Bonhoeffer on Death

I just finished Eric Metaxas’ engaging biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This section of a sermon Bonhoeffer gave several years before his death at the hands of the Nazis I found very powerful:

No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.

Whether we are young or old makes no difference. What are twenty or thirty or fifty years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal? That life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up—that is for young and old alike to think about. Why are we so afraid when we think about death?… Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle; it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace.

How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows whether, in our human fear and anguish we are only shivering and shuddering at the most glorious, heavenly, blessed event in the world?

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.

Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 531.

Community Idolatry

I long and pray for deeper community in our church in 2012. This is a good heart check on motivations from Bob Thune and Will Walker:

Community is about God. Community exists to declare his praises and to exalt his goodness and to display his excellencies. True community – the community we were made for – is God-centered and God-focused and God-exalting.

The reason our attempts at community are often shallow, stale, and unfulfilling is that we have made community about ourselves. Perhaps we could call this “community idolatry.” Instead of worshiping God, we worship idols. We jump into the vehicle of community and use it to chase our own false gods. The chart below outlines some of the ways our idolatry plays out in community.

Heart Idol // Underlying Desire // What it often sounds like in a “Christianized” or church setting…

approval // I want a community that always approves of me and never challenges my opinions or preferences // “Can’t we all just get along? Why do we have to talk about issues that bring disagreement or conflict?”

control // I want a community that meets on my schedule, fits my priorities, and doesn’t make demands // “I’d love to be in community, but I’m really busy, and nothing really works with my schedule…”

reputation // I want a community that thinks highly of me // “I DO repent of sin, in my own personal life; I just don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about it in a group setting.”

success // I want a community that’s successful – where we’re making progress and ‘getting stuff done’ (according to my criteria) // “This community feels like a waste of time. We’re not accomplishing anything!”

security // I want a community where I am safe, secure, and never threatened // “We need to spend more time together, so we can really grow deep and feel safe with each other…”

pleasure // I want a community that’s always fun and enjoyable and doesn’t take any work // “Meeting every Tuesday night seems really forced. Why can’t we just hang out spontaneously?”

knowledge // I want a community that gives me a platform to share everything I know // “We don’t study the Bible enough in this group; we should talk less about people’s lives and more about Scripture.”

recognition // I want a community where I can ‘stand out from the crowd’ and be recognized for the awesome person that I am // “I’ve led groups like this before… would you like me to lead this one?”

comfort // I want a community made up of my already-existing friends, where I don’t have to work to get to know anyone // “I tried to join a community group, but the relationships just weren’t natural; we didn’t have much in common…”

Underneath all these idols is the basic idol of SELF. Our various heart idols are tightly nuanced forms of self-worship. What kills community is the fact that we love ourselves more than we love God and others. Only the Bible recognizes that what really hinders community is self-worship. Every neighborhood, every city, every society is an attempt at creating community. But the standard human approach to community is external – find better friends, be nicer to people, build a more stable and just society. Only the Bible says: repent and worship God. The path to true, healthy community is the path of repentance and faith. And this path is made possible through the gospel.

HT: Nick Carter

Dare to be a Sinner

This is one of my favorite quotes from a much marked up copy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:

“Confess you faults one to another” (Jas. 5:16). He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!

But it is the grace of the Gospel, which is so hard for the pious to understand, that it confronts us with the truth and says: You are a sinner, a great, desperate sinner; now come, as the sinner that you are, to God who loves you. He wants you as you are; He does not want anything from you, a sacrifice, a work; He wants you alone. “My son, give me thine heart” (Prov. 23:26). God has come to you so save the sinner. Be glad! This message is liberation through truth. You can hide nothing from God. The mask you wear before men will do you no good before Him. He wants to see you as you are, He wants to be gracious to you. You do not have to go on lying to yourself and your brothers, as if you were without sin; you can dare to be a sinner.

John W. Doberstein, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 110.

All Men Seek Happiness

From the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal’s Pensées (#425):

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both,
attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

And yet after such a great number of years, no one without faith has reached the point to which all continually look. All complain, princes and subjects, noblemen and commoners, old and young, strong and weak, learned and ignorant, healthy and sick, of all countries, all times, all ages, and all conditions.

A trial so long, so continuous, and so uniform, should certainly convince us of our inability to reach the good by our own efforts. But example teaches us little. No resemblance is ever so perfect that there is not some slight difference; and hence we expect that our hope will not be deceived on this occasion as before. And thus, while the present never satisfies us, experience dupes us, and from misfortune to misfortune leads us to death, their eternal crown.

What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

The Vestibule

Francis Schaeffer on not letting orthodox doctrine be disconnected from a living relationship with the living Christ.

Doctrinal rightness and rightness of ecclesiastical position are important, but only as a starting-point to go on into a living relationship – and not as ends in themselves.

[Take the Reformation, for example.] The Roman Catholic Church had come to teach the wrong doctrines. And I feel that most of the Reformation then let the pendulum swing and thought if only the right doctrines were taught that all would be automatically well. Thus, to a large extent, the Reformation concentrated almost exclusively on the “teaching ministry of the Church.”

In other words almost all the emphasis was placed on teaching the right doctrines. In this I feel the fatal error had already been made. It is not for a moment that we can begin to get anywhere until the right doctrines are taught. But the right doctrines mentally assented to are not an end in themselves, but should only be the vestibule to a personal and loving communion with God.

The danger of orthodoxy, even true orthodoxy, is in falling off the other side of the knife blade: that is, in stating the intellectual position and then placing a period. What we must ask the Lord for is a work of the Spirit . . . to stand on a very thin line: in other words, to state intellectually (as well as understand, though not completely) the intellectual reality of that which God is and what God has revealed in the objectively inspired Bible; and then to live moment by moment in the reality of a restored relationship with the God who is there, and to act in faith upon what we believe in our daily lives.

HT: Trevin Wax

What Is Gospel-Centered Ministry?

I went back a re-watched this talk today that rocked my world the first time I heard it sitting in the chapel at TEDS for the inaugural Gospel Coalition Conference. It still rocks my world and has significantly impacted the way I understand ministry.

Go here and watch it!

Where Do You Put the Accent?

But now I want to make an attempt to state the most serious problem that I have with your thinking. I am thinking of the up-front emphasis on covenant faithfulness or obedience. Like you I do not think anyone is saved without obedience to Christ issuing from his faith. But the drumbeat of the new covenant is not covenant obedience. The accent is rather on the forgiveness of sins. In His inauguration of the new covenant in the giving of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus does not say anything about obedience but rather: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for many for the forgiveness of sins.” In the new covenant, the heart of things consists in “redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Eph 1:7).

The obedience which flows from this state and experience of forgiveness through Christ’s atonement is not a kind of generalized or vague “lawkeeping” but a being “kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God is Christ forgave you” (Eph 4:34). Thus the covenant drumbeat of “forgiveness” carries right on through into a life of forgiveness and kindness.

Our obedience is charged with the power to forgive and bless and serve others because we have been captured by God’s own pardon and acceptance of us by free grace… You cannot have the kind of family tenderness you seek if covenant obedience is the primary focus. Here I think you are putting the accent in the wrong place and in doing so have really undermined your fine emphasis on the covenant concept as a family relationship.

- Jack Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader, p.168-169.

HT: Drew Hunter

You’ve Got An A!

This is a great story illustrating the freedom of the gospel, found on Tullian Tchividjian’s grace-drenched blog:

My friend Steve Brown tells a story about a time his daughter Robin found herself in a very difficult English Literature course that she desperately wanted to get out of.

She sat there on her first day and thought, “If I don’t transfer out of this class, I’m going to fail. The other people in this class are much smarter than me. I can’t do this.” She came home and with tears in her eyes begged her dad to help her get out of the class so she could take a regular English course. Steve said, “Of course.”

So the next day he took her down to the school and went to the head of the English department, who was a Jewish woman and a great teacher. Steve remembers the event in these words:

She (the head of the English department) looked up and saw me standing there by my daughter and could tell that Robin was about to cry. There were some students standing around and, because the teacher didn’t want Robin to be embarrassed, she dismissed the students saying, “I want to talk to these people alone.” As soon as the students left and the door was closed, Robin began to cry. I said, “I’m here to get my daughter out of that English class. It’s too difficult for her. The problem with my daughter is that she’s too conscientious. So, can you put her into a regular English class?” The teacher said, “Mr. Brown, I understand.” Then she looked at Robin and said, “Can I talk to Robin for a minute?” I said, “Sure.” She said, “Robin, I know how you feel. What if I promised you an A no matter what you did in the class? If I gave you an A before you even started, would you be willing to take the class?” My daughter is not dumb! She started sniffling and said, “Well, I think I could do that.” The teacher said, “I’m going to give you an A in the class. You already have an A, so you can go to class.”

Later the teacher explained to Steve what she had done. She explained how she took away the threat of a bad grade so that Robin could learn English. Robin ended up making straight A’s on her own in that class.

That’s how God deals with us. Because we are, right now, under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ, Christians already have an A. The threat of failure, judgment, and condemnation has been removed. We’re in – forever! Nothing we do will make our grade better and nothing we do will make our grade worse. We’ve been set free.

Knowing that God’s love for you and approval of you will never be determined by your performance for Jesus but Jesus’ performance for you will actually make you perform more and better, not less and worse. In other words, grace mobilizes performance; performance does not mobilize grace.

Spurgeon On Conversion

When the Word of God converts a man, it takes away from him his despair but it does not take from him his repentance.

True conversion gives a man pardon, but it does not make him presumptuous.

True conversion gives a man perfect rest, but it does not stop his progress.

True conversion gives a man security, but it does not allow him to leave off being watchful.

True conversion gives a man strength and holiness, but it never lets him boast.

–quoted in Iain Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon (Banner of Truth 1966), 112

HT: Dane Ortlund

Communicating Coherently

Why should we who are Christians and who have something to say, labor to say it clearly and coherently? “God is not a God of disorder” (1Cor. 14:43). Our God makes order out of chaos (see Genesis 1). So organizing our thoughts and communicating them in a way that makes sense is an aspect of godliness. And it takes work!