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I could also say the above in a present ongoing sense, “My heart, being made for a great God, has become a great wreck, and is being redeemed through unending great grace by a good and great God!” However you or I say it, what I am expressing is a Kingdom principle, wherein Paul says, “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” and where Jesus says, “He who is forgiven much loves much,” and where I say, “O my God, I am a great wreck, and how great your grace is to me!” I realize that my saying all this may sound quite negative, but what is driving my expression is my ongoing awareness of how deep our hearts are, much deeper than we commonly imagine, and how this indicates something of the magnitude and glory for which we were created. Certainly we all have suffered unimaginable loss, a loss in which we all are complicit, and yet, in Christ all loss is more than gained.

This may all seem quite bleak, but actually it is the well spring of hope. Why? Because the very reality that is a sign of judgment is also a sign of grace. On the Cross God allowed himself to be broken by our brokenness, and judged for our rebellion, so that from within He could right us with Him. In this way the Cross is a double paradox for it is a sign of sovereign vulnerability and gracious judgment, for God made himself vulnerable, so that He could be crushed by our iniquities and bear the punishment that makes us whole.

In chapter 7, St. Paul says, “The law is spiritual.” What does that mean? If the law were physical, then it could be satisfied by works, but since it is spiritual, no one can satisfy it unless everything he does springs from the depths of the heart. But no one can give such a heart except the Spirit of God, who makes the person be like the law, so that he actually conceives a heartfelt longing for the law and henceforward does everything, not through fear or coercion, but from a free heart. Such a law is spiritual since it can only be loved and fulfilled by such a heart and such a spirit. If the Spirit is not in the heart, then there remain sin, aversion and enmity against the law, which in itself is good, just and holy.

As I was reading the above selection from Luther, I was struck by Luther’s statement about the kind of heart which the Law requires if one’s deeds are to be acceptable to God. About this heart Luther states, “no one can give such a heart except the Spirit of God.” In processing this it occurred to me that when one lives independent of the Spirit such a one must become a law unto himself. Certainly this becoming a law unto oneself will be profoundly shaped by culture, but nonetheless, apart from the Spirit one falls into radical autonomy (self naming, self law-making), which is opposed to God, for He alone is the author of all things, who established the law of all things. In hearing this, I imagine it will be tempting for religious types, such as myself, to concur and to therefore think that our business as humans is to bring our being into conformity with God’s law. This would be wrong. Why? Because it would still be the product of our autonomy, even if it is an autonomy directed toward compliance with God’s laws. We, in-and-of ourselves can not bring about the kind of conformity God desires.

The thing is, God never intended humanity to live independent of his Spirit; we were always meant to have our hearts in the hands of the Spirit, so that by the Spirit’s intimate influence we would, as a matter of course, be shaped more and more into God’s likeness. God constituted us to be precisely that kind of creature that at root functioned through the movement of the Spirit. It is this reality, the move of the Spirit in the depths of our being, that we lost in the Fall, and it is this reality that we recover through faith, and are immersed into by baptism. In this light, it could be said that Christians are not called to live in conformity to the Law, but rather are called to live out the reality of their baptism, which is to say that they are called to live by faith, which is to further say that Christians are called to trust the Spirit to work out the life of Christ in them, a life of which the Law is a mere shadow.

Jesus once said that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him, and yet I know there are Christians who treat the Scriptures as if they have all authority. Certainly the Scriptures are authoritative, but it seems to me they are sacramentally authoritative, in that they are the divinely created channel to communicate the life and authority of Jesus. The problem, however, is that the Scriptures are often treated as having innate authority, an authority that can be then mediated by those who have some kind of familiarity or mastery of the text. This is a problem because the picture of authority in Scripture itself is not primarily a matter of cognitive mastery, but of spiritual development, a development that comes from wrestling with and becoming intimate with God. I imagine that this issue is connected to Paul’s distinction between the Spirit and the letter, wherein the former gives life and the latter brings death. Having acknowledged this, however, I am concerned about the consequences of placing too great a distance between the written Word and the Spirit of God, as this would quickly lead to gross subjectivity, innovation, and error, all of which are forms of death.

Along with the relationship between the letter and the living Word is the matter of how we relate to and draw upon the Scriptures when formulating doctrine, and constructing visions for spiritual growth and Christian living. In opening this inquiry, I spoke of biblical reductionism, by which I refer to the conviction that Christians should not be involved in spiritual practices that are not explicit in or clearly endorsed by Scripture. But this attitude raises questions regarding the nature of Christian freedom, as well as questions about the parameters and purpose of Scripture. For example, are the Scriptures supposed to be an exhaustive compendium for how one ought to live, or is it a foundational document that provides a basic framework and set of dynamic presuppositions that we then have to work out in the context of our individual and collective Christian lives as we engage new issues and areas of inquiry? I will be honest, and say that I tend toward the latter, but I see problems here as well. However, I won’t attempt to articulate these problems, as what I have said thus far is enough to provide the groundwork for processing my question.

So, again, I pose my question. What is the distinction between having an appropriate respect for God’s written Word, and being a bibliolater?

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I got this quote from Donald Bloesch’s Theological Notebook. What I like about it is that it provides a profoundly Gospel understanding of sin, which is to say that it defines sin with respect to an immanently personal God, as opposed to a distant lawgiver.

Love.
Death,
Emptiness:
Trauma,
Then Lama

After this I read a brief blurb where the lady who wrote this almost Zen poem explains that she was traumatized by the death of her parents, and then set free from the trauma when a Buddhist Lama told her that she is not her trauma. Upon reading these words my heart pops with peace, and I start thinking, “Lord? Is this you??” And something like the following comes to mind, “You are not your sin. You are not your brokenness.”

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By the way my six words…

Passionately embraced by nail scarred hands

God is unimaginably gracious.