No Empty Space

"Your steadfast love, oh Lord, extends to the heavens; your faithfulness to the clouds…

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! 

The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. 

They feast on the abundance of your house, 

And you give them to drink from the river of your delights. 

For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light." 

-King David, Psalm 36:5, 7-9

I remember watching outer-space-themed movies as a pre-teen/early-teen in the late 90s. Deep Impact, Armageddon, Contact, etc. You might remember them. Latent as a sub-theme in most of these was the idea of the vacuity (emptiness) of space. On one occasion (on which movie, I can’t remember), a guy gets blown off of an asteroid by a random surface explosion, and goes hurtling into outer space, screaming in terror in his helmet, knowing he will die a lonely, miserable death in the vacuity of empty blackness. This view of the universe was woven into the minds of millennials with a ubiquity (and certainty) that takes major revisionism to deny. 

Combine it with the naturalism of the Lion King (and to be clear, we all love the Lion King), where people and animals are merely a part of an impersonal “circle of life,” and you begin to see emerge the final product of the late modern presuppositions that make today's thirty and early forty-somethings the skeptics about theism that they are: 

a) Space is big, dark, empty, and full of random explosions that will send us out into it 

alone; and 

b) My significance is found in the fact that I contribute to a food/survival chain. (Never 

answered in Lion King is how this impersonal, mechanical view of the universe in any 

way justifies Simba’s rage at his uncle for killing Mufasa: Doesn’t Scar’s ingenuity and 

cleverness simply prove him to be higher on the chain?) 

But David, under inspiration by the Spirit of the God who is, says something interesting in the text above: God’s steadfast love—his chesed love (it’s Hebrew; think covenantal, eternal, Trinitarian, relentlessly saving, protecting, healing)—extends to the heavens. Now God dwells perfectly in heaven (Matt. 6:9, Ecc. 5:2), so we would expect David to say that God's steadfast love extends from the heavens. But he says “to the heavens”; the implication seems to be that the the steadfast love of God, as far as humanity is concerned, starts on the ground. That is, our existence in this time and in this place is itself evidence of his steadfast love. He puts us where we are when we are, so that, as Paul says in Athens, “we’ll feel our way toward him and find him” (Ac. 17:27). 

But note the very next thing Paul says: “Yet he is actually not far from each of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being” (17:27-28). So he has chosen to place each of us in our unique lot in life because it is the best lot in which each of us can seek and find him. But what we’re seeking is not something far off, but something with a presence that is experienced by so simple an act as breathing, even existing. We do nothing apart from God’s supplying of our being. “In his hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind” (Job. 12:10); note, we breathe, but the breath is cradled in his hand. In that same sense he says via Jeremiah, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” (Jer. 23:23); similarly still, Jesus says that even something as insignificant as a sparrow's death does not occur apart from God’s provision, and neither do we lose hairs so that he loses count of them (Matt. 10:28-30). Our being is continually supplied by God, as is all being in both general and particular. We don’t act apart from him: If we do good, we participate with him; if we do bad, we choose non-participation, but his wisdom is such that those acts of non-participation will serve his good purposes in the end. Obviously this raises a lot of follow-up questions about causality and evil, but I’m going to decline them for now. I’d recommend a couple of books, footnoted below.*

Simply put, the difference between this view of the universe and the impersonal, mechanical, prone-to-explosion, unavoidably lonely view of the universe is obvious: If all of life is lived before God’s face, deriving from God’s being, there is not even a single square inch of space in existence that is lonely. If some catastrophe happened while in outer space, sending someone hurtling away, it is not nothingness into which they hurtle, but the space which the God of steadfast love fills. Neither is our significance tied to our production in some survival cycle, but on God's graciously giving us life, breath, and everything (Ac. 17:25) which means he cares, and invites us to himself, moment by moment. Thus even the one hurtling into outer space would do well to learn to think, even in that moment of terror, “While I’m terrified, nothingness doesn't consist in this spiral away, but only in refusing to look to and believe in God, and instead to think what I want to about this. God will care for me, and if that means death, it means entrance into his joy” (“Enter into the joy of your master” Matt. 25:21).

I think that this is why v.5 in the Psalm above flows into vv.7-9 the way that is does: His steadfast love fills all space and time such that he is inescapable, and when people acknowledge it and learn to rest in him, his care, his provision, etc., two things happen, one following the other: a) He becomes their refuge from the troubles of life (v.7); and b) He satisfies them with the joy and delight that exists in his perfect glory (vv.8-9, “the river of your delights”; see also Ps. 46:4).

In short, if you know the steadfast love of God the Trinity, you know that this love both follows and precedes you everywhere you go (Ps. 23:6). There is no isolated place, period, mood, thought, etc. You derive all things from him who is the “fountain of life” who, echoing Calvin, never dries up, and is the source of all goodness.** Or, to summarize, quoting Calvin: 

“After we have learned by faith to know that whatever is necessary for us or defective in us is supplied in God and in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom it hath pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell, that we may thence draw as from an inexhaustible fountain, it remains for us to seek and in prayer implore of him what we have learned to be in him.”***

 

And even in uncertainty, pain, even despair, such thoughts or feelings don’t change that He who is the fountain of life and all good things shepherds even in this. It’s only matter of time before there’s rejoicing again.

-------------

*Andrew Davison, Participation in God, chs.1,2,5,9; Peter Kreeft, Summa on the Summa (his annotations on the most relevant portions of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica; see especially “Four: Cosmology and Providence,” which deals with Summa I.44-105, pp.189-239.
**This terminology comes from his Ephesians sermons. 
***Institutes, III.20.1. Emphasis added. 

A Precious Remedy

I haven't been writing much, not because I haven't had anything to write, but because my writing attention has been on my dissertation. At the time of this writing, I am roughly four weeks from submission, so I'm "under the gun," as they say. But I need a fresh blog post so that I don't totally get out of practice. 

Over the last several years, my reading has been divided into several subsections, in many cases where books cause cross categories: First is research-reading, in which I read for the specific purpose of guiding higher academic pursuits (whether it be PhD, or proposed articles, papers for conferences, or publishing possibilities); second is personal theological growth, which is reading geared toward growth in "knowledge of Christ Jesus" (2 Pet. 3:18); third is pastoral and pedagogical reading, which is reading that assists my preaching and teaching at church, as well as what assists my teaching in the classroom setting; finally is personal growth and fun reading, in which I read things that I think help me either to practically follow Jesus or are just sort of decompression-reading.  

For the first category, Matthew Barrett's 900-page Reformation as Renewal is a current pursuit; in it he argues for an alternative reading of the history of the Reformation and the age in which it occurred than what is traditionally believed by both Protestant and Roman Catholic (highly, highly recommended). For the second category, I'm reading Peter Kreeft's Summa of the Summa, which is an annotated commentary on major portions of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica (also highly recommended). For the third category, I'm reading Jim Davis and Michael Graham's The Great Dechurching, in which they break down the exodus from the church that has occurred in America over the last 40 years. It is well worth any Christian's time - the church has work to do, because a lot of people have left churches for reasons that are avoidable. (And one fact worth considering is that the higher the level of a person's education, the lower likelihood of dechurching. In a world where we hear that progressive education is the problem in America, it is actually the case that church attenders who had high levels of academic achievement were less likely to leave church!)*

But one example of reading that belongs to the final category is the Puritan Thomas Brooks' Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices. I've owned it for a long time, but haven't spent much time in it until recently. Oh my goodness, is it helpful. Christians are to be in a constant defensive position against the devil, because his mission this side of the cross and leading to Christ's final coming is to destroy our faith (2 Cor. 4:4, Eph. 6:13f., 1 Pet. 5:8-10). It is not "fundamentalist" to believe that Satan is an actual entity at work in the world^; everyone, I think, believes evil exists. What is the source of evil, then? The devil, who has "devices" or "designs" (2 Cor. 2:11), of which we are to be made aware. 

Brooks (1608-80) spends the entirety of his pastoral work on the various "devices" Satan uses to destroy believers, giving several "precious remedies" that assist the believer in their battle. One of those devices which Satan employs to 

"keep souls in a sad, doubting, and questioning condition, and so making their life a hell, is, by causing them to be still poring and musing upon sin, to mind their sins more than their Savior; yea, so to mind their sins as to forget, yea, to neglect their Savior...Their eyes are so fixed upon their disease that they cannot see the remedy, though it be near."*^ 

This is a device in which the devil tries to keep the believer, still inhabited by sin and sin tendencies (1 Jn. 1:8, 10), so focused on their sin condition that they cannot see the Savior who has cleansed them and is available to them. Hence becomes fulfilled what Isaiah wrote, that the rebellious, by their sin, have made a wall between themselves and God, such that he cannot hear their prayers (Is. 59:1-2). Satan wants people to think that they're so bad, and hopelessly so, that God cannot (because he would not) listen. 

And Brooks' first precious remedy almost took my breath away when I read it: 

"The first remedy is for weak believers to consider, That though Jesus Christ hath not freed them from the presence of sin, yet he hath freed them from the damnatory power of sin. It is most true that sin and grace were never born together, neither shall sin and grace die together; yet while a believer breathes in this world, they must live together, they must keep house together. Christ in this life will not free any believer from the presence of any one sin, though he doth free every believer from the damning power of every sin."# 

I was stunned at Brooks' comment that sin and grace were not born together (for grace has to do with God's eternal giving nature, and sin, with a reactive refusal to participate in God), and thus they will not die together (that is, I'll one day be set free from sin's presence, but grace will continue). So until the end, sin and grace have to live together. They can't not. That's why Paul says the flesh and the Spirit are at war within believers (Gal. 5:16), and why everywhere the New Testament cautions against letting sin fester, for it can balloon to unmanageable bigness (i.e. Heb. 3:13, 12:15). We will not attain a practical perfection in this life, though it must never be because we are not seeking to be perfect like our Father (Mt. 5:48). We are all seeking something, living in light of some picture of the "good life." So we must always pursue God's "good life," which he has for us. 

So when we consider consistent sin struggles, areas where we are not growing like we should, frustrations with lack of love for God or for others, etc. we should remember that the devil would have us focus all of our attention on those areas. But much better is to remember that sin and grace are living together inside of each of us, and that they will do so until the end. And as Brooks says on the next page, if Jesus doesn't dispense entirely with particular sins in this life, it is because he has chosen not to, and thus he will forgive us when we slip, when we return to him and ask.^^

While it is true that Jesus did not die and rise again so that we would live this life defeated and hopeless in sin, it is also true that he does not leave us in this life of misery for us to feel defeated by our lack of growth and Christlikeness. Our faith is not seen in our perfection but in the ability of He who is perfect to cause us to keep returning to him. If the devil accuses--which is what he does--I counter his attack by returning to Jesus again, and again, and again, so on. And such reflection should be balm to a weary soul.

*See Davis, Graham, The Great Dechurching, 111-12.

^See, for instance, John Mark Comer's helpful Live No Lies, which is a book about Satan and evil, written from a decidedly non-fundamentalist perspective. 

*^Precious Remedies, Puritan Paperback edition, 142, emph original. 

#Ibid, 143, emph original.

^^Ibid, 144.

Augustine, On Predestination and Jesus as Our Fountain of Grace

“Therefore in Him who is our Head let there appear to be the very fountain of grace, whence, according to the measure of every man, He diffuses Himself through all His members. It is by that grace that every man from the beginning of his faith becomes a Christian, by which grace that one man from His beginning became Christ.” 
                           -Augustine, On Predestination, XXXI

In context, Augustine is arguing against both Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism. Both camps assert the necessity of man’s willing consent to his own conversion, in the former case (Pelagianism) in entirety (that is, conversion is entirely man’s consent), and in the latter (semi-Pelagianism) in partiality (that is, conversion is partially God’s doing and partially man’s consent.) Up against both of these frameworks, the former which is, thankfully, fairly uncommon today, and the latter, which is almost ubiquitous among evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox today, Augustine aims to assert that salvation is all the work of God, raising the dead, granting faith to the faithless, and empowering, by grace, the obedience of the once disobedient. 

Augustine bases his argument on such portions of Sacred Scripture as: 

-“When you were dead...He raised you with Christ. By grace you have been saved…this is not your own doing, but is the gift of God, that no man should boast” (Eph. 2:5, 8-9). 
-“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (Jn. 6:44). 
-“It has been granted you to believe in him…” (Phil. 1:29)
-“What do you have that you did not receive...Why boast as if you didn’t receive it?” (1 Cor. 4:7) 
-“As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.” (Ac. 13:48)

But mostly in this quote, Augustine is drawing on Heb. 12:2, which calls Jesus the “Author and Perfector of our faith.” That is, He begins it (that is, faith) in us and He completes it (maturing it, perfecting it) in us. 

This means that, just as God the Trinity is the fountain of life for all that exists, God the Son, the second Member of the Trinity, via His incarnation in the Person of Jesus Christ, is the fountain of grace for all of those who believe in and hope in Him. 

Like God the Trinity not only begins but at every moment continually gives all people who live their being (eg. “In Him we live and move and have our being,” Ac. 17:28), so God the Son in Jesus Christ both begins and at every moment continually gives all of His people their salvation and eternal life. No one can say, “God offered to save me, and I accepted,” though countless believers throughout the centuries have tried to (and still do). They should instead say (and will say one day), “God offered to save me, and I accepted, because the Holy Spirit moved me to willingness to embrace the One who He taught me is eternal life.” Or they’ll simply say, “God saved me through the Lamb” (as in the heavenly songs of Revelation 4-5). Augustine is explaining how this salvation occurs.

But the reason Jesus can be our salvation in the first place is because the eternal Son became temporal man in the first place. Note the logic of Augustine’s last sentence in the quote: By Christ’s grace one becomes a Christian, which is the same grace that united the man Jesus with the the divine Son in the hypostatic union. In other words, God's grace brings us, men and women, to Himself, because God's grace, in the person of Jesus, brought a human nature to Himself, to give us a Savior who could truly be our fountain of life. Why am I a Christian, right now? Because the life of Jesus, the God-man Incarnate, is in me, as a spring of living water in a parched land. It is not parched anymore. Thus Jesus' promise, “I will give you living water” (Jn. 4:10).

And indeed, He has done so and continues to. 

The Wilderness Teaches Us to Pray

I recently led a little Bible study at our Wednesday evening prayer meeting entitled “What the wilderness teaches us.” I leaned for the main point on a little section in Zack Eswine’s The Imperfect Pastor, because it was a profoundly helpful point for dealing with difficulty and trial, or the wilderness. Hopefully you agree. 

Context

Luke wants to show Jesus as the Son of God, seen in the fact that unlike Matthew’s genealogy (which shows Jesus’ Jewishness by taking him back through David to Abraham), Luke takes Jesus all the way back to Adam, who is then called “the son of God” (3:38). While that might seem strange, it shouldn’t be. Israel is called the son of God at several points (Ex. 4); and being the first made in God’s image, we should expect that Adam is son-like in a way that the other species are not. 

But immediately after the genealogy, which is itself a break in the narrative, following Jesus’ baptism where the Spirit of God came down on him, Luke says that the Spirit then drove Jesus into the wilderness for a time of testing. So: a) Spirit is on Jesus at baptism, b) Jesus in his humanity descends from Adam the Son of God. c) Then the Spirit drives him for testing. And the first thing the devil says is “If you’re the Son of God…” (4:3). It’s clear what Luke is saying: To give the Holy Spirit He has, Jesus has to endure the same kind of temptations both Adam and Israel, God's sons, did. For how could Jesus save humanity if he wasn’t tested like we are? 

Testing

This testing continues for 40 days (4:2). Imagine a month and a half of no relief, just constant testing, all day, every day, and hunger. And these temptations were the same types of ones we go through (Heb. 4:15). The essence of sin is getting things God promises us not on God’s terms; so temptation will be consistent with that. Thus the devil says, “I’ll give you the kingdoms of the world if you’ll bow to me.” Jesus would get the world as his inheritance eventually, but he had to wait so he could receive it on God’s terms. Satan’s temptation is essentially, “The Father is lying to you—he won’t give you the kingdom; you need my advice,” similar to Genesis 3: “God’s lying to you—he won’t give you eternal life; you need my advice.” 

As an aside, Jesus’ withstanding temptation means that he can truly help us in temptation (Heb. 2:18). When we’re tempted, the temptation ends one of two ways: Either we use our God-given escape rout (1 Cor. 10:13), or we give in. But Jesus, as Thomas Goodwin said, truly knows how to defeat it because he stared it down and never sinned. Therefore only he knows how strong the pull is. 

Afterward

Back to Luke: He survives the temptation, then it becomes clear that he is a man of prayer. See Luke’s comments in 5:16 and 6:12: Jesus prays a lot. He prays so much that the disciples ask him to teach them (11:1). Why did the Son of God, of all people, need so much prayer? 

Here’s Eswine’s answer, and I think it is beautifully said: In Jesus’ time of great testing in the wilderness, a time of testing beyond what we can imagine, he learned to bring all of his burdens to His Father in prayer. The wilderness taught him to only have God (Ps. 73:26, 143:6). Then when the testing was over, he’d had enough practice that prayer was second nature even to his human nature. 

This is exactly why Hebrews 5:8 says he learned obedience through what he suffered. It isn’t that he had been disobedient before. But that in his testing, he learned to submit himself to His Father’s will. Imagine, “Father, will this ever end?...Okay, I guess I have to wait.” In so doing, he learns to step into God’s will and trust him. 

Teach Us

This all explains his answer to the disciples asking “Teach us to pray.” He gives them the so-called Lord’s prayer, which is a deferent submission to God’s Kingdom, will, and leading, where the pray-ers only self-concern is for forgiveness, essentials, and holiness (11:2-4);. After teaching them the Prayer, Jesus then gives them a lesson on asking, seeking, and knocking; and then he promise the Holy Spirit to those who ask the Father (11:13). 

Seems like a strange promise: Why the Holy Spirit? Because to live like Jesus, seeking God’s will and Kingdom, it will lay you low like Jesus was, and you will need His empowering Spirit. In essence, the disciples say “Teach us to pray,” and he says “Okay, but you’ll go through the wilderness, and you’ll need the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit will, therefore, be God’s answer to your prayers.” 

That probably didn’t excite the disciples very much, especially considering that the next thing after the Spirit’s leading Jesus into temptation was Jesus proclaiming the Spirit’s presence on him for the jubilee year, which almost got him killed (Lk. 4:16ff., cf Is.61:1ff.). But the wilderness teaches obedience to God’s leading, and trust that He will be your defender and defense. And that is the purpose of the Father giving us His Spirit.

Or in other words, it is through the wilderness that God's Spirit teaches us to pray. 

Vos on Eschatology and Soteriology

“It is not biblical to hold that eschatology is a sort of appendix to soteriology, a consummation of the saving work of God. Eschatology is not necessarily bound up with soteriology. So conceived, it does not take into account that a whole chapter of eschatology is written before sin. Thus, it is not merely an omission to ignore the pre-redemptive eschatology; it is to place the sequel in the wrong place. There is an absolute end posited for the universe before and apart from sin. The universe, as created, was only a beginning.”**

So Vos begins his chapter on the presence of eschatology (which means “study of the end-times”) in the pre-fall state of Adam and Eve in Eden. The containing book is a collection of Vos’ thoughts on eschatology from the Old Testament. I can’t recommend the book enough. But I know that since Vos bores a lot of people and most of my readers simply wouldn't have the motivation to look him up, I should instead unpack some thoughts of his here. 

Vos’ point is to say that the study of the end-times should not be understood as a sort of “next chapter” or Appendix after we understand gospel doctrine (or soteriology, that is, how one is saved). To make eschatology a later chapter in the book of redemption, or even an appendix, is, as he says, to “put the sequel in the wrong place.” The truth is that the creation of the universe had a goal from the beginning, a “plan from the fullness of time to unite all things in (Christ)” (Eph. 1:10). Salvation is for the sake of that goal. So eschatology, to be more precise, is a study not just of what will come at the end, but a study of the nature of God’s purposes for His creation. It is actually theology, because it asks the question, “What does God want for His creation?” as well as a related question, "What does he save us for?" 

Only in this context can soteriology be understood. If someone asks me, “Scott, why should I come to Christ?” The answer is not merely, “So that you can be forgiven of sin,” but instead, “Because God created the universe and you in it. Since the creation has a goal in His eyes, you should make sure you are in sync with it. To get in sync, you find Christ who came into the world to find you. Once you do, you get a glorious future of increasing joy and fullness as you know and walk with the God who is joy and fullness.” 

Or in other words, "Christ died, the righteous for the unrighteous" (that's soteriology) "that he might bring us to God" (that's eschatology) (1 Pet. 3:18a). 

May we let the horse—eschatology—pull the cart—soteriology. It’ll get to its destination. 

**Geerhardus Vos, The Eschatology of the Old Testament, James T. Dennison, ed. (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2001), 73. Emphases added. 

Growing in Faith

(What follows is adapted from a recent Wednesday night Prayer Meeting Bible Study) 

“Increase our faith!” - the disciples, to Jesus (Lk. 17:5-6)

I read something recently where a pastor made the case that while we can know and trust in the Lord with “little faith” (Matt. 6:30), we are, however, called to grow in our faith: “Your faith is growing abundantly” (2 Thes. 1:3). In the earlier text, Jesus says, quite clearly, that God cares for those even with little faith (praise God). But in the latter text, we find that this faith is to grow, and the Lord gives the growth.

Therefore, the New Testament everywhere calls faith a gift bestowed by God alone: 

-Phil. 1:29 “It has been granted you…to believe in him.” 

-Ac. 18:27 “He (Apollos) greatly helped those who through grace believed.” 

-Eph. 2:8-9 “…saved by grace through faith and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God.” 

Hence Paul can say in the 2 Thessalonians text that he rejoices that the Lord has grown their faith and love, even as they endure afflictions. Further, this is the reason why the disciples can ask Jesus to increase their faith: While faith can be little (because saving faith doesn’t depend on the size of the faith but the size of the God in whom the faith is), God is effective at growing the faith of His people. 

The question is this: How does our faith grow? Or perhaps a more pertinent question is this: What can we do to increase our faith? A lot of data shows that in late modern times, it is becoming more and more difficult for people to believe in God because we depend so much on empirical data (that which relies on the senses) to determine what is real. Therefore many of us struggle with faith. How can we grow? 

1. Seek the Lord, and ask

The writer of Hebrews famously says that in order for one to believe in God, they must believe two things: First, that He is (in Greek, it is the third person form of “I Am”). That “He is” is not the same as saying, “He exists,” because the writer says that in order to believe in Him (that is, to believe in His existence and to truly know him), they must believe He is. The point is this: One must believe that He is the I-Am of the Old Testament. They must know His nature as Creator God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Secondly, they must believe that he rewards those who seek him. God is not a trickster or a prankster. If one asks, seeks, and knocks, the door will be opened (Lk. 11:9). God is not forcing you to learn some magic language before He allows blessing to be pried from his cold clenched hands. He rewards those who seek him. 

So if you ask him to help you believe, He will. How He’ll do this is up to him. But He will, nonetheless. 

2. Give glory to God 

In Romans 4:17-21, the apostle highlights Abraham’s faith to show that God has always saved by faith in His promises. Abe had been promised a son although he was himself about 100 years old, and therefore did not have much empirical security that it would be so (because who could easily believe such a promise?) But Abe, according to Paul under inspiration, “hoped against hope” (4:18), and “no unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God” (4:20). This means there was unbelief present in Abraham, but he did not let it keep him from believing the promise. Instead, he “grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God could do what he promised” (4:20). 

That is to say that Abraham doubted his doubts, of which he had to have some; otherwise Paul would have said, “He did not have unbelief.” Instead he said, “No unbelief made him waver,” implying he had some. But it did not win. Instead, he doubted himself and turned his attention to God’s faithfulness throughout his own life and the lives of his ancestors. 

Note also that Abraham had direct revelation from God, and yet he still had some unbelief. We have revelation given to us via Bibles passed down. Don’t be so hard on yourself if you have doubts. Jesus can handle that, and as you give glory to God, you’ll grow in your faith. 

3. Do your duty 

This takes us back to the original text from Luke 17. The disciples ask the Lord to increase their faith after He told them of their responsibility to forgive indefinitely. So it runs like this: “Forgive indefinitely.” “Lord, you’ll have to increase our faith if we’ll do so.” He then reminds them of the graciousness of their salvation by telling them a parable of servants who did not take extra glory for merely doing their duty (Lk. 17:7-10). Jesus’ point is that the doing of our duty—in this case, forgiving indefinitely—does not make us righteous before God. Instead, it shows our closeness to him. Hence, the effect of it will not be on Him but on us. In what way? It will increase our faith, thus showing that Jesus’ parable is in answer to their question. In effect, Jesus is saying, “If you forgive simply because I say you must, you will grow in your faith because you’re trusting me more than your own instincts.” 

This whole discussion reminds me of Bonhoeffer’s famous imagined conversation between a pastor and a parishioner. The parishioner comes to the pastor saying that he is struggling with doubts about his faith, and the pastor says, “Well you must believe the Word as it’s preached.” The parishioner says, “I try, but I can’t get anything out of it. I’m struggling with it.” The pastor then says, “Then you must not want to hear it,” to which the parishioner says, “No, I do.” Whereas the pastor usually keeps in his mind the truth that “Only those who believe can obey,” meaning that we only obey God when we believe in Him, this doesn’t speak to the present situation. The pastor is at a loss. They might break away from each other here. 

But, as Bonhoeffer says, it is at this point that the pastor should reverse the statement: Only those who obey can believe. We only grow in our faith if we’re willing to obey the Lord even if we struggle in our faith. Is there an area of sin in your life that you are keeping back from Christ? Maybe you’re not obeying him there, and thus you cannot hear him. Or maybe he’s silenced his voice to get you to treasure hearing it even more. In any event, you must obey Him now, if you want to believe again.** Keep seeking him, availing yourself of the means of grace, and don't give up. He will reward.

In other words, if you go by his word (like Abraham did), you will find your faith growing. But wait until your faith grows and you might not ever obey. 

**Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Simon and Schuster edition, 1995; orig 1959 SCM Press Ltd), 69.

Can I Forget What Lies Behind?

“One thing I do: Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (Philippians 3:13b) 

If you’re a human being, there is a chance that you’re dogged by bad memories of past traumas.  Either things done to you or things that you’ve done. If you’re a Christian, you cling to the promise that if you come to Jesus, your sins are forgiven; and you also are aware of your need to forgive others their wrongs against you. Jesus even—perhaps surprisingly—makes forgiveness of others a prerequisite for forgiveness with God (Mt. 6:14-15; though this statement has to be contextualized with the parable of the forgiving steward in Mt. 18:23-35, where the steward should have forgiven because he had been forgiven). In any event, our Lord has kept short accounts of our sins, and requires us to keep short accounts with others, regardless of how painful those sins might be. 

A cursory reading of the Apostle Paul’s life experience as recorded in the New Testament shows that he has both types of past traumas: He did a lot that would be hard to forgive, such as harshly persecuting Christians and trying to destroy the Christian faith; he also, after becoming a Christian, had a lot done to him that might be hard for him to forgive (see, for instance, the list in 2 Cor. 11:23-28, or the events of Ac. 14:19). If anyone had a reason to despair of God’s grace over himself, it’d be Paul; but on the other hand, if anyone had reason to be bitter toward others, it’d be Paul. 

But our passage above shows us how Paul was able to deal with those past traumas. Simply, he lets the past be the past, and sets his hope on future grace. Reading this passage the other day I was struck that Paul would say that forgetting what lies behind is something that he does. Forgetting does not happen actively, but passively. We don’t purpose to forget; it just happens. 

But the greek gives us a little further light into Paul’s point. The word for “forget” is epilanthano, which is a compound of lanthano, which means to escape notice, and the prefix epi, which means “over” or “above” (think about how epi-dermis means “the skin above.”) So the idea here is that Paul takes hold of what is in the past, and puts it where it belongs: In the past. In essence, he neglects the past. Whether talking about what people have done to him or what he’s done to people, it doesn’t matter. The past is the past. Paul lets it live there, and doesn’t drag it into the present unless it will serve the gospel.

And further, he “strains forward to what lies ahead.” Again, in greek, it is epikteinomenos, which means to “reach forward.” But the “epi” prefix seems to suggest the reaching happens from above, so that, as in being above the memories, so the reaching forward happens from above the present. Indeed, the presence of the future, the Kingdom of God, dominates the present for Paul. 

So how did Paul deal with his past sins and past sins against him? By letting the past be the past, and by focusing his attention on Christ’s future coming. If Jesus bore my past sins at the cross, then I don’t need to bring guilt upon myself for those sins again (and if I fall into sin again, he promises that I can simply bring those sins to him and he’ll forgive me, 1 Jn. 1:9). But if Jesus called on God’s grace for the forgiveness of those who crucified him, then I know that walking with him and living like him requires a sameness of aversion to condemnation. And since, if I believe in Jesus, I must “walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 Jn. 2:6), I have a responsibility to show grace as He did and does.

This might seem like a cross-centered framework for life, and in one sense, it is. “I’ve been crucified to the world, and the world to me,” says Paul (Gal. 6:14). But it is worked out from beyond the tomb under the presence of new life in the resurrection. The reason why Paul can forget what lies behind is because the cross happened, but that was not the end of the story. Paul can let the past be the past because Friday gave way to Sunday, and those in Christ live in the shadow of Sunday. Now, God is doing a new thing (Is. 43:19), so that all who are in Christ are themselves identified with what is new (2 Cor. 5:17). So the neglect of the past is possible because I’m alive in the present with the risen Christ living in and with me. Thus the verse before our text has Paul’s confidence that Christ has made him his own (Phil. 3:12). If I belong to Jesus and he belongs to me, then my past sins are no longer mine, nor is whatever it is that others took from me when they hurt me. 

I guess it comes down to one question: Do you believe that Jesus is alive and you’re alive in Him? You might believe it, but Jesus needs to be, like a radio volume knob, turned up louder than your doubts and/or hurts. That happens over time as your faith in him grows. For now, your job is to recognize the need to let the past go, bring your hurt to the Lord (who cares for you, 1 Pet. 5:7), and believe that He will lead you into all that He has for you. You might feel like such an endeavor is impossible. “I can’t, Scott.” That’s okay - neither can I. But Jesus can. “With God all things are possible if you believe” (Mk. 9:23).