Bonhoeffer: cheap grace

Saturday, May 22, 2021
Meditation:
    For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
    —Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    After all, we were told, our salvation had already been accomplished by the grace of God... It was unkind to speak to men like this, for such a cheap offer could only leave them bewildered and tempt them from the way to which they had been called by Christ. Having laid hold on cheap grace, they were barred forever from the knowledge of costly grace. Deceived and weakened, men felt that they were strong now that they were in possession of this cheap grace—whereas they had in fact lost the power to live the life of discipleship and obedience. The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works.
    ... Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), The Cost of Discipleship, Simon and Schuster, 1959, p. 55 (see the book)
    See also Eph. 2:10; Matt. 5:16; John 14:5; 2 Thess. 3:13; 1 John 5:3-4; 2 John 1:6
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, take my life, for I cannot keep it through my own strength. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Lewis: the moral test

Friday, May 21, 2021
    Feast of Commemoration of Helena, Protector of the Faith, 330
Meditation:
    For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
    —2 Timothy 1:7 (NIV)
Quotation:
    This, indeed, is probably one of [God’s] motives for creating a dangerous world—a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees... that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Screwtape Letters, Macmillan, 1944, p. 148 (see the book)
    See also 2 Tim. 1:7; Matt. 26:69-75; Acts 4:19-20; 5:29; Heb. 13:5-6; 1 John 4:16-18
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me courage that I may not fail You in the test. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Pascal: Why do the nations rage?

Thursday, May 20, 2021
Meditation:
    [The LORD to Abram:] “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
    —Genesis 12:2-3 (NIV)
Quotation:
    All that is great on earth is united together; the learned, the wise, the kings. The first write; the second condemn; the last kill. And notwithstanding all these oppositions, these [disciples], simple and weak, resist all these powers, subdue even these kings, these learned men and these sages, and remove idolatry from all the earth. And all this is done by the power which had foretold it.
    ... Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensées (Thoughts) [1660], P.F. Collier & Son, 1910, #783, p. 277 (see the book)
    See also Gen. 12:2-3; Ps. 2:1-3; 146:3; John 16:33; Acts 4:24-30
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have fulfilled Your promises. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Luther: taking the Scriptures literally

Wednesday, May 19, 2021
    Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 988
Meditation:
    For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.
    —Acts 20:27 (NIV)
Quotation:
    There is, however, very much to be said for my opinion; in the first place this—that no violence ought to be done to the words of God, neither by man, nor by angel, but that, as far as possible, they ought to be kept to their simplest meaning, and not to be taken, unless the circumstances manifestly compel us to do so, out of their grammatical and proper signification, that we may not give our adversaries any opportunity of evading the teaching of the whole Scriptures.
    ... Martin Luther (1483-1546), The Babylonian Captivity of the Church [1520], 2.25 (see the book)
    See also Acts 20:27; Mark 13:31; Phil. 2:14-16; 2 Tim. 3:16-17; Rev. 22:18-19
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may Your word come to Your people as You intended. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Jones: God's heart on the cross

Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Meditation:
    But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
    —Galatians 6:14 (KJV)
Quotation:
    God, to redeem us at the deepest portion of our nature—the urge to love and be loved—must reveal His nature in an incredible and impossible way. He must reveal it at a cross. At the cross God wrapped his heart in flesh and blood and let it be nailed to the cross for our redemption.
    ... E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973), Conversion, New York: Abingdon Press, 1959, p. 69 (see the book)
    See also Gal. 6:14; Rom. 1:16-17; 1 Cor. 1:22-24; 2:2; Phil. 3:10-11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant me a heart like Yours. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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MacDonald: the most perfect faith

Monday, May 17, 2021
Meditation:
    If you make the Most High your dwelling—even the LORD, who is my refuge—then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.
    —Psalm 91:9-10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The perfection of His relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defects, all our evils; for our childhood is born of His fatherhood. That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, “Thou art my refuge, because Thou art my home.”
    Such a faith will not lead to presumption. The man who can pray such a prayer will know better than another, that God is not mocked; that He is not a man that He should repent; that tears and entreaties will not work on Him to the breach of one of His laws; that for God to give a man because he asked for it that which was not in harmony with His laws of truth and right, would be to damn him—to cast him into the outer darkness.
    ... George MacDonald (1824-1905), “The Child in the Midst”, in Unspoken Sermons [First Series], London: A. Strahan, 1867, p. 24-25 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 91:9-10; Num. 23:19; Mark 9:36-37; Gal. 6:7
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have taught me to desire Your will. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Traherne: no reconciliation with sin

Sunday, May 16, 2021
    Commemoration of Caroline Chisholm, Social Reformer, 1877
Meditation:
    For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
    —Colossians 1:19-20 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Love can forbear, and Love can forgive, ... but Love can never be reconciled to an unlovely object... He can never therefore be reconciled to your sin, because sin itself is incapable of being altered; but He may be reconciled to your person, because that may be restored.
    ... Thomas Traherne (1637?-1674), Centuries of Meditations, edited and published by Bertram Dobell, in London, 1908, p. 102-103 (see the book)
    See also Col. 1:19-20; Rom. 3:22-24; 2 Cor. 5:18-19; 1 John 2:1-2; 4:10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, drive sin away from me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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