Come thou long expected Jesus

The tragic essence of Pharisaic piety

Where will you find the best expression of the essence of Pharisaic piety?

It lies in what Jesus says about the prayer of the Pharisee in the temple:

God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get. (Lk. 18:11-12)

It is a prayer that makes the wrong comparison because it looks upon a fellow sinner with a sense of elevation.  It is a prayer that makes the wrong appeal because it imagines a sense of righteousness that comes from being free from certain sinful acts committed by others.  It is a prayer that compounds that wrong appeal by placing confidence in works-righteousness.

But it is still a prayer.

And it discloses the very essence of Pharisaic piety.  It makes it's boast not only by a wrong comparison, not only by a wrong appeal, but in the presence of the Holy and Righteous God.  Its unseemly piety is expressed coram deo.

It is said that Pelagius taught the following prayer:

Thou knowest, O Lord, how holy, how innocent, how pure from all deceit and rapine, are the hands which I stretch forth unto thee; how just, how unspotted with evil, how free from lying, are those lips wherewith I pour forth prayers unto thee, that thou wouldst have mercy on me.

In that prayer you can hear the same cadences of Pharisaic piety that Jesus spoke of in Luke 18.

The atmosphere of true piety is found in the words of the tac collector: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner."

That same atmosphere can be found in the pastoral counsel of Anselm:

Put all thy confidence in this death alone, place thy trust in no other thing; commit thyself wholly to this death, cover thyself wholly with this alone... 

And if God would judge thee say 'I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and thy judgment...' 

And if he shall say unto thee that thou art a sinner, say, 'I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between thee and all my sins; and I offer no merits of my own, which I should have, and have not' 

If he say that he is angry with thee, say, 'Lord, I place the death of our Lord Jesus Christ between me and thy anger'.

Elsewhere Anselm wrote:

My conscience hath deserved damnation, and my repentance is not sufficient for satisfaction; but most certain it is that thy mercy aboundeth above all offence.

Ambrose also gave expression to the essence of true piety when he wrote these words:

Let no man arrogate anything unto himself, let no man glory in his own merits or good deeds, let no man boast of his power: let us all hope to find mercy by our Lord Jesus; for we shall all stand before his judgment-seat.   

Of him I will beg pardon...what other hope is there for sinners?

The Willing Substitute

"From now on, wearing his clothes, 

I would be treated the way he had been treated."

In 1944 British soldier Denis Avey willingly walked into Auschwitz III.  Already a POW he freely exchanged places with a Dutch Jew from the concentration camp.  The following is his recollection of that crucial moment:

He closed the door on the turmoil of that hideous construction site and shuffled out of his grimy striped uniform.  He threw the thin garments to me and I pulled them on without hesitation.  Then I watched as he dragged on my British army battledress, casting looks over his shoulder at the door as he did it. 

He was a Dutch Jew and I knew him as Hans.  With that simple exchange between the two of us I had given away the protection of the Geneva Convention: I'd given my uniform, my lifeline, my best chance of surviving that dreadful place, to another man. 

From now on, wearing his clothes, I would be treated the way he had been treated. 

It was the middle of 1944 when I entered Auschwitz III of my own free will.

The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, p. 3-4

This extraordinary tale of courage, a story that could so easily have been lost to human memory, is but the faintest echo of the decisive moment in the great saga of redemption: that Christ should bear our sin, and that we should be clothed in his righteousness.  That he should be treated as our sins deserve, exposed to our merited punishment, and that the Father should see us in the Son of his love, his Beloved, with whom he is well pleased.

As Calvin expressed it:

Christ was put in place of evildoers as surety and pledge -- submitting himself even as the accused -- to bear and suffer all the punishments that they ought to have sustained.

Institutes, 1.2.XVI.10

The nineteenth century Scottish NT scholar George Smeaton was right to state this truth as follows:

The element of substitution, that is, of an exchange of places, constitutes the very core of the atonement; and this is also the Gospel in a single word... 

But this substitution was no make-believe, no mere semblance, but a true exchange of places -- the most real of facts.  He was accounted as the sinner not by a mere as if He were so, but because he was made sin (2 Cor. 5:21), and hence was treated as a sinner.

Christ's Doctrine of the Atonement, p. 93, 95.

And finally these apposite words came from the pen of Herman Bavinck:

The mystical and moral interpretation of Jesus' suffering and death cannot be maintained if it is not acknowledged beforehand that in a legal sense he suffered and died in our place... 

For when it says that Christ, though personally without sin, has been put forward as an expiation to show God's righteousness [Rom. 3:25], has been made to be sin for us [2 Cor. 5:21], became a curse for us [Gal. 3:13], bore our sins in his body on the tree [1 Peter 2:24]...then we can construe the interconnection between all these scriptural pronouncements in no other way than that Christ put himself in our place, has borne the punishment of our sin, satisfied God's justice, and so secured salvation for us.

Reformed Dogmatics Volume 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ, p. 398

Steve Jobs: The Paths of Glory

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,

Awaits alike the inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

Thomas Gray

 "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"

"Si momumentum requiris circumspice"

("If you seek his monument look around you")

The epitaph of Sir Christopher Wren

Counselling and a mind at rest

 The counsel of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the subject of counselling quoted in Geoff Thomas' foreword to the new hardback edition of Spiritual Depression: It's Causes and Cure:

Dr. Lloyd-Jones once spoke to a group of doctors about the essentials needed to counsel men and women. He said this:

[The counsellor] is not doing something outside himself. He is giving something of himself and his experience, and there is an exchange taking place between the patient and himself. Hence the most important thing of all in counselling is the character and personality of the counsellor. 

What is the greatest essential in a counsellor? I would say that it is a quiet mind, and that he is at rest in himself. You will remember how our Lord put this on one occasion — ‘Can the blind lead the blind? If the blind lead the blind they will both fall in the ditch.’ 

In other words, if a man is in trouble within himself, and is restless, he is really in need of counselling himself. How can he give useful counsel to another? The first requisite, therefore, in a counsellor is that he himself is possessed of a quiet mind, a mind that is restful. It is at that point, of course, that the importance of the Christian faith comes in. 

I am prepared to defend the proposition that no man ultimately can have a quiet mind, a heart at rest, and at leisure from itself unless he is a Christian. He needs to know a true peace within — the peace of God which is able to keep both mind and heart. The patient comes in to see him in an agitated troubled condition, and can detect if there are similar manifestations in the counsellor.

Spiritual Depression

Geoff Thomas has written a foreword for a new hardback edition of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones' classic book Spiritual Depression: It's Causes and Cure.  Here's the start of the foreword:

There was no one in the twentieth century more suited to preach, counsel and write on this subject of spiritual depression than Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. This subject has always been addressed by pastors, but particularly so from the time of the Reformation when the wrappings of human traditions were removed from biblical Christianity. 

The Puritan period especially excelled as an age when sermons were life and power, and many kinds of men and women were drawn to faith in the Lord Christ. They brought their past with them into the kingdom of God and were troubled with doubts and periods of darkness. Their pastors became physicians of the soul and learned to deal with various conditions of spiritual desertion and depression and their books on this subject are read today. Dr Lloyd-Jones was a living representative of that tradition. He was exceptionally gifted in dealing with this subject, and Spiritual Depression has done much pastoral good in the last fifty years. 

We ministers give it to particular people whom we believe would profit from it. Perhaps we point out to them one of the sermons in the book which we feel could help them. I am especially fond of the message entitled 'That One Sin' and a striking incident recounted there by the Doctor from the days of his ministry in Wales. It has often done homiletical duty for me. Why was Dr. Lloyd-Jones so well-equipped to write on a subject like this?

i] He was such a well-rounded, intelligent, and tender personality. 

Although a mighty intellect with a formidable presence, he was accessible and not at all intimidating. There was not a trace of snobbery in him whatsoever; he loathed that sin. He had a particularly blessed marriage. Mrs. Bethan Lloyd-Jones, herself a qualified doctor, came from one of the foremost Calvinistic Methodist families in Wales rooted in the ethos of the local countryside of south Cardiganshire, an evangelical home where warm affection, godly living, the importance of education and reverence for God were prized and natural graces. Her father was an ophthalmic surgeon and her grandfather was one of the leading preachers in Wales who ministered in one congregation in Newcastle Emlyn for half a century, preaching there throughout both the 1859 and 1904 revivals. Mrs. Lloyd-Jones was also a descendant of the Baptist preacher Christmas Evans. 

Out of the harmony and affection of that home with the two daughters they were given came the pastoral ministry and counselling that strengthened multitudes. I remember telling the Doctor on one occasion that my parents were moving from South Wales to live just around the corner from us in Aberystwyth, and his face lit up with delight at that news. His family was vitally important to him.

Dr. Lloyd-Jones once spoke to a group of doctors about the essentials needed to counsel men and women. He said this:

[The counsellor] is not doing something outside himself. He is giving something of himself and his experience, and there is an exchange taking place between the patient and himself. Hence the most important thing of all in counselling is the character and personality of the counsellor. What is the greatest essential in a counsellor? I would say that it is a quiet mind, and that he is at rest in himself. You will remember how our Lord put this on one occasion — ‘Can the blind lead the blind? If the blind lead the blind they will both fall in the ditch.’ 

In other words, if a man is in trouble within himself, and is restless, he is really in need of counselling himself. How can he give useful counsel to another? The first requisite, therefore, in a counsellor is that he himself is possessed of a quiet mind, a mind that is restful. It is at that point, of course, that the importance of the Christian faith comes in. 

I am prepared to defend the proposition that no man ultimately can have a quiet mind, a heart at rest, and at leisure from itself unless he is a Christian. He needs to know a true peace within — the peace of God which is able to keep both mind and heart. The patient comes in to see him in an agitated troubled condition, and can detect if there are similar manifestations in the counsellor.

The eight points in the foreword are:

1.  He was such a well-rounded, intelligent and tender personality
2.  He was utterly committed to the faith of the Scriptures
3.  He was a man who maintained the disciplines of private devotion
4.  He was a man to whom people went for spiritual help
5.  He was a man confident that to grasp the person and work of Christ, the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the ethical demands of the Bible is itself a mighty power to transform people, to elevate, ennoble and enrich their lives
6.  He was a man who was prepared to help people in every way that he could
7.  He was a man with a lucidity in explaining the human condition
8.  He was a man persuaded that the person who had come to seek his counsels had more knowledge of all the circumstances involved than he himself had

You can read the whole thing at The Banner of Truth site

(HT: Heavenly Worldliness)

An ending as tragic as one of his novels

Here are some fascinating extracts from the closing chapters of Claire Tomalin's biography of Thomas Hardy:

On Boxing Day [1927] he asked for the Gospel account of the birth of Christ and the massacre of the innocents, and also the entries in the Encyclopedia Biblica, remarking when she [his wife Florence] had finished that there was not a grain of evidence that the Gospel was true.

On the final day of his life Tomalin notes the following incident:

Then he dictated to Florence two rough and rude epitaphs on disliked contemporaries.  One was George Moore, who had attacked him and was now accused of conceit.  The other, ungrammatical but clear in its intentions, went for G. K. Chesterton:

The literary contortionist
Who prove and never turn a hair
That Darwin's theories were a snare...
And if one with him could not see
He'd shout his choice word 'Blasphemy'.

It was his final word against Church doctrine and in favour of rational thinking, exemplified by Darwin -- a magnificent blast from the sickbed.

One of the final comments in the book breathes an air of sadness:

He knew the past like a man who has lived more than one span of life, and he understood how difficult it is to cast aside the beliefs of his forebears.  At the same time he faced his own extinction with no wish to be comforted and no hope of immortality.

 The contrast between this ending and that of the seventy third psalm could not be more pronounced:

Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
   you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
   and afterward you will receive me to glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
   And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
   but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

If Abraham had been a Socinian: Foreknowledge, trustworthiness and the sins of the Amorites

Those who have chosen to deny God's exhaustive foreknowledge, whether in the seventeenth or twenty first centuries, have always been met with able defenders of the Biblical doctrine.

Here is an extract from the Puritan Stephen Charnock's discourse on God's knowledge.  Archaic language aside, his foot on the head of this snake remains as forceful as it was in the days when it was thought acceptable for men to have big gold buckles on their shoes.

His truth hath depended on his foresight.

Let us consider that in Gen. 15:16, but 'the fourth generation, they shall come hither again;' that, the posterity of Abraham shall come into Canaan; 'for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.'

God makes a promise to Abraham of giving his posterity the land of Canaan, not presently, but in the fourth generation.  If the truth of God be infallible in the performance of his promise, his understanding is as infallible in the foresight of the Amorites' sin: the fulness of their iniquity was to precede the Israelites' possession.

Did the truth of God depend upon an uncertainty? Did he make the promise hand over head, as we say?

How could he with any wisdom and truth assure Israel of the possession of the land in the fourth generation, if he had not been sure that the Amorites would fill up the measure of their iniquities by that time?

If Abraham had been a Socinian, to deny God's knowledge of the free acts of men, had he not a fine excuse for unbelief?

What would his reply have been to God?

Alas, Lord, this is not a promise to be relied upon; the Amorites iniquity depends on the acts of their free will, and such thou canst have no knowledge of.  Thou canst see no more than a likelihood of their iniquity being full, and therefore there is but a likelihood of they performing thy promise, and not a certainty.

Would not this be judged not only a saucy, but a blashemous answer?

And upon these principles the truth of the most faithful God had been dashed to uncertainty and a peradventure.