Saturday, February 18, 2017

Dodd: Paul's meaning for freedom (IV)

Saturday, February 18, 2017
Meditation:
    I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
    —Philippians 4:13 (ESV)
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 a 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, London: Swarthmore, 1920, reprint, Fount Paperbacks, 1978, p. 136-137 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 8:2; 2 Cor. 3:17; Phil. 4:13
Quiet time reflection:
    Spirit of God, rest on me.
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Friday, February 17, 2017

Dodd: Paul's meaning for freedom (III)

Friday, February 17, 2017
    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)
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 hopeless 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, London: Swarthmore, 1920, reprint, Fount Paperbacks, 1978, p. 135-136 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 7:5-6; Isa. 48:16-17; Rom. 8:13-14; Gal. 5:16,22-25; Eph. 5:8-9
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I praise You for my deliverance.
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Thursday, February 16, 2017

Dodd: Paul's meaning for freedom (II)

Thursday, February 16, 2017
Meditation:
    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)
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, London: Swarthmore, 1920, reprint, Fount Paperbacks, 1978, p. 135 (see the book)
    See also 2 Cor. 5:17; Ps. 106:15; Isa. 43:18-19; John 8:32-36; Rom. 8:9; Gal. 5:1,13
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may I know the freedom that is in Christ.
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Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Dodd: Paul's meaning for freedom (I)

Wednesday, February 15, 2017
    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)
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 splendour, 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 attainment. 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, London: Swarthmore, 1920, reprint, Fount Paperbacks, 1978, p. 134-135 (see the book)
    See also Eph. 2:10; 1 Cor. 8:7-13; 2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 2:10; 3:16-17; Phil. 4:13
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, spread Your word through my world in power.
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Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Brent: intercession

Tuesday, February 14, 2017
    Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885
    Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269
Meditation:
    Brothers, pray for us.
    —1 Thessalonians 5:25 (NIV)
Quotation:
    It makes a great difference in our feelings towards others if their needs and their joys are on our lips in prayer; as also it makes a vast difference in their feelings towards us if they know that we are in the habit of praying for them. There is no chasm in society that cannot be firmly and permanently bridged by intercession; there is no feud or dislike that cannot be healed by the same exercise of love.
    ... Charles H. Brent (1862-1929), With God in the World [1899], London: Longmans Green, 1914, p. 83 (see the book)
    See also 1 Thess. 5:25; Rom. 15:30; Eph. 6:18-20; 1 Tim. 2:1-2; 5:5; Heb. 13:18-19; Jas. 5:16
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, fill my life with prayer and love for Your people.
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Monday, February 13, 2017

Tauler: the only safety

Monday, February 13, 2017
Meditation:
In you, O Lord, do I take refuge;
    let me never be put to shame!
In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me;
    incline your ear to me, and save me!
Be to me a rock of refuge,
    to which I may continually come;
you have given the command to save me,
    for you are my rock and my fortress.
    —Psalm 71:1-3 (ESV)
Quotation:
    If thou desirest to be safe, turn at once in thy emptiness to God. If thou hast been inconsistent, how canst thou better become consistent again than in God only? How canst thou better escape death than by the true, real Life, which is God Himself?
    ... Johannes Tauler (ca. 1300-1361), The Inner Way, Sermon XVI (see the book)
    See also Ps. 71:1-3; 31:2-3; 91:1-2; Hos. 13:14; John 1:4; 1 Cor. 10:13; 15:55
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are my Rock.
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Sunday, February 12, 2017

Newton: Thy will

Sunday, February 12, 2017
Meditation:
    And [Jesus] 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)
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), in a letter, 1779, The Works of the Rev. John Newton, v. II, New York: Williams and Whiting, 1810, p. 251 (see the book)
    See also Mark 14:36; 3:35; John 7:17; Rom. 8:27; 12:2; Gal. 4:4-5
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, place Your will before mine in my heart.
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