Sin concealed and revealed

It seems a shame that the lectionary divides 2 Chronicles 34 in half; had the whole chapter been read this morning a powerful theme would have shown through all the readings, namely, the way in which the Law of God unveils sin.

Psalm 32 sets the overall context: it is a superlatively good thing, a blessed state, to be one who acknowledges and confess sin, and is consequently in God's grace cleansed of sin. To hide sin, from the world and from oneself, is deathly. There is a psychological aspect to this, of course, but the imagery of the Psalm goes further, into the physical and I think the existential. Not to acknowledge sin is to be in a fundamentally false position, towards God and towards ourselves. This is anguish.

Psalm 36, on the other hand, notes that the wicked simply have no dread of God. In apparent tension with Psalm 32, the sin-denying life of the wicked seems to be one of psychological and existential peace - until, that is, God himself brings them into judgement.

There is a sense in which 2 Chronicles 34 explains this tension. Under Josiah, the people of Judah were, for once, behaving reasonably well. The idols were destroyed, the temple was repaired. There was reason to feel good. But when God's Law is discovered, all of that is shown up to be desperately inadequate. In a sense the reading of the Law represents already God prosecuting sin. The righteous requirements of the Law reveal the people of Judah, even in the midst of their great reformation, to be guilty sinners. The only response is anguish and penitence.

Romans 7 really pushes this deeper. The person who genuinely loves God and his Law finds nevertheless that sin continually corrupts even their best endeavours. They are a person divided against themselves - in a deeper sense even than is envisaged in Psalm 32. The believer - and I take that is who we're seeing in this chapter - has accepted the judgement of the Law on their sin, specifically as it has been carried out in Christ, at the cross. Sin has been unmasked by the Law and the Gospel. The believer is made wholly new in Christ and his resurrection. And yet... In experience, they find themselves still entirely old. Day by day they know again just what it is to be sinful, in a way that nobody else can. Because they are really renewed, really made clean, the stain of sin shows out so clearly. The division against themselves which is revealed in the gospel goes deeper even than that revealed in the Law.

But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Because the movement of faith is to continually respond to each new unmasking of sin in my old self by looking to Jesus, in whom that old self really is already dead, and in whom I am already really given new life. Because he has, once for all, rescued us from this body of death, so day by day he can deliver us.

My prayer this morning has been that God will not let me be ignorant of my sin, even if having it unmasked is desperately painful. But my prayer is also that it will be in Jesus, gentle Jesus, and his gospel that the Law will be applied to me, revealed sin put to death and the deep blessing of the forgiven - new life! - breathed into me by his Spirit of Life.

Look to him

"We don't mainly mortify sin by looking at it... We suffocate sin by redirecting our gaze to Christ."

Thus Dane Ortlund, in Deeper, p 139.

It is a strange kind of fight we're in, the fight against sin.  In pretty much every other war, the essential dictum is 'know your enemy'.  There is something of that in the fight for holiness - we are not unaware of the devil's schemes - but knowing our enemy is not going to take us to victory.  Doing reconnaissance, getting to understand sin and our own dark hearts better, is not going to get us there.

The only thing that will bring victory over sin is looking to the Lord Jesus, gazing at him, seeing his beauty and glory and goodness, delighting in him.

This is a battle of loves.  The problem with focussing on the enemy is that at some level, even as Christian believers, we love the enemy.  There would be no temptation to sin if we did not love sin.  But we do.  All human beings love sin; in certain circumstances we also hate it, and as Christians that hate becomes a real and significant force in our lives by the Holy Spirit.  But we still love sin.

So it is all well and good to assess what our chief idols are, or to pick up what false beliefs we might be holding.  But those things won't make us holy.  We fight the sin that we still love by seeing Jesus and loving him more.

Can I make a particular appeal to preachers and pastors?  It is common to hear McCheyne quoted from the pulpit - "for every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ".  Great, that's wisdom.  But can I encourage you to look at your sermons, your counselling sessions, your Bible studies - is there ten times as much time going into describing and depicting and verbally delighting in the goodness and grace and glory and love of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus?  Please, don't just set this as homework ('this week let's try to look at Jesus more') but actually devote sermon time to it.  If we're meant to be looking at Jesus, show us Jesus.

And for those of us who are not preachers and pastors, think about what the main goal of your private devotions is - how much time is spent in just looking at Jesus?  And how do we respond to our sin, whether temptation or actual failure - is it to look to Jesus?

Love elicits love, you see.  Do you see the Lord Jesus, suffering the agony of the cross?  Then you see love, deep love, love for sinners who hated him.  When he prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified him - that was love, the eternal love of God displayed in mercy and grace to his enemies.  And you and I were just such enemies.  We weren't there, but it was our sin that he bore.  We can stand before the cross of Calvary and say with the apostle "the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me".  We can sing of that love vast as an ocean, loving kindness like a flood - and know that it reaches me, even me.  His love has no beginning - he is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the one who has always been devoted and committed to your good even at the cost of his life, at the cost of cross and hell - and his love will have no end, because the crucified One is risen and now lives to intercede for you before the Throne.

Let the love of the Lord Jesus for you draw out your own love for him.  And then follow what you love, and that will suffocate sin.

The principle of sin

The Scriptures give us a number of ways in which sins can be distinguished and classified.  Numbers 15 gives us the distinction between unintentional sin and sinning with a high hand (translated here 'defiantly').  That same distinction crops up throughout the Pentateuch.  Perhaps 'unintentional' is not the most useful translation; it is more like sin which is wandered into, sin which is not deliberately premeditated.  To sin with a high hand, by contrast, is to sin with a knowing disregard for the will of God.  There is sin into which we are almost surprised - in the aftermath we think 'where did that come from?' - and there is sin which is planned, sin which despises the threat of God's judgement.  In Numbers 15, the former is to be dealt with by sacrifice; the latter results in excommunication and perpetual guilt.

Something similar to this distinction is perhaps at work in Psalm 19, where the Psalmist prays to be delivered from 'hidden faults' and kept from 'wilful sins'.  This seems to envisage sins of which the Psalmist is even unaware, which makes sense - sometimes when someone confronts you with your sin, it's the first you consciously knew of it.  (And of course, that doesn't make it any less sin).  Wilful or presumptuous sins, on the other hand, are committed knowing them for what they are, either in defiance of God or on the assumption that his forgiveness will be cheap and easy to obtain.

Psalm 32 gives another distinction - between sin kept secret and sin openly confessed.  The former is destructive and ultimately leads to death, but confession can bring forgiveness and healing.  We don't know when this Psalm of David was composed, but it is interesting to note that the categories introduced here cut across the others - unintentional sin could be hidden and therefore deadly; by contrast, high handed sin could be confessed and forgiven, as with David's terrible sin against Bathsheba.

Some of the Scriptural distinctions between sins are less easy to understand - for example, 1 John 5 introduces a distinction between sin which leads to death (which should not be [or perhaps need not be] prayed for) and sin which does not lead to death, for which a brother or sister can intercede for forgiveness.  Taking the whole of Scripture into account, it is tempting to map this on to the unconfessed/confessed paradigm from Psalm 32 - but that doesn't seem obviously correct to me from the scant context of 1 John.  I'm not sure I know for sure what this means.

Perhaps the most troubling New Testament distinction is between all the sins and blasphemies which can be forgiven, and the blasphemy against the Spirit which will never be forgiven (see Matthew 12 and parallels).  I think we do here have to see the distinction between sin of which one repents and sin in which one (wilfully) persists - with the added burden that this is sin against light, sin in the face of the Holy Ghost.

Outside Holy Scripture there have been various other attempts to distinguish between sins.  The classic division of sins into 'mortal' and 'venial' tries rather too hard to classify wickedness by acts rather than attitudes, and therefore seems to me to miss the target aimed at by the Biblical distinctions.  The well-known confession speaks of sinning 'through weakness, through negligence, through our own deliberate fault', which seems a more helpful classification.

Anyway, the point is: sins are not all the same.

That seems an important point to make in the current climate of evangelicalism, where the egregious sins of prominent leaders are being dragged into the light.  Sins are different.  There are sins into which all people by weakness stumble from time to time, and there are sins which call into question one's salvation.  There are sins into which even leaders can be expected sometimes to fall and yet not be beyond recovery, and there are sins which disqualify from ministry.  There are patterns of 'minor' or unintentional sin which speak to the ongoing need for sanctification, and there are patterns of deliberate sin which indicate gross hypocrisy and an unwillingness to repent and come to Christ for life.  There are sins, and there are sins.

We have to recognise that so that in the face of Christian leaders who turn out to be abusers we don't just shrug our shoulders and say 'hey ho, everyone sins'.  Not like that they don't.

But there is another point which I fear we're in danger of missing, perhaps because we're rightly trying very hard to make the distinctions evident.  There are sins and sins, but all sin is sin.

There is a principle to sin, a heart to it.  The heart of sin is rebellion against the Lord.  The heart of sin is turning away from the gracious Creator to serve other things.  The heart of sin is elevating self to the place rightly occupied by God.  When we see terrible sins - sins committed seemingly with a high hand and without repentance, sins which have hurt so many and brought disgrace to the cause of Christ - when we see those sins, we recoil.  Here is sin in its full ugliness.  Here is sin shown for something like what it is, in its true colours.  Sin is foul and vile.

But without making the mistake of flattening the distinction between sins, without implying that 'this is just like that', we do need to see that the principle which is operative in those great and terrible sins is also at work in the small and 'inoffensive' sins of our everyday.  No, these sins are not like those sins, not in their severity, nor in their consequences for victims, nor in the reactions which they ought to call forth from God's people.  But whilst there are sins and sins, all sin is sin.  The little sinful habits we indulge, the character defects we choose not to curb or rectify, the minor lapses and falls - they are not those sins, but they are of the same species.  This is what sin would like to make of us.  Those great sins are what these little sins would like to be.  They are not the same, but they are energised by the same principle.

Therefore, fight sin.  Therefore, pursue accountability and repentance.  Fear sin; fear it appropriately.  Have a horror of it.  Detest it.  Look what it would do to you if it could.  Get that sin into the light; it will wither and die there.  Better to be shamed now for your sin than to carry it to the Judgement Seat of Christ.

Whoever thinks he stands must be careful not to fall.

We've got a bigger problem

One of the useful aspects of contemporary liberal-left discourse is its emphasis on systemic wrong.  That is to say, ethics is not just a matter of considering my individual choices, or indeed the choices of other individuals; it must also involve recognising where the system is skewed in favour of particular classes of person or against those of another.  Inevitably that means asking questions about how, historically, we wound up with these particular systems: for whose benefit were they constructed, consciously or unconsciously?

This is helpful because it pushes the analysis of what is wrong in our world to a deeper level.  It's not just that certain free individuals choose immorally.  Rather, for many of us, it is that we are cheerfully complicit in wider immoralities.  The evil doesn't just arise from a few bad apples.  There is something wrong with the barrel.

As an aside, I think it's a shame that this point often comes so wrapped up in the language of identity politics and with so much ideological baggage that it is often unheard.  In Christian circles, particularly, I wonder if we could work on unpackaging this discourse, critiquing it from the perspective of the gospel, and re-expressing whatever is valid in terms of explicitly Christian theological discourse.  Liberal-lefty Christian friends, if your fellow believers are distressing you with their failure to get on board with the social causes which seem obviously right to you, consider whether there might be some value in doing this personally.

Here's the thing, though: the analysis still doesn't go deep enough.  Is the problem really the structures?  Is the issue really our history?  Isn't there a danger that this analysis leads us into a sort of hand-wringing guilt over our complicity, but actually at the deepest level leaves us remarkably comfortable - because after all, my inherited guilt isn't really mine.  I can still think of myself as a pretty decent person, especially if I'm fully engaged in all the Right Causes.

So, push it a bit deeper.  Yes, there are a few bad apples, in the form of obviously evil people.  But there lies behind and underneath that a whole network of systemic wickedness.  And under that - what?

It's just us, isn't it?  At the deepest level, we are guilty - not just in the sense of complicity in unjust systems, but in the sense of being part of a guilty humanity, given to evil, corrupt from top to bottom.  At the deepest level, we are Adam, and therefore we will die.  The biggest problem with our world is you and me.

Hence Lent.

But wait.  Did I say the deepest level?  Not quite.  Someone has managed to get deeper, the only human being who is really part of the solution and therefore not part of the problem.  At the deepest level, we are loved, forgiven, righteous in Christ Jesus.  It's really only when we know that - when we know ourselves as justly put to death in Christ and yet graciously raised to new life in him - that we can really do the Lent thing: really face up to the big problem.

Feet of clay

In the last few weeks there has been a lot in the air about Karl Barth and his relationship to his 'secretary' Charlotte von Kirchsbaum.  It has long been known that this relationship created difficulty in Barth's marriage, and that Barth's decision to have von Kirchsbaum move into the family home was a source of great pain to his wife.  Of course there were rumours that this was a sexual affair.  Recently various private letters have been translated into English and published, which have effectively confirmed that this was indeed an illicit affair - whether sexual or not (I'm still not sure it's clear) - and represented a significant failure on Barth's side to keep his marriage vows.  To put it more bluntly, Barth's family life was characterised by his own sin, of which he never (it seems) repented.

I wasn't personally particularly rocked by these revelations; I think I'd always assumed that the rumours were true, so I've factored this in to my thinking about Barth already!  Others were really shaken.  The thing with Barth, for those of us who love his theology, is that he often feels like more than just a writer.  We feel like we've thought alongside him, grown up through his help.  It's tough to realise that this man who has meant so much to us was compromised so completely.

So what do you do when you are let down in this way?

1.  First, you check your heart.  Have I, in fact, made an idol of this person, of their teaching or their life?  Have they perhaps been exalted to a place that ought to be occupied only by the Lord Jesus?  It won't always be easy to tell - to be genuinely grieved and shaken by the defection of a mentor or the sin of a teacher is to a certain extent appropriate, and if that person has been particularly helpful to you the grief can be strong.  I've appreciated Bobby Grow's series of reflections on this in relation to Barth (first article linked, but read on through the next few posts on his blog to see the progression).  Working it through is fine, and indeed essential, but at the end of the day you weren't meant to be putting that much faith in this other human being; they were only the ones who pointed you to The Other Human Being.  Get your heart right.

2.  Second, you check their doctrine.  If a teacher has fallen into gross sin, that does not necessarily imply anything about their teaching - but on the other hand, it might.  Was there always some idea, some misconception or untruth, lurking in this teacher's theology which proved to be the doorway, or the justification, for wickedness?  With regard to Barth, I'm not convinced there was.  The one spot where I want to do some more thinking is around whether Barth took seriously enough not only God's wrath - this he treated very seriously! - but the possibility of this wrath being visited on actual unrepentant sinners.  Is it possible that Barth's wide hope for salvation was connected to his own moral failure?  There's no real way to know, but it bears some scrutiny.

3.  Third, you acknowledge that every human teacher is a two-way signpost.  A Christian teacher, if they understand what they are about at all, seeks to be a signpost to Christ - a finger pointing in his direction.  But all Christian teachers are also sinful human beings, and so there will always be something in their teaching or life which points the other way.  Where sin is exposed, and it becomes apparent in exactly what ways a particular person has pointed away from Jesus, we can use even those failures as warning signs.  For me, Barth is both the person who has taught me more about Jesus than any other uninspired author, and the person who has shown me that everything can so easily be undermined by sin.  That latter can be as useful to me as the former if I take notice of it.

4.  Fourth, you say 'there but for the grace of God...' - and you pray.  "Watch your life and doctrine closely", says the apostle.  When we see a hero fail, whether in an area of life or doctrine, there is a temptation to become bitter - see how I have been failed!  But we know - surely we know - that there is nothing in us that makes us better.  This doesn't mean that we have to brush over the hero's failure; we ought to take it seriously.  We ought to condemn it strongly.  It is no false moralism to condemn what God condemns.  But at the same time, we need to acknowledge that unless God keeps us, we too will fail and fall.  And then we need to ask him to keep us.  Keep us from sin that will undermine our teaching.  Keep us from error that will point others away from Christ.  Keep us, keep us, keep us.

I will keep reading Karl Barth and benefiting from his insight.  I am determined also to benefit from his failure, as odd as that sounds.  I will be redoubling the watch on my life and doctrine, and I would encourage you to do the same.

No competition

Here is a question Barth faces in his discussion of preaching (and by the way, there is likely to be quite a bit of stuff forthcoming on Barth and preaching; dissertation reading, innit): when preaching in the Church becomes the Word of God (let's just assume for now that this is a sensible description of what happens), does it cease to be human activity?

Barth is clear that when the preacher stands up to speak, all he has is human words to say, in a very human way.  He aims, if he is a faithful preacher, at proclaiming the Word of God, but he can't do it.  He does his human thing, says his human words, and it is up to God whether this discourse actually is the Word of God, God himself addressing the Church.  But if it is, what then happens to the human element?  Is it displaced?  Or is hollowed out, leaving just a thin veneer of humanity around a basically divine event?  (Is it, then, transubstantiated?)

Nope.

"God and the human element are not two co-existing and co-operating factors.  The human element is what God created.  Only in the state of disobedience is it a factor standing over against God.  In the state of obedience it is service of God.  Between God and true service of God there can be no rivalry...  Where God is truly served, there - with no removal of the human element, with the full and essential presence and operation of the human element in all its humanity - the willing and doing of God is not just present as a first or second co-operating factor; it is present as the first and decisive thing as befits God the Creator and Lord."

(That's CD I/1, 94 for those reading along in their own Dogmatics at home.  You know who you are.)

Here is a thought which extends beyond preaching, and now seems so blindingly obvious, and yet I've never thought it before.  The question of the interaction of divine sovereignty and human freedom is only a question because of sin.  Take sin out of the equation, and there just isn't a problem.  So if we're wrestling with the dynamics of sovereignty and freedom, what we are really wrestling with is the most mysterious factor of human existence as we know it: sin.  In fact, sin might be considered to be the very act of raising the question: can my freedom, given me by God for use in his service, which service is perfect joy and freedom and leads to life - can that freedom be used contrary to God's will?  And so sin is exposed as a rebellious nonsense.

But between true service of God and God's own sovereign rule, there is no competition.

Sinners in the hands of an angry God

The late-Puritan Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon with this title in July 1741.  It is a warning shot of a sermon, expounding on the reality of hell in order to wake people up to their plight as guilty sinners.  It is uncomfortable reading; I can only imagine it was uncomfortable to preach, and to hear.  Frankly, it should be uncomfortable: the thought of unrepentant sinners coming before a holy God is terrifying.  Granted that Edwards plays heavily on the Biblical imagery of hell, and granted that this is just imagery - still, the horrific imagery is if anything inadequate for the awful reality.

But here's the thing: there is another way the Bible describes what it looks like for sinners to fall into the hands of an angry God, and it looks frighteningly familiar.

In Romans 1, the Apostle Paul describes the downward ethical and social spiral of a culture which has rejected knowledge of God.  It is an interaction of human and divine: human beings deny God, exchange his glory for the worship of created things, deliberately swap out his truth for falsehood; and God gives human beings over to increasingly depraved behaviour, to the point where they no longer even theoretically approve the good, but give praise and acclamation to those who pursue evil.

Yesterday, the British Medical Association voted overwhelmingly to campaign for the legalisation of in utero murder, on the grounds that we should trust women to choose 'what is best for themselves and their families'.  Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  All around us, society celebrates what God condemns.  The calendar of Pride events has become our society's new liturgical year.  Those of us who are not directly involved in gay culture are nevertheless called upon to give approval to those who are.  Meanwhile, our politics degenerates into a popularity contest and what passes for public ethics spins out of any sort of control.

According to Romans 1:18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against such wickedness.  Reading that in connection with verses 16 and 17, I take it that Paul is saying that the gospel - the good news about Jesus - is the message which unmasks what might be called social progress or social degeneration (depending on your political and cultural leanings) as something much more terrible: the anger of God being actually even now poured out on sinful human beings.

We don't need to pore over the imagery of flames and gnashing of teeth to see sinners in the hands of an angry God; we just need to read a newspaper with eyes opened by the gospel to see what is really happening.

Forgiveness of sins

It's amazing the capacity we have to forget stuff, including for Christians the absolutely central stuff of our faith.  I don't mean that things are completely expunged from the memory.  I just mean those times when for a long stretch the stuff that we know lies dormant and dusty in the mind.  It is a curse, this forgetfulness, requiring us to constantly discipline our memories.  But in a weird way, out of the curse of forgetfulness comes the blessing of remembering.  Because the truth has lain there hidden by all the day to day junk and precious treasure of life, when we see it again it is almost like the first time - but better than the first time, because it comes with that joyful sense of recollection: 'I remember this!'

Take, for example, the forgiveness of sins.

I bet you have from time to time been functionally forgetful of the fact that God in Christ forgives sins.  In my experience this sometimes happens when I go for a period without being conscious of any great transgression.  Without really thinking about it, the forgiveness of sins gets shoved into the mental attic, to be retrieved when needed.

And then, one morning, maybe I'm reading the Bible, or maybe I'm praying, or maybe I'm just reflecting on the past week, and suddenly, BAM!  The forgiveness of sins.  God my Father, in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, shows his great love to me by wiping out the record of my wrong, by looking at me as someone who is eternally separated from my own sin and therefore eternally welcomed by him as a son along with his Son, and a co-heir with him of the eternal kingdom.

He forgives our sins!

And suddenly I'm conscious that sin is the one word which accurately describes so much of my life and my character.  The forbidden and unwise done, the commanded and beneficial undone, self put before others, even the occasional appearance of selflessness shot through with concern for image.

And just like the first time, I am amazed that all of this is forgiven.  But unlike the first time, I remember that this is how God my Father has treated me again and again, bringing me to this point of turning my back on the me that he has also turned his back on, and embracing the me he calls me and allows me to be.  Sin really forgiven.

I'm almost glad I forgot it, for the sheer joy of remembering.  O felix culpa..?  But mostly just thank you.  Thank you, my great and good God, for remembering and reminding me.

Accountability/confession

I've been thinking about the difference between accountability and confession.  Accountability is so hot right now in evangelical circles.  We are encouraged to have accountability partners, to hold one another accountable, to install internet monitoring software so that we can be accountable.  There's something good in all that; it brings the battle for holiness into the community, or perhaps brings a community dimension to the battle.  But I do wonder if we wouldn't benefit from restoring the older category of confession as a better way to do this.

I am open to the possibility that this is just a function of my hard heart, but for me accountability inevitably has a whiff of legalism about it.  The idea is that there is a standard, and I am going to be questioned on whether I have attained it or not.  I am being held accountable for whether I have or have not done something.  That is not unreasonable, but I'm afraid that the sort of behaviour it promotes in me (and I cannot speak for anyone else) is outward conformity and avoidance.  Inwardly, what it promotes is guilt, because I know that really I am far more sinful than any 'accountability partners' will ever know.

Confession, on the other hand, begins with the premise that I have failed.  It doesn't flex the high standard that accountability seeks to enforce, but it does assume that I have not kept that standard.  And then it invites me to relate my particular sins to another human being.  An insight from Derek Tidball:

The personal verbal confession of sin assists a person to accept his moral guilt and view it in the same light as God does.  It is to easy to fool oneself and only pretend confession is accomplished simply by mulling it over in the mind.

I think that's right!  My supposed confession of sin to God easily becomes actually a monologue - me, by myself, pondering my failings.  In that monologue, I do not feel the force of guilt (because I am not forced to bring my sin into the light of another person's presence), nor do I ever really deal with sin (because it is just an object of thought, not a concrete thing).  Confession to another human being aids confession to God.

But the big thing that is present in the idea of confession but absent, or at least marginalised, in that of accountability is absolution.  When I confess specific sin to another Christian, it is there job to present the gospel!  As I confess to them, they stand proxy for God - they are his ministers and priests - receiving my confession and pronouncing, in God's name and through the gospel, forgiveness of sin.  And so the matter is dealt with.

What this means (in very black and white and somewhat caricatured terms) is that accountability tends toward a programmatic approach to holiness - it is about how can I do and be better - whereas confession is about a relational approach - it is about how my sinful self can genuinely enjoy the experience of forgiveness and deep fellowship with God.

Of course, there is significant overlap between accountability and confession, and I wouldn't suggest ditching the former!  I will still keep my accountability software running.  But perhaps a different approach - perhaps the recognition that even my accountability is a sort of general confession of sin and inability, rather than just a sensible precaution - perhaps that might help to keep the gospel central and our relationship with God at the fore.

Adultery

Tim preached us an excellent and powerful sermon from Proverbs 5 this past Sunday at Cowley Church Community.  Applying the chapter broadly, he addressed the 'pornification' of contemporary culture - something which I see the BBC is just waking up to.  It's important stuff, and it's important that we face up to it as churches and families.

This morning I started work on Proverbs 6, and of course that chapter too ends in a discussion of the dangers of adultery.  And it's there again in chapter 7.  Why this heavy emphasis?

I think the answer has something to do with the way wisdom is presented in Proverbs, and something to do with the whole Bible story.  In terms of the portrayal of wisdom in Proverbs, the fact that she is personified in chapter 8 giving a directly contrary appeal to the loose woman of chapter 7 is indicative.  The adulteress represents folly, the life lived without wisdom and without reference to the God of wisdom.  But why?  Well, wisdom is often represented in the early chapters of Proverbs as faithfulness to the received teaching.  I give you good teaching, says the father - don't forsake it!  Don't forget it!  Wisdom is being faithful to the wise teaching handed down, and not flirting with new ideas.  (This is not reactionary; it is about the father handing down the covenant testimonies of God, not just the received wisdom of the ages).  Adultery is the sexual counterpart of folly, forsaking what is good and what is yours for something else that is both forbidden and harmful.

And in the big story of the Bible, isn't that what's always going on?  Adam is unfaithful to God; humanity forgets God; Israel deserts God.  Adultery, adultery, adultery.  Hence the appeal of the apostle Paul - I betrothed you to Christ, to be spotless for him!  Don't desert him!

In a culture where adultery, and sexual immorality more widely, are rampant, we need to realise that behind the scenes this is not because of sexual liberation of any kind.  It is because we have betrayed our God, and been unfaithful to him.  Unfaithfulness breeds unfaithfulness.

Friendly fire

I've been thinking a little bit about how painful church can be.  It seems to be a sad fact that church communities - which are meant to be families of grace and places of gospel healing - are very often places where Christians suffer their most serious wounds.  A house divided against itself cannot stand - and yet every church I know of is to some extent divided against itself, and the fallout of this division is very often deep personal pain for individuals.

What's going on?

To a certain extent I suspect we over-sell church, making it offer more than it can ever provide in reality.  No community made up of sinful people can ever be a totally safe place.  No community of miserable sinners will ever be free of pain.

But sometimes it's more than that.  The division and fighting and pain is not just the inevitable result of any human community, but is specifically about church.  I would guess there are a couple of things going on here.  One is that the church is not a community we choose, and in that regard it is less like a club and more like a family.  We find ourselves members of the church as a result of being joined to Christ, and we are stuck with that Christian family whether we like them or not.  My guess is that we all know to some extent how families can be: the places of the deepest love, but also the most painful struggles to relate.  That's church.

Then on top of that you have the fact that in entering the church we enter a place of acute spiritual conflict.  The fight for genuine church community is not only a fight against our own selfish predispositions and sinfully warped characters; it is also a fight against the devil and all his angels.  We have been brought into the cosmic struggle, won by Christ but still being fought - and it perhaps ought not to be surprising that there is a certain amount of friendly fire, given who we all are and given what is at stake.

Perhaps there is an analogy here to our personal experience.  When we don't try to follow Christ - when we let sin reign in our mortal bodies - well then, to be sure, we're dying eternally, but it feels easy and even pleasant.  When we turn to Christ and take up arms against our sin - well, that is the way to life, but it sure feels like a war.  It feels like it because it is.

Church is hard.  The Christian life is hard.  We're at war, and entering into church community puts us on the front lines.

Anti-Advent

Suppose there is, ultimately, nobody coming to save us.  Suppose there is, at the end of the day, no absolute hope.  Suppose that when it comes down to it, all will end in oblivion.  Well, then, what need for renunciation and restraint in the present?  If that is the case: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!

You can do what you want, have what you want, be what you want.  No holding back.  The only price is giving up any shred of meaning, any shred of hope, any last vestige of significance.

It makes sense, and of course if you are convinced that this is how reality is, this is how you'll live - one way or another.  It may not look like unbridled excess; that might not be what you want.  But it will mean self-indulgence, even perhaps the self-indulgence of frugality, even perhaps the self-indulgence of generosity and genuine love.  Nothing means anything, and there is no hope: so why not just live for yourself and the things that you choose to value in the fleeting moment which you have - as you make your way all too quickly from darkness into darkness.

It makes sense.

I just don't understand why so many people seem so cheerful about it.

Being really awful

One of the things that I find most important about Christianity is that it allows me to admit that I am a really poor excuse for a human being.  Before you leap to my defence (which was your instinct, right?) I should say that you, too, are an awful, awful person.  I'm not exaggerating.  I'm sure that you, like me, have regularly had that experience of knowing exactly the morally right thing to do, and yet doing something else altogether - sometimes without even really knowing why.  Most of the time we brush that off - just a one off, a thing that happened.  But it happens quite often, doesn't it?  And what sort of a person are you - what sort of a person am I - if I deliberately avoid the good?  Those choices don't speak well of our inner being.

It's not just ethics either.  Like me, you have all sorts of opportunities to do good, exciting, fun, significant things with your life.  Like me, I bet you don't do most of them.  Maybe out of laziness, maybe out of fear, maybe just distracted by all the nonsense with which we've filled our lives.  We've got life - actual, real life - and what's more, uniquely, we know we've got it.  What sort of people are we to waste that?

And then there's just that nagging feeling that everything isn't right between you and the universe.  I'm slightly on a limb here, because we don't talk about this stuff as much, but I'm betting that you, like me, know what it means to feel not-at-home even when you are home.  I'm guessing you know what it means to have that discomfort verging on anxiety for no apparent reason.  It's like we don't really know how to be ourselves, when it comes down to it.

We're just really awful human beings.

Now, I think I know how the secular non-Christian ought to answer this.  He or she ought to point out that we are, after all, just very advanced animals, with only a lot of luck and a little bit of achievement separating us from the rest of the beasts.  Nothing means anything, we don't mean anything.  We are, at the end of the day, only pretending to be people anyway.  The only flaw we have - if we have one - is that we perversely hold ourselves to standards of ethical behaviour and existential peace which we don't extend to badgers and wolves.

Most people don't go down this logical but chilling route.  Most people instead choose to stand their ground and assert that in actual fact they are quite good (and if they're feeling generous, they might throw in that hey, you're not so bad either, and don't be so hard on yourself...)

This is frankly ludicrous.

What a relief to admit what would surely be patently obvious to any unbiased witness, if we could only find such a one: that we are utterly bankrupt, failures in almost every respect, turning even our triumphs into burdens we cannot bear.  We are real people gone really wrong, out of step with ourselves and with all of reality.  We are colossally guilty, guilty of the greatest crimes, all of us together and without exception.

What a relief to get it out in the open.

And then -

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Anyone want to throw me out an amen?

Some good

I think it was Bonhoeffer who first sparked off the thought in me.  In Ethics (p339ff.) he discusses the appeal of the gospel to good people.  In tidier, more together, more legalistic times, he suggests, it is the publicans and sinners who find themselves in the vicinity of the church; but when things fall apart it is good people who find themselves there. "In times that are out of joint, when lawlessness and wickedness arrogantly triumph, the gospel will instead demonstrate itself in the few remaining figures who are just, truthful, and humane".  I wonder if we might be approaching just such a time.  As the tide of the new barbarism rises, might it be time for the church to acknowledge and reach out to all those of good spirit, who will perhaps find themselves surprisingly close to her despite their basic antipathy to her message?

Of course Bonhoeffer is not questioning, and I am not questioning, that the ultimate word about each of us in all our relative good and evil is that we are sinners who are redeemed only by the death of Christ.  But there are nevertheless many penultimate words which are spoken in our lives, words which are good or bad, and despite our common misery there are nevertheless shades of light and darkness.  The question for Bonhoeffer, and I think for us, is just how we apply the gospel to those who are, relatively, good, in the midst of a culture that has lost all its ethical bearings.

I do wonder whether, for starters, we might need to think about how we talk about sin.  Our talk about sin is so very often ethical in a way that is unhelpful.  Because people in the world tend to think of sin as 'doing bad things', we only add to confusion when we use ethical standards to talk about sin.  Moreover, we blur all those relative differences.  In our rush to say that all are sinners in need of salvation (which we must say and cannot say too often), we are heard to say that everyone is ethically just as bad as their neighbour.  Since this is manifestly not true, the point misses its target and nobody is convicted.  Moreover, in setting ourselves in this way against both the good and the bad, we come across as indifferent to whether people are 'just, truthful, humane' or not.  Sometimes I worry whether that is because we are in fact indifferent...

Let us rather say that all the goodness in the world and in individuals is orphaned goodness.  It springs from Christ, as all good things do, but it is disconnected from him, and therefore powerless both to stand against evil in the world in any ultimate way, or even to defend itself from the corruption which threatens it.  Goodness without Christ is powerless to prevent itself from becoming self-righteousness; purity without Christ is powerless to prevent itself becoming pride...

The wise gospel preacher will not hesitate to say that it is sin - the ontological and relational alienation from God caused by our species-wide and yet all too individual rebellion against him - which has left this ethical goodness orphaned and pathetic in a world of evil (the world out there and indeed the world 'in here').  The invitation, then, to the good person is to see the good in the world, and in themselves, in the light of the cross: only at the cross could this good be secured and won; only at the foot of the cross can it begin to make sense in a world gone wrong.  Repentance, then, is not from the good, but towards the very source of the good - and therefore away from dead self, which even when it brings forth good is in the very midst of evil.

After all, there are many who say "who will show us some good?"

Sloth

Sometimes sin is described in Scripture as a rebellion, a terrible insurrection, a rising up against God.  But sometimes it is not that.  Sometimes "sin is merely banal and ugly and loathsome", having nothing of that human (and damnable) pride and self-confidence, but only the failure to act, only the resolute determination to be nothing and do nothing.  "The sinner is not merely Prometheus or Lucifer.  He is also - and for the sake of clarity and to match the grossness of the matter, we will use rather popular expressions - a lazy-bones, a sluggard, a good-for-nothing, a slow-coach and a loafer" (CD IV/2).

Because the Gospel not only liberates us from our action - our desperate attempts to make something of ourselves - by telling us that all is done in Christ, it also liberates us from our inaction - our no less desperate attempts to evade responsibility and action - by telling us that we can proceed on the secure basis of the righteousness of Christ.  The good news of Jesus is that in him we are really new people, who do not need to work to make ourselves something, but are already made something and therefore can (and must) work.  Our sinful self with its sinful actions is put to death, but we are not left as a vacuum.  Rather, we are created in Christ Jesus for good works.

So, no more inaction through despair - our work is not good enough, but it is ordained and blessed.  And no more inaction through laziness - our work is necessary because it is ordained and blessed.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and live!

Challenging

A thing I've noticed recently: if you say to an evangelical Christian "we should really be ministering the word to one another", they will probably reply "yeah, we should challenge one another".  If you say to them "I loved the preaching of the word this morning", they will most likely answer "yeah, it was really challenging".  Which is interesting, because I take it that the word of God is the good news about Jesus, and I'm not sure being 'challenged' is usually good news.  It is not that the gospel never confronts and judges my behaviour and beliefs - far from it!  It is just that this doesn't seem to be the emphasis...

I don't particularly want to discourage Christians from 'challenging' one another, in sermons and in passing conversation.  We are to rebuke and exhort one another, for sure, and there isn't enough of it going on.  But at the end of the day, the challenge is just diagnosis, and a diagnosis is certainly not good news.  If you're going to diagnose me, at least offer me medicine as well.

To me this seems to go along with a version of sanctification which I think is a bit like picking at scabs.  (Yes, I am using a horrible image to disparage a position I disagree with.  But I've been up front about it, so that's okay.  Isn't it?)  What I mean is that there is a school of thought which locates pastoral care - whether the formal care of elders or the informal care of members for one another - in digging at sins, poking at them, going over them again and again...  Constantly bringing to light new idols, always challenging...  And sometimes I just want to say "if you keep picking at it, it'll never get better"...

Here is a question: how can we help one another to have joy?  By challenging one another?  Well, yes, sometimes - the wounds of a friend are faithful, and sometimes reservoirs of joy are just the other side of this wilderness into which a friend is leading us with their rebuke...  But maybe sometimes we should stop weeping over our sins - because the joy of the Lord is our strength..?

Lent 1

The problem with spiritual disciplines is that the rest of life does not stop to give you time and space for them.  There are still people to see, tasks to perform, ordinary life to live.  And there are still annoyances and irritants and distractions galore.

Right.

So, what to do with all the stuff that just keeps getting in the way?  Say I wanted to spend the day meditating on my sinfulness - how am I to do that when my kids are noisy and excited and I have jobs at church, and tomorrow's working day is already starting to invade my mind?

Have you thought about meditating on that last paragraph?  Seems like there's plenty of sinfulness there to be going on with - selfishness, for starters, and an unwillingness to serve.

Oh, come on, you know I didn't mean that.  I wanted to spend the day thinking about My Need For A Saviour, and maybe The State Of Fallen Man.  That sort of sinfulness.  Not just the petty everyday stuff.

So you wanted to meditate vaguely on big ideas rather than think through your actual sins?

Obviously.

Seems like you might be wasting your Lent.

Three-fold sin

Karl Barth describes sin in three ways, each in relation to an aspect of the work of Christ:

1.  Where Christ humbled himself, each and every other human being exalts himself.  This is all the more striking when we bear in mind the inherent glory of Christ as the Image and Son of God, and on the other hand the dust from which humanity is shaped.  Despite this, Christ humbled himself to death - even death on a cross, in striking contrast to the status-seeking and self-promotion of humanity.  Sin in its first form is pride.

2.  Where Christ obeyed God and lived a life of active fellowship with him, each and every other human being avoids God's call and resists his fellowship.  Jesus always did the will of his Father, even when that will led him to Calvary.  We, on the other hand, do not respond to God's call.  We do not take up the responsibility of living toward God, but instead fall for the lure of irresponsibility and inaction.  Sin in its second form is sloth.

3. Where Christ bore true witness to God, each and every other human being distorts or ignores the knowledge of God.  Jesus was the light of the world, but we prefer to live in darkness.  We manufacture idols, literal or metaphorical, and create gods in our own image.  In doing so, we lose touch with ultimate truth, and consequently with all truth.  Sin in its third form is falsehood.

Obviously this is not the only way to think about sin, but I find it helpful especially for the way it places our sin in the context of Christ's righteousness.  Here, face to face with the only example of human righteousness there has ever been, we are surely forced to acknowledge that we not only fall short but set off in entirely the wrong direction.

Kyrie eleison.  Christe eleison.

Killing sin

I have recently finished re-reading John Owen On the Mortification of Sin, something which I do periodically and always find beneficial.  It has been a few years since I last dusted it off, and this time through I noted something I have not spotted before, and which struck me as very different from much of the instruction currently given on personal change.

Owen spends some time setting out what it means to mortify sin, and makes it clear that the power to so comes from the Spirit, and is given only to believers.  Then he gets on to some practical steps, of which there are nine, including "Get a clear sense of... the guilt... the danger... the evil... of the sin", "the first actings of sin to be vigorously opposed", and "Thoughtfulness of the excellence of the majesty of God".  These directions make up the bulk of the work.

But when he is done with them, Owen writes "Now, the things which I have hitherto insisted on are rather of things preparatory to the work aimed at than such as will effect it". In other words, think all you want about the guilt and evil of your sin, put as much effort as you can into meditation on the majesty of God, you still haven't even started to mortify sin.  For the actual battle against sin, Owen has only two directions, and since one of these is really just a reminder that this is the work of the Spirit, there is actually only one thing to do that belongs to the real fight against sin:

"Set faith at work on Christ for the killing of thy sin".

That's it.  Of course, we are used to exercising faith in Christ for the forgiving of our sin, but for Owen it is faith also which will kill it.  Setting faith at work here means regarding Christ as the one who will defeat sin in us, actively expecting him to do it, and then waiting for him to come through.

This is as far away from the CBT-disguised-as-sanctification that we often see as you can get.

Two things really strike me about this.  Firstly, it will only work if Jesus really is a gracious Lord, and really has conquered sin.  It's not a technique, but an appeal to a person with power to exercise it mercifully towards us.  It consists in expectation, and waiting, and looking, and longing.  In other words, it throws us absolutely on Christ, and not on any source of peace we can summon up in ourselves.  (Don't speak peace to yourself until God has spoken it to you, Owen says).

Secondly, this clarifies for me that sanctification, no less than justification, is by faith alone, because by Christ alone.  And this is both liberating and glorious.

Cynicism

I've been thinking for the last couple of weeks that cynicism is probably the signature sin of my generation. As I've turned that thought over and over, it occurs to me that I may only think this because cynicism is the signature sin of my heart. But I suspect I'm not alone. Cynicism is that diseased attitude of the heart which stops me from being serious about anything, creating distance between me and the world - perhaps for my own defence, perhaps out of a sense of arrogant detachment, perhaps a little of both. Let me run through some of the symptoms, and a course of treatment that I've been trialling on myself.

Symptoms:

1. Cynicism sneers at whatever appears genuinely noble or heroic. It belittles what is great and dismisses what is beautiful. This may present itself as a sarcastic remark, a flippant joke, a quick change of conversation, or just a sardonic smile. This may start as an occasional reaction, or perhaps something to fit in to the mood of the conversation, but if continued there is a risk that we lose the ability to even perceive or appreciate the good.

2. Cynicism shrugs in a resigned, or even dismissive, way at whatever seems evil, or just terrible. Disaster zone reports are met with a yawn, holocaust movies provoke off-colour jokes. Victims of crime 'probably had it coming'. This may start as a coping mechanism, but if pursued has a numbing effect on the heart which prevents us from seeing evil as evil, and kills off the ability to empathise with another's pain.

3. Cynicism believes that anything that looks good is too good to be true. There's no such thing as a free lunch. They must want something from me in return. What am I missing here? Pretty soon, no gift can be appreciated as anything more than a transaction which I must repay to keep face.

4. Cynicism doesn't believe in change. I can't change, you can't change. We'll just have to live with ourselves and the world as it is.

5. Cynicism won't argue. If what you say sounds smart, you're a smart-alec. If it sounds dumb, I'm smarter than you, so why should I listen? Sarcasm rather than truth-seeking characterises the cynic's conversation.

6. Cynicism can't dream. The imaginative faculties have been stifled. If I can't see it with my own eyes, I won't believe it. Even then, I might not.

7. Cynicism doesn't pray. Whether because of fatalism or atheism, the cynic is unable to envisage a world in which any higher power could change circumstances. If the cynic does pray, accidentally, in a moment of weakness, they are quickly able to explain away any apparent answer.

Treatment:

1. Cut yourself off from sources of scorn. For me, that's meant stopping watching various TV programmes, especially current affairs quiz shows. No more Mock the Week, possibly no more Have I Got News For You. It is impossible to sit in the seat of scoffers and not become a scoffer.

2. Re-stock the imagination with beautiful images. I've been re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia, and reminding myself of what a child-like enthusiasm for the world looks like. This morning, at the end of The Last Battle, I cried with joy as Aslan led his people out of the Shadowlands, and higher up and further in to the Real World. Of course, it helps that this is true - by which I mean Christian - imagery, but there is truth all over the place, not just in the Christian imagination.

3. Pray anyway. Enjoy doing it, even if you can't quite believe right now that it is achieving anything. Who said achieving stuff was so important anyway?

4. Cry in films. This has always been an easy one for me. Feel it. Don't protect yourself. I recommend Up as a recent film which caused me to cry like a girl (no offence, girls).

5. Spend some time day-dreaming. Wonder about what the future might hold. Don't spend all day on it, but take some time. And throw in some outrageous dreams. Why not? Anything could happen.

I wrote something similar before. You can find it here.