What Is the Gospel?

The Right and Wrong in Richard Foster

It is certainly a misconception by many who are vaguely aware of the meat and substance of Reformed theology, piety, and practice that we of the Reformed persuasion are lean on the area of private spiritual devotion. So you have the likes of Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Donald Whitney, et al. filling in the demand for more "instruction" on "spiritual formation," in the hopes of accelerating sanctification.

But whereas Scripture has laid out the three means of grace, i.e., the preaching of the Word, the Sacraments, and prayer, as the ways by which God has promised to meet us, build our faith, and hence produce the gratitude that is the ground of all God-pleasing obedience, gurus of "spiritual discipline" make much of introspection and obsessive "fruit-hunting" through devices that are really extrabiblical, taking more from mysticism than the catholic Christian faith.

The Juice of Life: God's Promises

I recently bought Francis Schaeffer's "How Should We Then Live" DVD. I must say that it has been a treat watching and hearing him explain through various epochs in history how mankind finally ended up in misery, with his pitiful attempts at finding meaning in life via humanism (notwithstanding his glorious achievements in culture), by virtue of his rejection of absolutes. Though I do not agree with Schaeffer's view of neutrality (as opposed to presuppositionalism), he does adequately describe the predicament of man when in a state of independence from God.

The following quote is something that Schaeffer would definitely agree with:

"What are you driven by? What really gets you up out of bed in the morning? When everything around you seems to fall apart and life doesn't seem to work, what anchors you? Is it things that you see (circumstances as they appear to you) or is it something that you hear (God's promise) that determines things for you? Is it something inside of you or something external to you, a word that comes from outside completely challenging your experience of things? Are you driven by power, wealth, ambition, self-esteem, the acceptance of others? Or perhaps by nobler things, like making the world a better place, loving God and your neighbor, a sense of purpose and meaning?...While affirming the importance of having clear goals and a worthy focus in life, I am urging us to put purposes in their place, as servants of promise. No longer under the law's condemnation, the justified are free now to respond to God's commands out of thanksgiving for the God whose character it displays and out of love for our neighbors. The gospel saves us, giving us reason to walk through the wilderness to the promised land, and the law guides us, giving us directions for that journey. Christians are driven by God's promises, and directed by God's purposes." (Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2009], 133, italics original).

The Turk-ey Affair

If you haven't been aware of the recent rave in the "Reformed blogosphere" then allow me to give you a heads up: Frank Turk of the famed blog, Pyromaniacs—a John MacArthurian, Baptist blog—has written an open letter to Dr. Michael Horton of the White Horse Inn, decrying his and his gang's seeming overemphasis on the indicative and imperative paradigm, in effect neglecting to admonish their supporters to "desire" the manifestation of "fruit" in their lives.

The following responses have been adequate in putting Turk in his rightful place:

Jason Hood, Frank Turk, Dane Ortlund, Mike Horton, and Antinomianism (UPDATE 3)

The Fear of Antinomianism

A Response to Frank Turk's Open Letter

The following thread also exists in the Puritan Board where this issue is discussed: Open Letter to Michael Horton Pyromaniacs

I wrote the following comments in the said thread:

The Frank Turk guy's main argument hinges on his "subjunctive" mood treatment, which he sees has been left out in the Horton Gang's emphasis on the imperative and the indicative. It's basically a straw man, since the indicative is precisely why the subjunctive fuels the implementation of the imperative. Turk would do well to heed a fellow, though much informed, Baptist, D.A. Carson: Underdog Theology: D.A. Carson on a Species of Perfectionism

What does Calvin say about grounding the assurance of salvation on one's good works?

"Now if we ask in what way the conscience can be made quiet before God, we shall find the only way to be that unmerited righteousness be conferred upon us as a gift of God. Let us ever bear in mind Solomon's question: "Who will say, 'I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin'?" [Prov. 20:9]. Surely there is no one who is not sunken in infinite filth! Let even the most perfect man descend into his conscience and call his deeds to account, what then will be the outcome for him? Will he sweetly rest as if all things were well composed between him and God and not, rather, be torn by dire torments, since if he judged by works, he will feel grounds for condemnation within himself? The conscience, if it looks to God, must either have sure peace with his judgment or be besieged by the terrors of hell. Therefore we profit nothing in discussing righteousness unless we establish a righteousness so steadfast that it can support our soul in the judgment of God....For no one can ever confidently trust in it [one's obedience—M.H.] because no one will ever come to be really convinced in his own mind that he has satisfied the law, as surely no one ever fully satisfied it through works....First, then, doubt would enter the minds of all men, and at length despair, while each one reckoned for himself how great a weight of debt still pressed upon him, and how far away he was from the condition laid down for him. See faith already oppressed and extinguished!...Therefore, on this point [assurance—M.H.] we must establish, and as it were, deeply fix all our hope, paying no regard to our works, to seek any help from them...For, as regards justification, faith is something merely passive, bringing nothing of ours [not even repentance and a determination of the will to obey—M.H.] to the recovering of God's favor but receiving from Christ that which we lack" (Institutes, 3.13.3—5, cited in Michael Horton, Christ the Lord, p. 52—53).

and

Turk may indeed believe that [i.e., justification by faith], but he adds the qualifier that the justified must necessarily bear fruit, so therefore the assurance of one's salvation, for him, must be buttressed by the presence of good works. I think this is the meat of his argument, for which he criticizes Horton, i.e. Horton and the Gang's lack of emphasis on "fruits." But then even Calvin (see quote above) sees the precarious nature of basing one's assurance of salvation on the presence of good works since the manifestation of good works is prone to ebb and flow (Romans 7).

I think Turk's weakness is his appeal to an abstraction of what the justified must possess in terms of attributes and properties for the label to stick.

Whereas, the Reformed consensus is that the "just shall live by faith," with faith defined as noticia + assensus + fiducia (no works there), Turk seems to prefer the following, "the just shall live by faith and prove their faith by good works." But then how much good works is enough to prove a state of justification?

The soundness of the indicative + imperative paradigm is that the knowledge of who you are in Christ as founded upon His person and work (indicative) is precisely the gratitude-producing impetus to obedience (imperative).

Some Reflections on Divine Providence

What better way to start off my blog this year than with some reflections on divine providence, and what better source of Scripture's teaching on the subject as understood by the Reformed consensus than the fifth chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith?

As the father of a 6 yr. old daughter and a 2 1/2 yr. old son—with another child in its 8th week of brewing who I hope will  be a boy so that I could name him "Cauvin Paul"—providence has weighed heavily upon my mind these days. I must also confess that I am of the sort that is not endowed with a measure of imperviousness to anxiety and worry, especially as pertaining to the welfare of my family, so reviewing Scripture's teachings on this subject has been a tremendous comfort to my soul.

Christmas and the Gift of Humanity

If there's one more lesson to be derived from Christmas then it must be the truth of God's magnanimous declaration that His physical creation is good and that Christ's putting on of human flesh is the guarantee that the physical bodies of His saints, along with the whole of the created order, shall finally be saved and delivered from the tyranny of sin through the bearing in His physical body of its pains, terrors and penalty, both in His perfectly righteous life and in His atoning death.

Another is that when Christ took on the Curse the very moment His newborn infant lungs started breathing air and when He suffered through its harsh realities as He grew in strength and stature as a man (like each and every one of us), He showcased to the universe what a human being was supposed to be, something that only He as the Second Adam could accomplish.

In effect God, in Christ, was giving us back the gift of humanity by becoming human Himself—something that should elicit in us the same praise and worship that it did in the heavenly host, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!" (Luke 2:14).

The Gift of Gifts

O Source of All Good,

  What shall I render to thee for the gift of gifts,
  thine own dear Son, begotten, not created,
  my Redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute,
  his self-emptying incomprehensible,
  his infinity of love beyond the heart's grasp.
Herein is wonder of wonders:
  he came below to raise me above,
  was born like me that I might become like him.
Herein is love;
  when I cannot rise to him he draws near on
    wings of grace,
  to raise me to himself.
Herein is power;
  when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart
  he united them in indissoluble unity,
    the uncreated and the created.
Herein is wisdom;
  when I was undone, with no will to return to him,
  and no intellect to devise recovery,
  he came, God-incarnate, to save me
    to the uttermost,
  as man to die my death,
  to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
  to work out a perfect righteousness for me.
O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, 
    and enlarge my mind;
  let me hear good tidings of great joy,
    and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore
    my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose,
    my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father;
  place me with ox, ass, camel, goat,
    to look with them upon my Redeemer's face,
    and in him account myself delivered from sin;
  let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child
    to my heart,
  embrace him with undying faith,
  exulting that he is mine and I am his.
In him thou hast given me so much
    that heaven can give no more.

— The Valley of Vision, Edited by Arthur Bennett (Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975).

Mortification, Faith, and the American Pitbull Terrier

One of the reasons why I inveterately adore the American Pitbull Terrier—and probably why most fanciers fancy them as well—is that this breed possesses the traits of gameness and tenacity at a level far above all other breeds. The pitbull, at least those that come from reputable, tested stock, will not back down from a challenge and will keep coming back for more in spite of injury or trouble to itself.

Another reason why I love "pits" is that they remind me of the tenacity and gameness required in the Christian life. The fallen world, the devil, and most especially our own remaining propensity for sin necessitate our incessant coming back to Christ. This "keep coming back for more" virtue in the Christian is called faith, and John Owen tells us that we are to "by faith ponder on this, that though you are no way able in or by yourself to get the conquest over your distemper, though you are even weary of contending, and are utterly ready to faint, yet that there is enough in Jesus Christ to yield you relief (Phil. 4:13)" and "Christ tells us that we obtain purging grace by abiding in him (John 15:3). To act faith upon the fullness that is in Christ for our supply is an eminent way of abiding in Christ, for both our insition [engraftment] and abode is by faith (Rom. 11:19-20)." [1]

Let the following reflections be fuel for your continued "scratching" back to Christ:

"I am a poor, weak, creature; unstable as water, I cannot excel. This corruption is too hard for me, and is at the very door of ruining my soul; and what to do I know not. My soul is becomes as parched ground, and an habitation of dragons. I have made promises and broken them; vows and engagements have been as a thing of naught. Many persuasions have I had that I had got the victory and should be delivered, but I am deceived; so that I plainly see, that without some eminent succor and assistance, I am lost, and shall be prevailed on to an utter relinquishment of God. But yet, though this be my state and condition, let the hands that hang down be lifted up, and the feeble knees be strengthened. Behold, the Lord Jesus Christ, that has all fullness of grace in his heart [John 1:16], all fullness of power in his hand [Matt. 28:18], he is able to slay all these his enemies. There is sufficient provision in him for  my relief and assistance. He can take my drooping, dying soul and make me more than a conqueror [Rom. 8:37].

'Why do you say, O my soul, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Have you not known, have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. He gives power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint' (Isa. 40:27-31).

He can make the 'dry, parched ground of my soul to become a pool, and my thirsty, barren heart as springs of water'; yea, he can make this 'habitation of dragons,' this heart, so full of abominable lusts and fiery temptations, to be a place for 'grass' and fruit to himself (Isa. 35:7)." [2]

Footnotes:
[1] John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation, eds. Kelly M. Kapic & Justin Taylor [Illinois: Crossway, 2006], 131-132).
[2] Ibid., 132.

Looking to Christ + Loving Sin = Futility

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and in Christ alone. The recovery of the doctrine of justification was the crowning achievement of the Reformation, and the Gospel is the good news not only for the unbelieving sinner but for the believing one as well.

But in our daily looking to Christ for the assurance of our salvation—which, the Reformers taught, is of the essence of faith—are we perhaps missing a key ingredient? Do we look to Christ in the manner with which the Apostle Paul did in his description of the normal Christian life in Romans 7, i.e., in utter abhorrence of the sin that still clings to him like a strapped-on carcass, "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Rom. 7:24-25)?

John Owen strips off our cloaks of deceitful comfort in the ff. statements:

"When men are wounded by sin, disquieted and perplexed, and knowing that there is no remedy for them but only in the mercies of God, through the blood of Christ, do therefore look to him, and to the promises of the covenant in him, and thereupon quiet their hearts that it shall be well with them, and that God will be exalted, that he may be gracious to them, and yet their souls are not wrought to the greatest detestation of the sin or sins upon the account whereof they are disquieted—this is to heal themselves, and not to be healed of God...When men do truly 'look upon Christ whom they have pierced,' without which there is no healing or peace, they will 'mourn' (Zech. 12:10); they will mourn for him, even upon this account, and detest the sin that pierced him.....Now this, I say, if it be done according to the mind of God, and in the strength of that Spirit which is poured out on believers, it will beget a detestation of that sin or sins for which healing and peace is sought.....When God comes home to speak peace in a sure covenant of it, it fills the soul with shame for all the ways whereby it has been alienated from him. And one of the things that the apostle mentions as attending that godly sorrow which is accompanied with repentance unto salvation, never to be repented of, is revenge: 'Yea, what revenge!' (2 Cor. 7:11).....he must come to self-abhorrency if he come to healing.....Let a man make what application he will for healing and peace, let him do it to the true Physician, let him do it the right way, let him quiet his heart in the promises of the covenant; yet, when peace is spoken, if it not be attended with the detestation and abhorrency of that sin which was the wound and caused the disquietment, this is no peace of God's creating, but of our own purchasing.....For instance, you find your heart running out after the world, and it disturbs you in your communion with God; the Spirit speaks expressly to you—'He that loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him' [1 John 2:15]. This puts you on dealing with God in Christ for the healing of your soul, the quieting of your conscience; but yet, withal, a thorough detestation of the evil itself abides not upon you; yea, perhaps that is liked well enough, but only in respect of the consequences of it. Perhaps you may be saved, yet as through fire, and God will have some work with you before he has done; but you will have little peace in this life—you will be sick and fainting all your days (Isa. 57:17). This is a deceit that lies at the root of the peace of many professors and wastes it. They deal with all their strength about mercy and pardon, and seem to have great communion with God in their so doing; they lie before him, bewail their sins and follies, that anyone would think, yea, they think themselves, that surely they and their sins are now parted; and so receive in mercy that satisfies their hearts for a little season. But when a thorough search comes to be made, there has been some secret reserve for the folly or follies treated about—at least, there has not been that thorough abhorrency of it which is necessary; and their whole peace is quickly discovered to be weak and rotten, scarce abiding any longer than the words of begging it are in their mouths." (Overcoming Sin and Temptation, eds. Kelly M. Kapic & Justin Taylor [Illinois: Crossway, 2006], 119-121).

Sobering words for the sin-parched pilgrim.

In Defense of Hell: Six Arguments Against Annihilationism

"In the first place, the amount of time spent in wrongdoing is often irrelevant in determining the sentence. As I write these words, police in London are looking for thugs who attacked a forty-five year old man in broad daylight, almost severed his arm with a billhook, pummelled him with a baseball bat and sprayed hydrochloric acid in his face. The assault was all over in less than a minute; would sixty seconds in jail be an appropriate sentence? As William Hendriksen says, 'It is not necessarily the duration of the crime that fixes the duration of the punishment...What is decisive is the nature of the crime.'

The Utility of Indwelling Sin

Indwelling sin—it is the scourge of the Christian life, even more so than the world or the devil. Though the Christian has been made a partaker of the nature of Christ through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, still, absolute freedom from sin is not to be had in this present age.

To be sure, it is the Christian's duty to be mortifying sin in his life, as far as he is aware of particular instances of dominance. However, it may come as some comfort to know that this enemy has both a God-glorifying and man-benefiting function, the knowledge of which can never be a warrant for lawlessness, but is actually the impetus behind the pedagogical use of the Law.

John Owen writes,

"To mortify sin is not utterly to kill, root it out, and destroy it, that it should have no more hold at all nor residence in our hearts. It is true this is that which is aimed at; but this is not in this life to be accomplished. There is no man that truly sets himself to mortify any sin, but he aims at, intends, desires its utter destruction, that it should leave neither root nor fruit in the heart or life. He would so kill it that it should never more nor stir anymore, cry or call, seduce or tempt, to eternity. Its not-being is the thing aimed at. Now, though doubtless there may, by the Spirit and grace of Christ, a wonderful success and eminency of victory against any sin be attained, so that a man may have almost constant triumph over it, yet an utter killing and destruction of it, that it should not be, is not in this life to be expected. This Paul assures us of: 'Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect' (Phil. 3:12). He was a choice saint, a pattern for believers, who, in faith and love, and all the fruits of the Spirit, had not his fellow in the world, and on that account ascribes perfection to himself in comparison of others (v. 15); yet he had not 'attained,' he was not 'perfect,' but was 'following after' (v. 12): still a vile body he had, and we have, that must be changed by the great power of Christ at last (v. 21). This we would have; but God sees it best for us that we should be complete in nothing in ourselves, that in all things we must be 'complete in Christ,' which is best for us (Col. 2:10)" (Overcoming Sin and Temptation, eds. Kelly M. Kapic & Justin Taylor [Illinois: Crossway, 2006], 69-70, italics original, emphasis mine).

The Presuppositionalism of Herman Bavinck

"The method of theology is established on three foundations (principia). The ultimate source and foundation of revelation is God (principium essendi). God's self-consciousness is conveyed through his self-communication and presented in the world as the external foundation of knowledge (principium cognoscendi externum). With the possibility of conducting science established, the Logos makes reason and intellect possible as the creator of the reality outside ourselves and the laws of thought within us. Scripture, the instrumental cause of theology, bears witness to the fact that revelation proceeds from God before and after the fall. Scripture is revelation itself. Third, the principium cognoscendi internum presupposes the disclosure of divine self-revelation mediated deeply into the human self-consciousness through the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Creation is the foundation for revelation from which proceeds all religious and ethical life. For Bavinck the question is never 'does God exist' but 'what is our relationship to him.'

Sin has disrupted true religion but has not eradicated the principium essendi. Religion is integral to human nature as created in the image of God. The entire world is a revelation of God; every creature, 'In its own way is the embodiment of a divine thought.' General revelation permeates nature and human history unfolding through historical process. It appeals primarily to the intellect but cannot itself produce saving knowledge or personal faith. E. P. Heideman finds Bavinck's position dangerously close to the Greek concept of the hule yet consistently maintaining that reason is not independent of revelation without going so far to say, as Emil Brunner, that reason is co-worker with revelation. Bavinck warns everywhere that without a strong view of revelation rooted in sola scriptura the alternatives will lean toward autonomy and run a course into deism and pantheism. Assuming as much dissolves religious knowledge into unconscious impressions of the divine or else casts faith into the mold of the enlightenment as a logical assent to the historical fact of scripture. For Bavinck this is disaster: dogmatic truth not aiming at the knowability of God loses its character, its certainty, and the intimate link between externum and internum in the personal activity of the Holy Spirit." (Joel Heflin, Sin, the Menace to Certainty, ETS, Nov. 2009. Italics Original).

Living Today in Light of the Future Resurrection of the Body and the Renewal of Creation

This is the sermon that I was supposed to speak on at church today. I prepared the content for the whole of yesterday, and as I was practicing reading it aloud in front of my wife, I realized how bad my stuttering was and that I may not actually be called to the ministry of a verbal presentation of the Word of God. Gifts determine calling and I simply do not have the gift of speech facility. I backed out of the speaking engagement.


Title: Living Today in Light of the Future Resurrection of the Body and the Renewal of Creation

Purpose: To lay out Scripture's teaching on this aspect of the redemption of Christ wherein the physicality of man and the rest of creation is not maintained as it is or utterly destroyed in the glorious future but renewed, and how this drives present-age obedience.

Text: "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good..." (Gen. 1:31); "And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God..." (Job 19:26); 1 Cor. 15:35-58.

Introduction:

I come before you today, brothers and sisters in Christ, in much fear and trembling (And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God — 1 Cor. 2:1-5). But I direct you not to the weakness and frailty of my stuttering tongue but to the message of hope that God has for us today, a message of bodily and physical redemption purchased for us by the person and work of our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, and that in this hope we may live lives of grateful obedience at the present time.

I. Physical Creation is Good

The first thing that must be said is that the material, the physical, the tangible, that which is apprehended by the senses is not intrinsically evil. The idea of atoms, molecules, and physical substance was God's. He created the universe as physical, and after being done with His masterful work unanimously declared it as good. The notion that only the spiritual, or the immaterial, is of inherent goodness does not arise from the teaching of Scripture but from pagan, Gnostic philosophy (Which the Apostle Paul in v.36 of our main text emphatically considers as foolish, i.e., not in accord with godly knowledge and wisdom). This is why Gnosticism cannot accept that Christ, as God, willingly took on the physical form of a human being. But then we know that Scripture explicitly teaches that Christ did indeed become a man, with all the physical limitations that humanity imposes, and therefore implicitly reaffirmed the goodness of physical creation.

Christ, by the power of His providential Word, sustains the universe as it is now, carrying its existence on to the time when it will be purged with fire and reformed into its intended glorious state, still retaining its substance but different in form. Indeed, as John 3:16 states, God so loved the world, He so prizes His creation, that through Christ, the way was made for the entire cosmos—heaven, earth, and humans—to be  freed from the curse and tyranny of sin ("The world according to it [Scripture], consists of heaven and earth; humans consist of soul and body; and the kingdom of God, accordingly, has a hidden spiritual dimension and an external, visible side" — Herman Bavinck, 'The Last Things', 158).

II. God Has No Plan B

We have established the goodness of the physical universe as created by God; now, it must be noted that even though Adam's sin ushered the universe into chaos, evil, and death, God never changed His mind about displaying the splendor and majesty of His attributes through a physical universe.

At the present age, there is death, and death runs its course in every aspect of creation. Stars lose energy and die out, entire continents are wiped out by quakes and flooding, crops and vegetation are decimated by climate change and various pestilences, many animal species become extinct, livestock die from the plague, and humans kill savagely and are themselves killed either by each other or by disease. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, "but in the world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes."

As universal as death is, it will not have the last laugh. How can it when God desires the praises of His glory to ring forth from physical human beings living in a physical earth? Though in Adam most of us must still taste death, for we are still clothed with a body cursed by sin, we are nevertheless assured of greater things since we are not merely in Adam, with respect to the flesh, but ultimately we are in Christ where our lives are hidden. Through His life, death, and resurrection, death has no hold on those who have put their faith in Him. His own resurrection from the dead guarantees that everyone united to Him by the Spirit will be resurrected (It is fascinating to note how God Himself, in poetic metaphor, displays this victory of life over death in the natural processes of the created order: a seed dies and out comes a tree, carbon is subjected to extreme heat and pressure over a long period of time and out comes the hardest substance on earth—the diamond, etc).

When will this resurrection take place? The resurrection of the elect, wherein they will be given imperishable, spiritual, and glorious bodies, will occur at the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. In this climactic event, those who have been dead in Christ, whose souls have been in heaven with Him, shall have their previous bodies raised in a glorious state and given back to them, and those still alive shall be transformed "in the twinkling of an eye" into the same type of bodies as the former. Individuality, identity, character, and personality will not be altered. The Warren I am now will be the same Warren I will be then—minus sin and death!

Along with the redemption of men's bodies, heaven and earth shall also be renewed. Fire will purify the earth from all remnants of sin and death and God will establish the new heaven and the new earth where God and man shall dwell together (As opposed to 2 aberrant views: a. ) the present state shall be retained and b.) total destruction paving the way for a new creation). Herman Bavinck states in "The Last Things", p. 160, that "The substance [of the city of God] is present in this creation. Just as the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, as carbon is converted into diamond, as the grain of wheat, upon dying in the ground, produces other grains of wheat, as all of nature revives in the spring and dresses up in celebrative clothing, as the believing community is formed out of Adam's fallen race, as the resurrection body is raised from the body that is dead and buried in the earth, so, too, by the re-creating power of Christ, the new heaven and the new earth will one day emerge from the fire-purged elements of this world, radiant in enduring glory and forever set free from the bondage of decay."

It must be noted that when Paul refers to our glorified bodies as "spiritual" and that "flesh and blood" cannot inherit the kingdom of God, he is not denying the physicality of these bodies. What he is doing is drawing a contrast between the present age, in-Adam, corruptible, sin-tainted, "natural" physical body and the future age, in Christ, indwelt by the Spirit, incorruptible, "spiritual" physical body.

III. Pilgrim Life Now, Glorious Life Later

Paul grounds the meaning, weight, and significance of the Christian life in the present age, with its labors, countless woes and persecutions, on the future glory to be revealed. He admonishes us to live pilgrim lives in consideration of the ff:

A. We Are in Christ, Not in Adam

Though we are still encumbered by our Adamic nature (indwelling sin), our lives are now "hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). The spiritual blessings of Christ are now ours to enjoy and we must live in them as we await the physical resurrection, i.e., "holiness (Rev. 3:4,5; 7:14; 19:8; 21:27); salvation (Rom. 13:11; 1 Thess. 5:9; Heb. 1:14; 5:9); glory (Luke 24:36; Rom. 2:10; 8:18, 21); adoption (Rom. 8:23); eternal life (Matt. 19:16, 29, etc.); the vision of and conformity to God and Christ (Matt.5:18; John 17:24; Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 13:12; 2 Cor. 3:18; Phil. 3:21; 1 John 3:2; Rev. 22:4); fellowship with, and the service and praise of, God and Christ (John 17:24; 2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23; Rev. 4:10; 5:9, 13; 7:10, 15; 21:3; 22:3, etc.)" — Herman Bavinck, 'The Last Things', 161. These blessings were purchased for us by Christ on account of His having obeyed the Law perfectly and by virtue of His having died on the cross for the guilt of our own Law-breaking. The merits of Christ's work are imputed to us in faith through the work of the Holy Spirit whom He has given us as a pledge that we shall indeed share in His resurrection and glory.

B. Our Citizenship Is in Heaven

The saints of all ages have always held to the conviction that the world in the present age is not their home. Abraham looked to the eternal city of God as his final destination. Such a consideration gave him a loose hold on the prosperity and security that he would be leaving behind as he obeyed the command of God to leave his present homeland for a strange, distant country. Paul himself says, "But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself" (Phil. 3:20-21).

As citizens of heaven, worldly allurements should not have us bound. We must not seek the things that the world seeks, but must set our hearts and hopes on Christ and the future physical kingdom that He will be establishing. Do we love our careers more than Christ and the future physical kingdom? Our cars? Our homes? Even our spouses and children? Do we jealously guard the keeping of the Sabbath against all worldly enticements to our time, knowing that in the Sabbath we have the foretaste of the future eternal rest?

C. We Must Stand Firm in What We Are Now and What We Shall Become

To stand firm in the truth of our possession of Christ's spiritual benefits now and the truth of our future possessing of physical glory is to look to Christ in faith, and "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Rom. 10:17). If we are to stand firm, we must then be fully immersed in the Word of God, for as we get to know the promises of God in Christ as revealed in His Word, hope and gratitude are formed—"we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience"  (Rom. 8:23-25).

VoV: Paradoxes

O Changeless God,

   Under the conviction of thy Spirit I learn that
   the more I do, the worse I am,
   the more I know, the less I know,
   the more holiness I have, the more sinful I am,
   the more I love, the more there is to love.
     O wretched man that I am!
O Lord,
   I have a wild heart,
     and cannot stand before thee;
I am like a bird before a man.
How little I love thy truth and ways!
I neglect prayer,
   by thinking I have prayed enough and earnestly,
   by knowing thou hast saved my soul.
Of all hypocrites, grant that I may not be
   an evangelical hypocrite,
   who sins more safely because grace abounds,
   who tells his lusts that Christ's blood
     cleanseth them,
   who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell,
     for he is saved,
   who loves evangelical preaching, churches,
     Christians, but lives unholily.
My mind is a bucket without a bottom,
   with no spiritual understanding,
   no desire for the Lord's Day,
   ever learning but never reaching the truth,
   always at the gospel-well but never holding water.
My conscience is without conviction or contrition,
   with nothing to repent of.
My will is without power of decision or resolution.
My heart is without affection, and full of leaks.
My memory has no retention,
   so I forget easily the lessons learned,
   and thy truths seep away.
Give me a broken heart that yet carries home
   the water of grace.

— The Valley of Vision, Edited by Arthur Bennett (Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1975).