to submit ourselves to God; because, in consequences of our obstinacy which belongs to our nature, we shall never make progress in the word of God, till we have been subdued by violence.

Have you ever thought you, wretched sinner that you are, need to be subdued by violence? Me neither. That seems kind of harsh, but as he says, we are obstinate little buggers, and God often has to go to extremes to get our attention. I know he does with me. This is the reason I would never want to be young again; I’ve gone through enough “violence” for one lifetime. I would also change none of it because God is making me the man he wants me to be, like it or not! And most of the time, I do not. Although I trust because of the results maybe others like me a little more.

As an aside, Calvin throughout his writing refers to the OT saints as “the Church.” We, Calvin and I, and Presbyterians in general, believe God’s people prior to the coming of their Messiah are part of the same covenant community of God’s people after his death and resurrection. So Israel was the Church, God’s “called out” ones, Greek ekklésia- ἐκκλησία, as clearly Israel was.

What is the Purpose of Suffering in the Christian Life?
Given a cross on which people were brutally tortured and crucified is at the heart of the Christian religion, it doesn’t surprise us that suffering is as well. Suffering, however, is something human beings don’t even like to think about, let alone endure, but think about and endure it we must. The problem is that our understanding of suffering is too narrow because we think it is primarily physical in nature, but it can be psychological and emotional as well, and whatever the suffering might entail, for the Christian none of it is in vain. 

We also don’t think of suffering as a blessing, but as something that is primarily negative, and to be avoided . As I said above, nobody likes to suffer, but as Paul says suffering has been granted to us by God. That doesn’t sound like a negative, does it. The Greek word Paul uses for granted is where we get our English word charisma, and it means to show favor or kindness. Thinking of suffering as a favor is counter intuitive to us, even nonsensical, but that is the Christian understanding of suffering. For a Christian, suffering is an unpleasant, inconvenience, and sometimes bad can be good because God promises all of it is for our good and His glory. Nothing that happens in the Christian’s life is in vain.

Which brings me to one of the most important blessings of the Christian life, our God-given telos, the Greek word for purpose. The origin of the concept comes from Aristotle and his four causes. For The Philosopher, as Aquinas called him, a cause was the reason for the existence of a thing. So let’s use a mundane example to explain the idea, a table.

  • Formal Cause-The idea or concept of the table in the mind of its creator.
  • Material Cause-The physical stuff, wood, out of which the table will be made.
  • Efficient Cause-The person doing the crafting of the table.
  • Final Cause-The purpose, or telos, of the thing for what it will be used.

For the Christian, our telos, the cause of our existence is God, and not just any divine being, but God in Christ. Big difference, as we’ll see. The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks: What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. The only true fulfillment comes from our relationship to our Creator in Christ and through Christ. God is our formal, material, efficient, and final cause.

By contrast, people who have imbibed secularism like the air they breathe, and its Darwinian assumptions, have no formal cause or final cause. Add to that depressing fact that the material of which they are made comes from nothing for no reason at all, and the efficient cause of their existence is chance because circumstances with no purpose do the crafting. The final cause, the purpose of their existence as they see it, is their fulfillment and happiness. This vision of their reality doesn’t offer much of either of those. In America, upwards of 50,000(!) people every year successfully kill themselves, and many more try. Millions are addicted to various medications to ease their anxiety and depression. The telos of chance is a fickle God indeed.

All Things Work for Our Good
To finish this up let’s go back to Calvin and his blunt assessment that God needs to subdue us “by violence.” We learn in Hebrews 5 that Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered,” and if so for the Son of God in the flesh, how much more we who are by nature self-centered rebellious little cretins who want to be our own gods. We have to be continually reminded of this inconvenient fact of our beings because our capacity for self-deception is endless. Thus the necessity of suffering in our lives. And just because it isn’t physical doesn’t mean it isn’t any less traumatic.

The title of this section is from Romans 8:28. I often joked with my children as I was raising them in our generational faith, that surely, Paul didn’t mean all. I mean, maybe 98 percent, but all? That’s crazy. Unless, of course, God is God, and in fact our Savior. Paul tells us he is confident “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6). God finishes what he starts because He is God. God is sovereign, which means all powerful, which means, his will cannot be thwarted even by we rebellious sinners. Your theology may not allow you to believe this because we see people, and ourselves for that matter, resisting God all the time. But do we not take into account that too is not beyond God’s sovereign control of all things? He is not in control of only some things, or he would not be sovereign, and we would be. That is not an option. It’s one or the other. 

Instead of trying to figure how all this works, how God is sovereign and yet we are accountable beings who have agency and whose choices really matter, we can let God be God and trust him. It all comes down to trust in the character of God, his goodness and love, and his absolute power. Either you believe this or you do not. I can promise you something if you do, Isaiah 26:3: 

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. 

If we want perfect peace, we’ll trust in Him, even through our suffering. I didn’t say it would be easy. Something to remember: work like it depends on you, pray because it depends on God.

Christian Activation: Waking Up Christians to Their Transformational Calling

Christian Activation: Waking Up Christians to Their Transformational Calling

Jul 3, 2024 | America

Almost every morning I pray for America with what I call the four Rs. All Christians regardless of what they believe about “end times,” want America rescued from its wicked Marxist enemies, and the only way that happens is with God, specifically God in the person of Jesus Christ. That means God must pour out his Holy Spirit on our land, and therefore I pray for revival, but that is just the beginning of what needs to happen. That must be followed with renewal, restoration, and ultimately Reformation. The church and the Christians who inhabit it are the tip of the spear for the re-conquest of Christian Western civilization from the pagans, but what needs to happen goes far beyond the four walls of a church.

This prayer is why the picture of Washington at Valley Forge is so profound to me. I didn’t realize it would be so important when my wife and daughter got it for me on my birthday in the momentous Covid year of 2020, the year in God’s providential mercy that woke up the world. Since then, and the writing of my book, Going Back to Find the Way Forward, I’ve come to see a connection between the founding of America, and the current need to refound it. In this context, I came to realize our job is far easier than it was for those who fought the mighty British Empire to forge a country out of 13 separate colonies.

Those who are given to doom and gloom, we’ll call them doomers, don’t seem to realize how immense the odds were against America ever coming into existence. Very few people in the 1770s thought the Americans had any chance to defeat the British. Most thought it was some kind of joke, and the rebellion would be quickly crushed. After the Colonies declared independence on July 4, the rest of 1776 looked like those predictions would prove true. But Patriots fought and prayed, and prayed and fought, believing in the rightness of their cause before Almighty God. I would suggest the odds against the founders of America were far worse than the odds of us refounding America in the 21st century, and that is what I think and pray every time I look at this picture.

One morning when I was praying I realized that to accomplish this we want and need more Christians, and a Great Awakening type of revival, but there are plenty of Christians in America already. What is needed is for these Christians to be activated to their true calling as world changers and culture transformers. Unfortunately, it’s far easier to complain and do nothing, to be a doomer. Not only that, but most Christians’ faith is a form of Pietism, a type of faith that is focused primarily on going to heaven when we die and personal holiness. Christianity is a whole lot more, and we need to wake up these Christians, to activate them to their Christian responsibilities to their families, their communities, their counties, their states, and their country. And this means teaching them to take their Christian worldview seriously as applying to ever area of life, and proclaiming Christ as sovereign Lord over all of reality.

What Does the Great Commission Mean?
What I’m describing is the context of the Great Commission given by Jesus to the 11 Apostles in Matthew 28:

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Most Evangelical Christians see this as primarily relevant, often only relevant, to individuals, but Jesus clearly says nations and not individuals, the Greek making that abundantly clear. Yes, nations are made up of individual people, and those people need to be discipled, but Jesus used the word ethnos, a race, people, nation, for a reason. We need to decide why, and if it has implications for how we disciple the people who make up a nation. I am convinced it has profound implications.

First, let’s look again at Jesus’ charge in the Great Commission. There is a reason Jesus said he was given “all authority in heaven and on earth,” and few Christians appear to ask what that reason might be. Again, most Christians think this is for “spiritual” reasons of our personal salvation from sin and holiness, justification and sanctification. Jesus’ authority applies to this and nothing else, so this means it applies only to the church and those within it. Because of this perspective, one we imbibe unconsciously from Christian culture, Christians think the Lord’s Prayer, God’s kingdom coming and will being done on earth as it is in heaven, is only applicable to the church. The rest of the earth and those who don’t come into the church, are going to hell in handbasket, which it appears to them has been the plan all along. I beg to differ.

One reason comes from the Apostle Paul who gives us more context in Ephesians 1 about the extent of “all” and from whence Jesus exercises it. Jesus, he says, was raised to the right hand of God in a position “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked,” both in this life and the one to come. This power raising him to the ultimate position of authority in the heavens and earth is that same power that conquered death when he raised Jesus from the dead. That is ultimate power because death is the ultimate enemy of man. And you, I, and every other human being who has ever lived knows it. Death is the biggest bully in the school, and he’s been picking on everyone in the school our entire lives. Now we know because Jesus of Nazareth came back from the dead, the bully is ultimately powerless over us, even if he roughs us up a bit in our journey to the resurrection.

If we go back to Matthew 28, there is also a reason Jesus said immediately after his declaration of all authority, therefore go. The authority, his authority, means he calls the shots, he’s the ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Nothing happens outside of his express will, whether that is allowed or caused to happen, we have no idea, and it is fruitless to speculate. We only know all history is redemptive history, and moves inevitably toward his teleological end, meaning his ultimate purposes in a redeemed and restored heavens and earth. The process started when both John the Baptist and Jesus declared in the exact same words, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt. 3 and Mark 1). Pentecost was when Jesus began to implement his mission on earth. We read in Psalm 2 via Acts 4 that his mission was specifically to the nations just as God had declared to Abraham and the Patriarchs 2000 years before.

What does this mean, then? It means the implications, the consequences of the Gospel and God’s law are for the entirety of creation, and that means everything nations do. It applies to entire cultures just as a painters’ paint encompasses the entire canvas, every pixel is imbued with the color of God’s salvation from sin. That means we as his body, his emissaries, his bride, push back against the curse, we overcome it by the truth, God’s law, and the fruit of the spirt. In fact, as Paul says in that passage in Galatians 5, against such fruit there is no law. In other words, that law can’t condemn and provoke those who live out the obedience to the law, which is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, and minds, and our neighbors as ourselves. Love is the fulfillment of the law, and is transformational wherever it goes. And this is how nations are discipled, teaching Christians to love and serve in every single thing they do.

Discipleship in 21st Century Secular Pagan America
I had never thought along these lines until I went to my first post-millennial conference in March 2023. I heard a speaker say something like we need to disciple Christian lawyers, and Christian academics, and Christian architects, etc. The point isn’t to be a more moral and honest lawyer, academic, or architect, but for Christians to understand how their Christian faith impacts how they understand and practice law, or how Christianity informs their academic pursuits, or what it means to design and build things as Christians. This applies to worldview professions, or those that are a direct influence on the worldview of the culture, but it also applies to those who work with their hands; they influence the culture in more indirect but no less important ways. We often think creating or building a Christian counter culture coming primarily out of Hollywood, but that is only one slice of the cultural pie, albeit a critically important one.

Culture is a strange and amorphous thing, more like trying to hold water in your hands or nailing Jello to the wall than catching a ball. At its most basic level, culture is whatever human beings create, meaning culture is an amorphous set of influences. Christian sociologist James Davison Hunter in his book, To Change the World, states that, “culture is a system of truth claims and moral obligations,” and that, “culture is about how societies define reality—what is good, bad, right, wrong, real, unreal, important, unimportant, and so on.” Culture affirms certain values and propositions, while it denies others, it embraces certain beliefs, while it eschews others; culture is never neutral. Our modern concept of culture derives from a term first used in classical antiquity by the Roman orator, Cicero: “cultura animi.” In Latin, cultura literally means cultivation. We could say culture cultivates.

This seems obvious, but most people don’t realize that culture shapes not only what they believe, or what they like, or how they behave, but literally shapes who they are. Most people also don’t understand, including Christians, that everything we do shapes culture as well. It is a two-way process of shaping and being shaped. Even if we are not aware of it, it is happening in and around us. This is why Christians need to think in a discerning way about the culture we inhabit, to not be merely reactive but rather proactive. Culture is something we cannot take for granted or escape, so we must take into account its effects both on us and us on it.

This means in everything we do we represent the King of Glory, the Lord Jesus Christ and everything he stands for, both law and gospel, the truth about the nature of things, his creational order. It is only through obedience that there can be righteousness, and only in right living, i.e., love, will true flourishing be able to happen, in Hebrew shalom, peace as well as prosperity. Many Christians don’t like to hear this because there are a lot of places in the world where there is very little peace and prosperity. We give monthly to Voice of the Martyrs, and I read their magazine every month, so I’m well aware many Christians in the world are living and dying as martyrs, but that doesn’t change the biblical facts. If we want peace and prosperity, if we want God to bless our efforts, that will only happen through prayer and obedience. As I often say, work like it depends on you, pray because it depends on God.

This applies to everything we do in our families as husbands and wives and parents, building the God glorifying home being the foundation of civilizational blessing, or in some cases survival. It applies in our occupations whatever those are. With an attitude of a servant’s heart, we are advancing God’s kingdom and spreading the fragrance of Christ in the culture, and more importantly transforming it from a cursed, weed infested, overgrown garden, to one bountiful and beautiful that can sustain and bless people, as was God’s plan from the very beginning, to spread His blessings on earth.

Why We Should Have Hope: There Are a Lot of Christians!
As we know, American and Western culture are in dire shape. Wokeness infects everything like a black plague spiritually wiping out millions upon millions, spiritual bodies metaphorically dropping in the streets all around us: bring out your dead! But this can change. This will change. The question is, do you believe that, and do you want to be part of making that happen. If not, you are part of the problem. That’s called tough love, speaking truth to spiritual and cultural apathy. There is no opting out in this war, no floating downstream on this one. Any old dead fish can do that.

If we’ve decided to go against the rushing current, then we must figure out how we do our part, whatever that might be. We are all called to be world changers in whatever sphere God has called us to, big or small or in between. Whatever we do, we do specifically as Christians, and how as Christians that determines how we do it, even if that is just serving others with a great attitude and a smile, going the extra mile. I also suggest that everyone you interact with on whatever level knows in some way that you are a Christian, and that means they will also in some way know being a Christian makes a difference in who you are and what you do.

Given that there are a huge number of conservative Christians in America, our influence should be massive. The reason it isn’t is the above mentioned Pietism, a disaster for Christian culture and society, as is obvious to all. But instead of going down the doomer drain in rebellion against God (pessimism and cynicism is a sin reflecting a lack of trust in God’s goodness, love, and power), we can begin to set the example for other Christians in our lives and words that we are servants of the King. Does Paul sound like a doomer?

14 But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. 15 For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.

This sounds like Paul very much expected victory, both in this life, and in the life to come.

Genesis 49: Jacob’s Farewell Prophecy to His Sons and Christ’s Kingly Reign

Genesis 49: Jacob’s Farewell Prophecy to His Sons and Christ’s Kingly Reign

Jun 26, 2024 | Eschatology, Uncategorized

The continuity of the Bible is mind blowing. Sixty-six different books written by 40 or so different authors over 1500 years in Hebrew and Greek, with a little Aramaic thrown in, and yet it is one consistent message. The entirety of redemptive history is found in microcosm in the account of the fall in Genesis 3, and God’s curse on the serpent, and His promise to fix it:

15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.

From there the story plays out in a very crooked line directly toward ultimate victory to Revelation 22 and the total consummation of all things.

This continuity and consistency is a powerful reason I believe the Bible could not have been made up, mere human invention, fiction to one degree or another. Remember, for 300 years, the Bible’s critics have asserted not only could it be made up, but in fact was and could easily be so, and Christians have been on the defensive ever since. Both they and we act as if we’re the only ones who have the burden of proof. Not true. Since they think it would be a piece of cake to make it all up, let them provide evidence it was. Reading or listening to such critics, we’ll quickly realize all they have are assertions based on question-begging anti-supernatural bias, conclusions assumed with questionable justification. The mental gymnastics and pretzel logic they have used over the years is truly impressive. And that people bought it uncritically, pun intended, is quite the feat. For many reasons, secular critical scholars don’t have the credibility they once did, and they never again will, but the bias and assertions remain.

Recently reading Genesis 49 I was reminded of this continuity and consistency. Jacob is about to die and tells his sons what is to come. In verse 1 he says, “Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come.” Most English translations say, “days to come,” but the Hebrew literally says last days, the after-part or end. The phrase last days is a common one to Christians. We see it in a variety of verses in the Old and New Testaments, always referring to the Messianic period after Christ. He speaks to all 12, and here is what Jacob says to Judah:

8 “Judah, your brothers will praise you;
your hand will be on the neck of your enemies;
your father’s sons will bow down to you.
9 You are a lion’s cub, Judah;
you return from the prey, my son.
Like a lion he crouches and lies down,
like a lioness—who dares to rouse him?
10 The scepter will not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until he to whom it belongs shall come
and the obedience of the nations shall be his.
11 He will tether his donkey to a vine,
his colt to the choicest branch;
he will wash his garments in wine,
his robes in the blood of grapes.
12 His eyes will be darker than wine,
his teeth whiter than milk.

The picture is one of complete dominance and flourishing of the descendent of Judah.

Remember, what we’re reading here is something that took place 400 years before the Exodus, and it will be a very long time before any descendent of Jacob’s will be anything other than slaves. It will be probably another 700 or 800 years before the nation of Israel will even have a land of its own, let alone any power over other nations. As I often say, God is never in a hurry. But think about how crazy this must have sounded. For hundreds of years Hebrew slaves were told this first official biblical prophecy coming through a man and nothing ever changed. God’s word often sounded crazy to God’s people, and often still does, but His track record is pretty good, so we are compelled to trust Him. Why we can trust Him is specifically because of this dominance and flourishing Jacob predicts, as we’ll explore below.

The Lion of the Tribe of Judah
First, though, I want to look more carefully at the metaphor of Jesus as a lion. As a messianic declaration it is specifically speaking to his divinity. In Isaiah 31:4, the lion metaphor speaks of Yahweh as the warrior for His people:

This is what the Lord says to me: “As a lion growls, a great lion over its prey— and though a whole band of shepherds is called together against it, it is not frightened by their shouts or disturbed by their clamor— so the Lord Almighty will come down to do battle on Mount Zion and on its heights.

In Jeremiah 50, Yahweh is like a lion doing battle for Israel against Babylon, and there are four different references to Yahweh as a lion doing battle for His people in Hosea. There are several other such references in other prophets as well, so in New Testament hindsight, we can conclude the lion Jacob refers to is Yahweh is Jesus the Messiah. The most well-known of phrases related to Jesus as lion comes from Revelation 5 where Jesus is referred to as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. The context is significantly related to Jacob’s prophecy about this descendent of Judah.

He who sits on the throne is holding in his right hand “a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals.” John weeps because no one is found worthy to open it, but an elder tells him this Lion of the Tribe of Judah is worthy. In a counter intuitive move, the Lion becomes like a Lamb who was slain, and he takes the scroll, and all of heaven breaks into joyous worship, singing a “new song”:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased people for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10 You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”

We will see how this relates to Jacob’s prophecy of over 1500 years before, but this lion as slain lamb’s victory is attained through his slaughter, the shedding of his blood to literally buy the people he will turn into a kingdom and servants of God. And not only is this connected to Jacob’s prophecy, but it goes directly back the Genesis 3 and God’s promise that the woman’s seed would strike the serpent’s head, but he only the heel of the seed. But victory in this cosmic spiritual war came in a way nobody could predict until it happened. The very absurdity of it makes it profoundly compelling as the truth.

At the very moment when the forces of darkness were convinced they had defeated Almighty God, He mocks them. Peter tells us in Acts 4 that Psalm 2 is a picture of the crucifixion and resurrection:

4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
5 He rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
6 “I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”

7 I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.
8 Ask me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You will break them with a rod of iron;
you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

The resurrection was when the lion of the tribe of Judah started his reign on earth. God had defeated his foe, and Satan was now bound and cast down no longer with any ultimate power to deceive the nations. He would now be slowly defeated as God’s kingdom had come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. After 2000 years Jacob’s prophecy was finally fulfilled, and he to whom the scepter belongs had arrived.

Jacob’s Prophecy: For Now or Only for the Life to Come?
At this point, how we view “end times,” or our eschatology, will determine how we interpret Jacob’s prophecy. Unlike for much of Christian history, today most Christians believe the obedience of the nations and Jesus receiving the nations as his inheritance will only happen when he returns, at his Second Coming or Advent. The Great Commission in this understanding is primarily witnessing and seeing the gospel preached. The results of that preaching are not the primary point, though fervently wished for. Most Christians, unfortunately, have not thought through their eschatology in any depth, but if you ask them they will likely say any fundamental transformation of this world will only happen when Jesus returns. Prior to that things would inevitably get worse until Jesus finally comes back to clean up the mess once and for all. This is exactly what I believed until about a year and eight months ago when I embraced postmillennialism.

I hadn’t thought through this in any depth either, but I guess I saw the Great Commission as there being Christian conversions in every nation, and once that happened maybe that means the nations had been discipled. In this view, the making of disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded them is severely constricted to individuals. The effects on the culture and society are byproducts of what happens in the church and in the individual lives as Christians. We are the best Christians we can be and some way this leaks out to the rest of the society, and a Christian nation or Christian culture is the result. As a Christian culture warrior I didn’t even believe this, but I hadn’t thought through it enough to have any firm convictions.

This perspective on the Christian life is the fruit of Pietism. I wrote about this previously, so I will not address it here, but the end result is that we see our faith as primarily personal. Another way to put it is that Jacob’s prophecy has nothing to do with life in this fallen world. It’s as if redemptive history after Christ ascended to heaven and the right hand of God only applied to individuals, and maybe church communities, but the rest of humanity is out of luck. I don’t see it that way anymore, and I’ll give a very brief glimpse here of why.

Now, I read passages like this in Genesis 49, and I’m off to the races! I see connections everywhere, and I could keep writing for a long time, but I’ll control myself. I no longer see Jacob’s prophecy as of passing interest because I believe it refers only to Christ coming to set all things right at the end of time. In other words, I don’t believe its relevance is primarily if not solely eschatological. Prior on a practical level, I saw Jesus as only king in the hearts of his people. He was obviously not king of this fallen world; isn’t that obvious? How could he be king if everyone isn’t obeying him and acknowledging him as king? Those are very good questions, but can’t be answered in any depth in a blog post. But I will answer them as best I can in the space I have remaining based on the passages above form Genesis 49, Revelation 5, and Psalm 2 via Acts 4.

The Obedience of the Nations Shall Be His Through His Body
The reality and idea of nations and God dealing with them as nations is common throughout Scripture. As post-Enlightenment secular Westerners (most Christians are secular, the opposite side of the coin of Pietism) we see the world through a personal and individual lens. Everything that happens is interpreted for how it affects individuals, not families, communities, groups, or nations, but God never deals with individuals apart from the larger context in which they live.

Think about your reading through the Old Testament. Early on God dealt with people groups like those spoken of in Genesis 15:19-21: “the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites . . . .” As time went on nations became more well defined by geographical boundaries, like the Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, and Babylonians, but nothing like the modern Westphalian nation-state with permanent boarders. For example, when God called Jonah to go preach his word of judgment to “the great city of Nineveh,” that city eventually repented and turned from their evil ways, God relented and didn’t bring his judgment on the city. The judgment or blessing was to fall on the entire nation. The purpose of God’s covenant to the Patriarchs is to bless the nations, not individuals.

This is clear from Jacob’s prophecy, and it’s direct connection via Acts 4 to Psalm 2. At the moment of the resurrection, Jesus was installed on God’s holy mountain, and the nations at that moment became his inheritance and possession. He did not have to wait until he returned at the end of time. When he ascended to the right hand of God to take all authority in heaven and on earth and sent his Holy Spirit at Pentecost, that actual slow, step-by-step process of taking possession of his nations to bless them per God’s covenant promises began. Too many Christians don’t seem to understand that God is never in a hurry. We’re 4,000 years into this thing, and we think it has to be close to over. What if it’s not? What if we’re not even half way through God extending Christ’s reign on earth and building his kingdom through expanding his church, His people?

We’re in this for the long haul, brothers and sisters. We need to stop this obsession among conservative Christians of whining about it being so bad Jesus must be coming back any day, and get to work building the kingdom. We’re his body, his hands and arms and legs, and this is how it is done, through us. When we read in Revelation that Christ purchased us “to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God” and that we “will reign on the earth,” we need to start acting like it. Doing nothing and cowering in fear as if the works of the devil and the power of sin is greater than our God and Christ and his righteousness, is dishonoring to Almighty God who so loved the world He gave himself up for it.

Moralism and the Horrible Freeing Ubiquitousness of Sin

Moralism and the Horrible Freeing Ubiquitousness of Sin

Jun 19, 2024 | Theology

Sin is all pervasive, ubiquitous. Like oxygen, in a fallen world it is everywhere.

In my first 5 plus years as a Christian I tried very hard to be more moral, to do what is right and be obedient to God, but I wasn’t very good at it. Thus, guilt was a constant companion. Then in February 1984 I was exposed to Reformed theology, soteriology to be exact, and realized my self-focus was a kind of morbid introspection. Christianity for me had been a matter of will, and if I could just determine strongly enough that I would overcome sin, by golly, I would overcome it! I knew I was a sinner and that perfection was not possible, but I guess I felt like it should be. I knew very well of forgiveness, the cross, and Christ as my Savior, so I had what the famous hymn calls blessed assurance. Nonetheless, there was always this nagging thing called sin that dogged my every step.

When I was introduced to Calvinism the best way I can explain it is that it was upside and down and inside out from how I had been looking at Christianity and my Christian life. Simplistically put, my focus shifted from me to God. My journey since, over 40 years, has taught me a lot about myself and sin, and specifically that sin is my constant companion. As my title implies, there is something terribly freeing about that. I came to call what I had been doing previously the fatal externalizing of sin, as if sin was merely what I do and not who I am. Or more accurately according to the Apostle Paul, sin inheres in my flesh, in Greek, sarx-σάρξ, and thus it is inescapable.

One conclusion I came to fairly early on is that if we see sin merely as something we do, and that it is primarily a matter of our will, then what we’re in effect doing is trivializing sin. Viewed this way, sin isn’t a mystery, terrible and profound beyond our comprehension, but something with enough effort we can control. That’s why I came to call it a fatal externalizing of sin because when it becomes an issue of our will, we are trivializing both sin and God’s salvation of us in Christ. The more profoundly deep and disturbing and powerful sin is, the more profound is the salvation from it. We can’t defeat sin by our will power, ever, as Paul makes abundantly clear in Romans 7. The struggle makes us a complete conundrum to ourselves, as Paul says, I don’t understand what I do. What I want to do I don’t do, and what I don’t want to do I do. He comes to the end in complete turmoil declaring himself a wretched man and asks, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And he replies, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” He alone is our hope. But what exactly does that mean for how we live our Christian lives?

Before I get to that, I started thinking about all this when I came across this passage on sin from Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. He’s basically making a point about the profound nature of sin:

If we search the remotest past, I say that none of the saints, clad in the body of death (cf. Rom. 7:24), has attained to that goal of love so as to love God “with all his heart, all his mind, all his soul, and all his might” [Mark 10:30 and parallels]. I say furthermore, there was no one who was not plagued with concupiscence. Who will contradict this? Indeed, I see what sort of saints we imagine in our foolish superstition; the heavenly angels can scarcely compare with them in purity! But this goes against both Scripture and the evidence of experience. (VII, 5)

Calvin delineates three uses of the law and is speaking here of the law as a mirror that makes us painfully aware of our own sin compared to the holy law of God. The word concupiscence is not used anymore, but it means ardent desire, often sexual, but it’s much broader than that. What Calvin has in mind is the Tenth Commandment:

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

The Tenth Commandment reveals to us that sin is a matter of desire as much as a matter of action. We can possibly get away with coveting without our neighbor knowing, but God knows, and in due course it will destroy us. No sin stays hidden or internal for long, which is why God warns us against it.

Daily Repentance
It wasn’t too many years ago that I realized the significance of Martin Luther starting his 95 Thesis with the foundational nature of repentance to the Christian life:

(1) When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent” [Matthew 4:17], he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

How could the Christian’s entire life be one of repentance unless their entire life was one of sin? Repentance is only necessary where there is sin. Most Christians, however, don’t appear to be rank sinners, anymore than they appear as disheveled and dirty bums. I’ve remarked to my wife many times over the years how incredibly kind and decent Christians are who I’ve come across at churches over 45 years, yet to our secular Christ hating elites Christians are hypocritical, narrow minded, homophobic, self-righteous bigots. I’ve never really met any of those, but I suppose one day I might.

Before I get to this ever present dynamic in the Christian life, I want to share the next two of Luther’s 95 thesis that clarify his meaning:

(2) This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.
(3) Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance; such inner repentance is worthless unless it produces various outward mortifications of the flesh.

First, Luther was just beginning to question the Catholic Church, of which he was a priest in good standing, so he needed to differentiate repentance from penance. He still believed in the latter at this point, but it was important not to confuse the two. Repentance doesn’t require a priest or someone else’s forgiveness because it is a requirement of right relationship to God in Christ. We might even say that the forgiveness in Christ is conditional. I know that will give some Christians pause, but it is simply biblical. One example is a verse all Christians should have memorized, 1 John 1:9:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

If we do not confess our sins to God, that is agree with Him that whatever it is we have done or think or feel, is sin, then He will not forgive and purify us. It means forgiveness is conditional.

Second, Luther is saying in thesis 3 that “inner repentance” by itself is worthless if it is not accompanied by outer holiness and obedience to God’s law, i.e., “mortifications of the flesh.” Faith without works is dead is Christianity 101 (James 2). In Romans 6 Paul expresses his horror at the notion some were pushing that grace gives us license to sin. Christianity if it is real, and real in our lives, must make a stark difference in how we live, even if for some people it doesn’t appear much different on the outside, in their moral lives. Even the nicest little old ladies and the respectful young men that help them across the street are rank sinners deserving of hell, or sin isn’t sin. For those of us who don’t have the problem of appearing better than we are, there is hope for real change, which I will address below.

In my own Christian walk as I learned all this, and not too many years ago, I began to practice daily repentance every morning. It was probably around the time, 2012, when I made a commitment that every morning I would read the Bible and get on my knees and pray, one that I have kept ever since. I hadn’t come across Luther’s take on repentance yet, but part of my daily routine was a passage of Scripture I learned as a teenage Catholic in Mass one Sunday, Luke 18. Even at 16 or 17 years old I knew I had a lot more in common with the tax collector than the Pharisee. Like him I could beat my breast and ask, “God have mercy on me a sinner.” I remember the thought popping into my mind: “I can do that!” Given I knew I was a sinner and proficient at it, going away justified was appealing to me.

Christ is Our Righteousness and Sanctification
Which brings me to Christ as our righteousness. Sometime after I started daily repentance, I heard someone say something I’d known pretty much all my Christian life, but which struck me with a force I hadn’t felt before: The wrath of God was fully satisfied in Christ. This meant God could no longer be angry with me. The word propitiation is used four times in the epistles, Romans, Hebrews, and twice in I John. Here is one of the latter:

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

The Greek word is defined as:

(a) a sin offering, by which the wrath of the deity shall be appeased; a means of propitiation, (b) the covering of the ark, which was sprinkled with the atoning blood on the Day of Atonement.

Some translations use atonement instead, but that word doesn’t convey the concept of wrath or magnified anger. Sin is so horrific in its destructive effects on God’s creation, especially his greatest creation, man, that anger is the only appropriate response.

A critical point must be made in this regard. We live in a moral world of right and wrong, good and evil, justice and injustice. Every human being knows wrongs must be punished for justice to reign, and if they are not that is terribly morally wrong. In a court of law, if judges decide not a punish a law breaker because they just don’t feel like it, everyone knows that judge must be terminated or society will fall apart and chaos will reign. We don’t have to be taught that justice is required for peace, which requires punishment that brings atonement, reconciliation, or restitution, paying back for the wrong committed. How much more is this dynamic required for a holy infinite God and his rebellious creatures! If God simply forgives man without punishment, there is no justice and God would be like the judge who deserves to be fired. The entire earth would be filled with chaos because people would have no incentive to change; God will forgive me, no big deal. But the wages of sin is death because all sin does is bring death and destruction, its horrible wages.

To get a better grasp on just how serious God takes all this sin business, take some time to read again (and if you haven’t read it yet, you need to read it, now!), Isaiah 53. This was written 700 years before the passion of Christ, and it is brutal. Only God himself in the person of his son could pay the infinite price He required, and in order for God’s justice to be met and his wrath satisfied, appeased, it had to be done exactly this way.

Transformation is God’s Job
Which brings us to I Corinthians 1:30. I was aware of this verse much of my Christian life, but at some point post 2012, it struck me with a force I’d never encountered before:

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

The standard which God requires for right relationship to Him, perfect righteousness, or always doing right as Calvin describes love, is Jesus. We trust that he is that impossible standard for us, no more guilt, shame, or needing to measure up to a standard we can never match anyway. And that’s only the beginning. Christ is also our sanctification, or the process of progressively becoming more like God Himself in Christ.

This was really the mind blower for me because as born-again, Protestant Christians, justification, how we’re made right with God, is the doorway into the Christian life. Once we walk through that, we’re in. The challenge though, is as soon as we hit the foyer, Romans 7 slaps us upside the head. Or at least it should, if we understand that sin is more than merely outward conformity to the law. I will say it as clearly as I can: We cannot overcome sin. That brothers and sisters is impossible. But you know who can? In Paul’s response to this dilemma: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” It is he who can rescue us from this body of death, both now in this life, and in the forever resurrected life to come.

This reminds me a something I read in Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology very early in my Reformed journey: Christianity is the work of God in the soul of man. Which means it is a supernatural work, a work beyond the natural, beyond what we ourselves can do. In a lightbulb moment talking to a family member some years ago I said our transformation is God’s business. I can’t change myself, not possible. If I think I can, I’m in for frustration and disappointment. Because Jesus is my sanctification, however, I am promised a real change in my being only the Holy Spirit living in, with, and through me can accomplish. All the pressure is off, and daily repentance reminds me that it is “not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord Almighty.” (Zech. 4:6)

Lastly, the deeper and more profound the nature of sin, the deeper and more profound is the forgiveness, mercy, and grace of God I experience in the love He has poured into my heart by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). I am totally unworthy, yet receive the lavish riches of his grace. Knowing this experientially in my life, not only am I compelled to love others, but God is making me able to love others, helping me to want to love others, especially those I don’t want to love. This is how we change the world.