The Story of God: Union With Christ
Reflections
I’m always in danger of losing my grip on reality. The reality, of course, is that God is sovereign and Christ is savior. The reality is that prayer is my mother tongue and the Eucharist my basic food. The reality is that baptism, not Myers-Briggs, defines who I am.
Very often when I leave a place of worship, the first impression I have of the so-called “outside world” is how small it is–how puny its politics, paltry its appetites, squint-eyed its interests. I have just spent an hour or so with friends reorienting myself in the realities of the world–the huge sweep of salvation and the minute particularities of holiness–and I blink my eyes in disbelief that so many are willing to live in such reduced and cramped conditions. But after a few hours or days, I find myself getting used to it and going along with its assumptions, since most of the politicians and journalists, artists and entertainers, stockbrokers and shoppers seem to assume that it’s the real world. And then some pastor or priest calls me back to reality with “Let us worship God,” and I get it straight again, see it whole.— Eugene Peterson
- Christians being old and the same is not good; it’s no good to have no growth
- David Martyn Lloyd-Jones – Benchmark of true Gospel Preaching: There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the gospel of salvation than this: that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel.
- Sin is not just bad behavior, not just at the superfical level
- It is the unwillingness to grow and to be more Christ-like
- It is over-desire even when desire is a good thing, when it is becoming an idol
- Justification – by God alone
- Sanctification – partner with God, for our process to grow, to be more Christ-like
- Progress is to be more and more dying to sin, more and more living in Christ
