Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam – he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts. And that has practical consequences. As long as the natural life is in your body, it will do a lot towards repairing that body. Cut it, and up to a point it will heal, as a dead body would not.

A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble – because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ himself carried out.

That is why the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or – if they think there is not – at least they hope to deserve approval from good men.

But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because he loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

~ from Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis.

Check out an interview with Shai and Blair Linne about the artistic genre of Spoken Word.

(HT: JT)

I was having a conversation with a friend last week about the glory of God and the message of the Gospel. He said something intriguing to me, especially given the “camp” that I hail from and generally hang around. Namely, if all we tell people is about the glory of God, then we aren’t telling them the whole story.

When asked what he meant, he explained, “The truth that God does is good and great and all-powerful and holy, and that he does everything for his Glory is absolutely right, and should be proclaimed. That I fall short of that is also true. But if we leave people there, we’ve failed to tell the whole story. We also need to tell them that God loves them, and has saved them, and that, in Jesus, they have absolutely everything that they need.”

In other words, when we say that God’s saving of us is about his glory, don’t forget the “us.” God saved me! God saved you! He did it for his glory, and he did it for our joy.

I was reminded of this conversation while reading the account of God saving his people by splitting the Red Sea. This story of great power is found in Exodus 14. By way of reminder, the people of God have just been rescued from Pharoah as a result of God’s great exhibition of power through ten disastrous plagues. They are marching away from Egypt. And, as they do, God gives Moses a heads-up: the trouble isn’t over yet.

“Moses, before it gets better, it is going to get a little worse. I am going to harden Pharaoh’s heart again. I am going to make him chase y’all down. And here is the reason I am going to do this – I will get glory in this. By conquering Pharaoh, and all his army, they, and all the nations that hear about it, will know that I am the LORD.”

I find it very interesting that God gives Moses this heads up. He tells him before the trouble, that trouble is coming. But he also essentially let’s Moses know that they don’t need to fret about it, because God is going to get glory by bringing the Egyptians for the purpose of routing them.

This kind of reminds me how God’s other mediator with his people – his Son Jesus – used to talk when he was here. He promised that we would have trouble in this world. He gave us a heads up. But when he did, he also said things like, “Don’t fear, for I have overcome the world!” And, don’t worry, for “I will never leave you or forsake you.” But I digress…

Well, as you know, the Israelites had trouble believing God on this one, despite all the signs they had already seen. They “feared greatly,” and they “cried out to the LORD.” (14:10) And then they proceeded to complain that God had ever brought them out of Egypt, only to be slaughtered by an enraged Egyptian ruler.

Moses, a mediator like the Great Mediator to come, proclaimed to them,

“Whoa there. Wait a minute. Remember, God gave us a heads up this was going to happen! Don’t worry. Fear not! Stand firm! See the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today! The LORD is going to fight for you. He’s got this. He will wage the battle. All you have to do is be silent and wait.” (14:13-14)

Then, the angel of the LORD and the pillar of cloud move from before God’s people, to behind them, separating them from the Egyptians. And Moses lifts up his hands, and the sea is driven back, split down the middle to make way for the people. The winds blow all night long, allowing the great procession of God’s people walk between two massive walls of water – on dry land! – escaping their enemies.

And when the morning comes, Moses lifts his hands once more, and the seas crash in, destroying Pharaoh and all his great army.

To what end?

God gets great and deserved glory as it is he and he alone who has defeated the Egyptians. All the nations shall thus know of the God of Israel.

And, that glory is all wrapped up in and connected to the salvation of people. Listen to what Moses concludes:

Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses. (14:30-31)

The LORD is glorious, in part, because the LORD saves his people!

What promise this story holds for us, as children of the new covenant. The GOD of the Red Sea crossing is our Father. He exhibits his great power on our behalf every day, so that we would fear him (and not people or our circumstances), and believe in him. And even better is that we live in an a new covenant age when our belief does not rest in some merely human servant like Moses, but the greater Servant that Moses prophesied would come (Deut. 18:15) – Jesus Christ, God’s Son!

In Christ, we have been delivered from our enemies. In Christ, we need not fear. In Christ, we may rejoice in the glory of God as our strength, and our song, and our salvation, who in his steadfast love has redeemed us, and will guide us safely to his holy abode!

Clive Staples Lewis writes:

[God] selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was – that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.

Then comes the real shock.

Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. he says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else.

And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

~ from Mere Christianity (paragraphing mine).

This post is a conclusion to yesterday’s post, Just a Bit of Coloured Paper?

Now, Theology is like the map.

Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God – experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it.

In fact, that is just why a vague religion – all feeling about God in nature, and so on – is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work: like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map. (~ from Mere Christianity)

My dear friend, quite apart from some vague experience or feeling that so many of us so often seem to be longing for, Lewis is trying to help us see that theology is the map that leads us to God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

(Jesus, quoted in Matthew 5:10-12, ESV)

Andree Seu has written another helpful post on anxiety, worry, and living conscious of the Gospel moment by moment. It is filled with thought-provoking and helpful insights. She begins:

God loves me. That is good doctrine, and I subscribe to it. I would affix my signature to a Christian organizations’s statement of faith that has ‘God loves me’ as one of its tenets. I have subscribed for decades, and been a wreck. What is the problem?

The problem is that I have spent very few moments of my life conscious of God loving me. A doctrine not actively believed in is as about as useful as an unplugged lamp. Christianity that is not conscious is a drag: We may get to heaven all right, but it will be a miserable trip.

And this on the worrier:

…in the mind of the chronic worrier a constant background signal, flashing once a second, says ‘I must be in control, I must be in control.’ You might think it is ‘natural,’ but no: The mind under that kind of servitude is a mind that has at some point handed authority to the Enemy to set up shop.

What is the way out? The way forward? Read the rest of the story.

Differences of all kinds, within people, face us every day. Often, those differences lead to difficulties. How could the problem actually be the solution?

I am spending time in a little volume each day entitled, A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from his Classic Works. It has already been quite rich and thought-provoking. I’d like to share an extended quote from this volume.

If I may be so bold – it will definitely be worth your time to read and think on this one. In it he tells a gripping story that serves as a metaphor for understanding the importance of living theologically.

Hey, maybe it will even move you to purchase a copy for yourself.

I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, ‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!’

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point.

The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.  ( ~ from Mere Christianity)

Check back here tomorrow morning for the conclusion…