Nichols Blog

Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.

Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.

Sun Tzu On The Art Of War VI.I,II

Given the recent events in California and New York, it seems like it is beneficial to consider a very obvious fact: prescriptive sanctification of gay union, that is the passing down of this ideal from parent to child, will by and large only be possible through adopted children. We can expect to see a quickening pace of acceptance of gay unions across America, so formerly unfathomable industries will soon begin to emerge in their wake. After all, Satan has used commerce and industry throughout history to entrench sin into culture, pitting one lust against another. Along with this will become a spike in adoption agencies' expectation to consider gay men and women for 'parenting' unwitting children. What a mess.

This is just a vague, initial draft of ideas which may be useful for strategy in the legal realm. I am not too fond of such things, as the line into civil matters is too often crossed by Christian men to distract them from the battles that matter. But with children's future ideology potentially being warped in matters of sexual immorality and being promoted by government, it may be time to enter.

There a few things which might be useful for limiting the prescriptive sanctification of gay unions and might make use of the respective secular institutions' weaknesses to short-circuit counterclaims. These might include:

• Psychology's invasion of theology among church leaders and seminary output
• Republican controlled congresses have largely detracted from decentralized government, and thus are just as prolific at passing frivolous public laws as Democratic controlled congresses

Laws, Laws everywhere and not a stance to make

One of the great by-products of relativism is its own implosion. It is unable to stand up under its own tests and so the ambiguity introduced by its pastors in pop-culture and media is not only necessary for its own survival but would be useful for protecting agencies under its umbrella.

What does this have to do with law makers? Since congress is fond of passing numerous laws regardless of being Republican or Democrat, ambiguity toward discrimination against homosexual adoptions might be introduced a little at a time, casting a larger net and a quieter strategy. An example of this happened in technology-land with the Black Sunday kill . I encourage you to read the article even if you aren't a geek as it shows a brilliant strategy that might work at the legal level. I am no lawyer, of course, but in my own small mind it  works great <s>. Basically, DirecTV issued an effective strike against hackers of its cards by slowly sending updates to the satellite cards that seemed harmless but actually formed a larger dynamic program that was finally invoked and destroyed the pirated cards.

Consider this: a Christian adoption agency has two males submitting an application for adoption. The agency is now head-to-head with the ACLU and is wondering how to reject the application without being sued for discrimination. If there were elements of definitions within multiple laws that could be pulled together from the aforementioned frivolous laws for the defense of these agencies (actually, the children they serve), that could create a precedent that can be used by other agencies under its umbrella. Since we have now determined to legislate from the bench, this might redirect the powerful, rich gay advocates toward these kinds of battles and put them back on defensive instead of offensive positions. The ambiguity encouraged by the relativism of our modern leaders could be brought full circle to defend the absolute discrimination against gay adoption.

DoctorPhilACalvinisticOprahBarthidocious

Since the gospel has been replaced with mental constructs, discipleship with professional counseling, and shepherds with CEO's, the church is perfectly poised to flood psychiatric journals and other academic venues with 'expert' opinions about the damaging effects of same-sex unions on their children and can use a whole slough of complex conclusions to support the basic claim that IT AIN'T NORMAL AND IT WILL DEFORM OUR CHILDREN. Of course, much more syntactic sugar would be applied to this statement in these papers, lectures, and studies. Now is the time to backfill these types of 'authoritative' resources with these studies for the reference by lawyers who will fight against same-sex adoptions.

The promotion of these men who encourage fleshly solutions to spiritual problems in the church could work to great advantage here, though it does rot out the inner life of the Christian's who succumb to their wise-sounding words. But at least their language would reflect almost exactly how the child psychologist's in the 'secular' world talk, so perhaps they could provide use for keeping children away from having dual dads or moms.

These are just first thoughts, but I am curious where they go...

A year and a half ago I wrote about how valuable writing is during the course of Bible study. I usually have multiple studies going on at once, though, so logging everything into one notebook diminishes the value of the study for later reference. I am currently studying Deuteronomy and Romans as book studies, but also doing a  'Devil/Evil Spirits/Evil' word study with Natasha while still hitting 1 Peter very slowly. Now, later on I will study these books/topics again, but everything is scattered all through the notebooks I have.

So I now have separate notebooks for every distinct domain (topic) ... a Deuteronomy book , a Romans book, etc. This has lots of benefits:

• Easier to look back on previous notes
• Mental focusing of topic-at-hand and an implicit constraint on 'rabbit trails'
• Easier to summarize at the end and evaluate what God taught me during the course of the study
• My children will have a greater use for them when they start studying the Bible

I really like this so far...

  Having just sat through another marriage sermon which convinces me the church has become a laboratory for the study of human behavior rather than a place to teach God's word to create faith in men to let the life of Christ manifest Himself in them, an interesting question popped up in my head that I want to mull on for a while.

You have only 45 minutes to preach a sermon. What are the absolute essential things people must know, embrace, and apply to have a marriage which glorifies God (and consequently promotes peace and love between them) ?

How would you answer that?

Let me remind you that the truths which you intend to present must also be true in developing countries where people are largely illiterate and have no money. Woops...looks like that just reduced the sermon in half since you were about to suggest that you have to read a ton of books and attend an expensive marriage conference.

Please let me remind you, too, that the practices which you spend so much time explaining should also have been available as conclusions for men in the middle ages without a requirement for the latest 'scientific' research or surveys. DRAT! Now that means that you will have to come up with something which is relevant independent of cultural affinities and current trends in thought.

Why these two constraints?

• Because a fundamental qualifier for truth is its immutability...does it withstand time's cruel forces of whim or does it just tingle modern ears to give us an appearance of godliness?
• Another qualifier for truth is its portability...is the assertion meaningful and relevant independent of geographical boundaries ?

Note that there are things which might be true today which were not true in the past and that there things which are true 'here' which are not true 'there'. But when we begin to discuss subjects which address the sanctification of men's behavior and the outworking of life in Christ, we are responsible to avoid the trendy commentary on man's nature and firmly preach the simplicity of the gospel. This is what Paul is driving at in the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians where he asserts he preached '...not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.' Before we leap into thinking this is evangelical in scope, let's remember the gospel including the Cross is not just for introduction into the Christian life, but its outworking as well.

We sat down two weeks ago and counted ELEVEN couples which have completed or are in the process of a divorce or separation...TWENTY TWO PEOPLE. Yet here the men who are supposed to be 'equipping the saints' make funny jokes and have absolutely no solemnity about the importance of marriage, choosing instead to concentrate on how to get people to figure each others' lusts out in order to imitate love and peace in a relationship . Each of the people in these couples which are splitting up have sat through these sermons and read the same books and laughed at all the cute emails. We think it is funny to reduce women to these bags of lusting, greedy, insatiable vacuums who always want more . We think it is acceptable to portray men as dull blockheads who are insensitive and incapable of spending quality time with their families. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking in the sermon and people are going home to war zones and fractured dreams. If things get really bad I guess they can just go to 'counseling' and get all this crap in private.

Why is it so dull to preach about sin and the delight God has in applying the death and resurrection of Jesus to our relationships to be set free from it? If apart from faith we can't please God and faith comes by hearing the Word of God, why are we substituting the word of God for 'secular' surveys and books by Dr. Freud's disciples?

Be honest, when you hear teaching on marriage is the greatest time spent on getting to the bottom of what attitudes or motives are rotting out the relationship (sin) and discovering the solutions to them through the Blood and life of Jesus Christ and the Spirit's constant ability to transform those motives into selfless love? Or is it mostly spent on behavioral tips for giving your spouse the impression that you are interested in what they are thinking or doing?

So, pretend you have 45 minutes with an absolutely captive audience and you are to teach on marriage. What do you cover? Remember that what you consider the most valuable will be what you spend the most time talking about. I am going to consider this heavily and let God refine and simplify my thinking. I no doubt have allowed the same worldly kool-aid the preachers have drunk to invade my own thinking, so it is worth it to sweat that out. My wife deserves better than that.

Ok...go.

All of us are under construction whether we want to be or not.  We have been built in such a way that neutrality is not a state we can choose since indifference itself is a rejection of a proposition.

I've been challenged in a couple of ways lately regarding what provides the fuel for my decisions or opinions on various matters which are not etched in stone or paper.

The first challenge came some time ago when Natasha (my wife) and I were having a discussion about the popularity being obtained by environmental propagandists in so many ways today. I won't go into details about the discussion, but the bottom line for me was simply that the underlying premise of people who are passionate about 'global warming' and so on is similar to those in 2 Peter 3:3,4:

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

With the obvious exception that the folks today are even dumber than what Peter said since today these majority of these proponents of Mother Earth don't believe in 'creation'. Go figure.

The next challenge came through a man I have been meeting with who has experienced a great relief in discovering for himself the fact of his freedom from the power of sin because of his faith in Jesus. This has come about from his slow, thoughtful writing of every Scripture verse in a workbook we have been going through. I suspect this exceeds one hundred verse that he has copied by hand into his spiral notebook. He has not written deep responses to these verses, nor has he logged his application of what he is learning. But the truth of Romans 10:17 and its intimate association of faith with the word of God. The words he has been 'feeding' on have caused him to start living more like the new creation he is and it is fun to see that.

What do these two things have in common?

The first challenge was a realization that we study the word of God not so much to know what it says but to know God's ways. And from there we can derive truthful opinions or stances about today's issues which probably don't have a direct correlation in the Scripture. More specifically, we learn how to discover the underlying premise  of propositions and then evaluate those premises against what we know God feels, says, or does about it.

The second challenge illuminates the importance of meditating and slowly bathing in God's word. The man's life I mentioned is being transformed and I have seen a very important discipline emerge in him which can be "objectivity" about his own thoughts and motives. I recall when he first started speaking about his thoughts as though they were available for his evaluation. He was talking about his earnest desire to be a Christian rock musician, and while at one time he could only speak about how convinced he was that he should play guitar for Jesus he soon started to see his motives as being self-driven and started to sense that he has no business being a kind of leader without knowing for himself what God says about truth and so on. The earnest desire to KNOW THE GOSPEL has gripped his thought-life and now he is evaluating every motive he has to see if in fact it is from God or just a desire to look busy for Jesus.

The point with both of these is that spending time with Jesus in His Word teaches us HIS WAYS, not just stated commandments of moral truths like a to-do list.

(Deu 11:22)  For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him;

My study of Deuteronomy has really underscored why God wanted Israel to know His commandments. It was not just so they would be good little boys and girls, but rather they would know His ways and so live their lives according to the priorities HE has in this life. This transcends just knowing what He said, but rather translates into knowing what He thinks about a proposition.

It's like being married. You come to know your spouse so well that you just 'know' what they want to do or what they would prefer so you find yourself having to ask less and less. But this only comes by spending meaningful time together. The biggest difference, though, is that this time spent with God actually constructs your operating system.. er ... worldview; and so impacts all aspect of your life. The acknowledgment of this really makes me want to spend my time more wisely and deliberately.

How many times have you noticed some trend in modern Christendom and been concerned about its misleading impact on naïve minds? Or how many radio programs have you heard spewing out absolute fleshly solutions to spiritual problems, causing you to wonder how one can possibly have positive influence with the tsunami of misinformation that is being delivered day after day to the minds of people who desire to know God?

It is so tempting to start (yet another) ministry XYZ to combat the latest heresy XYZ, or find a niche in some social cause and turn its crusade into our personal battle against all evil.

Interestingly, Deuteronomy has a different solution to dealing with deceivers, heretics, the ACLU, and various other hell-bound gangs of false ideologists:

Ye shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. (Deut 13:4)

This passage is instruction for Israelites in the context of the false prophets and dreamer who has successfully accomplished what they had promised to deliver with signs and wonders, yet were teaching men to go after the foreign gods of the inhabitants of the promised land. Note that this is not the prophet who makes a claim and it fails, making him an obvious 'false prophet'. Rather this is the 'prophet' who makes a claim and (probably with Satanic intervention) miraculously brings about this sign or wonder.

What kinds of things would easier deceive a Christian to pursue foreign gods? A man preaching to worship sex and its various indulgences, or a man preaching to emphasize the Holy Spirit's manifestation as the pursuit of our spiritual goals? A man preaching the use of drugs for spiritual enlightenment, or a man preaching the absolute importance of serving as a missionary in a faraway land as the measure of our spirituality?

Desiring a greater attenuation to the Holy Spirit's activity in our lives is good. Forgetting that He is sent to glorify Jesus Christ who in turn reveals the Father is not.

Desiring to share the gospel with unreached people groups is good. Believing that the service of God is more important than knowing God or having joy from God is not.

The verse above isn't just interesting for what it says, but also for what it does not say. It does not encourage men to live a life of reaction attempting to undo or respond to the scores of deceptive philosophies and movements that we are surrounded by, both in the world and the church. Rather, God simply calls on the believer to cleave to Him, serve Him, obey His voice, keep His commandments, and fear Him. It is provocative to start another ministry targeting some deception that is abounding but while there might be some good that emerges from such enterprises, these things are not what keep our minds clear of deception. Christ has not called us to a life that reacts to all the world's problems, lies, and foolishness. Rather He has called us to answer the foolishness of man with the truth of the Gospel, borne out of our own lives which are engaging the verse above in our daily mundane lives.

So how do we deal with the CNN spin, the Presidential Candidate Hollow-talk, the humanistic preacher at church, or the evolutionary curriculum at our schools?  "Ye shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him. "

Beginning a study of 1 Peter has been rich. I learned we have a 'lively hope' and that this hope is not secured by the death of Jesus Christ. Nope...once again we find the apostles' assertion that the Christian life is pegged on the Resurrection of our Lord, not His death. Would you say you have hope because Jesus died, or because He lives? Chances are, you'd say 'because He died for me.'

But I digress since it is the outworking of this hope we find out about in 1 Peter 1:3 that I meditated on from verse 4:

(1Pe 1:4)  To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,

I skipped over this verse several times, kind of giving it a thankful nod and acknowledgement that heaven someday will be nice. What I didn't realize was that I was pushing the reality of this out to the future where I have much to learn about this 'inheritance's bearing on my present day life.

I won't dwell too much on what this inheritance is. What we will be enjoying beyond life in these broken down sin-vessels is a whole other (worthy) issue and we frankly don't know a ton about it. There are popular books about heaven and such but typically they are driven by rational conjecture; a kind of 'if THIS is true, then THIS is true about heaven' way of looking at heaven. I suppose the premise is that if we really get excited about how gosh-darn neato it is we will desire to lead more joyful, meaningful lives. Whatever.

My primary focus lies in what this inheritance transcends. It is:

• incorruptible
• undefiled
• fadeth not away

Put another way, this inheritance is not subject to the constraints which TIME imposes.

Initially, we think the typical deep thought; "Don't desire fast pretty cars or big homes or fancy clothes" and then move on if we determine that isn't us. After all, we drive a Toyota not a Ferrari right? It is good to dwell on how our hope affects our expenditures, but the notion that it moves outside of times' infestation should penetrate much deeper.

What about character? What sort of things do I do with my time that feed my character either for temporal pleasure (entertainment) versus equipping myself for the challenges that inevitably lay ahead?

Taking it further, I look at my intentions for my children's rearing. Am I forming our training for their temporal benefit, or am I equipping them with character which has eternal significance in the kingdom?

For example, I have had mothers instruct their children "SAY THANK YOU" after I have given their children a gift of some sort. Or even worst, "SAY YOU'RE SORRY" after the child did something like spill a drink on me. I almost want to tell the child "PLEASE, DON'T" . Transactions like these make me nauseous. You see, what this mother is focusing on are the social graces of our culture, she is concerned for how her parenting appears to others, not the child's heart-condition. In fact, she is leading the child into a disingenuous habit that sows seeds of manipulation. These ridiculous approaches do not teach gratitude. It is far better to wait for the child to capture the gratitude expressed openly and often in the home and begin to express it on their own. Otherwise, we are short-circuiting the longer, deeper work of character building in lieu of the fast-food social graces training methods.

All this is an indicator of whether we have apprehended this hope we have as being constrained by time or not. Like the inheritance Peter speaks of, we often can't 'see' the benefits of living beyond time's cruel constraints. The decisions we make to feed our brains God's word instead of Seinfeld may seem neutral or inconsequential to us. The decision to wait for our children to replicate our godly character instead of teaching them to parrot Christian phrases and such may seem like it isn't working. But like that inheritance and the people in Hebrews 11, we can live today as we have already received it and continue anyway.

Over and over 'worship leaders' are promoting the vast importance of "worship" for Christians. Conferences are organized, books are written, DVD's marketed, and websites are deployed by famous worship leaders to aid the not-famous worship leaders find greater meaning in what they do. The term 'worship' is given this definition and that, with the great profound definition - "Worship Is How You Live Your Life" - uttered by the local deep-thinker... or something to that effect. With that premise in mind, the belief is held that there is some explosive change that happens in men's hearts through times of singing songs or closing eyes while the keyboards-guitar-NoDrumsMaybeBass play softly.

One popular songwriter wrote:

That’s why worship is such a key value. When we worship we are often left overwhelmed by God’s glory. We open ourselves to God’s change. We become obedient to God’s call...<snip>

Worship is our highest calling.

My concern with the language that prevails among this popular wave is this perception that we must somehow get people to 'experience' God in order to obey Him, and that our goal in this life is to pursue these experiences. This language wouldn't be used to express this, but really when these worship leaders are discussing honing worship leading skills, they are not talking about pouring their lives worth imitating into men and women who are spiritually immature to grow them up, but are instead talking about the music/prayer/time-just-before-preaching during a church service.

Obedience is an act of the will under the authority of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:16). It's just a reasonable expression of faith. It is never portrayed as something that is manifest because of some kind of emotional surge, as if we were spiritual balloons that, when punctured, splatter obedient acts when we are engorged with sentimentality. More frequently, we find God actually requiring men to act without that 'overwhelming' in order to experience that which these promoters are advocating. Pursuing intimacy with Christ is good; teaching men they should seek an encounter in order to achieve this is deceptive. It is making worship out to be a god to be served. A friend of mine pointed out that theology itself can become a god among the Christian intelligentsia - the worship hula hoop is similarly revered among the 'experientsia' , too.

Shortcuts to the Christian life are sold everywhere, whether implicitly through the moralism of heretics or explicitly through the ten thousand books being marketed to bored Christians everywhere. The fact is, we'd rather drink our theology in a praise chorus milkshake than spend time preparing a feast in careful meditation on God's word and exercising it among each other. We overlook the mundane demonstration of the Spirit in being intentional with our time to pursue the shinier demonstration of tears, raised arms, and goosebumps. We affirm C.S. Lewis in our fear of the Same Old Thing.

My problem with all of this is simply the fact that we are too capricious to live out what these promoters are teaching us. Humans are incapable of relying on some historical emotion to cause them to heed the Holy Spirit's prompting right now. When did you ever think 'I remember when I was really overwhelmed by God one Sunday morning, so I will <insert-uncomfortable-thing-God-is-commanding-here>? 

When I was playing drums at a popular big church, I was getting my sex ya-ya's Saturday night, having an emotional experience Sunday morning on the church stage, then masturbating by Tuesday. I didn't need another 'overwhelming'...I needed to know Jesus in truth and how to hear Him even in the mundane. I thought (and was taught) that rollercoasters are normative for Christians, but that was crap. I needed to have Jesus modeled for me in an intentional format by a guy who insisted that there are million "good" things to waste time on, but we should aim to be after the "best". I finally picked up that we artists are prone to high-thinking about what we do in the church and so inject great spiritual meaning into the enormous amount of time and energy spent on simply playing songs for people to sing in response to a holy, worthy God. The format of that discipleship can vary, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that strumming a guitar or banging a drum somehow has greater influence on a man's walk with Christ than sitting down to teach him God's ways through the Word and demonstration.

We are intended to bring obedient hearts and express faith-filled praises to God when we come together to worship. We are never instructed to perform the various expressions as a way to find obedience somewhere in our conviction. This is why we still have folks 'worshipping' in more creative ways than ever in the church yet still we have Christians who can't tell you what the gospel is (except the part about Jesus dying usually).

If you think of the Old Testament, and specifically the first five books, as being dry lists of do's and don't's Deuteronomy should be slowly waded through.

(Deu 11:22)  For if ye shall diligently keep all these commandments which I command you, to do them, to love the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, and to cleave unto him;...

One thing to be looking for in Deuteronomy (and elsewhere) is what God is really after in His construction of His theology. The verse above can be read as a mere statement of legal boundary in the context of a conditional statement; IF you do this, THEN this will happen. While that is definitely a core feature of the Law, it is important to note that God penetrates down beyond the compliant propensity of man into his heart - He is concerned that men search out His intent not merely the appearance of good.

Phrases like 'walk in his ways' and 'cleave unto him' and the constant appeal to man's heart and soul shows a God who is interested in men knowing WHY He issues the commands He does. For example, the Jews He was targeting here could avoid worshipping foreign gods because He said they would suffer economic failure if they fell into idolatry. Or they could see that God wanted them to avoid idolatry because of the bondage to lust and other problems it creates for them and He loves them enough to tell them, "Don't do that," and so respond to Him in obedience. The former they were complying perhaps out of fear, the latter out of response to His intent for the commandment.

The word 'cleave' in the verse above indicates a desire for men who don't stop with mere sets of rules and being nice little boys. He wanted then, and wants now, men who 'cleave' to Him through pursuit - some have called it 'following hard after God'. I always liked that phrase - it implies an engagement of the intellect, will, and decision-making throughout the day.

Php 3:10,12-13

(10)That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;...
(12)  Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
(13)  Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

My slow trolling through John has taken me to Christ's crucifixion for the last month or so. There are a variety of ways the account of Christ's brutal torture and execution permeate into a man's life. Indifference is the typical (and ironic) response. False piety, perhaps manifest through vows or religious sounding words is another. Then there is the intellectual response that harmonizes all the accounts together to 'figure it out'. There might be the historical response, where the various symbols of Passover are discovered or fulfilled prophecies are highlighted. There could be the emotional response that feels a great deal of thankfulness and so 'recommits' and decides to try a whole week of 'dying to self'.

All of these responses I have had at one time or another as I've gone over this event again and again. Sometimes, it is just plain hard to figure out what God intends for some of His words to do to my daily life. Hard, that is, if I just 'set my mind to it' or forget that spending the time in the Word is worship of a Person, not a business meeting for discovery. Today I was meditating through John 19:31-37 and it occurred to me how little I realize that God has a greater interest in my application of His Word than I do, so it seems logical to just wait around for Him to deal with what response I should have.

Then I found this little gem in the middle:

(Joh 19:35)  And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.

When I have read this in the past, my mind always leapt to the evangelical intent of this account of Christ's death. In other words, we often think of the Cross as being efficacious for the quickening of man's acknowledgment of sin and need for Jesus with the Cross being the crowning achievement of God's love for man to redeem him. While true, this shallow reading leaves money on the table. This passage is efficacious for the discipleship of a man, not merely his initial rebirth.

John said he preserved his witness of the crucifixion 'that ye might believe'. The prominent teaching and mood in the church today is the idea that a man comes to belief in something and then that event has lasting potential for change or benefit. I have spoken to men who feel they need to 'wrestle with God' on a matter or are 'seeking Him in prayer' over something they already know. What is being revealed is the assumption that an experience precedes understanding. Said another way, there is an assumption that once one fully understands a matter, he will walk in the truth of that proposition. We have retreats, we have conferences...all in hopes that we will find something we are missing so our lives can be improved or holy-fied.

The passage from Philippians above shows a different way of thinking about belief. Paul's famous treatise on self-righteousness versus Christ's righteousness illuminates a way of thinking about the Cross which serves a man day after day, not as a historical reflection on a really neato thingy God did for us but rather as a ever-present reality that the Cross is what God did TO us. John's account for a Christian, then, is written 'that ye might believe' not yesterday but today. Paul had a very forward-thinking way of looking at life - if Christians actually imitated Paul in Philippians 3:13 we'd see a weaning off our love of therapy books that has taken the Church hostage. At the root of Paul's conclusion here, though, is the application of the Cross as both a thing which did happen to him through Jesus Christ and a thing which is happening as a result of that historical fact. He is not trying to die or imitate the work Jesus did on the Cross...he is pursuing the apprehension of that death. He is walking in the idea that you understand a truth more when you apply it as if you already understood it.

How does this play out? One thing Paul points out is the putting away of our 'baggage'. That's a whole topic on its own I won't go into in this post, but it is important. If the Cross is only serving the Christian as a mere reminder of what God did for us, then we are missing out on the rest of the story. The Cross represents what God is doing to our lives...not as though we are dying again and again but rather as though that old crap we called Me IS DEAD! That's great news, really. Too many Christians are trying to drive their lives on the fumes of thankfulness and not on on the abiding Jesus that intends to disciple us into apprehending His death so we can experience His newness of Life.