day no. 17,303: politicians are bribery pirates

Here richly, with ridiculous display, 

The Politician's corpse was laid away. 

While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged 

I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

— Hilaire Belloc, Epitaph on the Politician Himself 

The adulterer deserves death. Divorce is permitted by God in the instance of adultery because the guilty party ought to be executed thus freeing the innocent party from their vows. 'Til death do us part need not be a matter of waiting for nature to run its course when one of the two partners is guilty of a capital offense against the law of Christ. 

It is the same with public office and those elected to represent their people. They are selected and accepted by their people, but if they betray their people, they should not simply lose their bid for reelection, they should, in certain circumstances not merely be terminated like an employee, but terminated like a criminal.

“It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.” — G.K. Chesterton

The seriousness of the office is not reinforced by allowing the one who wields the sword to wield it wildly and lawlessly with no greater consequence than having the sword taken away from him. The consequences of brandishing the sword of justice as an instrument of tyranny should be more severe than being forced to sheathe it. The one who wields that sword without the fear of God should be forced to fear the people. It is not enough for a fear-monger to be fired. He must fired at and finished so that future representatives take heed that masters have a Master and rulers have a Ruler.

This, the last ornament among the peers, 

Bribed, bullied, swindled and blackmailed for years: 

But Death's what even Politicians fail 

To bribe or swindle, bully or blackmail.

— Hilaire Belloc, Another on the Same

You can buy off your enemies and bribe your benefactors, but you cannot blackmail Christ. Politicians who make a living depriving others of their lives and livelihoods will end up facing a Judge who cannot be bought. That Judge isn't worried about being reelected. He doesn't have dirt you can use to steer Him. He is perfect and righteous and the bribery pirates will find their tactics utterly useless in His courts.

day no. 17,302: if the poor in spirit won't beg, who will?

“We poor sinners need to come back from our wanderings to seek pardon through the all-sufficient merits of our Redeemer. And we need to pray earnestly for the power of the Holy Spirit to give us a precious revival in our hearts and among the unconverted.” ― Robert E. Lee, Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee

If the poor in spirit won't beg, who will? If the humble in heart won't ask, who else would?

If we want the world to repent, we have to show them how.  If we won't go first, who will?  And if we can't, won't, or don't know how, then who does? If we don't believe our own Gospel, why should they?

Romans 10:13-16

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! But they have not all obeyed the gospel.

If we who have been sent out by Christ won't go, who can be reached? If we who have been called to speak won't preach, who can believe? If we who know the Lord don't call upon His name, how can anyone else?

day no. 17,301: finneas is fourteen

Happy Birthday, Finneas!

By this time next year, you will likely be taller than me. So, enjoy this chance to look up to me while you still can. You have grown a lot in the past year. You have gained inches in height and pounds of weight. You have gained muscle by lifting weights in the basement and you have grown in knowledge by reading and studying at school. You have changed a lot, but you are still very Finneas.

You still possess your eleven and know how to dominate, but you are beginning to see what is worth dominating and what is not worth your time. You listened through your first Men's Beer n Books study, Joe Rigney's Emotional Sabotage, and even attended your first Friday Beer n Books last month. You have begun sitting with the men on Sunday afternoons outside around the fire instead of staying inside to watch something with the other kids. You have taken an interest in being a man and you have your sights set on it. Like anything else you set your mind to, I fully expect you to dominate this new adventure as well.

You know what you believe and why you believe it and you aren't afraid of what other people think. This sometimes leads you to do or say things you shouldn't, but it's better to be brave and teachable than it is to be coward who thinks he knows it all. So, you are learning how to look to the interests of others, not merely to your own, but you don't have to learn as much in the way of being brave in the face of opposition as most others do.

You are a good son. You help your mom and look for ways to serve her. You are a good brother. You play games with your siblings and you enjoy contributing your gifts to the group. You are a good friend. You have fun with your band of bros at church. You are learning more and more what it means to be a churchman and often help set up tables for fellowship meal and tear them back down and clean up the mess when it's over. You are paying attention to the sermons and learning the songs. You are growing in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and men, just like Jesus did when He was your age.

I'm proud of you. I love you, and I like you. I like being your dad and I am glad that God made you to be my son.

So, here's the Finneas!

Happy Birthday, son.

Love,

Dad

day no. 17,300: the shattered fortunes of our old state

“Go home all you boys who fought with me and help build up the shattered fortunes of our old state” ― Robert E. Lee, The Wit and Wisdom of Robert E. Lee

What can the righteous do when the fortunes of their fathers have been destroyed by others? Go back and build back better.

Psalm 11:3

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

There is only one things to be done: begin again. Christendom is fueled by the indomitable power of resurrection. You cannot kill that which can resurrect. You may bury it, but not for long.

“Shake off those gloomy feelings. Drive them away. Fix your mind and pleasures upon what is before you. All is bright if you will think it so. All is happy if you will make it so. Do not dream. It is too ideal, too imaginary. Dreaming by day, I mean. Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage.”

― Robert E. Lee

There may be no situation so bad that you cannot make it worse, but there is also no situation so lost that grace cannot help you find it. God takes us from where we are, not where we should have been. So, if we have gotten off track, our best bet is to go back to where the mistake was made and then go forward from there in the right direction. That means tearing down what's left of the mess in order to rebuild what should have been constructed.

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.

By faith we believe that God will establish what He has called us to construct. By faith we build according to His blueprints. And by faith we trust our children to carry on the good work, to correct any mistakes we have made, and to preserve any good that we have done.

"Grand strategy must always remember that peace follows war. " — B. H. Liddell Hart

We must wage the good warfare with the good peace in mind. We should not fight in a way that makes peace harder to secure. We must fight in a manner that both produces the peace God requires and preserves it according to His Word.

day no. 17,299: imputation times two

“The real problem, the problem of justice and heaven, is resolved in the cross. Christ died as a blood atonement so that God could be both just and the one who justifies. God could be just and send us all to Hell. He could be the one who justifies and let us all into Heaven on a boys-will-be-boys basis. But in order to be both just and the one who justifies, Christ had to bleed. And that is our final theodicy. Christ is the one who bled.” ― Douglas Wilson, All the Condemnation

God is not a grandpa. He does not wink at sin. He hates it. So, if He is going to justify a sinner, He is going to have to justly deal with his sin. The cross of Christ is the justice of God. On the cross, God's hatred of sin is realized. On Jesus, the sins of the world were placed. This penal substitutionary atonement is our salvation. It allows us to acknowledge our sins without having to die for them and it allows us to see God forgiving them without losing respect for Him. If God lowered His standard for us, we would gain forgiveness, but lose respect for our Forgiver.

Jesus Christ is just and the justifier. He did not lay aside justice in order to justify us. He justified the requirements of God by offering a sinless sacrifice. He justified sinners by becoming their sins so that they might become His righteousness. 

The sinner has two problems: (1) sin is a debt he cannot pay, and (2) heaven requires a righteousness he does not have. So, if Jesus pays for your sins, you have one of your two problems solved. You no longer have debt, but you are still broke and Heaven requires the riches of righteousness. If you have a lot of righteous deeds, but you haven't confessed your sins, you have more debt than you have righteousness, which results in a negative balance. In Christ, then the solution is realized. He paid it all and He earned it all. He takes every last one of your sins and He gives you all of His righteousness. Your debt is cleared away entirely and your bank account is flooded with the riches of Christ's merit. Double imputation is our saving grace.

Thanks be to God!

day no. 17,298: lovelessness and lies

"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love." ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Do not lie to yourself, but if you do, do not believe your own lies. Do not lose track of which is which or you will lose your grip on reality, which is to say, you will be loveless.

James 1:22

Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

We have to admit, before we begin, that we can be deceived. We can believe lies, and even worse, we could be the liar. We can end up believing a rumor that we created. In fact, we do it all the time. It is called bitterness. When we want to believe the worst about someone else, we are willing to entertain any accusation, no matter how ludicrous or implausible, as long as it accuses the one we already dislike. We may even invent the evidence. We may even go on to believe the evidence we invented because of malicious bias.

There is a fine line between suicide and homicide. The one who cannot respect himself often finds it difficult to respect others. The one who has a hard time pursuing his self-interests will find it even harder to pursue the interests of others. Those who live by lies often become blind to the truth. 

day no. 17, 297: chalcedon and calvinism killed the cult of caesar

“Calvinism protests against State-omnipotence, against the horrible conception that no right exists above and beyond existing laws.” ― Abraham Kuyper

The definition of Chalcedon put the final nail in the coffin of statism. Jesus was not a man who became God, He was God become a man, the Word made flesh. Humanity cannot grow up into deity. The State cannot be omnipotent. It can print money from nothing, but it cannot add value to anything. It can pass laws, but it cannot create rights. It can surveil its citizens, but it cannot see everything. It can involve itself in most things, but it cannot hold everything together. It is not omnipotent, omniscient, or omnipresent, even if it has nuclear weapons, access to your phone's microphone and browser history, and a camera on every corner.

The doctrine of the sovereignty of God guards against a false hope in a comprehensive, worldwide government and the doctrine of total depravity guards against thinking that would be a good idea in the first place. If there is no buck beyond the state, then the state is god. But if God is above the state, then it must answer to Him and if it goes wrong, it can and should be held accountable. The civil magistrate is the deacon of God's wrath. Deacons have a lot of liberty to execute their office, but never outside of the authority of their elders. In this case, they answer to the session that is God almighty. They have real authority vested in them, but that is because the One above them has real authority to give. He is the source of their authority. Their sway is derivative. His is substantive. He does not forfeit authority in deputizing the state, He reinforces His authority over all things by establishing the office of civil government.