This Much We Can Agree On

main image

The Church can be neither red nor blue. Nor are bishops political commentators. And fixing America’s immigration system is a complicated question, which I hope we can get back to, someday, in a bipartisan way.

Still, it is good to state some simple moral truths that ought to be self-evident to all, whatever one’s politics. Increasing or prolonging the suffering of children for the sake of political leverage is wrong. When local residents of both parties want to give children in detention and distress diapers, soap, and toothpaste, the correct response is ‘yes, thanks.’ Contra Stephen Miller, brutality is not a policy.Should the above not seem clear, I would worry over the morally corrosive effect on us.

Often Scripture exhorts us to care for the sojourner; we are also to pray for all, including the enemy (per Jesus) and Caesar (per Paul). Practical local efforts like those of Gateway of Grace are to be commended. We should also pray for the President, the parties, the Congress, those who work at the border, and the refugees, that we all might be preserved by God’s unmerited grace, and that we might live in this harsh time according to the ‘angels of our better nature.’

 
Peace, GRS

 

The Human as Justified: "At Once Justified and a Sinner"

main image

We have been describing what we know of ourselves from the Word of God, and how that puts into focus the knowledge we have of ourselves on our own account. Being creatures, being sinful, being individuals yet corporate: these do not go away once we are redeemed. You might say that we have layers, one upon the other, or that we are the sum of our collective story: created, falled, redeemed, hopeful.  All of these together describe us, who stand in the midst of salvation history at once decisively directed by Christ and yet still in motion.  As a result, a single adjective will not do to define us. Rather we need a way of speaking that captures how we are yet a work-in-progress in God’s hands, and yet how our future has been settled, not by our own doing, but by that of God-in-Christ. We need a way of talking then which is dynamic, which indicates this motion, which is ‘dialectical’, that is, which includes a human ‘no’ and a more important divine ‘yes’ all at once. For so we are.

Leaning on the terminology of St. Paul, and in particular his emphasis on the contrast between our efforts to determine and even save ourselves (works) and God’s action on our behalf in Christ (grace), the key term here is justification. We might define it as being put right by God.  We are already set right, before and outside of anything we do, by Christ. But we are not yet a finished product. We are still growing into what we are already declared by the merciful divine word to be. Put it this way - looked at on our own, we remain flawed, but looked at from the God’s eye view, we are already what we are declared to be, and what we shall be, on the last day, standing before Him.  The classic expression of this is from Martin Luther, that we are simul justus et peccator, at once justified and a sinner. In contrast to medieval ways of thinking, where justification was something we reached only at the end, after a lifetime of striving and uncertainty, this more radical claim of the Gospel, is that we now are the recipients of that final verdict, ‘justified!’ by virtue of what Christ has done.

To review, one result of being justified is that we can in a sense say that faith is certain. This does not mean that we are now without times of weakness and doubt. But it does mean that who we are is determined by the One declaring us to be set right. He is trustworthy, even if our own sense of ourselves isn’t.  Here we may cite St. Thomas Aquinas, who says that if we look to the One in whom we hope, we are ‘certain’, since He is perfectly trustworthy, though we are not so if we look to ourselves who are doing the looking and hoping. Here too we need to say two things at once to capture our situation ‘on the road,’ in via.

Google Wikipedia’s ‘Theology of Martin Luther’

 

12...51525354555657585960 ... 132133

Complete the Race (II Timothy 4:17)

At the end of our vacation we find ourselves in Chicago for its Marathon weekend (the fastest, I have read this morning, perhaps because it is cool and relatively level). Marathons offer many good things. You can see world-class athletes from places like Ethiopia and Kenya. There is a feel of fiesta with signs by family members, getups by some for-fun runners, and food for sale.

But as I looked out my hotel window at 7:30 a.m., I watched the race of competitors who have lost legs or their use. Wheeling vehicles by arm for 26 miles means serious fitness and determination.

Those competitors were to me, this morning, a symbol of the Church too. For each is wounded. The larger family cheers them on. Each by grace has risen up to run the race. Ahead is the goal, the prize, the welcome home. We find the companionship of Jesus the Lord, there, and along the route too.

Amen.

GRS