1517 Blogcast

Arm over arm I make my way to the other side of the pool. Mentally I count the strokes. As I touch the pool wall, I pull my head out of the water and meet his eyes, anxiously hoping to hear the words, “Perfect! That’s exactly what I had in mind!”

Recently, a well-known pastor suggested we should obey the commandments in Scripture in order to experience a level of joy we cannot tap into any other way. The theological system that creates statements like this is commonly referred to as “Christian Hedonism.” To be clear, that is not the name critics have given it. It is the name given and used by its theological subscribers. There are many problems with the statement and the theology that produces it, but today, let’s focus on three.

What are the thoughts that run through your head as you read or sing this section of Psalm 51? Do you wonder if you sing or pray them with enough contrition? Do you worry you lack a clean heart, a steadfast spirit, the joy of salvation?

On Ash Wednesday, sinners and saints leave church marked with a cross, marked with the sign and material of death. Heads become canvases painted with ashes. The sobering words, “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” spoken to Adam and Eve as they rebelled against the Lord, are echoed today (Gen. 3:19).

Unlike other gods, Jesus isn't far away. He doesn't wait for us to find Him on some distant mountaintop. He's near us now, nearer to us than our next breath. He's true God, begotten of His Father from all eternity. He's true man born of the Virgin Mary. He's your Lord. He's our God.

Sitting in my office is a painting called The Two Crowns. In this painting, a king rides through the streets in full regalia, seated on an elegant, white horse. The crowd goes wild for him. The women swoon. The king, however, is distracted. He stares at the upper corner of the painting, at a dark, almost imperceptible crucifix, at the true King, his sovereign Lord, crowned with thorns.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (Matt. 28:19)

"How many do they worship?"

This question was asked of me by a representative from a neighboring church.

God is used to working with colorful figures. One of the most colorful in the Bible is Balaam. Hailing from Mesopotamia, Balaam was what we might call a shaman or a soothsayer. He was not a Hebrew. But he knew the God of the Hebrews, in addition to other purported deities he believed he could summon or charm.

What happens when Jesus is separated from the Gospel? He becomes an abstraction, free to be molded into any image or idea we want Him to take. No longer is He the God who loves us through concrete, verifiable ways in history. No longer is He the God who came down from heaven to die on a cross for our sins. No longer is He the God who rose to new life to bring us into eternity with Him. Jesus becomes a directionless divinity, an idle idolatry.

It's difficult, even painful, for Christians to daily suffer the full weight of our past sin. Often our past drives us forward like a blind animal fleeing from the sound of the hunter. Wherever we go it's always there, our sin, made so brutally clear to us in hindsight, like a big ship's anchor chained to our foot. Also, in this world, we most often bear the weight of past sin alone. Other Christians can't and won't carry it for us; no one wants to take it from us, and nobody wants to break the chain or do something that will ultimately relieve us of the weight. And why should they?