Tag: sanctification

Knowledge is not enough.

Consider for a second the greeting that Simon Peter gives in this letter: a general letter, to all those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours . The faith we have in Christ is not graded by class or virtue: for in the eyes of God we have neither.

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Consider the works of men: we make wonderful things (and yes, a pile of driftwood is not the biggest or greatest thing we make) but the land we live in is greater and more beautiful.

Our equality in Christ is an equality of mercy. We have all erred. We all need to reform. We all need to do better each day, strive for self-control. I was shamed yesterday at a party by the Photographer who managed to stay within dietary restrictions she needs despite the food that arrived (including food she could eat) because she has a goal and will stick to it. We can and should use the examples of others to stir us along.

For we are commanded to strive more and more to have control of our lives, and to love each other. If we do not do this, we are blind.


Simeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ:

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so near-sighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

(2 Peter 1:1-11 ESV)

Knowledge of Christ and the gospel is needed. We need to be looking into the scriptures, and we need to be reflecting on them, particularly if we do not like the conclusions. But knowledge, something that I am attracted to, is not enough.

If we do not control ourselves, remain steadfast in the faith, seek virtue, have affection for each other and love the kirk, which is the people, then we will be ineffective. And this requires training.

And training requires either a father or a mentor. (Mentor was the king Telemanchus sought out for guidance because his father, Odyessus, had not returned from the Trojan War).

Here our sisters are given clear teaching. Older women are to teach younger women how to love their husbands and children: Mothercraft and Wifedom. Neither are instinctual: both require training. But our young men are not being told how to live: and this requires men to show them: by word and example. Part of the reason that the manosphere has taken off is that the correct teaching they have (Get fit. Don’t spend your time on porn. Find your mission and do it. Don’t be a doormat: get a spine) is not being taought in the church.

For the fathers have been divorced, and the young man have absented themselves: even those of us who admire feminine skills don’t want to be around when they are being done, for risk of losing our man card.

We all need to be in training. There is no retirement. And our bodies, our minds, our hands, our words, and our actions have to be more and more like those of Christ. For our salvation is equal to that of the Apostles and fathers of our faith.

My fear is that we have forgotten this.

Hurinui, Baxter and a living God.

A Duneidn Valley (through a new hole in a hedge). From SHattered Light

I was looking through Will S’ photos yesterday (yes the colours in the photo are wrong. I used a cross developing filter to see what would happen to a photo taken at dusk, when the dark green of the NZ forest becomes very black) and that makes me think of the most regional NZ poet: James Baxter. This is taken from his Jerusalem Sonnets, which is still in copyright — it’s taken from the online NZ encyclopedia. Baxter discusses his version of hippie Catholicism: leaving the comfortable life of the Burns Fellowship (a stipend at the university and no questions on what he wrote) to live among the Maori, and Hurinui, or Jerusalem, next to a nunnery set up by the Mother AUbert.


Poem for Colin—25

The brown river, te taniwha, flows on
Between his banks—he could even be on my side,

I suspect, if there is a side—there are still notches worn
In the cliffs downstream where they used to shove

The big canoes up; and just last week some men
Floated a ridge-pole down from an old pa

For the museum—he can also be
A brutal lover; they say he sucked under

A young girl once, and the place at the river-bend is named
After her tears—I accept that—I wait for

The taniwha in the heart to rise—when will that happen?
Is He dead or alive? A car goes by on the road

With an enormous slogan advertising
Rides for tourists on the jetboat at Pipiriki.

A taniwha is a river monster, a dragon, in Maori mythology. They cause floods, earthquakes and disasters. And more recently, some iwi have required roads are diverted or a large sum of money is paid to appease them. As a nation we have lsot our faith, and become credulous, as we try desperately not to offend.
Baxter wrote poems about how the car offended him. The modern greens would have it banned as culturally insensitive: the jetboat rides still occur on thar river.

This is an error. This world is fallen: locally the floods come as a direct consequence of geography, which changes after each volcanic eruption or earthquake. Both happen: the Wanganui catchment includes as it source two active volcanoes. And the glory we see now is but a foreshadowing.

Isaiah 4:2-6

2On that day the branch of the LORD shall be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land shall be the pride and glory of the survivors of Israel. 3Whoever is left in Zion and remains in Jerusalem will be called holy, everyone who has been recorded for life in Jerusalem, 4once the Lord has washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion and cleansed the bloodstains of Jerusalem from its midst by a spirit of judgment and by a spirit of burning. 5Then the LORD will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over its places of assembly a cloud by day and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night. Indeed over all the glory there will be a canopy. 6It will serve as a pavilion, a shade by day from the heat, and a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain.

Ephesians 4:1-16

1I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, 2with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

7But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.” 9(When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? 10He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) 11The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. 14We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. 15But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

We can walk forwards from the glory into the implications of this or we can walk backwards from the commands to the theology: it does not matter much. For it is God who will refine us and test us and keeping on working by his spirit so that if we abide with him we will be not merely accounted as beautiful and glorious but be the same. The Romans talk about purgatory where we pay for our sins: there is no penalty we could pay but death, and Christ as paid that, in this life and the second.
So we will all end up as saints, beautiful, glorious, living in a land of beauty, where the stream runs sure and beauty is untrammeled, or we will be experiencing the second death without respite for an indefinite time. The comfort of oblivion, the wish of the atheist, is a delusion. We will be held to account. This life is the beginning, not the end. But in this life we choose our end.
And in this we need to keep to essentials. An illustration.

Last week I was at a seminar or teaching how to write. Which was challenging, because we had to examine how we write ourselves. In one exercise, I was working with someone from the English department and we both identified that people move from the point. He discusses this and talks about it: he mainly works with actors and playwrights. I diagram the experiment. ANd that which is not needed to explain the experiment is discarded.

The essentials of the Christian faith is the gospel of Christ. There is such a thing as mere Christianity: the baptism we have is one, the salvation we have is one, and the communion we have is one. The speculation on what these things mean is our own, and each religious tradition falls into the same theological error of speculating on what we cannot underhand, and trying to make God neat.

But God is not tamed. He is not neat. For he has the power of salvation: he can make and remake the universe.

And it is indeed a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God.

The savage ain’t noble.

Without Christ, we are going to follow our own ends. This leads to tribalism. We need limits on our behaviour. God is merciful. He saved the people of Israel and those who joined them… and gave them a law that is sustainable. But no one can keep it.

We thus need the work of Christ. For he will rescue from all parts of humanity, the distant and the near, those who have gone before and those in the future.

Psalm 22:27-31

27 All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the LORD;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.
28 For dominion belongs to the LORD,
and he rules over the nations.

29 To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and I shall live for him.
30 Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord,
31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
saying that he has done it.

In the end, it is not us that have saving power. We are flawed. We are fallen. We cannot do it. It is not the church that has saving power, for that is made up but of men. It is Christ. For Christ’s spirit should guide us, Christ will perfect us, and Christ will preserve the church. As Paul says, we work because we are under obligation: we do good because we are compelled. Left to our own devices, we would Party Hard (For various values of partying).

1 Corinthians 9:16-27

16If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! 17For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. 18What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.

19For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. 20To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. 21To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. 22To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. 23I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

Now, we are where we are. Our duty is to do good in the circumstances we find ourselves: we are not to wait for perfection or a time of no responsibility, for that will not happen.

Simple things.

  • We should aim for excellence in what we do: as we miss (which is the usual course of events we will end up with something that is good enough.
  • We should have interests. You can’t be a Jew to Jews, or a Gentile to Gentiles, unless we can do things with them. Now, for many women, this can be play dates and coffee — for their children and school are shared interests. For guys, it is more likely to be work or sports. I follow rugby, not because I love the game (I don’t) but because it allows me to talk to the average bloke around here.
  • And, in this Lenten season, we must be gentle with each other. Some will use the rituals of the church, special days and festivals . Others will not, for every day is holy.  Here I have to watch my sense of humour — the Presbyterians may be God’s Frozen People, but we don’t have to be sarcastic about others.

One of the current virtues of the interwebz is that we can say, still, what we think. But we lose information. We have but our bare words. The non verbal means by which we modify our discussions cannot occur with text.

This means that we can hurt each other quickly, deeply… and at times unintentionally.  Now, for men… Iron sharpens Iron. We do not mind confrontation. If you push, we push back. But for many women, this is very hurtful.  As a result, the men tend to talk to the men and the women to the women… which is not bad — and in fact good — provided that we do not follow our natural tendencies to (a) see all women as stupid and servants (men) or (b) see all men as violent, dumb, brutes with useful wallets (women).

God uses marriage to force us to be together. It is a holy institution because it forces us to grow. Which is why the enemy rejoices whenever there is a divorce, and celebrates when a generation chooses not to marry. But in marriage (by God’s rules, not the current legal ones)  we can gently lead each other, so that we do good and not pain.