Songs of Ascent

This is the law of the temple: the whole territory on the top of the mountain all around shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the temple. -- Ezekiel 43:12

Access to the Father is no longer limited to a priesthood.  Everyone, regardless of birth, sex, race, or social status is able to enter into a relationship and communion with God.  What had been limited and restricted becomes open and free, the price of absolution and admittance having been fully paid on the Cross. 

The common is removed, not by being taken away or demolished but by being transformed.  The most ordinary aspects of life – eating, sleeping, working, serving – are renewed, dying and resurrecting to become yet another means of worshiping and honoring the Lord. 

And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.  For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. … This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel (Ephesians 2:17-18, 3:6). 

There is no person beyond God’s reach.  Every corner of our lives can become holy.

The way I look at it, the temple and its immediate grounds -- what was set apart under the instruction of Moses and enforced by the priesthood of Aaron, represents more traditional, exoteric religious thinking.  We do good.  We live right.  We act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.  There is nothing wrong with this, just as there was nothing wrong with the temple or that tabernacle.  But it leaves us stuck in the illusion of a ground floor in the two-story universe. 

The fuller, more whole type of Christian faith and practice brings us up closer to the level of heaven.  Notice that it is the top of the mountain that is holy.  There are valleys and gulches that we must leave behind.  God doesn’t sanctify our dark and worldly desires; those He banishes.  We must lay aside much that burdens and holds us back if we would make the ascent. 

Pop Culture, Degeneracy, and Duggars

But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the LORD, and be sure your sin will find you out. -- Numbers 32:23

I have a friend who lives down in Arkansas, not too far from where the Duggar clan abides.  I have never watched their “reality” show and really could care less about their lifestyle.  My friend, though, says they have always presented a façade that is, to her, not credible.  She is a lovely, sweet person, but she is almost gloating about their sudden fall. 

One of the memes we see coming out of this from “liberals” claims that having millions of people registered on an adultery site proves that the institution of marriage will not be destroyed by homosexual nuptials.  I have to wonder if they have thought that through.  Perhaps it was making divorce easy and acceptable, coupled with widespread adultery and the resultant de-sanctification of marriage that allows homosexual unions to seem acceptable to some people.  Perhaps our problem is that normal people do not have enough respect for the institution to keep their vows.  The attitude of popular culture toward divorce and adultery along with feminazis equating marriage to slavery has made marriage a joke and homosexual marriage is the natural punch line.    

I don’t have anything against the Duggars, and I have no interest in criticizing or condemning them.   As far as I am concerned, a desire to disconnect and separate from a degenerate popular culture is admirable.  To the extent that the clan does this, I admire them.   I doubt this incident will cause much of a change in their lifestyles.  They will “work through” their issues and tighten the screws down a little tighter, be more “accountable” to one another when it comes to cell phones and internet browsing history while continuing to live in their two-story universe.  They will continue to be better people than I am. 

The greater point is that our sin will find us out, as individuals and as a nation.  It is the nature of violating the rules of reality, of rejecting truth that sooner or later, the consequences must pull us up short, and we are exposed. 

The sad thing is that I never needed a site to help me commit adultery.  I didn’t need pr0n on the internet to be wicked.  I was born this way.  I never cheated on my wife, but it wasn’t because I thought I might get caught.  It was because I knew I was already caught.  I know what Adam found out that first evening after the Fall.  Hiding behind fig leaves or putting my hands over my eyes so I can’t see God does not mean that He can’t see me, that I am not still completely naked and exposed before Him.

I have to ask myself the question, “Boy, who do you think you are fooling?”  It is certainly not God.  In the end, it’s not other people.  It is only myself.  Consider again what the verse says, I am sure that my sin will find me out.    

Curing the Evil Conscience

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  – Hebrews 10:19-22

What is an evil conscience?  Is it one that calls that which is evil “good”, as we were talking about a couple of days ago?  When we come to Christ, we do get our perspective changed.  We begin to see our thoughts, words, and deeds from the Divine point of view.  We understand things we found acceptable before are offensive to God and ought to be offensive to us. 

In the context of this passage, the writer talks about drawing near to God.  In this case, what is meant by an evil conscience has more to do, I think, with keeping us at a distance.  As Christians, our conscience may accuse us to the point that we feel condemned and unworthy of having access to the Father. 

I don’t mean to treat repentance lightly, but sometimes enough is enough.  When it comes to being convicted with regard to a fault in our lives, we are to repent.  We do that by admitting to God that we are guilty and wrong.  Then it is done.  But what if we do it again?  We’re going to feel bad and need, again, to acknowledge our failure.  Yes, but what if I just can’t quit?  What I’m really doing, at that point, is acknowledging that I know something is wrong but I rather enjoy it and don’t want to quit so long as I suffer no serious consequences from it.   If I don’t want to quit, I won’t, and I shouldn’t call it repentance because I haven’t “changed my mind” – no metanoia. 

Regardless of that point, I still have access to the Father in Christ, even if my “evil” conscience tells me otherwise.   The ultimate cure for wanting to continue under the flesh’s control is intimacy with God.  God does not fix us at a distance then bring us in.  He brings us in to fix us. 

The cure for an accusing conscience is to recognize the finished work of Jesus as Savior.  That’s all that I have going for me, but it is more than enough.  The Blood of the Cross is the answer to that nagging doubt that I am good enough for God.  Alone I cannot be accepted.  In Christ I cannot be rejected.  The Cross brings me into communion with the Lord, and once I am there, He will [c]reate in me a clean heart …  and renew a right spirit within me (Psalm 51:10).

Set Your Heading

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.  To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. – Romans 8:3-6

I'm a little rushed today, but ...

I find the verses above to be striking near the crux of my problems as a Christian, and, from what I’ve gathered from talking with other Christians over the years, I may not be entirely alone.  I don’t know that many people actually teach such a thing, but there are those who appear to believe that sanctification is sudden thing – where, if one is properly aligned on the mourners’ bench or whatever, the old nature is more or less eradicated. 

I going to throw this out there:  it is a bad idea to make a doctrine out of anyone’s personal experience, even when we are talking about several “anyones”.  We have denominations that are built and distinguished by little else.  I think it would be good if we could give individuals more room within the overall Church Universal – the one Jesus set up, to worship, serve, and connect with our Lord in their own ways, while being a little less concerned with our labels.  “Christian, Hillbilly” works fine for me.

In any case, my old nature doesn’t go down so easily.  I’ve spent 30 years playing Whack-An-Adam.  What I’ve learned is exactly what Paul says in Romans 8, that it is on what I set my mind that counts.  The sooner I can forget about the thoughts, urges, impulses, and even the mistakes of the old Mushroomic nature the better.  The more I can keep my focus on the new nature, on the truth of Christ in me, the hope of glory, even more better. 

I don’t think we need to let the old nature worry us.  I know we don’t need to listen to it, give in to it, or let it control us.  Jesus has set us free from the necessity of obedience to the flesh, from the bondage we were in, and that part is a completely done deal.  The perfect picture is the argument between Sméagol and Gollum in the film version of The Two Towers.  Sméagol could reject Gollum’s help because he had “the Master”.  We are the same way.  We owe nothing to the flesh.  We take care of the body but cast aside the old ragged cloak of the flesh in which we once trusted and tried to cover ourselves. 

Inspiration and Scripture

All these things Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed, he said nothing to them without a parable.  This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet:   “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.” – Matthew 13:34-35

I, somewhat facetiously, said a day or two ago that we know it is God and not goddess because He lays out the rules plainly.  That’s true enough about the Law.  Do this and you will live.  Do that, and it is death.  Yet life has both its pedestrian, masculine side and its exotic, mysterious, feminine side.  When it comes to what we are to be rather than only what we must do, we find the Lord talking about seeds and weeds and bread and vines. 

That’s the way that it works.  The Bible is not informational, certainly not solely informational.  It is not a book of facts or a flight schedule that tells us which plane to board for a trip to heaven.  That kind of thinking leads to the misunderstandings of extreme fundamentalism, of eschatological date-setting, of accusations of heresy over how long it took God to create the cosmos.  Has the sun indeed set on the Sixth?

I think the Bible is inspired literature.  I think the writers wrote, sometimes, lists of names because they were scribes and that is what scribes did.  I think Paul wrote greetings, salutations, and personal details in his Epistles because an epistle is a letter to one’s friends or potential friends.  Romans is possibly the richest Epistle in terms of doctrine but can we say it is more inspired than the simple little note Paul dashed off to Philemon about a useless runaway slave named Onesimus*? 

When a person becomes a Christian, he or she is baptized in symbolic death and resurrection.  God does not pull a man from the game and send in an angel to replace him.  Instead, by His Spirit, Christ comes to dwell in the man, in that flesh, though it be abused and wounded, even crippled and scarred.  We could all change our names to Christopher, for we are all Christ-bearers.  God makes new men out of old by inspiration in the fullest sense of the word.  As He breathed into red clay the Breath of Life, and Adam became a living soul, so the Holy Breath sanctifies the flawed and weak material bodies of those who will trust Him today.  We become sanctuaries of the Living God.

Are we surprised, then, that He took what is, in places, fairly prosaic literature and inspires it that His Spirit might make of it sacred Scripture?  It seems like something God would do.  He speaks to us through and by the limitations, the prejudices, and the flaws of those who wrote.  Like us they were but jars of clay, and, also like us, jars filled with an unimaginable treasure.  Whatever was in their minds as the pen moved, whatever the conditions that motivated them, whatever the context, though it may help us in understanding the language, does not limit the meaning. 

*For those who might not know, Paul has a little fun with the name Onesimus which means, literally, useful.  See verse 11 -- Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me.