Jesus broke its jaw

Without the resurrection of Jesus, life would be cruel because sin and death would reign. More to the point, without the resurrection of Jesus we would still be in our sin and life with all its cruelty would repeatedly, crushingly hit against us like a wrecking ball hits a doomed building.
Dostoevsky brings this point out poignantly in, The Idiot. One of the characters, the sick and depressed Ippolit gives a sort of suicide speech at Myshkin’s birthday party. He called it An Essential Explanation. In it he describes a painting he had seen of Jesus just after he had been taken down from the cross. He is puzzled because the painting is so brutally honest, and it makes him reflect on death. Most paintings, he says, “Strive to preserve that beauty (the beauty of Jesus), even in His most terrible agonies.” But it was not so in this one. Ippolit says this about the painting.

“It’s true it’s the face of a man only just taken from the cross – that is to say, still bearing traces of warmth and life. Nothing is rigid in it yet, so that there’s still a look of suffering in the face of the dead man, as though he were still feeling it. Yet the face has not been spared in the least. It is simply nature, and the corpse of a man, whoever he might be, must really look like that after such suffering. I know that the Christian Church laid it down, even in the early ages, that Christ’s suffering was not symbolical but actual and that his body was therefore fully and completely subject to the laws of nature on the cross. In the picture the face is fearfully crushed by blows, swollen, covered with fearful, swollen and blood-stained bruises, the eyes are open and squinting: the great wide-open whites of the eyes glitter with a sort of deathly, glassy light.”

From this entry we see Dostoevsky held a strong incarnational theology. Jesus was God and really man. He suffered for men as a man in cruelty, all the cruelty of violence and death – in our place. However, would this cruelty remain embedded in that face? How could hope and life come from a pulverized human being? Ipploit goes on…

“But, strange to say as one looks at this corpse of a tortured man, a peculiar and curious question arises: if just such a corpse (and it must have been just like that) was seen by all His disciples, by those who were to become his chief apostles, by the women that followed him and stood by the cross, by all who believed in Him and worshipped Him, how could they believe that that martyr would rise again? The question instinctively arises: if death is so awful and the laws of nature so mighty, how can they be overcome? How can they be overcome when even He did not conquer them, He who vanquished nature in His lifetime, who exclaimed, ‘Maiden, arise!’ and the maiden arose – ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ and the dead man came forth? Looking at such a picture, one conceives of nature in the shape of an immense, merciless, dumb beast, or more correctly, much more correctly, speaking, though it sounds strange, in the form of a huge machine of the most modern construction which, dull and insensible, has aimlessly clutched, crushed and swallowed up a great priceless Being, a Being worth all nature and its laws, worth the whole earth, which was created perhaps solely for the sake of the advent of that Being.”

Ipploit went on to say that "the disciples must have experienced the most terrible anguish and consternation on that evening, which had crushed all their hopes, and almost their convictions.” Another came to Ipploit’s mind, “And of the Teacher could have seen Himself on the eve of the crucifixion, would He have gone up to the cross and have died as he did? That question too rises involuntarily, as one looks at the picture.” I have felt this way when looking at Matthias Grunwald’s, The Crucifixion.

Dostoevsky forces the reader to look at the power of sin and death in many places in his novels, but this is to get us to look at Jesus and remind us that he overcame death. The reader asserts in his mind, “Yes, Jesus suffered, but he did not stay dead!” Even in what I have quoted above the reader is reminded of the resurrection. Yes, death, and the sin which caused it is an immense, merciless, dumb beast crushing, crushing, crushing. But it tried to crush Jesus into oblivion but Jesus broke its jaw! He conquered it with the young girl and Lazarus, and it was finally conquered, when on the third day he rose from the dead.

Hope is not now shattered into pieces. Jesus understood the great suffering he was to endure and prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done.” The word of forgiveness was even uttered from bruised and bloody lips, perhaps with teeth knocked out. Jesus had the hope of the resurrection. Life is not an immense, merciless, dumb beast crushing itself out. God never intended it for that so he sent his Son and killed death in and through him.

The resurrected Jesus is the hope for people crushed by sin. All who are in him by faith were crushed with him in his death, only to be raised again with him unto everlasting life. Bless God for the gospel.

All in the family

Here are all my children....for those interested.

My two youngest daughters

Here are Selina (6) and Monica (2). Our Selina was named after Selina Countess of Huntington (1707-1791), a Methodist Calvinist who gave and gave to the cause of Jesus Christ. Our Monica was named after Augustine's mother who prayed and prayed for her son to follow Jesus. Our hope is that these girls and all our children will give to any in need, pray for many to follow Jesus, and yes go where ever God leads them.

To be for God

I have been thinking about holiness a lot. What is it to be called a child of God if we are not ready to serve our Father or our brothers and sisters? What is faith without obedience? What is the new creation in Christ if there is not a new life of Christ-likeness? The questions could go on.

Holiness usually conjures up the moralist monster image, or a ton of guilt. I know people who hear the word holiness and almost immediately become depressed, or angry, or impassive. This is because they always think of Christian holiness in terms of what they do, or don’t do…and then comes the inner turmoil.

A big part of the problem is that the church is Schleiermachian on this point as well as many others! Schleiermacher was a German pietist preacher who lived from 1768 to 1834. To him holiness is a beauty a man should and can attain too. The evangelical church thinks this to. Holiness has become something for us; not God or our neighbour. People have their “comfort zones,” their “ways to relax.” For many evangelicals the “comfort zone” is personal holiness, and they can’t relax until they think they’ve got it. Of course what that personal holiness, that “comfort zone” is differs from person to person; an indicator that holiness has become an idol. They maintain, “Life will be better for me, for my kids, for my friends when they get this holiness, I like.” All of this thinking takes us away from God, even though we use his name when we say, “We should be holy because God is holy.” The fact is in the feverish exhausting pursuit of our holiness, not to mention the holiness we want to see in others, we are unholy. Why? At this point we are for man, and not for God. The phrase in 1 Peter, “You shall be holy for I am holy,” has no meaning when we take the “I am” out of it. “You shall be holy,” stands by itself in our churches today.

What do we do? Start by bringing God back into our lives; and that starts with Jesus Christ and his gospel. That means we are already holy, sanctified by God for God. God is already holy, he is already for himself, and by his grace he changes us to be for him too. We could change the 1 Peter passage to say, “You shall be for me, because I am for me.” Thomas Goodwin wrote Christian holiness is, “A disposition to be for God, even as God is for himself.”

This can be the beginning point for understanding true holiness. To be for God, rather than “holiness” is always a better place to start.

An eight letter word

Our lives, whether we are young or old are before us. But wait, when I say, "our lives" I haven’t got it quite right have I? Wonderfully, and to God’s eternal praise, all in his Son through faith and baptism are his congregation for he has called them to be his. They are designated as the Father’s children, and King Jesus’ servants. They are also are the Holy Spirit’s people. As Israel was chosen and claimed out of Egypt, so are they.

What is the name of our God? I am who I am. “I am the Lord God who brought you up out of the Land of Egypt out of the house of slavery.” As this changed everything for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all Israel so it changes everything for those who are now God's people. Why? In one word election!

In this eight letter word election, which is work of the grace of God, the course of the Christian's life has been set! Yes thier lives are before their own eyes, but it is a life claimed by God, a life in reference to God, a life that must constantly remember and recall, “I am your God and you are my people.”

God's justice and mercy; no need to reconcile friends

At times it has been very vogue to say, "I can't fit God's justice, severity, and wrath with his everlasting mercy and grace." Trying to figure this out has driven people either away from the true God or driven them to create a new "god" with whom they can be comfortable.


Doug Wilson, over at his blog had this to say about this. See it here.
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