Go, then, earthly fame and treasure

This is rich. Sanity-restoring. Lets me breathe again.

Luther on Adoption

In John 1:12, the apostle writes that 'to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.' On August 25, 1537, Martin Luther entered a pulpit in Denmark to fill in for a friend and preached on this text. He said:

No man, no matter who he may be, can ponder the magnificence sufficiently or express it adequately in words. We poor mortals, who are condemned and miserable sinners through our first birth from Adam, are singled out for such great honor and nobility that the eternal and almighty God is our Father and we are His children. Christ is our Brother, and we are His fellow heirs (Rom 8:17). . . .

This is a grand and overpowering thought! Whoever really reflects on it--the children of the world will not, but Christians will, although not all of them either--will be so startled and frightened by the thought that he will be prompted to ask: 'My dear, can this really be possible and true?' . . .

The world rates it a much higher honor and privilege to be the son and heir of a prince, a king, or a count than to be the possessor of God's spiritual goods, although by comparison all these are nothing but poor bags of worms and their glory sheer stench. Just compare all this with the ineffable dignity and nobility of which the evangelist speaks. . . . If we really believed with all our heart, firmly and unflinchingly, that the eternal God, Creator and Ruler of the world, is our Father, with whom we have an everlasting abode as children and heirs, not of this transitory wicked world but of all God's imperishable, heavenly, and inexpressible treasures, then we would, indeed, concern ourselves but little with all that the world prizes so highly; much less would we covet it and strive after it.

 Indeed, we would regard the world's riches, treasures, glories, splendor, and might--compared with the dignity and honor due us as the children and heirs, not of a mortal emperor but of the eternal and almighty God--as trifling, paltry, vile, leprous, yes, as stinking filth and poison. 

 --Luther's Works, 22:87-89

Living Supernaturally

Francis Schaeffer:

Once I was flying at night over the North Atlantic. It was in 1947, and I was coming back from my first visit to Europe. Our plane, one of those old DC4’s with two engines on each wing, was within two or three minutes of the middle of the Atlantic. Suddenly two engines on one wing stopped. I had already flown a lot, and so I could feel the engines going wrong. I remember thinking, if I’m going to go down into the ocean, I’d better get my coat. When I did, I said to the hostess, "There’s something wrong with the engines." She was a bit snappy and said, "You people always think there’s something wrong with the engines." So I shrugged my shoulders, but I took my coat. I had no sooner sat down, than the lights came on and a very agitated co-pilot came out. "We’re in trouble," he said. "Hurry and put on your life jackets."

So down we went, and we fell and fell, until in the middle of the night with no moon we could actually see the water breaking under us in the darkness. And as we were coming down, I prayed. Interestingly enough, a radio message had gone out, an SOS that was picked up and broadcast immediately all over the United States in a flash news announcement: "There is a plane falling in the middle of the Atlantic." My wife heard about this and at once she gathered our three little girls together and they knelt down and began to pray. They were praying in St Louis, Missouri, and I was praying on the plane. And we were going down and down.

Then, while we could see the waves breaking beneath us and everybody was ready for the crash, suddenly the two motors started, and we went on into Gander. When we got down I found the pilot and asked what happened. "Well," he said, "it’s a strange thing, something we can’t explain. Only rarely do two motors stop on one wing, but you can make an absolute rule that when they do, they don’t start again. We don’t understand it." So I turned to him and I said, "I can explain it." He looked at me: "How?" And I said, "My Father in heaven started it because I was praying." That man had the strangest look on his face and he turned away. 

Schaeffer then makes his point: 

. . . What one must realize is that seeing the world as a Christian does not mean just saying, "I am a Christian. I believe in the supernatural world," and then stopping. It is possible to be saved through faith in Christ and then spend much of our lives in [unbelief]. We can say we believe in a supernatural world, and yet live as though there were no supernatural in the universe at all. It is not enough merely to say, "I believe in a supernatural world."

Christianity is not just a mental assent that certain doctrines are true. This is only the beginning. This would be rather like a starving man sitting in front of great heaps of food and saying, "I believe the food exists; I believe it is real," and yet never eating it. It is not enough merely to say, "I am a Christian", and then in practice to live as if present contact with the supernatural were something far off and strange. Many Christians I know seem to act as though they come in contact with the supernatural just twice – once when they are justified and become a Christian and once when they die. The rest of the time they act [in unbelief]. 

 --Francis Schaeffer, 'The Universe and Two Chairs'

HT: Lane Dennis

No Works

To those who believe in Christ there are no works so bad as to accuse and condemn us, but again, there are no works so good that they could save and defend us.

--Martin Luther, 'Judgment on Monastic Vows,' in Luther's Works, 44:301

Pastoral Apologetics

From Tim Lane at CCEF. This is wise.



"You're trying to convince the Christian that the amazing grace of the gospel really is exactly what they need for growth in grace."