The Gospel Coalition

The Super Bowl is not just another NFL game.  It has become an intensified concentration of vulgarity and ego, with enough athletics in the game and cleverness in the commercials to trick me into watching.  It’s simply not what I’m living for.

That was my last Super Bowl.

“The universe operates by Karma, we all know that.  For every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.  There is some atonement built in: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  Then enters Grace and turns that upside down.  I love it.  I’m not talking about people being graceful in their actions but just covering over the cracks.  Christ’s ministry really was a lot to do with pointing out how everybody is a screw-up in some shape or form, there’s no way around it.  But then He was to say, well, I am going to deal with those sins for you.  I will take on Myself all the consequences of sin.  Even if you’re not religious I think you’d accept that there are consequences to all the mistakes we make.  And so Grace enters the picture to say, ‘I’ll take the blame, I’ll carry your cross.’  It is a powerful idea.  Grace interrupting Karma.”

Bono, in U2 by U2 (London, 2006), page 300.

“The difference between the law and gospel does not at all consist in this, that the one requires perfect doing, the other only sincere doing, but in this, that the one requires doing, the other not doing but believing for life and salvation.  Their terms are different, not only in degree, but in their whole nature.”

Walter Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification (Welwyn, 1981), page 76.

“Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him.  But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”  Acts 7:54-55

We are connected with two realities simultaneously.  There is the lower reality of this world of human judgment, and there is the higher reality of the throne of God.

The lower reality can be brutal.  It was brutal not only for Stephen but far more for those who stoned him.  Frederick Buechner, Peculiar Treasures, page 182: “Stoning somebody to death, even somebody as young and healthy as Stephen, isn’t easy.  You don’t get the job done with the first few rocks and broken bottles, and even after you’ve got the man down, it’s a long, hot business.”  Living at this level takes commitment.  Those stones are heavy – heavy to throw.

But whatever is happening at the lower level, the higher reality is still in authority.  And the Holy Spirit is able to make the glory of God more real than the stones.

“The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose I will not, I will not desert to his foes; that soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.”

“What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place.  Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition.  Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be.  A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth. . . .

We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.”

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Garden City, 1959), pages 31-32.

“Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side.  Do not disbelieve, but believe.’”  John 20:27

“It is hard to imagine anything more tiresome and provoking than the conduct of Thomas . . . . But it is impossible to imagine anything more patient and compassionate than our Lord’s treatment of this weak disciple. . . .

Our Lord has many weak children in his family, many dull pupils in his school, many raw soldiers in his army, many lame sheep in his flock.  Yet he bears with them all and casts none away.”

J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, ad loc.

“I am meek and lowly in heart.”  Matthew 11:29

“Our Savior, who never sought the praise of man, says of himself ‘I am meek,’ because he desired to remove the fears of those who trembled to approach him, and he would win the allegiance of those who feared to become his followers, lest his service should prove too severe.  He, in effect, cried, ‘Come to me, ye offending men, ye who feel your unworthiness, ye who think that your transgressions may provoke my anger.  Come to me, for I am meek.’”

C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, 1950), I:178.

“As I see it, the Christian life must be comprised of three concentric circles, each of which must be kept in its proper place.  In the outer circle must be the correct theological position, true biblical orthodoxy and the purity of the visible church.  This is first, but if that is all there is, it is just one more seedbed for spiritual pride.

In the second circle must be good intellectual training and comprehension of our own generation.  But having only this leads to intellectualism and again provides a seedbed for pride.

In the inner circle must be the humble heart — the love of God, the devotional attitude toward God.  There must be the daily practice of the reality of the God whom we know is there. . . .

When each of these three circles is established in its proper place, there will be tongues of fire and the power of the Holy Spirit.  Then, at the end of my life, when I look back over my work since I have been a Christian, I will see that I have not wasted my life.  The Lord’s work must be done in the Lord’s way.”

Francis A. Schaeffer, “The Lord’s Work in the Lord’s Way,” in No Little People (Downers Grove, 1974), page 74, italics his.

Update:  Justin Taylor has kindly let me know that Crossway Books has put this sermon of Schaeffer’s online.  You can view it here. “The Lord’s Work in the Lord’s Way” is one of the most important things I have ever read. It is never far from my thoughts.

“Who then can pride himself over against someone else and claim to be better than he?  Especially in view of the fact that he is always capable of doing exactly the same as the other does and, indeed, that he does secretly in his heart before God what the other does openly before men.  And so we must never despise anyone who sins but must generously bear with him as a companion in a common misery.  We must help one another just as two people caught in the same swamp assist each other.  Thus we must ‘bear one another’s burdens and fulfill the law of Christ’ (Galatians 6:2).  But if we despise the other, we shall both perish in the same swamp.”

Wilhelm Pauck, translator, Luther: Lectures on Romans (Philadelphia, 1961), page 115.

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