Moreover, the number and hardness of the Rules called the Pie, and the manifold changings of the service, was the cause, that to turn the book only was so hard and intricate a matter, that many times there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.
It seems to me that there are at least two varieties of words in the Christian lexicon, those that are trite and those that are specific. “God thing” is a trite phrase that has no objective meaning and there is not much to lose if we never use it again. “Propitiation” is a very precise term that has a distinct meaning. It is this second category that I believe we need to hold on to and we need to hold on to such words without shame. We impoverish ourselves when we lose these words. We impoverish ourselves if we never learn and teach these words.
But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the LORD their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do like them. And they abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves; and they made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger. Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only.
The Christian says, "Creatures are not born with desired unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."
By the time Moses's sandals hit the base of Mount Sinai with God's commandments under his arms, God's people had collected their golden earrings, melted them in a fire, and cast a golden calf (Exodus 32). The adornment of the ear was sacrificed in order to create an image pleasing to the eye. The ear (the receiver of God's word) was plundered for the eye (the receiver of the image). The irony is striking.
I'll be honest about it. It's not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the Garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. Be we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
Never forget that we are all still "the early Christians." The present wicked and wasteful divisions between us are, let us hope, a disease of infancy: we are still teething. The outer world, no doubt, thinks just the opposite. It thinks we are dying of old age. But it has thought that very often before. Again and again it has thought Christianity was dying, dying from persecutions from without and corruptions from within, by the rise of Mohammedanism, the rise of physical sciences, the rise of great anti-Christian revolutionary movements. But every time the world has been disappointed. Its first disappointment was over the crucifixion. The Man came to life again. In a sense – and I quite realise how frightfully unfair it must seem to them – that has been happening ever since. They keep on killing the thing that He started: and each time, just as they are patting down the earth on its grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive and has even broken out in some new place. No wonder they hate us.
I felt a kinship with him. It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them – and then they leap.
Gosnell's problem is not with what he was doing, which countless progressives have defended with their special kind of passionate malice, but with where he was doing it. You see, he was doing it where people could see.
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Hell is revealed as a place of torment where millions of human beings will be enclosed forever. Statisticians tell us that approximately ninety-five million people die every year. That means that, every second, three human beings enter hell or heaven. Within the next hour, eleven thousand men, woman and children will have gone forever to a place of everlasting joy or a place of everlasting pain. Imagine them dying even now, as you read these words - one, then another, then another. As you draw your next breath, several more are leaving this earth. When a plane crashes and two or three hundred people are suddenly snatched into eternity, everyone talks about it. It is an appalling disaster, headline news. And yet eleven thousand of our fellow human beings, every hour of every day of the year, are reaching their eternal destination. Surely for this reason alone such a doctrine must be an important one.
And yet - this is the other and equally important side of it - this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow to do the simplest duty. As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby's first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, "God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy."
Some will doubtless dispute this. If that is so, they will say, why did Paul say all those nasty things about the law in Romans and Galatians? Paul was primarily opposing the way people were (mis)using the law; he was battling a misconception about the function of the law. The law can never be in any way to any degree a standard you can meet and so earn salvation. The law can show you how you fail to be or to do what God requires, but it cannot absolve you of the guilt incurred in breaking the law. The can accuse you but cannot justify you. The law is like your back-porch thermometer - it will show you how hot or cold it is outside, but it does not have the power to raise or lower the temperature. That's why my only hope is Jesus, the Law-keeper who suffered the lawbreaker's judgement (Gal 3:10, 13).
Teachers will tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one that works hardest in the end. They mean this. If you give two boys, say, a proposition in geometry to do, the one who is prepared to take trouble will try to understand it. The lazy boy will try to learn it by heart because, for the moment, that needs less effort. But six months later, when they are preparing for an exam, that lazy boy is doing hours and hours of miserable drudgery over things the other boy understands, and positively enjoys, in a few minutes. Laziness means more work in the long run.
Whereas the God of Israel is not a God of the dead but of the living. For His city, the future is always the touchstone. His city now is not the preserve of the city of yesterday but an anticipation of the city of tomorrow.
I feel a strong desire to tell you - and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me - which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs - pairs of opposites. And he encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike like of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.
Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
