And even any good that could be thought or desired is found in this Jesus Christ alone.

For He humbled Himself to exalt us;
He made Himself a slave to set us free;
He became poor to enrich us;
He was sold to redeem us,
captive to deliver us,
condemned to absolve us;
He was made malediction for our benediction,
oblation of sins for our justice;
He was disfigured to re-figure us;

He died for our life,
in such manner that by Him harshness is softened,
wrath appeased,
darkness enlightened,
iniquity justified,
weakness is made strength,
affliction is consoled,
sin is impeached,
despite is despised,
dread is emboldened,
debt is acquitted,
labor is lightened,
sorrow turned into joy,
misfortune into fortune,
difficulty is made easy,
disorder made ordered,
division united,
ignominy is ennobled,
rebellion subjected,
threat is threatened,
ambushes are driven out,
assaults assailed,
striving is overpowered,
combat is combated,
war is warred,
vengeance is avenged,
torment tormented,
damnation damned,
abyss is thrown into the abyss,
hell is helled,
death is dead,
mortality immortality.

In short, mercy has swallowed up all misery,
and goodness all wretchedness.

For all those things which use to be the arms of the devil to combat us and the sting of death to pierce us, are turned for us into an exercise of which we can profit, so that we can boast with the apostle, saying, “O death,  where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55 NASB). From there it comes, that by such a Spirit of Christ promised to His elect, we no longer live, but Christ in us, and we are in spirit seated among the heavenlies, as the world is no longer world to us, though we have our conversation in it, but being content in all, either in countries, places, conditions, clothes, meats, and other like things. And we are comforted in tribulation, joyful in sorrow, glorious in vituperation, abounding in poverty, warmed in nakedness, patient in evil, living in death.

Finally, one extreme thing must be said. To forego self-conceit and to associate with the lowly means, in all soberness and without mincing the matter, to consider oneself the greatest of all sinners. This arouses all the resistance of the natural man, but also that of the self-confident Christian. It sounds like an exaggeration, like an untruth. Yet even Paul said of himself that he was the foremost of sinners (I Tim. 1:15); he said this specifically at the point where he was speaking of his service as an apostle. There can be no genuine acknowledgement of sin that does not lead to this extremity. If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. My sin is of necessity the worst, the most grievous, the most reprehensible. Brotherly love will find any number of extenuations for the sins of others; only for my sin is there no apology whatsoever. Therefore my sin is the worst. He who would serve his brother in the fellowship must sink all the way down to these depths of humility. How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own? Would I not be putting myself above him; could I have any hope for him? Such service would be hypocritical. “Never think that thou hast made any progress till thou look upon thyself as inferior to all” (Thomas a Kempis).

First, then, let the reader remember that the providence we mean is not one by which the Deity, sitting idly in heaven, looks on at what is taking place in the world, but one by which he, as it were, holds the helms and overrules all events. Hence his providence extends not less to the hand than to the eye. When Abraham said to his son, God will provide, (Gen. 22: 8,) he meant not merely to assert that the future event was foreknown to Gods but to resign the management of an unknown business to the will of Him whose province it is to bring perplexed and dubious matters to a happy result.

Calvin’s Institutes, Book 1, Chapter 16, Section 7:

Nothing in nature is more ordinary than that we should be nourished with bread. But the Spirit declares not only that the produce of the earth is God’s special gift, but “that man does not live by bread only,” (Deut. 8: 3,) because it is not mere fulness that nourishes him but the secret blessing of God. And hence, on the other hand, he threatens to take away “the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water,” (Is. 3: 1.) Indeed, there could be no serious meaning in our prayer for daily bread, if God did not with paternal hand supply us with food. Accordingly, to convince the faithful that God, in feeding them, fulfils the office of the best of parents, the prophet reminds them that he “giveth food to all flesh,” (Ps. 136: 25.)

This was not a repressed acting. This was a released acting. It was not acting in the service of imagination. It was acting in the service of reality. This was not rendering the imaginary as real. It was rendering the super-realness of the real as sheer awesome, breathtaking real. This was not affectation. This was a passionate re-presentation-replication-of reality. This was not the mighty microscope using all its powers to make the small look impressively big. This was the desperately inadequate telescope bending every power to give some small sense of the majesty of what too many preachers saw as tiresome and unreal.

My sister and I did well in school and we were tracking towards  lucrative careers.  We could have done anything.  We could have been incredibly comfortable and recognized.  Between my sister, my 2 brothers-in-law, my wife, and me, we have 15 undergraduate and graduate degrees.  Eleven of the 15 are from Ivy League school including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania.  

Now all 5 of us are either missionaries or heading to the mission field.

When some people hear of this, they think it’s tragic.  Tragic.  

But others see it like the pouring of ridiculously expensive and precious perfume upon the feet of Jesus.

Will those who fast the American Dream regret it in heaven?  

Now fasting the American Dream does not mean neglecting excellence.  I advocate for excellence in missions.  Somehow over the last few decades the idea has developed that missionaries are people who can’t do anything else or people who can’t have a successful ministry in their own country.  

“To those who receive great educations and have every opportunity to live wonderfully comfortable lives”, Francis Xavier says, “Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the Gospel of Christ!”

-Ben

Scott Peck, in his best-selling book, The Road Less Traveled, suggests that we can shape other people into host organisms. It is not a pretty picture: people are the intestine, we are the worm.

“I do not want to live. I cannot live without my husband [wife, girlfriend, boyfriend], I love him [or her] so much.”

And when I respond, as I frequently do, “You are mistaken; you do not love your husband [wife, girlfriend, boyfriend].”

“What do you mean?” is the angry question. “I just told you I can’t live without him [or her].”

I try to explain. “What you describe is parasitism, not love.”

The Bible summarizes these various shapes this way: People are our cherished idols. We worship them, hoping they will take care of us, hoping they will give us what we feel we need.  What we really need are biblical shapes and identities for other people.  Then, instead of needing people to fill our desires, we can love people for the sake of God’s glory and fulfill the purpose for which we were created.

-Ben

The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation.  For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.  Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.  Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone; God accepts penalties that belong to man alone.

…

The doctrine of substitution affirms not only a fact (God in Christ substituted himself for us) but its necessity (there was no other way by which God’s holy love could be satisfied and rebellious human beings could be saved).  Therefore, as we stand before the cross, we begin to gain a clear view both of God and of ourselves, especially in relation to each other.  Instead of inflicting on us the judgment we deserved, God in Christ endured it in our place.  Hell is the only alternative.  This is the “scandal,” the stumbling block, of the cross.  For our proud hearts rebel against it.  We cannot bear to acknowledge either the seriousness of our sin and guilt or our utter indebtedness to the cross.  Surely, we say, there must be something we can do, or at least contribute, in order to make amends?  If not, we often give the impression that we would rather suffer our own punishment than the humiliation of seeing God through Christ bear it in our place.  

- John Stott, The Cross of Christ, pp159-160

Here are the radical words I have been alluding to: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).  I must admit that I don’t always greet God’s kingdom with delight.  There are things that I want in my life, and I not only want them, but know how, when, and where I want them!  I want my life to be comfortable.  I want my schedule to be unobstructed and predictable.  I want the people around me to esteem and appreciate me.  I want control over the situation and relationships in my life.  I want people to affirm my opinions and follow my lead.  I want the pleasures that I find entertaining to be available to me.  I want the ministry initiatives I direct to be well received and successful.  I want my children to appreciate that they have been blessed with me as their father.  I want my wife to be a joyful and committed supporter of my dreams.  I don’t want to suffer.  I don’t want to live without.  I don’t want to have to deal with personal defeat or ministry failure.  What I am saying is that I want my kingdom to come and my will to be done.

In this way I stand with David.  In David’s kingdom, Bathsheba would be his wife.  In David’s kingdom, Bathsheba would have had no husband.  In David’s kingdom he could have Bathsheba and the blessing of the Lord on his reign at the same time.  So, David acted out of zeal for his own kingdom, forgetting that he was sent as the ambassador of a greater King.  Sadly, I do the very same thing.  I get mad at one of my children, not because they broke God’s law but because they broke mine.  I get impatient with my wife because she is delaying the realization of the purposes of my kingdom of one.  Or I get discouraged with God because he brings the very uncomfortable things into my life that I work so hard to avoid.

“Thy kingdom come” is a dangerous prayer, for it means the death of your own sovereignty.  It means your life will be shaped by the will of another.  It means that you will experience the messiness, discomfort, and difficulty of God’s refining grace.  It means surrendering the center of your universe to the One who alone deserves to be there.  It means loving God above all else and your neighbor as yourself.  It means experiencing the freedom that can only be found when God breaks your bondage to you!  It means finally living for the one glory that is truly glorious, the glory of God.

-Ben

I want to tell you … it’s tragic! The little itsy-bitsy things we ask of our Almighty God. Sure, nothing is too small — but also nothing is too big. Let’s learn to ask for our big God some of those big things He talks about in Jeremiah 33:3: “Call unto Me and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things that thou knowest not.”

- Dawson Trotman

It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time there were somehow different — deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know.

The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if ever you get there you will know what I mean.

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then he cried:

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that is sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!”

- The Last Battle

If you haven’t listened to Piper’s message called The Triumph Of The Gospel In The New Heavens And The New Earth, you should check it out.  Other than Prayer: The Work Of Missions, it’s the Piper message I’ve listened to the most.

-Ben