Morality Will Be Swallowed Up

Lewis:

Christianity will do you good--a great deal more good than you ever wanted or expected. And the first bit of good it will do you is to hammer into your head (you won't enjoy that!) the fact that what you have hitherto called 'good'--all that about 'leading a decent life' and 'being kind'--isn't quite the magnificent and all-important affair you supposed. It will teach you that in fact you can't be 'good' (not for 24 hours) on your own moral efforts. And then it will teach you that even if you were, you still wouldn't have achieved the purpose for which you were created. Mere morality is not the end of your life. You were made for something quite different than that. . . . Confucius simply didn't know what life is about. The people who keep on asking if they can't lead a decent life without Christ, don't know what life is about. . . .

Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be re-made. All the rabbit in us is to disappear--the worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit as well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit. We shall bleed and squeal as the handfuls of fur come out; and then, surprisingly, we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real Man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.

--C. S. Lewis, 'Man or Rabbit?' in God in the Dock (Eerdmans repr., 2002), 112

He's Asking for Everything

Pop, this past Sunday:

There are many reasons not to live on mission. One reason is, we’re tired already. And we’re supposed to add to our crowded, busy, demanding lives even more demand? We might think, if my life is a pie, and Jesus gets a slice of the pie, then okay, I’m willing to cut him an even bigger slice. But I decide how much he gets and how much he doesn’t get. He should be grateful he’s getting as much as he is. And the slice I’m giving him is a lot bigger than what I see in other Christians’ lives, so that makes me a pretty good Christian to begin with.

Obviously, that whole way of thinking is wrong. Where is the gospel in that? Where is the preeminence of Christ? Where is grace? Where is humility? Where is surrender? That way of thinking is what’s wrong with American Christianity today. It’s a barrier between us and the real Jesus. He is not asking for a bigger slice of the pie. He’s asking for everything. He’s asking that we do all that we do for him. The time has come not simply to give Jesus more of our unexamined lives but to subject our entire lives to a radical biblical critique. The time has come to stop making excuses for where we cut the slice of the pie and admit that every line we draw, shutting the Lord out to some extent, is us ignoring him and then blaming him for how pressured and limited we feel.

Weary and Heavy Laden

'Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'  (Matt. 11:28)

You who please yourselves with being good enough now, who are not weary and heavy laden with a sense of your sins here, will be weary and heavy laden with a sense of your punishment hereafter. 

--George Whitefield, 'Christ the Only Rest for the Weary and Heavy Laden,' in The Sermons of George Whitefield (ed. Lee Gatiss; 2 vols; Crossway, 2012), 1:360

Unimaginable

In an August 1956 letter to a "Mrs. Johnson"--follow the logic here and ponder what awaits us:

No, I don't wish I knew Heaven was like the picture in my Great Divorce, because, if we knew that, we should know it was no better. The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination. Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less Heaven. 

 --Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, 3:778

He Only Saves Real Sinners

In 1521 Martin Luther wrote a letter to his scrupulous friend, Philip Melanchthon. At one point Luther said:

God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners.

Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong; but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin . . . the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins?