From the July 18th entry of Still Higher for His Highest:
"Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice." Self-sacrifice may be simply a disease of the nerves, a morbid self-consciousness which is the obverse of intense selfishness. [...] Whenever I make self-sacrifice the aim and end of my life, I become a traitor to Jesus; instead of placing Him as my Lodestar I place Him as an example, One who helps me to sacrifice myself. [...] It is much easier to sacrifice myself, to efface myself, than to do God's will in God's way.
Oswald here reveals the inadequacy of words when we say (quite sincerely) that we are to "imitate" Christ. Though Christ-likeness is indeed or aim, we err when we call it "imitating" Christ, for that suggests mimicry, a conscious effort on our part to adhere as closely as we can to Christ character and guidelines. The danger is that we treat Christ like yet another spiritual guru whose Sermon on the Mount is the latest moral code that we are to try our best to follow. That, however, is not what "Christ-likeness" means.
The simple fact is that we are not to imitate Christ, but rather follow Him by obedience. He is our leader, not an example. To follow Him, to trust and obey Him, is our only duty; meanwhile, it is God who makes us "like Christ" (Phil. 2:13; Rom. 8:29-30) as we follow and obey Christ (John 14:15, 15:14). Christ-likeness is a work of God and not of ourselves. It is an impartation of Christ and not an imitation.
Surprisingly enough, "imitating" Christ could very well be a type of pride: "Look how like Christ I am! I follow Him so well!" "No, I follow Him better!" "No, I do!" Conversely, those who simply follow and obey Christ really have no grounds to boast, for two reasons: (1) whatever Christ-likeness they have is of God and not themselves, and (2) Christ leads each person differently, so there really is no way to compare any one to another (John 21:20-22).
This understanding of Christ-likeness as impartation rather than imitation changes the whole nature of the Christian life. I have been asked before about whether or not it is hard to "keep all of those rules" in order to be a good Christian. My response has been to point out that Christianity is not something that you do but rather something that you are made by God. The reason a true Christian "acts different" from others is not because they are really good at keeping the rules of a moral teacher, but because they, having decided to follow Christ, have been indwelt by the real and living presence of the Spirit of God, who makes them more like Christ along their way. Perhaps if we understood and expressed this necessary distinction between "keeping rules" and "being made into His image," perhaps then our lives and God's grace will become more wondrous, both to ourselves and others.
-Jon Vowell
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Oswald Chambers on Christ-Likeness (or, The Inadequacy of Words)
The Real Nature of Salvation (A Lecture for Salvation 101)
"The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do.... For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.... I can of my own self do nothing...." John 5:19, 26, 30
"I am the vine, ye are the branches...without me, ye can do nothing." John 15:5
The implication of these two verses is that what we have (as believers) is what belongs to Christ, and what Christ has belongs to God. This gives an added dimension to the nature of Salvation.
All that God is (i.e., Holy--the perfect wholeness and harmony of His qualities) is what we, as humans, need to be (John 17:3; I Peter 1:16). However, as sinners (i.e., those bound by and enslaved to Sin; John 8:34 & Rom. 6:16) we are separated from God (Is. 59:2; Ps.88:4-5), and thus we cannot know Him and thereby partake in His holiness.
Christ has solved this problem on both fronts: [1] By being the sacrificial payment for Sin (I John 2:2), He ended the separation thereof (Eph. 2; Col. 1:20-22). [2] All that Christ is comes from God (John 5:19, 26, 30), and all that God is has been given to Christ (Col. 2:9). Therefore, it is through Him that we can know God and partake in all that He is (I Cor. 1:30-31; II Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:8-9).
Thus, fellowship with God in His holiness was our destiny as humanity, but Sin brought by humanity's rebellion cut us off from that destiny. So God sent Christ so that (1) the world may be reconciled back unto Himself, and (2) all that He is may once again be ours (II Cor. 5:17-21). Therefore, we can see that salvation is not merely restored fellowship in the sense that God is no longer mad at us and won't throw us into hell; salvation is the restoration of a fellowship that leads into a partaking of and oneness with God and all that He is. This is the answer to mankind's deepest desires. This is the Gospel, which except a man believe, He cannot be saved.
-Jon Vowell
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The Proper and Necessary Desire
"Teach me Thy way, O Lord; I will walk in Thy truth. Unite my heart to fear Thy name." Ps. 86:11
Herein lies two things that are proper and necessary for us to desire: the truth of God and the fear of God, i.e., the realities that God reveals and the reverence towards God for who He is. It is for these two things the psalmist request, and it is these two things that are sorely lacking today.
"A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself" (Pro. 18:2). We care very little for the truth that only God can reveal. The only truth that we desire is the "truth" that we invent for ourselves so that we can shape our identity and world as we see fit. If a certain truth is inconvenient, it can be dropped. Reality is unnecessary, and even lies can become "truth" if they make us feel better about ourselves and confirm our congenial preferences. In short, we would much rather shape our subjectivity by our subjectivity rather than the objectivity of God.
"An oracle in my heart says, 'The Transgression of the wicked is that there is no fear of God before their eyes'" (Ps. 36:1, Rev. marg.). We reverence God very little, but reverence ourselves very much, especially our preferences for God. Like truth, we would much rather shape God by our own subjectivity rather than accept the objective reality of Himself that he has revealed to us. Thus, today's modern "worship" is little more than idolatry, a ceremony of self-worship.
Herein, therefore, is the proper and necessary desire: to desire, not the God we want, but rather the God who is.
-Jon Vowell
Monday, July 13, 2009
Real Presence
The main ignorance both inside and outside the church is that Christianity is about dead principles rather than a living person. Apparently, we are all about rite and ritual and ceremony with empty prayers and readings rather than communion with a living, personal being who is there. In addition, our churches are merely buildings of stone and wood rather than the house of the Holy One. Even holiness itself is nothing more than dead piety rather than an active principle emanating from a living and present presence that dwells within us. We must set this ignorance straight: Christianity is no more about dead formalism or stringent legalism than Christ Himself was; rather, Christianity is about actual fellowship with the living God who is there.
Perhaps the world can be excused for this ignorance, for how are they to know unless we tell them? Thus, we are the more guilty ones. Our lives, our deeds as well as our words, reveal nothing living or present, nothing active or personal. If we are not dead formalists orlegalists (or both), then we are at least pasty-faced moralists, our lives no different from the average pagan or heathen. Christianity, however, is not about dead religion; it is about the living God who walks with us and dwells within us. That reality should be reflective of a difference in our lives, a difference that cannot be simply explained away as mere religion and/or morality. To be "Christ-like" means that, like Christ, people must not know what to do with us because they have been in the presence of the living God, whether they knew it or not.
-Jon Vowell
Friday, July 10, 2009
Reminders on the Basics of Reality
"Fill their faces with shame that they may seek Thy name, O Lord." Ps. 83:16
The purpose of punishment is remembrance. It is a (paradoxically) friendly reminder of the may things really are, a reality check courtesy call. To the punished (and unpunished; vs. 17-18), it reasserts the immutability of what is true and real, for all evil is ultimately a denial of the true and real. When God laid down His laws, He was not making arbitrary assignments; He was laying down the basics of reality. You really shouldn't steal, or murder, or dishonor your parents, or worship any other god if you want to be happy and well. All acts against such laws are merely denials of their status as truths, an action that clearly reveals the supreme idiocy of evil: it actually claims, with a straight face and sober disposition, that lies, theft, murder, dishonor, idolatry, etc., are good for the soul.
It is at this point that punishment comes to wake the sleepers from the dead, out of dreams and into daylight. Punishment reaffirms the truthfulness of the law: you can only succeed and be happy when you obey what is real. Therefore, God does not punish out of egotistical sadism, but rather out of benevolent mercy to shake us to our senses. Should not this be obvious, though? Our own parents (if they were proper) punished us, if not to save us from some immediate physical threat, then to teach us that in the real world, negative actions necessarily entail negative consequences. That is how our parents taught us, and our Heavenly Father is no different.
-Jon Vowell
Thursday, July 9, 2009
"What goes up..."
"I have said, 'Ye are gods,' and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes." Ps. 82:6, 7
"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,...for thou hast said in thine heart, 'I will ascend into heaven'...yet thou shalt be brought down to hell...." Is. 14:12-15
"Thine heart was lifted up.... I will cast thee to the ground...." Ez. 28:17
"God resisteth the proud...." Js 4:6
Pride is quite literally a state of fighting against God, because it is (at bottom) a claim on His throne. Pride is when an individual claims the place of God in their life. Such an act can take various forms: it can be an overt and obvious malice, or it can hide itself under a veneer of innocence; it can consume the whole life or be sequestered to one besetting sin. Regardless of its form, it only has one result, for fighting against God can only have one result: to be cast down, i.e., humiliation.
Older Christianity was right when it labelled Pride (superbia) as the foundation of all sins, for sin always starts with some sort of attempted rebellion against God, both His character and His commands. When we aren't breaking His laws, we are making Him into something that He is not, whether it be a sentimental grandfather or a non-existent fantasy. All are attempts by prideful man to stand where God alone can stand (Ps. 82:1).
-Jon Vowell
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
On Darkness (and a word on Light)
"...Thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth. [...] Turn us again, O God, and cause Thy face to shine; and we shall be saved." Ps. 80:1b, 3, 7, 19
"In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." John 1:4
Jesus spoke of the "light of life" (John 8:12), a characteristic obviously belong to Jesus (the light of the world; John 8:12) and God (who is Light; I John 1:5). According to Scripture, being outside of God is properly understood as being in darkness, for what is darkness? Firstly, it is a confusion and deception, for it hides and distorts all things, so that our perception is clouded and unreliable. We follow every shadow and shade, our blinded eyes unable to see what is real. So also, those outside of God are blind (II Cor. 4:3-4), and they cannot see what they stumble over (Prov. 4:19).
Darkness is also a terror, a terror because of its deception. To be lost without sight or clear perception is to be trapped in the utter unknown, as if the unknown were dark ocean depths that one drowns in. We see no paths, we cannot identify any sound or face, whether they be real or of our own imagination. We cannot discern between friend and foe, threat and comfort. We cannot even identify ourselves, for every mirror merely reflects the darkness. So also, those outside of God know only fear and dread, for the world is dark and pitiless (I John 5:19), and they cannot find a place of safety and rest; neither can their hearts comfort them, for they are dark as well (Jer. 17:9).
This is the proper state of man outside of God: deceived and afraid. Thus, being redeemed by God is properly understood as being in the light; not just a single flash, but a continuous burning that illumines the darkness without and the darkness within, serving as guide and revealer not only for the pathways of the world but also the depths of the soul. It is this light that man desires, this light that Christ reveals: God is that light.
-Jon Vowell
Holiness (or, The Harmony of Fullness)
"Thy way, O God, is in holiness...." Ps. 77:13a (rev. marg.)
"Be ye holy, for I am holy." I Peter 1:16
Holiness is not mere morality; to"be holy" does not mean simply to "do good." Good action arises from holiness, but it is not the definition of holiness. Holiness, properly understood, means perfection in the sense of absolute completion, without lack or defect. All things that are of their nature lacking or defective cannot partake in such completion (for then it would no longer be completion), and thus holiness is also understood as sanctification, i.e., being "set apart." Subsequently, God alone can be properly called "holy," since in Him is the fullness of all good and true things, and thus He lacks nothing; meanwhile, we who are sinners, fallen and frail, are not holy because as sinners we fall short of God's fullness (Rom. 3:23). In addition, holiness has been understood to be beautiful in that it is the fullness of all good things working and standing in harmony with each other. Thus, older (more medieval) Christians often worshipped what scripture calls, "the beauty of holiness" (Ps. 29:2; 96:9; 110:3; II Chr. 20:21). It is this clockwork perfection, this harmony of fullness, that God has made us for and called us to.
We are not called to good-doing; we are called to God-likeness. We are not here to be moral people; we are here to be encores of the Incarnation (I Cor. 3:16). Christ did not come and die just to simply teach us the Sermon on the Mount, but rather to give us a "righteousness [that would] exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees" (Matt. 5:20). That kind of righteousness is the holy righteousness of God (the righteousness that the law was a portrait of), which is given to us in Christ (I Cor. 1:30; II Cor. 5:21). If we do not reconcile our worldview with (1) our high calling (i.e., the holiness of God), and (2) our amazing gift (i.e., the righteousness of God in Christ), then we will bumble about half awake and living lesser lives.
-Jon Vowell
Love and Righteousness
"Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy name; and deliver us and purge away our sins, for Thy name's sake...and render unto our neighbors sevenfold into their bosom their reproach, wherewith they have reproached Thee, O Lord." Ps. 79:9, 12
Redemption and damnation, salvation and judgment, love and righteousness; whichever way that you put it, these are the two arms of God's government, two of the most essential qualities of His character. It is these two qualities that are the most sorely attacked today by the religious and secular alike.
We hate the love of God as Scripture presents it, i.e., a holy love that desires to make lovable and lovely the hateful and ugly beloved. It is less like Romeo and Juliet and more like The Taming of the Shrew. It is a love that will not tolerate any stain or blemish, not matter how much we tolerate or even cherish it. We despise such a heavy-handed and true love, so we boil God's love down into either a fluffy sentimentalism that means absolutely nothing or a cruel toleration that winks at the damnation of a soul out of fear of being labelled "mean," "insensitive," or other useless buzz words of contemporary society. The love of God is a consuming fire: all that is imperfect will burn away.
Likewise, we hate the righteousness of God because it directly conflicts with our damnable version of the love of God. If our supreme deity is to be sentimental and tolerant, then He must necessarily not be moral. The sentimental and tolerant man suffuses all things into an incomprehensible whole; the moral man sets everything in rigid distinctions, distinctions like right and wrong, good and evil. Such distinctions are inherent in true righteousness, and thus righteousness is an insufferable eye-sore to the modern world (esp. Modern Christendom). Consequently, they choose not to talk about it; it is too much of a landmine. The righteousness of God is a consuming fire: all that is imperfect will burn away.
If we are to remain loyal to God and His revelations of Himself, then we must maintain the reality of His holy character, i.e., the fullness and harmony of His qualities, viz., love and righteousness. The world does not need sentimental toleration, a fluffy cruelty that "loves" it by amassing it into a pile of indistinguishable nothingness that it can safely ignore; what the world needs is a holy and true love and righteousness that burns away our impurities and makes us fit for itself.
-Jon Vowell
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Sovereignty and Evil (or, God and Julian)
"Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee...." Ps. 76:10a
This is perhaps the hardest part of sovereignty to swallow, viz., that the evil of man (and nature) have their place in the tapestry of God. Often it is very little comfort to tell people that what seems senseless now will make sense in the end. Even if such a statement is true (and it is), it is hardly encouraging to those caught in the midst of the real consequences of real evil. That evil makes sense somewhere else, a place that we will get to one day, does not make the pain go away. Indeed, the element of mystery can be a joyous surprise, but also a frustrating agony. Darkness and silence are cold comforts, at least that's what the post-WW II twentieth century concluded.
Then again, perhaps the sovereignty of God in regards to evil is cold comfort because it is not considered fully. The truest pain (and subsequent anger) of any evil (both moral and natural) is the apparent senselessness of it all. A great hope burned into the psyche of all humanity is the hope that evil will not triumph, and part of that hope means that even if evil makes and initiates its plans on us, there is something behind it all that undermines their schemes and fits it into the ultimate victory. We could bear the wrath of man (and nature) if that wrath were fundamentally and ultimately supplanted by and in the service of grace and redemption. The mere existence of evil is no true weapon for an atheist or skeptic; the truest weapon is its apparent senselessness. It is that point that we must deal with.
We deal with it incorrectly, though, when we feel like we have to state the exact purpose in detail. God does not give the details of His purpose behind things. The only thing we know is that it will be glory to Him and goodness to us. It is not the details of the fact, however, that matter. Rather, it is the fact itself, i.e., God's sovereignty does have a point, and though it is temporarily hidden from view, a hidden point is a far, far better thing than no point at all. Actually, that every incident, no matter how indecent, is (in truth) all a part a grand purpose, a purpose whose goodness vastly exceeds the summation of the evil allowed in it, has been (and should continue to be) the sole Christian apologetic on the subject. I am not sure when, where, or how the sovereignty of God got turned against us (as though biblical truth could undermine the truth of the Bible), but it should not be so. The sovereignty of God does not mean that "God is in control"; it means what Lady Julian said that it means: "All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." That is the hope of the Christian faith, and it is time that we spread that hope around.
-Jon Vowell