This is Augustine’s understanding of grace. Grace is God’s giving us sovereign joy in God that triumphs over joy in sin. In other words, God works deep in the human heart to transform the springs of joy so that we love God more than sex or anything else. Loving God, in Augustine’s mind, is never reduced to deeds of obedience or acts of willpower. It is always a delighting in God, and in other things only for God’s sake. He defines it clearly in On Christian Doctrine (III, x, 16). “I call ‘charity’ [i.e., love for God] the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of one’s self and of one’s neighbor for the sake of God.” Loving God is always conceived of essentially as delighting in God and in anything else for his sake.
For Augustine, freedom is to be so in love with God and his ways that the very experience of choice is transcended. The ideal of freedom is not the autonomous will poised with sovereign equilibrium between good and evil. The ideal of freedom is to be so spiritually discerning of God’s beauty, and to be so in love with God that one never stands with equilibrium between God and an alternate choice. Rather, one transcends the experience of choice and walks under the continual sway of sovereign joy in God. For Augustine the self-conscious experience of having to contemplate choices was a sign not of the freedom of the will, but of the disintegration of the will. Choice is a necessary evil in this fallen world until the day comes when discernment and delight unite in a perfect apprehension of what is infinitely delightful, namely, God.
—The Swan is Not Silent, Sovereign Joy in the Life and Thought of St. Augustine, a sermon delivered on February 3, 1998 by John Piper at the 1998 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors.
I stumbled upon this simple and concise article by John Piper explaining the thought behind one of his common phrases, “Christian Hedonism.” Its a quick read, and I hope it will provide you some fodder for thought as you consider what you value and delight in, and why you do so. What unspeakable pleasure there is in communing, seeking and obeying our compassionate creator.
Outside of heaven, the power of God in its highest density is found inside the gospel. This must be so, for the Bible twice describes the gospel as ‘the power of God.’ (Rom 1:16; 1 Cor 1:18)
Nothing else in all of Scripture is ever described in this way, except for the Person of Jesus Christ. Such a description indicates that the gospel is not only powerful, but that it is the ultimate entity in which God’s power resides and does its greatest work.
Indeed, God’s power is seen in erupting volcanos, in the unimaginably hot boil of our massive sun, and in the lightning speed of a recently discovered star seen streaking through the heavens at 1.5 million miles per hour. Yet in Scripture such wonders are never labeled ‘the power of God.’
How powerful, then, must the gospel be that it would merit such a title! And how great is the salvation it could accomplish in my life, if I would only embrace it by faith and give it a central place in my thoughts each day!”
–Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians (Bemidji, MN: Focus, 2008), 14-15.
Credit Nick Roark
What does it mean to live in the world, but not of the world? As a christian, we who profess faith in Christ, adhere to the teaching of the Bible and strive for spiritual growth should look different from everyone and everything else around us. Radically different, if we’re sincere in our quest for righteousness, because modern culture increasingly considers true and Biblical christianity to be, well, weird. But if you’re like me, sometimes spiritual effort is overshadowed and diminished by distractions – temporal, trifling and time-consuming objects and interests that are not evil in themselves, but consume the real estate of our heart reserved for the work of the advancement of God’s kingdom.
I can confess to God in my prayers that I want to seek His glory above my own, that I desire righteousness more than riches, and I can be sincere in doing so. But then what? What action am I taking to make these more than intellectual assents, and more of a physical reality in my life? The truth is, our prayers must go beyond stringing together the right combination of words and phrases to our God… we must plead with Him for practical mercy, the kind that ignites our mind and consumes our affections so that truth in action is the only possible fruit of our heart’s attachments. We will reap what we sow. The question is, do you believe that every prayer, word, deed and action is really the planting of a seed that will later manifest itself in your life?
Romans 12:1-2
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
As a good friend recently mentioned to me, we are an amalgamation of our environment, the things we surround ourselves with everyday and let inside our minds and bodies. This is our nature – to internalize what our external senses perceive. What are you doing to renew your mind? Are the words of Christ dwelling in you richly? Are you earnestly seeking the fellowship of other believers, for encouragement and edification? Are you listening to Biblical teaching and reading books that point back to the realities of the Gospel message? Do you pray, and cry out for wisdom from the God you proclaim to trust in for everything you need? If you are not pursuing these things mightily, you will absorb the alternative: the world.
The things of this world will pass away. Are you drinking down these things of death, like everyone else? Or are you feasting upon the abundant grace, peace and joy that’s freely offered to those who repent of their sin and cling to Christ, in whom the fullness of existence dwells? Lined up next to each other, these two options don’t compare in worth, but the outworking of our lives will reflect which one we truly value.
What a mess we’ve made of life. We so easily live inside our little glass globe of existence and often quite successfully convince ourselves that life is peaceful, good and quiet. In regards to mankind, we’re disillusioned. We are an utter mess, and the terror lurking on the street corners of dark cities in every nation serves as a chilling reminder of the deadly effects of sin. The human race is morally, physically and spiritually degenerating itself into an abyss of misery.
Take a look at this website.
If you’re like me, these photos are eerily awakening to the intrinsic effect man’s depravity. Our initial reaction is to write it off as foreign because it’s happening on someone else’s soil, but reality is this is the world we live in, and this is the lostness of man apart from God. It’s not just China, or India, or third-world poverty-stricken countries. It’s happening, possibly more violently even, on the streets of Los Angeles, Houston, Omaha. It’s happening in between the walls of homes in your neighborhood. The incarnation of wickedness is all around us. We can smell the burning soot of self-idolatry from our doorsteps.
We need to be reminded of the importance of taking the message of the gospel to a lost and dying world. We need to be awakened to the desperateness of the times we live in. And we must understand the implications of failing to accept a Holy God’s incredible offer of salvation, an escape from the abyss we live in and an invitation to worship our creator forever.
The riots on the streets of China will someday grow quieter and fade from the media’s eye. But the internal rioting inside each human’s heart will rage on until the moment of death. The God of peace has called us to wage war. Be on guard, and look to Christ. He is the only escape.
You know what’s crazy to think about? What people lived like for the thousands and thousands of years up til’ the late twentieth century, with no phones, internet, vehicles, television, distractions. If you are like me, our lives are bombarded with external stimulation, our minds infiltrated countless times an hour by these technological devices we surround ourselves with and openly beckon into our thoughts and passions. We are addicted to distraction.
Our days are filled with activities to draw us out of ourselves and keep our minds from resting, reflecting, and introspecting. When was the last time you sat with no intention other than to think? If you are anything like me, this is a rare pastime. It’s sad though, because how incredibly healthy it would be for us to step out of the whirlwind of each day and slow our mind down enough so that it can quietly stroll down those side hallways of our mind – the ones where the lights are off and down which we rarely travel. Chances are we have information stored in boxes at the end of those dark passageways, but those thoughts rarely make it to the forefront of our minds most days because it would take a little effort to pull them from their storage spots and unpack them.
When was the last time you felt your emptiness? Your utter weakness to progress in your own strength and even take a step in the right direction under your own fortitude. Your chilling emptiness apart from grace. The frustration these feelings induce and then entangle the rest of your thoughts inside? There are times when I suddenly realize how futile my self efforts are when my eyes are not in the Word and fixed upon the power of Christ. Those realizations of self worthlessness taste bitter.
Is your life full of noise? Are you sub-consciencously devoted to diversion? Its so easy to be without recognizing it. It’s easy to let everything else around you think for you and suggest things for you to then think about. Its a lot more difficult to sit with no intention other than to allow your mind to look inside itself, at the inner engine of your existence, and realize how pathetic we really are outside of God’s infinite grace. It should open your eyes to how dependent we truly are on the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work and on the power of Christ’s resurrection that is now at work inside us as believers. Peek behind those things and you will see an ugly, shriveled up mind desperate for something to cling to outside itself. It’s lost in darkness back there alone. Remember what that felt like?
Most of all, introspection can bring God such great glory and praise. As Voddie Baucham says, “I hate who I was, and I thank God I hate who I was.” What a testimony to grace the reminder of our emptiness and wretchedness can serve as. What beautiful thoughts of our heavenly Father’s wonders await us at the end those rarely traveled paths down the side streets of our minds. Slow down and see what you find up there in the attic of your thoughts. It may surprise you.
The word blessing has quite the hope-inducing effect. Just hearing or reading the word generates a sense of excitement, anticipation, and eagerness. God certainly promises the believer blessings, but what do we generally think of when we hear the word blessing? What do we really feel excited about and begin hoping for? Our reward is great, but often our expectations are pathetically askew and fall short of what we’re promised.
I know for me, when I initially think of personal blessings that come from striving to do God’s will, I far too often envision things that are so trite. Material possessions. Happiness. Success. I’m not necessarily prone to the false “prosperity gospel” in the sense that I don’t expect to be rich and live an easy life simply because I confess Christ. But sometimes I do find myself internally hoping that someday, maybe God will bless me with a bigger house or success in my work. Those may not be necessarily evil desires in themselves, but why do I think of those things before I think of the spiritual blessings I take for granted every single day? His infinite grace and mercy spares my life hundreds of times a day when I sin and rebel against His holiness; yet he offers breath for my lungs, forgiveness for blackness, and steadiness for my wondering heart. What he offers brings eternal reward. What I desire on my own brings temporary satisfaction, and then dust and emptiness.
We all need to be conscientious of what it is we’re really longing for in our heart, underneath the outer show we convey to the world. The greatest blessing a human being on earth can obtain and is redemption in the blood of Christ — we, the absolute corrupt beings, are now presented as righteous before our Maker because of God choosing to reconcile with us. I have a new heart beating inside this doomed body, and I would hate to become so prone to desiring merely physical blessings that I fail to understand that sanctification is what this new heart needs to survive. As I seek to grow in righteousness and obedience, I pray that my hope will mature to match the grace working inside me. To be made more like Christ is an infinitely superior blessing than any personal comfort or achievement.
The simple fact that you and I can walk, speak, think, create, laugh, love, enjoy, and rest is astounding in itself. We forget how fragile we really are. Everything we are and do, we do with borrowed energy and on borrowed time, with borrowed air in a fleeting world. Let us be on guard against attributing joy to false wellsprings. We are easily disillusioned to what can truly bring us happiness, and nothing out there will apart from God. It is my prayer that my desires, running on the engine of grace, align with God’s will for my life, and I need not look anywhere else for joy. All we as believers have to do is look inside our own heart for a reminder of how immeasurably great the blessings are for those who seek the Lord. He is true to His promise of blessings. Am I true with my desire for blessings?
Everything you see in this world is a mirage, and it will dissipate into nothingness. Your new heart is a different story; therein lie the fathomless blessings.
Easter can be an easy holiday to float through. Spring is here, family gets together, kids hunt for eggs, and we remember the death and celebrate the resurrection of the special man who lived and died on this very planet two centuries ago. Most of us know the story. But do we feel the story? Does the resurrection of the man we call Jesus Christ really still mean something to us today? If you have been converted, regenerated and justified, then it means more than you and I could ever fully understand.
Jesus was betrayed, mocked, falsely accused, beaten, tortured and crucified on that dark day so long ago. People tend to know that part of the story; they think about how terrible it would be to undergo such pain for something he wasn’t guilty of. But too often we only think about that portion of the story: the physical. The truly excruciating aspect of the crucifixion was not the physical brutality, but the spiritual horror of His Father’s wrath. For three hours darkness came over the land, and Jesus Christ, who was and is and shall ever be glorified in heaven for all time, had to bear the wrath of His Father for the sin of you and me and every other person who’s walked this earth. In those three hours Jesus suffered more torment and anguish than you and I could even begin to imagine. Our pain in life is generally caused by personal sin or the general affects of sin to our corrupt natures. But on Christ’s perfect soul was imputed our black, disgusting and innumerable sin — causing His Father, with whom He shared infinite union, to turn His back in wrath. This is our debt paid.
Would all that have mattered if Christ wouldn’t have been resurrected? The answer, when examined, is overwhelming. His resurrection is a declaration of victory over death. By raising Christ from the dead, God was declaring the approval and completion of Christ’s work of redemption. He approved of Christ’s work of suffering and dying for our sins, and in doing so Christ no longer had a need to remain dead. His work on our behalf was finished.
What’s staggering to me is the claim made in Ephesians 1:19-20. Paul tells us the power at work in Jesus’ resurrection is the same power now at work in us. He prays that we would know “what is the immeasurable greatness of His power in us who believe, according to the working of His great might which He accomplished in Christ when He raised him from the dead and made Him sit at His right hand in the heavenly places.”
Romans 6:4,11 adds: We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. . . So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Now we as believers begin to understand that in the same way Christ was put to death and then risen again anew, we also have put to death our old self, by grace through faith in Him, and are given a new heart, a resurrected nature, and a desire to no longer be slave to the sin and filth that previously entangled us, but to instead now be conformed into the image of our Savior through the power of His Spirit within us. What an incredible thought this is! We too easily forget the miracle of our conversion and the incredible grace of our sanctification, all the while it’s pumping inside our chest unseen. Because of Christ’s resurrection we have victory over sin. We have hope that sin and death will be conquered, and there is glory awaiting us in the end. We are dead to sin and alive in Christ by virtue of this resurrection masked by a jolly holiday we call Easter.
Finally, Colossians 3 tells us: If then, you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When we reflect on the magnitude of Christ’s work two thousand years ago, we must be reminded of the implications of these things we profess to believe. In a sense, Christ’s resurrection was not something that happened once long ago and is lost today in vagueness. On the contrary, in His death and resurrection we find our new life and hope. This Easter, take time to reflect on the wretchedness you have been redeemed from. I know who I was, and I hate who I was. I thank God I hate who I was, and I’m no longer that man enslaved to the lusts of this world. Instead, in the gospel we have been presented a process by which to kill that old man inside us, and be reborn into Christ. I’d say it takes a mighty phenomenal capacity to raise a person from the dead. That same power is at work inside your heart right now, transforming you and your new life. If you have experienced this, you will know how worth celebrating it truly is. Praise the Lord for His infinite strength and the wonder of Christ still alive and at work today. He is king!
The Word. Scripture. The Bible. Food. Life. The dawn of new birth and spiritual awakening. The inception of the means to the end: Christ Jesus. My question is this: How much does this thing mean to you? Is it a book on your shelf, or is it your source of life – your bread, water and oxygen?
Perhaps a great many of you reading this have a Bible. And perhaps a great many of us are insufficiently cognizant of the effervescent life abounding inside its pages. We so often open the book and see words in verses in chapters. We remember these stories from Sunday School. Maybe we read a little in the morning, and then our mind must journey into the forest of work, family, responsibility, bills, fun, life. And all the while the green earth, blossoming trees and velvet breezes of the life of the words of our Creator sit unopened, unsought after, silent in their stillness. An entire world of knowledge, comfort, guidance and provision sits under our roof, and we smell not the sweet aroma of understanding. We know God loves us, but we don’t taste the reality of that love in our prayers. We know Christ is working on our hearts to conform us to his image, but the overwhelming nature of that truth doesn’t engulf our feeble hearts with humility. In short, we’re content to exist in a world of polluted air and corrupted soil; and though a world of unthinkable joy sits within our reach, we don’t lay our souls down to rest on its rolling hills or beneath its swaying trees of life. In our reluctance we are left gasping for air. And we wonder why we don’t grow spiritually.
So why don’t we read it? Does it seem strange to you when you do read it? Why do we so easily forget what we do take in? Well, we are simple people with dying minds. We forget this is a letter from our Lord God, addressed specifically to us. We fail to recognize this is the fountain of life, the only source of hope. A perishing sinner must find the Christ he is to place his faith in within the pages of this Letter from God. A person can not be saved (regenerated and justified) apart from this book. And once we are saved by grace through faith, we can not grow without this book. It is a very good thing to listen to a preacher and read books of Godly men, but it can not replace your personal, intimate time in the Word. As Spurgeon says, “Truth is sweetest where it breaks from the smitten Rock, for at its first gush it has lost none of its heavenliness and vitality. It is always best to drink at the well and not from the tank. You shall find that reading the Word of God for yourselves, reading it rather than notes upon it, is the surest way of growing in grace. Drink of the unadulterated milk of the Word of God, and not of the skim milk, or the milk and water of man’s word.”
So if we are to read this book alone, how are we to do it? We can not be mere skimmers and glancers. It will do us no good to read something if we don’t understand what we’re reading. Failure to understand leads to failure to obey. Reading quickly will dump a few things inside your head, but it won’t take long before every drop will float out of your head and into the world we spend our time in. Where the eye glances, the mind must rest. We must yearn to enter into a passage’s meaning, and we can’t do it without the Holy Spirit’s guidance. This is what separates religious works from true spiritual growth. We must read this book, but we must not read this book on our own strength and gumption. The only way we will be able to engrave these words onto our heart will be with the tool of the Spirit.
In order to achieve this, I think it’s vital to approach your time in the Word with reverence. It will do no good for your mind to come before the very words of God while it bustles with the day’s activities. It will require a deliberate prayer in which we stop ourselves, slow our mind, and simply ask the Lord to reveal His truth to our wandering hearts. “Lord, we want to grow in understanding of you so that we may adore you more deeply and serve you more wholeheartedly, but we can not see the light of your truth hidden in these pages without the illuminating work of your Spirit. I know you live inside these words, and in parts you are very plain to see. Other parts, the brush seems dense, and it will require much more work and resolve to find you and your truth there. But grant me a willing spirit Lord, and sustain me. Help me think my way into divine mysteries. Compel me to partake of your abundant heavenly food. Allow me the blessing, my Creator, to more fully understand how wretched I am apart from you and how desperate I must be to be renewed in Christ.”
It’s important to remind that simply reading the Word is not what saves us. But in His perfect and sufficient Word, we do find the precious jewel of salvation. Reading leads to faith, which brings salvation. Spurgeon also says, “Be not content with the idea that you are instructed until you so understand the doctrine that you have felt its spiritual power . . . Thy Word is life, but not without the Holy Spirit. I may know this book of thine from beginning to end, and repeat it all from Genesis to Revelation, and yet it may be a dead book, and I may be a dead soul. But, Lord, be present here; then will I look up from the book to the Lord; from the precept to him who fulfilled it.”
I want to again challenge you who may be reading this. Perhaps the Spirit is working on your heart right now . . . it was His grace that brought you to this article and has you reading this far. Act now, and we must act into the pages of the Bible. Do you treasure the words of the Lord you profess to believe in? If you haven’t made that profession, do you seek to understand who Jesus Christ really is, and to experience His power on your heart? If you want a relationship with God, a new relationship with the Word is utmost. The fountain of life is available to all, and we who fail to drink from it do so to our damnation. May we read it to see how great our God is. How merciful. How faithful and compassionate. We get to God through Jesus. And the Spirit helps us find our way to our mediator. Each one of us, in reverent prayer, must open the pages of Scripture and open our heart and mind to the immeasurable depths of His truth.
Start with Psalm 119. Make it your prayer. Taste and see for yourself: the Lord is a rewarder of those who seek Him. We must renew our desire to seek. May our hearts burn within us til’ we come before His throne with open arms. May we live inside this infinitely beautiful paradise we call the Bible.
