Tag: bible

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What We Believe – The Grace of God

This is an ongoing series of posts based on short papers written for our church’s elder class and edited (and in some cases, expanded) for this format. Today’s writing prompt: “What is your view of God’s grace?”

God’s grace is a subject that is on my mind daily, every hour as I struggle against sin or feel the weight of failure. The beauty of His grace in my life is has been transformative in the way I’ve grown, and yet it provides so much relief from the weight of the fact that on my own, I am utterly incapable of doing what is pleasing to God. God showers the whole world with His grace even as it revolves daily in rebellion – rain falls on saved and unsaved alike, happiness and joy persist even for the most virulent atheist. His common grace is a sign of who God is – the loving Creator and Father of all of us. Yet the grace that we seek is the grace that is available in Christ. This is the special grace that saves all who receive it, all who stand in Christ in faith. I think about this often, as I pray and work after my desire to grow into the image of Christ.

What is grace?

Grace could be described as the application of God’s love. His love is shown in all creation through grace as I mentioned, by His provision of our needs. God provides for our need for food, in abundance and variety. He “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” He gives both work and rest to humanity.

And more than that, He provides an abundance of beauty in our world, of a form that humans continue to seek to recreate through our own artistic methods. I’m reminded of what I like to call the “Holmes apologetic,” from a Sherlock Holmes story where the detective stops mid-thought to remark on the beauty of flowers, and how a flower’s “smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives these extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.” When we look at nature and consider it, from the incredibly minute detail of particles so small no eye could see them, to vast stellar nurseries discovered deep in our galaxy and beyond, the artistry of God demonstrates His love for his creation.

In theological terms, we see two concepts of grace: what is called “common grace,” which is God’s provision for our existence and for creation itself, and “special (or saving) grace,” which is His provision of salvation in Christ. Common grace is what I described above, in God’s provision for all His creation. Special grace is not given to all, but to His people – to all who believe in the name of Jesus and look to Him for life and hope. For those who do not, God’s common grace will ultimately become a condemnation – they received God’s goodness while refusing to worship Him as God.

As Paul says in Romans 1, the truth of God seen in creation is not new information to humanity. We know this, but we also “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” In our sin and our refusal to honor our Creator, we deny God’s handiwork as being special or of showing His glory. We allow cynical, nihilistic beliefs to draw us into attitudes of self-absorption, rather than humility. But humility is the key that unlocks the gate to the way of Christ, a humility brought about by the conviction of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who hear the gospel and by God’s grace respond. In Romans 3:23 Paul writes that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But Paul answers this problem with the only possible solution: the grace that is given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus. We are all tainted by sin, and there is no way we can “un-sin” by our own means – as Isaiah writes, even our attempts to do good are tainted by our evil desires before God. But the special grace of Christ truly and perfectly covers our sin, and He delights to administer that to us each day, as our great high priest before the Father. 

God’s grace transforms our hearts

Paul continues in that chapter to demonstrate that humility is the necessary consequence of this realization – boasting in ourselves “is excluded” he writes, “by a law of faith.” Our way is not a free ticket to do what we please because God doesn’t care any longer. His grace creates in us a realization that we have received what we do not and could never deserve.  And as that truth works inward like a seed that is sprouting out of the ground, it changes us bit by bit, breaking away hard-hearted and selfish attitudes and bringing idols to light so they may be thrown down. God’s saving grace shows us that truly resting in God for all our needs, from the most basic to the most profound, is precisely the life God intends for us to live in Him, now and in eternity. As Charles Spurgeon said, “The more grace we have, the less we shall think of ourselves, for grace, like light, reveals our impurity.”

I remember how this happened in my own life, and the moment I experienced that deep conviction of my own sin even as I also felt a tremendous sense of joy of knowing that Jesus was, in fact, enough. It was during a sermon many years ago that the Holy Spirit used as a transformative moment beyond description, and I think about that day often, even as I think about the days and years to come walking the path of Christ.

This applied love of grace is not simply an expression of pity, though pity could be said to share in it. When God saw the sorry state of Adam and Eve in the garden, even though He surely was not surprised by any turn of events, might pity not have had its place in His promise that the woman’s offspring would destroy the enemy and his work? When Jesus stood among weeping mourners at the tomb of Lazarus and joined in their tears, pity surely must have been one of the feelings he bore as he demonstrated the great hope of life that was His gift to humanity, when he called Lazarus forth from the tomb. But this great love expresses the perfect love in unity shared by Father, Son, and Spirit. Again returning to Romans, Paul writes in chapter 5 that “God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

Knowing that, we can bring our heavy burdens to Him. We can truly obey the call of Psalm 55:22, to “cast all our burdens on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to be shaken.” We often do feel shaken, it is true, but God knows our needs and provides for them, in His love, by His grace. The more we realize this grace, the more we lower our own self-estimations, and raise our worshipful attitudes in expressing that love we have received to God, and to one another.

Living in His grace

The implications for our day to day lives are nothing short of tremendous. Yet they are also the implications that we often find ourselves blinded to the most by our day to day lives, our personal sin struggles and sufferings, and even our successes. When we build our lives around His grace, we find a rest that supports and extends far beyond all our earthly hopes, because life in Christ itself likewise is far beyond our brief years in this world. 

I want to end with three ideas of ways we can grow in the grace of God in our daily lives:

  • Pursue the things that bring His grace to mind. This can be done in many ways, from taking time to reflect on the beauty of God’s grace in nature and the goodness of His provision for your life in things like a good meal, to meditating on the testimony of Scripture and the teachings of those who have pursued this deeply. 
  • Find ways to express the ways you’ve seen God’s grace move in your life. You don’t have to have a big formal journaling effort, though keeping a personal record of the ways you experience God’s grace is a good idea. When dark times come, being able to remember that God’s presence has not lessened is wise.
  • Don’t try to walk alone. Have people who are close to you, who you trust and who knows you. When hardship comes and clouds fill the horizon of life, have someone who can encourage and pray with you. This should be a person who can listen to confessions of the sins, fears and failures of your life and remind you of your true worth in Christ. My podcast cohost Jake is a person like this for me, someone who I turn to often when I’m needing to talk about life struggles or confess sins.

None of this is dynamic and new, but then that’s not the point. The goal is to build a reminder into our lives of the constant grace of God, and the Holy Spirit has given us so many ways to do so through the Word, through prayer, and through the people around us. Pursue the grace of Christ daily, and the day will come where both suffering and success in this world will be a dim memory compared with the joy of truly being in the presence of Jesus. My prayer for everyone who reads this is that you will strive each day towards that moment for yourself.

How has the grace of God impacted your life? How do you want to see God move further in your life and transform your heart? Leave a comment below or email us, prayer requests are welcome!

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Episode 4 – That’s What Christmas is All About

We’re wrapping up 2024 and celebrating Christmas with a wide ranging conversation. We recorded this a little over a week ago and covered everything from Christmas music preferences both sacred and secular, to why it’s still okay to be against murder while also believing the American health care system is broken, to the struggle of genuine engagement online and more. Tune in and listen!

Leave your comments below or email us with your thoughts and prayer requests.

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What We Believe – The Work of Christ

In this ongoing series I am publishing slightly edited versions of short papers I wrote for my church’s elder pipeline class. The prompt for this paper was, “What did Christ accomplish on the cross?”

We have talked about who Christ is – He is the Son of God, He is a man born at a certain place in a certain time, He is the fulfillment of prophecy and a prophet Himself. But it is that last part that we must look to now, not just who He is, but what He has done, and continues to do. We cannot examine the work of Jesus without looking closely at the central focus of His whole life: the cross, His death there, and His resurrection. This was no mere display of power, nor is it simply a tragedy we mourn as unjust. This was the point at which God inaugurated His kingdom, and began the work that will conclude when Jesus returns: namely, the restoration of creation to true holiness, and true and total intimacy between God and His people.

Firstly, Jesus atoned for the sins of His people. There has been much debate over the concept of penal substitutionary atonement and its centrality to what Christ accomplished on the cross, but the testimony of Scripture is clear. All those who draw near to Christ receive the benefits of His atonement, just as all those who drew near on the Day of Atonement each year received those benefits for their sins. The difference is that Christ’s atonement is a better one, for it does not need to be renewed year after year, but as the author of Hebrews says, it is completed and perfect. 

Continue reading “What We Believe – The Work of Christ”
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Episode 3: Back At It – Papers, Prayers and Passions in Life

After a hectic summer Dave and Jake are back together talking about life, music, new babies, and much more. Our church’s elder class recently wrapped up and we’ve been publishing these piecemeal on the podcast website. We’re also going to begin turning these into podcast episodes, so we spent a little time talking about the purpose of these as well as our hopes for the future of this class. 

Some of the books we talked about in this episode:

Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture – by Christopher Watkin

Art and Faith: A Theology of Making – by Makoto Fujimura

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution – by Carl Trueman

Habits of the Household: Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms – by Justin Whitmel Earley

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What we believe – Who is Jesus?

In this ongoing series I am publishing slightly edited versions of short papers I wrote for my church’s elder pipeline class. The prompt for this paper was, “What is your view of Jesus Christ?”

The question “what is your view of Jesus” could receive so broad an answer that literally, many books exist just to tackle it. I want to address this by answering three specific questions that serve as the foundation upon which Christology is built.

Continue reading “What we believe – Who is Jesus?”
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What We Believe – The Imago Dei

This series is taken from short papers I wrote for my church’s elder class in response to different questions. This week’s question: What does it mean that man is an image-bearer of God?

Genesis 1 contains the account of God creating everything, day by day. Each part of creation has its place and is authored by God’s will, and each part is declared to be good. In verse 26, humanity is created specially and uniquely, “in our image, according to our likeness,” as the passage reads. But we struggle with understanding what it means to be truly made in His image. With the fall of man in chapter three of the same book, we see that humanity takes on a desire to be God. In the subsequent chapters and books and continuing down through human history, people have tried to make gods in the image of humanity, either literally or in the reckoning of what we believe is powerful. 

If we look in a mirror, we see an image of ourselves created for that moment, the product of light reflected off a surface that displays what we look like. But it is not us, and it only exists as long as we choose to stand there. Walk away, and the image vanishes, yet we continue. In her book Five Lies of our Anti-Christian Age, Rosaria Butterfield uses this analogy to explain this unique relationship between God and man, one that is not shared by any other aspect of creation. She says, “God is the object in the biblical creation account, and we are the reflection.” 

Her analogy is rooted in the one Paul uses to express the longing we experience in this life as we look toward a future of truly seeing and knowing God in 1 Corinthians 13:12: “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.” And he follows it up with a very telling concluding verse to chapter 13: “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.”  

Love is what flows from God to His creation, and most especially to humanity. Love is what propels Him to mercy when Adam and Eve sin, and to promise a redeemer who will restore what they have broken. Love drives God to display mercy to the Israelites over and over, to be patient beyond any human reckoning, as generation after generation falls into rebellion and idolatry and requires reminding again that there is only one true God. And most of all, love is what drives the Trinitarian work of salvation – love within the Trinity, and love of God for His creation, for His image seen in His people. To acknowledge that we are made in His image is to accept and share in His tremendous love, and to rest in that love and all the promises it carries for provision, protection, and ultimate salvation in this world and the next.

By the same token, to deny that we are made in God’s image is to deny that love, and to deny the very thing that makes us human, more than just animals with higher intelligence and greater emotional capacity. Sin is an attack on that image. The first sin in Genesis 3 was a denial of God as creator and ruler, and an attempt to assert the right to decide right and wrong apart from Him. Murder is a vicious assault on God’s image, and carries the death penalty in Israel’s law because to kill a man is to destroy that image. Idolatry is a sin because it says that a man may know better what God should be, than the One who created us.

When the author of Hebrews describes Jesus in chapter 1, he calls him “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature,” that is to say, while we are made in the image of God, Christ is the image of God. When we trust in Christ, we are looking to He who bears the unscarred, unbroken perfection of God’s image in His humanity, and the perfect power and total authority of God in His divinity.

When we place our trust in Jesus, when we preach the power of His name and the love and mercy of God found in Him, we are calling out to all humanity with a tremendous message. We are saying, “Stop trying to be something you are not, and remember that you are something so much greater in creation – you are made to reflect the perfect, the complete, the holy.” When we preach the gospel we say to our listeners, “Be who God made you to be, because to be His image is to find true life that transcends anything your base desires in this world could hope to find.”

How does knowing that you are made in the image of God affect your view of yourself and others? How can this empower you in your walk with Christ and the way you love your neighbor? Let us know below in the comments!

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What We Believe – Our God is Three in One

This is a continuing series based on short papers I wrote for my church’s elder class to prepare for discussions of different doctrinal questions. This week’s prompt: What is your view of the Trinity?

The doctrine of God’s existence as one being in three persons is one of the most controversial and defining doctrines of the faith. It is sensible that discussion of this topic follows an exploration of the nature of Scripture, because it is through a belief in the character of Scripture as God-breathed and therefore infallible and supreme that we must arrive at the conclusion that the doctrine of the Trinity is true. 

As with so many doctrines, it was defined in the face of error. It is tempting to linger on these errors in a historical sense, and it is important to understand them because so often people tend to repeat them. There are whole offshoot faiths from Christianity that are founded on denials of various aspects of the Trinity – for example, United Pentacostals who hold to a modalistic view of God, or Jehovah’s Witnesses who insist that Jesus is a mere created being. But it’s important to define what we do believe, rather than just what we do not. 

Looking back at the early discussions in the church that hashed out the doctrine and the way it is stated across denominational lines to this day, we see the priorities of these believers as they examined what the Scriptures say for the sake of clarifying teaching and avoiding error. We see them prioritizing the nature of God, and the distinction between God’s being (or substance, to use the Nicene term) and the persons of the Trinity, who Scripture reveals as unique in role and action, yet utterly united in will and fully bearing the nature of being God.

We see the early church’s recognition that for salvation to be effective, Christ must be fully man and fully God. He must be fully man so that He may share in our existence and bear our suffering and sin upon the cross, and He must be fully God so that He may endure in a way no mere sinful human ever could alone. We see the Father as the one who declares the nature of creation and trajectory of history through His perfect plans. He does not do anything alone, but plays His own unique role in sending forth the Son and blessing His work. He calls all those who will be Christ’s. And we see the Holy Spirit as the one who ministers constantly through and in Christ’s church, to glorify Christ and to be the “Giver of Life” as the Council of Constantinople put it, as He makes possible Christ’s words from John 3 that to be saved, we “must be born again.”

God’s Trinitarian nature is beyond our comprehension in many ways, but that itself is evidence of it being a revelation of God and not a production of man’s own mind. The legion of heresies that the church has contended with through the centuries show what happens when humans attempt to apply their own wisdom to God’s nature. From Sabellius teaching that the persons of the Trinity are little more than masks worn by one being of God, to Arius’ claims that “there was a time that the Son was not” and his theological children in groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, to outright polytheists like the Mormons, many times man refuses to be satisfied by trusting to what God says but insists that he has better wisdom. Yet none of them can truly say they believe that Scripture is God’s Word, when they refuse to heed God’s own revelations of Himself. They cannot claim to have true salvation in a Christ who is not who He said He was, in His own words – “I am.” 

To rest in God’s promises we must trust in the words of Deuteronomy 29:29, “The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.” We cannot truly reckon as created, mortal, singular beings with the true nature of existence for an eternal, Trinitarian God, but we can trust that He is truthful and trustworthy. We rely on Him to grasp this, and His work and Word calls us to let our doubts and confusion rest on His promises.

Do you have questions or areas where you struggle to understand? Please ask them below or email me if you prefer, our hope here is to bless the body and engage in dialogue.

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My friend Jarod

A week ago Friday I picked my wife up from work, our 3 year old riding in his seat in the back singing and pointing out fire trucks and windmills as we drove across town to to the grocery store. We pulled into a spot and started making a list – after all, the only bigger mistake to make than going grocery shopping without a list, is going while hungry.

As we sat there chatting about what to get, watching grey clouds roll in, my phone buzzed with a text message from a friend of mine. “Dave, I just heard about Jarod. I’m so sorry.”

I looked at my wife and we both sat there confused and horrified for a moment. Neither of us had no idea what was going on, and I asked him to clarify.

“I’m so sorry, I thought you would have heard by now. Jarod took his own life today.”

It didn’t make sense. We didn’t have a category for this information, because…we thought we knew him. As we learned more about the circumstances surrounding everything, our grief and the grief of many others was mingled with the question that always seems to come up when someone reflects on someone who recently committed suicide: “Why couldn’t he just talk to me? To somebody?”

I met my friend Jarod shortly after I started going to Christ Community Church. He was a regular musician there, and on staff helping, among other things, to coordinate with the small group leaders. He and I developed a friendship that developed over many years. We had many things in common – we were both musicians, albeit of a very different variety; Jarod was a singer and songwriter who played guitar and taught many students, while I was a tuba player with on-and-off times playing with New Orleans brass bands in town. We were both strongly in the “reformed” mindset of Christianity, though over the years we parted ways on certain issues; he wound up developing convictions that led him and his wife Morgan to leave the Baptist tradition and join an Anglican church, while I grew more firm in my credobaptist and church autonomy convictions.

But through all that we remained close. While that was going on I started my previous podcast, formerly known as Spurgeon Audio, then Kings Way Talk. When I wanted to have a regular partner to discuss subjects, my first choice was Jarod. We’d always spent hours many weekends up at the local cigar shop discussing the books we were reading, the goings-on of our lives, and the struggles of sin and faith we were working through. He sat with me and listened as I discussed issues like my previous marriage collapsing and trying to find healing in that. He was a tremendous encouragement to me in very dark times, and an incredible blessing in good ones. He served as a groomsman for my marriage to Ravyn and led us all in worship for the service.

When we’d get behind the microphone his insights were always helpful. He helped me think through my own maturing faith in new ways, and helped me to get away from looking at my faith as a matter of “us versus the world” and more as a matter of “serving those around us in patient love.” Because of his encouragement I was able to grow in new ways as I saw the deeper truth underlying the reality of God’s gracious and sovereign rule over our world. Our discussions especially helped me think through the dangers of valuing certainty over truth.

So when I read those texts, I was shocked and horrified to my very core. My good friend, my brother, wasn’t just dead – he’d taken his own life. I was shocked, because I couldn’t imagine him feeling like he couldn’t just talk to me about difficult things. I couldn’t picture him reaching that level of despair.

But then I took another step in thinking about it that I found later many of my friends who’d known Jarod were also doing: I began asking myself, “What would drive me to that level?” I know my sin tendencies. I am well aware of the ways in which I tend to fall when life’s pressures are turned up. Is there a fear, a frustration, a doubt that could grow like a weed in my heart to the point that I begin to believe I can’t dare confide in someone else? Or that even if I do find that someone, that my life is about to be blown open in irreversible ways?

I don’t know. I don’t think any of us truly know the depths of our own hearts, and only God can say He knows us to that level. So grief and confusion become mingled with a flavor of fear and self-doubt in such a time. And then there’s the anger. Anger at myself for not pursuing our friendship harder than I had been in the days leading up to it. For not somehow knowing what even his closest family didn’t know. And anger at him, for not knowing – he could have come to me. To someone.

Honestly there are lots of questions I’ve wrestled with over the course of the last week. But as I do, I find myself sitting in the dirt with Job, my hand over my mouth. My wisdom is so small, and I certainly have no special insight into his mind in those last moments. All I do know is God’s character. I know God is merciful and kind. I know His grace is greater than we can imagine. I know that our salvation is His work, not our own.

And so, I grieve the loss of my friend. I grieve my brother. And I trust to God’s perfect wisdom and love for Jarod, and for myself. I’ve had dark moments in my life and I’ve known those who have died, but this is a uniquely difficult flavor of sadness. But as Paul said, I don’t grieve as one without hope. I look to the day that I will see him again. And I am incredibly grateful for all those around us who are grieving in this time who are offering comfort and wise counsel, who are helping us to turn our eyes to Jesus and find our hope there even in this dark time.

I would like to close by asking you to consider supporting his widow Morgan in this time, to help offset funeral costs and to give her what she needs as she works through this tragic period: time, to heal and to see what her next steps will be. You can find the GoFundMe being managed by one of her church leaders at this link. And if there is anyone reading this who is finding that despair growing, who is beginning to think on some level that this “permanent solution to a temporary problem” is the right choice – please, find someone to talk to. Know that you’re not alone. You can even send me an email. Our life in Christ is not made to be run on our own, but we are to bear one another’s burdens, and yours is not too great for such a grace.

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