Whale: the inevitable

Saturday, February 17, 2018
    Feast of Janani Luwum, Archbishop of Uganda, Martyr, 1977
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
    —John 3:13-15 (NIV)
Quotation:
    As a sinful man looking at death and beyond it, into the eternal world, I need salvation. Nothing else will meet my case. There is something genuinely at stake in every man’s life, the climax whereof is death. Dying is inevitable, but arriving at the destination God offers to me is not inevitable. It is not impossible to go out of the way and fail to arrive. Christian doctrine has always urged that life eternal is something which may conceivably be missed. It is possible to neglect this great salvation and to lose it eternally, even though no man may say that anything is impossible with God or that his grace may ultimately be defeated.
    I know it is no longer fashionable to talk about Hell, one good reason for this being that to make religion into a prudential insurance policy is to degrade it. The Faith is not a fire-escape. [Continued tomorrow]
    ... John S. Whale (1896-1997), Christian Doctrine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966, p. 186 (see the book)
    See also John 3:13-15; Job 14:2; Ps. 39:4-6; Matt. 19:25-26; Mark 10:27; Luke 18:27; Jas. 4:14
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I pray that You take me at last to be with You forever. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Law: death to the passions

Friday, February 16, 2018
Meditation:
    Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.
    —Galatians 5:24 (NIV)
Quotation:
    There is nothing safe in religion, but in such a course of behaviour, as leaves nothing for corrupt nature to feed, or live upon; which can only then be done, when every degree of perfection we aim at, is a degree of death to the passions of the natural man.
    ... William Law (1686-1761), Christian Regeneration [1739], in Works of Rev. William Law, v. V, London: G. Moreton, 1893, p. 169 (see the book)
    See also Gal. 5:24; Ps. 42:1-2; Matt. 10:37; 24:12; Mark 12:30; Luke 14:26; Rom. 6:6; 8:13; Gal. 6:14; Col. 3:1-2; 1 Pet. 2:11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me a heart that seeks Your glory in self-control. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Bonar: Faith is rest

Thursday, February 15, 2018
    Commemoration of Thomas Bray, Priest, Founder of SPCK, 1730
Meditation:
    We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.
    —Hebrews 6:19-20 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Faith is rest, not toil. It is the giving up all the former weary efforts to do or feel something good, in order to induce God to love and pardon; and the calm reception of the truth so long rejected, that God is not waiting for any such inducements, but loves and pardons of His own goodwill, and is showing that goodwill to any sinner who will come to Him on such a footing, casting away his own poor performances or goodnesses, and relying implicitly upon the free love of Him who so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.
    ... Horatius Bonar (1808-1889), The Everlasting Righteousness, London: James Nisbet and Co., 1873, p. 116 (see the book)
    See also Heb. 6:19-20; Ps. 42:11; 62:5-6; John 3:16-17; Rom. 3:25-26; 4:16; 5:5-6; Col. 1:5-6
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, my rest is complete in You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Carlyle: holiness vs. sin

Wednesday, February 14, 2018
    Ash Wednesday
    Feast of Cyril & Methodius, Missionaries to the Slavs, 869 & 885
    Commemoration of Valentine, Martyr at Rome, c.269
Meditation:
    Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
    —Isaiah 60:1-3 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The Christian must be consumed with the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin.
    ... Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
    See also Isa. 60:1-3; Deut. 4:24; Isa. 6:3; Matt. 23:33; Heb. 12:29
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, take my sin away, that I may see Your holiness. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Calvin: the proper defense of righteousness

Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Meditation:
    Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.
    —2 John 9 (NIV)
Quotation:
    To pious and peaceable persons [Augustine] gives this advice: that they should correct in mercy whatever they can; that what they cannot, they should patiently bear, and affectionately lament, till God either reform and correct it, or, at the harvest, root up the tares and sift out the chaff. All pious persons should study to fortify themselves with these counsels, lest, while they consider themselves as valiant and strenuous defenders of righteousness, they depart from the kingdom of heaven, which is the only kingdom of righteousness. For since it is the will of God that the communion of his Church should be maintained in this external society, those who, from an aversion to wicked men, destroy the token of that society, enter on a course in which they are in great danger of falling from the communion of saints.
    ... John Calvin (1509-1564), The Institutes of the Christian Religion, v. II, tr. John Allen, Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath-School Work, 1921, IV.i.16, p. 238 (see the book)
    See also 2 John 1:9; Matt. 13:24-30; 25:32; Rom. 12:18; 1 Cor. 4:5; 12:18-20,25; Phil. 2:1-2
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, drive schism from my heart, so that I know only Christ. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Lewis: why did he bother?

Monday, February 12, 2018
Meditation:
    So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
    —Matthew 7:12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Is not the popular idea of Christianity simply this, that Jesus Christ was a great moral teacher and that, if only we took his advice, we might be able to establish a better social order and avoid another war? Now, mind you, that is quite true; but it tells you much less than the whole truth about Christianity and it has no practical importance at all.
    It is quite true that, if we took Christ’s advice, we should soon be living in a happier world. You need not even go as far as Christ. If we did all that... Confucius told us, we should get on a great deal better than we do. And so what?... If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years. A bit more makes no difference.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Mere Christianity, New York: MacMillan, 1952, reprint, HarperCollins, 2001, p. 155-156 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 7:12; 21:11-13; 21:46; Mark 12:29-34; Luke 7:16-17; John 4:19; 6:14-15; Acts 7:51-53; Gal. 5:13-14; Jas. 2:10-13
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, fill my speech with the good news. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Rushdoony: two practical atheists

Sunday, February 11, 2018
Meditation:
    [Moses:] See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
    —Deuteronomy 30:15-18 (NIV)
Quotation:
    For man to turn his back on God is to turn towards death; it involves ultimately the renunciation of every aspect of life...
    To deny God, man must ultimately deny that there is any law or reality. The full implications of this were seen in the [19th] century by two profound thinkers, one a Christian and the other a non-Christian. [Friedrich W.] Nietzsche recognized fully that every atheist is an unwilling believer to the extent that he has any element of justice or order in his life, to the very extent that he is even alive and enjoys life. In his earlier writings, Nietzsche first attempted the creation of another set of standards and values, affirming life for a time, until he concluded that he could not affirm life itself nor give it any meaning, any value, apart from God. Thus Nietzsche’s ultimate counsel was suicide; only then, [he asserted] can we truly deny God: and in his own life, this brilliant thinker, one of the clearest in his description of modern Christianity and the contemporary issue, did in effect commit a kind of psychic suicide.
    The same concept was powerfully developed by [Fyodor M.] Dostoyevski, particularly in The Possessed, or, more literally, the Demon-Possessed. Kirilov, a thoroughly Nietzschean character, is very much concerned with denying God, asserting that he himself is God and that man does not need God. But at every point, Kirilov finds that no standard or structure in reality can be affirmed without ultimately asserting God, that no value can be asserted without being ultimately derived from the Triune God. As a result, Kirilov committed suicide as the only apparently practical way of denying God and affirming himself—for to be alive was to affirm this ontological deity in some fashion.
    ... Rousas J. Rushdoony (1916-2001), Intellectual Schizophrenia, Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1961, p. 25-26 (see the book)
    See also Deut. 30:15-19; Pr. 1:32; Mark 16:16; John 3:16,19-21; 2 Tim. 4:4; Heb. 3:12; 1 John 5:11-12
Quiet time reflection:
    Thank You, Lord, for Your saving word, that keeps me from destruction. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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