Tag: 2 Corinthians

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Christ’s Humiliation :: A Lenten Reflection

“Christ was subject to great humiliation in his private life at Nazareth,” writes Jonathan Edwards. While many of us can appreciate a great high priest who can “sympathize with our weaknesses,” the grittiness of this reality can escape us.

Edwards, the great theologian, writes of the daily toil of Christ’s vocation in Nazareth:

He there led a servile, obscure life, in a mean, laborious occupation; for he is called not only the carpenter’s son, but the carpenter. By hard labor he earned his bread before he ate it, and so suffered that curse which God pronounced on Adam; “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.”

Let us consider how great a degree of humiliation the glorious Son of God, the Creator of heaven and earth, was subject to in this—that for about thirty years he should live a private obscure life among laboring men, and all this while be overlooked, not taken notice of in the world, more than other common laborers.

Christ’s humiliation in some respects was greater in private life than in the time of his public ministry. The first thirty years of his life he spent among ordinary men, as it were in silence. There was not any thing to make him to be taken notice of more than any ordinary mechanic.

In fasting we forego a luxury in order to better understand our desires and better experience the only one who can truly satisfy. The sacrifice of fasting is our way of entering into the footsteps of Christ who, “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor.” Edwards reflects on the fulfillment of Christ’s love, even as he was subjected to the pangs of earthly brokenness:

He suffered great poverty, so that he had no where to lay his head. So that what was spoken of Christ, “My head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night,” was literally fulfilled. And through his poverty he was doubtless when tried with hunger, thirst, and cold.

Christ had no land of his own, though he was possessor of heaven and earth; and therefore was buried by Joseph of Arimathea’s charity, and in his tomb, which Joseph had prepared for himself.

Christ being thus brought under the power of death, continued under it till the morning of next day but one. Then was finished that great work, the purchase of our redemption, for which such great preparation had been made from the beginning of the world.

 

Today's Reading
Job 32 (Listen – 2:12)  
2 Corinthians 2 (Listen – 2:13)

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Shattering Selfishness :: A Lenten Reflection

At some point we become seduced into believing our life, dreams, and work are the most significant and complex things going in the world. Though we would never admit such things, it’s only a matter of time before this belief yields a near-overwhelming concern that God cannot handle things so complicated without our guidance.

Soon our prayers are dominated by a grasping for control and longing for success. With each circumstance beyond our control we resolve ourselves to refocus—not realizing this only deepens our commitment to ourselves. Kierkegaard warns:
It is the Spirit who gives life. The life-giving Spirit is not a direct heightening of our natural powers—what blas­phemy! How horrible to understand the Spirit in this way!

Christianity teaches that you must die. Your power must be dismantled. The life-giving Spirit—that is the invitation. Who would not willingly take hold of it? But die first—there’s the rub!
Each of us can go along, dedicating our lives to pursuing our dreams or fleeing our failures—both will catch up and crush us. The invitation of Christ is to abandon ourselves—to dispense with our successes and aspirations as well as our failures and shortcomings—for the transcendent love and grace of God. Kierkegaard concludes:
You must first die to every earthly hope, to every merely hu­man confidence. You must die to your selfishness, and to the world, because it is only through your selfishness that the world has power over you.

What, exactly, does it mean to die to yourself? It is more than not seeing your wish fulfilled or to be deprived of the one that is dearest to you. True, this is painful enough, and selfishness is wounded. But it does not follow that you are dying. No, but personally to shatter your own fulfilled desire, personally to de­prive yourself of the dearly desired one who is now your own: this is what it means to wound selfishness at the root.

Christianity is not what we are all too eager to make it. Christianity waits before it applies its remedy. This is Christianity’s severity. It demands a great sacrifice, one which we often despair of making and can only later see why it was necessary to hold out and wait.

Today’s Reading
Job 31 (Listen – 4:16)
2 Corinthians 1 (Listen – 3:52)

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TBT: The Effects of a Loving God

2 Corinthians 13.5
Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?

 

By Thomas Doolittle (1632-1707)

Besides, belief (how do we know we “are in the faith”)? We know by what we value, by what our will chooses, and by our affection loving Christ above all.

What We Value
A woman whose house is on fire loses all her pewter to the flames so that she may save her child. Is it not apparent which she values most? Likewise, you will keep Christ, if you prize him most.

What We Choose
Christ is an honor to the believer, and Christ is most prized and valued by the believer. Can a man not know what he prizes most?
What he values and esteems most?
What his mind dictates to him to be chosen above all?
Whether his will chooses according to the dictates of the mind?

The affections, love, and desire enjoy what the will choices; grief fills the heart when he cannot obtain it. There is as much power of God required, and strength of grace, to make a man part with his beloved sin as all the rest.

Loving Christ Above All

By the effects of love, we may certainly know that we love him.
  1. By your unfeigned desires to be like unto him. — We love to imitate those whom we dearly love. Love produces assimilation: if he is holy, so we will be; if he hates sin, so will we.
  2. By your passionate desire to be united to him, to have him with you. — You go from your prayer closet to the congregation — if you find him there, from the word to the sacrament, you rejoice.
  3. By your great care to please him, fear to offend him, and resigning yourself to him. — When it grieves your heart to grieve the Lord, and it breaks thy heart when your break his commands.
  4. By the love that we bear in his image — in whoever we love by denying ourselves of honor and profit, if necessary, God should call us to do them good.

The delight of the heart is revealed in the enjoyment a man values, even while lacking other things. You can delight in Christ, in poverty, affliction, in the midst of troubles in the world.

*Abridged and language updated from Rev. Doolittle’s Cambridge talk, If We Must Aim At Assurance, What Should They Do, That Are Not Able To Discern Their Own Spiritual Condition?

Today’s Reading
2 Samuel 20 (Listen – 4:51)
2 Corinthians 13 (Listen – 2:19)

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Calamity Come

2 Corinthians 12.9
He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”By Ben Palpant

Editor’s Note: As we reflect on the verse above I want to return to an excerpt we published as part of our Summer Reading Series. This transparent look at his faith — during intense suffering — serves as both encouragement and great challenge. Ben Palpant’s transparency reveals both the profound pain of weakness and the remarkable sufficiency of God’s grace in it.

From the author’s website: “In his mid-thirties, Ben Palpant was suddenly reduced to an infant in a matter of a few short weeks–learning again to read and walk and feed himself. With no clear diagnosis, he was left alone with his questions: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why is this happening to me?’”

No child in the history of mankind, when asked what he would like to do when he grows up, has ever responded, “I want to suffer.” I, for one, did not. — Ben Palpant

C.S. Lewis called pain God’s megaphone. John Piper has called pain God’s pedagogy. “God, I am listening. Teach me. Speak into this bewilderment.”

After my meltdown in the office, everyone important to me encouraged me to stay home. My wife, father, mother, boss, and friends seemed to conspire against my ambitions. Soon my head began bobbing involuntarily and tremors gradually took over my torso. And then my arms and even my legs shook. My hands curled in on themselves and my tongue thickened in my mouth. I would sit like that for hours at a time.

My stability dissolved under the strain of suffering. In my suffering, I forgot that pain has a context. It is framed by the Master Storyteller. I am imagined: before I kicked against my mother’s womb, before the nurse pricked my heel and I cried out, before I threw a snowball and squealed with delight, God imagined all of it.

He imagined the death of grubs and the death of the chicks that ate them. Such pain is part of his story. Thomas Merton suggested that the mystery of God eclipses our suffering.

Pain is no case against God. No matter the cause. No matter the degree. Suffering does not call into question the existence of a good God; rather, it calls into question our lives. — Ben Palpant

He knows the falling of a sparrow and he knew the collapse of a mind. God does not look at our suffering from afar. It is an intimate event to him. He is the author of every detail, speaking the suffering as it occurs.

— Excerpt from A Small Cup of Light by Ben Palpant. benpalpant.com, 2014.

Today’s Reading
2 Samuel 19 (Listen – 7:31)
2 Corinthians 12 (Listen – 3:54)

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The Strengths of Weakness

2 Corinthians 11.30
If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.
Paul frequently asked his fellow believers to pray for him. Sometimes he would simply say, “Brothers, pray for us.” Other times he would passionately plead,“Strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf.” And we know why he so desperately needed their prayers.
2 Corinthians 11.24-27
Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.
Paul was brilliant and intense. He was a great man, a spiritual warrior, and a chosen instrument of God. Yet he needed others to pray for him. Why?
First, he knew that he could never accomplish his work apart from the grace of God: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
Second, he knew that moral growth and ministry fruitfulness came only by prayer. As he told the Philippians, “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment”(moral growth), and wrote to the Thessalonians, “Pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored” (fruitfulness).
Prayer
Lord, we long for grace, moral growth and fruitfulness in our lives. Thus, we know that we must meet with you in prayer. We must boast in our weaknesses apart from you, knowing that we cannot accomplish the most lasting achievements on this earth apart from your might, power, glory and love.
Let us not be lazy in praying for one another – that your grace would abound in our lives, that our love may grow in knowledge and depth of insight, and that your word may speed ahead and be honored in our lives – even as we endure hardship for our obedience like Paul did. Amen.
Today’s Reading
2 Samuel 18 (Listen – 6:16)
2 Corinthians 11 (Listen – 4:46)