I gotta have my orange juice.

In his chapter in The Glory of Kings, “Holy War Fulfilled and Transformed,” Rich Lusk deals with the unique way in which God led Israel to prosecute war in the conquest of Canaan. Lusk contrasts Israel’s conquest of Canaan against the much more restrictive demands God placed on their ordinary warfare. He goes on to establish how the conquest is typological for Jesus’s conquest of the world through the cross and the church. The church engages in battle and wrestling through our worship, prayer, sacrifice, evangelism, discipleship and ministries of mercy.

There is a kind of double meaning in the idea of something being devoted to God: it may entail either punishment or acceptance, judgment or justification. While cities were sent up in smoke as a mark of God’s judgment, the system of offerings shows a positive meaning of ascension in smoke. The penalty and judgment for sin came into play when the animal was put to death. After its death, the animal’s ascension in smoke was a positive figure of its entering into God’s presence on behalf of the worshipper. The underlying Hebrew for “whole burnt offering,” in fact, literally means “ascension offering.” Likewise, Jesus, our offering for sin, in his ascension brings us to the Father in union with him as our representative. So, today, the church wields the sword of the Spirit, the word (Eph. 6:17; Heb. 4:12), waging a campaign of devoting the world to God by spreading the fire of the Holy Spirit, life born out of repentance. Since Pentecost, we are living sacrifices.

What struck me in thinking about this was Israel’s refusal to enter into Canaan, and how this may serve as a caution for the church. Consider Numbers 13:25-14:38. Clearly God promised to give them the land, and they saw firsthand his power to fight for them. And yet they still did not believe. Ultimately, God forgave their sin, but they had to endure the consequence of their unbelief through forty years of wandering and death. In a way, they were given only as much as they believed God for: they did not believe God could or would fight for them, so they do not enjoy the victory that God had promised.

What does this mean for the church? Jesus is the high priest whose death brings about an atoning transition from judgment to grace (Numbers 35), and immediately opens the way to the gospel’s conquest of the world (Numbers 20:29-21:3). Jesus’s ascension is his coronation; the Father has now put everything in subjection under his feet (Ps. 8, Heb. 2). Here are a few ways we can work at walking in faith in Jesus’s lordship:

• Jesus is lord of nations, kings and magistrates, so our responsibility as citizens does not stop at voting and prayer: we call them to account to Jesus and seek to disciple them
• Our children belong to Jesus and his Spirit is at work in them, so our parenting owes as much to the pattern of discipleship as to evangelism
• Jesus is lord of our work, so we can work in any lawful vocation “as for the Lord,” knowing that he is beginning a new work of subduing the earth regardless of the seeming futility we see on our own time horizons
• Jesus is lord of all, so we can confidently appeal to unbelievers on the basis that they live under his rule in his realm, that everything they enjoy is a blessing from him, and that true joy and blessing is to be found in welcoming him and his lordship rather than despising him.

And belt out some Christmas songs this holiday season. Joy to the world!

The Westminster Confession of Faith reads:

God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

We confess that God ordains or decrees everything, but in a way that establishes individual freedom and responsibility. At one level this is simply a mystery to us, but it is possible for us to go a little deeper. Authorship and artistry — or, as Tolkien puts it, sub-creation — have been for me a helpful analogy for God’s sovereignty over creation^[1]. It does not even occur to us to accuse Tolkien of tempting or causing Gollum to sin, or of any injustice or violence toward Gollum. Even recognizing Tolkien’s authorship, we do not doubt that Gollum did what he did of his own free will, or that he deserved his end. Philosophers call this compatibilist free will, but it just means that we do what we want to do. An author or artist’s decreeing or ordaining her work is categorically different from ordinary causation or compulsion within the world of the work itself. In fact, the author’s decrees are just what establishes and upholds a structure of causality and responsibility within the world of her work. Otherwise it would be utter chaos.

This also means that God’s very being and existence are categorically different from ours; to use the philosophical term, he is transcendent. This is perhaps the main reason that Anselm’s argument fails: we cannot induct our way outside of the story; we cannot build a ladder that jumps right off the page. We need God to reveal himself to us.

There are some fun ways to explore this creator-creature distinction in story and art. In simplest form, characters might speculate about or comically defy the author. Pushing the analogy to its limits, we end up with self-reference, a multiplicity of levels, and illusions. This gets us into the realm of what Douglas Hofstadter calls the “strange loop,” and as Hofstadter points out, Escher’s work is a great example of all this. But the analogy does break down: our stories are only shadows of reality, and Escher’s lizards and hands and birds only have the illusion of reality. Only God enters his creation in the flesh and allows it to act upon himself.

While talking with the men from my small group this week, it struck me that this analogy of sub-creation gives literary references to God a double or ironic meaning. When an unbelieving author’s characters rail against or reject God’s authority, they are in one sense railing against him, and so he is undermining his own argument. In his very attempt to boast in human autonomy, he reveals the absurdity of that rebellion. He cannot escape his dependence on and submission to God any more than his characters can escape their obvious dependence on and submission to him.

This gives us an alternate reading of the poem Invictus. Instead of seeing it as the poet’s raising his fist against God, we can equally see it as the character within the poem’s raising his own fist against the poet. In that light, the poem becomes childish and petty.

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?”

The idea that we could transcend the boundary between ourselves and our author, or somehow cast off a dependence on him that is fundamental to our very existence, is absurd. Far better to humble our hearts and enjoy where he has set us.

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!

The analogy of authorship might prove instructive to us in other ways, too. The fact that God’s sovereignty is what establishes causality and responsibility rescues us from futile determinism. And seeing God as an author certainly emphasizes his power over his creation. It is a small thing for him to write of the weaving of his world in seven days, or of a world-wide flood rather than a regional flood: we don’t have to wring our hands over miracles that are hard for our creaturely minds to conceive. And as much as there may be degrees of fellowship with or separation from God, this also suggests that it is misguided to divide creation and our experience into the natural and the supernatural, secular and spiritual, nature and grace. Because of God’s intimate and personal involvement in his story, the overlap between the natural and supernatural is entire and complete. You cannot possibly escape God’s sovereignty, lordship, or grace. That in turn lays the foundation for a robust common grace.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?

Finally, this analogy also suggests that, while there is great value in a reductionist approach to understanding God’s world, there is comparatively greater value in seeking to understand God’s word and world holistically, to grasp the sweep of story and persons.

See also: Proof of the non-existence of God.

^[1] Yes, this does contradict the WCF quote on the face of it. See John Frame’s distinction between what you might call a proximate and an ultimate sense of authorship, which is what I’m getting at by distinguishing between decree/ordination and causation/compulsion.

John 3:1-15 reveals that there is an inescapable spiritual component to our children’s growing in faith. But this passage also insists that we can rarely peel back the layers to see what is happening, even in our own lives, much less our children’s. So it should not be surprising to find that the way God brings about spiritual life and growth, in us and our children, actually rides along the very natural and seemingly mundane tracks of hearing, seeing, tasting, doing. Consider:

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. — Deut. 6:6-7

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. — Prov. 22:6

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! — Psalm 34:8

What is striking about these and other passages is that they speak of our children’s acquiring faith in God and learning to live in his household no differently than we would speak of how they acquire language, or how they come to know and love and trust us as their parents. This is because faith is a language: faith understands and speaks of ourselves and the entire world as being related to God in particular ways. Jesus, in whom all things hold together, is more real and immediate a part of his world than anything in it. So while we cannot see him, his constant activity can be seen everywhere to someone who speaks the right language. To anyone else, it is mere gibberish.

Therefore it is not vain repetition to teach our children to say “Jesus is my king and savior,” “God has forgiven my sins,” or “Jesus will always keep me;” any more than it is vain repetition to teach them to say “Daddy,” “this is a chair,” “that is blue,” or “Mr. S. is our mayor.” This is how they learn about both Jesus and the world that he has given to us. And, just as we talk in terms of stages of learning language (“he’s learned his primary and secondary colors,” or “he knows where his pancreas is”) rather than absolutes (“he’s learned English!”), we should speak in terms of stages of learning faith (“she’s really starting to bubble over with gratitude”) rather than absolutes (“she’s converted!”). Faith and language are things to be increasingly exercised rather than inert states of being.

So we teach our children simply to say “Jesus is …” and “Jesus does …” because that is the language of faith. After all, when we speak of Jesus’s world, we simply say “what color is that?” or “what letter is that?;” we do not say “do you believe that color is blue?” or “do you believe that letter is ‘K’?” Because of this, we can confuse our children (and ourselves) if we speak in indirect terms like “do you believe in Jesus as your savior?” rather than simply saying “Who is your savior?” By speaking a more indirect language than faith speaks, we make faith out to be something magical, and make it seem like getting that magic right is just as important as simply knowing and trusting Jesus. And without meaning to do so, this makes Jesus to be something less real than blueness and chairs and letters. But he is far more real than those. The best learning is by doing, and so the best learning to believe in Jesus is actually believing in Jesus — not believing in the supposed power of belief.

Finally, we do not worry that language will become a mindless habit for our children. Neither should we worry that all this Christian talking and living will become a mindless habit. There are some ways in which we expect a mature language and faith to become self-conscious, but it is the essence of language and of childlike faith to be unselfconscious, a simple confidence. The real danger is that this habit and language of faith will be uncultivated and cease to be a habit altogether! We do not want to banish habits — what we want is to cultivate all those delightful habits that a persevering life is simply full of.

See also:

• In the way
• Walking
• Choose your own assurance
• A child’s profession of faith
• God is trustworthy

The forest is deep, but it is neither dark nor silent. Even last night’s sounds and the glimmerings of moonlight spoke peace and not terror. You and your mule are more than halfway home, and the promise of feasting quickens your step.

You hear a hoofbeat and voices approaching. Moments later your king and his guard rein their horses before you.

Do you:

• Complain about the violence inherent in the system? Go to page 42.
• Pause to wonder if you got everything in proper order when you swore fealty to him ten years before? Go to page 60.
• Whisk off your cap and look up, glad to see your lord and protector? Go to page 77.

My pastor recently posed the question, “What do you say when your child says, ‘Mom, I’m a Christian’?” He warned against discouraging or stumbling our children by telling them “we’ll wait and see.”

Perhaps you are uncomfortable calling your children Christians, although Scripture uses the word simply to mean one who is discipled. Regardless, it is not enough to appropriate the name “Christian;” we point beyond it, reminding them and ourselves that faith is a daily walking as much as a starting. So we help them to see all the privileges and responsibilities of belonging to Christ. We are repeatedly saying things like: “Isn’t it so good to . . .”

• . . . be forgiven
• . . . have our sins washed away
• . . . have God as our father
• . . . have God as our provider
• . . . belong to God
• . . . belong to Jesus
• . . . be a part of God’s family
• . . . rely on Jesus
• . . . have Jesus as our savior
• . . . have life in Jesus
• . . . be joined to Jesus
• . . . have Jesus as our king
• . . . have the Holy Spirit to help us love and obey
• . . . have the Holy Spirit to comfort us
• . . . serve God
• . . . obey God

This is simply part of fanning into flame — urging our children to grow and continue and delight in these things that are a part of obedient faith. It is such a delight to know, trust and obey a king who is so great and so good to us! God has designed for our children to trust us instinctively, just so that we can help them to see his goodness and to trust him instinctively now, and with more understanding over the years. Jesus even points to a child’s instinctive, joyful, care-free trusting as an example for us in our own faith.

Some of these things are true even for the hardest of unbelievers — Jesus is king over all the earth, and we are to obey God. Part of our children’s and our own walking in faith is simply seeing, delighting and resting in what is already true, rather than chafing or cursing. “Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, [and] you will be saved.”

Last November I posted a quote from John Loftness on parenting with faith in God and his promises for our children. But faith always has legs; “therefore how we act,” as Loftness says. I have three small children. What difference does it make that I know God is at work in them, that he has been at work from the very beginning?

• We teach them [1], [2] to name Jesus as “our Lord” and to confess that “he died for our sins and pleads with God for us.”
• When we pray, we teach them to name God as “our Father” and to look to him for provision and forgiveness. And we rejoice in his forgiveness and provision! God is far more lavish even than Mommy and Daddy in his mercy and blessing.
• We teach and expect them to sing to our savior and king, at home and at church.
• We teach and expect them to walk in the fruit of the Spirit. With every bit of good fruit we see, we rejoice and encourage them that this is God at work in them.
• We teach and expect them to obey cheerfully. Repentance for sin and rejoicing in God’s forgiveness and acceptance are also a key part of this.
• Whether or not they participate in the Lord’s supper, we teach them to thank Jesus for cleansing them from sin with his blood, and for making them a part of God’s family.

Not that we have already obtained this!

Are we training our children to be little hypocrites? Absolutely not! Rather:

• Scripture gives us great confidence that the Holy Spirit is already at work in our children, and our task is one of fanning into flame.
• The Christian life is lifelong repentance and faith. While regeneration is absolutely necessary, it is likely in the case of our children that pinpointing it will be futile. The gardener diligently tends his garden before he can even see the sprouts; and as they grow, he tenderly cares for, trains and prunes them, without knowing whether they will survive, so that they may survive. In the same way, we train our children to walk in daily repentance, faith and obedience.
• Similarly, there is a reason that Proverbs 22:6 does not instruct us to lead our children to the way, but rather train them in the way. Christian nurture is not preparation for a future driver’s exam; it is a continuous going deeper. We love our savior and king; there is absolutely no question that he is our trustworthy savior and the king of the world; and faith, repentance and obedience are simply what it looks like to love him.

We shared the Lord’s Supper on Sunday morning.

When we speak scripture to one another, and when our pastors preach, we know that, by the Holy Spirit, Christ himself is speaking to us and preaching to us. We listen intently and we search our hearts because we long to hear our Lord. He comforts and strengthens us with promises and sends us out with commands.

When we take the Lord’s Supper it is easy to be aware of what we ourselves are doing — examining, remembering. But, no less than in preaching, Christ is speaking to us in the Lord’s Supper, comforting and strengthening us with promises and sending us out with commands. The Lord’s Supper preaches to our hungry hearts. What are some of the promises that we will hear our Savior saying if we are attentive?

• Are you condemned? You are forgiven! I have washed and cleansed you with my blood.
• Are you ashamed? You are accepted! You come before God in me.
• Are you afraid or anxious? I drank the cup of God’s wrath so that you can enjoy mercy and grace and peace.
• You are adopted. I have made you a part of God’s family.
• I love you. Receive my lavish gifts of bread, wine, my body, and my blood.
• You belong to me; I bought you with my own blood.
• I have provided for your greatest and most costly need, and I will surely provide for all of your needs.
• I will keep you safe to the end; we will feast like this together in heaven.

And what commands is he giving to us?

• Believe in me!
• Find your satisfaction in me. You will not find lasting satisfaction anywhere else.
• Find your joy in me. You will not find lasting joy anywhere else.
• Hear my great promises, receive my great gifts, and then give thanks, celebrate, feast and rejoice!
• See, you are all my body. Love one another, care for one another, provide for one another.
• You belong to me, and you feed on me for your life. Become more like me.

The elements preach to us. Hear our Savior speaking to you.

Crossposted to Reflections on Upchurch.

Following are some notes and quotes from Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism.

• A key element of Christian revolutions (Dutch, American) was a gradual undermining of kings, not by lowering esteem, but by raising it; not by opposing God but by worshipping Him (through p. 28)
• 3 fundamental measures of unique world views (p. 31)
  • relationship to God – immediate fellowship through Christ + HS
  • relationship to man – divine image, intrinsic worth, equality of men
  • relationship to world – curse restrained by grace; “discover treasures and develop potencies hidden by God in nature and in human life.”
• common grace – do we define things, relative to power of sin or power of God?  Which is more potent: pollution of sin or redemptive movement?
• Kuyper strikes me as being exceptionally enamored with progress (pp. 32, 34, 35, 40)
• God’s authority over, and necessary glorification in, all spheres of life (p. 53)
  • “Coram Deo”, no such thing as private religion, … one-ness of all human life
  • C.f. Mark Horne, “public relationship with Jesus Christ”
• Importance of Church in God’s redemptive plan; covenant = church
• God’s supreme sovereignty flowing down in sovereignty given to state/society/church (p. 79)
• Assumes one-world gov’t is best in absence of sin (p. 80) … some logic given to this
  • “God has instituted the magistrates, by reason of sin.” (p. 81)  Nations exist for God (p. 81)
• Calvin regarded republic as best, but not categorically so; others will work.  Commends gratitude for privilege of electing magistrates (pp. 83-84)
• Contrasts God’s sovereignty w/ false ideas of popular sovereignty or state sovereignty (as rejection of God) (pp. 85ff)
• Calvinism “makes it easy for us to obey authority, because, in all authority, it causes us to honor the demand of divine sovereignty.” (p. 90)
• “Principal characteristic” of gov’t is “the right of life + death” (p. 93)
  • Sword for -> justice, war, order
• Much discussion of self-organization of spheres, natural leadership of “masters” in spheres
• Political sphere should not rightfully interfere in natural God-given operation of these other spheres (family, art, science, education, business) (p. 96)
• The state interferes to (p. 97)
  • Mediate clashes between spheres
  • Defend the weak against abuse of power in other spheres
  • Coerce all to bear personal + financial burdens of maintaining unity of the state
• Government may not take on absolute authority, nor may other spheres overstep their bounds into arena of government
• Pp. 99ff — admission of the propriety of a plurality of churches
  • Against the state church (even as expressed by Calvin)
  • Proper Calvinism promotes plurality, and understands the government’s role as protecting it.
• Pp. 103ff — magistrates’ duty
  • to God – acknowledge and confess authority, rule by God’s ordinances, restrain blasphemy
    • magistrate understands God’s law personally, not under authority (strictly speaking) of church
    • blasphemy addressed not for religious reasons but as undermining God’s establishment of law and state
    • “The sphere of the state is not profane.  But both church and state must, each in their own sphere, obey God and serve His honor.” (p. 104)
  • to church – may not exercise judgment as to true and false churches
  • to individual
    • some individual sovereignty exists, but conscience is not entirely liberated from state, church, word, family (p. 107)
    • magistrate respects liberty of conscience, ensures church does so (particularly regarding those outside church)
• Science
  • p. 118, “A dualistic conception of regeneration was the cause of the rupture between the life of nature and the life of grace.”
  • p. 125, “Not only the church, but also the world belongs to God.”
  • p. 132, is the world normal, or abnormal seeking regeneration?  fundamental distinction striking at the heart of the scientific conception

Christ is Lord of all. He is great beyond our understanding, and he is greatly to be feared. But he is also good, and he deserving of the deepest love and trust.

Christ is Lord of our salvation.

Christ is Lord of the whole of Christian life and of his church.

Christ is Lord of our children.

Christ is Lord of our family life.

Christ is Lord of our vocations.

Christ is Lord over all spheres of life; such as politics, science and art.

Christ is Lord of the convinced atheist.

Christ is Lord of the unbeliever, and his compassion toward unbelievers compels us to love them as well.

Christ is Lord over all his enemies.

The Christian conversion is not an event; conversion is an ongoing way of life that ”sees” Christ’s lordship over all, rejoices in it, continually entrusts oneself to him, and embraces his people. The Christian’s life of faith is not an exercise merely of the mind and will, but of the whole man; it covers all of the human existence, involves every human faculty, and shapes every vocation and relationship. The Christian hope is not a mere future hope that sees this world as nothing; it is a hope that desires this world to enjoy the fruit of Christ’s redemptive lordship as much as heaven. The Christian mission is not merely a mission to save individuals but one to redeem an entire people.

The Christian life is all-encompassing. But by embracing and transforming ”all” of life, the Christian life thus becomes ”ordinary”.