Burning Ones

Posts from March, 2009

• Reflection on Hebrews 9:11-14

  From March 27, 2009 @ 6:00 am

  Mine:

  But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then by the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

  Real:

  But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

  Unified Diff (A little boo this time, the Emacs fill had unfortunate splits. Oh well.):

  2,7c2,7
  < come, then by the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands,
  < that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the holy
  < places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of
  < his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.  For if the
  < sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and
  < with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the
  ---
  > come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with
  > hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the
  > holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by
  > means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.  For if
  > the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls
  > and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the
  9c9
  < spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience
  ---
  > Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience
  

  1. I think the phrase that hit me hardest in this particular section is:

     If the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

     The reason I love this so much is that it speaks to the fact that it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance and allows us to serve him whole heartedly.

     The fact is that under the old covenant and the law (which we are always judged by, and in fact even more strenuously so (Matthew 5-7)) you lived with the constant weight of the need to perform. And the problem was that you were always failing. There was never anyone who didn’t have to show up at the yearly Day of Atonement with offerings for the sins that they had committed. Everyone, every day (depending on how honest they were with themselves), sinned in various ways, and each of the sins warranted punishment of some kind. If I was under that system, I can tell you exactly how I’d feel: hopeless.

     But God was gracious and gave the sacrificial law so that people could be cleansed from their sins. Despite that, that system gave rise to the most self-righteous people, the Pharisees. These were people who felt like they didn’t really sin. Maybe they had some little petty sins here or there, but for the most part they were perfect, and everyone who couldn’t man up like they had was a sinner and deserved judgement.

     But you see the thing is that if our conscience isn’t clear before God then we lose our energy to serve him. Why serve someone who’s constantly mad at you unless you do something? It’s exhausting living in a relationship like that. When someone’s love for you is predicated on your ability to do what they want, and you can’t ever do what they want, then you’ll just give up, even if they give you a systematic way to receive their forgiveness that you can do fairly easily.

     That’s where the covenant that Christ inaugurates improves so much upon the old covenant. Under the new covenant, our sins are forever abolished and thus we are freed from dead works and stale religion. Instead, secure in the knowledge that through Christ we are delighted in and over by God, we can serve him with our whole heart knowing that when we fail, it’s been paid for. It’s both our conscience and our flesh that Christ purifies with his blood. Amen!

  2. I find the juxtaposition of Christ’s purification of our conscience from dead works and the serving of the living God intriguing. The problem with the gospel of mercy is and has always been that it can lead to licentiousness. People have always taken the knowledge that God will not judge us for our sins any longer and used it to say, “Well then I can do whatever I want!”. This of course is a confusion of the gospel. I say again that it’s God’s kindness that leads us to repentance. Without repentance, we haven’t understood the gospel at all.

     I’m not sure if I’ve written about this here before (A quick google search didn’t turn up anything.) so I’ll just introduce it like it’s new. One of the ways that I’ve come to understand the gospel most clearly is a concept that I call Graceful Failure.

     To understand the gospel it’s very important to understand the seriousness and gravity of sin. One sin is worth eternal, literal, conscious damnation under the active wrath of God. It’s useless and audacious to attempt to argue against the goodness of God because of this. God defines goodness and reality and we who are fallen and finite can’t hope to understand his reasoning. Suffice it to say that any blaming of God for our sin is a useless exercise. We sinned. We deserve judgement. End of story.

     But God, in his inestimable mercy, chose to not give us what we deserved. Instead, he promised that one day he would make it right. This is unbelievably important. Notice that in the first gospel preached (Genesis 3) God takes upon himself the responsibility of making things right again. He doesn’t say, “Here’s the steps to make this right. Good luck. Maybe I’ll help.” but instead says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise [Hebrew crush] your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”.

     In the interim he institutes the first covenant through Moses, in which he defines everything that he had always expected of us. This was to make it clear and without question that we are sinners who deserve judgement. However, Christ hadn’t come yet. So he instituted the sacrificial system so people could serve him without dying. But they still weren’t able to serve him whole heartedly.

     But then Christ came! He lived the life we couldn’t live, died the death we should have died, and rose to give us the righteousness that he obtained. Suddenly, we can be washed in his blood (and we are) and we become pure before the God of the universe.

     But to what end? To have license to sin? Of course not! In fact God makes greater demands on us than ever before through Christ (Matthew 5-7). But things are different now. Now the sacrifice has been made. I can enter boldly into the presence of my holy God because through the blood of Christ I am seen as holy, no matter what I’ve done. But it’s through this that I’m struck to the core with a love for him who saved me. Because I know what I deserved (at least in part), I’m aware of how great a love God has for me, because he pardoned my great debt to him. It is this realization that makes me want to serve him so badly. He owed me nothing, and yet he’s given me mercy. Amen.

     This is where my term, Graceful Failure comes in. When I fail now, I can with confidence press on, forgetting what lies behind me, because I know that God has as well. I don’t have to wait to serve him again. All I need to do is reapproach his throne without shame, knowing that I stand clean in the blood of Jesus. Thus I am able to work again for God. Where as before I was crippled with my guilt, now my conscience is free to attempt to obey God in everything knowing that he doesn’t count my sins against me.

     So we see, there is no contradiction. Yes, we no longer are slaves to dead works that lead us to destruction, so we work with our whole hearts to serve the one who made that possible.

• Elimination Communication

  From March 25, 2009 @ 6:19 pm

  Now that I feel like I have somewhat of a handle on having an infant, I’d like to be challenged again, and so on Monday I have started to “potty-train” Fiery, who is now about 5.5 months old. I thought this would be a fun thing to blog about.

  I don’t want to get into the specifics and “how-to’s” but if you’re interested you can read about it here.

  I jumped head-first into this and came up with this:

  

  A very poor method. One thing about doing this is quickness: and unbottoning footsies is by far not a quick method. Since then I’ve learned, thanks to a Mothering forum, that pants and a ti-shirt is much easier. Being butt naked would be the easiest (yay for hardwood floors!) but unfortunately I don’t know want to do that until the weather is a little bit warmer.

  We had our first poop today!! I was SO proud of her. I thought she was just going to pee and then she just started pooping! I didn’t even have to “catch” it. Go Fiery!

  And this is a picture of her first pee:

  

  Just to add this potty-training toilet is horrible for infants and I can’t wait until my Baby Bjorn Little Potty comes in the mail :-D

  My Flickr page.

• Maintenance Notes

  From March 19, 2009 @ 12:56 pm

  Ugh… There are so many things wrong with the site right now. I just found out that our feed links aren’t working right now for whatever reason. I’ll get to this as soon as I can. :\

• Ancestor has a show this Friday! Go if you can.

  From March 19, 2009 @ 12:10 pm

  So my buddies Joe, Alan, and Trevor (as well as two other guys that I’m less familiar with but otherwise seem sweet, Marigold and Mike) used to be in this band called Prevail. They played sweet meaty technical hardcore. Joe had an ultra-gravely growl of voice, their lyrics were dark, they played rockin’ shows, they brought a light fixture down at the Ark. They were awesome.

  Then Joe left the band and Scott joined in for vocals. Scott’s got a much smoother scream and an unreal lung capacity. Marigold and Alan left and I think they have another new guitar player. Anyway, their style has matured a lot and I’m more a fan than ever. Plus they seem to clearly have a heart to see the local scene continue.

  Anyway, that’s my introduction for the following:

  

  Here’s Scott’s original post.

  Enjoy!