My server has moved, and the DNS has changed. At A2Hosting: it has not propagated around the web. Yet. As a result I cannot post the on the reading today. However, I can prepare it, save it as a file, and post it when things have propagated. Which could take some time. So I want to start today with something I asked for V. to post as an individual post
I get tired of people assuming that Christians are automatically more virtuous than everyone else, for a few reasons:
1) They might have recently converted and still be far away from where they are headed in their personal development. You can be totally sincere and on fire for Jesus, and still be a class A jerk and a lazy slob. Jesus will give you an “E” for your efforts, even if nobody else notices. It’s not like there’s a magic wand waved over you at your baptism, that instantaneously takes away all of your bad habits.
2) Virtue is the practice of good habits, and anyone can form good habits. What Christianity offers is the support of grace in the formation of those habits. So, it is not that we are necessarily more virtuous, but that we have less excuse for our vices and are held to a higher standard of behavior.
3) It makes Christianity seem like a club for the already perfected, which it isn’t, and discourages those with a surfeit of vices from wanting to join. It also discourages those of us already in the club from trying to eliminate our personal vices.
This links into the tendency of us to become Pharisees. To consider that if we keep certain rules that we will somehow be alright, and that it will all work out. The irony is that this new religion not only enslaves us, but we cannot keep to our own rules, and the rules vary from place to place. This problem is not new. It existed in the early church, and their response is worth noting.
Then certain individuals came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to discuss this question with the apostles and the elders. So they were sent on their way by the church, and as they passed through both Phoenicia and Samaria, they reported the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the believers. When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all that God had done with them. But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, “It is necessary for them to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.”The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”
Amen. We cannot keep the law. Nor can we keep the laws of our making. We were saved by the freely given gift of Christ, and not by any virtue that we have.
And, attached to this religiosity is a sense that the righteous will prosper, and therefore prosperity will be some test of righteousness. Now, those who teach that are fools, who have never read their Augustine.
Will some one say, Why, then, was this divine compassion extended even to the ungodly and ungrateful? Why, but because it was the mercy of Him who daily “maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” For though some of these men, taking thought of this, repent of their wickedness and reform, some, as the apostle says, “despising the riches of His goodness and long-suffering, after their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds:” nevertheless does the patience of God still invite the wicked to repentance, even as the scourge of God educates the good to patience. And so, too, does the mercy of God embrace the good that it may cherish them, as the severity of God arrests the wicked to punish them. To the divine providence it has seemed good to prepare in the world to come for the righteous good things, which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things, by which the good shall not be tormented. But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men often suffer.
There is, too, a very great difference in the purpose served both by those events which we call adverse and those called prosperous. For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world’s happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness. Yet often, even in the present distribution of temporal things, does God plainly evince His own interference. For if every sin were now visited with manifest punishment, nothing would seem to be reserved for the final judgment; on the other hand, if no sin received now a plainly divine punishment, it would be concluded that there is no divine providence at all. And so of the good things of this life: if God did not by a very visible liberality confer these on some of those persons who ask for them, we should say that these good things were not at His disposal; and if He gave them to all who sought them, we should suppose that such were the only rewards of His service; and such a service would make us not godly, but greedy rather, and covetous. Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke; and under the same flail the straw is beaten small, while the grain is cleansed; and as the lees are not mixed with the oil, though squeezed out of the vat by the same pressure, so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them. For, stirred up with the same movement, mud exhales a horrible stench, and ointment emits a fragrant odor.
Now, a lot of people are going to hate this. They feel that they have done all these good things and it should end up with some form of spiritual reward. Or temporal one. Or say that it is easy for an upper middle class New Zealander to sound tough, and play the man, not the ball, falling into that logical trap.
But the person who wrote this was Augustine, after the sack of Rome. I quoted from chapter 8: Chapters 2 — 7 include a survey of the behaviour of pagan peoples during a sack. Times were a lot rougher than they are now and the populace feared invading armies with good reason.
Many of the reformed condemn the prosperity Gospel. Correctly: God is not some slot machine and if we thought he was it makes us out to been some greedy, grasping horrible people. But we have to watch for the other side. While we need to practice being virtuous and we pray that the Spirit of God will refine us, we need to remember that God is sovereign, and that during a life there will be seasons of peace and seasons of travail and pain.
But this life is not the one we have alone.
You’re not even mortals anymore! Why are you acting like this pitiful life is the only one you get? Heaven is real, and we’re headed Home! This is but a moment. We have eternity! This is *very* good news. This is, in fact, a good portion of the good news that we’re supposed to be proclaiming to the World. “Our Lord has taken your punishment, and He welcomes you into His family – if you accept His grace. He died. He rose again. For you. And you can join Him in paradise forever. Put your faith in Him”.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t enjoy the moment – in fact, in future essays, you’ll see that’s the very opposite of what I’m advocating. Wonder is a Christian emotion. Joy is a command. But – grabbing, holding, trying to get the “best” from this life? That’s not what this life is for! This live is for works. This life is to get the Word out to our potential siblings. This life is to show the World what God is doing, has done, with our lives.
We must be transformed. We must shine. We must put off these chains, because we have been freed.
So do not look at the laws as some kind of series of merit badges that will lead to your salvation, but instead look to the LORD and aim to improve. For in that will be eternity.