CQOD: 02/18/07 -- Dodd : Paul's meaning for freedom (IV)

Christian Quotation of the Day

February 18, 2007Meditation:
    I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
    -- Philippians 4:13 (ESV)

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Quotation:
    Continued from yesterday:
    This is Paul’s meaning. The state of slavery described in Romans 7 is a slavery to wrong desires; not merely to “flesh” in the abstract, as implying our material nature and environment, but to the “mind of the flesh”—the lower nature and environment made a part of one’s conscious self. What the Law could not do, God has done by the gift of the Spirit of Christ: He has given the victory to the higher self. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (II Cor. 3:17) “The Law of the Spirit—the law of a life in communion with Christ Jesus—has made me free from the law of sin and death.” (Rom. 8:2) Whereas life was a hopeless struggle, it now becomes a struggle in which the handicap is removed, and victory already secured in principle, because God has come into the life. The Law was external; it was the taskmaster set over against the troubled and fettered will of man. The Spirit is within, the mind of the Spirit is the mind of the man himself, and from within works out a growing perfection of life which satisfies the real longing of the soul. In the full sense freedom is still an object of hope; but the liberty already attained makes possible the building up of a Christian morality.
    ... C. Harold Dodd (1884-1973), The Meaning of Paul for Today [1920]

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Quiet time reflection:
    Spirit of God, rest on me.

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CQOD: 02/17/07 -- Dodd: Paul's meaning for freedom (III)

Christian Quotation of the Day

February 17, 2007

Feast of Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda, Martyr, 1977

Meditation:
    For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.
    -- Romans 7:5-6 (ESV)

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Quotation:
    Continued from yesterday:
    He, then, whose action is governed by mere desire is not free to attain the satisfaction which alone gives meaning to that desire. There is no breaking through this law of our being. Every attempt to do so proves itself in experience to be futile. Hence we are in a more helpless state of bondage than that which materialistic determinism holds; for the tyrant is established within our own consciousness. One way, and one way only, out of this bondage remains. If we can discover how to make our own immediate desire, and the act of will springing out of it, accord with the supreme law of our being, then to “do as we like” will no longer be to run our heads against the stone wall of necessity which shuts us out from the heaven of satisfaction. For we shall only “like” doing what we “ought.” This introduces a new sense of the word “freedom.” It does not now mean freedom from restrains to follow our desires, but freedom from the tyranny of futile desires to follow what is really good. (Continued tomorrow)
    ... C. Harold Dodd (1884-1973), The Meaning of Paul for Today [1920]

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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I praise You for my deliverance.

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See Believer's Desktop Companion 2007
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CQOD: 02/16/07 -- Dodd: Paul's meaning for freedom (II)

Christian Quotation of the Day

February 16, 2007Meditation:
    Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
    -- 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV)

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Quotation:
    Continued from yesterday:
    The result of all this is that the Christian is a free man. It is here to be observed that the term “freedom” is ambiguous in common usage. It is sometimes used to imply that a man can do just as he likes, undetermined by any external force. To this the determinist replies that as a matter of fact this freedom is so limited by the laws which condition man’s empirical existence as to be illusory. The rejoinder from the advocates of free will is that no external force can determine a man’s moral conduct (and with mere automatism we are not concerned), unless it is presented in consciousness, and that in being so presented it becomes a desire, a temptation, or a motive. In suffering himself to be determined by these, the man is not submitting to external control, but to something which he has already made a part of himself, for good or ill. When, however, we have said that, we are faced with a further problem. Not all that is desired is desirable, and in being moved by my immediate desire I may be balking myself of that ultimate satisfaction which is the real object of all effort. If that is so, then to “do as I like” may well be no freedom at all. There is a law of our being which forbids satisfaction to be found along that line, as it is written, “He gave them their desire, and sent leanness into their souls.” (Ps. 106:15) (Continued tomorrow)
    ... C. Harold Dodd (1884-1973), The Meaning of Paul for Today [1920]

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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may I know the freedom that is in Christ.

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See Believer's Desktop Companion 2007
    http://www.cqod.com/cqoddtcb.html

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CQOD Compilation Copyright 2007, Robert McAnally Adams, Curator
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CQOD: 02/15/07 -- Dodd: Paul's meaning for freedom (I)

Christian Quotation of the Day

February 15, 2007

Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730

Meditation:
    For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
    -- Ephesians 2:10 (ESV)

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Quotation:
    The indwelling of Christ’s Spirit means not only moral discernment but moral power. Paul’s count against the Law is that it was impotent through the flesh. Against this impotence Paul sets the ethical competence of the Spirit. “I can do anything in Him who makes me strong,” (Phil. 4:13) he exclaims. For his friends in Asia he prays “that God may grant you, according to the wealth of His splendor, to be made strong with power through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through your trust in Him.” (Eph. 3:16-17) This is the antithesis of the dismal picture presented in Romans 7, and it comes, just as evidently as that, out of experience. Indeed, we may say that the thing above all which distinguished the early Christian community from its environment was the moral competence of its members. In order to maintain this we need not idealize unduly the early Christians. There were sins and scandals at Corinth and Ephesus, but it was impossible to miss the note of genuine power of renewal and recuperation—the power of the simple person progressively to approximate to his moral ideals in spite of failures. The very fact that the term “Spirit” is used points to a sense of something essentially “supernatural” in such ethical attainments. For the primitive Christians the Spirit was manifested in what they regarded as miraculous. Paul does not whittle away the miraculous sense when he transfers it to the moral sphere. He concentrates attention on the moral miracle as something more wonderful far than any “speaking with tongues.” So fully convinced is he of the new and miraculous nature of this moral power that he can regard the Christian as a “new creation.” (II Cor. 5:17) This is not the old person at all: it is a “new man,” “created in Christ Jesus for good deeds.” (Eph. 2:10) (Continued tomorrow)
    ... C. Harold Dodd (1884-1973), The Meaning of Paul for Today [1920]

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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, spread Your word through my world in power.

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See Believer's Desktop Companion 2007
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CQOD: 02/14/07 -- Osler: God right in front of us

Christian Quotation of the Day

February 14, 2007

Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885
Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269

Meditation:
    Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
    -- Ephesians 5:6 (ESV)

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Quotation:
    Look heavenward, if you wish, but never to the horizon; that way danger lies. Truth is not there, happiness is not there, certainty is not there, but the falsehoods, the frauds, the quackeries, the ignes fatui (false beacons) which have deceived each generation all beckon from the horizon and lure the men not content to look for the truth and happiness that tumble out at their feet.
    ... William Osler (1849-1919), A Way of Life [1937]

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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I reach out and You are there.

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See Believer's Desktop Companion 2007
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CQOD Compilation Copyright 2007, Robert McAnally Adams, Curator
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CQOD: 02/13/07 -- Barclay: where heaven is

Christian Quotation of the Day

February 13, 2007Meditation:
    And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
    -- John 14:3 (ESV)

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Quotation:
    For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be for ever with Him. When we love anyone with our whole hearts, life begins when we are with that person; it is only in their company that we are really and truly alive. It is so with Christ. In this world our contact with Him is shadowy, for we can only see through a glass darkly. It is spasmodic, for we are poor creatures and cannot live always on the heights. But the best definition of it is to say that heaven is that state where we will always be with Jesus, and where nothing will separate us from Him any more.
    ... William Barclay (1907-1978), The Gospel of John [1975] (Vol. 2)

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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have shown me Your Way.

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See Believer's Desktop Companion 2007
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CQOD: 02/12/07 -- Newton: Thy will

Christian Quotation of the Day

February 12, 2007Meditation:
    And he said, "Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."
    -- Mark 14:36 (ESV)

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Quotation:
    “What Thou wilt, when Thou wilt, how Thou wilt.” I had rather speak these three sentences from my heart in my mother tongue than be master of all the languages in Europe.
    ... John Newton (1725-1807)

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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, place Your will before mine in my heart.

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See Believer's Desktop Companion 2007
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CQOD: 02/11/07 -- Teresa: prayer

Christian Quotation of the Day

February 11, 2007Meditation:
    And when he rose from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping for sorrow, and he said to them, "Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation."
    -- Luke 22:45-46 (ESV)

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Quotation:
    We must not content ourselves with liberty and consolation and gust in prayer. We must come out from prayer the most rapturous and sweet, only to do harder and ever harder works for God and our neighbors. Otherwise the prayer is not good, and the gusts are not from God.
    ... Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You strengthen me in prayer.

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See Believer's Desktop Companion 2007
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CQOD Compilation Copyright 2007, Robert McAnally Adams, Curator
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