Inflated Self Deflated

‘Be true to yourself’ the moral queens say

There’s no other Higher or Better foray

No duty to harken or summon to call

But interest of Self and seared conscience withal

Yet what wisdom flows from this stagnant infirm

This frame that succumbs to miniscule germ

With skin that is pierced by the simplest straw

And falters at winds or the water’s full draw?

Can this soul break the sun and its withering heat?

Or wrangle the cold and submit it to beat

Back the ice that breach trickling channels of blood

Or heap up the seas into bundles of flood?

I am but a frailty of lightless disgrace

Emboldening violence with wanton embrace

No command to halt all of Nature’s desires

Arrogance bowing with quickening tires

Be true to myself with no power at all

The one who can’t seize any honor or call

Which would bring any good to this cosmos or sphere

But the tribute of futile and foolhardy fear

This darkness that sets such a glowering stage

Shows glorious colors of the Author’s bright grace

Illumined against the blackness and dross

Shines the love condescending to the height of the cross

Your glory, O Soul, is not of your own

He sets His heart on the dead who respond as a stone

To make them alive by His sovereign grace

And call them, "Beloved", with warming embrace

7-14-14

What Stayed the Hand of Ancient Strength?

"Now the men who were holding Jesus in custody were mocking him as they beat him.  They also blindfolded him and kept asking him, 'Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?' And they said many other things against him, blaspheming him."

(The Gospel According to Luke, 22:63-65)

Hammer and the anvil greyed o’er time and space and starlight made
By your expulsive word and trade when timeless arm of glory played

The sword which cuts through spirit’s bone divided up Orion’s home
Gleaming blade of light was shone enwrapped in Son of Man, alone

Face of swollen purple bleeds though you had scattered starry seeds
At mocking jeers of weakened knees you hid the fists which poured the seas

Power held within your breast bore shame and scoffs of worthlessness
“Restrained” is much too small address to wear such mercy thus expressed

What stayed the hand of ancient strength to suffer such perverse disgrace?
“Your will be done” to every length though vile spittle marks your face

For Father’s honor, glory, fame endured corrupt disgusted shame
That I, the swinger of the same,might be delivered by your name

An act of might never beheld as that of love which inward held
Your righteous power from war-cry yelled consuming fire which should have felled

Hanging stars and planets pale to strength of soul which did not fail
In torrents of injustice gale when God’s Son leashed and bridled hell

February 5, 2015

Master's Hold

What weapon against me will dare bare its blade

  If heavens are bowed by the Master who made

 

The stars pull apart from their seedy abyss

  and the voice that compelled lips of Heaven to kiss

the earth which now quakes under quivering feet

  laying grip to my soul pressing certain defeat

Hold firm, O my Master!  Hold firm to the wheel

  For my take is unclear on this worn rugged trail

Dragon Down

The fearsome fire of taunting terror

roaming the face of the earth

seeking someone to devour

to and fro heart to hearth

Roar and fluff of pride and stuff 

of bluster full with wind

a toothless scowl and harmless growl

that wields a Cheshire grin

You've been undone from tip to tail

full desecration nail to scale 

no more to harm or fool to charm

by hollow sore or grim travail

The narrow stake has power take 

all glory from your light

withered gone plunged fire headlong

into the Lake stoked white

Marriage: The Two-Gendered Icon of the Image of God

God created male and female as his image in creation. Humanity, not merely individuals, is created in the image of God. Both male and female, together, making up the humanity that bears the mark of its Creator. From this beginning, marriage is intended by God to be a reflection of this image, an icon of the wholeness of both genders making one image of God. A single-gender definition of marriage is a single-gender representation of humanity, theologically, and therefore sexist by nature not merely at the cultural level, but at the universal foundation of what it means to be human. Even greater than this it is a misrepresentation of the image which God declared at the beginning to be his own.

This misrepresentation of God goes obviously far deeper than merely the issue surrounding marriage to all forms of idolatry and self-worship which every one of us has fallen and is currently wrestling with in all its different forms, but the issue of marriage is prevalent today, thus I write.

It is because I love my friends that I hate what destroys us, and because I love my God that I hate what dishonors and misrepresents him, just like I do when someone misrepresents those whom I love. I hate sin within me, with all its desires which lead me to misrepresent my God, and I long for the day when it is eradicated upon seeing the gloriously burning light of Christ Jesus which melts this inner dross away. For now, I glory in his washing of my sin and in his gracious imputing of his perfect righteousness in place of my wandering heart's sinfulness and rest in his ability to hold me close and bring me all the way home to the God who has authority over all.

For my Christian brothers and sisters, consider the story which God began and God will close. Consider for yourselves and for your neighbor the glory and the sin, the fall and the redemption in Christ Jesus, the despair and the hope of restoration in Him. For in Him all the glory of God dwells and all the promises of God find their 'yes'. Our daily experiences from birth are Fridays full of struggle and death and the bitter tang of carrying crosses within and without, but Sunday is on the way and the sun of righteousness is dawning and his name is Jesus.

When We See Jesus

Only when I see that He took my judgment upon Himself, for me, that I will be able to forget My Self and deny my Self and take up that cross by which my attitudes are brought under the mastery of Him who rescued me by breaking His own heart. 

He who, while my sins bore upon His soul, and the hammer separated his bones by sharpened iron point, cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t understand what they’re doing!”  The One who longed to bring the fires of judgment and endured their terrible searing for me rather than call them down from heaven upon me. 

When we see Him, really see Him as He is, we forget ourselves, our perceived need for attention, and our clamor for significance fades to silence in the glow of His great and glorious grace until all that we see is Him and our joy is made complete, our hope made stalwart in our ever-changing reputations, and our dependence swells to the fullness of the knowledge of the Son of God by which we are transformed to truly be who we were meant to be. 

In your mercy, Lord Jesus, may it be. 

“Against those forms of Judaism that saw the law-covenant not only as lex [law] but as a hermeneutical device for interpreting the Old Testament, Paul insists that the Bible’s story line takes precedence and provides the proper hermeneutical key.”

D. A. Carson, “Reflections on Salvation and Justification in the New Testament,” JETS 40 (1997): 585.

There are two ways to read the Bible.  We can read it as law or as promise.

If we read the Bible as law, we will find on every page what God is telling us we should do.  Even the promises will be conditioned by law.  But if we read the Bible as promise, we will find on every page what God is telling us he will do.  Even the law will be conditioned by promise.

In Galatians 3 Paul explains which hermeneutic is the correct one.  “This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.  For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise” (Galatians 3:17-18).

So, if we want to know whether we should read the Bible through the lens of law or grace, demand or provision, threat or promise — if we want to know how to read the Bible in an apostolic rather than a rabbinic way — we can follow the plot-line of the Bible itself and see which comes first.  And in fact, promise comes first, in God’s word to Abram in Genesis 12.  Then the law is “added” — significant word, in Galatians 3:19 — the law is added as a sidebar later, in Exodus 20.  The hermeneutical category “promise” establishes the larger, wraparound framework for everything else added in along the way.

The deepest message of the Bible is the promises of God to undeserving law-breakers through his grace in Christ.  This is not an arbitrary overlay forced onto the biblical text.  The Bible presents itself to us this way.  The laws and commands and examples and warnings are all there, fulfilled in Christ and revered by us.  But they do not provide the hermeneutic with which we make sense of the whole.  We can and should understand them as qualified by God’s gracious promise, for all who will bank their hopes on him.

From Ray Ortlund, Jr.'s blog:  Christ is Deeper Still