Nov 2 - If you love Me, keep My commandments —John 14:15

Our Lord never insists on obedience. He stresses very definitely what we ought to do, but He never forces us to do it. We have to obey Him out of a oneness of spirit with Him.
Obedience.  This is my biggest issue with my boys: it's not so much what they do that upsets me, it's their disobedience to what they've been told.  Their "crimes" are pretty petty in the big picture: sneaking candy, watching TV without permission, sneaking games on the computer, etc.  But while those issues are trivial, the consistent disobedience behind them is not--THAT is what wears me down year after year with no end in sight.  When I consider all the disobedience God has to put up with . . . now there's an example of divine patience!!  And am I the obedient son that I should be?  Far from it.  This again is one of those short, simple phrases that Jesus uses which sounds easy but carries a whole world of weight behind it.  Obedience sounds great and seems simple till we actually try it. 

That is why whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He prefaced it with an “If,” meaning, “You do not need to do this unless you desire to do so.” “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself . . .” (Luke 9:23).
He should have said "IF you know what's good for you . . . you'll obey me!"  That takes us all the way back to Eden, doesn't it?  And then, several thousand years later, the Son comes along telling us the exact same thing that His Father did; should that be a clue that we should take notice and obey?!?!  If you wanted to be pessimistic, you might say that nothing's changed since the creation:  God's still asking us to obey and we're still ignoring Him.  Again, I am amazed at His patience:  I can't put up with my own two while He has to contend with everyone He's ever created! 

The Lord does not give me rules, but He makes His standard very clear. If my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without hesitation. If I hesitate, it is because I love someone I have placed in competition with Him, namely, myself.
One of my favorite sayings (which I came up with myself) is:  authority is not imposed from the top down, it is granted from the bottom up.  I can lead all I want, but if nobody follows me . . . then am I really leading?  I can tell my children what I want them to do but if they refuse to do it, am I really parenting them?  We can continue to lock up criminals over and over again but if they refuse to obey the civil authorities and stop breaking laws, are we really exercising any authority over them or just punishing them after the fact?  All this is true of our human experience down here on earth with each other, but not true of our relationship with God.  He does have top-down authority and He's given us the choice to recognize it or not; a choice that bears eternal ramifications.  We can be our own little petty gods down here and think that we don't have to answer to anyone for it.  This will be true until it's not, and then it's too late. 

Oct 29 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him —2 Corinthians 5:21

The modern view of the death of Jesus is that He died for our sins out of sympathy for us.

I can't say as I ever had that view, or maybe only as a young child.  I think that if one pays attention in church or Sunday school they should clearly learn that Christ's sacrifice wasn't about sympathy, it was about substitution. But, since Chambers says "the modern view," maybe that was in fact the case in Scotland of his day.

Our sins are removed because of the death of Jesus, and the only explanation for His death is His obedience to His Father, not His sympathy for us. We are acceptable to God not because we have obeyed, . . . 

Jesus' obedience is easy to overlook, I think, for someone who doesn't pay much attention in church or never developed faith beyond what children's Bible stories teach.  Because we are so hardwired to do everything in our own strength, it is easy to think that it's our obedience that pleases God.  And there is truth in this, but it's not the full picture.  The Israelites tried for centuries to obey God, but the Mosaic Law was too heavy a yoke to bear (Acts 15:10).  The agony in the garden, as reported by Luke, is probably the best illustration of Jesus' obedience to the Father: obedience that required death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). 

That Christ died for me, and therefore I am completely free from penalty, is never taught in the New Testament. What is taught in the New Testament is that “He died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:15)— not, “He died my death”— and that through identification with His death I can be freed from sin, . . . 

Hmm, I don't know that I'd say that that was never taught in the New Testament.  See Ephesians 2: 1-10, where Paul tells believers that they have died and risen with Christ. It's not the exact wording that Chambers uses, but it expresses the same concept.

Chambers frequently annoys me with his use of "always" and "never."  There are certainly lots of "always" and "never" taught in scripture, but Chambers--when making his point--seems to like to shoot down the antithesis of his thesis.  Soteriology wears man faces in the New Testament and develops over time.  Consider as a quick example Peter's declaration at Pentacost (Acts 2:22-24).  Peter implies that Christ was not immortal until after God raise him from the dead; this is a very different soteriology than John teaches at the beginning of his gospel (John 1:1-5). 

As much as I'd like to stay and discuss this further, I have a history paper to write!!  :) 

Oct 21 - Death to self. Matt 16:24-26

²⁴ Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ²⁵ For whoever wants to save their life^[a] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. ²⁶ What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

This is one of my favorite passages of scripture for several reasons.  First, I like the ones that so simply and easily express the teachings of Jesus which are the most difficult for us to do.  It's almost a rhetorical question: who would give up their soul to gain the whole world?  To a Christian, at least, it's a ridiculous question because our obvious answer is "nothing!"  Yet, how indescribably hard is it for us to actually give up our lives--our whole lives, favorite sins and all--and take up a cross?  Many of us can get a percentage of the way there but not all the way.  As such, this passage is one of those that we can point to as expressing "what christian life is all about" as we ourselves struggle to achieve it.  It's one of those analogies which we spend our life seeking rather than living our life after attaining it. 

I like this passage for another reason, that being the anachronism of Jesus inviting his disciples to "take up their cross."  This analogy works great in our modern times because Jesus set the ultimate example of giving up self and bearing a cross for others.  However, when Jesus is saying this to his disciples, He hadn't yet been crucified.  Given that, how would they understand "taking up their cross" as an analogy for self-sacrificing love?  While crucifixion was a common punishment in Jesus' lifetime, did anyone besides Him endure it as a sacrifice for others?  And if not, then why is He using an analogy that really only makes sense after the crucifixion?  I think the answer is that the author of Matthew inadvertently includes this anachronism because, by the time he's writing his gospel, the analogy of taking up one's cross for others was well established, well known and needed no explanation among a christian audience reading his gospel. 
So does that make it "wrong?"  I don't think so, it's just one of those little details that academic geeks like me like to ruminate on.  :) 

Finally, I like this passage because it's one of those teachings of Jesus where He takes life as we know it and flips it on its head to show us how earthly life differs from life lived in the Kingdom.  This teaching fits right in with the "you have heard it said . . . but I tell you . . ." ones. 

Oct 21 - But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith . . . —Jude 20

But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus.
This comes into sharp focus for us when we read the lives of the saints.  While no particular example comes to mind at the moment, I recall hearing of many female saints who spent most of their lives as a scullery maid in a convent, being humble and faithful to the Lord.  It's sort of the opposite of what our modern culture does: it lifts up as heroes those who do exceptional (in our eyes) things, be they athletes, celebrities, etc.  Conversely, quiet humility rarely makes the evening news yet we still find in such people heroic qualities.  Maybe that's because we find it so hard ourselves to live in quiet humility among the crashing din of modern culture all around us. 


It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God—but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people—and this is not learned in five minutes.
To this I would add: so long as we are trying to do exceptional things for God in our own strength, we prevent God from doing His exceptional things through us in His strength. 

Oct 18 - Prayer Month

October must be prayer month.  I get Charles Stanley’s monthly magazine/devotional and this month the theme is prayer.  That in itself is not very amazing, there’s a theme every month and the theme of prayer for a monthly christian publication is not jaw dropping.  But then there’s this other devotional I have.  It’s called “Experiencing God Day by Day” and is a yearly devotional, i.e. contains a daily devotion for each day of the year.  It’s more like my weekly devotional because that’s how often I seem to find the time to pick it up.  So last week when I picked it up and turned to that day’s devotional the theme was prayer.  Pretty ironic, given the theme of my other devotional.  

Then two weeks ago Pastor James’ message included a discussion about the need for personal quiet time and prayer.  Hmm, starting to sense a common theme?  On top of that, we local churches are praying for our city this month.  So after all these little cues it’s hard to miss that God is trying to get my attention and is asking me to come spend some quiet time with Him.  

As I recently blogged, quiet time is the one thing which always eludes me.  If I ever get any it seems to get eaten up by chores or some other busy-ness of life.  So what do you do when God drops all these little hints in your lap?  “Hey God, I’m trying, maybe a little divine intervention to grease the skids, maybe?”  

I was pleasantly surprised this past Saturday when the 15 minute prayer slot I’d signed up for went by so quickly.  I even helped Aaron & Caitlynn with their 15 minute slots.  So I prayed for nearly 45 minutes on Saturday!!  It’s not all that hard when you have a list of topics in front of you.  I’m pretty comfortable talking to God; it’s the listening part that I need to work on (which will be the topic of an upcoming blog).  

Oct 10 Jesus answered and said, ’I thank You, Father . . . that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes’ —Matthew 11:25

All of God’s revealed truths are sealed until they are opened to us through obedience. You will never open them through philosophy or thinking.

It seems I like arguing back at Chambers.  ;)  One could justifiably argue that the reason it took me so long to come to faith is because I was approaching it from a philosophical angle.  On the other hand, I think one could just as correctly argue (as I do) that that is the very reason I finally came to faith.  Most people, it seems, can just decide to have faith and they instantly get their Christian walk up-and-running (no pun intended).  Not so with me.  I approached it like I do everything else: from a practical, academic, show-me-the-research angle. Eventually that got me there and--when I tell the story--the reason I got there is because I approached faith in the only way I could, given how God made me.  He knew I'd eventually get there once that "hook" He'd implanted finally came into play. 

It is a matter of obedience, and once we obey, the relationship is instantly perfected.

I imagine it works this way for some people, I don't know if it necessarily did for me.  I was strongly influenced by the few personal testimonials I'd heard growing up where someone asked Jesus to come into their heart and they were instantly filled with a warm, peaceful feeling as the Holy Spirit infilled them.  Every time I asked Jesus into my heart I was left listening to the crickets chirping in the silence, no warm, fuzzy feeling inside. After a while that becomes discouraging.  Then I heard something just last year and if I'd have heard it years ago my walk would have started way back then, "faith is not an emotion, it's a decision."  In other words, it's not an emotional reaction (all warm and fuzzy inside) to having asked God to save us, it's a conscious decision to simply start following Jesus and sticking with it.  Eventually that's pretty much what I did: once I'd acquired enough answers to satisfy me up to a certain point, I decided to cast my lot with Jesus and take the rest on faith.  Sure wish I'd known years ago that you can make that second step the first step and save yourself a lot of frustration.  But . . . all in His time, not mine.

The only way you can get to know the truth of God is to stop trying to find out and by being born again. If you obey God in the first thing He shows you, then He instantly opens up the next truth to you.

This kinda reminds me of what James said in his Sunday sermon: through prayer, we discard our "selves" and allow God to fill us with His Son. The more we study and try to be holy, the less so we will be.  Yes, it's another one of those great paradoxes in the way God works versus the way we think He ought to work. 

Oct 5 Just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned . . . —Romans 5:12

The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin, but that the nature of sin, namely, my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race through one man.

And yet, I'll bet if you ask ten people, at least nine will say that God allows bad things to happen in this world as punishment for our (Adam's) sin.  They'll probably even tell you to "look it up in the bible, it's there."  We can think of many other examples of things that aren't in the bible but--through the lens of (pop) culture and oral tradition, these beliefs get propagated.  One of my favorite sayings is "perception is reality."  Everyone has their version of the truth--formed by experience, culture, education, etc.--and it's what they live by, make decisions by, vote by, raise children by, etc.  How many well-intentioned people are missing (or ignoring!) the gospel message because their perception-turned-reality is actually not correct?  How many people harbor hard-heartedness toward God because they mistakenly think that He's punishing us all for something Adam did?  This situation is what I call "an education piece;" it's up to us as Christians to educate the lost about what the Truth really is.

The nature of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the nature of self-realization which leads us to say, “I am my own god.”

Yes, I like this distinction.  And again, I think many people look at the former as being reality rather than the later.  Self-realization begets immorality and wrongdoing; it was acting upon self-realization that Lucifer was cast down from heaven (Isaiah 14:12-15).  

But it also says that another Man took upon Himself the sin of the human race and put it away . . .

In case you missed it, recent studies have shown that it is genetically impossible for all of humanity to have descended from a single couple (Adam & Eve).  Some liberal thinking Christians have sought to re-interpret the creation story based on this genetic evidence.  I'm not going to debate science & religion here, but I do think it's worth pointing out what Albert Mohler had to say about this issue--without Adam and the Fall, there is no cross and redemption.  That's not to say that we simply ignore what science teaches us, but equally we should not be ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater and casually reinterpret fundamental tenets of our faith.