Because it’s beautiful.
Category Archives: Personal
When the Gospel Becomes Our Civil Religion
This is the air we breathe in America. . . and the gospel calls it into question.
What Does a Missional Community Look Like?
There is a growing vision in my heart for a church in the city. I’ve chatted about it over coffee and daydreamed about it when class gets long. I’ve jotted notes down in a journal and teased it out with Melissa not a few times
Now, I’ll keep trying to articulate it in words and crystallize it on a page, but for my friends to whom I’ve so far left more confused than excited, here’s a video that illustrates what I mean:
Gospel, Glory, and the Preeminence of Christ
I recently spent a whole day tucked away at a local library. It was a golden spot. Quiet. Secluded. I sat beneath a shower of grace: an open Bible, a hungry soul, a copy of Owen’s “The Glory of Christ.” I spent good hours there reading and praying and preparing for a sermon about Jesus and his glory.
I left that spot and within an hour found myself in the clutter of a defiant three year old and her younger sister who really needed a diaper change. I would have longed for the tiny cell back in the library, except it dawned on me that this is where I really live. In fact, this is where most everyone lives, and if the glory of Christ doesn’t land on us here then we’ll spend our real lives oblivious to its wonder.
Talk About Jesus, A Lot
Our lives are not polished and shiny and set up on a mantle. They are messy and complicated and we get tired. The preeminence of Jesus can’t be an “out there” sort of thing. We’ve got to bring this home. One of the simplest ways to do that is to talk about Jesus, a lot.
We should talk about Jesus often and be clear about his identity, resisting every temptation to make him peripheral, secondary, or assumed. Here are two reasons why: the gospel and the glory of God.
The Gospel
It’s important that we talk about Jesus a lot because the gospel is not, first and foremost, the mechanics of some design that we attempt to helpfully articulate. But the gospel is, first and foremost, a Person.
A person, Jesus Christ, is the one who suffered in our place, who was raised on the third day. Jesus, the Person, was the one who though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor so that we in his poverty might become rich. The gospel is about a person and that person is Jesus.
The Glory of God
It’s important that we talk about Jesus a lot because the glory of God is not an abstract idea or motivation that we aspire to live for. But the glory of God is a Person
A person, Jesus Christ, is the one in whom all the fullness of deity was pleased to dwell. Jesus, the Person, is the Word of God made flesh as the ultimate revelation of the triune God—the revelatory action of God who embodies and supremely expresses the LORD’s intratrinitarian majesty. The glory of God is a person and that person is Jesus.
This simple: there is no gospel and there is no glory of God apart from Jesus Christ.
So talk about him.
An Unprofitable Christology (That’s Even Orthodox)
Men profess to know the truth; but they know it not in its proper order, in its harmony in use. It leads them not to Christ, and brings not Christ unto them; and so is lifeless and useless. Hence, oft-times, none are more estranged from the life of God than such as have much notional knowledge of the doctrines of Scripture. For they are all of them useless, and subject to be abused, if they are not improved to form Christ in the soul, and transform the whole person into his likeness and image.
This they will not affect where their relation to him is not understood—where they are not received and learned as a revelation of him, with the mystery of the will and wisdom of God in him.
For whereas he is our life, and in our living unto God we do not so much live as he lives in us, and the life which we lead in the flesh is by the faith of him—so that we have neither principle nor power of spiritual life, but in, by, and from him—whatever knowledge we have of the truth, if it does not affect a union between him and our souls, it will be lifeless in us, and unprofitable unto us. It is learning the truth as it is in Jesus, which alone renews the image of God in us (Ephesians 4:21-24).
John Owen, The Glory of Christ, VI.2, 84.
To know you to know you, Jesus.
Not about you nor of you, nor merely what Paul said. But really you.
Winter in March
Snow in Spring, with gray in sky,
our residence here we must ask why.
Old man labors, a season’s late start,
worse than outer freeze, the coldness of my heart.
The sun may shine, the flowers bloom,
but the wintery soul it can’t consume.
So let it snow in August, since snow is least of care,
But make it hot inside me, for passion is my prayer.
A Funny Conversation with Elizabeth
Reading at my desk yesterday, Elizabeth walks up beside me —
Elizabeth: Daddy, that’s not the Bible.
Me: I know, sweetie. This is just a book by a man named John Owen. It’s called The Glory of Christ.
Elizabeth: [while handing me a DVD] this is called “Shrek.”
“The Tears of Christ” with Exposition by Makoto Fujimura
Fujimura introduces his work:
In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that took away so many lives in northern Japan, and the subsequent nuclear power plant crisis, I am struggling to comprehend the magnitude of destruction and ensuing suffering of the beautiful nation which has served as an aesthetic basis for my work.
The Tears of Christ: Fujimura’s The Four Holy Gospels (Part Three).
Historical Advantage and Exegetical Progression
A Great Conversation With My Dad About Albert Pujols and Iran in the Suez Canal
((Ringing . . .))
Dad: Hello
Me: What is Cardinals nations going to do?
Dad: Look, if Pujols goes to another team, I am done with Major League Baseball.
Me: Come on, Dad. We were Cardinals before Pujols and we’ll be Cardinals after Pujols.
Dad: No, it’s not that. It’s what Major League Baseball is doing to the game. Who do these people think is paying the salaries? The insanity has to stop.
Me: Y—
Dad: Baseball used to be a common man’s game. The fans are paying for this. The fans can’t even afford to go to the games anymore. Pujols turns down 28 million dollars a year and there are many Americans out there who can’t even find a job. And 28 million a year is not enough for him. Really?
Me: Ri—
Dad: I’m done with it. I am going to straight college baseball. I am going back to T-Ball. That’s my game now. That’s where it’s true.
Me: You’re right. I’m with you.
Dad: Yeah, well what we really need to be concerned about it what’s happening in Egypt. You know, Iran is provoking Israel by sailing some warships through the Suez Canal.
Me: Oh, really?
Dad: Yeah, a loaf of bread will cost a day’s wage. Not to sound all doomsday or anything. But we’re not headed in a good direction.
((Pause))
Dad: We have to just trust in the Lord.
. . .
