salvation – Mum's devotional

The other side of the river

December 9th

Jesus replied to them,* “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I assure you: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself. But if it dies, it produces a large crop. The one who loves his life will lose it, and the one who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me. Where I am, there My servant also will be…”

John 12:23-26 (HCSB)

As… life on the other side of the great river becomes more and more the reality, of which this is only a shadow, that the petty distinctions of the many creeds of Christendom tend to slip away as well—leaving only the great truths which all Christians believe alike. More and more, as I read of the Christian religion, as Christ preached it, I stand amazed at the forms men have given to it, and the fictitious barriers they have built up between themselves and their brethren. I believe that when you and I come to lie down for the last time, if only we can keep firm hold of the great truths Christ taught us—our own utter worthlessness and His infinite worth; and that He has brought us back to our one Father, and made us His brethren, and so brethren to one another—we shall have all we need to guide us through the shadows.

Most assuredly I accept to the full the doctrines that Christ died to save us, that we have no other way of salvation open to us but through His death, and that it is by faith in Him, and through no merit of ours, that we are reconciled to God; and most assuredly I can cordially say, “I owe all to Him who loved me, and died on the Cross of Calvary.”

from The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll

Here is Voctave’s O Come All Ye Faithful, because their tenor is just fantastic. (Full warning: I’m going to fit in as many Voctave carols as I can this month; they’re good arrangements, and the singers are pretty uniformly amazing. It’s like Pentatonix for adults.)

…and here is an image of NGC 1032 in Cetus (they got the galaxy’s ‘bad side,’ which is obviously pretty hard) from last year’s Hubble Advent Calendar in The Atlantic.

Here’s this year’s, if anyone’s interested.

Around the Wicket Gate

November 17th

But where sin increased, grace increased all the more… What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

Romans 6:1-2 (NIV)

The Lord Jesus has come to save us from sinning; and if we are resolved to go on sinning, Christ and our souls will never agree. Salvation consists largely in parting the sinner from his sin, and the very nature of salvation would have to be changed before we could speak of a man’s being saved when he is loving sin, and wilfully living in it.

A drunkard will be saved by believing in Christ—that is to say, he will be saved from being a drunkard; but if he determines still to make himself intoxicated, he is not saved from it, and he has not truly believed in Jesus. A liar can by faith be saved from falsehood, but then he leaves off lying, and is careful to speak the truth. Anyone can see with half an eye that he cannot be saved from being a liar, and yet go on in his old style of deceit and untruthfulness. A person who is at enmity with another will be saved from that feeling of enmity by believing in the Lord Jesus; but if he vows that he will still cherish the feeling of hate, it is clear that he is not saved from it, and equally clear that he has not believed in the Lord Jesus unto salvation. The great matter is to be delivered from the love of sin: this is the sure effect of trust in the Saviour; but if this effect is so far from being desired that it is even refused, all talk of trusting in the Saviour for salvation is an idle tale. A man goes to the shipping-office, and asks if he can be taken to America. He is assured that a ship is just ready, and that he has only to go on board, and he will soon reach New York. “But,” says he, “I want to stop at home in England, and mind my shop all the time I am crossing the Atlantic.” The agent thinks he is talking to a madman, and tells him to go about his business, and not waste his time by playing the fool. To pretend to trust Christ to save you from sin while you are still determined to continue in it, is making a mock of Christ.

If you are anxious to give up every evil way, our Lord Jesus will enable you to do so at once. His grace has already changed the direction of your desires: in fact, your heart is renewed. Therefore, rest on him to strengthen you to battle with temptations as they arise, and to fulfill the Lord’s commands from day to day. The Lord Jesus is great at making the lame man to leap like a hart, and in enabling those who are sick of the palsy to take up their bed and walk. He will make you able to conquer the evil habit. …there is no limit to his power to cleanse and sanctify. Now that you are willing to be made whole, the great difficulty is removed. He that has set the will right can arrange all your other powers, and make them move to his praise. You would not have earnestly desired to quit all sin if he had not secretly inclined you in that direction. If you now trust him, it will be clear that he has begun a good work in you, and we feel assured that he will carry it on.

from Spurgeon’s Around the Wicket Gate
(Ch. 8 – A Real Hindrance)

Around the Wicket Gate is the cutest wee pamphlet. Seriously, lots of melodramatic metaphors there. I sort of skimmed it on a lark because it popped up on Gutenberg, but was then struck with this inexpressible longing for a time when pamphleteers could actually write, and now here we are.

Impatience is double-mindedness

November 4th

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

2 Peter 3:9 (NIV)

[We] often enough confuse impatience with humble, obedient enthusiasm; impatience even lends itself to this confusion. When a man is active early and late “for the sake of the Good,” storming about noisily and restlessly, hurling himself into time, as a sick man throws himself down upon his bed, throwing off all consideration for himself, scornful of the world’s reward; then the masses think what he himself imagines, that he is inspired. And yet he is at the other pole from that, for he is double-minded.

So it is with all impatience. It is a kind of ill-temper. Its root is already in the child, because the child will not take time for things. With the double-minded one, it is thus clear that time and eternity cannot rule in the same man. He cannot, he will not, understand the Good’s Slowness; that out of mercy, the Good is slow; that out of love for free persons, it will not use force; that in its wisdom toward the frail ones, it shrinks from any deception. He cannot, he will not, humbly understand that the Good can get on without him. He is double-minded, he that with his enthusiasm could apparently become an apostle, but can quite as readily become a Judas, who treacherously wishes to hasten the victory of the Good. He is scandalized, he that by his enthusiasm seems to love the Good so highly. He is scandalized by its poverty, when it is clothed in the slowness of time. He is not devoted to the Good in service that may profit nothing. He loves the moment. And he that loves the moment fears time, he fears that the course of time will reveal his double-mindedness, and he falsifies eternity; for otherwise eternity might still more effectively reveal his double-mindedness. For him eternity is the deceptive sensory illusion of the horizon; for him eternity is the bluish haze that limits time; for him eternity is the dazzling sleight-of-hand trick executed by the moment.

from Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing (Ch. 6)

So, yay, more Kierkegaard! …and don’t worry, when we’re done with this book, there’s plenty more where that came from. He had lots of journals too.

Fear of punishment

October 26th

…yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.

2 Corinthians 7:9-10 (NIV)

The other aspect of the reward-centered man is willing the good only out of fear of punishment [or consequence]. For in essence, this is the same as to will the Good for the sake of the reward, to the extent that avoiding an evil is an advantage of the same sort as that of attaining a benefit. The Good is one thing. Punishment is something else. Therefore the double-minded person does not desire one thing when he desires the Good under the condition that he shall avoid punishment. The condition lays its finger upon just the double mindedness. If that condition were not there, he would not fear the punishment, for punishment is indeed not what a man should fear. He should fear to do wrong. But if he has done wrong, then he must, if he really wills one thing and sincerely wills the Good, desire to be punished, that the punishment may heal him just as medicine heals the sick. If one who is sick fears the bitterness of the medicine, or fears “to let himself be cut and cauterized by the physician,” then what he really fears is — to get well, even though in delirium he swears most positively that this is not the case, and that, on the contrary, he all too eagerly longs for his health. As for this assurance, the more zealously it is made, the more clearly is its double-mindedness revealed: that he desires his health and yet does not will it, although he has it in his power. To desire what one cannot carry out is not such double-mindedness because the hindrance is not within the control of the one who desires it. But when the person who desires is himself the obstacle that keeps himself from getting his desire fulfilled, not by giving it up, for then he would be at one with himself, but both by not willing and yet by willing to continue to desire: then the double-mindedness is clear — if it can be made clear — or at least the fact is clear that it is double-mindedness. If what a man fears is not the mistake itself, but the reproach at being caught in the mistake, then that fear so far from helping him out of the error may even lead him into that which is still more ruinous, even if apart from this he had made no mistake.

…Only one thing can help a man to will the Good in truth: the Good itself.

from Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing (Ch. 5)

It’s just occurred to me that I have to read SK’s devotional works a lot more carefully than his “dense” and difficult theological works… probably because I’m an emotionally-stunted pedant, but that’s just a working theory.

…and yes, we’ve already touched on 2 Corinthians 7.

No one can come to me, unless…

September 4th

Jesus… asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”

Matthew 16:13-16 (NASB)

The majority of people when they come across a nature like Zacchaeus will say he is simply selfish, sordid, and indifferent; he is not convicted of sin, it is no use to try and deal with him. That is the attitude we all maintain to the “Zacchaeus” type of man until we learn how to bring Jesus Christ close to him. Whenever Jesus Christ came across men in His day, they knew where they were, and they either rebelled or followed him. They either went away exceeding sorrowful, or they turned with their whole nature towards Him.

Look what happened to Zacchaeus—“And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of any man, I restore fourfold” (RV). Who had been talking to him about his doings? Not a soul. Jesus had never said a word about his evil doings. What awakened him? What suddenly made him know where he was? The presence of Jesus!

So many people try to explain things about Jesus Christ, but no worker need ever try to do that. You cannot explain things about Jesus Christ, rely on the Holy Spirit and He will explain Jesus to the soul.

from Oswald Chamber’s The Cure of Souls (Ch. 2)

There was also this quote at the end, which I liked (well, not liked, but you get the idea):

I want to say one other thing—the Spirit of God will not work for the cure of some souls without you, and God is going to hold to the account of some of us the souls that have gone uncured, unhealed, untouched by Jesus Christ because we have refused to keep our souls open towards Him, and when the sensual, selfish, wrong lives came around we were not ready to present the Lord Jesus Christ to them by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Which, just… ouch.

I’m not very emotional about this kind of thing, but then I always think of that horrible scene in Schindler’s List —where he suddenly realizes what all of the money he spent on his own expensive tastes and social posturing really meant in the economy of lives that he was dealing with, and that he could have saved so many more— and figure that he probably wasn’t very emotional about it either initially.

Mum’s Devotional… the place where metaphors come to die…

…gasping for breath, like a horse ridden too hard across the Gobi desert, even though there were perfectly adequate four-wheel drives available, possibly even camels, that knew where the watering holes were, but you didn’t listen to the local guide, who so clearly knew what he was talking about…

The natural soul

August 27th

But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.

1 Corinthians 2:14 (CSB)

We preach to men as if they were conscious they were dying sinners, they are not; they are having a good time, and our talk about being born from above is in a domain they know nothing of.

Nowadays we have come to the conclusion that a man must be a down-and-out sinner before he needs Jesus Christ to do anything for him; consequently we debase Jesus Christ’s salvation to mean merely that He can save the vile man and lift him into a better life. We quote our Lord’s statement that “the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost” and misinterpret His meaning by limiting “the lost” to those who are lost in our eyes.

The natural man does not want to be born again. The natural man is not in distress,he is not conscious of conviction of sin, or of any disharmony, he is quite contented and at peace. The Gospel does not present what the natural man wants but what he needs, and the Gospel awakens an intense resentment as well as an intense craving. We will take God’s blessings and loving-kindnesses and prosperities, but when it comes to the need of having our disposition altered, there is opposition at once. When we come down to close quarters and God’s Spirit tells us we must give up the right to ourselves to Jesus Christ and let Him rule, then we understand what Paul meant when he said that “the carnal mind,” which resides in the heart, is “enmity against God.”

from Oswald Chambers’ The Soul of a Christian (Soul Satisfaction)

Why yes, I do have the fifteen hundred page Collected Works of Oswald Chambers, why do you ask? (I would say that this is the lamest thing about my life, except: it’s digital, and, sadly, wouldn’t make the top twenty even if it weren’t.)

The Cross of Christ

August 14th

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

John 3:17 (HCSB)

Never confuse the Cross of Christ with the benefits that flow from it. For all Paul’s doctrine, his one great passion was the Cross of Christ, not salvation, nor sanctification, but the great truth that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son; consequently you never find him artificial, or making a feeble statement. Every doctrine Paul taught had the blood and the power of God in it. There is an amazing force of spirit in all he said because the great passion behind was not that he wanted men to be holy, that was secondary, but that he had come to understand what God meant by the Cross of Christ. If we have only the idea of personal holiness, of being put in God’s show room, we shall never come anywhere near seeing what God wants; but when once we have come where Paul is and God is enabling us to understand what the Cross of Christ means, then nothing can ever turn us.

from Oswald Chambers’ Approved Unto God

More Romans

March 9th

CARDINAL: Would you could become honest!
BOSOLA. With all your divinity do but direct me the way to it. I have known many travel far for it, and yet return as arrant knaves as they went forth, because they carried themselves always along with them.

from The Duchess of Malfi (Webster)

…We know that the Law is spiritual, but I am a creature of the flesh — worldly, self-reliant, carnal and unspiritual — sold into slavery to sin and serving under its control. For I do not understand my own actions. I am baffled and bewildered by them. I do not practice what I want to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate (yielding to my human nature, my worldliness—my sinful capacity). Now if I habitually do what I do not want to do, that means I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good (morally excellent). So now, if that is the case, then it is no longer I who do the disobedient thing which I despise, but the sin nature which lives in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh (in my human nature, my worldliness—my sinful capacity). For the willingness to do good is present in me, but the doing of good is not. For the good that I want to do, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want to do, I am no longer the one doing it (that is, it is not me that acts), but the sin nature which lives in me.

So I find it to be the law of my inner self, that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully delight in the law of God in my inner self, with my new nature, but I see a different law and rule of action in the members of my body (in its appetites and desires), waging war against the law of my mind and subduing me and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is within my members. Wretched and miserable man that I am! Who will rescue me and set me free from this body of death (this corrupt, mortal existence)? Thanks be to God for my deliverance through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind serve the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh (my human nature, my worldliness, my sinful capacity—I serve) the law of sin.

from Romans 7 (Amplified Bible… obviously)

A bit of amusing background, if you haven’t read The Duchess of Malfi: Bosola is the villain, in the sense that he does most of the stabbing that goes on in the play. (Seriously. Plays from this era were very stabby. I guess that’s kind of what happens when you have to follow Shakespeare and Marlowe, but can’t actually write as well as them.) The Cardinal, though, is the one that orchestrates everything and arranges for his sister and her children (and her husband, but who cares about him, he’s not in the line of succession) to be killed, because theater-goers love having a good hypocrite to hate. (Bonus points if he’s religious.)

Anyhow, the play is better known for its “shot to death with pearls” speech, or possibly the “she walks in such noble virtue that her days, nay, her very nights, are more in heaven than other ladies’ shrifts” bit, but, for the most part, it’s not on high school curricula for a reason.

Repentance vs. beating yourself up, ft. Bunyan

February 8th

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what longing, what zeal, what punishment! At every point you have proved yourselves innocent in the matter.

2 Corinthians 7:10-11 (ESV)

[after Evangelist saves Christian from Mr. Legality and Mount Doom, I mean, Mt. Sinai…]

So he went on with haste, neither spake he to any man by the way; nor, if any asked him, would he vouchsafe them an answer. He went like one that was all the while treading on forbidden ground, and could by no means think himself safe, till again he was got into the way which he left to follow Mr. Wordly Wiseman’s counsel. So, in process of time, Christian got up to the gate. Now, over the gate there was written, “Knock; and it shall be opened unto you”.

He knocked therefore, more than once or twice, saying — “May I now enter here? Will he within open to sorry me, though I have been an undeserving rebel? Then shall I not fail to sing his lasting praise on high.” At last there came a grave person to the gate, named Goodwill, who asked who was there? and whence he came? and what he would have?

Christian spoke: ‘Here is a poor burdened sinner. I come from the city of Destruction; but am going to Mount Zion, that I may be delivered from the wrath to come. I would, therefore, sir, since I am informed that by this gate is the way thither, know if you are willing to let me in.’

”I am willing, with all my heart,” said Goodwill. And with that he opened the gate

Christian said: “Evangelist bade me come hither and knock, as I did; and he said that you, sir, would tell me what I must do.”

Goodwill replied: “An open door is before thee; and no man can shut it. We make no objections against any; notwithstanding all that they have done before they come hither, they in no wise are cast out and, therefore, good Christian, come a little way with me, and I will teach thee about the way thou must go. Look before thee: dost thou see this narrow way? that is the way thou must go. It was cast up by the patriarchs, prophets, Christ, and his apostles; and it is as straight as a rule can make it: this is the way thou must go.

The text here is from a really beautiful copy of the Pilgrim’s Progress (especially considering the quality of most texts on the internet, and possibly my judgment is clouded by the fact that I didn’t have to type this entire thing out). Also, someone did a graphic novel adaption of the story, which, while I appreciate the idea, has horrific echoes of both the art and the… unique writing in Calvin Miller’s Singer Trilogy. (Apparently it’s a thing, I like the look of this adaptation a bit better, but haven’t read it.)

Tobymac’s Forgiveness, on Youtube and Spotify respectively

Create in me a clean heart

February 7th

Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. …Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.

Psalm 51:10,12 (NIV)

Now, it sometimes seems to the troubled heart that the simple gospel of “Believe and live,” is not, after all, so very simple; for it asks the poor sinner to do what he cannot do. There appears to be a missing link; yonder is the salvation of Jesus, but how is it to be reached? The soul is without strength, and knows not what to do. It lies within sight of the city of refuge, and cannot enter its gate.

Is this want of strength provided for in the plan of salvation? It is. The work of the Lord is perfect. It begins where we are, and asks nothing of us in order to its completion.

A curious idea men have of what repentance is! Many fancy that so many tears are to be shed, and so many groans are to be heaved, and so much despair is to be endured. Whence comes this unreasonable notion? Unbelief and despair are sins, and therefore I do not see how they can be constituent elements of acceptable repentance; yet there are many who regard them as necessary parts of true Christian experience. They are in great error. Still, I know what they mean, for in the days of my darkness I used to feel in the same way. I desired to repent, but I thought that I could not do it, and yet all the while I was repenting. Odd as it may sound, I felt that I could not feel. I used to get into a corner and weep, because I could not weep; and I fell into bitter sorrow because I could not sorrow for sin. What a jumble it all is when in our unbelieving state we begin to judge our own condition! It is like a blind man looking at his own eyes. My heart was broken to think that it would not break. Now I can see that I was exhibiting the very thing which I thought I did not possess; but then I knew not where I was.

But listen! To repent is to change your mind about sin, and Christ, and all the great things of God. There is sorrow implied in this; but the main point is the turning of the heart from sin to Christ. If there be this turning, you have the essence of true repentance, even though no alarm and no despair should ever have cast their shadow upon your mind.

from Spurgeon’s All of Grace (Ch. 11)

Keith Green’s Create in Me a Clean Heart on Youtube and Spotify respectively