Many years ago I came across a quote from Martin Luther about personal criticism from unfriendly critics. Luther’s point was that no matter how bad the personal criticisms—no matter how accurate, or inaccurate, the accusations—there is more sin in each of our hearts than a critic could ever discover.

Luther’s humbling reminder has been useful when I have been criticized and accused of things that were simply not accurate (although to avoid any misunderstanding, there have been plenty of critics that were right in their observations, too).

Far too often, my initial impulse has been to dismiss the criticism and defend myself, not realizing that this response is simply an evidence of pride.

Luther’s words directly confront my temptation to a prideful response, because he reminds me that, even if the criticisms are inaccurate or exaggerated, there remain in my heart many other sins that go unnoticed by my critics. And had my critics been aware of these other sins, they surely would have put them to use in their cause!

Luther’s reminder of the depth of personal sin has served me on numerous occasions over the years. And recently Luther’s words have served my friend Carl Trueman, too.

Carl is the Professor of Historical Theology and Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary. And he has taught a course on John Owen in the Pastors College. Carl is a gifted, insightful, and witty writer (despite writing with just two fingers). I am a friend and a fan of Carl Trueman.

In his most recent online article, “Thank God for Bandit Country,” Carl explains how Luther’s words have served him in handling personal criticism. Listen as the words of Luther and the words of Trueman merge:

I have learned much (as elsewhere) from the master theologian, churchman, public figure, and normal Christian believer, Martin Luther. It is well-known that in his writings [and] in table conversation Luther would often refer to visits from the Devil, how the Devil would come to him and whisper in his ear, accusing him of all manner of filthy sin: “Martin, you are a liar, greedy, lecherous, a blasphemer, a hypocrite. You cannot stand before God.” To which Luther would respond: “Well, yes, I am. And, indeed, Satan, you do not know the half of it. I have done much worse than that and if you care to give me your full list, I can no doubt add to it and help make it more complete. But you know what? My Saviour has died for all my sins—those you mention, those I could add and, indeed, those I have committed but am so wicked that I am unaware of having done so. It does not change the fact that Christ has died for all of them; his blood is sufficient; and on the Day of Judgment I shall be exonerated because he has taken all my sins on himself and clothed me in his own perfect righteousness.”

Luther knew what temptation looked like; he knew his own wickedness; but he also knew the all-surpassing perfection and grace of Christ. So, in closing, I want to thank my blog critics, the crass, the colourful, the profane, and the plain old crazy, for helping me to understand better my sin and my Saviour. You think I'm arrogant? You should talk to my wife: she could fill you in on just how arrogant I really am. You think I'm ruthless and cold? Believe me, you don't know where half of the bodies are buried. You think I'm a weak and spineless girlyman? Hey, you don't know nearly the extent of my cowardice. You think I'm an inveterate street fighter? Bring it on. If someone will hold my coat, why go out onto the street? We can finish this right here and right now. But you know what? My Saviour knows the full depth of all my sleaziness, my sin, and my moral insanity, and has covered by his blood all these crimes you allege against me. Indeed, he has covered many more and much worse; and your reminders of my sinfulness and my need of him are most gratefully received.

Carl’s words, with Luther’s voice in the background, provide us with a humbling and helpful pattern to follow when encountering personal criticism. When we face criticism, the gospel provides us with an ever-present reminder of the depth of remaining sin in our hearts, the scale of our need for our Savior’s blood, and our unceasing need for God’s abundant grace each day.

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Related post: "How to Help Your Husband When He's Criticized"

 

Cedric Moss was the senior pastor of Kingdom Life Church in Nassau, Bahamas long before he ever heard of Sovereign Grace Ministries. One day, wanting to better understand the gospel personally and to more passionately preach it to his church, Cedric searched online and stumbled upon Sovereign Grace Ministries. In 2004 Cedric attended our pastors conference as a visitor, hoping to observe from a distance.

In reflecting upon the trip Cedric says,

I was a pastor who was weary in the ministry and skeptical about church associations and networks, having been closely associated with a few and having given up on them. However, to my surprise, in Sovereign Grace I found men who were genuinely interested in me as a pastor, not the size of my church, or getting my church’s name on a list.

During our 2009 Pastors Conference, Cedric shared the rest of the story, which you can hear in this 16-minute recording:

Download MP3 (3.7 MB)

Next week I plan to resume the series on procrastination (unless of course I don’t get to it until the following week).

But today I have the privilege of featuring a recent interview with my friend Jerry Bridges. Jerry is the author of numerous excellent books such as The Discipline of Grace (NavPress, 2006) and The Gospel for Real Life (NavPress, 2003). Last week I invited him to join me in the studio to discuss a very helpful practice for living a cross-centered life, captured in the little phrase “preach the gospel to yourself.”

It was in the writings of Mr. Bridges that I was introduced to this phrase. The interview provided an opportunity to ask him where the phrase originated, what it means, and what difference this practice has made in his life.

The interview also includes some discussion of sports. It’s in this section of the interview that you will hear Jerry Bridges and me deliver a special joint message for all New York Yankee baseball fans. Be listening for that.

As you listen to this short interview I think you will discover for yourselves why I am so thankful to God for this man.

You will find the audio download of the interview here. Or listen to the interview online:

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Related: Interview with Sinclair Ferguson

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The audio recording from C.J.’s message Sunday at Covenant Life Church:

Don’t Waste Your Sports    
C.J. Mahaney
1 Corinthians 10:31
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Covenant Life Church; Gaithersburg, MD
57:34 run time; 13.2MB MP3

Download here.

Listen here:

Art by David Somerville.

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Related: Don't Waste Your Humor. 

The gospel is central to everything in the Christian life, including the cultivation of personal and pastoral joy. In this excerpt from the upcoming Sovereign Grace Leadership Interview Series (“The Pastor + Joy”), Joshua Harris, Jeff Purswell, and C.J. discuss the connection between the gospel and the fight for joy.

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Joshua Harris: I would love to just hear from you, Jeff and C.J., about what the fight for joy each day looks like in the life of a pastor. What are some key moments for you when it comes to cultivating that kind of joy? How is it expressed?

C.J. Mahaney: Your reference to the fight for joy is right—it’s a fight each and every day. So this is not a natural disposition that one possesses. Each day sin will be opposing the experience and cultivation of joy in our lives. I am personally very familiar with weariness and discouragement and, therefore, what I read in Scripture about the priority of joy and the experience of joy is very applicable to my soul.

And each day what I seek to do, from the outset of the day, is position myself as close to the gospel as possible so that I might experience the effects of the gospel. One pronounced effect of preaching the gospel to my soul is joy.

I am the worst sinner I know. And given the countless sins I have been forgiven of, as I contemplate the Savior’s substitutionary sacrifice on the cross for my sins, the effect of that contemplation in my life is joy.  

So from the outset of each day I seek to “survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory died.” I seek to study the doctrines of grace. I seek to prepare my heart to discern evidences of grace throughout the day. And as I devote myself to those practices at the outset of each day and throughout the day, the effect upon my soul is joy.  

Jeff Purswell: Yeah, I think, C.J., what you started that with is so important. You quoted Psalm 100:2 a moment ago: “Serve the Lord with gladness.” It is just so critical to have the basis of that joy right.

Paul puts it in Philippians 4:4, “Rejoice in the Lord.” Without that “in the Lord,” the command to “rejoice” would be an unreasonable command or a superficial command. But when it is rejoicing “in the Lord,” that is really what distinguishes it from mere happiness.

There are theological reasons for all commands in Scripture. There are theological reasons for the command to “rejoice in the Lord.” And in all the times in Scripture that speak of Christians being joyful, even in the Old Testament, they are rooted in God’s character and especially in his activity—his gracious activity towards his people.

And so, as C.J. was talking about staying close to the gospel, the inevitable and natural result of doing that will be a recognition of God’s gracious activity to us. We will be joyful. And that is the only way we can sustain joy.
 
CJM: Yes, if we assume the gospel, or neglect the gospel, or neglect to preach the gospel to ourselves on a daily basis, if we do not review and remind ourselves of the doctrines of grace, if we do not prepare our hearts to discern evidences of grace, all we will be left with throughout the day is an increasing awareness of sin and an increasing awareness of adversity.

The audio recording of C.J.'s first message delivered at the New Attitude conference is now online.

The Troubled Soul: God's Word and Our Feelings
C.J. Mahaney
Psalm 42:1-11
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Louisville, KY

Download here.

Listen here:

Together for the Gospel 2008 begins here in Louisville today. Over 5,000 men (mostly pastors) will be assembling in the Kentucky International Convention Center, celebrating the glorious atonement of Jesus Christ.

During the conference attention will be directed to a new book titled In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement by J.I. Packer and Mark Dever (Crossway, 2008). Not long ago, C.J. explained how this book and T4G are closely connected (here).

The discerning content of this book is a gift to all Christians and pastors in particular. Here is one excerpt from the epilogue.

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The cross of Christ is the heart of the apostles’ gospel and of their piety and praise as well; so surely it ought to be central in our own proclamation, catechesis, and devotional practice? True Christ-centeredness is, and ever must be, cross-centeredness. The cross on which the divine-human mediator hung, and from which he rose to reign on the basis and in the power of his atoning death, must become the vantage point from which we survey the whole of human history and human life, the reference point for explaining all that has gone wrong in the world everywhere and all that God has done and will do to put it right, and the center point for fixing the flow of doxology and devotion from our hearts. Healthy, virile, competent Christianity depends on clear-headedness about the cross; otherwise we are always off-key. And clear-headedness about the cross, banishing blurriness of mind, is only attained by facing up to the reality of Christ’s blood-sacrifice of himself in penal substitution for those whom the Father had given him to redeem.

Why then is it that in today's churches, even in some professedly evangelical congregations, this emphasis is rare? Why is it that in seminary classrooms, professional theological guilds, Bible teaching conferences, and regular Sunday preaching, not to mention the devotional books that we write for each other, so little comparatively is said about the heart-stirring, life-transforming reality of penal substitution? Several reasons spring to mind.

First, we forget that the necessity of retribution for sin is an integral expression of the holiness of God, and we sentimentalize his love by thinking and speaking of it without relating it to this necessity. This leaves us with a Christ who certainly embodies divine wisdom and goodwill, who certainly has blazed a trail for us through death into life, and who through the Spirit certainly stands by each of us as friend and helper (all true, so far as it goes), but who is not, strictly speaking, a redeemer and an atoning sacrifice for us at all.

Second, in this age that studies human behavior and psychology with such sustained intensity, knowledge of our sins and sinfulness as seen by God has faded, being overlaid by techniques and routines for self-improvement in terms of society's current ideals of decency and worthwhileness of life. It is all very secular, even when sponsored by churches, as it often is, and it keeps us from awareness of our own deep guilty and shameful alienation from God, which only the Savior, who in his sinlessness literally bore the penalty of our sins in our place, can deal with.

Third, in an age in which historic Christianity in the West is under heavy pressure and is marginalized in our post-Christian communities, we are preoccupied with apologetic battles, doctrinal and ethical, all along the interface of Christian faith and secularity—battles in which we are for the most part forced to play black, responding to the opening gambits of our secular critics. Constant concern to fight and win these battles diverts our attention from thorough study of the central realities of our own faith, of which the atonement is one.

Fourth, heavyweight scholars in our own ranks, as we have seen, line up from time to time with liberal theologians to offer revisionist, under-exegeted accounts of Bible teaching on the atonement, accounts which in the name of Scripture (!) play down or reject entirely the reality of penal substitution as we have been expounding it. The effect is that whereas from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century evangelicals stood solid for penal substitution against unitarianism (Socinianism) and deism, and taught this truth as no less central to the gospel than the incarnation itself, today it is often seen as a disputed and disputable option that we can get on quite well without, as many already are apparently doing.

What in the way of understanding our Savior and our salvation we lose, however, if we slip away from penal substitution, is, we think, incalculable.

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Taken from In My Place Condemned He Stood by J.I. Packer and Mark Dever, pp. 150-151, © 2008. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.

(The final selection from C.J.’s interview with pastor and author Dr. Sinclair Ferguson)

C.J. Mahaney: Let me move on to the fourth and final quote. This is my most recent favorite quote, because one of the great things about having access to your quotes is not only the difference they make in my private life, in my understanding of pastoral ministry and preaching, but also the difference they make in individual sermons. So if I really don’t have much else to say—and often I don’t—the “go to” quotes make all the difference.

So this particular quote is for pastors, although any and all readers will benefit from the content of this quote. You write,

Only by seeing our sin do we come to see the need for and wonder of grace. But exposing sin is not the same thing as unveiling and applying grace. We must be familiar with and exponents of its multifaceted power, and know how to apply it to a variety of spiritual conditions. Truth to tell, exposing sin is easier than applying grace; for, alas, we are more intimate with the former than we sometimes are with the latter. Therein lies our weakness.

This line is just filled with discernment for pastors and filled with discernment for everyone.

So without in any way minimizing the doctrine of sin—because you opened by saying it’s only by seeing our sin we come to see the need and the wonder of grace—how can we effectively expose sin and yet ultimately unveil and apply grace?

Sinclair Ferguson: At least for myself it’s returning to a principle with me: Make sure you have gone back to basics. Make sure that you think back from first principles.

Part of the first principles of the gospel are these categories, sin and grace. I think the thing that I am trying to get at here is the correlation between my ability to grasp the grace, grace of grace and my grasping the sin, sin of sin (what Ralph Venning calls the “exceeding sinfulness of sin”). The sin is mine and therefore natural for me to see. It’s grace that isn’t natural to me and therefore difficult to see. Therefore I am going to struggle to bring the sin I am so familiar with to the grace I am unfamiliar with. And therefore I need to find ways given to me in Scripture of discovering the graciousness of God.

And I find a couple of paradoxes here. On the one hand, it’s almost easier for me to explore the vocabulary for sin in the Bible than the vocabulary for grace. And I notice this in the literature, too. As a preacher it is wonderful to be able to say to people, “Sin is a multi-headed monster. One of the richest areas of vocabulary in the Hebrew language is for sin. There is transgression, there is iniquity...” And in the addressing the substitutionary atonement of Christ, it would be right for me to speak about that.

But on the other hand I find that, because I am a sinner, I have got to work harder intellectually and mentally to see there is an even richer vocabulary for grace. Under the principle of Romans 5:20—“where sin abounds, grace super-abounds”—has got to be a principle on which I will live my Christian life. I’m reminded of the hymn,

O Jesus! full of pardoning grace,—
More full of grace than I of sin.

And if somebody quibbles by saying surely the work of Christ is equivalent grace to sin, I think, “No. Paul is saying there really is more grace in Christ than sin in me.”

Here is an illustration. Because American houses are bigger, we have a washing machine and a tumble dryer in the house. Because houses tend to be smaller in the United Kingdom, many families have a washing machine and spin dryer all in one machine. It takes longer because the thing goes through the washing cycle and then it goes through the spin-drying cycle.

I often think, “That’s my life as a Christian. I am in the machinery of the exposure of my sin. Then I get thrown around to discover grace. But the thing about grace is that grace is Christ, it’s not substance. It’s not washing powder that’s thrown in.

Grace is Christ. When I am in Christ I am going to become more conscious of my other sins and the same sins at deeper levels. I realize what I thought was the sin was actually only the manifestation of the real sin.

I am constantly being turned in this sin/grace, sin/grace, sin/grace cycle all my days.

I still hold the, kind of the classical Augustinian view of Romans 7:14–25 that Paul is actually speaking about himself. I don’t think he is speaking wholesale about himself; I think he is speaking about himself from a particular perspective. But I think Paul understood this sin/grace cycle. And it’s not like now it’s grace, now it’s sin, but it’s both at the same time. It’s in this that you realize why looking at yourself in a certain light, this tension is expressed in a deep-seated contradiction of being—is bound to make you cry out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24).

But that is exactly the point where, as Christians, we need to learn that we are in Christ, but we are not yet in heaven. The dominion of sin has been broken, but the presence of sin has not been abolished.

And I think it is R.L. Dabney who says that surely there is no more extraordinary contradiction in the universe than that sin continues to dwell where Christ indwells. Or, sometimes I put it this way: Once you have got a lodger in your house he may be extremely difficult to dislocate from the house. And sin is like that. Sin used to be the owner of the house. Sin is now a lodger in the house, but lodgers can be very, very difficult to get out.

By God’s grace, the great thing has been done and sin’s dominion has been broken. But we are, in an ongoing way, discovering how sin is not a commodity that can be abstracted. It is in our bones. And it is battle all the way to the end.…

CJM: You have been exceedingly generous with your time, Dr. Ferguson. And actually, we must get you to lunch. But before we conclude: You have made different references to preachers and others who have had this profound effect on you. I want you to know you have had that same profound effect on me. And if anyone is perceptive when I am preaching, they will hear your influence in and through my preaching. And so one of the highlights for me has been just to sit here and not only learn from you, but now be able to say, “Thank you.”

Thank you for example, your teaching, your writing, your preaching. It has made, not a minor difference, and not even a significant difference. I would say it has made a profound difference, and for that I am profoundly grateful to God.

Thank you, Sinclair.

SF: Thank you, C.J.

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The above quote from Dr. Ferguson was published on the Reformation21 blog here.

Photo © 2008, Lukas VanDyke

(A continuation of C.J.’s interview with pastor and author Dr. Sinclair Ferguson)

C.J. Mahaney: This quote I have used numerous times in preaching. I don’t think I have ever used this quote without it affecting me. And I would anticipate this would happen even this moment. I think once readers hear the contents of this quote they will understand why:

When we think of Christ dying on the cross we are shown the lengths to which God’s love goes in order to win us back to himself. We would almost think that God loved us more than he loves his Son! We cannot measure such love by any other standard. He is saying to us: I love you this much. The cross is the heart of the gospel. It makes the gospel good news: Christ died for us. He has stood in our place before God’s judgment seat. He has borne our sins. God has done something on the cross we could never do for ourselves. But God does something to us as well as for us through the cross. He persuades us that he loves us.

And this is the phrase that I find just affects me every time: “We would almost think that God loved us more than he loves his Son.” Please, the origin of that quote. And please elaborate for us.

Sinclair Ferguson: Well, there are probably several origins when I begin to think about the different parts of that quote. I think actually the statement that most affects you was stimulated by something that Spurgeon says somewhere—“We would almost think that God loved us more than he loves his Son.” I can’t remember exactly where the quote originates, but I do remember Spurgeon is somewhere there in the stimulus. And that was because he had such a tremendous sense in his preaching about the love of God in Christ.

It is one thing to say love, isn’t it? It is another thing to exude that in preaching. We were talking about Dr. Lloyd-Jones earlier, and I think he says somewhere in his book on preaching that looking back, the one thing that he feels was missing was pathos. I don’t know that it was more missing in him than others. I think I can understand why he felt it was missing, because he was so committed to this notion of preaching being logic on fire. I can see, knowing what he knew about preachers in the past, he realized that there was something that they would have called an “affecting character” that maybe was more than just logic on fire. And Spurgeon certainly had this pathos in his preaching.

When you do look at the cross, there is something full of pathos, not because of sentiment (the poor man is dying on the cross), but because of theology. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. And the connectedness between John 3 and Romans 8:32: If he who did not spare his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?

Capturing that truth in a world of the unloved—I can’t work myself up to that truth. That truth has got to break into my heart with its pathos: that he has given his own Son. And that is not just a theological construction. Therefore the heart of the atonement actually takes place not wholly outside of God but within. This is his own Son who is our Savior.

And then the logic we now have is that “if I have given my Son for you, I will stop short of nothing else for you.” Couple that with what Paul said earlier in Romans 5:8--"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (NASB).

The cross should never be expounded simply as a demonstration of the love of God in a sense of being overwhelmed with his love, like it doesn’t matter if anything else was accomplished on the cross as long as we are overwhelmed by his love and swept along into fellowship with him, and that is the atonement. No. But while wrath is satisfied and Christ dies for our sins, it would be erroneous for us to reduce this to the kind of mathematical formulation of “this is how God has merely dealt with our sins.” No, this is also how God actually proves to us he really loves us!

So it is both the effecting of the atonement and the persuading of his love. And that really takes us back to what we were talking about earlier on, in Eden. The situation with the fall of Adam, it seems to me—among the dimensions that need to be dealt with, there is the satanic dimension: the one who has now taken over the universe needs to be crushed, and in Genesis 3:15 his head will be crushed. But in that there also needs to be an atonement for guilt, but with that atonement for guilt we need to be persuaded of what was originally true, that Satan sought to destroy. This issue of being persuaded of God’s love, not in a facile way, but through the work of the cross, goes very much along with how is it that God is going to deal with the natural legalism of my heart that says, “He will only begin to love me when I do things to please him.”

Also, I think this is a powerful reality in difficult providences. There are times when I bump into somebody unexpectedly that I will say, “This is a happy providence.” And then I will stop and think, “Would it have been an unhappy providence if I hadn’t bumped into you?” We have this tendency—especially if you are inclined to this legalism—to measure how God’s love is doing for you these days by the providences that surround your life. Our ability to read providences are a very inaccurate measure of God’s love for us.

So again, it’s back to the cross. This is where God demonstrates his love. I don’t know that Christ loves me because I am in the boat with him and the seas are calm. And therefore I don’t know that Christ doesn’t love me because I am in the boat with him and the seas are not calm. I know my heart will say to him, “Don’t you care that we are perishing?”

But with the cross I know he is saying to me, “The reason I am in the boat and the reason I am going to the cross is because I care. So my love is demonstrated towards you in this way.”

CJM: Well, I only wish everyone could be here in this room right now. I hope that what is taking place in this room is transferred to people’s hearts and that God’s love, as so eloquently just expressed by Sinclair, in and through the cross, would transform people’s hearts and make an immediate and dramatic difference. I pray that everyone reading would be persuaded that he loves us because of what took place upon the cross.

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The Ferguson quote at the top is taken from Grow in Grace (Banner of Truth, 1989), pp. 56, 58.

Photo © 2008, Lukas VanDyke

(A continuation of C.J.’s interview with pastor and author Dr. Sinclair Ferguson)

Sinclair Ferguson: The struggle of our minds is to submit to Scripture, because our minds wander all over the place. I sometimes wonder why it’s so difficult for us to sit down and think about the Lord Jesus for five minutes when we can think of almost anything else in the world for five minutes. And when I think about that I think, “My, how far we have to go.” And, therefore, it is going to be very hard discipline to bring my mind and my spirit under the Word to really listen.

This was the thing that professor John Murray helped me with. The development of the humanity of the Lord Jesus has meant more to me than I think—than I have ever even tried to communicate. To think that he grew in stature—I understand that. And I can understand that he grew in wisdom, although that is a bit of a shock sometimes to Christians.

How did he grow in wisdom? He grew in wisdom by meditating on the Scriptures, not because it kind of fell on his head because he was the Son of God.

And that he grew in favor with God as well as with man—I just find that stunning. And when you get over the other side of that statement, that he grew in favor with God, then you realize I have got to see why. I read the rest of Luke’s Gospel. I have got to see why that was.

C.J. Mahaney: Ok, so how did he grow in favor with God (Luke 2:52)?

SF: How long have we got?

CJM: As long as it takes you to explain it.

SF: When I think about the Lord Jesus, I’m thinking about the way in which here he is—at twelve years old—asking questions. And I think he was asking questions. I think he wanted to know the answers. And as he explored the answers, they were obviously startled by his insight. I think the reason for that was because in a twelve-year-old-boy kind of way, like some of our youngsters, he can come out with very direct questions that after years of managing to manipulate themselves around people and avoid the important questions—they just get straight to the heart of the matter.

I assume by twelve he had memorized a lot of the Scriptures, and now as he grows, the level of obedience to which he is being called, the tests are getting harder. And as he advances through each of these tests, the Father responds like any father who goes along to watch his children play in a competition or something.

I could imagine a boy running down the touchline with a football and scoring and the father, if he is a Christian, doing it very quietly, but just saying, “That’s my boy. I have always loved you. And I always knew you had talent. But now I see it.” Or a child overcomes a huge obstacle and the father’s heart just leaps. Or in a marriage relationship, the day you got married you thought, “It is not possible for man to love woman more than I love this woman!” And now you look back and think, “I have so many more reasons to love her.”

And so the relationship between the Son and the Father in the Son’s incarnate and humiliated days is a relationship.

With respect to his having taken our flesh, in that flesh the relationship grows and the tests become harder. And the test in Gethsemane is unspeakably hard for him. Because it seems to me that what is happening there is he is being called to do what his humanity can never want. He has been called to give himself to the abandonment of the One who has favored him all his life.

I really do see that as the ultimate reverse of Eden. In Eden God is saying to Adam, “Do this just because I am God, not because you can read off this tree, ‘Do not touch.’” And I personally don’t think that tree was really any different. I don’t think the fruit was poisonous. I don’t think you could have walked past it and said, “It is obvious that we shouldn’t eat it.” That would not so much have been a test as an instinctive response. But I think it’s in its sameness to the others that God says, “For my sake, trust me. Don’t eat from it.”

And yet we are told—and I find this fascinating, that in Genesis 2 we are told about all the trees, that they were attractive and delicious. And in 3 we are told that this tree was also attractive and delicious, so that the only thing that stops me is because God has said, “Don’t eat.” I am going to trust him.

And here is Jesus in a position where, for Adam, every natural instinct is to take the fruit of the tree, but God has said don’t do it. And Adam should have not taken it because God said it. And here, for Jesus, his natural instinct is to say, “Please, not the cross, not the cross.” But the reason he does it is because “the cup that my Father gives me to drink, will I not drink of it?” (John 18:11) I mean, it’s unspeakable, really.

CJM: It is, indeed. [weeping]

SF: I think we all will be weeping in a moment, C.J.

It’s just, you know, that you can’t see this truth by thinking about yourself. So that’s what lies behind this “smuggling character into the work of grace.”

When we sit round like this and start talking about it, we begin to realize the depth of this truth. When we are preaching we are kind of trying to hit the ball down the middle of the fairway. But in a way it is easier to communicate this, I think, when we are just sitting around like this, as friends talking, than when we have got the multidimensional distractions of a preaching situation.

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Photo © 2008, Lukas VanDyke