Our eldest son was joined to the wife of his youth this weekend. He has indeed found an excellent wife (Prov 12:4) and has been blessed by the favor of the Lord (18:22).

As part of their wedding, they included a Tree Planting Ceremony, which is right in line with their love for the outdoors. Though I’ve seen other symbols of unity in weddings (e.g. knot tying, sand mixture, etc.), I had not witnessed a tree planting. An internet search produced a number of suggested scripts, but many came perilously close to nature-worship. I borrowed a few lines from other scripts and eventually wrote the following for the wedding, and am posting it here in hope that others might find it useful in honoring Almighty God, maker of all things:

“Today we are witnessing the creation of a something that is absolutely brand new – a new family springing from the love that <Groom & Bride> have for each other. To symbolize the roots of their relationship and the continued growth and flourishing of their love, <Groom & Bride> will now take part in a Tree Planting Ceremony, as they become a new family today.

[Couple moves to tree table.]

<Groom & Bride>, as you symbolize the uniting of your lives by combining the soils from your homes, remember that growing a strong marriage takes place over time – it grows like a tree, not a squash. As you grow your roots downward into the faithful promises of God, His grace will enable you to stand strong during the good seasons of bounty and blessing, and the challenging seasons of tempests and testing.

[Couple puts soil into pot.]

And as you water the roots of this tree, remember that growth in your marriage is not automatic, but it requires intention, attention, nourishing and nurturing each other in unconditional love.

[Couple waters the soil.]

<Groom & Bride>, May it be said that, together you “will be called an oak of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:3)

Scripture frequently affirms, “Blessed [are those] who trust in the Lord, And whose trust is the Lord.”  (Jer. 17:17)

Therefore, as you trust in your Lord, may your marriage “be like a tree planted by the water that extends its roots by a stream, and will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought, nor cease to yield fruit. And in whatever you do, may you prosper.” (Psalm 1:2-3; Jeremiah 17:7-8)

[To the congregation…]

<Groom & Bride> will plant this tree in their backyard to be a symbol always of their love for each other.”

Last week I attended an annual marketing “boot camp” for managed I.T. service providers. I always enjoy this event for its motivation, collaboration and vision building. Each year the speakers are excellent and encouraging, representing a variety of disciplines. This year’s roster included, among others, David Allen (author, Getting Things Done), Diana Nyad (recently swam successfully from Cuba to Florida on her 5th attempt at age 64), and comedian Joe Malarkey (“Worst Motivational Speaker in America”).

I am stretched by the “success” and “wealth” messages I hear at this event because they cause me to evaluate my presuppositions in those areas. Many of those presuppositions were shaped early in life: some biblical, many cultural, and many others arising from my own depravity. At least none of the speakers pretended to “have a message from God” on the subject.  There was,however, a recurring phrase this year which I don’t recall hearing in previous years.

In the course of their presentations last week several speakers made it a point to tell the audience, “I’m not religious.”

This is a secular event and I don’t expect any reference to God, though there’s usually some allusion to the blessings we all enjoy.  I would not have been surprised if only one speaker had told us that he was not religious, but the phrase was repeated by 3-4 throughout the event, and in each case, the statement was irrelevant to the context of the message (as in “I’m not religious, but …..”) I was not surprised that the speakers had a non-religious orientation, but that their proclamation was served up as a badge of honor and was considered important enough to include in their presentations.

A professional speaker chooses each word carefully, assembling each one into sentences in order to deliver maximum impact. These speakers achieve their level of success with a lot of practice, honing their craft just as any professional musician or artist.  Speakers at this level command large fees for each performance (e.g. $10 – $25K). Why, then, would several of these professionals include this same phrase in their message?

My point is not to split hairs on their meaning of not “being religious.”   I don’t think their intent was one of verbal smoke and mirrors as Fritz Ridenour’s book, How to be a Christian Without Being Religious, but on the other hand, even a humanist is religious in his self-worship.  It seems to me, then, that the statement is just another way of saying, “I don’t need God, and…,”  by implication and illustration, ” neither do you.”

I don’t pretend to be an astute watcher of culture — that would require me watching television — but it seems to me that these professionals were proclaiming  “I’m not religious” to endear themselves with an increasingly secularized audience.

It was as if in pointing to God, they say, “I’m not with Him.”

Sad.

Psalm 14:1 “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.”

As I was driving home from our Good Friday service last night I thought back to the drives home from the cemetery where my father and mother were buried.

It’s hard to describe the finality, loss, and the feeling of they’re-never-coming-back, fighting the creeping desperation of hoping it’s all a dream and they really aren’t gone — the kicked-in-the-gut feeling that life will never be the same from this point forward.   The days following their deaths seemed to drag like a dream of being immovably mired in mud.

I still miss them and think of them often, occasionally seeing them in a dream or mistaking them for someone in a crowd.  I’m sure these are natural reactions to grief, both short and long term.  Time heals and life goes on, but the loss remains.

I imagined Jesus’s followers having similar, if not more intense, feelings as He was taken down off the cross and laid in the tomb.  Hopes dashed, a good man cut down in his prime, a deliverer defeated.  “Messiah?  Yeah, right.”   Life was never going to be the same now that he’s gone.   Three   l-o-n-g   days . . . .

The Sacrifice, by George Herbert

Oh all ye, who pass by, whose eyes and mind
To worldly things are sharp, but to me blind;
To me, who took eyes that I might you find:
Was ever grief like mine?

The Princes of my people make a head
Against their Maker: they do wish me dead,
Who cannot wish, except I give them bread:
Was ever grief like mine?

Without me each one, who doth now me brave,
Had to this day been an Egyptian slave.
They use that power against me, which I gave:
Was ever grief like mine?

Mine own Apostle, who the bag did bear,
Though he had all I had, did not forebear
To sell me also, and to put me there:
Was ever grief like mine?

For thirty pence he did my death devise,
Who at three hundred did the ointment prize,
Not half so sweet as my sweet sacrifice:
Was ever grief like mine?

Therefore my soul melts, and my heart’s dear treasure
Drops blood (the only beads) my words to measure:
O let this cup pass, if it be thy pleasure:
Was ever grief like mine?

These drops being temper’d with a sinner’s tears,
A Balsam are for both the Hemispheres:
Curing all wounds but mine; all, but my fears,
Was ever grief like mine?

Yet my Disciples sleep: I cannot gain
One hour of watching; but their drowsy brain
Comforts not me, and doth my doctrine stain:
Was ever grief like mine?

Arise, arise, they come. Look how they run.
Alas! what haste they make to be undone!
How with their lanterns do they seek the sun!
Was ever grief like mine?

With clubs and staves they seek me, as a thief,
Who am the way of truth, the true relief;
Most true to those, who are my greatest grief:
Was ever grief like mine?

Judas, dost thou betray me with a kiss?
Canst thou find hell about my lips? and miss
Of life, just at the gates of life and bliss?
Was ever grief like mine?

See, they lay hold on me, not with the hands
Of faith, but fury: yet at their commands
I suffer binding, who have loos’d their bands:
Was ever grief like mine?

All my Disciples fly; fear puts a bar
Betwixt my friends and me. They leave the star
That brought the wise men of the East from far.
Was ever grief like mine?

Then from one ruler to another bound
They lead me; urging, that it was not sound
What I taught: Comments would the text confound.
Was ever grief like mine?

The Priest and rulers all false witness seek
‘Gainst him, who seeks not life, but is the meek
And ready Paschal Lamb of this great week:
Was ever grief like mine?

Then they accuse me of great blasphemy,
That I did thrust into the Deity,
Who never thought that any robbery:
Was ever grief like mine?

Some said, that I the Temple to the floor
In three days raz’d, and raised as before.
Why, he that built the world can do much more:
Was ever grief like mine?

Then they condemn me all with that same breath,
Which I do give them daily, unto death.
Thus Adam my first breathing rendereth:
Was ever grief like mine?

They bind, and lead me unto Herod: he
Sends me to Pilate. This makes them agree;
But yet their friendship is my enmity:
Was ever grief like mine?

Herod and all his bands do set me light,
Who teach all hands to war, fingers to fight,
And only am the Lord of hosts and might:
Was ever grief like mine?

Herod in judgement sits while I do stand;
Examines me with a censorious hand:
I him obey, who all things else command:
Was ever grief like mine?

The Jews accuse me with despitefulness;
And vying malice with my gentleness,
Pick quarrels with their only happiness:
Was ever grief like mine?

I answer nothing, but with patience prove
If stony hearts will melt with gentle love.
But who does hawk at eagles with a dove?
Was ever grief like mine?

My silence rather doth augment their cry;
My dove doth back into my bosom fly;
Because the raging waters still are high:
Was ever grief like mine?

Hark how they cry aloud still, ‘Crucify:
It is not fit he live a day, ‘ they cry,
Who cannot live less than eternally:
Was ever grief like mine?

Pilate a stranger holdeth off; but they,
Mine own dear people, cry, ‘Away, away, ‘
With noises confused frighting the day:
Was ever grief like mine?

Yet still they shout, and cry, and stop their ears,
Putting my life among their sins and fears,
And therefore wish my blood on them and theirs:
Was ever grief like mine?

See how spite cankers things. These words aright
Used, and wished, are the whole world’s light:
But honey is their gall, brightness their night:
Was ever grief like mine?

They choose a murderer, and all agree
In him to do themselves a courtesy:
For it was their own cause who killed me:
Was ever grief like mine?

And a seditious murderer he was:
But I the Prince of peace; peace that doth pass
All understanding, more than heav’n doth glass:
Was ever grief like mine?

Why, Caesar is their only King, not I:
He clave the stony rock, when they were dry;
But surely not their hearts, as I well try:
Was ever grief like mine?

Ah! how they scourge me! yet my tenderness
Doubles each lash: and yet their bitterness
Winds up my grief to a mysteriousness.
Was ever grief like mine?

They buffet me, and box me as they list,
Who grasp the earth and heaven with my fist,
And never yet, whom I would punish, miss’d:
Was ever grief like mine?

Behold, they spit on me in scornful wise,
Who by my spittle gave the blind man eyes,
Leaving his blindness to mine enemies:
Was ever grief like mine?

My face they cover, though it be divine.
As Moses’ face was veiled, so is mine,
Lest on their double-dark souls either shine:
Was ever grief like mine?

Servants and abjects flout me; they are witty:
‘Now prophesy who strikes thee, ‘ is their ditty.
So they in me deny themselves all pity:
Was ever grief like mine?

And now I am deliver’d unto death,
Which each one calls for so with utmost breath,
That he before me well nigh suffereth:
Was ever grief like mine?

Weep not, dear friends, since I for both have wept
When all my tears were blood, the while you slept:
Your tears for your own fortunes should be kept:
Was ever grief like mine?

The soldiers lead me to the common hall;
There they deride me, they abuse me all:
Yet for twelve heavn’ly legions I could call:
Was ever grief like mine?

Then with a scarlet robe they me array;
Which shows my blood to be the only way.
And cordial left to repair man’s decay:
Was ever grief like mine?

Then on my head a crown of thorns I wear:
For these are all the grapes Sion doth bear,
Though I my vine planted and watered there:
Was ever grief like mine?

So sits the earth’s great curse in Adam’s fall
Upon my head: so I remove it all
From th’ earth unto my brows, and bear the thrall:
Was ever grief like mine?

Then with the reed they gave to me before,
They strike my head, the rock from whence all store
Of heavn’ly blessings issue evermore:
Was ever grief like mine?

They bow their knees to me, and cry, ‘Hail king’:
What ever scoffs or scornfulness can bring,
I am the floor, the sink, where they it fling:
Was ever grief like mine?

Yet since man’s sceptres are as frail as reeds,
And thorny all their crowns, bloody their weeds;
I, who am Truth, turn into truth their deeds:
Was ever grief like mine?

The soldiers also spit upon that face,
Which Angels did desire to have the grace,
And Prophets once to see, but found no place:
Was ever grief like mine?

Thus trimmed forth they bring me to the rout,
Who ‘Crucify him, ‘ cry with one strong shout.
God holds his peace at man, and man cries out.
Was ever grief like mine?

They lead me in once more, and putting then
Mine own clothes on, they lead me out again.
Whom devils fly, thus is he toss’d of men:
Was ever grief like mine?

And now weary of sport, glad to engross
All spite in one, counting my life their loss,
They carry me to my most bitter cross:
Was ever grief like mine?

My cross I bear my self, until I faint:
Then Simon bears it for me by constraint,
The decreed burden of each mortal Saint:
Was ever grief like mine?

O all ye who pass by, behold and see;
Man stole the fruit, but I must climb the tree;
The tree of life to all, but only me:
Was ever grief like mine?

Lo, here I hang, charg’d with a world of sin,
The greater world o’ th’ two; for that came in
By words, but this by sorrow I must win:
Was ever grief like mine?

Such sorrow, as if sinful man could feel,
Or feel his part, he would not cease to kneel,
Till all were melted, though he were all steel:
Was ever grief like mine?

But, O my God, my God! why leav’st thou me,
The son, in whom thou dost delight to be?
My God, my God –
Never was grief like mine.

Shame tears my soul, my body many a wound;
Sharp nails pierce this, but sharper that confound;
Reproaches, which are free, while I am bound.
Was ever grief like mine?

Now heal thy self, Physician; now come down.
Alas! I did so, when I left my crown
And father’s smile for you, to feel his frown:
Was ever grief like mine?

In healing not my self, there doth consist
All that salvation, which ye now resist;
Your safety in my sickness doth subsist:
Was ever grief like mine?

Betwixt two thieves I spend my utmost breath,
As he that for some robbery suffereth.
Alas! what have I stolen from you? death:
Was ever grief like mine?

A king my title is, prefixt on high;
Yet by my subjects am condemn’d to die
A servile death in servile company;
Was ever grief like mine?

They gave me vinegar mingled with gall,
But more with malice: yet, when they did call,
With Manna, Angels’ food, I fed them all:
Was ever grief like mine?

They part my garments, and by lot dispose
My coat, the type of love, which once cur’d those
Who sought for help, never malicious foes:
Was ever grief like mine?

Nay, after death their spite shall further go;
For they will pierce my side, I full well know;
That as sin came, so Sacraments might flow:
Was ever grief like mine?

But now I die; now all is finished.
My woe, man’s weal: and now I bow my head.
Only let others say, when I am dead,
Never was grief like mine.

George Herbert

In his Introduction to seventh edition of his lectures on The Atonement (1875), R. W. Dale adds further insight to the implications of Jesus’s willful obedience in the Garden and on the Cross.  I find in it my shortcomings and my hope, my willing spirit and my weak flesh.  Dale tells us that our life is bound up in the life of Christ, that His life might be ours:

“Our whole conception of the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ rests upon our faith in His Divine dignity. He was the Son of God. But He was also the Son of man. That it should have been possible for a Divine person to reveal Himself under the conditions of human nature, and in a human history, is very wonderful, and throws an intense light on the vast possibilities of perfection which belong to our race.  These possibilities are still more gloriously illustrated when we discover what, indeed, seems to me to be implied in the Incarnation, but is also distinctly affirmed in the New Testament that the life which dwelt in Christ is the true life of man, that we were created in order that this life might be ours. Hence, while the Lord Jesus Christ is the brightness of God’s glory, and the express image of His Person, He is also the visible manifestation of the glory of human nature, the “idea” and prophecy of its moral and spiritual excellence, and of its true relation to God. He is God’s “Word” to us; and there is a sense in which He is also our “Word” to God. He reveals God to man; I will not say that He also reveals man to God ; but He is the true root of the human race; the life which is in Him is to be in us if we confess His authority and trust in His love; so that what He is may be described as expressing, not, indeed, what we are, or what we shall ever be, but the transcendent perfection towards which, through the life we receive from Him, we are to be for ever approaching.

When I, a sinful man, come to God through Christ, I acknowledge that I am not what I ought to be, nor what I desire to be. Christ is at once my condemnation and my hope. In Him I see the ideal perfection of my nature, and it stands in vivid contrast to my sin.  But in Him I also see the revelation of that absolute trust in the Father, that faultless loyalty to the Father’s authority, that delight in doing the Father s will, which, though in inferior forms, may be manifested in me, if I receive the life which is His supreme gift.”  [Atonement, pp. lvii – lix]

———–

One of the results of my focus on the Agony-Trial-Crucifixion-Resurrection is a growing appreciation (connection, respect, awe, thankfulness, etc.) of the humanity of Jesus Christ.  As one of my pastors said a couple of weeks ago, consider the type of man Jesus must have been to command the respect of professional fishermen.

I confess that I often mentally compartmentalize (i.e. intellectualize) God’s acts of mercy and grace toward mankind.   I get caught up in the great truths about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, for instance, as the Maker and Sustainer of all creation (Col. 1:15-17) that I do not think enough about Jesus Christ, the Son of Man.  I err, I think, by unconsciously attributing more weight to Jesus’s divinity when I consider the events leading up to the cross.

All that to say, that I am learning “again for the first time” about what it cost the Son of Man to pay my sin-penalty.  The “manliness” required for Jesus to courageously endure suffering and death astounds me and stands in stark contrast to my own manliness.   What was the source of His resolve?

We learned from Cyril that Jesus was a unique kind of human being.  What, though, enabled Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, to go to the cross?   Did the agony in the Garden hint that the Son of Man acquiesced (“accept something reluctantly but without protest”) to the will of the Father, suggesting He had second thoughts?  What difference does any of this make (i.e. what are the implications) for those who become children of God through faith in Christ?

Maximus The Confessor (580 – 662), gives us insight as he considered Jesus’s words in Gethsemane.   Dr. Wilken writes:

“For earlier writers, the words of Jesus’ petition, “Father, if thou are willing, let this cup pass from me” (which seemed to imply that the Christ could act in opposition to the will of the Father), were understood as hypothetical.  Maximus, however, asks whether the second part of Christ’s prayer, “Not what I will, but let your will prevail,” makes sense if the words “let this cup pass from me” were not spoken in earnest.   At the same time he notes that the most significant feature of the account is that Christ did drink the cup.  What Christ says is, “Not what I will,” but “Let your will prevail.”  Do the words of Jesus, asks Maximus, express “shrinking back” from what lay before him, that is, refusal to drink the cup? or do they represent a supreme act of courage and assent?  For Maximus, Jesus’s words express neither resistance nor fear but “perfect agreement and consent.”  As a man, acting in freedom, Christ submitted to the will of God by conforming his human will wholly to God’s will, and in this way demonstrated “the supreme agreement of his human will to the divine will which is at the same time his own will as well as that of the Father.”  …   Christ’s humanity, then is most evident in the garden:  “If the Word made flesh does not himself naturally as a human being and accomplish things in accordance with his human nature, how can he willingly undergo hunger and thirst, labor and weariness, sleep and everything else common to man?  For the Word does not simply will and accomplish these things in accordance with the transcendent and infinite nature he shares with the Father and Holy Spirit…. For if it is only as God that he wills these things, and not as himself being a human being, then either the body has become divine by nature, or the Word has changed its nature and become flesh by abandoning its own divinity, or the flesh is not at all in itself endowed with a rational soul, but in itself completely lifeless and irrational.”   Note that Maximus uses almost uses the same formulation about Christ’s will as Cyril did about the Resurrection.  Cyril had said, “If he conquered as God, to us it is nothing,” and Maximus says, “If it is only as God he wills these things,” then his flesh is “lifeless and irrational.”  In short, if Christ does not have a human will he cannot be fully human.  …”  The Word himself shows clearly that he has a human will just as by nature he has a divine will.  For when he became man for our sake, he pleaded to be spared from death, saying, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me’ (Matt. 26:39).  In his way he displayed the weakness of his own flesh.  Those who saw him recognized that his flesh was not imaginary, but in fact he was a genuine human being.”   Of course Maximus does not suggest that Christ’s human will could have been set in opposition to the will of the Father.  Yet he gives full weight to both parts of the petition, the request that the cup be removed and the decision to drink the cup and act in accord with the will of the Father.  So fully did Christ’s will conform to the divine will that his will can be said to be godlike:  “It is clear that his human will is wholly deified, in that it is in harmony with the divine will, for it is always moved and formed by it.  His human will is in perfect conformity with the will of his father when as a man he says, “Let not my will but thine be done.”   In Maximus’s hands Christ’s act of will became a decisive moment in the history of salvation.  It had long been affirmed, following the Scriptures (God “wills all men to be saved” [1 Tim. 2:4]), that the eternal Son of God, in concert with the Father and the Holy Spirit, had willed the salvation of humankind.  But Maximus now discerns that at the moment of his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ the man willed the salvation of the world.  He cites the word from 1 Timothy to highlight the distinction between the divine will from eternity (which was, of course, also the will of the divine Son) and Christ’s human will in action during his passion.  The words “not my will, let yours prevail” were said “in a human fashion” by Christ to his God and Father.  This leads Maximus to the triumphant affirmation that Christ by his obedience as man “willed and carried out our salvation.”   It is often said that the divine plan of salvation depended on Mary’s free assent to the word of the angel.  The work of salvation is a work of God, but it could not be carried out without the cooperation of human beings.  After Mary heard the word of the angels she said, “Let it be to me according to your word.”  This fiat, this “let it be done,” made possible the Incarnation of the eternal Son in the womb of the Virgin.  Maximus proposes that there is another fiat in the gospels, another “let it be done,” the agony of the man Christ, in which Christ, by accepting his suffering and death, wills the salvation of mankind,  Just as the plan of salvation required Mary’s “yes,” so it also needed Christ’s “yes,” for it was only through Christ’s passion and death that the world’s salvation could be accomplished.   The acceptance of the cup of suffering was Christ’s free act.  That salvation which the eternal Son had willed “in union with the Father and the Holy Spirit,” Christ now wills as a man, and in this way shows himself to be a new kind of human being.  The human will is not less human but more human because it is in harmony with the divine will.  Like Cyril, Maximus wishes to say that Christ showed us a “wholly new way of being human.”  ….  [Early Christian Thought, pp. 128-131]

As I type and re-read this material, I am again caught up in wonder and worship of Jesus Christ who went willingly to the cross as a man (fully human) to accomplish that which he willed before “the Word became flesh” (fully divine).  He not only “shows himself to be a new kind of human being,” but shows us a “wholly new way of being human, … not less human but more human because it is in harmony with the divine will.”   This makes me long more to make His will my will because anything else is to be less human.

“Lord, make me willing to be willing to do your will.”

————————-

I find reading early church history sometimes feels like walking through tall weeds.  It’s easy to forget what’s at stake and how God is writing a larger story for His glory.   I have bushwhacked for a couple of weeks trying to develop context for two quotations from Dr. Wilken’s book, Early Christian Thought.  (This is not his fault as a writer, but my inadequacy as a communicator.)  The more I read and wrote the weedier it got.  So, at the risk of minimal context, I offer two excerpts from Dr. Wilken’s book that have caused me to consider anew what Christ has done for me and who He’s making me.

In the chapter discussing the Incarnation and the question before the early church regarding whether Christ had one or two wills (one divine and the other human), Wilken writes:

“When Cyril [of Alexandria] writes his commentary on the Gospel of John, he sees another dimension of the Resurrection.  The Resurrection was evidence that Christ was a unique kind of man.   Christ, he writes, “presented himself to God the Father as the first fruits of humanity….He opened up for us a way that the human race had not known before.”  Before Christ came into the world “human nature was incapable of destroying death,” but Christ was superior to the tribulation of the world and “more powerful” than death.  Hence he became the first man who was able to conquer death and corruption.  By showing himself stronger than death, Christ extends to us the power of his Resurrection “because the one that overcame death was one of us.”  Then Cyril adds the sentence, “If he conquered as God, to us it is nothing; but if he conquered as man we conquered in Him.  For he is to us the second Adam come from heaven according to the Scripture.”  This is an extraordinary statement and to my knowledge unprecedented.  Cyril asserts that Christ triumphed over death because of the kind of human being he was.  His human nature makes Christ unique.”  [Early Christian Thought, pp 120-121]

Continued . . . .

I have the privilege of serving among a team of godly men in shepherding Roswell Community Church.  I am often humbled to see God at work in and through my brothers, as each brings his unique gifts and experience in loving service to Christ and this particular expression of His Church.

Yesterday one of the men shared an excerpt from Calvin’s Institutes.  (I was impressed that he’s reading Institutes!)   It described for me the interplay of mind and heart, obedience and response.  It also convicted me that I have a lot of heart-work to do.

“… What avails it, in short, to know a God with whom we have nothing to do? The
effect of our knowledge rather ought to be, first, to teach us reverence and fear; and, secondly, to induce us, under its guidance and teaching, to ask every good thing from him, and, when it is received, ascribe it to him. For how can the idea of God enter your mind without instantly giving rise to the thought, that since you are his workmanship, you are bound, by the very law of creation, to submit to his authority?—that your life is due to him?—that whatever you do ought to have reference to him? If so, it undoubtedly follows that your life is sadly corrupted, if it is not framed in obedience to him, since his will ought to be the law of our lives. On the other hand, your idea of his nature is not clear unless you acknowledge him to be the origin and fountain of all goodness.”   [Calvin, John. The Institutes of Christian Religion (Illustrated), Bk1, Ch2, Sec 2]

One of my goals during Lent is to learn and love more of Christ by reading, meditating, and praying about the events surrounding the Crucifixion and Resurrection.  The Cross is proof that God is “the origin and fountain of all goodness.”  I don’t adore God enough for His goodness.  I suspect I’m not alone.

1. When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of Glory died;
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.

2. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
save in the death of Christ, my God;
all the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.

3. See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown.

4. Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were an offering far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

Hilary of Poitiers showed us that the Resurrection opened to us a new way of thinking about God.  As I’ve thought about this, I’ve also prayed about this, asking the Holy Spirit to draw me deeper in mind and heart to the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I don’t think it was by chance that the discussion has centered around the Resurrection in the weeks leading up to Easter.  (I wish I could say that I had scheduled it that way, but I’m not that organized.)

In my research of another pivotal figure in understanding the Incarnation — Cyril of Alexander, I came across a blog by Orthodox theologian, William Witt.  In his academic article entitled “The Trinitarian Structure of Resurrection Faith,” he articulates one of the reasons learning historical theology attracts me, equips me, and leads me to worship.

With regard to the Resurrection, Witt writes that we have to decide “…the question of whether or not the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are constitutive* of our salvation, whether Jesus actually creates and makes possible a salvation that would not be possible otherwise, or rather whether Jesus’ mission is illustrative of something that God is doing elsewhere or perhaps everywhere in creation as well.”

In other words, was (is) Jesus unique, essential, and able to accomplish our salvation before God, or was he just a good man who serves as one example among others for “right living?”  Sounds like the type of question that a CNN anchor will ask a panel of “experts” during Easter.  The “expert” dialogue will show that the fundamental theological doctrines that evangelical Christians take so much for granted today were hammered out in an intellectual, political, religious and cultural environment that was not so dissimilar to our own.

“But who do you say that I am?” — Jesus (Matthew 16:15 ESV)

“This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.  And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:11-12 ESV)

Cyril of Alexander will help us further understand just how unique, essential and able Jesus was to accomplish our salvation.  In the meantime, the question before me (and you) is how am I to live in light of who I am, and who I am becoming, because of my faith and life in the Resurrected One.

Am I “educated beyond my obedience?” Am I well trained both in knowledge and duty, having “head knowledge” and an adequate religiosity that hides a cold heart?  Am I of those whom Jesus repeats the accusation from Isaiah “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’” (Matthew 15:7-9)

Or does my heart leap (or at least do I want my heart to leap) at the thought of what Jesus has done for me?  Do I live out of the truth of the Resurrection (and all that it includes)?  Do I obey in response to the One who loves me most of all?

Lent began this week.  I am asking God to use this season to teach me, convict me, forgive me, and change me by the power that Resurrected Jesus (see Ephesians 1:15-23).  I pray you do too.

*Constitutive — (a) constituent; making a thing what it is; essential. (b) having power to establish or enact.

1.  Witt, William. “Non Sermoni Res.” The Trinitarian Structure of Resurrection Faith, February 11, 2009. http://willgwitt.org/the-trinitarian-structure-of-resurrection-faith/.