day no. 17,437: from within and from without

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” — Walt Kelly’s comic strip Pogo

If we are going to triumph over our enemies out there, we must first triumph over our enemies within. Traitors and haters in the camp must be addressed before we can successfully repel our invaders. The sin within did not invade us, it is native. It is more legit than an anchor baby. It was born of the blood and soil of its host. Your sins are truly yours. They have your last name and they share your DNA. If you do not deal with those, you will not be able to righteously deal with those who have invaded your world. 

“A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad.” — C.S. Lewis, The Problem if Pain

If you assume that other men from other places or from other races are bad, but fail to see that natives are as well, you will never build anything that can survive. You cannot win a war against reality. If you do not accept your own depravity, you will not be able to defend yourself against another's hostility.

"One last point. Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not when you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

If we are blind to how bad we are it is a sign of how truly bad things are for us. But when we begin to acknowledge and accept and take responsibility for the wickedness within, we will know that we are on the right path toward dealing with the wickedness that is coming at us from without.

"A civilization is not destroyed by wicked men; it is destroyed by weak men who cannot defend what is good.” — G. K. Chesterton

Men who do not acknowledge their own weakness are too weak to resist the strong temptation of becoming like our enemies. Weakness is worse than wickedness. Good men who are not good at being men are no better in the long run than wicked men for they will one day be just as wicked as their current enemies. Wickedness, for all its faults, never skips leg day. It is always raring to go and it keeps its eye on the prize. Goodness, for all it virtues, sometimes gets soft. It prefers peace to war and so it sometimes forgets that it is in war. Wickedness never forgets.

“Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.” — G.K. Chesterton

Society's are smashed from without because they have gone soft from within. Men who ignore their own evil are hardly equipped to defeat the evils of others. Men who are regularly conquered by their own lusts will not be able to conquer men motivated by their respective lusts.

They end up with rosters rounded out by round men who cannot rise up to defend their people. Civilization, if it is not in shape, will be overcome by barbarism. You cannot be in good shape without first acknowledging how bad of shape your are within.

“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.” — Thomas Sowell

If you are not yourself civilized, you are merely one barbarian meeting another in battle. Civilization requires civilized men. Those men are not soft because they admit defeat before God, rather they are empowered by the Spirit of God in destroying evil strongholds within and without.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

If you have lost on the battleground of imagination, you will lose on the battleground of infiltration. You cannot defend the world from demons without when you are defeated by your demons within.

day no. 17,326: stupid people

Jeremiah 10:14

Every person is stupid.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Proverbs 12:1

Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, 

But he who hates correction is stupid.

Stupid is rejecting correction. Stupid is knowing what to do and refusing to do it. Stupid is not being ignorant. Stupid is being arrogant.

So, stupid is as stupid does, but stupid also is what stupid doesn't, which is to say that not repenting is stupid.

day no. 17,316: realignment

“The spirit in us veers toward envy, like the front end of a car that needs to be aligned.” — Douglas Wilson, All the Condemnation

We are bent. 

We, by default, lean into sin and away from God. We are like a car with misaligned tires. We can drive straight when our steering wheels are being held firmly, but the second Jesus lets go of the wheel, we are right back to swerving. We are prone to wander. 

The grace of God is Him grabbing the wheel. Grace upon grace is Him driving us to His Word to be realigned. His Word does the alignment and His Son pays the bill. His Spirit takes the wheel and gets us back onto the road. 

We cannot drive straight without Him at the wheel and we cannot keep our wheels aligned without His ongoing maintenance. The world is full of pot holes and curb checks, but God keeps us on the straight and narrow.

day no. 17,313: the rotten core of Christianity

“A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes it for granted that men are bad.” — C.S. Lewis, The Problem if Pain

Original sin is not an optional doctrine. Christianity presupposes sin and sinners. Christ came to save sinners. He knew who He was dealing with before He came to the world and He knew for whom He was dying while He hung on the cross.

John 2:24-25

But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, And needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.

More than anyone else, Jesus knew what was in a man. While Jesus never knew what it was like to have sin inside Him, He knew what was on the inside of everyone else. Men may know their sins, but they know them only in part. They do not see the depths of their own depravity. The presence of some kinds of sins keep you from seeing others at all or from seeing some as badly as they are.  But Christ did not have any sin of His own, so He could see our imperfections perfectly. He saw His fellow man the same way the Holy Spirit did.

Romans 3:10-12

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:

There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; 

there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

A good man knows that he is bad. A bad man thinks that he is good. A good man understands the depth of his badness in trying and failing to be good. The bad man misunderstands what he imagines to be his goodness because it goes untested. It is good enough for him, which is why is wicked before God.

Jesus did not come to die for people who were good enough. He did not come to be killed for people who just needed a pep talk. He took on flesh in order to be put to death for people who deserve to die. He knew what was in a man and yet He treated men better than anyone else. He presupposed their evil and healed their diseases. He knew their depravity and sunk down to Hades for them.

This is a core belief of Christianity. It is a rotten core, but it is essential. Remove it and you have a different religion entirely. 

day no. 17,287: sit still and know

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” —  Blaise Pascal

Because men will not be left alone to their thoughts, they force other men to listen. 

Because men cannot talk back to the voice in the head, they find others who will hear them.

Revelation 8:1

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.

In Heaven there are those who can sit quietly and contentedly knowing their God and being known by Him. They can do this in Heaven because they made a habit of doing it on earth. They were able to sit still and know that the Lord is God.

Psalm 46:10

Be still, and know that I am God

All the problems in the world are caused by people who cannot be still knowing Who is in control. So, they fuss and fidget and mess with things not realizing that they are messing them up. They cannot sit still, because real thoughts may creep in and convict. They cannot be busy with good works, so they are busybodies going about talking about others who are working.

day no. 17,028: like minded

“What the heart liketh best, the mind studieth most.” — Richard Sibbes

We think a lot about the things we love a bunch. It is easy. It comes naturally. When you like something, you like thinking about it. You even like thinking about how much you like it. 

God has put this principle into place primarily for the purpose of man meditating upon the Word of God as a result of his intense love for God. Since there is only one God, you do not have to divvy up your mind or your heart. This frees a man up to love the Lord God with all of his heart and all of his mind. When he does so, he finds himself thinking about God a lot. He who is forgiven much, loves much; and he who loves much, meditates often and at length about his Savior and his salvation.

As a secondary benefit of this principle, God gives us the joy of enjoying things. When those things are ordered correctly, they really are enjoyed for what they are with proportion to what they are. We can think about them as gifts and enjoy them as His grace. We like thinking about them because we are grateful for them. Thanks be to God!

day no. 17,024: tyrannitos

“One of the reasons God makes them so small is so that they won’t kill you. And one of the reasons he makes them so cute is so that you won’t kill them.” — Voddie Baucham

Murder is bound up in the heart of an infant, but by the grace of God, they lack the requisite competencies needed to pull off their plots. Rest assured, if they could burn the world to the ground over their unmet expectations, they would, but they can't, so it keeps on chugging along. God loves us and He wants us to be happy.

Toddlers are tiny tyrants. Let's call them tyrannitos. They would "off with their heads" every hand that feeds them if they had the ability to do it. They rail at any one in between what they want and when they want it. They are all impulse and no implication. They would blow up the kitchen one minute and be mad that dinner was delayed the next.

Their sin is not cute, but they are. As Voddie points out, if they were as ugly as their sin, it would not go well for most babies. But more often than not, they are so cute that their sin gets excused as cute as well. This is not an improvement. Parents who make this accommodation end up with teens who want to burn the world down, but by that point they actually could, and it is no longer cute.

Proverbs 23:13-14

Withhold not correction from the child: For if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, And shalt deliver his soul from hell.

Correct sin when the kids are cute. If you wait, the child you raise will be as ugly as the sin always has been. Love your son enough to give him the gift of knowing how to be under authority and he will walk with God, following His footsteps, as a grown man.

day no. 16,924: not any good

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.” — C.S. Lewis

Don’t feel too badly; no one is very good at being any good.

Romans 3:10-12

None is righteous, 

no, not one;

no one understands;

no one seeks for God.

All have turned aside; 

together they have become worthless;

no one does good,

not even one.

“No one” here is not a select group of elite someones.

Everyone is a complete success at total failure.

There is no one who does not excel at falling short.

If you're not convinced, you haven't tried very hard.

Imagining that you are good is an easy business.

Hard work heals that daydream.

day no. 16,890: something or another

"Somebody is always up to something, and the rest of them are up to something else." — P.G. Wodehouse

Sinners gonna sin; heathen gonna heathe.

Romans 3:23

All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

Everyone comes up short on the I AM exam.

Ecclesiastes 7:20

For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.

No one is exempted from God's standards. There is no bye in the first round for the best record.

"There is no criminal who is half so bad in actuality as you know yourself to be in possibility." —Oswald Chamber, My Utmost for His Highest

Everyone is up to something and anyone is capable of anything.

day no. 16,888: covenantal presumption vs. continuity

Romans 9:7-8

Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called. That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed.

All men are sons of Adam.

Some are sons of Abraham.

Romans 5:19

For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

You cannot inherit election per se, but you can inherit elect parents.

Covenantal presumption kills.

Covenantal continuity saves.

To assume you are saved because your parents are or your grandparents were is to presume upon the covenant, not to put your faith in it.

To continue in the covenant in which you were raised by grace through faith in Christ alone saves you just as much as it saved your fathers.

Romans 11:18-22

Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.

Biblically speaking, everyone is a true son or daughter of Adam by genetics, but no one is a true son or daughter of Abraham but by faith.

In other words, history is not essentially a matter of blood relation, but of covenantal relation. What is your relationship to the covenant? Are you a covenant breaker or a covenant keeper?

day no. 16,726: a softball question

"Bret Harte tells the truth about the wildest, the grossest, the most rapacious of all the districts of the earth—the truth that, while it is very rare indeed in the world to find a thoroughly good man, it is rarer still, rare to the point of monstrosity, to find a man who does not either desire to be one, or imagine that he is one already." — G.K. Chesterton, Varied Types

A good man may be hard to find, but a man who wants to be good is hardly rare. Furthermore, a good man is a hard man. He is hard for his people. A bad man is soft, effeminate; but make no mistake, he is hard on his people. He has conquered his fear of failure by celebrating his shame. He calls attention to his courage in embracing his cowardice. And modern man has, in the process, accomplished what Chesterton warned... he has become a monster.

"If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of." — Jordan B. Peterson

day no. 16,483: TULIP time!

TOTAL DEPRAVITY

Total depravity is not the belief that everything is as bad it could be, but that nothing is as good as it should be. 

Total depravity does not insist that there is no good in anything, but that there is a bit of bad in everything.

Isaiah 64:6

We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

Christianity is not unique among world religions in insisting that sin exists, it is unique in insisting that even our very best is still sinful. Our righteousness is ridiculous. Our cleanest living is corrupted.

We should not be surprised to discover that our best efforts are merely filthy rags, but that our rags contain any good in them at all. The shock should not be in realizing that God sees our best as offensive, but in realizing that He looks for good even in our offenses.

Philippians 3:7-9

What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.

All that to say, we should not be shocked to discover how much shit God puts up with, but how much good He is willing to find in so much shit.

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good... We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it." ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Only those who love and pursue the standard can see how far short of it they fall.

“A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is alright. This is common sense really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not well you are sleeping.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Christianity is a waking up to the fact of sin in general and a realizing of the need of salvation regardless of the individual resume.

UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION

The Pelagian assumption is dependent upon a zero sum game that begins with a tabula rasa (blank slate); but the Bible puts forward the idea of us being conceived as debtors and daily adding new debts to the ledger as we grow. In other words, Pelagianism is grounded on a neutral that does not exist. Nothing is neutral. Claiming neutrality is, in fact, a common military formation of one of the two sides party to the conflict. Neutrality, then, is a weapon; and only one side deploys it.

Doug Wilson recently pointed out that the Pelagian impulse is to cry, "inability limits obligation." In other words, if you can't do something, you can't be obligated to do it. It is akin to proposing that if you had no choice in the matter, you can't be held accountable for your choices. You can only be held accountable for things over which you had free choice, or so the story goes. You can't sentence someone or judge someone guilty for impulses over which he had no say is the high watermark of modern logic. The same high watermark those exhibited in the days of Noah.

Genesis 6:5

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

The argument proceeds as follows,

"I want to do sinful things, but I didn't choose to want to do sinful things. I never remember making a conscious decision to be a sinner, I just wanted to sin and saw sin as attractive. It was always the case. I have no responsibility, therefore, for the way I feel. And if I cannot be held responsible for how I feel, then why should I be prohibited from acting upon my feelings? If the feelings can't be counted as wrong, then how can the actions that flow from those feelings be any less wrong?"

This sounds right in way... right? But only in a way and only because we're indoctrinated in worldly catechisms in which we have all been trained and led astray. We collectively, impulsively identify the unfairness in it and relate to the plea-bargainer's reply, of "How can I be fined for breaking regulations I had no ability to obey? How can I rightly be held accountable for feelings I didn't ask to feel?"

But this is where the divergence between Augustinian Christianity and Pelagian Christiahhhh....ehhhhh.....errrrrr....nity is most obvious.

Scripture reveals that we are all born in Adam. We have a genetic marker that compels us to follow his example and sin. We are sinful because we are sinners, not the other way around. We are not counted sinful because of our sins, we can count our sins so easily because we are sinners and so good at what we do that you can count on it.

We are commanded by God to die to ourselves. We are commanded to go against our impulses. We are not given vague impulses as excuses for disobeying clear commands. We know what we are to do and how we are commanded to feel about our feelings. You can appeal to thine own self staying true, but it will not hold up in God's court. He has gone on record as to what He requires and what He condemns. If you find yourself, by nature, feeling attracted to things He has declared abominations or feeling repulsed by things He has declared attractive, the problem lies in you and your obligation in response to that is to forsake your feelings and follow Christ.

Because we are all born into Adam, each one of us must die to ourselves on some points and go against our natural inclinations if we are to follow Jesus. No one follows Jesus and feels warm fuzzies about His commands without being regenerated from our old nature into a new nature provided by God.

God does not choose anyone because of something they did or for anything He foresaw that they would do. The conditions of our election are nowhere to be found in us. The condition is located in His loving kindness. His initiative is our confidence. Our initiative towards Him is merely our response to His initiative in us. We live, move, and have our being because He lives, moves, and is.

Romans 9:9-13

For this is the word of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son. And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, "The elder shall serve the younger." As it is written, "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."

Paul goes out of his way to point out that the unborn sons had not yet done anything good or bad to deserve favor or discipline. It was at this point that God promised the blessing to the younger. This was not merely a statement of God's preference, but an example of His purposes in election.

A woman once reportedly said to Charles Spurgeon, “I cannot understand why God should say that He hated Esau.”  Spurgeon replied, “That is not my difficulty, madam. My trouble is to understand how God could love Jacob.”

The sticking point is often Esau, right? But that math should not be too hard to wrap your head around. The real head scratcher is God's mercy to Jacob. There is no math for something like that. It is unconditional and cannot be summarized. It is a product of the grace of God in making life not fair.

LIMITED ATONEMENT

"I would rather believe a limited atonement that is efficacious for all men for whom it was intended, than a universal atonement that is not efficacious for anybody, except the will of men be added to it." -- Charles Spurgeon

If someone has a sticking point when it comes to the so-called, "5 Points of Calvinism," it's almost always just the one particular point on which they are stuck... limited atonement.

Unless you have a universalist approach that assumes everyone is going to heaven when they die, you limit atonement somehow. The question is not IF you limit it, but HOW.

You must either limit its efficacy or its ubiquity. That is to say, you must either limit its power or its promiscuity. Which does it lack: surety or scope? Because it must lack one of these. It cannot be all powerful for everyone without being universal. So, is it all powerful for some or potentially powerful for all?

What Spurgeon is quoted as saying above assumes that the atonement is limited in quantity, not quality. That is, it saves to the utmost everyone that it saves. It does not kind of save everyone or definitively save everyone. It only works for those whom it goes to work. But by this definition of the atonement, it's scope is limited or reduced from everyone in the entire world, to those elected out of the world. Rest assured, all kinds of people will be elected: red and yellow, black and white, rich and poor, men and women, old and young, sick and healthy, etc... But not each and every one from each and every kind will be elected. In other words, no kind of person is exempt, but some of each kind will be.

Many find this discrimination distasteful and opt for a more broad-minded approach saying, "the atonement made it possible for each and every individual regardless of race, nation, tongue, gender, etc... to be saved." In this arrangement, the scope is broadened to include everyone ubiquitously, however, the efficacy has now been limited. In this understanding, everyone CAN make it to heaven, but no one assuredly WILL. In this case, at least in theory, everyone could reject salvation and the atonement and heaven could end up vacant. God would still be good, but Christ would have died for no one in particular. Granted, the benefit, in this formation, would be that everyone could do it, but the fact would remain that no one assuredly would and those who have previously done it should fret that perhaps they didn't do it quite enough or must do it again later just to be safe.

Limiting atonement's scope is the only measure of providing any security to anyone's salvation. While it does mean that some will most assuredly not be saved, it also promises that some most assuredly will. 

John Owen put it this way...

The Father imposed His wrath due unto, and the Son underwent punishment for, either:

1. All the sins of all men.

2. All the sins of some men.

3. Some of the sins of some men.

In which case it may be said: 

That if the last be true, all men have some sins to answer for, and so none are saved.

That if the second be true, then Christ, in their stead suffered for all the sins of all the elect in the whole world, and this is the truth.

But if the first be the case, why are not all men free from the punishment due unto their sins?

You answer, Because of unbelief. I ask, Is this unbelief a sin, or is it not? If it be, then Christ suffered the punishment due unto it, or He did not. If He did, why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which He died? If He did not, He did not die for all their sins!

In other words, we are left with 4 options, Christ died for:

All of the sins of all men

All of the sins of some men

Some of the sins of all men

Some of the sins of some men

If Jesus died for all of the sins of all men, everyone is going to be saved, but Jesus Himself said some will go to hell (goats, bad fish, weeds, etc...) So, universalism is heresy.

If Jesus died for some of the sins of all men, all men still have some sins for which they must  themselves atone and all would be damned.

If Jesus died for some of the sins of some men, all men still have some sins for which they must atone and some still have all their sins left to atone for in which case, all are damned.

But if Jesus died for all of the sins of some men, then some men will actually be saved — not because of works, lest any of them should boast, but by grace through faith, which is itself a gift flowing from the finished work of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

IRRESISTIBLE GRACE

Matthew 22:14

For many are called, but few are chosen.

All who are called come and all who stay are chosen. Some come and go. Some come incorrectly. Some come for something else. Those who are called, come correctly according to the summons. They come by grace through faith in Christ alone and live by faith according to His rule and reign.

No one who is drawn up by God hopes for holes in the bucket. None come to Him eyeballing the exits. No one is dragged to Heaven against his will. He is converted against his will precisely because his will is the thing that needs converting. Once converted and regenerated, his will does not long for its former life, it longs for the next one. This does not mean that it cannot be tempted by old longings, but that it cannot ignore the new ones. It cannot shake the desire for sanctity, nor does it want to. The will's wants have all been reorganized while some sinful ones may have been abandoned entirely and the ones that remain have been defrocked from their previous priestly positions. They no longer direct the worship service of the soul. As affections, they have either been vanquished or court marshaled. Inordinate affections have all been rounded up and reordered according to the commands of Christ. He keeps our cares corralled according to their kind and to their proper proportion.

God does not fail. He does not have unfulfilled desires with respect to His will of decree. In that regard, what He says goes and what He calls comes. His will of desire is communicated to us through the Law and the Gospel. This can be resisted or ignored. We can resist or grieve the Spirit in this respect, but not with respect to our spirits. We are not sovereign over our souls. We do not possess the ability to lock God out. There is not a PIN He does not know or a lock for which He doesn't possess the key. He cannot be kept at a distance by a restraining order. He provides both the inspiration to ask and the answer. There is not a move toward Him which did not originate in His moving the mover to move. 

The kindness of God is His Kingness. He is good and in charge and good at being in charge. He demands what is divine and inspires in His elect that which delivers them from death. He is no one's Plan B. He cannot be had as an afterthought. He does not accept seconds. He is not forced to receive any He does not want and there is no one who wants Him who won't be received. He provides the "want to" and the "will do" because the "all done" has been accomplished in Christ.

John 19:30

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, "It is finished:" and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. (emphasis mine)

PERSEVERANCE OF THE SAINTS

"When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, 'Repent' (Mt 4:17), He willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance." -- Martin Luther, 95 Theses, #1

The saints persevere primarily in repentance. They never cease turning to Christ. They are not sinless, but they do sin less. But in their sinning, the sin of unrepentance is absent. A saint is not one who never sins again, but one who repents again and again. It's not that they never fail, but that they never fail to ask for forgiveness. That is the handiwork of Christ in keeping His saints. They endure difficulty for the sake of Christ and endure humility in constantly confessing their ongoing need for His intervention and intercession.

The word commonly translated, "persevere," in the New Testament is hypomonḗ which is a compound word made up from hypó, "under" and ménō, "remain, endure." In other words, persevering is a matter of "remaining under." This can apply to remaining under difficulties for as long as they might last, in which case we say the man persevered, or to remaining under submission to God regardless of the circumstances. Whatever stands around you are your circumstances (circum "around" and stances "standing"). Perseverance is standing with God regardless of whoever stands against you or whatever stands around you. Whatever stands up, you don't stand down. You possess steadfastness and endurance because in Christ, by the power of His Holy Spirit to will and work in you, you are like Him who endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him.

Hebrews 12:2-3

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.

Jesus remained under (hypomone) the cross. He remained under the mockery of sinners. He did get out from under His cross. He did not abandon His post to get back at sinners. He endured. He persevered and by His grace and through His Spirit, we, like Him, remain under whatever stands around us so that we might stand confident in Christ before His Father.

Ephesians 6:13

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

We stand in Christ against sin. We stay put where He has placed us. We endure the conditions He requires and in the manner and by the means He has commanded.

Hebrews 4:16

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

We come at all because He called us. We come humbly because of who we were when He called. We come boldly because of Who it is that called us. We come joyfully because of Who we go to. We come with confidence because of Whose we are. We come and we stay because of Christ sat down.

John 18:9

Of them which thou gavest Me have I lost none.

We cannot be lost because God cannot lose in any sense of that word.

day no. 16,360: stone cold instruction

"If you can teach a child not to throw a stone, you can teach him when to shoot an arrow; if you cannot teach him anything, he will always have something to throw." — G.K. Chesterton

A child is born with both the ability and the desire to throw stones. This can, however, be curbed or corralled by discipline and instruction. If you can train a child to resist the urge to throw a stone, you can train him to hold the string until the right time to fire. A child with a trigger needs instruction on how to shoot and why, at whom to shoot and when. If they have been taught to stop throwing rocks, they can be taught to start shooting arrows.

John 8:7

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.

The desire to sling stones come naturally. The discernment to know when to throw them, however, doesn’t. That must be taught. If you don’t take the time to teach your children discernment, that won't prevent them from throwing stones. They are going to do that without any instruction. Rocks will be tossed. The only questions are at whom and when.

All that to say, the native soul is full of pluck and lacks no creativity when surveying things to pluck up. Thus, all children should be rock enrolled. Everyone needs stone cold instruction.

David knew how to throw a rock and which were best for slinging. He knew how and he knew when. 

1 Samuel 17:36

“Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.”

We gain nothing in raising a generation of boys too timid to toss rocks, but we do lose our fighting chance against the giants. What we get in manners, we give up in mettle.

day no. 16,305: counting curses and forgetting blessings

Malachi 2:2

If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings

It is always easier and more intuitive to count your curses and to forget your blessings. Because works righteousness is so embedded into us, we immediately recognize when we've been short-changed and often overlook when we've received more than we owed. We not only count our curses, but we count on them. We count on them being an adequate disinfectant for all of our accumulated sins. It is easier to justify yourself by your mistreatment than by your merit. It is easier to find examples of being burdened than it is of being blessed. We can count our blessings, if we try real hard. But even then, we prefer to do it only once a year and mostly for things which we are at that very moment taking for granted.

"When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude." -- G.K. Chesterton

When you refuse to count your blessings as blessings, you turn them into curses. You call deep heaven down upon yourself. You take mercy and make it miserable. When we make a regular habit of forgetting our blessings and the One from whom all blessings flow along with them, we are converting our present blessings into burdens. We are making disgruntled disciples of divine favors. We catechize our comforts to become cancers. We make a mess of the blessings we have and backfill the well of fresh mercies.

"Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things." -- G.K. Chesterton

When we look down on what we've received from above, there's nowhere left to look. We cut ourselves off from the source of life and spoil the life we've already bottled up. Like bread from heaven, it can go bad when abused. 

Count your blessings, not your curses. Remember your blessings and forgive those who've cursed you. They only know the half of it after all. 

day no. 16,170: perfect pens and imperfect men

2 Peter 1:21

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Was the Bible written by God or by men? Yes.

Holy men inspired by the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible.

One catechism asks and answers it this way:

Q. 14. Where do you learn how to love and obey God?

A. In the Bible alone.

Q. 15. Who wrote the Bible?

A. Holy men who were taught by the Holy Spirit.

How can unreliable, imperfect men write reliable, perfect words?

The same way unreliable, imperfect men do anything which isn't in vain... by relying upon the Lord.

Psalm 127:1

Except the Lord build the house,

they labour in vain that build it.

The point is clearly made: laboring without the Lord is ludicrous, but the inverse is also true -- labor for the Lord will last.

1 Corinthians 15:58

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

Unreliable men can write reliable words, e.g. two plus two equals four. That is reliable, but typed by yours truly, an unreliable man. I am an imperfect, but that is perfectly true. Even more to the point, saying, "I am an imperfect man," is perfectly true. I have it on good authority. I've looked in a mirror, but I've also seen my reflection in the pool of God's Word. So, you ought to believe me when I say, "I'm imperfect." You shouldn't doubt my imperfection simply because I could be wrong. And if that is to taken as Gospel truth, how much more so the actual Gospel truth. And amen.

day no. 16,125: a parable of being in deep doo-doo

Philippians 3:7-11

What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.

Imagine your clean world is covered in dirt. Where would you go to get clean? You feel dirty and despair that you and your world always will be, no matter what anyone does, dirty, dirty, dirty — disgusting, disreputable, and destined to stay that way. In other words, not just dirty, but dirty with no hope of ever being clean again.

This is how I felt the other morning. I awoke at 6 am to Finneas and Rocco in my bedroom doorway saying Atticus had gotten sick. I jumped out of bed and as Paige and I walked down the stairs, the stench hit my nostrils. What I saw when I got downstairs and turned the lights on was liquid poop all over our carpet. A large deposit was in the boys' bedroom and another smaller pile was between the bedroom and the bathroom and in between and up the stairs were poop coated footprints of the morning's activities. I didn't even know where to begin. Paige immediately went and got towels and I grabbed the two little boys and carried them up to the bathtub. I got them cleaned off respectively and then laid them down on the sectional as I joined Paige in using soapy water soaked rags to begin cleaning the carpet. On my hands and knees cleaning up excrement, I felt dirty. I felt like I would never be clean ever again. Where hadn't poop-covered feet walked. They had attempted to clean up their feet which meant the toilet paper roll had poop on it and the door handles and the walls and the.... what didn't have a poop on it at this point? In that moment, I felt helplessly, hopelessly dirty and gross.

It reminded me of my moments before confessing my sin before God. Back then, I too had reached a point of seeing my filth for the filth that it was -- not just dirty and gross, but irrevocably so. The hands I had been using my whole life to wash my feet were themselves covered in grime. How can dirty objects clean up dirt without just getting them dirtier? How can crooked sticks in crooked hands draw straight lines?

Praise God for the gift of His Son. Thank God for purity from outside myself. A purity which is not defiled by touching me. A cleanliness that leaves me clean after contact. But the shower is dirty because it gets you clean and so the instrument God used to clean me up got dirty in the process. Jesus was nailed to the cross because He took my place. He became sin that I might become the righteousness of God. This required Him to possess cleanliness and a willingness trade. On the Cross, He gave me His purity and disposed of my depravity. And when He rose on the third day afterwards, He left those dirty rags in the grave and rose again in the purity in which He will rule and reign all of His laundered beloveds.

2 Corinthians 5:21

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him

Praise God for His work in my life in showing me this as a young man and reminding me of this as an adult man with children of his own. His love endures forever!

*based on events which took place on Sunday, August 8th, 2020

day no. 16,122: a good way to fall down

"Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Resting on your laurels is a good way to fall down. Relying on yesterday's victories in today's battles is a sure way to experience defeat. Leaning entirely on previous achievement in the moment is like leaning on a sharp stick, the harder you lean, the more you get stuck.

Romans 3:20

Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

day no. 16,073: you cannot make statues without rejecting stone

"For that there must be a final choice, for a man cannot make statues without rejecting stone." -- G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

A statue is what's left of a stone once everything that isn't statue has been removed. If we are to be made saints, everything unsaintly will have to be chipped away. You cannot choose stature without rejecting stone and you cannot reject stone without a standard if you intend to end up with a statue. You need a rule by which to discern which is stone and which is statue so that you do not either lop off a limb or leave a rough spot.

day no. 15,966: faithful, fruitful multiplication leads to inevitable, eternal division

Luke 23:12

And the same day Pilate and Herod were made friends together: for before they were at enmity between themselves

Jesus brings people together.

But not into one, unified mass mind you. All of humanity is headed for one of two camps: the seed of the serpent or the seed of Eve and Jesus is a watershed that forces everyone into one uniform or the other.

Genesis 3:15

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman,

and between thy seed and her seed;

it shall bruise thy head,

and thou shalt bruise his heel.

The enmity between the two sides unifies each against the other. On the side of the serpent there are divisions coming to a head under a common opposition to God's imposition.

Psalm 2:1-3

Why do the heathen rage,

and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves,

and the rulers take counsel together,

against the Lord, and against his anointed,

saying, Let us break their bands asunder,

and cast away their cords from us.

The rallying point for the seeds of the serpent is a shared resistance to the sovereign claims of God in the singular person of His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lord. Hatred of Him is their meeting place in case of emergency. Cursing the Christ is their designated rendezvous.

So, Jesus unites peoples either in their opposition to Him or in their obedience to Him. 

Thus, Jesus divides people.

He is the watershed that joins all tributaries into opposite oceans. He brings the two opposing forces into complete focus. All of His followers are diversified in their individual likes and dislikes and unified in their first love. All of His detractors are unified in their dislikes and diversified in their individual self-love: they share a common interest in their respective self-interest.

Matthew 10:34

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

If Jesus had not come, the world would be more unified. The entire earth would have come together in one firm middle finger against God and His Christ. But because of Jesus, there is division on earth. Because of Him an alternative exists. Because He produced enmity between the fruit of wickedness and the fruit of the woman, there is not one unified mass of humanity sliding headfirst into the horrors of hell.

Luke 12:51

Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.

The earth is divided because God keeps His promises. The sides are coming together because of Him. The one rallies together out of a shared resistance to His authority, like Coachella, and the other out of a shared insistence on His authority, like the Church.

When God's people multiply it leads to increased division. It sets more apart to everlasting life from those headed toward everlasting destruction. It makes salvation a possibility and divides the number of sinners into redeemed sinners and recalcitrant sinners. Faithful, fruitful multiplication leads to inevitable, eternal division.

day no. 15,901: a quest and a dragon to kill

When God put man in a garden
He girt him with a sword,
And sent him forth a free knight
That might betray his lord;

He brake Him and betrayed Him,
And fast and far he fell,
Till you and I may stretch our necks
And burn our beards in hell.

But though I lie on the floor of the world,
With the seven sins for rods,
I would rather fall with Adam

Than rise with all your gods.
-- G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse

God gave Adam the ability to fall. He made him a knight, gave him a mission, provided a quest, and a dragon to kill. But Adam fell short of the glory of God by reaching up for what was forbidden. Yet God forgave Adam and provided the promise of a Dragon-slayer Son who would reverse the curse and inhabit His people as they warred with the sons of serpents. I would rather fall with Adam than rise on the wings of fallen angels. The second Adam, the Son of Man and Son of God, rose from the dead and ascended to His throne where He rests His feet on the heads of His enemies. It is better to be resurrected from the dust with Adam than to ascend to the penthouse of Babel.