Augustine on Preaching

Peter Brown wrote an excellent biography of Augustine named, Augustine of Hippo. Augustine was a bishop: an elder of the town of Hippo who was in charge of the local church and some priests in the surrounding area. He had some very wise insights about the Bible, preaching and training leaders.

The first quote is about Augustine's desire to immediately feed his flock from the bounty of the Word of God. The rest of the quotes are self-explanatory.

Augustine was certain of his basic role. It was not to stir up emotion: it was to distribute food. The Scriptural idea of 'breaking bread', of 'feeding the multitude', by expounding the Bible, an idea already rich with complex associations, is central to Augustine's view of himself as a preacher. (p. 249)

As he told Jerome, he could never be a 'disinterested' Biblical scholar: "If I do gain any stock of knowledge (in the Scriptures), I pay it out immediately to the people of God' (p. 249)

Nothing can be better, nothing more sweet for me than to gaze upon the Divine treasure without noise and hustle: this is what is sweet and good. To have to preach, to inveigh, to admonish, to edify, to feel responsible for every one of you--this is a great burden, a heavy weight upon me, a hard labour. (Augustine as quoted by Brown, pp. 252-253)

Augustine never faced the problem of replacing classical education throughout the Roman world. He merely wished to create for the devotees of true 'Wisdom' an oasis of literary culture, that was distinguished by being unselfconscious, unacademic, uncompetitve, and devoted to the understanding of the Bible alone. (p. 264)

Ephesians, Prayer and the Cosmic Battle

We were reading Ephesians 6:10-20 in the Wednesday Morning Men's Group. I noticed in Ephesians that prayer was central to our struggle against the cosmic powers. In Ephesians, prayer did not have a metaphor of a piece of armor tied to it. Paul wrote that prayer was our primary weapon and our main defense in our struggle. In the following passage, I put in bold the part of the passage that dealt with prayer.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. (Ephesians 6:10-20, ESV)

In Peter T. O'Brien's commentary: The Letter to the Ephesians, he states the following about the importance of prayer in our struggle with the present darkness.

Prayer is given greater prominence within the context of the battle with the powers of darkness than any of the weapons listed in vv. 14-17... Paul wants his readers to understand that prayer is 'foundational for the deployment of all the other weapons', and is therefore crucial if they are to stand firm in their spiritual struggle. He has already shown his concern for them by praying that they might know the greatness of God's power (1:15-23), and be strengthened by it so as to grasp the dimensions of Christ's love for them and be filled with all the fulness of God (3:14-21). The apostle wants them to realize that a life of dependence on God in prayer is essential if they are to engage successfully in their warfare with the powers of darkness. (p. 483-484, Peter. T. O'Brien)

We are in a battle of cosmic proportions. We are commanded to pray continually. (xref. 1 Thess. 5:17). To pray continually, we need to keep alert as for what we need to pray. Here's O'Brien again,

Believers are to pray continually because their struggle with the powers of darkness is never ending. And their prayers are to be 'in or by the Spirit', that is, inspired and guided by the same Holy Spirit through whom they have confident access to the Father (2:18). As those who have been built into God's dwelling place in the Spirit (2:22) and who are being filled by the Spirit (5:18), they are to pray to the Father, prompted and guided by the Spirit. This is not a reference to praying in tongues, since not all christians are expected to engage in such prayer, but has to do with specific requests offered through the Spirit by every believer involved in spiritual warfare. Even when we do know what pray as we ought, the Spirit comes to our assistance and intercedes for us with unspoken groanings that are perfectly in line with the will of God (lit. 'according to God', Rom. 8:26-27). (pp. 484-485)

C. S. Lewis and Others on the Nature of Sin

Psalm 51:3-5

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Sin is described as "the plague of his own heart."

Matthew Henry comments on I Kings 8:38

Sin is the plague of our own heart; our indwelling corruptions are our spiritual diseases.

I Kings 8:38-39 NKJV

whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this temple: 39 then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and act, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart You know (for You alone know the hearts of all the sons of men),

C. S. Lewis through Screwtape, the senior demon in the Screwtape Letters, points out the effectiveness of the smaller sins.

“You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” (p. 56, Screwtape Letters)

Westminster Shorter Catechism

Q. 14. What is sin? A. Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.

Scriptural Support for the Catechism Answer:

“If anyone sins, doing any of the things that by the Lord's commandments ought not to be done, though he did not know it, then realizes his guilt, he shall bear his iniquity. (Leviticus 5:17, ESV)

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (James 4:17, ESV)

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. (1 John 3:4, ESV)

Jonathan Edwards on Sin

“Divines are generally agreed that sin radically and fundamentally consists in what is negative, or privative, having its root and foundation in a privation or want of holiness. And therefore undoubtedly, if it be so that sin does very much consist in hardness of heart, and so in the want of pious affections of heart, holiness does consist very much in those pious affections.” (Religious Affections)

A Dust-Covered Man on a Dust-Covered Horse

In the Civil War, U. S. Grant was stuck. He needed to capture Vicksburg, but he could not get through the swamp on the east side of the river. Grant made a risky move. He had his men march down river through the swamp on the western side so he could attack Vicksburg from behind. The maneuver was risky because he cut himself off from his supply line. Shelby Foote related why the men followed him with such a risky plan.

[During the Vicksburg campaign] the men knew they were cut loose from their base of supplies, but Grant himself gave them confidence. They believed Grant knew what he was doing, and one great encouragement for their believing that was that quite often on the march, whether at night or in the daytime, they’d be moving along a road or over a bridge and right beside the road would be Grant on his horse—a dust-covered man on a dust-covered horse—saying, “Move on, close up.” So they felt very much that he personally was in charge of their movement and it gave them added confidence.

This story showed Grant shepherding his men. He made sure they were going in the right direction and they were not going astray. I thought this was a vivid illustration of what an elder does for a church. Grant was covered with dust like his men. An elder should be involved with his flock and the church's daily battles. Grant had two commands. First he told them to move on so they would reach their goal. Second Grant told them to close up. This command meant close up the ranks: Stay together as a unit and don't fall behind. An elder should encourage his flock to move on toward knowing Christ, and helping others to know Christ. An elder should make sure the members of the flock should close up: shepherd the flock so no one goes astray through false teaching. The ministry of the ministers of the Word, according to Ephesians, should be maturity of the body and unity of faith. An elder should teach the Word in such a manner so the congregation can "Move on, close up." Here are some of the verses about elders preserving unity through the ministry of the word.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, (Ephesians 4:11-13, ESV)

He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. (Titus 1:9, ESV)

C. S. Lewis on Greed

In the The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace was unwillingly transported to Narnia and taken aboard a ship that was on an adventure. As this adventure progressed, Eustace went on an expedition on a mysterious island. He got lost, found a treasure, and he fell asleep on the treasure. C. S. Lewis described the following event when Eustace awoke from his charmed sleep.

He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon. (p. 75, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,)

C. S. Lewis's commentary on Ephesians 4:28.

In the passage where the New Testament says that every one must work, it gives as a reason "in order that he may have something to give to those in need." Charity--giving to the poor--is an essential part of Christian morality: in the frightening parable of the sheep and the goats it seems to be the point on which everything turns. Some people nowadays say that charity ought to be unnecessary and that instead of giving to the poor we ought to be producing a society in which there were no poor to give to. They may be quite right in saying that we ought to produce that kind of society. But if anyone thinks that, as a consequence, you can stop giving in the meantime, then he has parted company with all Christian morality. I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them. I am speaking now of "charities" in the common way. Particular cases of distress among your own relatives, friends, neighbours or employees, which God, as it were, forces upon your notice, may demand much more: even to the crippling and endangering of your own position. For many of us the great obstacle to charity lies not in our luxurious living or desire for money, but in fear--fear of insecurity. This must often be recognised as a temptation. Sometimes our pride also also hinders our charity; we are tempted to spend more that we ought on the showy forms of generosity (tipping, hospitality) and less than we ought on those who really need our help. (p. 67, Mere Christianity)

Here's the verse in Ephesians:

Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. (Ephesians 4:28, ESV)

The relationship between Greed and Pride.

That is why I say that Pride is essentially competitive in a way the other vices the other vices are not. ... Greed may drive men into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power. Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride.

Take it with money. Greed will certainly make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to point. What is it that makes a man with 10,000 pounds a year anxious to get 20,000 pounds a year? It is not the greed for more pleasure. 10,000 pounds will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride--the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) the wish for power. For, of course, power is what Pride really enjoys ... (p. 95, Mere Christianity)

C. S. Lewis ends Mere Christianity with this summary of the fundamental principle of the Christian world view.

The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.(p. 175)

C. S. Lewis on Anger

Here are some miscellaneous quotes by C. S. Lewis on Anger and Wrath.

This first quote points out the effect of our anger on others is not the measure of the impact of the unrighteous anger on our souls.

One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed at. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it. Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not. The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters.” (p. 72,Mere Christianity)

In the following quote, Lewis is trying to convince Malcolm that depersonalizing God's anger with unemotional analogies of anger (i.e. "The live wire doesn't feel angry with us, but if we blunder against it we get a shocked") doesn't really help us at all.

All the liberalising and "civilising" analogies only lead us astray. Turn God's wrath into mere enlightened disapproval, and you also turn His love into mere humanitarianism. The "consuming fire" and the "perfect beauty" both vanish. We have, instead, a judicious headmistress or a conscientious magistrate. (p. 97, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer)

C. S. Lewis commenting on James 1:20

I know that "the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God." That is not because wrath is wrath but because man is (fallen) man.(p. 97, Letters to Malcolm Chiefly on Prayer)

Here's the passage in James.

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1:19-20, ESV)

The first sonnet of the poem the Five Sonnets by C. S. Lewis. Notice the line "Anger's the anesthetic of the mind."

You think that we who do not shout and shake
Our first at God when youth or bravery die
Have colder blood or hearts less apt to ache
Than yours who rail. I know you do. Yet why?
You have what sorrow always longs to find,
Someone to blame, some enemy in chief;
Anger's the anesthetic of the mind,
It does men good, it fumes away their grief.
We feel the stroke like you; so far our fate
Is equal. After that, for us begin
Half-hopeless labours, learning not to hate,
And then to want, and then (perhaps) to win
A high, unearthly comfort, angel's food,
That seems at first mockery to flesh and blood.

C. S. Lewis (and Friend) on Sloth

This is how Dorothy L. Sayers, a contemporary and friend of C. S. Lewis, defines sloth.

It is the sin which believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing. lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for. (Dorothy L. Sayer)

In C. S. Lewis's book, The Screwtape Letters, a senior demon, Screwtape, writes a series of letters to his nephew, Wormwood. The purpose of the letters is to advise Wormwood in the finer points of temptation in order to keep his patient, John, from finishing the course as a Christian. The following passage is part of a letter where Screwtape advises Wormwood how to keep his patient from doing spiritual disciplines, especially prayer.

You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, "I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked." The Christians describe the enemy as one “without whom Nothing is strong.” And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years, not in sweet sins but in dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, .... It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.” (Letter XII, Screwtape Letters)

The following quote from C. S. Lewis's most famous sermon summarizes well the missed opportunities that we have when we give into sloth.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staqgering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." (pp. 2-3, The Weight of Glory)

C. S. Lewis on Pride

Here are some of my favorites quotes by C. S. Lewis on Pride.

According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind. (p. 109, Mere Christianity)

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of Pride towards their fellow-men
(p. 111, Mere Christianity)

Pleasure in being praised is not Pride. The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is praised by her lover, the saved soul to whom Christ says "Well done," are pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you wanted (and rightly wanted) to please. The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, "I have pleased him; all is well," to thinking, "What a fine person I must be to have done it." The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming. (p. 112, Mere Christianity)

This sin has been described by Saint Augustine as the result of Pride, of the movement whereby a creature (that is, an essentially dependent being whose principle of existence lies not in itself but in another) tries to set up on its own, to exist for itself. Such a sin requires no complex social conditions, no extended experience, no great intellectual development. From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself a self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the centre is opened to it. This sin is committed daily by young children and ignorant peasants as well as by sophisticated persons, by solitaries no less than by those who live in society: it is the fall in every individual life, and in each day of each individual life, the basic sin behind all particular sins: at this very moment you and I are either committing it, or about to commit, or repenting it.(p. 79, The Problem of Pain)

I can hardly imagine a more deadly spiritual condition than that of the man who can read that passage [Sermon on the Mount] with tranquil pleasure. (p. 182, God in the Dock)

It is Faust, not he, who really exhibits the ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self which is the mark of hell. (Preface to The Screwtape Letters)

Pride is the primary sin, so C. S. Lewis wrote a lot about Pride. The following chapters have great insights on the sin of Pride.

• Mere Christianity: Book 3: Beyond Personality: Chapter 8, "The Greatest Sin," 
• The Problem of Pain: Chapter 5, "The Fall of Man", 

C. S. Lewis (and friends) on Envy

I have a quote from The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis, but I want to set it up first with other quotes on envy and some explanation of the context of the quote in the narrative. I will then finish the blog with a cure for envy advocated by Charles Spurgeon.

Traditionally envy was regarded as the second worst and second most prevalent of the seven deadly sins. Like pride, it is a sin of the spirit, not of the flesh, and thus a “cold” and highly “respectable” sin, in contrast to the “warm” and openly “disreputable” sins of the flesh, such as gluttony. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it is the one vice that its perpetrators never enjoy and rarely confess. (The Call, Os Guinness)

"But Envy always brings the truest charge, or the charge nearest to the truth, that she can think up; it hurts more." (The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis ).

Envy enters when, seeing someone else’s happiness or success, we feel ourselves called into question. Then, out of the hurt of our wounded self-esteem, we seek to bring the other person down to our level by word or deed. They belittle us by their success, we feel; we should bring them down to their deserved level, envy helps us feel. Full-blown envy, in short, is dejection plus disparagement plus destruction. (The Call, Os Guiness)

“Envy begins by asking plausibly: ‘Why should I not enjoy what others enjoy?’ and it ends by demanding: ‘Why should others enjoy what I may not?’” (Dorothy Sayers)

The following dialog occurs in The Great Divorce. The protagonist John witnesses an exchange of a resident of heaven with her husband. The husband is visiting from hell. The wife tries to persuade him to stay and pleads with him to forget his pride and self-importance so he can then join her in heaven. At the end of the conversation, he refuses heaven and happiness, and demands that the wife leave her Joy(Christ) and follow him back to hell. She flatly refuses. The protagonist, John, asks his tour guide is it really necessary that wife should be so untouched by her husband's self-inflicted misery. The tour guide, George MacDonald, responds as follows:

Would ye rather he still had the power of tormenting her? He did it many a day and many a year in their earthy life."
"Well, no. I suppose I don't want that."
"What then?"
"I hardly know, Sir. What some people say on earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved."
"Ye see it does not."
"I feel in a way that it ought to."
"That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it."
"What?"
"The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven."
"I don't know what I want, Sir."
"Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in other the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye'll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye'll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe." (pp. 120-121)

Here is a couple notes of explanation. First, Sophistry is an argument based on cleverness and not truth. Second, "Dog in a Manger" means some one who prevents other people from getting what they want when the person can't get what he wants. The fable goes "There was a dog lying in a manger who did not eat the grain but who nevertheless prevented the horse from being able to eat anything either."

Here's a quote by Charles Spurgeon on the cure for envy. I stole it from a website listed below.

The cure for envy lies in living under a constant sense of the divine presence, worshiping God and communing with Him all the day long, however long the day may seem. True religion lifts the soul into a higher region, where the judgment becomes more clear and the desires are more elevated. The more of heaven there is in our lives, the less of earth we shall covet. The fear of God casts out envy of men. ( http://www.challies.com/personal-reflections/the-cure-for-envy)

C. S. Lewis on Lust

This is my favorite passage of C. S. Lewis on lust. The Great Divorce is written as a dream. Some of the residents of hell take a bus trip to heaven. The protagonist meets up with a guide, George MacDonald, who explains the various encounters of the residents of heaven with the tourists from hell. The residents of heaven try to convince the tourists to stay. In the following dialog, George MacDonald explains the vignette just witnessed where an angel-like being convinces a tourist to let the angel kill the tourist's pet lizard. The pet lizard is a whispering, whimpering creature that represents lust.

"Do ye understand all this, my Son"? said the Teacher.

"I don't know about all, Sir," said I. "Am I right in thinking the Lizard really turned into the Horse?

"Aye. But it was killed first. Ye'll not forget that part of the story?"

"I'll try not to, Sir. But does it mean that everything--everything--that is in us can go on to the Mountains?"

"Nothing, not even the best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains. Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a Lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed." (pp. 103-104)

The verses MacDonald is referencing is

So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:42-44, ESV)

C. S. Lewis on Gluttony

A friend at work and I were discussing the sin of gluttony and he reminded me of this passage by C. S. Lewis in the Screwtape Letters. In the book, a senior demon Screwtape was explaining to a junior demon, Wormwood, the efficacy of promoting the sin of gluttony in their clients. A fellow demon, Glubose, had Wormwood's client's mother well in hand through the sin of gluttony. This passage rang so true. I had a coworker just like this. However, we all could fall into this sin either from excess side or delicacy side.

My dear Wormwood,
The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, shows only your ignorance. One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient's mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example. She would be astonished--one day, I hope, will be--to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and smile, "Oh, please, please... all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast." You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says: "Oh, that's far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it." If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.

The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which Glubose has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life. The woman is in what may be called the "All-I-want" state of mind. All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted. But she never finds any servant or any friend who can do these simple things "properly"--because her "properly" conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatal pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past; a past described by her as the "The days when you could get good servants" but known to us as the days when her senses were more easily pleased and she had pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those of the table. Meanwhile, the daily disappointment produces daily ill temper: cooks give notice and friendships are cooled. If ever the Enemy introduces into her mind a faint suspicion that she is too interested in food, Glubose counters it by suggesting to her that she doesn't mind what she eats herself but "does like to have things nice for her boy." In fact of course, her greed has been one of the chief sources of his domestic discomfort for many years. (pp. 77-78)

Mortification of Sin

I have been reading the "Mortification of Sin" by John Owen. Owen refers to some verses over and over again. I thought it would be handy to write the verses down somewhere. After meditating on these verses, I realize that I tend to dismiss how much sin impacts my life. As I talk to fellow Christians, the battle with our own sin does not seem to concern us: Christ died for us, right? Owen points out that it is a life and death battle. As the following verses point out, God has given us the provision to fight sin through Christ living in us, but it takes a God-commanded effort on our part to win the battle.

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (Romans 8:13, ESV)

Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:13-14, ESV)

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. (2 Corinthians 7:1, ESV)

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-21, ESV)

to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:22-24, ESV)

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (Colossians 3:5, ESV)

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2:11, ESV)

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:9, ESV)

Joseph, Free Will, and God's Sovereignty

Our faith family is studying Genesis, and this week we are studying one of the more famous and clear statements of God's sovereignty in the Bible.

So Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, please.” And they came near. And he said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. (Genesis 45:4-8, ESV)

When I read this passage not only do I marvel on what a mature believer Joseph is, but several questions about free will come to mind. Did God entice Joseph's brothers to sell Joseph into slavery? Did God orchestrate the caravan of Ishmaelites's arrival to coincide with the brothers' dispute about what to do with Joseph? How did God bring this about? Could Joseph's brothers have decided otherwise? If they decided otherwise, how would God have brought Israel's family to Egypt? If the brothers acted godly or even honorably, how might their lives been better?

Of course, how we view free will and God's sovereignty affects our missionary strategy. How does a strong view of God's sovereignty in everyday events affect our evangelism? If God has chosen His elect since before the beginning of creation, why evangelize? What about the believer's free will?

J. I. Packer proposes an intellectual framework that does not answer the question, but gives us a way to approach these kind of issues in scripture. Packer proposes that the free will versus God's sovereignty issue is an antinomy. J.I. Packer's book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God is a small, but very useful book about how to view evangelism within the confines of God's Sovereignty. Packer defines antinomy as

What is an antinomy? The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines it as 'a contradiction between conclusions which seem equally logical, reasonable or necessary'. For our purposes, however, this definition is not quite accurate; the opening words should read 'an appearance of contradiction'. For the whole point of an antinomy--in theology, at any rate--is that it is not a real contradiction, though it looks like one. It is an apparent incompatibility between two apparent truths. An antinomy exists when a pair of principles stand side by side, seemingly irreconcilable, yet both undeniable. There are cogent reasons for believing each of them; each rests on clear and solid evidence; but it is a mystery to you how they can be squared with each other. You see that each can be squared with each other. You see that each must be true on its own, but you do not see how they can both be true together. Let me give an example. Modern physics faces an antinomy, in this sense, in its study of light. There is cogent evidence to show that light consists of waves, and equally cogent evidence to show that it consists of particles. It is not apparent how light can be both waves and particles, but the evidence is there, and so neither view can be ruled out in favour of the other. Neither, however, can be reduced to the other or explained in terms of the other; the two seemingly incompatible positions must be held together, and both must be treated as true. Such a necessity scandalizes our tidy minds, no doubt but there is no help for it if we are to be loyal to the facts. (pp. 18-19, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God

Just to clarify Packer's example, all subatomic particles exhibit this Wave Particle Duality. You can go to a physics lab and ask a physicist to demonstrate the Wave Particle duality. The physicists would show you particles or photons exchanging momentum. Exchanging momentum would be in our day-to-day lives billiard balls bouncing off each other on a billiard table. Subatomic particles can collide too. This same physicist would then show you experiments where subatomic particles reflect, diffract, and show interference just like a wave. Through sophisticated experiments, physicists can demonstrate that even one particle exhibits the characteristics of a wave. This is one of the basic principle of quantum mechanics and this duality is not even close to being the strangest concept that quantum theory provides us.

To use a more theological example, I would say that the Hypostatic Union (Christ is fully God and fully Man) is an another example of an antinomy. Scripture argues both that Jesus Christ is fully man and he is fully God. If you deny His humanity, you start moving into heresies like Docetism and Gnosticism. If you deny that Christ is fully God you fall into Arianism or Adoptionism or even Mormonism. We must assert both Jesus's full humanity and full divinity to understand the full truths and promises of scripture.

Packer emphasizes that an antinomy is not a figure of speech like a paradox. Jesus uses paradoxes all the time to illustrates truths about what life in the Kingdom of God is like. For example, Matthew 10:39, "Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Although at first glance it seems contradictory, we understand what the paradox means and we can explain how the saying works. It is comprehensible. However, an antinomy is impossible to understand. Both opposing concepts are completely true.

Packer then asks the question, "What should one do, then, with an antinomy?" Packer simply encourages the reader to just accept it. Other theologians like R. C. Sproul think this is a cop out. Sproul claims that we can understand how God works through man's free will. However, Packer's concept of the antinomy is a great concept to move pass some sticking points people have about God's justice. We can them move to have discussions on how God's sovereignty is a great comfort to those who wait upon the Lord.

This idea of comfort brings us back to the Joseph passage. Joseph could comfort his brothers because he trusted in God's sovereignty and forgave them. Joseph had the brothers totally at his mercy, but Joseph saw God's hand in bringing Joseph down to Egypt and saw God's hand in the maturing of his brothers. Joseph forgave them because he understood God's sovereignty. As Allen P. Ross wrote in his commentary on this passage,

Reconciliation comes through forgiveness, and forgiveness through the recognition of God's sovereignty. (p. 675, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of the Book of Genesis, Allen P. Ross)

The Ministry of the Word

Jehosaphat became a great king in Judah. He bravely removed pagan worship sites (high places and Asherim). He fortified the cities. He followed God courageously. Early in his career he organized the priests and sent them out to the cities of Judah.

And they taught in Judah, having the Book of the Law of the Lord with them. They went about through all the cities of Judah and taught among the people. (2 Chronicles 17:9, ESV)

Jehosaphat did this because it is commanded in the Law.

You are to distinguish between the holy and the common, and between the unclean and the clean, and you are to teach the people of Israel all the statutes that the Lord has spoken to them by Moses.” (Leviticus 10:10-11, ESV)

They shall teach Jacob your rules and Israel your law; they shall put incense before you and whole burnt offerings on your altar. (Deut. 33:20)

Why did God put teaching the Word of God to all His people as the primary task of the priests? Why did a godly king like Jehosaphat insisted that God's people hear God's Word? What was even more curious, why did a pagan king, Artaxerxes send Ezra, an expert on the God's Word, to Jerusalem to teach the Israelites God's Word and enforce it?

“And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God that is in your hand, appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the province Beyond the River, all such as know the laws of your God. And those who do not know them, you shall teach. Whoever will not obey the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be strictly executed on him, whether for death or for banishment or for confiscation of his goods or for imprisonment.” (Ezra 7:25-26)

I don't know Artaxerxes's motives for having the Word taught to the Israelites, but one of the reasons had to be with maintaining order and unity. If the Israelites were obeying their law, they would be good subjects. The Word brings unity to a people. Charles Hodge, the great Princeton theologian, noted in his Systematic Theology about the impact the Word of God had in world history.

The Bible ever has been and still is, a power in the world. It has determined the course of history. It has overthrown false religion wherever it is known. It is the parent of modern civilization. It is the only guarantee of social order, of virtue, and of human rights and liberty. Its effect cannot be rationally accounted for upon any other hypothesis than that it is what it claims to be, "The Word of God." (p. 89, Systematic Theology Volume 1

Jotham, a godly king of Judah, is referenced in 2 Chronicles about how the Word of God ordered his kingdom.

So Jotham became mighty, because he ordered his ways before the Lord his God. (2 Chronicles 27:6, ESV)

Jotham was a king so not only did he order his personal life; he ordered his kingdom before the ways of the Lord. God's Word has a ordering and unifying effect on God's people. In Ephesians 4, Paul wrote about how God uses God's Word to mature His people into Christ.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:11-16, ESV)

"Speaking the truth in love" does not mean giving people a painful truth in a "loving" way. Speaking the truth in love is speaking the gospel into lives because you love them. Every member of the body of Christ has the ministry of the Word. The teachers and shepherds are needed to equip us with the tools to minister the Word, but it is up to each of us to speak the Gospel in word and song to one another (Ephesians 5:19). This will protect the body of Christ in sound doctrine and unify us in love and truth to each another.