More Than Conquerors

Don Carson post:  1 Samuel 10; Romans 8; Jeremiah 47; Psalms 23–24

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR Christians to be “more than conquerors” (Rom. 8:37)? A considerable body of thought pictures a special group of illustrious Christians who “live above it all,” powerful in confronting temptation, victorious in their prayer lives, fruitful in their witness, mature and faithful in their relationships. And none of that is what the text says.

First, the “us” to whom the apostle refers includes all Christians. All Christians are the ones whom God has foreknown, “predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son,” called, justified, glorified (Rom. 8:29–30). The people referred to are not the elite of the elect; they are ordinary Christians, all genuine Christians.

Second, the actual evidence that they are “more than conquerors” is that they persevere regardless of all opposition. That opposition may take the form of horrible persecution, of the kind that Scripture describes (Rom. 8:35–38). It may be some other hardship, all the way to famine. The glories of life will not finally seduce them; the terrors of death will not finally sway them; neither the pressures of the present nor the frustrations of the future will destroy them (Rom. 8:38). Neither human powers nor anything else in all creation, not even all the powers of hell unleashed, can “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39).

Third, as the last sentence already makes clear, that from which Christians cannot be finally separated is the “love of Christ” (Rom. 8:35) or the love of God in Christ (Rom. 8:39). At one level, of course, that is simply saying that no power can stop Christians from being Christians. That is why we are “more than conquerors.” But that point could have been made a lot of different ways. To make it this way, with an emphasis on the love of Christ as that from which we cannot be separated, reminds us of the sheer glory and pleasure that is ours, both now and in eternity, to be in such a relationship. We are not simply acquitted; we are loved. We are loved not simply by a peer, but by God himself. Nor is this a reference to the general love that God has for his entire creation. What is at stake here is that special love that attaches to “all who have been called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

Fourth, the guarantee that we shall prevail and persevere, and prove to be “more than conquerors” in this sense, is nothing other than the sovereign purposes of God (Rom. 8:29–30), manifest in the death of his Son on our behalf (Rom. 8:31–35). “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:32). No greater security is imaginable.

To Find Him

Steven Dilla post:  The Object of Our Faith

Readers’ Choice (originally published July 21, 2015)

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“I was reading Humans of New York’s Facebook page and a woman commented that she grew up with organized religion but once she moved to NYC, she was liberated from thinking what others told her to think. Christianity is more about falling in love, an adventure, and an achievement than about organized religion.”— JoAnn

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Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. —Acts 8.35

Coming to belief in Christ is a mysterious and wonderful thing. As Augustine explained, “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement.”

Acts 8-9 recounts the stories of salvation among the least likely of subjects: a racially oppressed group, a mystic, a pagan leader, and ultimately a radical extremist who had dedicated the first half of his life to terrorizing the early Christians.

What each held in common was their willingness to forfeit their previous systems of belief as a response to the glorious grace set before them. Because the stories move so quickly from one to another it’s easy to miss the struggle each would have faced in yielding their worldview to an outside source.

This struggle has not diminished today. Timothy Keller recounts the story Duke University professor Stanley Hauerwas tells of his philosophy students and their assumption that modern individuals must determine truth for themselves.

The professor explains that “Every religion and culture was different, but every culture before our culture said, ‘Right and wrong is determined by something outside the self, and it’s the job of the self to harmonize with it.’ We are the first culture, Hauerwas says, that is marked by “expressive individualism.”

“Expressive individualism is the view that right and wrong is not determined by outside the self, but right and wrong is determined by what you find in your own consciousness.”

Hauerwas challenges his students with this; “‘I’m not going to argue which of these views is right. All I’m going to tell you is this: When an American says you have to think and determine truth for yourself, you are not thinking for yourself at all. You are adopting a particular way of thinking, a particular view of truth and spiritual reality. It is a Western, almost tribal, white European way of thinking based on the Enlightenment, based on Romanticism, those European movements, and you’re believing it not because you’re thinking for yourself, but because your culture has told you to do it.’”

Responding to Christ challenges our assumptions, pride, and illusion of self-sufficiency. The alternative, assimilating God into our personal worldview, is just as much an act of faith, but one rooted in selfishness. Augustine put it another way, “If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

Shine the Light

Jon Bloom post: Keep Speaking

This is not the time for Christian timidity. This is not the time for Christian silence. This is not the time for Christian retreat. This is a time for Christian boldness. It is a time to speak.

Into a world that considers any exclusive truth claim to be the height of bigotry, we must lovingly speak that Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through [him]” (John 14:6).

Into a world that has rejected God’s objective meaning for marriage, opening the door to a wide range of perversities, we must lovingly speak that it was God who said, “a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5).

Into a world that has embraced the horrific lie that to kill a child is an act of compassion to his mother, we must lovingly speak that God alone has the right to give and take life and that we shall not murder (Job 1:21; Exodus 20:13).

Speak Sanity Into the Madman’s World

Into a world that has repressed the truth and asserted the glorious order and fine tuning of the universe, the biological richness of earth, and the rational mind of man to comprehend quasars and quarks are the products of eons of chaos, unintelligent macroevolution, and unimaginable odds, we must lovingly speak that “what can be known about God is plain to [us], because God has shown it to [us]. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So [we] are without excuse” (Romans 1:19–20).

A world that embraces the rejection of truth, the destruction of marriage, the extermination of the innocents, and the veneration of a mindless, value-less “creator” is the world of a madman. It is the devil’s playground (1 John 5:19). It is an insane nightmare.

But on “those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone” (Isaiah 9:2). The return to sanity, the end of the nightmare, is Jesus Christ, “the light of the world” (John 8:12).

And it is precisely when the dark descends that the light is most needed. We must shine the light.

Our Dishonor May Be God’s Answer to Our Prayers

We have prayed for Jesus to shine in this world. We have prayed for the completion of world evangelization. And now we in the West are seeing our societies grow increasingly hostile toward the gospel. Some of us are bewildered. Some are discouraged.

But we must bear in mind that God often answers our prayers in unexpected ways.

For what do we see in the New Testament? We see that human beings perceive the love of God in the gospel of Christ most clearly in this dark world, not through the prosperity of his servants, but through their suffering.

First, it was our Lord himself. The cross was the most evil and most righteous, most hateful and most loving, most profane and most holy event in all of human, indeed cosmic, history. Then the gospel began to spread to Samaria and all Judea and to other regions following the death of Stephen. Then the gospel spread through Asia Minor and into Europe through Paul and his band who suffered more than most of us can imagine (2 Corinthians 11:23–28).

Testifying and suffering — it is the motif of all of redemptive history. It is God’s chosen method to display his love and spread his gospel. The earliest Christians even rejoiced “that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (Acts 5:41).

That might seem strange to us Westerners. But that’s because we’re strange in redemptive history. Most of us have not had to endure dishonor for bearing the name Christian.

But we have prayed for the gospel to spread through our nations and the world. Looking at redemptive history, should we be surprised if God answers our prayers by counting us worthy to suffer dishonor for his name? What if the cross of our dishonor is a means to the salvation of millions?

Jesus did say, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). And he told us, “You will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. . . . [A]nd because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold (Matthew 24:9, 12).

And Paul prepared us too: “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:12–13).

If It’s Costly to Speak, It Must Be Valuable

So what are we to do as increasing dishonor comes to us? We are to do just what the early disciples did: keep speaking. When the governing authorities charged them to stop preaching the gospel, the apostles replied, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20).

It is precisely when it is personally costly to speak, and we still speak, that people listen to what we have to say. When it’s costly to deliver a message, the message must be costly. For people only pay dearly for what is valuable. Paying dearly glorifies the valuable thing. And no message is more valuable than the gospel of Jesus.

Keep Speaking!

So keep speaking. Relentlessly keep speaking. Relentlessly keep speaking, not to win a culture war, but to win souls. Relentlessly keep speaking to win souls because you love souls.

And as we keep speaking, we should not expect to measure our success by immediate circumstantial improvement. In our short-term context, the gospel may appear to lose ground and evil appear to have the momentum. That is often how circumstances appeared to saints throughout history. But in fact, the gospel has only ever continually spread through the world, despite the mad devil’s best attempts to stamp it out.

So keep speaking the gospel. It is going to win. Jesus promised it would: “The one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:13–14).

Note this, we will have to endure. That means suffering and dishonor. But the gospel will be preached to the whole world.

God will answer our prayers, first by causing us to endure, and then bringing the end. Then Jesus will deliver the kingdom to the Father (1 Corinthians 15:24). And then, pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

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God's Grace from God's Place

Marshall Segal post: Sex: The Frontrunner for President

One decision determines the fate of the American people every four years: Who will be our next president? This man or woman will almost certainly drive our 320-million-person passenger van through economic upheaval, volatile international affairs, violent terrorist threats, and any number of sensitive social issues.

The candidates are pouring in, and the race heating up. So who’s the favorite?

Sex.

Specifically, sexual autonomy or freedom. The single most powerful, most driving, most appealing person, idea, or reality in American society is sex — the intense and intimate attractions and sensations felt between people. I define it broadly, because Satan’s grassroots campaign has planted sex’s posters and pinups in all kinds of places today, not just the marriage bed. We wish we could define it more narrowly, as God intended when he created sex, but it’s crawled into too many corners, and won too many worshipers.

Sex — sexual ecstasy, autonomy, and freedom — is the trump card in American entertainment, politics, and marketing. And as Randy Newman writes in his book Questioning Evangelism, “As long as we uphold our sexual autonomy as the highest value in our lives, we separate ourselves from God’s majestic and redemptive reign” (157). A nation — or a person — governed by sex, and not God, has rejected God. Sex has won far too many elections, but it cannot satisfy like God, nor will it be able to stand against him in the end.

Sex Appeal

Why has sex so captivated American society?

You might say that God is gloriously to blame here. What God has created with sex is unlike any experience or mystery in this life. Newman writes, “Sex uniquely engages all of our being — physical, psychological, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual. It is unparalleled as both pleasurable and profound” (158).

Those who love and follow Jesus enjoy some of the deepest, most intense pleasure in bed with their spouse. And those who refuse or mock Jesus still find some of the same gratification. For some perfectly calculated and good reason, God has allowed men and women to access some of the pleasure of sex in unnatural ways: lust, adultery, premarital sex, pornography, homosexuality. They’re consuming, but not in a way that can truly (genuinely or fully) satisfy, fulfill, or last. They sip and sip, but never quench their thirst.

And captivated by sex, dismissing its Author, the world structures its life, in public and especially in private, to preserve and cultivate their sipping. They passionately, even violently, squeeze and squeeze that little drop of ecstasy, not realizing there’s a freshwater ocean of everlasting pleasure at their disposal.

Sex sells and reigns because God has given it an unusual, mysterious pleasure. It can’t be replicated or replaced by education or vocation or sports or hobbies. On this planet, sex has a kind of monopoly on bodily pleasure for people of every nation, culture, and social status. It’s perhaps the world’s most universal hope for happiness apart from Jesus.

Sin’s Campaign Manager

Now, sex cannot run for president, because sex isn’t a person. The face behind sex’s unrivaled rule in America is Satan. With centuries of experience and supporters everywhere in the world, he deftly leads a massive coordinated effort to enlist generation after generation. He’s the corrupt campaign manager, hidden in the shadows, wielding sex for an agenda. Newman describes his tactics,

God’s enemy (and ours) wants to distort [sex]. His goals are to make it a mere physical act, with no profundity; a painful act, reminiscent of abuse; a comical act, reducing it to crude joking; or an enslaving act, transforming people into addicts or idolaters. (158)

Satan molests the goodness of sex. He has nothing original to wield against us, so he lies in secret, presenting sex as simple and ordinary, or humorous, or powerful. Sex becomes just another toy, or an entertaining and provocative punch line, or the alluring, controlling master of our desires — the president of our hearts — not the pure, spiritual, mysterious union it was designed and given to be.

And now, in a fascinating and shocking political turn, a new pillar of Satan’s platform emerges. He and his followers have worked relentlessly over the years to undermine and sabotage marriage — a sacred (“religious”), exclusive (“enslaving”), lifelong (“boring”) union. Now, they’d like to have marriage, too, but are promoting a new, more dangerous distortion: so-called same-sex marriage. A longstanding, evil, and spiritual platform once utterly opposed to all that marriage stood for has staged a new assault on pleasure by legalizing and solemnizing homosexual unions.

Unseating Sex with Grace

The gospel unseats sex (and every other influential, powerful, and seductive idol) with the grace of God — the pinnacle of his glory, and the controlling theme of our redeemed and repurposed lives. As unlikely as it seems today, there is a force more compelling and more satisfying than sexual temptation and freedom — a marketing campaign that promises and delivers more (Psalm 16:11). But we must submit our souls to a new president.

Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:12–14)

Sex is not the enemy for Christians. It is God’s good gift, created for those who believe (1 Timothy 4:3), and designed to be experienced in marriage as an act of knowing and enjoying more of God as the Creator and Giver. Illicit, superficial sex exists where true worship doesn’t, but worship is not the holy rival to sex. Sex, like the rest of life on earth, is meant to be worship (Romans 12:1). Sinful distortion and manipulation of sex, though, makes for a deceitful and miserable lord.

True joy and pleasure for us and for our world, then, rests in unseating sex by God’s grace from God’s place, and reseating it in its good and rightful place under God, the one true Treasure and Lord of our lives.

God's Presence

Steven Dilla post:  God's Presence in Vocation

Readers’ Choice (originally published January 16, 2015)

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“We are in full-time service to our Lord as he gifts us with our talents, be it in engineering, carpentry, medicine, trash collection, missions, the arts or whatever.'” — Audrey

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Exodus 31.1-6
The LORD said to Moses, “See, I have called by name Bezalel… and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. Moreover, I have appointed Oholiab… Also I have given ability to all the skilled workers to make everything I have commanded you.”

There are particular places we expect God to be present. In ancient Israel’s day we see God’s Spirit reside in the holy of holies — a space distinct from every part of common life. We also see the special relationship Israel’s leaders and pillars of faith had with him (Adam, Eve, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Aaron to name a few).

Bezalel and Oholiab are outliers to this expectation, but not to the way God’s Spirit works. Both men are tradesmen who are filled with God’s Spirit to engage in their vocation in a unique and transcendent way. (They are not the first to have this happen.)

God creates work as an invitation into creation and empowers it as a pathway into deeper relationship with Him. Work’s transcendent value comes from him.

“If the God of the Bible exists,” posits Timothy Keller in Every Good Endeavor, “and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest of ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever.”

God’s presence reaches into every part of the world as his Spirit empowers people of faith in each vocation. 

“No single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest,” insists Abraham Kuyper. As an advocate for God’s presence in all things, Kuyper proclaims, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

Prayer
Father, thank you for creating, empowering, and valuing work. Give us the ability to engage in our vocations in ways which bring honor and glory to you. Give us vision for your Kingdom in our fields and in the lives of those we work with. Help us to see our work, as Dr. Keller says, as your “assignment to serve others.”

Then all the people said "Amen!"

35 Say also:

“Save us, O God of our salvation,
    and gather and deliver us from among the nations,
that we may give thanks to your holy name
    and glory in your praise.
36 Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,
    from everlasting to everlasting!”

Then all the people said, “Amen!” and praised the Lord.

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Pressing On Towards the Goal

Jon Bloom post:  Turning Fifty and Still Fighting for Faith

I turn fifty this weekend. Fifty. It came faster than I expected.

I received a birthday greeting in the mail from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). I told my wife that it was like receiving a card from the Grim Reaper. Retirement is not something I’m prepared to think about yet, either psychologically or financially (though I may be prepared in the former sense before the latter sense).

Or spiritually. There is no retirement from Kingdom work.

I am among the oldest of so-called “Generation X,” born from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s. We are a gap generation, an undistinguished “X” between the massive, socially dominant Baby Boomers and the noisy, hip Millennials. We are not “the greatest generation,” and we’re not the coolest. We’re the quiet, middle-child generation. We came of age in the relatively conservative Reagan-Bush era, which means we aren’t political or cultural revolutionaries. And we are now increasingly finding ourselves in middle age, no longer trendsetters, and not yet sages.

Fifty Feels Different

Middle age feels different than I thought it would. My grandmother once said to me (she was in her early nineties and I was in my early thirties), “Inside I still feel like I did in my twenties. I look in the mirror now and wonder, who is that old lady?” Now I understand better what she meant. Much of the inner me at fifty does not feel different than I did at 25. But when I see myself in photos, I wonder at the middle-aged man. Is that really what I look like? That looks like my dad.

But looking older is not the hard part of middle age. That’s mainly hard on my vanity, which is good for my soul. The harder part is the deeper, existential realization that at fifty I am still far more like the 25-year-old inner me than I thought I would be.

I thought I would be more mature by now. I thought I would have greater faith. I thought I would be more prayerful, less fearful, more patient, less irritable. There has been progress in all these areas, but not as much as I expected.

I thought I would be a more Christ-like, Spirit-filled disciple of Jesus, a better husband, a more skilled father, a more thoughtful friend. I thought I would be a bolder witness for Christ and a greater lover of people. I thought I would be more fruitful. And I thought I would have made more progress in overcoming my constitutional and temperamental weaknesses.

The hardest part of middle age is realizing how much of the me I thought would change still remains. The pace of sanctification is turning out to be painfully slow. Disgusting depravity is still a daily battle on many levels. I am still so “beset with weakness” (Hebrews 5:2).

Middle Age Temptations

I know better now why people have mid-life crises. There are more demands on us at this stage of life than at any previous time. Family, vocational, financial, and often ministry challenges are more complex than ever. And these arrive precisely at the time when it dawns on us that we are more sinful, weaker, and less wise than we thought we’d be by now. We can feel trapped in the middle.

That’s why some respond by withdrawing into a protective cocoon while others bolt for some greener-looking pastures. Some grasp at a new fantasy since the old ones didn’t deliver, while others simply succumb to the cynicism that all dreams are empty fantasies and begin the hardening process that produces bitter old people. When weakness meets weariness, and discouragement meets disillusionment, we must be on our guard. These are spiritually precarious moments.

Sufficient Grace to Endure the Race

I’m finding that what I really need at this phase of life is the refreshing gospel reminder that it is precisely my weaknesses that showcase most clearly and beautifully the strength of God’s grace (2 Corinthians 12:9–10), and that I have need of endurance, so that when I have done the will of God I may receive what he promised (Hebrews 10:36). My weaknesses have a purpose in God’s design, and so does my weariness.

Middle age is like miles twelve to twenty in a marathon (at least psychologically), when the initial energetic optimism of the start is gone and the finish line still seems far off (even with the AARP cheerleaders). Miles still stretch out ahead, and we know there are still some hills. Our body is weary, and our mind is susceptible to mental diversions. Regrets, anxieties, and fears cloud our thinking more than they did at the beginning. We are faced with various temptations to give up.

These middle miles may not be the most glorious miles of the race, but they frequently are the most important. Whether or not we finish well is often determined during this stretch of road.

So as I help lead the vanguard of Generation X into our sixth decade in the race of faith, with the rhythm of my feet upon the pavement and through some fatigue, I’m preaching to myself, There’s sufficient grace to endure the race (2 Corinthians 12:9; Hebrews 12:1).

Fifty came faster than I expected. So will sixty and seventy, if the Lord wills. So will the finish line. So will Glory. And each will feel different than I thought it would. My expectations, and certainly my self-image, are not what’s important.

What’s important, what this whole race is about, is obtaining the Prize (Philippians 3:14). And I want to keep running that I may obtain it (1 Corinthians 9:24).