Words
Why compose music?
To imprint on heaven and earth images of your fearfully and wonderfully made self. While God exists outside of and independently of history, we do not. Man exists inside of and interdependently of history—this is to say, we are both material and spiritual. When man lives, he has a body connected to time and space as well as a spirit connected to the spiritual realm. When man dies, the body is no longer but the spirit remains. Our existence creates an implicit imprint upon heaven and earth because of this connection to both material and spiritual worlds. For me, this creates a "while we are here" philosophy. Covert nihilism seeks to avoid, destroy, and suppress creativity (and the work which follows) through depression1 and other means. "While we are here" recognizes the inherent goodness of man’s existence and aims to enhance and enliven what God has already made good. Like spices added to an expensive cut of meat, music adds to the beauty of life in and around us. Composing music is the protest song against depression, nihilism, and any of life’s antagonists. Creating a work of art is the stamp we imprint on this wonderful canvas God has made; the result is a mosaic more beautiful than our human mind’s can understand. What we make matters and is forever imprinted on history. Time and space will forever remember what you compose because they are servant to God and His Purposes. He admires your creation and will preserve what you have made because it glorifies Him forever.
Difficulty and its merits
“The merit of all things lies in their difficulty.” This quote can be found in Alexandre Dumas’ seminal work The Three Musketeers. It’s in chapter twenty-eight that one of the three musketeers, Aramis, says “I have lived very agreeably. I have begun a poem in verses of one syllable. That is rather difficult, but the merit in all things consists in the difficulty. The matter is gallant. I will read you the first canto. It has four hundred lines and lasts a minute.”
“My faith, my dear Aramis,” [replied] D’Artagnan who detested verses almost as much as he did Latin, “add to the merit of the difficulty that of the brevity, and you are sure that your poem will at least have two merits.”
Now, this book was written 200 years ago in 1844 with a setting 200 years before that in the 17th century. Difficulty and its merits, to me at least, seem to be a lost art. No more do we talk about difficulty than we talk about how long a horse ride is from Denton to Sanger. In our technocratic age, difficulty is a problem to be solved, scorned, or ignored altogether.
But something put on my heart, mind, and soul is how difficulty proves somethings worth. Ultimately, I would like to convince all of us (including myself) to embrace difficulty as a type of refinement of the soul. Difficulty, while it angers and discourages us, can also be something that inspires and pushes us beyond the envelope of our experience and knowledge. Colloquialisms that come to my mind include: “it’s a thing that asks much of you but ultimately rewards you”; or “you get out of it what you put into it”; and Teddy Roosevelt said “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
Back in November of 2023, I finally finished the video game Hollow Knight. A game developed by three people in Australia at the beginning of 2017. The indie title is well known in the gaming community for its surprising size, scope, and difficulty. In this genre of gaming, the player takes control of a character in a two-dimensional side-to-side environment. The notorious difficulty is due to several factors, but what reigns supreme is the game’s resource management. At the outset of the game, you can only get struck five times before it is game-over. The player can of course recover lost health and throughout the game collect up to four additional hit points, but in the heat of battle you cannot heal yourself. In battle, the outcome is either win or die after five hits.
https://youtu.be/kIbDO3p2IJs?si=6jWk_pa1uWUPalja&t=76
In my thirty-one years of life, this was my first forray and experience with such a difficult genre of gaming (one so lovingly called “souls-bourne” difficulty named after two of the most difficult games known to the world: “Blood Souls” and Bloodbourne”). Traditionally, I like the easy-going, tactical, “think-it-through" genre of gaming called Role-Playing. By contrast, the difficulty of Role-Playing Games lies not in perfectly timed actions, but rather pre-conceived meditation and strategy. In Role-Playing Games, I can relax in my arm-chair. I can ponder as long as I would like. And then, when the perfect plan of attack has been conceived (and no sooner), I act. I cannot begin to tell you how often I died.
When I was in music school, difficulty proved to manifest itself in performance. I was a saxophone major. I played a little jazz, but I was more intrigued by the world of contemporary classical. Because the saxophone is a relatively new instrument compared to the violin or piano, we saxophonists cannot rely on a comparatively long repertoire like our instrumental brothers and sisters. This oftentimes meant that I was playing what so affectionately call “beep-boop” music. Charles Ives, one of the first great unique American composers and pioneer in our very own field of life insurance, said “Beauty in music is too often confused with something that lets the ears lie back in an easy chair. Many sounds that we are used to do not bother us and, for that reason, we are inclined to call them beautiful.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69UQRQbWSiU
When practicing saxophone, I often thought of Christ saying in the Luke’s gospel: “to whom much is given, much is required.” I think of this as how difficulty asks much of us but returns a reciprocal reward.
Many times (both in the video game and saxophone playing), I began to think I was too stubborn and bull-headed to get back up again after metaphorically getting knocked down hundreds of times. The voices in my head said: “the definition of insanity is attempting the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.” This is certainly true, but we often jump to this conclusion and use it to give up prematurely when what we really need is external encouragement. I would like to think this is what leadership is for: an antidote to your internal critic. We need an external voice to help push us out of our ruts. Sometimes this looks like new strategies or different action. But oftentimes I believe we just need to try again. Nothing is more encouraging than a leader, a friend, that says: “if I can do it, you can too.”
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1257/pg1257-images.html
What does it mean that man is an “image-bearer” of God?
On a surface level, to be an image-bearer is to carry on the likeness of God, or to reflect Him. Dissecting the words image and bearer might imply that we carry (or bear) inward, around, and onward what God might look like or resemble (an image). Likeness is troublesome because of its connection to something like word equal. Equality is not true of our relationship with God. There is a hierarchy: God is at the top and we serve under Him, not equally. 1 Corinthians 15:27 points toward Psalm 8:6 when Paul writes of the subjugation of all things, including man, to the feet of God:
“For ‘God has put all things in subjection under his feet.’ But when it says, ‘all things are put in subjection,’ it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.”
So not equal, but like, or analogous to God. My favorite verse that points to our image bearing qualities is Psalm 139:13-14:
“13 For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. 14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”
Understanding and teaching that quality of image-bearer is important for me to start at the beginning—or even before the beginning—so that we might magnify how awesome God is and how we are placed above all other created things while below in subjection to Him. After marveling at our pre-conception, He creates fearfully and wonderfully. Non-human creatures have one of these qualities. Many are fearful, many are wonderful, but none are both I might argue.
For me, understanding how we are fearfully made brings to mind love and respect. I think, in order to love and respect ourselves and one another, we must keep in mind that we are not just soul or spirit, but also body and mind. It is tempting to take on our post-modern thinking that reinvents gnostic theories of elevating mind and soul while also rejecting the body. Ephesians 5:27-29 also points to Psalm 139:
“In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.”
Image-bearer is already such an imaginative and catalytic word to describe the glory of man. But it is also through Psalm 139:13-14 that I might better understand the term: from conception, we are made with unparalleled qualities. A definition which uses words that are so unique and beautiful, yet help me understand how, as humans, we might know ourselves to be image-bearers. (That is, “my soul knoweth right well.”)
What did Jesus accomplish on the cross?
Propitiation is the act of appeasing God. It is a word that occurs only a handful of times in the new testament.
Here are three I know of: once in Romans 3:25 “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins;” again in 1 John 2:2 “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world”; and a few verses later in 1 John 4:10 “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”
The use of this word continually points to one thing—our sin being appeased by God and for God’s glory. For me, reading the musings of theologians like Boice expounding and dancing around the word propitiation is comparable to the finest music theorists in our universities discussing and teaching Bach’s handling of the fugue: both are tickled to death by the subject’s breadth and depth of complexity; both find that the head finally marries the heart in understanding and sharing what they have uncovered; both find excitement and purpose in their office (and ultimately life) learning such things. While this dense theological subject is an important cornerstone (if not, the cornerstone), I think when discussing such things with friends and believers we miss the forest for the trees and worship the created idea instead of the Creator.
Boice seems to anticipatorily write in response to potential reactions to the word. He takes the perspective that the presupposition is almost heretical because of its possible paganistic undertones. I find this interesting growing up in the church because I was well discipled in reformed theological topics. I understand that many believers find themselves coming into the the faith later in life after living a post-Christian lifestyle which many pastors frame as pagan-like (if not outright decrying it as paganistic). Additionally, we are taught in public schools the various world religions which centered around human sacrifice to appease an angry God—such worldview’s make it understandable how a new believer might react to their first lesson on propitiation: Boice theoretically posits the reactionary as “how the idea of propitiation would be appropriate in paganism, where God was assumed to be capricious, easily offended, and therefore often angry.”1 He defends such a reactionary quasi-question with an answer that in paganism it is the sacrifice of the human that would quiet the god, but in Christianity God orchestrates and sacrifices himself as justification for sin (rather than pacify and an emotional god).2 Boice highlights that such an understanding of God (that is, only pagan god’s are angry or emotional and our God is love) reflects more of a beginner’s understanding of the love of God. Christ as the propitiation of our sins ultimately “enhances our appreciation of his love... within this framework, the love of God is not merely some indulgent feeling of good will (which is what human love often is). It is rather an intense, demanding, holy love that is willing to pay the greatest price in order to save the one loved.”3
Punitory substitution is a combination of two words to convey one meaning. Punitory is having the nature of punishment or some sort of consequence for wrong action(s). Substitution is the act of taking the place of one thing, idea or person and replacing it with another. Unlike propitiation, I do not believe the term punitory substitution can be found in the bible. To my knowledge, both are similar in meaning and ultimately convey the simple Gospel: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16).
As far as Christ’s accomplishment on the cross: what can be written on propitiation that has not been written by both undergrad bible majors and PhD Theologians? It is a topic of much interest perhaps because on a single word, propitiation, we rest much of our faith, tradition, history, and legacy as a religion different from the world. Jesus accomplished more than just one thing on the cross and propitiation is a single word that so closely captures the many things we wish to convey in his ultimate sacrifice.
“He became sin who knew no sin that we might become His righteousness.” These are words etched on my heart through song. I am so thankful that through music (albeit Chris Tomlin), I have 2 Corinthians 5:21 eternally memorized. If I were to present the theological topic to a secular man or woman, church brother or sister, I would use these simple words to convey a complex meaning. From there, I might point out how throughout the history of God’s people, God presents continual covenants to not only bless but forgive what is unforgivable both for Jew and gentile. We see this in Genesis 3:15 when He covenants to bring an Offspring that will crush the head of the serpent and that serpent strike his heel. I would note that not only there is triumph of the Offspring in the crushing of the serpent's head but a deliberate striking of that Offspring’s heel.
What does the bible teach about Satan and Hell?
The Bible speaks little to Satan, but what it does mention is profound. What immediately comes to mind are references like: Genesis when Satan lies and tempts Adam and Eve; the famous song-like verse which follows1; Job when Satan is allowed to tempt and even torture the titular man; the Gospels when Jesus is tempted in the wilderness by Satan; and Revelation when God sends down Satan and his followers down to the pit of Hell.
What was especially transformative for me in the study (and reading Boice) is the clear repudiation of the idea that Satan is creator, ruler, or dweller of Hell. I was so positively and joyfully reminded that it is God who created Hell, rules it, and sends Satan as inmate, not correction officer. This is a key difference between Satan and God’s Wrath – while Satan is liar, thief, murderer, and trickster, God’s wrath is just, honest, and ultimately holy.
I personally have spent more time on Hell than Satan in my discipleship to Jesus. I was a child of the Rob Bell “Love Win’s” fiasco. While I have only listened to portions of the book, I read the counter-dispute by Francis Chan “Erasing Hell.” If I can recall correctly (from more than ten years ago), it seems like Bell’s book is a sort of “coming out” for him to formally say what he ambiguously (and if I can be opinionated, spinelessly) does not believe. Chan’s response was cold and a purely logos view of Hell and read like an attempt at damage control: in other words, Bell said Hell did not exist and Chan was left with the firehose proving Hell’s reality.
Boice beautifully writes and supports the reality of Hell by pointing back to what the word originally and truthfully meant: the wrath of God. As elders, we can aid the body by framing Hell as not a place where eternal fire is, but the method and medium by which God’s judgement is expressed. While a universalist edge to a no-hell reality relies on all is good, a biblical and gospel-centered approach demands that justice must be served. I appreciated Boice citing Nahum as one of many example’s of God’s justice: “The Lord is Good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. But with an overflowing flood he will make a complete end of the adversaries.”2 Throughout Chapter 7 in Book III, Boice continues to refer to many different verses that speak God’s views on judgement and wrath on those who are not covered by the grace and gospel of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, I think my main problem and refute to those who might side with an ambiguous, universalist view of hell (or lack therof) is that this belief is centered on a God who might let evil, even pure evil, get off scot-free, without punishment. A belief that leads to chaos, injustice, and more evil.
What is the relationship between the human authors and the passages they ‘wrote’?
These vary a lot from writer to writer. The Bible is a library, full of books from different genres. These include, but are not limited to, history (Genesis, 1st and 2nd Kings, Judges), poetry (Psalms, songs like Mary’s), prophecy (the Prophets like Isaiah), law (Leviticus, Dueteronomy), wisdom (Job, Ecclesiastes), romance (Song of Solomon), letters (Pauline), and apocalypse (Revelation).
We get these different genres because of God’s spirit moving these writes and expressing His truth through their mouths and ink. This human element that the Spirit uses is the relationshsip between the human authors and passages they wrote: an amalgam of purpose and expression but also a unity of truth and revelation in the Messiah.
What is inerrancy?
Inerrancy means without error. Using a quick search in Google reveals that the etymology has its roots in “inerrantem” which means “not wandering, fixed (of stars).” I found this definition pointing toward fixed more meaningful. It points to Dr. Boice’s struggle to use the definition as “without error” because that does not necessarily ring true when he points to how Quirinius was the true governor of Syria at the birth of Christ.1 The meaning of fixed is a better pithy definition to “without error” because it does not imply that the writing is grammatically perfect (which, on a natural-level, it is), but points to a supernatural elevation. Boice points to this when he writes on page 62:
“The real problem with inerrancy therefore goes beyond the data produced by scientific criticism to the philosophy underlying the modern critical enterprise. That philosophy is naturalism. This worldview denies the supernatural, or it seeks to place it beyond scientific investigation. The supernatural therefore has no direct correlation with the specific words of the biblical text. It is, to use Francis Schaeffer’s term, an “upper story” reality, beyond proof or contradiction.”2
Fixed, to me, is simply the most true description and characterization of the bible.
“The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever,” Isaiah 40:8.
“Your word, O Lord will last forever; it is eternal in heaven,” Psalm 119:89.
What is your view of God’s grace?
To be a Christian is to know, receive, and accept grace. This is not to say that these three things are required to be a Christian, but more so that each Christian has a multi-dimensional understanding of the word. For me, the first experience of grace came in middle school when I understood that, even at my best, I did not even want a desire for Christ. My prayer in the bathroom was: “God, I want to want you. Give me the grace to desire you.” From this prayer, God unleashed the flood gates and gave me more than I could ever ask. The second experience of grace came from a deeper understanding of the word. While I was an adult, I gleaned this from a sermond given to the youth group at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro, NC. I was a graduate student and serving in the middle school program as a teacher alongside Lynn Graham, one of the parents of these middle schoolers. The topic of the sermon differentiated between mercy and grace. “Mercy,” said the guest speaker, “is withholding something truly deserves.” He went on to explain that this looks like a judge giving a convict a 10 year sentence even though that convict deserves a life sentence. Grace, on the other hand, was defined as giving someone something they do not deserve. In short, mercy is the act of withholding deserving punishment, while grace is the act of endowing unmerited favor. Hearing this helped me distinguish the difference between mercy and grace – I unknowingly, for most of my Christian faith, believed that the two terms were indistinguishable because of how pastors in my life frequently intertwined the two.
Biblically, I can recall several moments in my life where God illuminated the beauty of grace to me (much like witnessing the blooming of a flower). One such moment was in high school when hearing a sermon at Hardin Baptist Church in Kentucky. The topic at hand: Noah. I was at the height of my cage-stage of Calvinism. I had the Romans road at top of mind and TULIP memorized. After coming to understand Romans 3:23 (for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God), I read Genesis 6:5 in a totally different perspective. “The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.” Reading this, my heart fell into a trough only to be lifted back up to a peak when I read three verses later: “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” How often does an eighteen year-old reflect for hours upon a single word? I could not stop thinking about favor. What did this mean? Technically it is approval, support, or liking for someone of something. Deeper it could mean to feel or show preference for, but what does preference mean from the living God? If all man is evil, totally depraved, how can God have any preference for Noah amongst any other man? At eighteen years-old, I was the equivalent to a Christian baby in my faith and spiritual maturity. At eighteen years-old, this helped me frame predestination and identify how the Bible supports the doctrine (“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be ocnformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” Romans 8:29.) But what I did not know was how the word “favor” in Genesis would allow me to understand the connection between predestination and grace and how they seem to work hand in hand. Predestination is that He gifted those who were unworthy—Noah was no more of an evil man than the next, but God found favor in Noah. To me this shows how God might choose to save as a free gift.
What is the grace of God? Christ willfully giving His own life to save us from our sins—the ultimate sacrificial lamb for every man and every sin. This sacrifice was a gift freely given and without any merit from the receivers. The epistles of the Bible make it a point to make this the centerpiece of their thesis – that is to say, it is the meaning of the meaning, or the meaning of everything!
John 1:16-17 – For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 2:8 – For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God
Titus 2:11 – For the grace of God has appeared, bringin salvation for all people
And also in the old testament:
Exodus 34:6 – The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
2 Chronicles 30:9 – For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him.”
God’s grace is a gift freely given to us that we do not deserve: how can we possibly begin to understand why? This question also conveys the wonderful mystery; one of many magnum mysteriums.
Can we lose our salvation?
This question, for many believers, introduces numerous forks, avenues, and paths to explore. However, for the sake of concision, I want to narrow down to two possible paths: the impartial emotional and the logical thinker.
The impartial emotional might simplify his thinking to a statement: “the fact that one of my friends chose to no longer live and act and believe to be a Christian proves to me that, yes, salvation can be gifted but also abandoned.” This is the thinking of a young 24-year-old named Jack. He met weekly with one of his buddies, Tom, to confess sin and pray together. However, after a full semester of doing this, Tom told Jack in a Taco Bell during their weekly meeting: “I’m no longer a Christian.” Tom’s reasoning was experiential. His niece, a toddler, died in a car crash. While Tom could understand the theological tenants of Christianity, emotionally the conflict and frustration of this event was too much. He could not reconcile how the Christian God could let this happen and it was too painful to go any further in his faith. Perhaps when Tom said “Christian faith” he meant more of a lifestyle that would mirror the typical mix of southern Baptists and evangelicals. Jack was heartbroken over this. For Jack, it was a pain comparable to a girlfriend whom he loved breaking up with him. He understood why, the breakup was well explained and clear, but emotionally it left Jack holding the metaphorical bag. Jack began to question whether he could lose his own salvation if Tom so readily gave it up, only to simply walk away after he had seen much fruit in Tom’s life.
On the alternative side, there are the logical thinkers who might pride themselves with statements like: “men and women who claimed to be saved, claimed to be Christians, and then walk away from the faith were never Christians to begin with.” This believer, John, sees a story like Tom’s and can understand it without considering the emotional implications. However, because John can frame this logic, he is not so easily shaken or carried away by choices his friends make. While he needs to keep vigilant to not become emotionally callous, John has the spiritual security to know that neither he nor God will take away what is freely given to him: his eternal salvation in Christ.
To thoroughly teach his audience, Boice introduces hypothetical questions and problems to answer (like previous chapters). In this case, the primary question that redemption (and therefore salvation) brings is that it implies that “God might sell his favors and that salvation is therefore no longer grace.” 1 However, I must object to this hypothetical. While this problem makes sense logically, it is not informed of how God has revealed Himself to us. The central tenant of grace is not a matter of something’s worth. This question implies that grace must be either worthless or invaluable in order to “work.” This misses the forest for the trees (which is what I think Boice is after). What matters about grace is that it is something freely given (regardless of its value). Grace is a free gift given to us; everything else is secondary (or beside the point). Of course, the gift can be invaluable! This ties back to the idea of propitiation, there is a judgement to be made. Additionally, Boice is trying to pre-emptively combat problems posed by anyone living in our post-Christian, post-modern, post-enlightenment mind frame. Because we live in these cultures (in mostly western countries), we sometimes are convinced to pervert our sense of value.
“If Jesus had to pay the price of his death for our deliverance, doesn’t that mean that God is actually selling his favors and that salvation is therefore no longer grace?”
Well, are you trying to posit that, because salvation has any sort of value, propitiation and redemption are conundrums to our faith? This seems to be a fixation on how either God is too perfect to exchange something or that man is inherently too good to have no ransom or debt; this thinking, to me, reeks of a sort of post-modern hierarchy complex. Of course, there is something to be exchanged. There is something of value here: it is about both God’s glory and glorifying God. Beyond this, there is no deeper answer to “why” that our childish hearts get lost in; this is where the seemingly endless loop truly stops.
Additionally, redemption and salvation introduce another paradoxical concept: freedom. Much like how the word random is real in idea only (nothing is random, everything is pre-determined), freedom explains that, if you have it (which most argue that you do not), you are able to choose or live at your own will. Topics like random and freedom are intertwined because there is a conflict of whether everything is set in motion at one point. For Christians, we look to Genesis where God determined the initial seed and, as a result, we get the complex results of what may as well be a pseudo-random number generator to us. Everything that is and everything that will be is a result of His work speaking something out of nothing.2 That definition is where most split off and begin to counter: is anything we do truly free? I believe this paradox proves not only the existence of God, but also supports the life, death and resurrection of Christ: his death and resurrection grant us a freedom to serve as Boice explains.3 We are free but not truly free, we are still slaves to Someone.
These are deep, and sometimes fun, philosophical musings. But much deeper there are wounds and serious shepherding needed when fellow believers ask these questions. I believe the heart and mind must connect, ponder the magnum mysterium, and have Jack and John meet in the middle. As a shepherd of the flock, our elders must sensitively address the concerns of those who might believe that he or she can lose their salvation. We must point to how loving and amazing our God is who not only lived among us, showed us miracles, and lived the perfect life, but also loved us to the point of death and death on a cross.4 He died for our sins now and forever as a free gift given to us. We can point to how Paul tells the church: “He who has begun a good work in you will perfect it to the end”5 and that John writes “those who went out from us were never really with us.”6 And ultimately, we need to do life with this believer; really bear his burdens, his convictions. As elders we need to help, and as much as possible, see to the end that he understands that:
“37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” —Romans 8:37-39
“22 Be merciful to those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh” —Jude 1:22-23
What is the doctrine of Resurrection and Ascension?
The doctrine of resurrection and ascension, though two separate ideas exist interdependently on one another. At the beginning of Ch. 16, Boice positions the question: which is more important to Christian theology, the death of Jesus Christ or his resurrection? He answers himself by saying the question is unanswerable. Based on my own understanding, experience, and time in the scriptures, I would like to beg-to-differ. I think the two concepts hold equal weight and importance and that one cannot exist without the other. Another way of saying this might be: there is no resurrection without death and without resurrection there is no purpose to Christ's death.
Now one could point out, to the contrary, that Enoch and Elijah were taken up to heaven, but I find that ascension differs from resurrection. These men never perished a physical death: the ultimate toll of sin which we are owed from God.
Understanding the two is incredibly important for the believer because it bestows the believer with confidence and hope. These two attributes are important because without them the heart turns sick. When the heart turns sick, the soul becomes burdened with depression and anxiety. These burdens, while unnecessary, become a habit more difficult to break for a believer than a pack-a-day chain smoker after twenty years of smoking. It affects the daily life of the believer by impeding their confidence to live their everyday life. Without the church, its elders, and a fellowship of friends the believer loses hope of a future glory and becomes inundated with everyday things. Like C.S. Lewis writes in his famous Weight of Glory sermon:
“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.”
There are two believers who become guilty of forgetting the hope of Christ’s death and resurrection. The first believer struggles with a passive neglect. He is simply distracted by his everyday life. He is more captivated by his present hopes and dreams than the eternal and ultimate promise God has graced us with. He would rather place his hope in what is to come in his life while his heart is beating rather in the one that comes after. Now, I am not suggesting that such hopes are bad. They are necessary and fulfill a commandment God gave us in Genesis to subdue the world and take domain in it (a mandate which is ultimately fulfilled in Christ). However, the believer is fickle and foolish—we are half-hearted—making idols out of created things disguising them as hope. This believer must periodically recenter his hope on the ultimate hope: Christ’s victory over death and his resurrection power to bring us up with him.
The other believer suffers from an active neglect of the hope and confidence in Christ’s death and resurrection. He struggles to either understand or believe that Christ did such things or their importance. Doubt may look like requiring more evidence beyond what he might be exhaustively provided—his doubt might be an unquenchable thirst, so much so that he might still struggle to believe even if Christ appeared before him, died, and resurrected in front of his eyes. No matter how seasoned a Christian we might be, I am not convinced that none of us are immune to such a diagnosis. After all, we are half-hearted creatures. This is why our fellowship is necessary; this is the purpose of the Church: to remind each other of the hope we have in the death and resurrection in Christ.
By Christ’s death and resurrection God is glorified because we can live a life pleasing to Him. He is glorified because He gets it all: the trinity eternity past and eternity future; His Church is saved; and sin receives the judgement which it deserves and is cast out forever. Surely our God is worthy of glories beyond comprehension and worship forever and ever, amen.