#377 Children's Blessing

We dedicated our children at church this past Sunday and this is the blessing we put together for them.  It is a paraphrase of several passages, including Ephesians 3, Colossians 1, Psalm 56, and Psalm 23.

Gavin and Elena,

We bow our knees before the God from whom every family in heaven and earth comes, that out of his riches, he would give you strength in the power of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may know how wide, how long, how high, and how deep is the love of Christ Jesus which surpasses everything we know, that you may be filled up with all the fullness of God.

We always give thanks to God for you because of the hope laid up for you in heaven and we ask that you may be filled up with him.  May you walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please him in all respects, bearing fruit like trees in all the good works that you do.

As Jesus became one of us, our highest hope for you is that you become one with the lowly, the lonely, and those who feel left-out.

When you are afraid, may you trust in God and not be afraid.   He puts your tears in his container. He records them in his book.  May you know that he is on your side.

The Lord is your shepherd, you don’t need anything else.  May he make you lie down in green pastures and lead you beside still waters.  He will restore your soul and lead you down the right path.  Even when you’re in the dark, don’t be afraid.  God is with you.  He will comfort you.  May God’s goodness and love chase you every day of your life.

#376 The Moral Challenge of the Law

Here are three mutually exclusive ways to look at the difficult moral challenges presented by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

Starting in the 4th century, Ambrosiaster reads it the way that comes naturally when you first encounter the text at face value, that is that Jesus took the moral standards in the law of Moses (don't murder, don't commit adultery) and raised the bar (don't hate, don't lust):

"[The law and the gospel]: both have a single author. Yet in the time of Christ it was necessary to add something, namely, that we should love our enemies as well as our neighbors, whence love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13:10), so that righteousness is to love one's neighbor, but overflowing and perfect righteousness is to love one's enemies."
-- From his commentary on Romans

But in the 16th century, John Calvin, commenting on Matthew 5:20 and the surrounding verses, seems to directly address Ambrosiaster's comments and says that interpretation is all wrong:

"It has been a prevailing opinion, that the beginning of righteousness was laid down in the ancient law, but that the perfection of it is pointed out in the Gospel. But nothing was farther from the design of Christ, than to alter or innovate any thing in the commandments of the law. There God has once fixed the rule of life which he will never retract. But as the law had been corrupted by false expositions, and turned to a profane meaning, Christ vindicates it against such corruptions, and points out its true meaning, from which the Jews had departed... That Christ, on the other hand, intended to make no correction in the precepts of the law, is very clear from other passages: for to those who desire to enter into life by their good works, he gives no other injunction, than to, keep the commandments of the law (Matthew 19:17). From no other source do the Apostles, as well as Christ himself, draw the rules for a devout and holy life. It is doing a grievous injury to God, the author of the Law, to imagine that the eyes, and hands, and feet alone, are trained by it to a hypocritical appearance of good works, and that it is only in the Gospel that we are taught to love God with the heart. Away, then, with that error, 'The deficiencies of the law are here supplied by Christ.'"
-- From his commentary on Matthew

Then in the 21st century, along comes what I take to be the standard kerygma of most reformed-leaning churches I have attended over the past ten years.  John MacArthur, contradicting both Ambrosiaster and Calvin, provides a good example:

"The purpose of God's law was to show you that you had to have more righteousness than you could come up with on your own; that's the point of it, the purpose.  Galatians 3:24 articulates it with this statement: 'Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.'  The law was the schoolmaster, or the disciplinarian, to bring us to Christ.  The law was the perfect standard which would show us our sin; that was its purpose.  The law was to show us that we couldn't do it on our own, that even the best - the scribes and the Pharisees, with all of their religiosity, trappings, ceremony, and ritual - could not gain the righteousness required to enter the Kingdom.  In other words, if you want it simply, the law was given with the purpose of frustrating us, showing us our inadequacy.  The law wasn't to tell us how good we are, but to show us how rotten we are."

-- From a sermon delivered on March 18, 1979 entitled Christ and the Law, Part 4.

For what it's worth, Ambrosiaster rings true and Calvin hits the nail on the head.  But I've heard countless sermons more along MacArthur's line where morality/virtue/ethics/good works/merit/law/what-have-you are viewed as nothing more than a foil, a matador's cape, to show you how depraved you are.  These preachers have a strong, sincere belief that the greatest threat their congregants face is the chance that they might slip into thinking they can earn their salvation through works and it is their top priority to disabuse them of this notion.  Why else do I hear this sermon Sunday after Sunday?  Why else do the words separated by slashes above feel like such dirty words when spoken among Protestants?  Why else do accountability partners feel the need to remind me that I can't earn my salvation when I share about a moral hill I am trying to climb? I say they are preaching to straw men.  And I say if God is waving a matador's cape when he urges obedience, then he is waving it at a straw bull.  And while MacArthur and the countless other preachers I've heard in person over the years will help someone who grew up in a very legalistic environment struggling with an existential crisis, they do so by stretching the text to fit into their own preconceived gospel story.