Uninvented: Job and the Nature of God

Uninvented: Job and the Nature of God

Dec 1, 2022 | Theology

Reading through the book of Job, I’ve been trying to think through it from an uninvented perspective. I’ve realized it would be difficult to see it as merely a figment of human imagination, as if some ancient screenwriter was preparing a script on suffering for a Netflix TV series. Who knows how it actually played out, but the realness lies in the antagonists thinking they get God and why he does what he does; we know, the ending doesn’t let them do that.

Sinful human beings have a nasty habit of thinking they can comprehend God, who by definition is incomprehensible. However, since we are made in God’s image and made to know him, we can have some, although not exhaustive, knowledge of God. We don’t have exhaustive knowledge of anything, even ourselves! If we’re honest, we’re willing to admit we’re often a mystery to ourselves. It’s interesting, then, when reading Job to see how each of the characters seems unwilling to admit there is any mystery in what is happening to Job. Although to Job his suffering is a mystery because he “was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.”

Theology isn’t an option in the Christian life, but I wasn’t even introduced to the concept until I’d been a Christian for over six years. Until then, I was under the impression it was just me, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit. I don’t deny the Holy Spirit is intimately involved with helping us understand Scripture, only we’re never called to bypass our brain. I seemed to think there was a wire in my brain going up to heaven, and when God wanted me to understand something, zap! That’s not the best hermeneutical principle.

Why is theology important? It is the study (ology) of God (theos in Greek), so yeah, it’s important. And Paul in Ephesians 1 prays

17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints.

The two requirements for us to grow in our knowledge of God is work and effort, and God revealing truth about himself to us by the power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it’s more than just reading the Bible; it’s studying the Bible, studying God in the revelation of himself to us in his word. Paul is telling us without the Christian concept of revelation, we would be as benighted as Job and his friends, his “miserable comforters.”

This includes having some idea of the principles of biblical hermeneutics, of how texts ought to be interpreted. I hadn’t even heard that word, let alone knew what it meant, until I had been Christian for more than six years. I learned the text of the Bible wasn’t magic, but it had a specific meaning the author intended when he wrote it. That’s called, not surprisingly, authorial intent. We must ask what the author intended his audience to understand when he wrote. Which further means the context is critical to understanding the text. Which even further means the Bible wasn’t written to me! It was written for me, but not to me, big difference.

All of this requires study outside the Bible itself. We’ll get a lot of this every Sunday in church if the pastor is doing his job, and in my 44 years as a Christian I’ve found that always to be the case. It’s why they go to seminary. But that doesn’t let us off the hook. We must read more than the Bible. A study Bible is helpful, as are the innumerable commentaries and books on the Bible, as well as the inexhaustible sources on the Internet. It’s amazing how alive the text and the stories in Scripture become when we know more about the author and the historical context. Most amazing of all is the ultimate biblical hermeneutical principle that Jesus gave us: the entire Bible is about him!

When I was introduced to theology at 24, I began with reading the Systematic Theology of Charles Hodge, the great 19th century Princeton Theologian. It blew my mind. In a chapter on the knowledge of God Hodge writes that God is inconceivable, incomprehensible, and that our knowledge of him can only be partial, but he argues it is real knowledge. The problem is when we think our knowledge of God means we can understand him, why and how he does what he does. The reason Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done . . .” is because we don’t, and we can’t! The book of Job makes that very clear. This problem of thinking we can figure out God’s thoughts and motives is endemic to the human condition, and both Christians and non-Christians are afflicted by it.

If we give it a moment’s thought, we’ll realize our pretension of thinking we can probe the depths of God’s being and mind is ridiculous. It’s stunning if we really ruminate upon it, how totally and completely inconceivable and incomprehensible God is. For example, he created everything out of nothing by the power of his word, “and God said, ‘Let there be . . . .’” Try to wrap your mind around that. God is also omnipresent, everywhere at once. He is also omniscient, meaning he knows all things. And omnipotent, meaning he possesses all power. Think of the devastating power of splitting the atom, and he made every single one! He is also aware and intimately involved in the lives of every single human being on earth, at the same moment.

I could go on, but you get the point. All we can do is fall down in praise and adoration of a being so great, and proclaim in doxology with King David,

Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom;
you are exalted as head over all.

Now, our God, we give you thanks,
and praise your glorious name.

Calvinism and the Inevitable Non Sequitur

Calvinism and the Inevitable Non Sequitur

Nov 13, 2022 | Theology

I would wager that almost everyone coming across this lonely old blog post out on my very tiny corner of the windswept desolation of the Internet has some idea of what Calvinism is. Whether they are right or not is the topic I seek to address. Of course, being right isn’t everything, but it ain’t nothin’. As for non sequiturs, few have ever heard of it, let alone know what it means. The reason is the woeful state of education in America. Classes in formal logic are rare, and as a public-school kid, I certainly never learned it. The term is a basic logical fallacy, and the first two Brave search results were:

  1. An inference or conclusion that does not follow from the premises or evidence.
  2. A statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it.

The phrase is a Latin term for “nonsequential,” or literally “does not sequentially follow.” It is a fallacy committed when a conclusion does not follow logically from its given premise. Thus a non sequitur entails reasonings or premises that are irrelevant to a conclusion.

All sinners are given to logical fallacies, which would include all of us. They come naturally like sin itself, often knee-jerk reactions and thoughtlessly easy. Non sequiturs are especially easy and common fallacies. What have they to do with Calvinism, you may ask. Good question.

When I was first introduced to the theology of John Calvin, the great 16th century Reformer, at the tender age of 24, I instantly went into non sequitur overdrive, knee-jerk like. My first reaction was that if God choose me and I had nothing to do with it, then my choosing didn’t matter. I was, it seemed, no more than a robot. Why would I think such a thing? Well, because I instinctively assumed God’s choosing made my choosing irrelevant. Sure, it seemed like I chose, but if it wasn’t only my choice, then it wasn’t really a choice. Who says? I don’t know. I just . . . . assumed it. That is a non-sequitur.

Or take the gospel. We are saved by unmerited grace apart from the works of the law. All Christians believe that, Christianity 101, right? Yet, the Apostle Paul had to deal with gospel non sequiturs. Both Jews and pagans had a difficult time believing what we did had absolutely and completely nothing to do with our justification and acceptance by God. Paul directly addresses the non sequitur in Romans 6:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

In other words, it doesn’t follow, logically, that because we’re saved by grace (and not in obedience to the law) that we can do whatever the hell we want. No! And Paul gives the very logical reasons why.

The biblical and other examples of this logical fallacy are manifold and common. Once you understand what it is, you become aware of how common it is, like when you’re shopping for a new car and decide on a model, suddenly you see them everywhere.

This sinful human tendency is especially common when it comes to Calvinism. The reason is because of the Calvinist focus on God’s sovereign grace. I remember listening to a lecture by the late great R.C. Sproul, and he said all Christians believe God is sovereign, except when it comes to his grace. Early on in my Reformed (a synonym for Calvinism) journey I realized how illogical this was. When Moses asks Yahweh to show him his glory, he doesn’t get fireworks, but instead the Lord replies:

“I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”

The glory of this God in whom we believe, his very essence, is to grant his sovereign kingly pardon to whomever he pleases. Full stop. It has absolutely nothing to do with the person being pardoned, a la the thief on the cross. Unlike an earthly king, however, our heavenly king then raises us spiritually from the dead (those born-again have as much say in their spiritual birth as any baby has in their physical birth), and transforms our heart of spiritual stone, to a heart of flesh.

When Calvinists assert this is all of God, completely and totally monergistic, our natural non sequitur response is, what about me? Don’t I have to do something? I mean, I have to believe, right? Of course we do, but does it follow that because we do believe, we have to power to do that? This would be a classic non sequitur, and one Calvinists are faced with all the time. Dead people don’t have the power to do anything. The blind don’t have the power to make themselves see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, or the dead come back to life. Jesus’ healing ministry is a spiritual metaphor for our spiritual helplessness and dependence on him for the double cure for sin.

The most prevalent non-sequitur is determinism: If God is sovereign and in control off all things, then human freedom is an illusion, we can’t be accountable, and we are no more than robots. This, however, isn’t Calvinism. The testimony of Scripture from beginning to end portrays God as sovereign and in control of all things, and man as free to choose. These are not mutually exclusive, nor do they contradict one another. How does this work? Who knows. If God and his ways were comprehensible to us, he wouldn’t be God. And most critics of Calvin and Calvinism have never actually read his works. There is nothing deterministic in them, but rather the thoughts of a man with an incredible heart for God and love for his people.

How Donald Trump Turned Me into a Postmillennialist!

How Donald Trump Turned Me into a Postmillennialist!

Nov 6, 2022 | Theology

The very last thing I expected when Donald Trump came down the escalator to announce his run for the presidency on June 16, 2015, was the red pill I unknowingly swallowed that would eventually lead me to embracing postmillennialism. In case you don’t know what postmillennialism (PM) is, don’t feel bad. Until a few months ago I didn’t either, but the massive paradigm shifts I’ve undergone in the last seven years have brought much that was unexpected, not least to my eschatology.

Up to late summer I had no clue my understanding of “the end times” would be another unexpected revelation. I’m writing a book about these last seven years and the many revelations I’ve experience, which is thrilling because I’m not really sure where it will end up. I didn’t realize how our theology of “end times” determines how we interpret everything about the times in which we live, whether negatively or positively.

I’ve posted two videos below about PM, and I encourage you to watch/listen as an introduction to the topic. If you don’t agree with this eschatological position, at least you’ll have some knowledge of what you don’t agree with. That’s more than I can say when I was on that side of things. Before I get there, I’ll explain, briefly, why I rejected PM out of hand while knowing absolutely nothing about it, and how my mind became open. Once opened, I discovered it makes perfect biblical sense.

I rejected PM because I thought it was embraced by 19th and early 20th century Christians because of cultural conditioning of the Western concept of “progress.” The hubris that came out of Enlightenment rationalism and the explosion of scientific knowledge led people to assume progress as linear, like an arrow shot to ever more wonderful human accomplishment. I thought Christians uncritically bought into this as their eschatology. This included my theological heroes, the great Princeton theologians Charles Hodge and B.B. Warfield. Apparently they were great in all things theological, except when it came to eschatology.

For most of my Christian life I was a “pan-millennialist”; it will all pan out in the end. It seemed like trying to understand “end times” was endless speculation and trying to figure it all out was a fool’s errand. Then in 2014 I discovered amillennialism through a teaching series by Dr. Kim Riddlebarger.  It blew my mind, and I decided it was an eschatological position I could embrace. Until a few months ago. I’ll share very briefly why, and suggest you watch/listen to these to videos so you can see why I’ve embraced PM, and see if you want to as well.

This is where Donald Trump comes in. In addition to being an uncouth billionaire New Yorker who rubs a lot of people the wrong way, his policies were a threat to both political parties, or the Uniparty. Everyone, including me, thought his candidacy was a joke, until it wasn’t. Then TDS really kicked in. I had it initially, but his critics were so over the top I thought, nobody can be that bad. Then there was three years of Trump-Russia “collusion,” and then covid, stolen election, and the cherry on the top was the J6 “insurrection.”

You would think all this would all depress me given I’d become full on MAGA, even “Ultra Maga,” and I was, but then I found Steve Bannon’s War Room, and became one of the Posse. I can’t explain it all here, but he turned me into an optimist with his affirmation of human agency (we can change things), especially in the context of the United States of America. That leads to his now famous rallying cry, action, action, action!

Earlier this year I decided to write a book of hope based on all these revelations I’d been going through since Trump, and realized I needed theological justification for my optimism. Initially, I thought it lay in the revelation of God in creation a la Paul in Romans 1:20, that “God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made . . . .” In other words, God’s revelation in creation, and human knowledge is part of his creation. We now know things we wouldn’t have known before Trump, or before Einstein, or before America’s Founding, or before Newton, Luther, Aquinas, you get the picture. All this knowledge is in some way a revelation of God’s “eternal power and divine nature.”

I still believe this, but when PM came along, I sensed it might be the answer I was looking for. Then in a conversation about PM in a YouTube video, Doug Wilson said, “Now you have a theological justification for optimism.” That’s it! The feeling at that moment reminded me of A Charlie Brown Christmas When Charlie goes to Lucy for “Psychiatric Help” so he can find out why he’s so depressed. She thinks it might be fear, so goes through various phobias. Finally, she asks about a phobia that means fear of everything, and Charlie yells out, “That’s it!” And Lucy flips backward cartoon like several times. I felt like Charlie. It was thrilling.

You’ll have to learn more about PM yourself to understand why I felt and still feel this way. Here are the promised videos:

James White went through a similar journey to me, from Pan-Mill, to A-Mill, to PM.

This is a documentary of various interviews. The host when through the same journey.

Wealth and Honor Come from You!

Wealth and Honor Come from You!

Nov 4, 2022 | Gratitude, Theology

If you’re a sinner, you probably think this post is about you. I won’t say you’re so vain, but you probably get the point. If you read my last post, though, you already know the answer is . . . . God! I wrote about David’s words of praise for God in I Chronicles 29:10-13, but I didn’t get into details about what made this passage so powerful in the last five plus years of my life. I’ll share that below, but before I get there, a great cross reference to David’s declaration is in Deuteronomy 8:

17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

It looks like “you” is always the temptation, which goes back to the initial bold-faced lie the serpent told Eve in the garden, “you will be like God knowing good and evil” In some ways we are very much like God being made in his image, but the temptation had nothing to do with the imago dei. Rather it had to do with epistemology, which is fascinating to think through. Why did all the misery of sin and death come into God’s good creation with knowing? Man was obviously never meant to know evil, and he already knew good. The problem was we couldn’t handle it because, well, we are not God! Seems pretty simple doesn’t it.

Related to creating wealth, thinking we are in some way God is really the core of the problem. You may say without us there is no wealth, and you would be correct. But without a theology of wealth, and sin, and God, we area easily confused. This is important to my story because I found out I suck at being God (can I do LOL in a blog post?).

First, Paul tells us (Acts 17:25) God “gives to all life and breath and everything else.” So, there’s that. We may think we’re pretty hot stuff, but every single breath is granted to us by God, not to mention “everything else.” He also asks these rhetorical questions: “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” All of our abilities and skills and talents and knowledge, all of it comes from him. Even our drive to acquire these things, our ambitions and desires come from him.

When we understand and accept this, that we are not autonomous self-sufficient, self-created beings, it all somehow becomes so much easier. As much as it is up to us, in a way none of it us up to us. This tension is what we call life lived in God’s created salvific reality. It is a thrilling dynamic in which to live in light of ultimate things, in the biggest of big pictures. As Paul yet again puts it perfectly in Romans 8:

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

I would joke with my kids as they were growing up, and still do when they are, surely Paul didn’t mean all. Maybe 98%. Nope, all!

Which brings me to the I Chronicles 29:10-13 context. A month after we moved down to Florida, I lost my job of 14 years, and that at age 57. Uh oh. Now what. After two months of finding nothing, in desperation I decided to take a job in IT sales on 100% commission, something I’d never done. It was terrifying, and the first year, even two, was miserable. God and me, we did some serious wrestling. It’s hard to explain the intensity of emotions I went through. Many times, often daily, I went back to David’s praise about the greatness of our God.

Right after David says wealth and honor come from God, he declares God is “the ruler of all things.” Not some things, but all things. That is the ultimate existential question: Do we really buy this, believe it when push comes to shove, when we are confronted with, do we trust him or not.

I remember praying something prior to taking the job that reveals what a moron I am. I would pray, “Lord it would be ideal if . . .” One day it struck me like a thunderclap: How the hell would I know what ideal is!!! I’m ashamed to say I had been a Christian by that time for almost 40 years, and was still so clueless about the true Greatness of our God that I would pray something like that. I’m a slow learner, but eventually I get it.

This new job confronted me with the trust question literally every day, and it was often painful. For those old enough, you may remember ABC’s Wide World of Sports, and the video opening every show: It was daily, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. Exhilarating and disappointing. Was I going to embrace the God who is “the ruler of all things”? Could I experience equanimity in the face of defeat? Could I obey Jesus and not worry? Obey Paul and not be anxious about anything? Anything?

I even got to the point of telling the Lord, “If you want me to fail, that’s fine. Thy will be done.” But I was going to work my ever-living guts out and pray every day he would bless my efforts, and whatever happens from there is up to him. And he has!

The greatest lesson, I think, was learning my knee jerk reaction is always initially wrong, and I have to fight it. Trusting God takes mental and emotional effort. Takes turning back the fear, worry, anxiety, doubt because it just isn’t necessary. It is our sinful, distrustful imagination that causes those, and we just have to stop it! Rebuke ourselves, repent (I John 1:9, and leave the inner transformation to him), and convince ourselves anew that he’s got our back. It is a wonderfully fulfilling way to live in his promise to us (Is. 26)

You will keep in perfect peace
him whose mind is steadfast,
because he trusts in you.

Perfect peace. 

I Chronicles 29:10-13: David’s Life Transforming Praise for God

I Chronicles 29:10-13: David’s Life Transforming Praise for God

Nov 1, 2022 | Theology

In my current jaunt through Scripture, much quicker than last time, I recently read this passage in I Chronicles and reflected on how significant it has been in the last five years or so of my life. When we moved from the Chicago area to Florida in early June of 2017, these verses were in the bulletin in the second church service we attended. I remember thinking how heavy it was, and decided I needed to memorize it. I couldn’t have realized how significant the truths David proclaims would be for me in the coming years.

The context is near the end of David’s life. He had developed plans and provided the resources for the Temple. Since the Lord would not let him build it because of all the blood he had spilled, he passed those on to his successor, his son Solomon, and he would be the one to build it. Then we read his effusive words of praise for the Lord his God:

10 David praised the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly, saying,

“Praise be to you, Lord,
the God of our father Israel,
from everlasting to everlasting.
11 Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power
and the glory and the majesty and the splendor,
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
Yours, Lord, is the kingdom;
you are exalted as head over all.
12 Wealth and honor come from you;
you are the ruler of all things.
In your hands are strength and power
to exalt and give strength to all.
13 Now, our God, we give you thanks,
and praise your glorious name.

As we know, David had quite the tumultuous life, and while he sinned greatly, the Lord declared that he was a man after his own heart. The two are not mutually exclusive, which I why think his life is such a powerful object lesson, in addition to being a prophetic type of King Jesus.

We all sin greatly to one degree or another because the standard is the perfectly holy Creator God of the universe. Sure, compared to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao I’m a pretty good guy, but compared to God the only thing I deserve is the wages of the sins I commit, death. As I often say to anyone who will listen, I deserve to be a pile of smoldering ashes on the ground, so anything other than that is gravy.

What separated David from the average king was his laser like focus on God. Even when he sinned against Bathsheba and her husband, he said to God, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.” Most of us, dare I say none of us, would have said such a thing, but David realized the essence of sin isn’t my sin against others or others against me, but ours against God. All the personal and interpersonal misery and dysfunction flows out of that. If we get that backward we don’t get the gospel.

For me, David’s praise, especially at that time in my life, helped sharpen my focus on the God he is so effusively praising. The temptation all sinful humanity has is to focus on our circumstances or other people. It’s terribly easy to do because, well, it’s all we can see! So, instead of living by faith, i.e., trust, we live by site, the opposite of what Paul says we should do.

Speaking of trust, that is the I Chronicles 29:10-13 lesson of these last five years, and the focus of the rest of my life; trusting God who worthy of my trust. The lack thereof is my greatest sin, and something for which I repent daily. I know I don’t trust him if I allow fear, worry, anxiety, doubt, frustration, and anything else that cannot be defined as “perfect peace” into my life. I didn’t say it would be easy!

I realized how important this was for me as I began to understand the word faith or belief in the New Testament. When we come across those, or any variations thereof, they do not mean intellectual assent. The Greek word used for both English words is pistis-πίστις, so it is far more than merely intellectually accepting that something is true. We can “believe” something is true, and it make absolutely no difference in our lives. Will that airplane get me to Tuscaloosa, Alabama safe and alive? Trust gets me on it. Or ice fishing. I don’t quite get the appeal (probably because I was born and raised in L.A.), and I believe the ice will hold up, but you would never get me out on the ice. I believe, but don’t trust.

What David’s declaration of praise did for me was convince me the ice will hold up no matter how thin it looks, no matter how many cracks appear. I learned how addicted I am to circumstances, how easily I treat them as more sovereign and powerful than Almighty God. It’s kind of pathetic when you think about it, but the problem is we don’t often think about it; we react. Our peace of mind isn’t determined by who God is, a la David’s accurate declaration, but by how we interpret our circumstances. When the trust challenge comes, as it did for me so often in the early years of our time in Florida, I didn’t pass the test. But in due course because I was determined to focus on this God and his power and glory and majesty and splendor, I slowly developed my trust muscle. You can too!

 

 

 

Rock of Ages and The Double Cure for Sin

Rock of Ages and The Double Cure for Sin

Oct 28, 2022 | Theology

One reason we’ve always gone to churches where hymns are sung is because the best hymnody is theology in song, meaning the study (ology) of God (theos) set to music. Much modern praise music unfortunately is more anthropology, more about man (anthropos), than God. And for my wife and I, something about two or three hundred year-old music lends itself to the sacred. The theology, though, is what we appreciate most, and I often learn or am reminded of truths about our astonishing faith that allow me to marvel all over again at our great God and Savior.

One recent Sunday we sang the theologically rich old hymn every Christian has heard of, Rock of Ages. The author, with one of the best hymn writer names in history, Augustus Toplady (1740-1778), knew his theology. The theme of the Hymn comes from Exodus 33 where Moses asks the Lord to show him his glory, who he really is. In reply, The Lord declares his name, and adds, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” The Lord alone determines who will receive his mercy, or not. This truth is foundational to the revelation of God to his people about who he is. We can’t earn his mercy, or grace; he alone grants it as he will.

The beauty of the salvation for those to whom he grants it, his people, is that it is a complete and total salvation. Thus, in the first stanza, Toplady writes:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee;
let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure.

This double cure saves us from God’s wrath, and at the same time makes us pure. In other words, the salvation granted to us in Christ is for sin’s guilt and power. The problem is that sin’s power over us seems, well, powerful. We fight it, but we often feel like a pummeled boxer down for the count.

The Apostle Paul can relate. He confesses in Roman 7, “I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” Who can’t relate to that! In his frustration he cries out:

 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me out of this body of death?

The English doesn’t do justice to Paul’s emphasis in Greek because emphasis is determined by where words are placed unlike in English. He starts, “Wretched I am man.” In other words, he is emphasizing just how wretched he is. The extended meaning of that word captures well our struggle against sin: (beaten-down) from continued strain, leaving a person literally full of callouses (deep misery) – describing a person with severe side-effects from great, ongoing strain (significant hardships). If we haven’t felt that way about our sin, we haven’t really struggled against it.

I’ve heard it said, any dead fish can float downstream; it’s easy to go with the sinful flow because, well, we’re sinners! It’s really hard to fight against our natural sinful inclinations. As soon as we’re spiritually raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit, however, the fight begins; but we are not in this fight alone. Paul answers his question, and affirms Toplady’s double cure:

 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Amen!

Most Christians have no problem believing God saves us from the guilt of sin, justification, but we tend to think the pure part, sanctification, is our job. The good news is that Jesus is both! I never really got this until maybe 10 years ago. Deep down I was under the impression my relationship with God was in some way determined by what I did or did not do.

First, I seemed to believe God would like me more if I was a good little boy, and less if I wasn’t. At some point I realized that wasn’t true at all because God’s wrath was fully satisfied in Christ, the whole enchilada. On the cross, Christ paid for the penalty and guilt of my sin, all of it, past, present, and future. In Isaiah 53 we learn he was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; and “the punishment that brought us peace was on him.” So absolutely nothing we do or don’t do can make us any more acceptable to God than we are in Christ, ever.

But Christ is not only our justification, as Paul says in I Cor. 1:30, but he is also our sanctification. We’re not left to deal with the power of sin in us on our own, as if defeating it was up to our choosing, our will, our decisions. It is not!  These are obviously part of the process of our sanctification, but they do not determine it. We tend to think we just need to try harder. Then I can finally live, as it used to be called, the victorious Christian life. Technically we call that hooey.

I want you to chew on something God made apparent to me: we can’t transform ourselves. That’s God’s job. As we read in Zechariah 4:6, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord Almighty. As Julia Ward Howe wrote in the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Christ “died to make us holy.” The Apostle John tells us how instead of letting sin defeat us, we trust that Christ too is our sanctification:

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

This is the double cure! Not only are we forgiven for the guilt, but God promises to purify us from the power of sin. That is his job not ours! It’s even gooder news than I ever thought!