How does one comment on a prayer?
If you love the prayer, do you say so? It seems a little awkward, doesn't it? And the author of the prayer doesn't really want to be praised for it. The whole point was for Christ to praised!
There is a cool way to run with this.
Let me first digress, though.
Picture in your mind a rope. Not just any rope. Picture a cotton rope thick enough, long enough and strong enough to moor an aircraft carrier to a pier. Details don't matter, but this rope is bigger around than you are, and longer than any clothesline you have ever seen.
How is it made?
I don't know the process, but if you look at it, any rope is a collection of twisted ropes. Those ropes are collections of twisted cords. Those cords are collections of twisted threads. Those threads are collections of twisted fibers. And those fibers are grown from seeds.
So it is with the church.
The body of Christ extends from the beginning to eternity. Adam and Eve are its first fibers. Seth and Abel joined them. The Seed of God's Life was planted in their lives, and it bore fruit.
They became cotton bolls!
Adam and Eve were around long before Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, so someone had to work them into the rope of God by hand. From Wikipedia on Cotton, "When the cotton boll (seed case) is opened the fibres dry into flat, twisted, ribbon-like shapes and become kinked together and interlocked. This interlocked form is ideal for spinning into a fine yarn." The little cotton bolls had to become kinked together, and interlocked, so that they could be twisted into something amazing.
That kinking is what life does to us.
Life goes pear-shaped on us, and someone is there to help us through. Or we have things go wonderfully, and someone is there to rejoice with us. We are happy types, and the sad people around us cling to us; or we are melancholic types, and the happy people around us rejoice in our depth. We are different, and in our differences we catch at each other and interlock. It's chemistry, it's beautiful, and God deserves worship for making us this way.
But kinking isn't the end.
We have to be spun into something more.
Without the kinking, the spinning would not work. The Spinning Jenny of our lives is the body of Christ. The body twists us together, and applies that tension and friction that forges from our kinks a solid thread. Those threads, God uses to form His everlasting church, a rope strong enough to display the manifold wisdom of God, and to delight the omniwealthy Creator of all things.
There are a hundred things that can twist and entwine us together. Sitting and listening to a sermon every week together might be worth a half-a-turn, but you won't get any more than that out of me. It's working together that joins us together. Are you reaching out to your neighbors together? That will bind you together. Are you reaching out to the needy together? Are you bearing each other's burdens? Are you calling celebration dinners when someone graduates or survives some other trial? These things will entwine you together with dozens and hundreds of turns.
Worshipping together has the potential to bind us, too, if it is done with heart and everyone is heard.
A shared experience of true love toward God will make you see your brother in a whole new light. Hearing a sister declare the same awesome beauty of the Lord that was just moving you. Hearing a brother praise the Lord's majesty in just the way that you were feeling but could not express. Saying something so intimate, so risky about the Lord that you almost were silent, then hearing another saint pick up your words and carry them a little further. Being stirred by a sister's prayer, and feeling a little more for the Lord than you did 30 seconds ago, and turning that feeling into one more expression of Love for Jesus Christ.
These things forge a body. These things teach you to depend on one another.
We love the same Lovely One, and when we do it together, the work binds us together. Loving God is work as hard as digging a ditch, and as rich as chocolate pudding pie. It can be hard to start, and and hard to stop. The key is to build on each other's work.
Which brings me back to Timeless Prayer.
The best way to comment on a prayer is to pray.
First you read the prayer, and then you come back to it and pray it. If you like it, print it and pray it when you have a little more time. I suspect that pretending someone else is praying it will help. You are merely listening to her prayer. And as you see, touch, smell, hear, taste things of God in that prayer that stir you, stop and add your prayer to hers.
Come back later and type a little bit of your prayer as a comment on the prayer that stirred you.
So, we will provoke each other to love.
And so we will be wound together.
And so we will display the manifold beauty of the One Who loves us.
18 November, 2006
America: This Post is Not About Football
I am a resident of Columbus, OH on Nov 18, 2006 at 5:20 PM. Therefore, The GAME is on.
The GAME is the Ohio State Buckeyes hosting the Michigan Wolverines in football. It is the last game of the college football regular season every year, and they measure the score by the series. The GAME even has its own Wikipedia entry, and they count the score like this:
Michigan leads the overall series 57-39-6 and the conference series 45-39-4. However, in the last 50 years, they are even at 24-24-2.
I love football. It is the perfect game for men. It has everything. Individual performance matters. Team performance matters. Toughness matters. Heart matters. Like Lombardi said, the most competitive men love the most competitive sports. In football, a game can be decided when one person, on one play, steps too far back by one foot, and cannot throw the critical block. All 44 people on a team can win or lose the game every day.
It's a magnificent game.
I despise football.
Let me quote from "Play," the New York Times Sports Magazine.
This year, the NFL will reap a staggering $3.7 billion from television networks (including DirectTV, which has out-of-market rights), billions more than any other sport commands. Much of that money is distributed equally among the 32 teams; it is such a huge sum that it essentially covers the players' salaries, which for any football team is its largest expense.
The NFL has commanded its brand with a brutal genius.
The hammer the NFL holds over the networks and ESPN is fairly obvious: if the other networks aren't willing to ante up, well, the NFL can always decide to withdraw a rights package and put the games on its own network instead.
...
And that's the other, more immediate purpose of putting those eight games on the NFL Network: to apply pressure to the cable companies.
That game, and The GAME have nothing to do with games any more. They are all about American eyeballs. $3.7 billion dollars is only the revenue from television, but it's enough to talk about for purposes of this post. $3.7 billion dollars comes from New York Life advertising eternal promises. $3.7 billion dollars comes from Best Buy keeping their name on the screen during every replay. From Pacific Life giving the game summary. $3.7 billion comes from hundreds of advertisers paying for our eyeballs for 3 long, interruption-rich hours.
The Ohio State Buckeyes charge about $18,000 dollars per year to attend. The GAME makes them so popular that they need offer ZERO financial aid to most students - as a state university. The boys out on the field during The GAME think they are half playing, half gambling their lives, hoping to make it into the big time - to play for the pros. But really, they are just marketing toys for NCAA financiers.
The GAME's not football. Those boys demonstrating the fruit of their discipline and talent are deceived. And the millions of American men watching them every week are too. They think it matters what happens on that field. The only thing that matters is that millions of eyeballs cannot turn away. As long as football can sell eyeballs to television networks, football's power brokers will continue to collect money.
There are things in life that matter. Being a member of a society that has no clue how to entertain itself matters. Being a member of a city that has no idea how to care for its own matters. Whether the Buckeyes Beat Michigan! does not matter.
Except to the people in those towers. Those money-addicted people in those towers, those men who pull the strings of America, deciding which tv network will be allowed to pay them billions for their piece of the millions of eyeballs tuned in every week, to those men it matters. They need the game to be compelling. And they need it to be expensive for tv networks and cable companies.
And there's precious little they won't do to make sure it is.
The only way [the cable companies] can stay an unregulated monopoly is to provide the programming." Congressman love football, regulators love football, lots of people in important places love football. And as usual, what the NFL wants, the NFL will surely get.
America. You are dying.
The GAME is the Ohio State Buckeyes hosting the Michigan Wolverines in football. It is the last game of the college football regular season every year, and they measure the score by the series. The GAME even has its own Wikipedia entry, and they count the score like this:
Michigan leads the overall series 57-39-6 and the conference series 45-39-4. However, in the last 50 years, they are even at 24-24-2.
I love football. It is the perfect game for men. It has everything. Individual performance matters. Team performance matters. Toughness matters. Heart matters. Like Lombardi said, the most competitive men love the most competitive sports. In football, a game can be decided when one person, on one play, steps too far back by one foot, and cannot throw the critical block. All 44 people on a team can win or lose the game every day.
It's a magnificent game.
I despise football.
Let me quote from "Play," the New York Times Sports Magazine.
This year, the NFL will reap a staggering $3.7 billion from television networks (including DirectTV, which has out-of-market rights), billions more than any other sport commands. Much of that money is distributed equally among the 32 teams; it is such a huge sum that it essentially covers the players' salaries, which for any football team is its largest expense.
The NFL has commanded its brand with a brutal genius.
The hammer the NFL holds over the networks and ESPN is fairly obvious: if the other networks aren't willing to ante up, well, the NFL can always decide to withdraw a rights package and put the games on its own network instead.
...
And that's the other, more immediate purpose of putting those eight games on the NFL Network: to apply pressure to the cable companies.
That game, and The GAME have nothing to do with games any more. They are all about American eyeballs. $3.7 billion dollars is only the revenue from television, but it's enough to talk about for purposes of this post. $3.7 billion dollars comes from New York Life advertising eternal promises. $3.7 billion dollars comes from Best Buy keeping their name on the screen during every replay. From Pacific Life giving the game summary. $3.7 billion comes from hundreds of advertisers paying for our eyeballs for 3 long, interruption-rich hours.
The Ohio State Buckeyes charge about $18,000 dollars per year to attend. The GAME makes them so popular that they need offer ZERO financial aid to most students - as a state university. The boys out on the field during The GAME think they are half playing, half gambling their lives, hoping to make it into the big time - to play for the pros. But really, they are just marketing toys for NCAA financiers.
The GAME's not football. Those boys demonstrating the fruit of their discipline and talent are deceived. And the millions of American men watching them every week are too. They think it matters what happens on that field. The only thing that matters is that millions of eyeballs cannot turn away. As long as football can sell eyeballs to television networks, football's power brokers will continue to collect money.
There are things in life that matter. Being a member of a society that has no clue how to entertain itself matters. Being a member of a city that has no idea how to care for its own matters. Whether the Buckeyes Beat Michigan! does not matter.
Except to the people in those towers. Those money-addicted people in those towers, those men who pull the strings of America, deciding which tv network will be allowed to pay them billions for their piece of the millions of eyeballs tuned in every week, to those men it matters. They need the game to be compelling. And they need it to be expensive for tv networks and cable companies.
And there's precious little they won't do to make sure it is.
The only way [the cable companies] can stay an unregulated monopoly is to provide the programming." Congressman love football, regulators love football, lots of people in important places love football. And as usual, what the NFL wants, the NFL will surely get.
America. You are dying.
15 November, 2006
Engaging God: Timeless Prayer
I don't want to post about praying within the blogosphere; I want to pray here in the blogosphere! And I'm hoping you'll join me. :-)
There are a number of ways one can pray profitably. Most of them may not work out here. They are too individual. But there is one way to pray that I believe will work out here. There is a specific kind of corporate prayer into which I believe we can all join and be blessed as both listeners and speakers.
Rev 4:8-12
And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
And
Revelation 19:1-4
And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen; Alleluia.
Please do me a favor, at this point. Give this a chance to be something more than worship, at least as we currently use that word. For just a minute, entertain the hope that this might be something more.
There are two commands that excel above all others, love the Lord, and love each other. Prayer cannot encompass everything expressed in those commands, but it embraces more than you might guess.
Prayer is a chance to appreciate our God.
Prayer is a chance to depend upon Him.
Prayer is a chance to declare His entire fitness.
Prayer is a chance to flee to Him in fears.
Prayer is a chance to rejoice in His many triumphs.
Prayer is a chance to awe at the obstacles He leaps.
Prayer is a chance to know Him.
Prayer is a chance to know ourselves through His eyes.
Prayer is a fine conduit for fulfilling those two great commandments. Is there anything more that any lovers do, than what is in that list?
Like any conduit, though, prayer is nothing if nothing flows through it. (How many of you are old enough to have been raised on, "Nothing from nothing and nothing remains?") I will also say that prayer is very little, if very little flows through it. How many of us have given up on "eloquent" prayers? Or how many of us pray nothing but eloquence?
There is a prayer, very like the elders pray in the Revelation, that we can pray together and that has deep meaning. There are innumerable such prayers, but there are 150 that we all know, and want to know better.
I am extending an offer to investigate the Psalms experimentally with as many people as would like to go.
To this end, I have created a group blog on the Blogger Beta site called "Timeless Prayer."
I would like to invite any of you (and anyone else) who would like to pray through the Psalms to join me as editors of Timeless Prayers. We will speak and hear the Psalms in light of the revelation of Jesus Christ 500-1500 years after they were written, record these new perspectives, and pray them again. Reply to the first post over there, and I will add you as an editor. (On blogger beta, I have taken the name, Odepoke.)
May the Lord be blessed in our experiments.
There are a number of ways one can pray profitably. Most of them may not work out here. They are too individual. But there is one way to pray that I believe will work out here. There is a specific kind of corporate prayer into which I believe we can all join and be blessed as both listeners and speakers.
Rev 4:8-12
And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.
And
Revelation 19:1-4
And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen; Alleluia.
Please do me a favor, at this point. Give this a chance to be something more than worship, at least as we currently use that word. For just a minute, entertain the hope that this might be something more.
There are two commands that excel above all others, love the Lord, and love each other. Prayer cannot encompass everything expressed in those commands, but it embraces more than you might guess.
Prayer is a chance to appreciate our God.
Prayer is a chance to depend upon Him.
Prayer is a chance to declare His entire fitness.
Prayer is a chance to flee to Him in fears.
Prayer is a chance to rejoice in His many triumphs.
Prayer is a chance to awe at the obstacles He leaps.
Prayer is a chance to know Him.
Prayer is a chance to know ourselves through His eyes.
Prayer is a fine conduit for fulfilling those two great commandments. Is there anything more that any lovers do, than what is in that list?
Like any conduit, though, prayer is nothing if nothing flows through it. (How many of you are old enough to have been raised on, "Nothing from nothing and nothing remains?") I will also say that prayer is very little, if very little flows through it. How many of us have given up on "eloquent" prayers? Or how many of us pray nothing but eloquence?
There is a prayer, very like the elders pray in the Revelation, that we can pray together and that has deep meaning. There are innumerable such prayers, but there are 150 that we all know, and want to know better.
I am extending an offer to investigate the Psalms experimentally with as many people as would like to go.
To this end, I have created a group blog on the Blogger Beta site called "Timeless Prayer."
I would like to invite any of you (and anyone else) who would like to pray through the Psalms to join me as editors of Timeless Prayers. We will speak and hear the Psalms in light of the revelation of Jesus Christ 500-1500 years after they were written, record these new perspectives, and pray them again. Reply to the first post over there, and I will add you as an editor. (On blogger beta, I have taken the name, Odepoke.)
May the Lord be blessed in our experiments.
Even Less Important!
I found this while making sure the recipe for Green Bean Casserole was as easy as I remembered it to be. I didn't mean to find it, but it should be blazoned all over the internet.
http://www.cookingforengineers.com
http://www.cookingforengineers.com
14 November, 2006
Tennis: Federer versus Roddick
OK. I was wrong. So very, very wrong.
I expected Federer to roll right over Roddick. The very first set proved me wrong.
It was tight from the very first game, and in the third game, Roddick broke Federer. He retained that break until 5-4, 40-30 - set point Roddick. There were two points that told the tale of the match, and this was the first.
Roddick served, and followed it straight into the net. Roddick's volley off Federer's return was solid, if uninspiring, to Federer's backhand. Federer was out of options, so he hit a conservative backhand over Roddick's backhand shoulder. Roddick decided not to play it, electing to let it sail long. Only it didn't. It landed a good foot inside the baseline.
With the set on his racket, Roddick decided to hope for a free point.
That's never a good sign.
When you trust your opponent to miss more than you trust yourself to hit that shot, you are having some fear problems.
Roddick went on to win the next two points, and closed out the set 6-4. But it was a telling moment.
Against Nalbandian, Federer turned it on in the second set. Not so against Roddick. Roddick may have been afraid, but he was handling it. The highlights showed some inspired play by both players in the second set. They quickly jumped to the tiebreak. Roddick was up 6-6, 6-4 - double set point Roddick. It was only by clear, calm play that Federer pulled his way back first to 5-6, and finally to a 9-8 lead in the tiebreak. Roddick was serving to stay in the set. (This is normal. In a perfect tiebreak, the server is always serving from behind.) This is the second telling point of the match.
Roddick served a screamer to Federer's backhand. There was precious little Federer could do, so he just blocked a floater back. Roddick leapt at the ball, and smashed it - 4 feet long.
It's just a mistake, but with that mistake the match was over. It was a free point, if Roddick played it right, but instead he played it loose. He was feeling a tremendous relief at having gotten the free point, and then he gave it away. Fear makes you do things like that.
They showed some highlight shots from the third set, but nothing memorable. Except one shot in which Roddick served a screamer to Federer's backhand, Federer blocked it back, and Roddick leapt at the ball, and smashed it - 3 feet in.
It's amazing what a difference a complete lack of pressure can make.
Federer 4-6, 7-6, 6-4.
I expected Federer to roll right over Roddick. The very first set proved me wrong.
It was tight from the very first game, and in the third game, Roddick broke Federer. He retained that break until 5-4, 40-30 - set point Roddick. There were two points that told the tale of the match, and this was the first.
Roddick served, and followed it straight into the net. Roddick's volley off Federer's return was solid, if uninspiring, to Federer's backhand. Federer was out of options, so he hit a conservative backhand over Roddick's backhand shoulder. Roddick decided not to play it, electing to let it sail long. Only it didn't. It landed a good foot inside the baseline.
With the set on his racket, Roddick decided to hope for a free point.
That's never a good sign.
When you trust your opponent to miss more than you trust yourself to hit that shot, you are having some fear problems.
Roddick went on to win the next two points, and closed out the set 6-4. But it was a telling moment.
Against Nalbandian, Federer turned it on in the second set. Not so against Roddick. Roddick may have been afraid, but he was handling it. The highlights showed some inspired play by both players in the second set. They quickly jumped to the tiebreak. Roddick was up 6-6, 6-4 - double set point Roddick. It was only by clear, calm play that Federer pulled his way back first to 5-6, and finally to a 9-8 lead in the tiebreak. Roddick was serving to stay in the set. (This is normal. In a perfect tiebreak, the server is always serving from behind.) This is the second telling point of the match.
Roddick served a screamer to Federer's backhand. There was precious little Federer could do, so he just blocked a floater back. Roddick leapt at the ball, and smashed it - 4 feet long.
It's just a mistake, but with that mistake the match was over. It was a free point, if Roddick played it right, but instead he played it loose. He was feeling a tremendous relief at having gotten the free point, and then he gave it away. Fear makes you do things like that.
They showed some highlight shots from the third set, but nothing memorable. Except one shot in which Roddick served a screamer to Federer's backhand, Federer blocked it back, and Roddick leapt at the ball, and smashed it - 3 feet in.
It's amazing what a difference a complete lack of pressure can make.
Federer 4-6, 7-6, 6-4.
Nothing Important!
And with this silly discovery, I enlist in Danny Kaye's ranks.
The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form
The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form
13 November, 2006
Watch the Tennis Master's Finale - Free on the Internet!
No joke, no spam.
http://www.atpmastersseries.tv/page/Home/0,,11444,00.html
For $5 you can watch a 5 minute highlight video of every match of the entire week, and for free you can watch the whole doubles tournament. It's seriously good stuff, and it doesn't take too long to watch.
This is a complex tournament. Only the 8 best men in the world are invited. They break into 2 groups of 4, and play round robin. The two best of each group meet in a semifinal. The winners of the semis play the final on Friday.
Federer and Nadal are in opposite groups, so they can only meet in the final. Already, though, we have seen Federer and Nadal show the contrast of their games.
Federer versus Nalbandian saw Federer drop the first set under a withering barrage by Nalbandian - then come back to win the next two sets 6-1, 6-1.
Nadal versus Blake showed the opposite. Nadal lost the first set, jumped out to the early lead in the second, and then saw Blake nibble his way back into the match. The announcer credited Blake's control of the errors that almost gave the set away. Then came the deciding tiebreak, which Nadal lost 0-7.
Nadal's power/spin game is not suited to the hardcourts yet, and any game that is one-dimensional is subject to meltdown. Federer can always reach back for another strategy. Nadal must work his way through every problem on sheer muscle-strength - more power, more spin.
There are two more round-robin matches for each of them. Federer plays Roddick tomorrow (or early this morning, or some such - the tourney is in Shanghai.) Roddick is fresh off a sound thumping of Ljubicic. We'll see what he can bring, but I call it Federer in two, though the first one should be close.
(If anyone cares to talk doubles, I'll call that one too! Bryan/Bryan should win this thing, but they were shocked in their first match. :-( )
http://www.atpmastersseries.tv/page/Home/0,,11444,00.html
For $5 you can watch a 5 minute highlight video of every match of the entire week, and for free you can watch the whole doubles tournament. It's seriously good stuff, and it doesn't take too long to watch.
This is a complex tournament. Only the 8 best men in the world are invited. They break into 2 groups of 4, and play round robin. The two best of each group meet in a semifinal. The winners of the semis play the final on Friday.
Federer and Nadal are in opposite groups, so they can only meet in the final. Already, though, we have seen Federer and Nadal show the contrast of their games.
Federer versus Nalbandian saw Federer drop the first set under a withering barrage by Nalbandian - then come back to win the next two sets 6-1, 6-1.
Nadal versus Blake showed the opposite. Nadal lost the first set, jumped out to the early lead in the second, and then saw Blake nibble his way back into the match. The announcer credited Blake's control of the errors that almost gave the set away. Then came the deciding tiebreak, which Nadal lost 0-7.
Nadal's power/spin game is not suited to the hardcourts yet, and any game that is one-dimensional is subject to meltdown. Federer can always reach back for another strategy. Nadal must work his way through every problem on sheer muscle-strength - more power, more spin.
There are two more round-robin matches for each of them. Federer plays Roddick tomorrow (or early this morning, or some such - the tourney is in Shanghai.) Roddick is fresh off a sound thumping of Ljubicic. We'll see what he can bring, but I call it Federer in two, though the first one should be close.
(If anyone cares to talk doubles, I'll call that one too! Bryan/Bryan should win this thing, but they were shocked in their first match. :-( )
Keyboards
Maybe you don't make your living with a keyboard. Or maybe you don't accidently sit down to write a quick post and get up a day or two, 13,000 words and 7 posts later. Still, you have to have learned to hate what the keyboard has become.
Dell makes dissatisfyingly mediocre keyboards. Their left shift key works on union scale, taking breaks every two hours no matter how important the job. They saved themselves about $0.30 worth of plastic, by getting rid of the 1/2 inch border around the actual keys - leaving the (somewhat?) important ESC, CTRL, Windows, "Second" and ENTER keys exposed to every careless brush of the palm. And they keep lining up the Insert, Home, Delete, End, Page up, Page down keypad differently every year. I will risk the judgement by calling them morons. Was anybody thinking? Could it really be that much more efficient to randomly rearrange them again?
But worst of all, Dell's keyboards are not, and nor will they ever be, IBM keyboards.
Ah. Do you remember the IBM keyboards? IBM still puts real keyboards like that on their laptops (last time I got to touch one, anyway.)
Their keyboards click.
That doesn't sound like much, but it's the world.
The click rewards the user twice. The first reward comes because your ears know what your fingers are doing. You can blithely tap along, reassured with every meshing of push, click and sight that all is well with the word. Every push yields a click, and every click yields a character. Oh, and to hear the shift key before the character key... heaven.
The second reward comes when your fingers know they can rest again.
You see, the click of the old keyboard was not just a reassuring noise. All keyboards make noise - nasty, pointless thunking noise, but noise. No, the click came when you had pushed the key about half way down, not all the way at the bottom. And once that key had clicked, your finger's work was done - every time. You could push that key half way, knowing the click would come, and quit. And, sure enough, the click came, and if the click came the character showed up on the screen.
Every time.
And rapture of raptures, when you hit the shift key, and you made it click before the character key, you could be SURE the character would be in upper case. Those shift keys worked on a commission, I tell you. They knew if they took a break, productivity would fall, and they'd be begging bread for their children!
Give me my Dell computer, and watch me backspace over and over and over because the shift key was only 83% depressed, while the character key was 86% depressed.
The agony!
Even using shorthand as I do (so that a 60,000 character series of posts only requires that I type 33,000 characters - now you know my secret) having to press every key through the bottom of the keyboard just to be sure it will show up on screen gets painful! And while you may wish that my keyboard hurt me enough to make me shorten a post or two, it never works that way. I am compelled to keep clicking through the pain until the muse leaves. (Actually, maybe if I would quit when the muse did people would read more?) I hope it's enough merely to know that I hurt with each word I write as much as you do with each word you read.
Anyway, if anyone knows of a good keyboard out there, I'll buy two, maybe three of them. Elsewise, I'll be cruising the IBM peripherals site in the next day or two.
Dell makes dissatisfyingly mediocre keyboards. Their left shift key works on union scale, taking breaks every two hours no matter how important the job. They saved themselves about $0.30 worth of plastic, by getting rid of the 1/2 inch border around the actual keys - leaving the (somewhat?) important ESC, CTRL, Windows, "Second" and ENTER keys exposed to every careless brush of the palm. And they keep lining up the Insert, Home, Delete, End, Page up, Page down keypad differently every year. I will risk the judgement by calling them morons. Was anybody thinking? Could it really be that much more efficient to randomly rearrange them again?
But worst of all, Dell's keyboards are not, and nor will they ever be, IBM keyboards.
Ah. Do you remember the IBM keyboards? IBM still puts real keyboards like that on their laptops (last time I got to touch one, anyway.)
Their keyboards click.
That doesn't sound like much, but it's the world.
The click rewards the user twice. The first reward comes because your ears know what your fingers are doing. You can blithely tap along, reassured with every meshing of push, click and sight that all is well with the word. Every push yields a click, and every click yields a character. Oh, and to hear the shift key before the character key... heaven.
The second reward comes when your fingers know they can rest again.
You see, the click of the old keyboard was not just a reassuring noise. All keyboards make noise - nasty, pointless thunking noise, but noise. No, the click came when you had pushed the key about half way down, not all the way at the bottom. And once that key had clicked, your finger's work was done - every time. You could push that key half way, knowing the click would come, and quit. And, sure enough, the click came, and if the click came the character showed up on the screen.
Every time.
And rapture of raptures, when you hit the shift key, and you made it click before the character key, you could be SURE the character would be in upper case. Those shift keys worked on a commission, I tell you. They knew if they took a break, productivity would fall, and they'd be begging bread for their children!
Give me my Dell computer, and watch me backspace over and over and over because the shift key was only 83% depressed, while the character key was 86% depressed.
The agony!
Even using shorthand as I do (so that a 60,000 character series of posts only requires that I type 33,000 characters - now you know my secret) having to press every key through the bottom of the keyboard just to be sure it will show up on screen gets painful! And while you may wish that my keyboard hurt me enough to make me shorten a post or two, it never works that way. I am compelled to keep clicking through the pain until the muse leaves. (Actually, maybe if I would quit when the muse did people would read more?) I hope it's enough merely to know that I hurt with each word I write as much as you do with each word you read.
Anyway, if anyone knows of a good keyboard out there, I'll buy two, maybe three of them. Elsewise, I'll be cruising the IBM peripherals site in the next day or two.
11 November, 2006
Prosetry
Not to Your church, O Lord, not to Your church
But to Your Name
Be glory for Your grace
And for Your Truth's sake.
Why should the blind say,
"Where is their God now?"
Our God stands in the heavens
On feet of flesh like brass.
He has done what His Father has pleased.
Their idols are silicon and glass
The work of men's hands.
They have theses, but they don't guide their thoughts.
They have proofs, but they don't lead to Truth.
They have vision with no sight
Missions with no goal
Charity with no love.
The path of their understanding leads to confusion
They are confounded by their wisdom.
Church!
Trust in your Lord!
He is your Deliverer.
You that are born into Him,
Trust in Him.
He is your Redeemer.
The Lord has remembered us
And given us everything He promised.
He has blessed His kingdom.
He has blessed His bride.
He has blessed every one who loves Him
The man on welfare, and the man with options.
He has multiplied Himself to us.
Every blessing in heavenly places He has given
To us and to all who call on His Name.
We are the blessed of the earth.
The heavens are the Lord's
And Jesus added the earth to His possessions.
He put His feet down on the earth,
And left His kingdom to conquer in His Name.
Those with no spirit breathe no praise to the Lord
Those with no mouth say nothing to His glory.
But we must sing of the glory of the Lord.
But we bless the Father and the Son
Here on earth
And in heaven
Forever.
Praise the Lord
Psalm 115 - retold as if written in 2006.
But to Your Name
Be glory for Your grace
And for Your Truth's sake.
Why should the blind say,
"Where is their God now?"
Our God stands in the heavens
On feet of flesh like brass.
He has done what His Father has pleased.
Their idols are silicon and glass
The work of men's hands.
They have theses, but they don't guide their thoughts.
They have proofs, but they don't lead to Truth.
They have vision with no sight
Missions with no goal
Charity with no love.
The path of their understanding leads to confusion
They are confounded by their wisdom.
Church!
Trust in your Lord!
He is your Deliverer.
You that are born into Him,
Trust in Him.
He is your Redeemer.
The Lord has remembered us
And given us everything He promised.
He has blessed His kingdom.
He has blessed His bride.
He has blessed every one who loves Him
The man on welfare, and the man with options.
He has multiplied Himself to us.
Every blessing in heavenly places He has given
To us and to all who call on His Name.
We are the blessed of the earth.
The heavens are the Lord's
And Jesus added the earth to His possessions.
He put His feet down on the earth,
And left His kingdom to conquer in His Name.
Those with no spirit breathe no praise to the Lord
Those with no mouth say nothing to His glory.
But we must sing of the glory of the Lord.
But we bless the Father and the Son
Here on earth
And in heaven
Forever.
Praise the Lord
Psalm 115 - retold as if written in 2006.
Election: Republicans Take a Beating
But the phone calls have ended.
Merciful, merciful RNC and DNC, we are free at last.
No more listening to voice mails that all say, "Hello, my name is beep-beep-BEEP," 17 times in a row. (If I hit 3-3-7 as I am listening to a voice mail it takes me to the end of the message then deletes it.) I figure I did every politician a favor with my 337 solution. If I had allowed them to say their names, I would have loathed them. By silencing them so soon, in the prime of their messages really, I kept myself from despising them.
Do they not realize that voice mail is not like junk mail?
I laugh at junk mail. Each day my son and I chuckled, because each day Deborah Pryce and her opponent (whatever her name was) seemed to alternate mailings. Each day candidate A was either going to save the world or damn it. We joked that we were so confused. Which was true? Was Deborah saving the children from a cruel death by taxation, or was she eating them as after-dinner snacks? It was all so upsetting. She was like a mother to me, until the next day when Pilate would have feared her.
See? Just amusing. We'd laugh at our little stories, then recover the only real value in all the mailings - namely the raw value of the wood fiber - by putting them in the recycle bin. We certainly didn't learn one worthwhile piece of information from any of them, but at least they only took 5 seconds to throw away.
Voice mail?
Not so much.
The morons at the Republican and Democratic HQs seem to assume that I want to listen to their vapid hyperbole for (who knows how many) seconds. "Daft," does not begin to describe their asinine stupidity. Didn't they realize I could be fishing crud out from between my toes? I could be scrubbing behind the toilet. I could be standing in a driving rain, trying to wash away my guilt. I cannot think of anything I'd willingly quit doing in order to listen to a moron exaggerate half-truths while never giving me one useful fact.
May they be forced to press Q-tips into their ear canals until dead.
----
The Republicans took a beating.
They earned it.
Now it's the Dem's turn to make the populace angry. We'll see how that works out for them.
It's still a great country, and I thank the Lord He has made a place in the world where His church can live and move in peace.
1 Tim 2:1-2
I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
We pray for government, not that America might be great, but that the church might be allowed to serve HER GOVERNMENT in peace. The government here serves only one purpose - to make a peaceful place for the church. Our forefathers' prayers for a nation that might give freedom to God's church were answered.
I think we'd best start praying that the church finds some way to capitalize on this gift we've been given. The return on the investment God has made in us is pitiful. Much freedom and untold wealth have been given to us, and the profit from it will surely be expected by God. 4 hours a day of television (the national average) is going to be hard to justify when He makes an accounting of us.
The Republicans took a beating.
So what?
What's the church doing?
---
(Maybe we should be starting a voice mail campaign?)
Merciful, merciful RNC and DNC, we are free at last.
No more listening to voice mails that all say, "Hello, my name is beep-beep-BEEP," 17 times in a row. (If I hit 3-3-7 as I am listening to a voice mail it takes me to the end of the message then deletes it.) I figure I did every politician a favor with my 337 solution. If I had allowed them to say their names, I would have loathed them. By silencing them so soon, in the prime of their messages really, I kept myself from despising them.
Do they not realize that voice mail is not like junk mail?
I laugh at junk mail. Each day my son and I chuckled, because each day Deborah Pryce and her opponent (whatever her name was) seemed to alternate mailings. Each day candidate A was either going to save the world or damn it. We joked that we were so confused. Which was true? Was Deborah saving the children from a cruel death by taxation, or was she eating them as after-dinner snacks? It was all so upsetting. She was like a mother to me, until the next day when Pilate would have feared her.
See? Just amusing. We'd laugh at our little stories, then recover the only real value in all the mailings - namely the raw value of the wood fiber - by putting them in the recycle bin. We certainly didn't learn one worthwhile piece of information from any of them, but at least they only took 5 seconds to throw away.
Voice mail?
Not so much.
The morons at the Republican and Democratic HQs seem to assume that I want to listen to their vapid hyperbole for (who knows how many) seconds. "Daft," does not begin to describe their asinine stupidity. Didn't they realize I could be fishing crud out from between my toes? I could be scrubbing behind the toilet. I could be standing in a driving rain, trying to wash away my guilt. I cannot think of anything I'd willingly quit doing in order to listen to a moron exaggerate half-truths while never giving me one useful fact.
May they be forced to press Q-tips into their ear canals until dead.
----
The Republicans took a beating.
They earned it.
Now it's the Dem's turn to make the populace angry. We'll see how that works out for them.
It's still a great country, and I thank the Lord He has made a place in the world where His church can live and move in peace.
1 Tim 2:1-2
I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
We pray for government, not that America might be great, but that the church might be allowed to serve HER GOVERNMENT in peace. The government here serves only one purpose - to make a peaceful place for the church. Our forefathers' prayers for a nation that might give freedom to God's church were answered.
I think we'd best start praying that the church finds some way to capitalize on this gift we've been given. The return on the investment God has made in us is pitiful. Much freedom and untold wealth have been given to us, and the profit from it will surely be expected by God. 4 hours a day of television (the national average) is going to be hard to justify when He makes an accounting of us.
The Republicans took a beating.
So what?
What's the church doing?
---
(Maybe we should be starting a voice mail campaign?)
10 November, 2006
Predestination: The Series is Over - Was I right?
Of course, that is the wrong question. There is another, better question.
+ How right was I?
I promise I don't know, but I feel like I am righter than I was 2 months ago. Many of the things you guys said made a difference in my perspective.
As I was writing, I did not try to represent or to answer your thoughts in these posts. I hope none of you took that as a slight. I realize that I wrote this series as if I had believed every word of it my whole life. The truth is that the discussions of Sept through Nov shifted my opinions a great deal, especially on man's free will.
I've never given free will the time of day, and never been troubled by the fact. About half way through our talks, I started being troubled over free will, and by the end I began to see things differently. I had always seen man as dead, and needing to be made alive. Hence, free will was extraneous. Oddly, I also saw man as needing God's Life ingrafted, but never saw the connection with free will that made me want to rewrite my whole perspective from front to back like that. You will read my old position in these posts as part of that ascribed to Calvinists.
Regarding God loving all men equally, I am not persuaded. I know that's not popular, but despite all the verses I quoted, there are just too many that inform those verses the "other way." Who knows? Maybe some day I will shift here, too.
Two things happened to drive me to this series of posts so suddenly, and so "lengthily." One of them was the feeling that I had reached some new ground, and I needed to capture it on paper. The other was a desire to change subjects, and the feeling that I could not do so without closure on this one. I'm always game for a discussion on the subject, but I am going to move in a new direction shortly.
Thank you to everyone who commented as I built up to this. Your provocative thoughts were profitable for me. I hope the discussion was to you, too.
---
I also want to extend a special, heartfelt thanks to Milly. Your faithful comment at the end of every post, letting me know that you had actually read each of them, was a tremendous encouragement - especially since I know you were enduring eye trouble that made reading long posts especially painful. I am honored.
Thank you, Milly.
+ How right was I?
I promise I don't know, but I feel like I am righter than I was 2 months ago. Many of the things you guys said made a difference in my perspective.
As I was writing, I did not try to represent or to answer your thoughts in these posts. I hope none of you took that as a slight. I realize that I wrote this series as if I had believed every word of it my whole life. The truth is that the discussions of Sept through Nov shifted my opinions a great deal, especially on man's free will.
I've never given free will the time of day, and never been troubled by the fact. About half way through our talks, I started being troubled over free will, and by the end I began to see things differently. I had always seen man as dead, and needing to be made alive. Hence, free will was extraneous. Oddly, I also saw man as needing God's Life ingrafted, but never saw the connection with free will that made me want to rewrite my whole perspective from front to back like that. You will read my old position in these posts as part of that ascribed to Calvinists.
Regarding God loving all men equally, I am not persuaded. I know that's not popular, but despite all the verses I quoted, there are just too many that inform those verses the "other way." Who knows? Maybe some day I will shift here, too.
Two things happened to drive me to this series of posts so suddenly, and so "lengthily." One of them was the feeling that I had reached some new ground, and I needed to capture it on paper. The other was a desire to change subjects, and the feeling that I could not do so without closure on this one. I'm always game for a discussion on the subject, but I am going to move in a new direction shortly.
Thank you to everyone who commented as I built up to this. Your provocative thoughts were profitable for me. I hope the discussion was to you, too.
---
I also want to extend a special, heartfelt thanks to Milly. Your faithful comment at the end of every post, letting me know that you had actually read each of them, was a tremendous encouragement - especially since I know you were enduring eye trouble that made reading long posts especially painful. I am honored.
Thank you, Milly.
09 November, 2006
Predestination: TULIP - The Missing Foundation
And so we come to the "R" in Plenus EMPTOR.
Redemptor is one of the Latin names for Christ. That would make an outstanding "R," but I don't think that even Christ's name says enough. There is a LOT more to be said than just a single Name, even that Name above all names. There's even more to the story of that Name's value.
--
TULIP stops at a really critical place, and kind of an odd one. Its friends will be quick to explain that this is because the 5 points of the Remonstrance stopped just there, but that's not really of consequence to me. Whether TULIP or Remonstrance, they both stop at the same place.
Man is depraved, so God intervenes by electing some somehow, paying for their sins, converting them, and seeing them safely all the way to heaven. Through "EMPTOR" I have dealt with my thoughts on how God does these 5 things, but there is a massive, gaping hole this picture if it is going to try to explain salvation.
TULIP and Remonstrance both rest on a foundation of sin, and man's need.
The missing foundation is God. All 5 of these points concern man, and only introduce God as in relation to man's needs. That is falacious.
God has works an incredible change upon Himself in the story of salvation, apart from any effect He has on man. The most amazing thing in the redemption story is how I AM that I AM changed Himself in taking captivity captive. As long as we are pinning butterflies to styrofoam, let's catalog the greatest metamorphosis in all history, pre-history, and even non-history.
The Living God became the Resurrected Seed.
Ge 1:12
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Much like a seed, this verse contains the full fruit of God's experience, but in a nutshell, waiting to be revealed in the rest of scripture.
All of the living beings in Genesis 1 reproduce after their kind. This is a picture of God. The herbs, the trees, the fish, the fowl, and the beasts all multiply after their kind. The plants, though, are described as bearing seed, and that is a little more careful picture of Him. And the tree, in particular, is described as bearing fruit with its seed within in it, both in verse 12 and in verse 29.
Everything has its picture of the image of God, but the tree yielding fruit is called out in particular.
Ge 3:15
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Now the idea of "seed" gets transferred to human children. Satan will reproduce after his kind, and Eve will reproduce after her kind. She will bear a Seed that will grow and destroy Satan's seed, though at a cost to Himself.
Ge 12:7
And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
Paul notes a little later that this Seed is singular, but see that God is talking about His kind on earth. The children of Abraham are a better picture of God than the fruit from a tree.
Ge 15:5
And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.
The seed are not always singular!
Ge 15:13
And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;
Nor will the seed always be comfortable.
In fact, the nation of Israel is identified as the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You can track their fortune through scripture exclusively by searching for the word, "seed." You will see every time they do well and every time they fail, because God continues to refer to them as the seed over and over.
Ps 22:30
A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
Even when the kingdom is but a remnant, and only one single seed remains, God still counts that solitary seed as a complete generation.
Ps 89:29
His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.
But the key meaning of Seed is still the promised One.
Isa 66:22
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain.
He is the Seed, and His Name will be hallowed.
So, far, I would describe none of this as terribly mysterious. Certainly, none of this involves the metamorphosis of God. This is just standard stuff for a God Who rules everything in Truth and Justice. He stands at the beginning of time, and foreordains that He will come as the Son of a woman some day, and that Abraham will be the father of the great nation from which He will spring.
Then, He says this:
Joh 12:24
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
And in one sentence Jesus turns two thousand years of Jewish interpretation of prophecy on its ear.
They have expected and waited on a Redeemer Who would deliver them from the hands of their enemies. They have, instead, received Jesus, Who has come to lay down His life.
Jesus is teaching His disciples that He must be lifted up, and die, but not to redeem us. Yes, Jesus must die to redeem us. Yes, He must be the sin bearer. But, this verse is about something bigger, something foundational. Jesus must die in order to bear fruit.
Jesus must be planted in the ground.
Suddenly, the seed in Genesis 1 comes rushing back into our minds. The fruit must be planted in the ground, or the tree cannot reproduce. The seed must die, or the tree must abide alone. But, if the seed dies, then kind of its kind is brought forth.
It is not just trees that bear kind after their kind, but fish, fowl and beasts as well. Could it be that God, too, bears kind after His kind? Is this one of the things nature is portraying about God?
Jesus said that unless a man was "born from above," he could not see the kingdom of God. (I know the common translation is "born again," but that is derived from Nicodemus's misunderstanding. The other three times the word is used by John in his gospel, it is translated "from above.")
Unless a man becomes kind of the kind that is "from above," he cannot see the kingdom of God.
And unless the Son of God falls into the earth as a grain of wheat, He must abide alone.
But, am I just stretching things here?
1 Cor 15:35
But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
Paul doesn't seem to think so.
1 Cor 15:42
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
Paul is even ready to consider all our bodies seeds.
1 Cor 15:54
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And how did our Lord give us this victory? By being the first to overcome death by resurrection.
Joh 12:24
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
CS Lewis refered to a deep magic, magic that was stronger than the law of the land. Here is that magic in plain view.
What was the magic that worked the resurrection?
It was the magic of a corn of wheat that falls into the ground and dies. If the Seed sown is alive, then it must rise again.
Jesus died so that He might not abide alone.
Let that sentence sink into a deep place in your heart.
Jesus died so that He might not abide alone. Yes, Jesus died for your salvation, but He died for something much deeper, much more fundamental than that. Have you ever wondered how to "bless the Lord?" Have you ever wondered what you might bring to God to please Him? Have you ever wondered what gift you might bring that would have meaning to an omnipotent God?
Jesus died so that He might abide with you.
But maybe you have assumed that He only died because things had gone horribly wrong, because Adam rebelled.
Jesus would have had to die had there been no sin and no fall of man.
The Sabbath is a law, but its meaning changed. Thou shalt not kill is a law but it has exceptions. "If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit," is like the law of gravity. It cannot be repealed. This law springs from the very nature of Life, from the nature of God. "Kind after its kind," is a law that exists on earth before even, "but of the tree in the midst of the garden, thou shalt not eat." This law was in full effect in Genesis 1, before there was any law.
"The tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
But there is an even deeper, more powerful example. The image bearer bore out this image as well.
Before Adam had sinned, he was found alone in the garden, without a mate, and God Himself declared that it was not good.
Adam could not produce kind after his kind. Adam could not fulfill the basic law of creation, and it was not good. And God declared it not good for a reason. God shared Adam's problem. God could not create kind after His kind. Adam was a tragically perfect picture of the perfect God. Flawless, alive, master of all he surveyed, and in violation of the law of gravity. Neither God nor Adam could produce kind after his kind.
God was ready to change this about Himself. God was ready no longer to abide alone.
First, He showed what He would do for Himself by doing it in Adam.
God caused Adam to sleep. Adam had to die in order no longer to abide alone. Adam had to be cracked open like a seed, and a half of him had to be removed. Maybe it was just a rib, but the Hebrew word would indicate that it was much more than a rib. If there weren't centuries of tradition to the contrary, I don't think modern linguistics would allow us to translate that word as rib. Either way, a piece of Adam was taken away in order that it might be grown into someone who could face him, love him, and receive love from him in return.
We know this is a picture of Christ, but consider that it is a picture from before sin. Sin has no part in this miracle. The only thing being rectified by Adam's death and loss was His loneliness - rather his aloneness. As Kansas Bob has pointed out, the two are indescribably different.
We have then two powerful pictures. The seed must die, or forever abide alone, and Adam must sleep to have his mate.
The unavoidable reality these pictures describe is that God created the earth so that He might Himself brave the same grave metamorphosis.
God in Jesus died for a purpose, and that purpose was not primarily to wipe away our 10,000 year stain of sin. There was eternal work afoot in Christ's passion. If Christ does not die, the Godhead, the Singular with three Persons, abides alone. Even if Adam did not sin, Christ must die. If Adam were without win, and Christ did not die, then man could never become more than Empty Humanity. We might have lived happy human lives on earth, but we could never see the God Who created us - not with spiritual eyes.
Yes, God walked with Adam in the cool of day, but only because He made Himself visible to Adam's naked eye. In this age and time of the revelation of God, we have been blessed more deeply. We see God invisibly in our hearts. We know Him as He knows us, in Spirit and in Truth. Adam would never have reached that glory, any more than my cats might write a sonnet.
Unless we are born from above, we cannot see the kingdom of God.
But, Christ did die.
And He rose again.
Joh 17:2
As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.
In rising again, Christ achieved every goal of the Father. In dying and rising again, Christ broke open the shell of the Seed, and sprouted to become fruitful on a divine scale.
In Him, we rise too.
Re 20:6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
We have in us the new Life in Christ, because He fell into the ground and died.
God has been expanded, in the same manner that Adam was expanded. Adam became Adam and Eve, and the Lord saw that it was God. God has become the Son and His bride, and that is perfect.
The "R" in EMPTOR is for "Resurrected Seed, because on this foundation, God is blessed.
Plenus EMPTOR
Redemptor is one of the Latin names for Christ. That would make an outstanding "R," but I don't think that even Christ's name says enough. There is a LOT more to be said than just a single Name, even that Name above all names. There's even more to the story of that Name's value.
--
TULIP stops at a really critical place, and kind of an odd one. Its friends will be quick to explain that this is because the 5 points of the Remonstrance stopped just there, but that's not really of consequence to me. Whether TULIP or Remonstrance, they both stop at the same place.
Man is depraved, so God intervenes by electing some somehow, paying for their sins, converting them, and seeing them safely all the way to heaven. Through "EMPTOR" I have dealt with my thoughts on how God does these 5 things, but there is a massive, gaping hole this picture if it is going to try to explain salvation.
TULIP and Remonstrance both rest on a foundation of sin, and man's need.
The missing foundation is God. All 5 of these points concern man, and only introduce God as in relation to man's needs. That is falacious.
God has works an incredible change upon Himself in the story of salvation, apart from any effect He has on man. The most amazing thing in the redemption story is how I AM that I AM changed Himself in taking captivity captive. As long as we are pinning butterflies to styrofoam, let's catalog the greatest metamorphosis in all history, pre-history, and even non-history.
The Living God became the Resurrected Seed.
Ge 1:12
And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
Much like a seed, this verse contains the full fruit of God's experience, but in a nutshell, waiting to be revealed in the rest of scripture.
All of the living beings in Genesis 1 reproduce after their kind. This is a picture of God. The herbs, the trees, the fish, the fowl, and the beasts all multiply after their kind. The plants, though, are described as bearing seed, and that is a little more careful picture of Him. And the tree, in particular, is described as bearing fruit with its seed within in it, both in verse 12 and in verse 29.
Everything has its picture of the image of God, but the tree yielding fruit is called out in particular.
Ge 3:15
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
Now the idea of "seed" gets transferred to human children. Satan will reproduce after his kind, and Eve will reproduce after her kind. She will bear a Seed that will grow and destroy Satan's seed, though at a cost to Himself.
Ge 12:7
And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
Paul notes a little later that this Seed is singular, but see that God is talking about His kind on earth. The children of Abraham are a better picture of God than the fruit from a tree.
Ge 15:5
And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.
The seed are not always singular!
Ge 15:13
And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;
Nor will the seed always be comfortable.
In fact, the nation of Israel is identified as the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You can track their fortune through scripture exclusively by searching for the word, "seed." You will see every time they do well and every time they fail, because God continues to refer to them as the seed over and over.
Ps 22:30
A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.
Even when the kingdom is but a remnant, and only one single seed remains, God still counts that solitary seed as a complete generation.
Ps 89:29
His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven.
But the key meaning of Seed is still the promised One.
Isa 66:22
For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain.
He is the Seed, and His Name will be hallowed.
So, far, I would describe none of this as terribly mysterious. Certainly, none of this involves the metamorphosis of God. This is just standard stuff for a God Who rules everything in Truth and Justice. He stands at the beginning of time, and foreordains that He will come as the Son of a woman some day, and that Abraham will be the father of the great nation from which He will spring.
Then, He says this:
Joh 12:24
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
And in one sentence Jesus turns two thousand years of Jewish interpretation of prophecy on its ear.
They have expected and waited on a Redeemer Who would deliver them from the hands of their enemies. They have, instead, received Jesus, Who has come to lay down His life.
Jesus is teaching His disciples that He must be lifted up, and die, but not to redeem us. Yes, Jesus must die to redeem us. Yes, He must be the sin bearer. But, this verse is about something bigger, something foundational. Jesus must die in order to bear fruit.
Jesus must be planted in the ground.
Suddenly, the seed in Genesis 1 comes rushing back into our minds. The fruit must be planted in the ground, or the tree cannot reproduce. The seed must die, or the tree must abide alone. But, if the seed dies, then kind of its kind is brought forth.
It is not just trees that bear kind after their kind, but fish, fowl and beasts as well. Could it be that God, too, bears kind after His kind? Is this one of the things nature is portraying about God?
Jesus said that unless a man was "born from above," he could not see the kingdom of God. (I know the common translation is "born again," but that is derived from Nicodemus's misunderstanding. The other three times the word is used by John in his gospel, it is translated "from above.")
Unless a man becomes kind of the kind that is "from above," he cannot see the kingdom of God.
And unless the Son of God falls into the earth as a grain of wheat, He must abide alone.
But, am I just stretching things here?
1 Cor 15:35
But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.
Paul doesn't seem to think so.
1 Cor 15:42
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
Paul is even ready to consider all our bodies seeds.
1 Cor 15:54
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And how did our Lord give us this victory? By being the first to overcome death by resurrection.
Joh 12:24
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
CS Lewis refered to a deep magic, magic that was stronger than the law of the land. Here is that magic in plain view.
What was the magic that worked the resurrection?
It was the magic of a corn of wheat that falls into the ground and dies. If the Seed sown is alive, then it must rise again.
Jesus died so that He might not abide alone.
Let that sentence sink into a deep place in your heart.
Jesus died so that He might not abide alone. Yes, Jesus died for your salvation, but He died for something much deeper, much more fundamental than that. Have you ever wondered how to "bless the Lord?" Have you ever wondered what you might bring to God to please Him? Have you ever wondered what gift you might bring that would have meaning to an omnipotent God?
Jesus died so that He might abide with you.
But maybe you have assumed that He only died because things had gone horribly wrong, because Adam rebelled.
Jesus would have had to die had there been no sin and no fall of man.
The Sabbath is a law, but its meaning changed. Thou shalt not kill is a law but it has exceptions. "If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit," is like the law of gravity. It cannot be repealed. This law springs from the very nature of Life, from the nature of God. "Kind after its kind," is a law that exists on earth before even, "but of the tree in the midst of the garden, thou shalt not eat." This law was in full effect in Genesis 1, before there was any law.
"The tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
But there is an even deeper, more powerful example. The image bearer bore out this image as well.
Before Adam had sinned, he was found alone in the garden, without a mate, and God Himself declared that it was not good.
Adam could not produce kind after his kind. Adam could not fulfill the basic law of creation, and it was not good. And God declared it not good for a reason. God shared Adam's problem. God could not create kind after His kind. Adam was a tragically perfect picture of the perfect God. Flawless, alive, master of all he surveyed, and in violation of the law of gravity. Neither God nor Adam could produce kind after his kind.
God was ready to change this about Himself. God was ready no longer to abide alone.
First, He showed what He would do for Himself by doing it in Adam.
God caused Adam to sleep. Adam had to die in order no longer to abide alone. Adam had to be cracked open like a seed, and a half of him had to be removed. Maybe it was just a rib, but the Hebrew word would indicate that it was much more than a rib. If there weren't centuries of tradition to the contrary, I don't think modern linguistics would allow us to translate that word as rib. Either way, a piece of Adam was taken away in order that it might be grown into someone who could face him, love him, and receive love from him in return.
We know this is a picture of Christ, but consider that it is a picture from before sin. Sin has no part in this miracle. The only thing being rectified by Adam's death and loss was His loneliness - rather his aloneness. As Kansas Bob has pointed out, the two are indescribably different.
We have then two powerful pictures. The seed must die, or forever abide alone, and Adam must sleep to have his mate.
The unavoidable reality these pictures describe is that God created the earth so that He might Himself brave the same grave metamorphosis.
God in Jesus died for a purpose, and that purpose was not primarily to wipe away our 10,000 year stain of sin. There was eternal work afoot in Christ's passion. If Christ does not die, the Godhead, the Singular with three Persons, abides alone. Even if Adam did not sin, Christ must die. If Adam were without win, and Christ did not die, then man could never become more than Empty Humanity. We might have lived happy human lives on earth, but we could never see the God Who created us - not with spiritual eyes.
Yes, God walked with Adam in the cool of day, but only because He made Himself visible to Adam's naked eye. In this age and time of the revelation of God, we have been blessed more deeply. We see God invisibly in our hearts. We know Him as He knows us, in Spirit and in Truth. Adam would never have reached that glory, any more than my cats might write a sonnet.
Unless we are born from above, we cannot see the kingdom of God.
But, Christ did die.
And He rose again.
Joh 17:2
As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.
In rising again, Christ achieved every goal of the Father. In dying and rising again, Christ broke open the shell of the Seed, and sprouted to become fruitful on a divine scale.
In Him, we rise too.
Re 20:6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
We have in us the new Life in Christ, because He fell into the ground and died.
God has been expanded, in the same manner that Adam was expanded. Adam became Adam and Eve, and the Lord saw that it was God. God has become the Son and His bride, and that is perfect.
The "R" in EMPTOR is for "Resurrected Seed, because on this foundation, God is blessed.
Plenus EMPTOR
08 November, 2006
Sidebar: Religious Affections
I was reading Jonathon Edwards, and I laughed out loud. Frankly, that doesn't happen very often reading Mr. Edwards, so I figured I'd share it.
Does anyone attempt to nourish and strengthen a little child by repeated blows on the head with a hammer?
Alright, I'm a guy. I'll admit that. I cannot type that without laughing the whole time. I don't know why, but mousy little super-genius Christian philosophers saying things like that is just beyond funny.
But then he followed it with one of the most profound things I've read in a long time. This is going to be kind of long, but it's really unusual.
He is making the point that it is non-sensical to criticize a doubting believer for not believing in his belief. You might criticize him for not believing in God, but he is already criticizing himself for that. So, many people will want him to trust in the fact that he trusted God a long time ago. I pick his argument up in the middle of the paragraph. (This is all one paragraph in the original. For the sake of the reader, I will break it up into a few. The emphases are all his.)
Distant experiences, when darkened by present prevailing lust and corruption, will never keep alive a gracious confidence and assurance. If the one prevail, the other sickens and decays upon it. Does anyone attempt to nourish and strengthen a little child by repeated blows on the head with a hammer? Nor is it at all to be lamented that persons doubt of their state in such circumstances; but on the contrary, it is desirable and every way best that they should. It is agreeable to that wise and merciful constitution of things which God hath established. For so hath God constituted things, in His dispensation towards His own people, that when their love decays, and their exercises of it become weak, fear should arise.
They need fear then to restrain them from sin, to excite them to care for the good of their souls, and so to stir them up to watchfulness and diligence in religion.
But God hath so ordered, that when love rises, and is in vigorous exercise, then fear should vanish, and be driven away; for then they need it not, having a higher and more excellent principle in exercise, to restrain them from sin, and stir them up to duty. No other principles will ever make men conscientious, but one of these two, fear or love: and therefore, if one of these should not prevail as the other decayed, God's people when fallen into dead and carnal frames, when love is asleep, would be lamentably exposed indeed.
Hence, God has wisely ordained, that these two opposite principles of love and fear, should rise and fall, like the two opposite scales of a balance; when one rises the other sinks. Light and darkness unavoidably succeed each other; if light prevail so much does darkness cease, and no more; and if light decay, so much does darkness prevail. So it is in the heart of a child of God; if divine love decay, and fall asleep, and lust prevail, the light and joy of hope goes out, and dark fear arises; and if, on the contrary, divine love prevail, and come into lively exercise, this brings in the brightness of hope, and drives away black lust and fear with it. Love is the spirit of adoption, or the childlike principle; if that slumbers, men fall under fear, which is the spirit of bondage, or the servile principle: and so on the contrary.
And if love, or the spirit of adoption, be carried to a great height, it quite drives away all fear, and gives full assurance; 1 John iv. 18. "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear." These two opposite principles of lust and holy love, bring fear or hope into the hearts of God's children, just in proportion as they prevail; that is, when left to their own natural influence, without something adventitious or accidental intervening; as the distemper of melancholy, doctrinal ignorance , prejudices of education, wrong instruction, false principles, peculiar temptations, &c.
I don't know whether that does as much for anyone else as it did for me, but it is fabulous.
Permission from such an esteemed man as Mr. Edwards, to feel fear and to feel oppression when lust prevails is a great comfort. To always be play-acting courage toward God is a life-destroying occupation. To let fear arise, when it must, and to allow it to drive us back to Christ is nothing but the greatest relief.
And to hope that God has ordered it just this way, is a beautiful thing.
Did lust and fear never play a part in my life, I could stand with all my brothers and sisters who remind me that "perfect love casts out fear."
I am not that man, so I will allow fear to drive me to my Love.
Does anyone attempt to nourish and strengthen a little child by repeated blows on the head with a hammer?
Alright, I'm a guy. I'll admit that. I cannot type that without laughing the whole time. I don't know why, but mousy little super-genius Christian philosophers saying things like that is just beyond funny.
But then he followed it with one of the most profound things I've read in a long time. This is going to be kind of long, but it's really unusual.
He is making the point that it is non-sensical to criticize a doubting believer for not believing in his belief. You might criticize him for not believing in God, but he is already criticizing himself for that. So, many people will want him to trust in the fact that he trusted God a long time ago. I pick his argument up in the middle of the paragraph. (This is all one paragraph in the original. For the sake of the reader, I will break it up into a few. The emphases are all his.)
Distant experiences, when darkened by present prevailing lust and corruption, will never keep alive a gracious confidence and assurance. If the one prevail, the other sickens and decays upon it. Does anyone attempt to nourish and strengthen a little child by repeated blows on the head with a hammer? Nor is it at all to be lamented that persons doubt of their state in such circumstances; but on the contrary, it is desirable and every way best that they should. It is agreeable to that wise and merciful constitution of things which God hath established. For so hath God constituted things, in His dispensation towards His own people, that when their love decays, and their exercises of it become weak, fear should arise.
They need fear then to restrain them from sin, to excite them to care for the good of their souls, and so to stir them up to watchfulness and diligence in religion.
But God hath so ordered, that when love rises, and is in vigorous exercise, then fear should vanish, and be driven away; for then they need it not, having a higher and more excellent principle in exercise, to restrain them from sin, and stir them up to duty. No other principles will ever make men conscientious, but one of these two, fear or love: and therefore, if one of these should not prevail as the other decayed, God's people when fallen into dead and carnal frames, when love is asleep, would be lamentably exposed indeed.
Hence, God has wisely ordained, that these two opposite principles of love and fear, should rise and fall, like the two opposite scales of a balance; when one rises the other sinks. Light and darkness unavoidably succeed each other; if light prevail so much does darkness cease, and no more; and if light decay, so much does darkness prevail. So it is in the heart of a child of God; if divine love decay, and fall asleep, and lust prevail, the light and joy of hope goes out, and dark fear arises; and if, on the contrary, divine love prevail, and come into lively exercise, this brings in the brightness of hope, and drives away black lust and fear with it. Love is the spirit of adoption, or the childlike principle; if that slumbers, men fall under fear, which is the spirit of bondage, or the servile principle: and so on the contrary.
And if love, or the spirit of adoption, be carried to a great height, it quite drives away all fear, and gives full assurance; 1 John iv. 18. "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear." These two opposite principles of lust and holy love, bring fear or hope into the hearts of God's children, just in proportion as they prevail; that is, when left to their own natural influence, without something adventitious or accidental intervening; as the distemper of melancholy, doctrinal ignorance , prejudices of education, wrong instruction, false principles, peculiar temptations, &c.
I don't know whether that does as much for anyone else as it did for me, but it is fabulous.
Permission from such an esteemed man as Mr. Edwards, to feel fear and to feel oppression when lust prevails is a great comfort. To always be play-acting courage toward God is a life-destroying occupation. To let fear arise, when it must, and to allow it to drive us back to Christ is nothing but the greatest relief.
And to hope that God has ordered it just this way, is a beautiful thing.
Did lust and fear never play a part in my life, I could stand with all my brothers and sisters who remind me that "perfect love casts out fear."
I am not that man, so I will allow fear to drive me to my Love.
Predestination: TULIP - Perseverance of the Saints
This is the fifth of six posts regarding TULIP. Just one more to go. :-) If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
5) Perseverance of the Saints
Perseverance of the Saints gets the least debate of all the points. Classical Arminians believed that any saint could apostasize, and be damned in the end, no matter how strongly they ran the course up until that point. Almost universally, Arminians and Calvinists now functionally agree with the simple formula, "Once saved, always saved," which moves the subject pretty much out of the arena. Calvinists twist once saved, always saved pretty aggresively, though, when they look at it very closely.
Calvinists hold that every believer must persevere in the faith in order to be finally saved. They believe that every truly converted believer will persevere and finally be saved, but they are not clear who is truly converted. Some might appear to have run well and then fallen away, but really they were never saved. They had simply deceived themselves and those around them. (This creates some serious room for doubt. A believer may find that same worry he might have spent wondering whether he will fall away in the end, he spends instead wondering whether he is deceiving himself.)
Arminians, hold to, "Once saved, always saved," with more conviction. In many cases, they now believe and teach that once a person has said the sinner's prayer with conviction, he is going to heaven no matter what he does from that day forward. It is an interesting, and rather extreme, change in position from early Arminianism, but so be it.
Codepoke believes that assurance is an important goal for every believer, but not one to be assumed lightly. Both Arminianism and Calvinism handle this well in theory, and a little worse in practice. I doubt any particular doctrine can do better, but let's try anyway.
Jesus decries blind assurance as a critical threat to the seeker after God. Blind assurance cripples the seeker by contenting him with a false achievement. He believes that he has achieved eternal security, when in reality, he has only dabbled in spiritual things.
Matt 13:3-9
And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some * * fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold *, some sixtyfold *, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Of the four fates for the seeds Jesus sows, two result in the illusion of assurance. The seeds on the rocky soil spring up, but die later, and the seeds among thorns do well for a while too. If the seeker assumes that the growth in his heart is a sign of conversion, he faces a big, and possibly eternal fall. Jesus invites those who have ears to hear this parable, but He explains it in detail to His disciples.
Matt 13:18-23
Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower. When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side. But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold *, some sixty *, some thirty.
There is no life-long benefit to these seeds for those who have no root within themselves, nor for those deceived by riches.
I am of the number who believe that the Word of the Kingdom, the holy seed of scripture, can be sown into the hearts of those who are not, and never will be saved. I also believe that the seed can be sown into the hearts of those who will be saved, or are saved, and still be choked out. So, I don't believe that this passage says anything conclusive about whether a person can be truly born again and truly apostasize.
My point in quoting this passage is that salvation is a struggle.
We must reach out and take salvation. We must become skilled in seeing the invisible, and loving God and man. We must be prepared to suffer, and become good at it. We must expect tribulation, and then not be surprised when it comes (I know that's redundant, but it's pretty real.) We must throw off the cares of this world (yes, even the good ones,) and handle money knowing it is a deceiver.
Christianity that introduces God primarily as a Helper Who wants to ease our lot in life is selling a bald-faced, blaspheming lie. It's an easy lie to sell in the land of TiVo and mega-malls, but the deception is real and vicious. Ease is a lie of the enemy, and one that has crippled the church.
Given the state of the church, and the state of our doctrines, it is very easy to believe we are saved, and not know Christ. It is very easy to believe that, "God loves me," but not to know the fear that comes of seeing the perfectly holy God, and knowing that we must somehow be conformed to that holiness. We will never fully conform to His holiness, but it must be a passion for us.
God's bride knows this and does it. All her members grow in holiness and grace, some 30, some 60 and some 100-fold.
1 John 5:4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
1 John 5:11 - 13 And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
1 John 10:27-30 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one.
Our faith will not falter, because the Son of God will not let us go. He will not allow us to fail. We might trust that in ease we would not fail Him, but He promises that He can keep us through every terror, too.
Rom 8:35-37 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written *, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
God has Ordained Victory for Himself through us.
We don't need to pretend that this life is made easy by being His children. We can acknowledge that this life is always heartbreaking, and know that He has promised to see us through it anyway. This is what He must do to earn the joy that was set before Him, and He will not be denied.
Plenus EMPTOR
5) Perseverance of the Saints
Perseverance of the Saints gets the least debate of all the points. Classical Arminians believed that any saint could apostasize, and be damned in the end, no matter how strongly they ran the course up until that point. Almost universally, Arminians and Calvinists now functionally agree with the simple formula, "Once saved, always saved," which moves the subject pretty much out of the arena. Calvinists twist once saved, always saved pretty aggresively, though, when they look at it very closely.
Calvinists hold that every believer must persevere in the faith in order to be finally saved. They believe that every truly converted believer will persevere and finally be saved, but they are not clear who is truly converted. Some might appear to have run well and then fallen away, but really they were never saved. They had simply deceived themselves and those around them. (This creates some serious room for doubt. A believer may find that same worry he might have spent wondering whether he will fall away in the end, he spends instead wondering whether he is deceiving himself.)
Arminians, hold to, "Once saved, always saved," with more conviction. In many cases, they now believe and teach that once a person has said the sinner's prayer with conviction, he is going to heaven no matter what he does from that day forward. It is an interesting, and rather extreme, change in position from early Arminianism, but so be it.
Codepoke believes that assurance is an important goal for every believer, but not one to be assumed lightly. Both Arminianism and Calvinism handle this well in theory, and a little worse in practice. I doubt any particular doctrine can do better, but let's try anyway.
Jesus decries blind assurance as a critical threat to the seeker after God. Blind assurance cripples the seeker by contenting him with a false achievement. He believes that he has achieved eternal security, when in reality, he has only dabbled in spiritual things.
Matt 13:3-9
And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some * * fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold *, some sixtyfold *, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Of the four fates for the seeds Jesus sows, two result in the illusion of assurance. The seeds on the rocky soil spring up, but die later, and the seeds among thorns do well for a while too. If the seeker assumes that the growth in his heart is a sign of conversion, he faces a big, and possibly eternal fall. Jesus invites those who have ears to hear this parable, but He explains it in detail to His disciples.
Matt 13:18-23
Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower. When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way side. But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold *, some sixty *, some thirty.
There is no life-long benefit to these seeds for those who have no root within themselves, nor for those deceived by riches.
I am of the number who believe that the Word of the Kingdom, the holy seed of scripture, can be sown into the hearts of those who are not, and never will be saved. I also believe that the seed can be sown into the hearts of those who will be saved, or are saved, and still be choked out. So, I don't believe that this passage says anything conclusive about whether a person can be truly born again and truly apostasize.
My point in quoting this passage is that salvation is a struggle.
We must reach out and take salvation. We must become skilled in seeing the invisible, and loving God and man. We must be prepared to suffer, and become good at it. We must expect tribulation, and then not be surprised when it comes (I know that's redundant, but it's pretty real.) We must throw off the cares of this world (yes, even the good ones,) and handle money knowing it is a deceiver.
Christianity that introduces God primarily as a Helper Who wants to ease our lot in life is selling a bald-faced, blaspheming lie. It's an easy lie to sell in the land of TiVo and mega-malls, but the deception is real and vicious. Ease is a lie of the enemy, and one that has crippled the church.
Given the state of the church, and the state of our doctrines, it is very easy to believe we are saved, and not know Christ. It is very easy to believe that, "God loves me," but not to know the fear that comes of seeing the perfectly holy God, and knowing that we must somehow be conformed to that holiness. We will never fully conform to His holiness, but it must be a passion for us.
God's bride knows this and does it. All her members grow in holiness and grace, some 30, some 60 and some 100-fold.
1 John 5:4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
1 John 5:11 - 13 And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
1 John 10:27-30 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one.
Our faith will not falter, because the Son of God will not let us go. He will not allow us to fail. We might trust that in ease we would not fail Him, but He promises that He can keep us through every terror, too.
Rom 8:35-37 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written *, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
God has Ordained Victory for Himself through us.
We don't need to pretend that this life is made easy by being His children. We can acknowledge that this life is always heartbreaking, and know that He has promised to see us through it anyway. This is what He must do to earn the joy that was set before Him, and He will not be denied.
Plenus EMPTOR
07 November, 2006
Predestination: TULIP - Irresistible Grace
This is the fourth of six posts regarding TULIP. If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
4) Irresistible Grace
Calvinists have been embarassed by this term for centuries. "Irresistible Grace" conjures images of a man trying to better himself by arts or sciences suddenly being accosted by God. He protests his innocence, and desire to be free of God, but He has chosen this one, and this one will be saved, whether he likes it or not. All the while, a poor peasant girl standing by and watching, wishing she could only know God, is passed over and damned. Had God wished her to be saved, her wish should surely have been granted, but God wanted to prove His grace's irresistibility, so He left her to die while taking the harder case.
It's a ridiculous picture, but it's a ridiculous term, too.
(Of course, the term could refer to a grace that is irresistible like a beautiful painting, not like a tsunami, but it's a little late to suggest that now. ;-)
The term came about because the 5 TULIP points were an answer to the 5 points of the Remonstrance. The fourth point of the Remonstrance was "Resistible Grace." Nobody could think ahead to how poorly the term, "irresistible," would market, so Calvinists are stuck with it.
Then again, it's a pretty good fit for the way most Calvinists understand it.
Calvinists believe that the Holy Spirit succeeds in attracting every person whom God selected from that great mass of the to-be-born. It is that simple, really. Some Calvinists portray God as a bulldozer, breaking down every wall of opposition in the hearts of the elect, while others portray Him as a velvet-lined bulldozer. Either way, God succeeds in drawing His elect.
Arminians, again, are repulsed by the thought. That God might be thankful for love won with a bulldozer is anathema to them. The human heart is driven by its own will. God ceded this element of His sovereignty in order to make the love of His children worthy to be called love. Hence, the Spirit's call is resistible. Try as any minister might, be the Son's gift ever so beautiful, and may the Spirit woo with all His guile, most men will still reject God.
It is on this point, more than the other four, that Arminians and Calvinists cannot hear one another. As I read the scriptures, it seems pretty clear why. The scriptures are crystal clear that men resist God's will, but not on why they succeed. The scriptures are also crystal clear that no one freely wills to come to God, but not on how God changes that will. And what does God do and not do for those who are never saved?
The upshot of this ambiguity is that Calvinists and Arminians can actually use the same proof texts to support opposite conclusions. For example:
John 1:12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
The Arminian sees all this coming because of God's gracious reaction to man's belief. The Calvinist sees a critical sequence of events. First, a person receives God, and then he believes. They can argue together for pages on this passage, and never really hear each other's reasoning.
But this post is about Codepoke. :-)
Codepoke believes that all men are born empty and dead, and that the deadness is the lesser of the two problems!
The Arminian says that God makes every man alive enough to choose to have faith or reject it by a little gift called "prevenient grace." Prevenient grace is defined as the grace that prompts our first wish to please God. It all sounds rather circular to me, but then I quit being Arminian 25 years ago.
The Calvinist says that God only makes His elect alive, but He stirs up their mind, will and emotions such that they will aways believe. Before God moved, the man was dead. After God moves, the man is alive, and the Spirit continues to work in the man's nature, guiding him toward a saving faith. If a Calvinist believes in a grace that is prevenient, it is only a formality. To a Calvinist, there is grace and there is "not-grace," and nothing in between.
Codepoke says that a piece of the divine nature of God, taken from Christ, is placed within a man according to the purpose of God. Without that piece, a man cannot sense God. With it, He cannot not sense God.
Every man were born without spiritual eyes, unable to see into the invisibles, and unable to see the Son or the Father. Christ came, and they did not know Him, nor comprehend what they saw. Their will is free, but their senses lie to them, and tell them that there is no God. After they receive spiritual eyesight, and after they see Christ, the whole avalanch of experiences necessary to salvation flow from their free will the way eating flows from the hungry.
2Pe 1:4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Gal 6:15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation.
Ezek 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
This newness is absolutely the core of salvation.
1 Cor 2:14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
The natural man is both dead and empty. The gift of the divine nature, given to him, changes everything.
Only the divine nature is capable of hearing the Word of God, and believing. Only the divine nature is capable of repenting. Only the divine nature can see God, even as He is revealed in the flesh in the first century.
John 10:26 but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.
Looking right at the God of the universe in human flesh, they see only a competitor for the hearts of the people. And, of course, they are right. He's all that and more. They are just blind to the "more" part, because it is invisible, and they have no spiritual eyes.
So, I have to stand with the theory of the Calvinists, and say that God has to move first, and that God only moves for the ones He knew in His bride before He ever created anything.
Then I have to move over and stand with the practice of the Arminians, because Calvinists are not always very good at telling people they have to believe, repent, and be converted. True, mature Calvinism always does preach the necessity of these things, but too often the message is confused by the overly theological.
Placing the new man, the piece of the divine nature, is God's worry. Man's worry is to believe, repent and be converted! These things must happen to be saved, and they happen when a man can truly see Jesus. Preaching must show Jesus, Himself, in all His passion, beauty and faithfulness. It is when Jesus is presented, and the people see Him, that their hearts are pricked and they cry out to Him. Mature Calvinists get this, but every Arminian does.
2 Tim 2:10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.
Salvation is not just given, it is obtained, even for the elect. For this reason, Paul must endure hardship, and everyone who would know Christ must endure hardship. Salvation is a thing to be worked out. It is no jigsaw puzzle, ready cut and made to assemble in 2 hours or your money back. Salvation requires that a man sell everything he owns.
The divine nature implanted in man, can see the value of that pearl of great price. The Christian man will do anything to have the pleasure of His Father and Bridegroom.
So, I believe in Transplanted Divinity. Not that God overcomes our will, but that He mingles His Life with ours, thereby allowing us a true sight of Him. Once we can finally see Him, the rest happens naturally. God is irresistible to us once we can finally see Him.
It is no longer fashionable to quote the Song of Solomon when explaining salvation, but...
Song 1:7
Tell me, you whom I love,
where you graze your flock
and where you rest your sheep at midday.
Why should I be like a veiled woman
beside the flocks of your friends?
Had she never seen Him, she would never have sought Him. And now that she has seen Him, nothing less will do. She has no desire to be anywhere but directly with Him at all times.
Song 5:
8 Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you—
if you find my beloved,
what will you tell him?
Tell him I am faint with love
When the Lord Transplants His Life into us, our free will does the rest.
Plenus EMPTOR
4) Irresistible Grace
Calvinists have been embarassed by this term for centuries. "Irresistible Grace" conjures images of a man trying to better himself by arts or sciences suddenly being accosted by God. He protests his innocence, and desire to be free of God, but He has chosen this one, and this one will be saved, whether he likes it or not. All the while, a poor peasant girl standing by and watching, wishing she could only know God, is passed over and damned. Had God wished her to be saved, her wish should surely have been granted, but God wanted to prove His grace's irresistibility, so He left her to die while taking the harder case.
It's a ridiculous picture, but it's a ridiculous term, too.
(Of course, the term could refer to a grace that is irresistible like a beautiful painting, not like a tsunami, but it's a little late to suggest that now. ;-)
The term came about because the 5 TULIP points were an answer to the 5 points of the Remonstrance. The fourth point of the Remonstrance was "Resistible Grace." Nobody could think ahead to how poorly the term, "irresistible," would market, so Calvinists are stuck with it.
Then again, it's a pretty good fit for the way most Calvinists understand it.
Calvinists believe that the Holy Spirit succeeds in attracting every person whom God selected from that great mass of the to-be-born. It is that simple, really. Some Calvinists portray God as a bulldozer, breaking down every wall of opposition in the hearts of the elect, while others portray Him as a velvet-lined bulldozer. Either way, God succeeds in drawing His elect.
Arminians, again, are repulsed by the thought. That God might be thankful for love won with a bulldozer is anathema to them. The human heart is driven by its own will. God ceded this element of His sovereignty in order to make the love of His children worthy to be called love. Hence, the Spirit's call is resistible. Try as any minister might, be the Son's gift ever so beautiful, and may the Spirit woo with all His guile, most men will still reject God.
It is on this point, more than the other four, that Arminians and Calvinists cannot hear one another. As I read the scriptures, it seems pretty clear why. The scriptures are crystal clear that men resist God's will, but not on why they succeed. The scriptures are also crystal clear that no one freely wills to come to God, but not on how God changes that will. And what does God do and not do for those who are never saved?
The upshot of this ambiguity is that Calvinists and Arminians can actually use the same proof texts to support opposite conclusions. For example:
John 1:12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
The Arminian sees all this coming because of God's gracious reaction to man's belief. The Calvinist sees a critical sequence of events. First, a person receives God, and then he believes. They can argue together for pages on this passage, and never really hear each other's reasoning.
But this post is about Codepoke. :-)
Codepoke believes that all men are born empty and dead, and that the deadness is the lesser of the two problems!
The Arminian says that God makes every man alive enough to choose to have faith or reject it by a little gift called "prevenient grace." Prevenient grace is defined as the grace that prompts our first wish to please God. It all sounds rather circular to me, but then I quit being Arminian 25 years ago.
The Calvinist says that God only makes His elect alive, but He stirs up their mind, will and emotions such that they will aways believe. Before God moved, the man was dead. After God moves, the man is alive, and the Spirit continues to work in the man's nature, guiding him toward a saving faith. If a Calvinist believes in a grace that is prevenient, it is only a formality. To a Calvinist, there is grace and there is "not-grace," and nothing in between.
Codepoke says that a piece of the divine nature of God, taken from Christ, is placed within a man according to the purpose of God. Without that piece, a man cannot sense God. With it, He cannot not sense God.
Every man were born without spiritual eyes, unable to see into the invisibles, and unable to see the Son or the Father. Christ came, and they did not know Him, nor comprehend what they saw. Their will is free, but their senses lie to them, and tell them that there is no God. After they receive spiritual eyesight, and after they see Christ, the whole avalanch of experiences necessary to salvation flow from their free will the way eating flows from the hungry.
2Pe 1:4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
Gal 6:15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation.
Ezek 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
This newness is absolutely the core of salvation.
1 Cor 2:14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
The natural man is both dead and empty. The gift of the divine nature, given to him, changes everything.
Only the divine nature is capable of hearing the Word of God, and believing. Only the divine nature is capable of repenting. Only the divine nature can see God, even as He is revealed in the flesh in the first century.
John 10:26 but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.
Looking right at the God of the universe in human flesh, they see only a competitor for the hearts of the people. And, of course, they are right. He's all that and more. They are just blind to the "more" part, because it is invisible, and they have no spiritual eyes.
So, I have to stand with the theory of the Calvinists, and say that God has to move first, and that God only moves for the ones He knew in His bride before He ever created anything.
Then I have to move over and stand with the practice of the Arminians, because Calvinists are not always very good at telling people they have to believe, repent, and be converted. True, mature Calvinism always does preach the necessity of these things, but too often the message is confused by the overly theological.
Placing the new man, the piece of the divine nature, is God's worry. Man's worry is to believe, repent and be converted! These things must happen to be saved, and they happen when a man can truly see Jesus. Preaching must show Jesus, Himself, in all His passion, beauty and faithfulness. It is when Jesus is presented, and the people see Him, that their hearts are pricked and they cry out to Him. Mature Calvinists get this, but every Arminian does.
2 Tim 2:10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.
Salvation is not just given, it is obtained, even for the elect. For this reason, Paul must endure hardship, and everyone who would know Christ must endure hardship. Salvation is a thing to be worked out. It is no jigsaw puzzle, ready cut and made to assemble in 2 hours or your money back. Salvation requires that a man sell everything he owns.
The divine nature implanted in man, can see the value of that pearl of great price. The Christian man will do anything to have the pleasure of His Father and Bridegroom.
So, I believe in Transplanted Divinity. Not that God overcomes our will, but that He mingles His Life with ours, thereby allowing us a true sight of Him. Once we can finally see Him, the rest happens naturally. God is irresistible to us once we can finally see Him.
It is no longer fashionable to quote the Song of Solomon when explaining salvation, but...
Song 1:7
Tell me, you whom I love,
where you graze your flock
and where you rest your sheep at midday.
Why should I be like a veiled woman
beside the flocks of your friends?
Had she never seen Him, she would never have sought Him. And now that she has seen Him, nothing less will do. She has no desire to be anywhere but directly with Him at all times.
Song 5:
8 Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you—
if you find my beloved,
what will you tell him?
Tell him I am faint with love
When the Lord Transplants His Life into us, our free will does the rest.
Plenus EMPTOR
06 November, 2006
Predestination: TULIP - Limited Atonement
This is the third of six posts regarding TULIP. If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
3) Limited Atonement
This is the one that turns everyone off from Calvinism. Everyone. And that is odd, because both Calvinists and Arminians believe in a Limited Atonement. Calvinists believe it is limited when God decides only to die for those He sovereignly elects, and Arminians decide it is limited when men sovereignly decide not to accept the benefits of Christ's death for themselves.
Calvinists teach that Christ did not die for every man, but only for every man whom the Father gave to Him.
Arminians universally find this point unscriptural and offensive. I know. I was one, and I still have never found an Arminian who can accept the idea that Christ did not die for everyone. The scriptures that say, "everyone," are so clear that they consider any other interpretation reprehensible.
John 3:14-18 - "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."
2 Cor 5:14-15 - "For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again."
1 Timothy 2:3-6 - For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time."
1 Timothy 4:10 - "For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe."
Titus 2:11 (ESV) - "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people."
1 John 2:2 - "And He [Christ] Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world."
These verses are powerful.
Against them, the Calvinists array a barrage of verses of their own. I will quote only my favorite.
John 10: 11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14 "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.
...
25 Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name testify about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.
The bottom line is that the Lamb knows the names of the sheep that are written in His Book of Life.
But, again, the Calvinists have one huge thing wrong. They are thinking about God sovereignly and semi-randomly selecting the weak of this world to be saved as if His focus were upon masses of humanity. Their statement is not false, but it is insufficient.
Jesus is thinking of His Father and His bride when He is dying on that cross.
Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
Heb 12:2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
The Son dies for His bride; specifically; purposefully.
When, in Israel, the lamb was sacrificed to atone for the sins of the past year, God could have accepted the blood of that lamb as atonement for the sins of everyone on earth. He didn't. That lamb that was killed in Jerusalem was killed for the sins of Israel. The rest of the world died without that blood to cleanse them before God.
Israel was God's bride pictured on earth, just as that lamb was God's Lamb pictured on earth.
The Calvinists are wrong because they focus on people in time, and on God's sovereign plan to not atone for some. That is clearly not taught in scripture. There is never the sentence, "I will not die for you."
The Arminians are wrong because they focus on people in time, and on God's submission to their free will. They have Christ dying in doubt as to who would be saved by His sacrifice.
Christ died for His bride. Period. He knew whom she would be, and every name of every member in her. He laid His life down for her in particular, and not for just anyone. His death was not intended for men in time, but for His bride whom He knew perfectly before He ever put on the likeness of sinful flesh. And He knew their names, because they are written the Book of Life of the Lamb.
When He died, it was not to make possible her salvation, but to redeem her. The blood of that Lamb is powerful, and it is handled as a precious gift.
Heb 9:12 He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining [b] eternal redemption.
The difference between obtaining a possibility of eternal redemption and the actuality of it is huge. Christ secured the redemption of His bride - absolutely.
Could anyone have been redeemed by that blood? Yes. Of course. Either way, He knew those by name for whom He died, and He spent His blood for them. He spent His blood for her.
But maybe He died to give a chance to those who had no chance, whose names were not in that book? I cannot grasp my Lord's blood shed for those who will never profit by it, but I cannot fight over this one. If the atonement was only limited by the coldness of faith among men, the difference is moot. We agree together that His blood was precious, and that is the third point of EMPTOR.
Precious Blood
His blood cleansed all that which it touched, and we are made clean by His sacrifice. All those whom He has redeemed are made holy enough and pure enough to know and be with Him. He is greatly satisfied with His work.
Plenus EMPTOR
3) Limited Atonement
This is the one that turns everyone off from Calvinism. Everyone. And that is odd, because both Calvinists and Arminians believe in a Limited Atonement. Calvinists believe it is limited when God decides only to die for those He sovereignly elects, and Arminians decide it is limited when men sovereignly decide not to accept the benefits of Christ's death for themselves.
Calvinists teach that Christ did not die for every man, but only for every man whom the Father gave to Him.
Arminians universally find this point unscriptural and offensive. I know. I was one, and I still have never found an Arminian who can accept the idea that Christ did not die for everyone. The scriptures that say, "everyone," are so clear that they consider any other interpretation reprehensible.
John 3:14-18 - "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."
2 Cor 5:14-15 - "For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again."
1 Timothy 2:3-6 - For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time."
1 Timothy 4:10 - "For to this end we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe."
Titus 2:11 (ESV) - "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people."
1 John 2:2 - "And He [Christ] Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world."
These verses are powerful.
Against them, the Calvinists array a barrage of verses of their own. I will quote only my favorite.
John 10: 11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.
14 "I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.
...
25 Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name testify about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.
The bottom line is that the Lamb knows the names of the sheep that are written in His Book of Life.
But, again, the Calvinists have one huge thing wrong. They are thinking about God sovereignly and semi-randomly selecting the weak of this world to be saved as if His focus were upon masses of humanity. Their statement is not false, but it is insufficient.
Jesus is thinking of His Father and His bride when He is dying on that cross.
Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
Heb 12:2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
The Son dies for His bride; specifically; purposefully.
When, in Israel, the lamb was sacrificed to atone for the sins of the past year, God could have accepted the blood of that lamb as atonement for the sins of everyone on earth. He didn't. That lamb that was killed in Jerusalem was killed for the sins of Israel. The rest of the world died without that blood to cleanse them before God.
Israel was God's bride pictured on earth, just as that lamb was God's Lamb pictured on earth.
The Calvinists are wrong because they focus on people in time, and on God's sovereign plan to not atone for some. That is clearly not taught in scripture. There is never the sentence, "I will not die for you."
The Arminians are wrong because they focus on people in time, and on God's submission to their free will. They have Christ dying in doubt as to who would be saved by His sacrifice.
Christ died for His bride. Period. He knew whom she would be, and every name of every member in her. He laid His life down for her in particular, and not for just anyone. His death was not intended for men in time, but for His bride whom He knew perfectly before He ever put on the likeness of sinful flesh. And He knew their names, because they are written the Book of Life of the Lamb.
When He died, it was not to make possible her salvation, but to redeem her. The blood of that Lamb is powerful, and it is handled as a precious gift.
Heb 9:12 He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining [b] eternal redemption.
The difference between obtaining a possibility of eternal redemption and the actuality of it is huge. Christ secured the redemption of His bride - absolutely.
Could anyone have been redeemed by that blood? Yes. Of course. Either way, He knew those by name for whom He died, and He spent His blood for them. He spent His blood for her.
But maybe He died to give a chance to those who had no chance, whose names were not in that book? I cannot grasp my Lord's blood shed for those who will never profit by it, but I cannot fight over this one. If the atonement was only limited by the coldness of faith among men, the difference is moot. We agree together that His blood was precious, and that is the third point of EMPTOR.
Precious Blood
His blood cleansed all that which it touched, and we are made clean by His sacrifice. All those whom He has redeemed are made holy enough and pure enough to know and be with Him. He is greatly satisfied with His work.
Plenus EMPTOR
05 November, 2006
Predestination: TULIP - Unconditional Election
This is the second of six posts regarding TULIP. If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
2) Unconditional Election
Here the Calvinists and Arminians part ways, and the Arminians usually take a bit of an undeserved beating. Calvinists usually treat Arminians as if they were Open Theists, but many of the staunch opposers of Open Theism are Arminians. Arminians don't believe that God is surprised by the actions of men, nor that He is unsure of the outcome of His creation.
Both see God looking into a future over which He is the Master. They acknowledge that God knows the future perfectly, and that He knows all who will be saved. They agree that God elects before time begins. They differ over the whether the election is conditional or not.
Calvinists portray God contemplating the entirety of time, and observing that some people will be strong and beautiful, and that others will be weak and helpless. God, they observe, chooses the weak and helpless. They see God choosing from amongst the billions of souls who will live on His earth a relative few, but absolutely a great company. He chooses some fraction of those whom He will create, and decides to love them. The rest, the average Calvinist believes, He either chooses to hate or to watch until they willfully earn His hatred, depending upon the interpretation of a couple of key passages.
Arminians believe in conditional election. They believe God lives as much in the future as the past, so it is well within Him to elect those whom He knows will believe in Him when the time comes. He loves every man equally, and desires all to be saved, but He is unable to influence them all to believe in the Son. This willing inability of God's is established in point 4, so I am not going to dwell on it here. The point is that God does choose whom He will save, but His choice is based effectively on whether they will subsequently choose Him. If He could, He would choose everyone, but He cannot.
Codepoke believes that God foreknows and foreordains, but that this is not the most significant point. Both Calvinists and Arminians focus upon man's salvation, when salvation was not even at issue when God was making these decisions.
When God was contemplating the creation of a thing called "a physical universe," there was only the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They were One, and yet they always had each other. They lived by perfect Love, and their Food was to know each Other. They were not deciding to create billions of people, but to create a single bride for God the Son. They were deciding to create an ezer kenegdo - a one outside of and facing Themself, suitable to Themself, equally yoked. The bride would not be equal, but she would be equally yoked with the Son.
God purposed in Himself a mystery.
Eph 3:9 and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.
This mystery was hidden in God for ages, but Paul was charged with making it known. And this hidden mystery was all about an eventually betrothal between Christ and His church.
Eph 5: 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing [b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
Eph 5: 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
God purposed for Christ to somehow leave the Godhead, and to be united to His wife. This He did when He came to earth.
Now, I am going to tell you that I cannot picture God leaving anything about this process to chance. Nothing. God knew everything about this bride before They did anything to bring that purpose to fruit.
God did not elect a billion people to salvation. He elected a single bride. But he didn't stop there. He chose in Christ those portions of His Life that would be made into that bride. Just as Eve was made from a specific part of Adam, the bride was chosen from specific parts of Christ. God knew, before He ever considered creating people, how many living spirits would go into the perfect bride. He knew the color of her eyes, and everything else about her, because He knew every cell in her body by name.
Then, and only then, God decided to create a universe, and a galaxy, and a solar system, and a world, and a species of man, and every individual who would eventually carry a piece of that bride around in her heart. And He knew each of us by name.
Eph 1:11 In him we were also chosen, [e] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,
Rev 13:8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
Rev 17:8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.
2 Tim 1:9 who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,
The bride is not amorphous. The names of all those who make her up are known to God, and written in His Book of Life before the beginning.
In point 3 we will talk about what saves those who make up His bride, and in point 4 how they obtain that salvation. Here we talk only about whether God elected these people, and how.
Arminians and Calvinists both agree that God elected these people. They disagree about how He did it. I side with the Calvinists on the point that He elected them without consideration to anything they might do (for example, foreknowing their believing or not believing in Him.) I step away from the Calvinists, though, when they talk about Him electing from a vast sea of people who would be born.
God elected the members of the bride. He called them by name, before He even considered making a world to put them in. Their living spirits were marked off in Christ and named from before the beginning. When time began, and God created the physical realm, the men and women that He created were all empty, living souls, in need of living spirits. They were empty humans, needing and waiting to be filled with that piece of Christ God had marked off for them.
Only they didn't know that!
That's why it's called a great mystery. God's eternal purpose was hidden from men, and not even fully revealed by Christ when He was here. Jesus fulfilled that purpose, but He did so without fully explaining it. Paul was given that calling.
Unconditional Election falls vastly short of describing what God truly did. I would like to replace the term with, "Mysterious Purpose."
Yes, we were chosen by name in Christ before the foundations of the world were laid, but not in a simple "you're a sheep - you're a goat," kind of a way. We were all blessed parts of a bride chosen in Christ for God's own good and glory. We were named and known for His good purpose in a way that no man could have guessed, but in a way that was finally revealed in the church.
This Mysterious Purpose is all about the Godhead. And God is satisfied with His purchase.
Plenus EMPTOR
2) Unconditional Election
Here the Calvinists and Arminians part ways, and the Arminians usually take a bit of an undeserved beating. Calvinists usually treat Arminians as if they were Open Theists, but many of the staunch opposers of Open Theism are Arminians. Arminians don't believe that God is surprised by the actions of men, nor that He is unsure of the outcome of His creation.
Both see God looking into a future over which He is the Master. They acknowledge that God knows the future perfectly, and that He knows all who will be saved. They agree that God elects before time begins. They differ over the whether the election is conditional or not.
Calvinists portray God contemplating the entirety of time, and observing that some people will be strong and beautiful, and that others will be weak and helpless. God, they observe, chooses the weak and helpless. They see God choosing from amongst the billions of souls who will live on His earth a relative few, but absolutely a great company. He chooses some fraction of those whom He will create, and decides to love them. The rest, the average Calvinist believes, He either chooses to hate or to watch until they willfully earn His hatred, depending upon the interpretation of a couple of key passages.
Arminians believe in conditional election. They believe God lives as much in the future as the past, so it is well within Him to elect those whom He knows will believe in Him when the time comes. He loves every man equally, and desires all to be saved, but He is unable to influence them all to believe in the Son. This willing inability of God's is established in point 4, so I am not going to dwell on it here. The point is that God does choose whom He will save, but His choice is based effectively on whether they will subsequently choose Him. If He could, He would choose everyone, but He cannot.
Codepoke believes that God foreknows and foreordains, but that this is not the most significant point. Both Calvinists and Arminians focus upon man's salvation, when salvation was not even at issue when God was making these decisions.
When God was contemplating the creation of a thing called "a physical universe," there was only the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They were One, and yet they always had each other. They lived by perfect Love, and their Food was to know each Other. They were not deciding to create billions of people, but to create a single bride for God the Son. They were deciding to create an ezer kenegdo - a one outside of and facing Themself, suitable to Themself, equally yoked. The bride would not be equal, but she would be equally yoked with the Son.
God purposed in Himself a mystery.
Eph 3:9 and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.
This mystery was hidden in God for ages, but Paul was charged with making it known. And this hidden mystery was all about an eventually betrothal between Christ and His church.
Eph 5: 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing [b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
Eph 5: 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
God purposed for Christ to somehow leave the Godhead, and to be united to His wife. This He did when He came to earth.
Now, I am going to tell you that I cannot picture God leaving anything about this process to chance. Nothing. God knew everything about this bride before They did anything to bring that purpose to fruit.
God did not elect a billion people to salvation. He elected a single bride. But he didn't stop there. He chose in Christ those portions of His Life that would be made into that bride. Just as Eve was made from a specific part of Adam, the bride was chosen from specific parts of Christ. God knew, before He ever considered creating people, how many living spirits would go into the perfect bride. He knew the color of her eyes, and everything else about her, because He knew every cell in her body by name.
Then, and only then, God decided to create a universe, and a galaxy, and a solar system, and a world, and a species of man, and every individual who would eventually carry a piece of that bride around in her heart. And He knew each of us by name.
Eph 1:11 In him we were also chosen, [e] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,
Rev 13:8 All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world.
Rev 17:8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.
2 Tim 1:9 who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,
The bride is not amorphous. The names of all those who make her up are known to God, and written in His Book of Life before the beginning.
In point 3 we will talk about what saves those who make up His bride, and in point 4 how they obtain that salvation. Here we talk only about whether God elected these people, and how.
Arminians and Calvinists both agree that God elected these people. They disagree about how He did it. I side with the Calvinists on the point that He elected them without consideration to anything they might do (for example, foreknowing their believing or not believing in Him.) I step away from the Calvinists, though, when they talk about Him electing from a vast sea of people who would be born.
God elected the members of the bride. He called them by name, before He even considered making a world to put them in. Their living spirits were marked off in Christ and named from before the beginning. When time began, and God created the physical realm, the men and women that He created were all empty, living souls, in need of living spirits. They were empty humans, needing and waiting to be filled with that piece of Christ God had marked off for them.
Only they didn't know that!
That's why it's called a great mystery. God's eternal purpose was hidden from men, and not even fully revealed by Christ when He was here. Jesus fulfilled that purpose, but He did so without fully explaining it. Paul was given that calling.
Unconditional Election falls vastly short of describing what God truly did. I would like to replace the term with, "Mysterious Purpose."
Yes, we were chosen by name in Christ before the foundations of the world were laid, but not in a simple "you're a sheep - you're a goat," kind of a way. We were all blessed parts of a bride chosen in Christ for God's own good and glory. We were named and known for His good purpose in a way that no man could have guessed, but in a way that was finally revealed in the church.
This Mysterious Purpose is all about the Godhead. And God is satisfied with His purchase.
Plenus EMPTOR
04 November, 2006
Predestination: TULIP - Total Depravity
This is the first of six posts regarding TULIP. If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
1) Total Depravity
Calvinists hold that man is shot through with sin. They don't believe that man is as sinful as he can be, but that there is no part of him that is not sinful. He is so sinful that he cannot muster up a saving faith in Christ without God doing it for him. Man is truly dead in his sins, and like any dead man, he cannot help himself at all. Man cannot have the faith it takes to be saved.
Arminians also believe that man is dead in his sins, and that he cannot come to God without divine help.
Codepoke believes that man is dead in his sins, but that this is not the most significant point. Man died in the garden, the day he ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. He died, and was shot through with sin completely, so I agree with the Calvinists and Arminians on the point they make. I just believe that they miss the point that needs to be made.
Even before he ate that fruit, man was not alive.
1 Cor 15:45 So it is written: "The first Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.
Adam had only a living soul, not a living spirit. He was supposed to take Life into himself, and did not.
Gen 2:9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Had Adam eaten of that Tree, it would have made him alive as surely as eating of the other tree made him dead.
Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
The Life God talks about here is not clearly defined. We find that often in scripture, upon the first mention of a thing. It is more fully explained as the scripture goes on, though. Let me fast forward to the gospels.
John 1:4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all people.
John 4:14 but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
John 6:33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
John 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
John 6:53 Jesus said to them, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
John 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
I see two things in the Garden of Eden. There is a Tree of Life, and there is Fruit on that Tree. Then I look at the rest of scripture, and I see Jesus as a Vine Tree, and Jesus as Bread. Jesus commands us to eat to gain eternal life, to eat Bread and to eat His Flesh.
If we look at the Garden of Eden as a one-dimensional experience for Adam and Eve, merely as a chance for them to not sin, then it is easy to overlook the other Tree. Adam's and Eve's experience was not a simple choice between "obey" and "disobey," though. They had to choose between "Life" and "Knowledge."
Knowledge, the serpent correctly told them, would make them like God. (Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.) Life, though, would have made them one with God. (John 17:21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us ...)
The question is not whether man is totally depraved - he is - but whether he was ever even a little bit alive.
So, on the first point, the one on which the Calvinists and Arminians agree, I believe they have spoken far short of the truth.
So, while not completely disagreeing with Total Depravity, I have to say that I believe in Empty Humanity. Adam and Eve were empty vessels, waiting to be filled with either life or knowledge. They chose knowledge. That choice was a rebellion and a sin that led to their immediate spiritual death, and eventual physical death.
Now man needs not only to be filled, but also to be restored.
Christ has done this for us.
Plenus EMPTOR
1) Total Depravity
Calvinists hold that man is shot through with sin. They don't believe that man is as sinful as he can be, but that there is no part of him that is not sinful. He is so sinful that he cannot muster up a saving faith in Christ without God doing it for him. Man is truly dead in his sins, and like any dead man, he cannot help himself at all. Man cannot have the faith it takes to be saved.
Arminians also believe that man is dead in his sins, and that he cannot come to God without divine help.
Codepoke believes that man is dead in his sins, but that this is not the most significant point. Man died in the garden, the day he ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. He died, and was shot through with sin completely, so I agree with the Calvinists and Arminians on the point they make. I just believe that they miss the point that needs to be made.
Even before he ate that fruit, man was not alive.
1 Cor 15:45 So it is written: "The first Adam became a living being"; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.
Adam had only a living soul, not a living spirit. He was supposed to take Life into himself, and did not.
Gen 2:9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Had Adam eaten of that Tree, it would have made him alive as surely as eating of the other tree made him dead.
Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
The Life God talks about here is not clearly defined. We find that often in scripture, upon the first mention of a thing. It is more fully explained as the scripture goes on, though. Let me fast forward to the gospels.
John 1:4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all people.
John 4:14 but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
John 6:33 For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
John 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."
John 6:53 Jesus said to them, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
John 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.
I see two things in the Garden of Eden. There is a Tree of Life, and there is Fruit on that Tree. Then I look at the rest of scripture, and I see Jesus as a Vine Tree, and Jesus as Bread. Jesus commands us to eat to gain eternal life, to eat Bread and to eat His Flesh.
If we look at the Garden of Eden as a one-dimensional experience for Adam and Eve, merely as a chance for them to not sin, then it is easy to overlook the other Tree. Adam's and Eve's experience was not a simple choice between "obey" and "disobey," though. They had to choose between "Life" and "Knowledge."
Knowledge, the serpent correctly told them, would make them like God. (Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.) Life, though, would have made them one with God. (John 17:21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us ...)
The question is not whether man is totally depraved - he is - but whether he was ever even a little bit alive.
So, on the first point, the one on which the Calvinists and Arminians agree, I believe they have spoken far short of the truth.
So, while not completely disagreeing with Total Depravity, I have to say that I believe in Empty Humanity. Adam and Eve were empty vessels, waiting to be filled with either life or knowledge. They chose knowledge. That choice was a rebellion and a sin that led to their immediate spiritual death, and eventual physical death.
Now man needs not only to be filled, but also to be restored.
Christ has done this for us.
Plenus EMPTOR
Predestination: TULIP versus EMPTOR
What's the fun of looking at ancient and honored doctrines if you can't thumb your nose at them. :-)
The previous post is how I like to think of predestination. It is, admittedly, not a good format for discussion though. TULIP has proven, over the years, to be pretty effective in that right, so let's talk about TULIP for a little while.
If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
I had intended to write one post comparing Calvinists and Arminians, identifying where I thought they were both wrong. Then I started writing. That one post would have been long, even by my standards.
Not only that, but I believe there is a missing point in both systems - *the* missing point, actually. So, I am going to write 6 posts on Plenus EMPTOR. Plenus means satisfied and emptor is supposed to mean "buyer." God is the satisfied buyer of our salvation.
So, some time tonight, I would imagine, I will post on Total Depravity, comparing it to the mysterious "E" in EMPTOR.
See you then. :-)
The previous post is how I like to think of predestination. It is, admittedly, not a good format for discussion though. TULIP has proven, over the years, to be pretty effective in that right, so let's talk about TULIP for a little while.
If you are not familar with that acronym, Wikipedia has a number of articles on the subject. This one is probably the most succinct and provides links to the counter positions of Arminians.
I had intended to write one post comparing Calvinists and Arminians, identifying where I thought they were both wrong. Then I started writing. That one post would have been long, even by my standards.
Not only that, but I believe there is a missing point in both systems - *the* missing point, actually. So, I am going to write 6 posts on Plenus EMPTOR. Plenus means satisfied and emptor is supposed to mean "buyer." God is the satisfied buyer of our salvation.
So, some time tonight, I would imagine, I will post on Total Depravity, comparing it to the mysterious "E" in EMPTOR.
See you then. :-)
02 November, 2006
Predestination: Codepoke Answers Everything
No, not how the omniscient God actually "does" predestination. :-)
Nor will I answer every objection to classic predestination I have heard over the past month or two on this site. I have loved those insights, and thank you all for taking the time to offer them to me. After hearing them all, I still believe that God knows whom He will save before he begins creation, but those comments have moved me nonetheless. I think my understanding of the human side of predestination is richer than it was two months ago, and I believe that I will continue to grow in that area.
So, I will "answer everything" about how Codepoke understands what God has revealed about predestination. Not quite as helpful or dramatic as untying the 1600 year knot that Augustine and Pelagius drew tight, but potentially more amusing. Certainly more possible.
This post will be all about the elephants.
Elephants were in the news this week. It seems that they have joined the short list of living things that understand what a mirror is. When an elephant sees herself in a mirror, she starts primping. The only other species to do this are apes, humans, and maybe dolphins.
When animals of all other species sees themselves in a mirror, they starts flirting or fighting, depending upon their mood and other things. Even a monkey will fail to realize that it is "monkey see/monkey do" -ing with itself. As smart as a chimp is, he will not grasp the fact that that other chimp is himself, and not "other" at all.
It takes some special wiring to "get" mirrors. Only 3 species are social enough to understand themselves in a mirror.
And a human being cannot "get" God.
When a human - any human - every human - all humans - without exception - looks at God, he sees himself.
When an elephant looks in a mirror, he gets that he is looking at himself. But if a chimp riding on the only elephant in Columbus were to look in a mirror, he could never get that he is looking at himself.
In the same way, when a man looks at a seed sprouting from the dirt, he sees his own work. When he sees the rain coming, he sees his own relief (or maybe the fruit of some offering he made to the rain gods last week.) When he looks at the stars, he sees a random universe that culminated in man! When he looks at a baby, he sees the fruit of his love, and when he looks at death, he sees an irresistible force coming after him.
No matter how hard man looks at the universe around him, he only sees himself. The universe is projecting God to him as hard as it can, but man assumes all that beauty is simply his own reflection.
Man really is more truly descended from the chimp than the elephant.
A Long Time Ago, Before Any Galaxy No Matter How Far Away
God is alone.
There is not yet a universe, nor a world, nor even a plan. There is only God, the infinite Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God, and three Persons.
They is alone, and it is good, but evidently it could be better, because They decide They is going to find a bride for the Son.
They cannot go on a search for her, because They is the only thing there is.
They decide They is going to make a bride.
From what, though? From nothing?
No. That is not the way life works. Life brings forth abundantly, kind after its kind. A bride suitable for Him would have to be kind of Their kind.
But we have a story that explains how this happens. God showed how to find kind of one's kind, when there is only one to start with.
God created everything, and then Adam. Adam was alone, and it was not good. Adam could find no help suitable to him in all the creatures God had made for his pleasure and rule, but God was only waiting to show Adam something truly amazing.
God did not "create" Eve. He "built" her according to the Hebrew. He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep (think, "death," here, not anaesthesia.) He killed Adam, and took from His wounded side a piece of human flesh and bone. That piece of humanity God carded, spun and knit into a suitable mate for Adam. And it was good.
God did not do this because it was the only way. They did it because it was the way that gave us the most insight into Their life, insight into the plan of God. Jesus, too, was killed, and from His wounded side came a mate suitable to Him.
Back To That Faraway Time Again, Before Adam
God knows what They will do. God knows that They will take a piece of Themself and card, spin and knit that piece into a mate suitable for the Son.
But this is not a process that God will leave to chance.
Every detail of that bride will be known, planned and complete before the first Word of creation is spoken. Before God has the first inclination to create, They has seen the end from the beginning, and They knows exactly how many living cells - souls, really - will make up the body of the Son, the bride. Before the word "Let..." is spoken, the flesh and bone that will be taken from the Son and built into His bride, is marked off in Christ.
Hence, Paul says, "He has chosen us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world."
And Now To the Doctrine
I am satisfied that this understanding of the things that happened before creation paves the way for a reconciliation of predestination, the Love of God, and the caprice of man.
+ Remember the elephant and the chimp?
The only thing that makes a man able to see God, is that Jesus Christ is ingrafted into his heart. Man cannot see God, but a Christian man does. The point I dodged at the beginning of this post is that the elephant always sees himself in the mirror. The chimp always sees himself in the mirror as some other chimp, but the elephant always sees himself.
It takes no effort or training for the elephant to see himself in the mirror. The elephant sees an elephant, raises his trunk, and says, "Hey, that's me!" It's not even a conclusion for him. It's just as plain as the nose on his face (so to speak.)
Even so the Christian.
When the Christian man sees the seed sprout from the earth, he sees divine creation and providence. He sees God's provision in the rain, His immense beauty in the stars, and His incredible imagination in the intricate glory of creation. The Christian man sees God's promise in every baby, and the scar on God's heel in every death.
And he is just like that elephant. You don't need to teach the Christian man to see God. He cannot not see Him. God is everywhere, and everywhere the Christian man looks, he sees His image. Once the spiritual connection is made, the man is a new creature forever. Old things are passed away. All things are become new. All things are become true.
And to see God is to love Him.
+ So, what do I say about man's free will? About his caprice?
Caprice is God's gift to the natural man. Much like that chimp, the natural man is brilliant, fun and creative. He is a loyal friend, and an exciting competitor. But he cannot see God, no matter how clearly the divine beauty is staring him in the face.
Free will is the highest to which a natural man can attain. And in the fall, that free will was perverted. Now, his free will turns against God. It's as if the chimp learned to hate all mirrors for some indecipherable reason. Man hates God, and his free will is radically turned against him. Caprice is not evil in itself. It is just natural. But when the natural man sees the image of God, anywhere in the world, his free will is as likely to try to destroy it as to admire it.
But even if the natural man did not hate God, still he would be blind to Him.
A piece of Christ was marked off and set aside before the foundation of the world to be born in you. And when it is placed in your heart, your blindness ends. You see God in everything. You see God, and you love Him. You soon repent your sins, and turn to be given to Him forever.
And you still have caprice!
But now, your caprice is spent in delighting God. He is visible to you now, and He is beautiful, and the new man in you reaches out to love Him - of your own free will. You are able to surprise Him, and that is what love is all about. Before He rewires you, you are blind to Him. Afterward, you not only see, but you see the Most Lovely One.
Is man a piano to be played by God? Hardly! The Christian man is a living, free spirit, healed of his blindness by the mercy of God, and freed to love the Most Lovely One.
If a Christian man were made of the same stuff as a non-Christian man, then his decision would be "the thing" that mattered. If there is no difference between a man and a Christian man, then free will and God's Sovereignty must be at odds. But because a man is made a new creature in Christ, and this new creature sees God, the man is more like the elephant than the chimp. As the elephant cannot mistake the image in the mirror for someone else, so the Christian man can no longer mistake divinity for anything but God. That piece of Christ marked off an eternity ago has been placed in the man, and nothing will ever be the same.
+ And what of those who will be damned? Does God not love them?
I love Matt 5:44-48 which says in part,
But I say unto you, "Love your enemies" ... that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven for He makes His sun to rise on the evil ... and sends rain ... on the unjust ... Be therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
God loved Abraham and Abraham's children. We know that. But did God love the Edomites and the Philistines? According to this verse, yes He did. God loved them, but without ever forgetting that they were His enemies. God sent them rain and sunshine as tokens of His love. He did not starve them into submission, nor smite them with miracles, but neither did He preach them the gospel. God sent them rain and sunshine.
And this was perfect love.
To say that God loves all men in the same way is difficult in light of God's dealings with everyone not born of Abraham. God loved Abraham differently even than He loved Terah, Abraham's own father. God called Abraham, and did not call Terah. God loved Terah, and God loved all those who were not Israel, but He loved them in rain and sunshine, not in Spirit.
I have said this before, but I will repeat it here. God warned Eve, when He cursed the serpent and the ground, that He was going to greatly increase both her sorrow and her conception. I believe that God knew all those whom He had marked off, predestined, in Christ before the foundation of the world. Had there been no fall, these predestined ones would have been born on earth, but no one else. There was a fall, though, and there were curses. Due to all this, God told Eve that He Himself would increase her sorrow and her conception.
God would allow those to be born who would never be able to see Him.
Does God love everyone? Yes, but not in the same way. God loves those He knew before creation with an everlasting love. The rest He loves as enemies, and in the last day He will say to them, "Depart from Me. I never knew you."
I understand that this seems unfair to us, but God does not seem to fear appearing unfair. He allowed the entire world to suffer without the knowledge of Him, and called Abraham alone. He understands their plight, and He says that it will be better for Tyre and Sidon than for those who heard the testimony directly from His mouth and rejected Him. But, though He understands their plight, He does not change it. God did not command the Jews to begin immediately to evangelize the world as soon as He gave them the Truth of the Law. Yes, I know that God commanded the Jews to spread the Truth, but He did not show any signs of remorse that they did not go. He did not repent the millions of souls whom He allowed to die without hearing the Truth once.
God sees things differently than we do.
God loves those who can see Him. In the same way that the elephant is more social than the chimp, and so he knows when he is looking at himself; the Christian man is spiritual, and knows when he is looking at God. When we look at God - and see Him - His heart is stirred toward us.
He sees those He marked off in Christ before the foundation of the earth, and He knows that He will place that marked off bit of Christ into all of His own - everyone one of them - every time. His heart is not hard toward the others. He loves them, but not in the way that He loves those He has known from before the first Word was spoken.
Ephesians 3:9-11 says:
And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God, Who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:
God does not capriciously and randomly select some, and pass over others. He also does not look at us, and decide to love some of us and not love others. He predestines a bride, and all of us who will be in her. Then He creates a world in which to build her. And finally, He builds His Life into each of us, so that we can be knit together into that one body.
There is a mystery that was hid in God, and now it is being revealed by the church every day. This revelation was purposed by God before He created anything, and His purpose will not be denied. It will not be deflected. It will not be distracted. It is being performed perfectly according to how Jesus Christ has executed it.
Jesus never fails.
Nor will I answer every objection to classic predestination I have heard over the past month or two on this site. I have loved those insights, and thank you all for taking the time to offer them to me. After hearing them all, I still believe that God knows whom He will save before he begins creation, but those comments have moved me nonetheless. I think my understanding of the human side of predestination is richer than it was two months ago, and I believe that I will continue to grow in that area.
So, I will "answer everything" about how Codepoke understands what God has revealed about predestination. Not quite as helpful or dramatic as untying the 1600 year knot that Augustine and Pelagius drew tight, but potentially more amusing. Certainly more possible.
This post will be all about the elephants.
Elephants were in the news this week. It seems that they have joined the short list of living things that understand what a mirror is. When an elephant sees herself in a mirror, she starts primping. The only other species to do this are apes, humans, and maybe dolphins.
When animals of all other species sees themselves in a mirror, they starts flirting or fighting, depending upon their mood and other things. Even a monkey will fail to realize that it is "monkey see/monkey do" -ing with itself. As smart as a chimp is, he will not grasp the fact that that other chimp is himself, and not "other" at all.
It takes some special wiring to "get" mirrors. Only 3 species are social enough to understand themselves in a mirror.
And a human being cannot "get" God.
When a human - any human - every human - all humans - without exception - looks at God, he sees himself.
When an elephant looks in a mirror, he gets that he is looking at himself. But if a chimp riding on the only elephant in Columbus were to look in a mirror, he could never get that he is looking at himself.
In the same way, when a man looks at a seed sprouting from the dirt, he sees his own work. When he sees the rain coming, he sees his own relief (or maybe the fruit of some offering he made to the rain gods last week.) When he looks at the stars, he sees a random universe that culminated in man! When he looks at a baby, he sees the fruit of his love, and when he looks at death, he sees an irresistible force coming after him.
No matter how hard man looks at the universe around him, he only sees himself. The universe is projecting God to him as hard as it can, but man assumes all that beauty is simply his own reflection.
Man really is more truly descended from the chimp than the elephant.
A Long Time Ago, Before Any Galaxy No Matter How Far Away
God is alone.
There is not yet a universe, nor a world, nor even a plan. There is only God, the infinite Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One God, and three Persons.
They is alone, and it is good, but evidently it could be better, because They decide They is going to find a bride for the Son.
They cannot go on a search for her, because They is the only thing there is.
They decide They is going to make a bride.
From what, though? From nothing?
No. That is not the way life works. Life brings forth abundantly, kind after its kind. A bride suitable for Him would have to be kind of Their kind.
But we have a story that explains how this happens. God showed how to find kind of one's kind, when there is only one to start with.
God created everything, and then Adam. Adam was alone, and it was not good. Adam could find no help suitable to him in all the creatures God had made for his pleasure and rule, but God was only waiting to show Adam something truly amazing.
God did not "create" Eve. He "built" her according to the Hebrew. He caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep (think, "death," here, not anaesthesia.) He killed Adam, and took from His wounded side a piece of human flesh and bone. That piece of humanity God carded, spun and knit into a suitable mate for Adam. And it was good.
God did not do this because it was the only way. They did it because it was the way that gave us the most insight into Their life, insight into the plan of God. Jesus, too, was killed, and from His wounded side came a mate suitable to Him.
Back To That Faraway Time Again, Before Adam
God knows what They will do. God knows that They will take a piece of Themself and card, spin and knit that piece into a mate suitable for the Son.
But this is not a process that God will leave to chance.
Every detail of that bride will be known, planned and complete before the first Word of creation is spoken. Before God has the first inclination to create, They has seen the end from the beginning, and They knows exactly how many living cells - souls, really - will make up the body of the Son, the bride. Before the word "Let..." is spoken, the flesh and bone that will be taken from the Son and built into His bride, is marked off in Christ.
Hence, Paul says, "He has chosen us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world."
And Now To the Doctrine
I am satisfied that this understanding of the things that happened before creation paves the way for a reconciliation of predestination, the Love of God, and the caprice of man.
+ Remember the elephant and the chimp?
The only thing that makes a man able to see God, is that Jesus Christ is ingrafted into his heart. Man cannot see God, but a Christian man does. The point I dodged at the beginning of this post is that the elephant always sees himself in the mirror. The chimp always sees himself in the mirror as some other chimp, but the elephant always sees himself.
It takes no effort or training for the elephant to see himself in the mirror. The elephant sees an elephant, raises his trunk, and says, "Hey, that's me!" It's not even a conclusion for him. It's just as plain as the nose on his face (so to speak.)
Even so the Christian.
When the Christian man sees the seed sprout from the earth, he sees divine creation and providence. He sees God's provision in the rain, His immense beauty in the stars, and His incredible imagination in the intricate glory of creation. The Christian man sees God's promise in every baby, and the scar on God's heel in every death.
And he is just like that elephant. You don't need to teach the Christian man to see God. He cannot not see Him. God is everywhere, and everywhere the Christian man looks, he sees His image. Once the spiritual connection is made, the man is a new creature forever. Old things are passed away. All things are become new. All things are become true.
And to see God is to love Him.
+ So, what do I say about man's free will? About his caprice?
Caprice is God's gift to the natural man. Much like that chimp, the natural man is brilliant, fun and creative. He is a loyal friend, and an exciting competitor. But he cannot see God, no matter how clearly the divine beauty is staring him in the face.
Free will is the highest to which a natural man can attain. And in the fall, that free will was perverted. Now, his free will turns against God. It's as if the chimp learned to hate all mirrors for some indecipherable reason. Man hates God, and his free will is radically turned against him. Caprice is not evil in itself. It is just natural. But when the natural man sees the image of God, anywhere in the world, his free will is as likely to try to destroy it as to admire it.
But even if the natural man did not hate God, still he would be blind to Him.
A piece of Christ was marked off and set aside before the foundation of the world to be born in you. And when it is placed in your heart, your blindness ends. You see God in everything. You see God, and you love Him. You soon repent your sins, and turn to be given to Him forever.
And you still have caprice!
But now, your caprice is spent in delighting God. He is visible to you now, and He is beautiful, and the new man in you reaches out to love Him - of your own free will. You are able to surprise Him, and that is what love is all about. Before He rewires you, you are blind to Him. Afterward, you not only see, but you see the Most Lovely One.
Is man a piano to be played by God? Hardly! The Christian man is a living, free spirit, healed of his blindness by the mercy of God, and freed to love the Most Lovely One.
If a Christian man were made of the same stuff as a non-Christian man, then his decision would be "the thing" that mattered. If there is no difference between a man and a Christian man, then free will and God's Sovereignty must be at odds. But because a man is made a new creature in Christ, and this new creature sees God, the man is more like the elephant than the chimp. As the elephant cannot mistake the image in the mirror for someone else, so the Christian man can no longer mistake divinity for anything but God. That piece of Christ marked off an eternity ago has been placed in the man, and nothing will ever be the same.
+ And what of those who will be damned? Does God not love them?
I love Matt 5:44-48 which says in part,
But I say unto you, "Love your enemies" ... that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven for He makes His sun to rise on the evil ... and sends rain ... on the unjust ... Be therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
God loved Abraham and Abraham's children. We know that. But did God love the Edomites and the Philistines? According to this verse, yes He did. God loved them, but without ever forgetting that they were His enemies. God sent them rain and sunshine as tokens of His love. He did not starve them into submission, nor smite them with miracles, but neither did He preach them the gospel. God sent them rain and sunshine.
And this was perfect love.
To say that God loves all men in the same way is difficult in light of God's dealings with everyone not born of Abraham. God loved Abraham differently even than He loved Terah, Abraham's own father. God called Abraham, and did not call Terah. God loved Terah, and God loved all those who were not Israel, but He loved them in rain and sunshine, not in Spirit.
I have said this before, but I will repeat it here. God warned Eve, when He cursed the serpent and the ground, that He was going to greatly increase both her sorrow and her conception. I believe that God knew all those whom He had marked off, predestined, in Christ before the foundation of the world. Had there been no fall, these predestined ones would have been born on earth, but no one else. There was a fall, though, and there were curses. Due to all this, God told Eve that He Himself would increase her sorrow and her conception.
God would allow those to be born who would never be able to see Him.
Does God love everyone? Yes, but not in the same way. God loves those He knew before creation with an everlasting love. The rest He loves as enemies, and in the last day He will say to them, "Depart from Me. I never knew you."
I understand that this seems unfair to us, but God does not seem to fear appearing unfair. He allowed the entire world to suffer without the knowledge of Him, and called Abraham alone. He understands their plight, and He says that it will be better for Tyre and Sidon than for those who heard the testimony directly from His mouth and rejected Him. But, though He understands their plight, He does not change it. God did not command the Jews to begin immediately to evangelize the world as soon as He gave them the Truth of the Law. Yes, I know that God commanded the Jews to spread the Truth, but He did not show any signs of remorse that they did not go. He did not repent the millions of souls whom He allowed to die without hearing the Truth once.
God sees things differently than we do.
God loves those who can see Him. In the same way that the elephant is more social than the chimp, and so he knows when he is looking at himself; the Christian man is spiritual, and knows when he is looking at God. When we look at God - and see Him - His heart is stirred toward us.
He sees those He marked off in Christ before the foundation of the earth, and He knows that He will place that marked off bit of Christ into all of His own - everyone one of them - every time. His heart is not hard toward the others. He loves them, but not in the way that He loves those He has known from before the first Word was spoken.
Ephesians 3:9-11 says:
And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God, Who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord:
God does not capriciously and randomly select some, and pass over others. He also does not look at us, and decide to love some of us and not love others. He predestines a bride, and all of us who will be in her. Then He creates a world in which to build her. And finally, He builds His Life into each of us, so that we can be knit together into that one body.
There is a mystery that was hid in God, and now it is being revealed by the church every day. This revelation was purposed by God before He created anything, and His purpose will not be denied. It will not be deflected. It will not be distracted. It is being performed perfectly according to how Jesus Christ has executed it.
Jesus never fails.
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