When are the times I reflect on my sin the most? It is when I sin the "biggest". "Big" sins are defined by our culture in light of the bible and often (but not always) have more manifest consequences. It is a shame that it takes a "big" sin for me to wonder just how sinful I truly am. When I stop to consider how many times a day a thought or reaction or spoken word was simply dismissed because it was a "small" sin, I shudder to think how truly and utterly evil I am in my flesh.
I do not fully comprehend how desperate I am apart from Christ and His Holy Spirit. I do know partially how sinful I am but I do not fully know:
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face (I Corinthians 13:12).
For God to fully reveal my sin to me would be my utter destruction. Even now thinking about my sin quickens my heart and weighs down my soul. It is not the sin itself that destroys me, it is the holiness of God; for God to fully reveal our sin it necessarily follows that God must fully reveal himself.
Think about it: our sin is only counted as sin because it is measured against the standard of God himself (Psalm 51:4). Look at Isaiah's reaction to seeing God:
I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up: and the train of his robe filled the temple...And I said "Woe is me! For I am lost... (Isaiah 6:1 & 5)
Isaiah is terrified at the sight of God, and this is just a vision! It was a preview to the grand show in heaven! Consider Job's reaction:
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:5-6)
At the instant God is revealed our sin will be truly revealed and our weightless sin will crush us under the gravity of God's holiness.
But it won't crush us. At the moment God is revealed, our sin is revealed, and Christ on the cross is revealed. It is in that moment that we will simultaneously look with terror upon our sin and feel utter joy at the sight of the cross. We are not crushed by our sin because Christ was crushed by our sin. We do not fully understand the brevity of our sin and we do not fully understand the brevity of the cross.
We can only look in a mirror dimly but then...then we will see face to face.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
A Nursing Mother
A tear hangs suspended from my wife's nose, hesitating like a young adolescent waiting to jump off a rock form into the water below. The tear splashes gently on my son's cheek but he is oblivious to the wetness on his face as he nurses peacefully at my wife's breast. Her toes clench and unclench and she grits her teeth to hold back moans of pain. The pain escapes her lips and my heart breaks as soon as the sound hits my ears.
Who knew that the first few weeks of nursing were so painful? The sensitivity of my wife's breasts combined with the surprisingly powerful sucking ability of our newborn son is an equation for pain. She dreads feeding him because she knows the pain she will have to face and yet, motivated by guilt or love or both, she persists in feeding him at the breast.
Why do I share this with you? Watching my wife go through this pain and longsuffering to benefit our son has given me a more vivid picture of a I Thessalonians passage:
But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.
-I Thessalonians 2:7-8
This passage is about discipleship, and how Paul and Silvanus and Timothy (and possibly others?) discipled the Thessalonians and worked hard among them, so much so that God had produced abundant fruit from the Thessalonian church (I Thess. 1:7-10).
When I first read this verse I pictured a mother staring down at her child with loving affection as he nurses quietly at her teet. She smiles as she rocks back and forth and admires her beautiful child. I think Paul wants us to picture this too, look at the opening line to verse 8: ...being affectionately desirous of you... Discipleship should be affectionate. We should have a loving desire to see others grow in their faith and we should love young (not necessarily agewise but faithwise) believers as sons and daughters (e.g. Paul often referred to Timothy as his son in the faith).
Yet there is a second part of verse 8: ...we were ready to not only share with you the gospel of God but also our own selves... Which God has shown me through the perseverance of my wife.
For those of you who have recently experienced having a newborn, you know the amount of time and effort it takes to nurse your child. Our doctors and consultants recommend feeding him every two hours for the first few weeks! What a sacrifice of the body it is for the wife; what a time and energy consuming effort it is! The sleepless nights, the pain, the emotional turmoil. The mother has to eat at least 500 calories more per day to sustain her child via breast milk production. Oh how mothers must "share [their] own selves" to raise their children!
Paul uses the simile of a nursing mother for good reason. He wants us to understand discipleship as a twofold thing:
1) It is of loving affection
2) This loving affection drives us to spend ourselves for the benefit of the young believer
I want to focus on number two because I lack(ed) understanding on this end. As I reflect on my experience with younger believers (though I myself am still immature in many doctrines, still allow me to continue!), I remember the moments of grit teeth and wincing as they said some outlandish thing about God, often times heretical, yet it was simply because they did not know or understand: no one had fed them spiritual milk. I reflect on my own experience as a prodigal son, why had a I wandered from God? In part I myself was to blame because I would yolk myself to unbelievers and surrounded myself with unbelieving friends so that I myself could be enticed and even entice my friends into sinful endeavors and yet the other part of my wandering was a lack of discipleship; no one took me under their wing to guide me and teach. If there is no one to guide and teach the young believer, she simply will not grow. Let me put it this way, you cannot put a bottle in a one-week old baby's hands and leave her to eat for herself; she does not even know how to hold the bottle, she can't even use her hands yet! You must feed her the milk yourself for her to grow and mature. Eventually she will grasp the bottle or breast in her hands and soon (real soon if you talk to empty nest parents) she no longer needs milk but will eat solid food!
We must bear patiently through the pain of the first few weeks (or more likely months or years) of discipleship and we must be willing to put in the time if we want to see these young believers grow! Sometimes the believer will be ravenous and will devour the milk at the breast, other times the believer will be slow and sluggish, falling asleep and not getting what he needs; we must gently prod him and wake him and urge him to nurse all the while having much forbearance through the pain of their complacency, ignorance, and misunderstanding.
Let us share our bodies and expend ourselves with young believers, in loving affection, and let our hope and goal be this:
And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.
-I Thessalonians 2:13
It is the milk that does the work, the mother simply delivers it. So it is God's word "which is at work" in the believer, it simply is us who are delivering it to them. This way we can have hope through the frustrating times because it is God who ultimately makes the child grow, and that is why "we also thank God constantly" when we see a young believer weaned from spiritual milk and able to find spiritual food for himself!
Who knew that the first few weeks of nursing were so painful? The sensitivity of my wife's breasts combined with the surprisingly powerful sucking ability of our newborn son is an equation for pain. She dreads feeding him because she knows the pain she will have to face and yet, motivated by guilt or love or both, she persists in feeding him at the breast.
Why do I share this with you? Watching my wife go through this pain and longsuffering to benefit our son has given me a more vivid picture of a I Thessalonians passage:
But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.
-I Thessalonians 2:7-8
This passage is about discipleship, and how Paul and Silvanus and Timothy (and possibly others?) discipled the Thessalonians and worked hard among them, so much so that God had produced abundant fruit from the Thessalonian church (I Thess. 1:7-10).
When I first read this verse I pictured a mother staring down at her child with loving affection as he nurses quietly at her teet. She smiles as she rocks back and forth and admires her beautiful child. I think Paul wants us to picture this too, look at the opening line to verse 8: ...being affectionately desirous of you... Discipleship should be affectionate. We should have a loving desire to see others grow in their faith and we should love young (not necessarily agewise but faithwise) believers as sons and daughters (e.g. Paul often referred to Timothy as his son in the faith).
Yet there is a second part of verse 8: ...we were ready to not only share with you the gospel of God but also our own selves... Which God has shown me through the perseverance of my wife.
For those of you who have recently experienced having a newborn, you know the amount of time and effort it takes to nurse your child. Our doctors and consultants recommend feeding him every two hours for the first few weeks! What a sacrifice of the body it is for the wife; what a time and energy consuming effort it is! The sleepless nights, the pain, the emotional turmoil. The mother has to eat at least 500 calories more per day to sustain her child via breast milk production. Oh how mothers must "share [their] own selves" to raise their children!
Paul uses the simile of a nursing mother for good reason. He wants us to understand discipleship as a twofold thing:
1) It is of loving affection
2) This loving affection drives us to spend ourselves for the benefit of the young believer
I want to focus on number two because I lack(ed) understanding on this end. As I reflect on my experience with younger believers (though I myself am still immature in many doctrines, still allow me to continue!), I remember the moments of grit teeth and wincing as they said some outlandish thing about God, often times heretical, yet it was simply because they did not know or understand: no one had fed them spiritual milk. I reflect on my own experience as a prodigal son, why had a I wandered from God? In part I myself was to blame because I would yolk myself to unbelievers and surrounded myself with unbelieving friends so that I myself could be enticed and even entice my friends into sinful endeavors and yet the other part of my wandering was a lack of discipleship; no one took me under their wing to guide me and teach. If there is no one to guide and teach the young believer, she simply will not grow. Let me put it this way, you cannot put a bottle in a one-week old baby's hands and leave her to eat for herself; she does not even know how to hold the bottle, she can't even use her hands yet! You must feed her the milk yourself for her to grow and mature. Eventually she will grasp the bottle or breast in her hands and soon (real soon if you talk to empty nest parents) she no longer needs milk but will eat solid food!
We must bear patiently through the pain of the first few weeks (or more likely months or years) of discipleship and we must be willing to put in the time if we want to see these young believers grow! Sometimes the believer will be ravenous and will devour the milk at the breast, other times the believer will be slow and sluggish, falling asleep and not getting what he needs; we must gently prod him and wake him and urge him to nurse all the while having much forbearance through the pain of their complacency, ignorance, and misunderstanding.
Let us share our bodies and expend ourselves with young believers, in loving affection, and let our hope and goal be this:
And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.
-I Thessalonians 2:13
It is the milk that does the work, the mother simply delivers it. So it is God's word "which is at work" in the believer, it simply is us who are delivering it to them. This way we can have hope through the frustrating times because it is God who ultimately makes the child grow, and that is why "we also thank God constantly" when we see a young believer weaned from spiritual milk and able to find spiritual food for himself!
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