lowly and meek

Great quote from John Piper's 'This Momentary Marriage':

... husbands, sink your roots by faith into Christ through the gospel until you become more lowly and humble... The gospel of Christ's painful death on our behalf has a way of breaking our pride and our sense of rightful demands and our frustration at not getting our way. It works lowliness into our souls. Then we treat each other with meekness flowing out of that lowliness. The battle is with our own proud, self-centered inner person. Fight that battle by faith, through the gospel, in prayer. Be stunned and built up and made glad and humble because you are chosen, holy, loved.

wartime mentality

As my previous post suggested, I'm currently thinking about the roles of men and woman in church. As part of this I'm reading 'Rediscovering Biblical womanhood and manhood' by Piper and Grudem. Here's a great quote:

...develop a wartime mentality and lifestyle; that you never forget that life is short, that billions of people hang in the balance of heaven and hell every day, that the love of money is spiritual suicide, that the goals of upward mobility (nicer clothes, cars, houses, vacations, food, hobbies) are a poor and dangerous substitute for the goals of living for Christ with all your might and maximizing your joy in ministry to people’s needs.

John Piper's thoughts on his leave

Click here to read John Piper's report of his recent eight-month leave from his ministry responsibilities.

I found it a very encouraging read. John Piper gets grace, and he models it amazingly. He's got grace, and so he can show his weakness and failure. He doesn't need to project a 'sorted' front, pretending he's perfect, because that's not the reality, and that's not what Christianity's about.

I find most encouraging his section on marriage, in which he talks about some of the struggles that they face. His openness and willingness to show his failure and sin proclaims brilliantly the cross: he can show that he's not perfect and that he struggles in some areas because his hope is not in his morality - it's in the righteousness of Christ. We'd do well in churches to take heed of his example and to be more transparent with one another. Grace frees us to be real with each other and to help each other in areas that we struggle.

Through this openness he can model that sanctification is an ongoing process for all Christians, and that he is struggling with sin, as we should be.

Great post - have a read!

God ordains evil

Sometimes I come across ideas and theology that I find hard to understand.

An example of this is the fact that God ordains evil. It just makes me a little taken aback, and makes me think that somehow I must have got something wrong.

I was listening to a talk today by John Piper on Ruth (from Forum08), in which he was talking about how God ordains that evil should happen. We see various examples in the Bible. In the life of Joseph: his brothers intended his selling into slavery for evil, but God intended it for good. We see it in the appointing of a king by the Israelites - a sin, an act of rebellion against God as they wanted a human king to rule over them instead of the true King - God. Yet God allowed it, that through the line of Kings would come the King of Kings: Jesus Christ.

The ultimate illustration is the cross. God planned it all along - he planned for the evil that was to happen from the men that crucified Jesus would lead to his death, so that through it God could bring good - the redemption of many (better than good!!).

To say that God used the bad for good is absolutely fine. But to say he planned the bad to bring good is harder for me to grasp. Now I accept it because I know it to be true as that is how God has revealed it. I know ultimately that God is good so I trust that he has it sorted and so praise him!

BUT... what I find most difficult of all to get my head around is the fall. Did God ordain that? Was it God's plan all along for the fall to happen? Did he make creation intending for it to fall? That seems a bit twisted? Or did humanity really have free will in the beginning and really make the choice to rebel against God?

I honestly really find this one difficult, and it has caused me to doubt at times. I do trust that whatever is true was right, but I find it hard to understand that if God ordained and planned the fall, how we can conclude anything other than that God is evil, as through it SUCH evil has happened.

I can see your heresy alert going off, and I am expecting many tackles from those of you in Manchester, haha. But fear not! I trust that God is perfectly good. I trust that whatever the answer is, my mind is far smaller than the reality of who God is, and so I accept and praise God for whatever is the truth, even if I don't quite understand it!

Is the answer the annoying on that it is just an antimony? It is perfectly true that Adam and Eve completely chose what they did, and it is perfectly true that God ordained it and planned it to happen so that he could ultimately reveal his glory in the cross, even though to our feeble brains these two statements seem to contradict. But saying that God planned it is very hard for me to swallow - the reality of their choice seems to fall away! Argh!

I would appreciate anyone's thoughts!