Phillips: words to pass the defenses

Saturday, January 15, 2022
Meditation:
    Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
    —Colossians 3:16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The preacher and the writer may seem to have an... easy task. At first sight, it may seem that they have only to proclaim and declare; but in fact, if their words are to enter men’s hearts and bear fruit, they must be the right words, shaped cunningly to pass men’s defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. This means, in practice, turning a face of flint toward the easy cliché, the well-worn religious cant and phraseology, dear, no doubt, to the faithful, but utterly meaningless to those outside the fold. It means learning how people are thinking and how they are feeling; it means learning with patience, imagination and ingenuity the way to pierce apathy or blank lack of understanding. I sometimes wonder what hours of prayer and thought lie behind the apparently simple and spontaneous parables of the Gospel.
    ... J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), Making Men Whole, London: Highway Press, 1952, p. 44 (see the book)
    See also Col. 3:16-17; Matt. 13:10-13; Mark 4:33-34; Luke 12:11-12
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant the word of truth to the shepherds of Your people. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Ellul: the persistence of election

Friday, January 14, 2022
    Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915
Meditation:
    The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
    —Jonah 1:1-2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    In reality (spiritual reality) it is much too simple to think that God offers his grace to man and man accepts or refuses. When God has graciously chosen a man his grace continues even though the man does not do what God has decided. On the other hand, this persistence of election... does not entail a negation of man’s will. God pursues this man, conducts him through his whole life, in order to bring about the consent of this man’s will to what God has decided.
    ... Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), The Judgment of Jonah, tr. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1971, p. 24 (see the book)
    See also Jonah 1:1-2; Isa. 45:4; John 15:16; 17:6; Acts 9:15-16; Eph. 1:4-5; 2:10
Quiet time reflection:
    Thank you, Lord, that You pursued me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Hilary: divinity and eternity

Thursday, January 13, 2022
    Feast of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, Teacher, 367
    Commemoration of Kentigern (Mungo), Missionary Bishop in Strathclyde & Cumbria, 603
Meditation:
    Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going.”
    —John 8:14 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We proclaim ... that the Father is eternal and the Son eternal, and demonstrate that the Son is God of all with an absolute, not a limited, preexistence; that these bold assaults of... blasphemous logic—He was born out of nothing, and He was not before He was born—are powerless against Him; that His eternity is consistent with sonship, and His sonship with eternity; that there was in Him no unique exemption from birth but a birth from everlasting, for, while birth implies a Father, Divinity is inseparable from eternity.
    ... St. Hilary (ca. 300-367?), On the Trinity, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, v. IX, Philip Schaff & Henry Wace, ed., New York: Christian Literature Company, 1902, p. 50 (see the book)
    See also John 8:14; 1:1,32-33; 8:58; 13:3; 1 Cor. 8:5-6; Phil. 2:5-7; Col. 2:2-3; 1 Pet. 3:18-19
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are eternal. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Trueblood: conveying the knowledge

Wednesday, January 12, 2022
    Feast of Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167
    Commemoration of Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, Scholar, 689
Meditation:
Posterity will serve him;
    future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness
    to a people yet unborn—
    for he has done it.
    —Psalm 22:30-31 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The religion of a hundred years ago or of two thousand years ago does not seem quaint, for men can speak to each other about their knowledge of God, unhindered by the barriers of centuries.
    ... Elton Trueblood (1900-1994), The Knowledge of God, Harper & Brothers, 1939, p. 107 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 22:30-31; John 8:58; Rom. 1:17; 5:19; Heb. 11:4
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You planned our salvation from the foundation of the world. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Denney: the authority of Jesus

Tuesday, January 11, 2022
    Commemoration of Mary Slessor, Missionary in West Africa, 1915
Meditation:
    Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...” Then he said to the paralytic, “Get up, take your mat and go home.”
    —Matthew 9:4-6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The displacement of ‘the Son of Man’ by ‘man’ [according to the recommendation of textual critics] has only a superficial plausibility in logic. The healing of the palsy by Jesus does not prove that man generically can forgive sins. The man who does the visible miracle in confirmation of his claim to do the invisible is to be taken at his word: but it is no more true that man generically can speak the word of forgiveness with divine effect than that man generically can effectively bid the lame walk. The only question raised, and the only question settled, is one concerning the power claimed by Jesus; and it is settled, not by bringing Jesus under the general category of humanity, but by an act of Jesus Himself which was as impossible for men in general as the forgiveness of sins. It is not any man, but only He who has the right to think of Himself as the Son of Man, who can forgive sins upon the earth.
    ... James Denney (1856-1917), Jesus and the Gospel: Christianity justified in the mind of Christ, New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908, p. 275 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 9:2-8; 11:5,21; Mark 2:1-12
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, to You all power is given. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Campbell: drawn to Jesus

Monday, January 10, 2022
Meditation:
    When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”
    —Matthew 27:54 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Our Master was his own Gospel. Men came to Him one by one attracted by the winsomeness of Jesus. He spake, of course, as never man spake, and He was as never man was, and, as has been well said by one who has a right to speak upon such subjects, he reversed our ordinary experience about our human ideals. The nearer we draw to an individual, as a rule the more plainly we see the flaws and the crevices in his character; but the nearer men drew to Jesus the more His faultless excellence declared itself; they were drawn to Him, they hardly knew why, with a reverence and a devotion unexampled in the history of the world.
    ... R. J. Campbell (1867-1956), City Temple Sermons, New York: F. H. Revell company, 1903, p.195 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 26:6-7; 27:54; Mark 12:14; John 1:14; 3:2
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your character is incomparable. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Augustine: living by the Spirit

Sunday, January 9, 2022
Meditation:
    ... those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
    —Romans 8:14 (NIV)
Quotation:
    But when does flesh receive the bread which He calls His flesh? The faithful know and receive the Body of Christ if they labor to be the body of Christ; and they become the body of Christ if they study to live by the Spirit of Christ: for that which lives by the Spirit of Christ is the body of Christ.
    ... St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John, vol. i, Marcus Dods, ed., as vol. x of The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Edinbugh: T & T Clark, 1873, tract. XXVI.13, p. 376 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 8:14; John 6:41-59; Rom. 8:29-30; 1 Cor. 12:12; 2 Tim. 2:15
Quiet time reflection:
    Spirit of God, lead me! CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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