Steve Jobs Was Both Right and Wrong

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it." (Steve Jobs, Commencement Address at Stanford University [June 12, 2005])

The statement above by the late, great Steve Jobs is both true and false.

It is true in the sense that physical death was never part of man's telos as indicated by the fact that the everlasting life that is the heritage of the saints is a physical life to be lived out in a physical New Earth, and arguably, the damned shall be tormented in hell in a state of physicality as well.

But it is also false in the sense intimated by Paul in the following verses:

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better (Philippians 1:21-23).

Steve Jobs had the best medical treatment that money could buy, and yet here we are now mourning his passing.

The message that is crystal clear is that not a single one of us holds our lives in our own hands, in an ultimate sense, regardless of the size of our pocketbooks. This is cause for fear and consternation on the part of the rebel, but comfort and solace for the humble in Christ:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. (Matthew 10:28-31).

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).

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).

The Weekly Antidote to Worldliness

Those who have a low view of the Sabbath, who deem it as unbinding, forfeit on a key means to overcoming worldliness.

"The Lord's day with its worship directs our attention to God and eternity. How we need this. We need to get away from the toil and dayliness of living and be reminded that a better day is coming. This not only fortifies us in suffering and persecution, but also arms us against worldliness. Spiritually, we need adjustments, and if we cling to our worldly tasks and recreations on the Lord's day, we will not be realigned with God's perspective, and the world will tighten its grip on us."

- Joseph A. Pipa, The Lord's Day, 'The Work of the Sabbath', ch. 10, p. 168

Papa, Our Long Talks Are Not Over

I am writing this as one who has just recently lost a dearly beloved father-in-law. Well, to be more precise, what I lost was the ability to interact with him through the agency of our physical bodies. Human relationships this side of glory are founded on laws of physics that must not be transgressed in order for life to ensue, for communication to take place, and hence for relationships to flourish. Death is the stake driven through the heart of the physicality of humanity, the distortion that mars God's ultimate design for man to be embodied, and the fruition of sin. For where there is sin, there then must be the tears of years of shared humanity abruptly torn asunder, bringing with it the grief and convulsion of soul that marked even the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. John 11:33—35).

Me and my family are allowed to mourn for papa, for he was God's gift to us—being instrumental in the bringing forth of my wife into the world and raising her up in a manner that has benefited me as her husband and our kids as their mother—with his felicities transcending kinfolk, spilling over to the many people he has touched through the preaching of the Word, his social advocacies, and his long, drawn-out story-telling (he was a voracious reader and had an opinion on almost everything under the sun), which have all now been temporarily suspended.

But then our lament must be short-lived. As children of God, redeemed by the invaluable covenant blood of Christ, death is now but the doorway into an eternity of seeing the Lord face to face—but it is not to be romanticized for it is the curse of God upon sin, and the curse which He Himself bore in behalf of those whom He has chosen from among the lot of mankind even before the dawn of time. The nature of death is a dichotomy: it is the harbinger of doom for those who have shunned the Lamb that was slain even before the foundation of the world, and the herald of delights for those who through the Spirit have put their faith, through grace, in Christ—and it is in the latter consideration that we find the consolation that cuts short our sadness.

I may not have often appreciated papa's penchant for verbosity, but I know that in the future age of glory, I shall again converse with papa, with a perfection of dialogue that must necessarily mark the absence of sin, in the flesh. We love you, papa!

"When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

'Death is swallowed up in victory.'
'O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?'" (1 Cor. 15:54—55)

The Entailments of Everlasting Life

"We must believe in Jesus and receive Him and turn from our sin and obey Him and humble ourselves like little children and love Him more than we love our family, our possessions, or our own life. This is what it means to be converted to Christ. This alone is the way of everlasting life."

- John Piper, Desiring God, ch. 2, pp. 69 - 70