The Depths of Self-Righteousness
Feb 8th, 2008 by Nathan White
If we could pinpoint the precise point where the modern church has erred and has thus flirted with completely abandoning the gospel of Jesus Christ, where would that point be?
A misunderstanding and confusion on law versus grace? Works versus true faith? That might be a good place to start, but there seems to be something just a little deeper.
A misunderstanding and error regarding the sovereignty of God and the sinfulness of sin which leaves men dead in their sins and unable to save themselves? Again, a great place to start –for arminianism and a belief in free will has indeed infected this country like a deadly plague. But there seems to be something just a little deeper.
The glory of God as the end of the gospel
A good way to sum up where the church in our culture has largely abandoned the gospel would be to say that we’ve made Christianity all about us and our needs instead of all about God and His glory. We seem to have turned our backs on a holy and perfect God who cannot overlook sin and still be just, and have instead looked first and foremost at ourselves, that is, at our needs, our wants, our desires, our anything here and now. Jesus has turned into our means to get what we want, both now and in eternity, instead of the end to which we abandon everything to obtain.
As I read David Brainerd, I am struck dumb with how deeply he recognized sin within his own heart, and how he had such a beautiful view of the glory of God. Again and again we read of him praying, reading scripture, attending church, indeed all the religious duties you could think of, and yet he repeatedly comes back to his journal and laments of his self-righteousness and how he is simply trying to commend himself to God. There is no doubt, reading Brainerd’s journal is like stepping into another world.
I read Brainerd and am often left wondering how my prayers could be so self-centered instead of Christ-centered. I read Brainerd, and the countless ways I have attempted to commend myself to God over the years becomes painfully clear. I read Brainerd and I see such a love and a passion for the glory of God –and that alone, that I am humbled to the dust because of my own self-righteousness.
I would humbly propose that you read Brainerd’s words below and search your own heart as well. There has been such a corporate and superficial church built up in our culture, that meditating on the depths of one’s sin is very rare indeed. May you search your own heart, and may God be glorified in you humbling yourself before His mighty hand.
Quotes taken out of The Hidden Smile of God, by John Piper:
David Brainerd quarreled with the fact that there was nothing he could do in his own strength to commend himself to God.
“…all of my good frames [i.e., devotional states] were but self-righteousness, not bottomed on a desire for the glory of God.”
“There was no more goodness in my praying than there would be in my paddling with my hands in the water…because [my prayers] were not performed from any love or regard to God…I never once prayed for the glory of God.”
“I never once intended His honor and glory…I had never once acted for God in all my devotions…I used to charge them with sin…[because] of wanderings and vain thoughts…and not because I never had any regard in them to the glory of God.”
There is this thing we hear, that Christ died for us. There is something deeper. Christ died for the glory of His Father. We think that we were created to glorify God. There is something deeper. We were created by God that by us he would glorify Himself. To the end that we are glorified, glory to glory, it is God, who for his own glory works all things. Simple, a Father has children and they are his glory. So we pray, “for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory. Truely.” From doxology to doxology, the perfect praise, perfected in the mouths of infants by God who creates the fruit of the lips, belongs to God alone. Soli Deo Gloria.
“We were created by God that by us he would glorify Himself.”
Thomas, this may be a nonsensical question (like “Is Thursday red or black?”), but was this whole endeavor necessary? By this I mean, would God’s glory have been any less were Heaven not populated with the elect that had been born throughout the ages? Is He more glorious with a billion souls in Heaven than if there were only a handful of angels and seraphim? If that were so, then it implies that there was something He once lacked, and I think we would agree that this cannot be.
If it were not necessary, why then the existence of the reprobate? What purpose do they serve? Are the elect more grateful to God for their election simply because of the knowledge of the existence (and implicit suffering) of those who have not so been chosen? What does this say about their characters if they are? What does Scripture say about those who feast in the palace while others are starving at the gates? The only option is to mourn over it, I would think. Yet, this is God’s will since He decreed things to be this way, so how can we mourn over that which He has decreed as right?
Perhaps I’m missing a piece of this puzzle.
Yeah James you’re missing a big part. The point is that God is the highest good that he seeks. Infiniteness can not be added to nor taken from, finiteness is swallowed up in infinitude. God is neither increased nor decreased by anything that he creates. He remains the same yesterday and forever, he remains Creator, transcendent and totally other than his creation. The question is not is it necessary, but simply whether or not it is.
Scripture teaches us the purpose of the reprobate is to teach the elect of God
But it is not that we are grateful for that mercy based upon any amount of suffering in the reprobate, but that each one of us is thankful for the relief of our own individual eternal suffering;
Yes, we do mourn here, just as God does also mourn, because mouning is also decreed by God. But mourning only will last till the consummation of the ages because mourning only last for the night and joy comes in the morning. In the eternal state the memory of this sinful existence and all that it entails will be washed away, and no tear will be found in the Jerusalem which is from above. and so joy will be eternal and not at the expense of the wicked, but to the glory of God. Scripture delcares that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked and solemnly charges us not to glory in the suffering of our enemies, for that is a trait of the enemy.
There is no one starving at the gate, as if they were victims of those or the One within. No, those starving are so because they have refused to be fed the body and blood of Christ, and having rejected being fed by Him, their hunger will never be satisfied.
Yeah, you are missing a big part of the picture, such as a fear of God and the knowledge of the Holy One, it appears. To sum up what I wrote in my original post: Isaiah 43:7; Isaiah 48:11; Isaiah 66; 2 Corinthians 1:20; and
My suspicion, though, is that you have already rejected God, and his purpose anyway. And it will not matter what might be said about all things being made for his glory, you will have to find some means to diminish it by attaching something to it.
Here’s a link with a good article on God’s glory.
Thomas writes: “Scripture teaches us the purpose of the reprobate is to teach the elect of God in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.”
I’m not sure what this means, even though it sounds poetic, I suppose. It sounds like you’re saying that the reprobate exists for the benefit of the elect, yes?
IOW, one man is sentenced to eternal condemnation so that the man who is granted salvation has knowledge of what would have been his fate had God not been gracious to him. This presupposes that this knowledge could not be given in any other way that didn’t entail the suffering of another. You would not have knowledge of how gracious God would have been to you had you not known that others were in torment. However, if this awareness only is to last “till the consummation of the ages” as you say, does this mean the memory of the reprobate will be eliminated as well? If that’s the case, the corollary to your assertion is that your gratitude will disappear along with the memory of their condemnation.
Is this correct?
No. But as I said you will rationalize the reason for faith into non-existence. You do not understand the basis of revelation, nor do you care. We know of our condemnation and what that entails by revelation, and each according to his own condemnation. It is the mercy of God which teaches us and that for his glory. We know first of our own estate and learn that we who were reprobate have been marked out for salvation. We were all by nature children of wrath. We do not have to have others to look at in misery, we know our own. But, you want rationalization. Corollaries to understand. No, as the glory of God will never cease so neither will our joy in salvation. You can think only in terms of light and dark, but in the new kingdom there will be no darkness. That escapes you because the light is your enemy.
Let me quess, you are atheistic?
“Let me quess, you are atheistic?”
How do you gather that?
Look, I’m not sure why any theology should require the suspension of lucid thought. Theology may transcend mere reason, but it is not less, just as Christian ethics means more than not breaking the Commandments, but it is not less.
When you say “the purpose of the reprobate is to teach the elect of God”, I’m simply paraphrasing your words by saying that the reprobate exists for the benefit of the elect. Perhaps what you don’t like is that I tend to strip the words of some of their poetry, but I do this in order to more clearly define what you are writing.
Further, what does “You can think only in terms of light and dark, but in the new kingdom there will be no darkness” mean exactly? Okay on the second part, but are you suggesting that good and evil are not valid constructs? What terms should I think in then? That everything’s a shade of gray?
For the record, I’m not a non-theist (or an anti-theist). I just don’t see the same ideas being conveyed in Scripture as you might. Hence, the need for clarification.
Okay, James, thanks for clarifying, somewhat.
Nate said this:
You said you were, not a non-theist, or anti-theist. And I was merely reflecting on your apparent rejection of what Scripture states as true. So, what are you? You remain anonymous. The question was not whether you were either of the two you state, but was, are you atheistic? Which you in part answered, but you answered only in the negative, but gave no affirmative glance at what your worldview is. Are you deist? Pantheist? What? I am Christian Theist, and know him in whom I believe. Do you know him?
No, things are not a matter of shades of grey, but of light, and again, you show that you can only see in terms of oppositional duads, only in terms of contrast and comparison. It seems, for you, without the construct of good and evil in opposition, you can have no concept of good. Can you of conceive Holiness, without antithesis? Knowledge of evil was not part of the original creation. In fact, the oppositional duadinal construct was forbidden knowledge. No, I repeat, it is not necessary that we have knowledge of reprobation to understand God’s glory prepared for his vessels of mercy. However, God has given us that knowledge which we have now for our instruction and for the instruction of the nations. Good and evil are valid constructs, and will always be, that is not the question. The question that you have proposed is will that construct be necessary knowledge eternally for those who will enter the “blessed estate”. I say no. And, I would ask you this, do you need to know where you are not to know where you are? The reconstitution of the creation in the New creation will be similar to that which was in the beginning. Man will no longer have nor need a knowledge of evil nor anything that would by its association include memory of it. There will be no shades of grey, just glorious color, without shadow, nor any other corruption. That essesence of truth which now escapes us in this fallen creation, will be revealed in the new heavens and new earth. For now, the closest most of us come as believers is the Truth, the revelation of Christ in us the hope of glory yet to be revealed.
I quoted Nathan above, because you have yet to deal with his assertion. Is it all about God’s glory? I was merely restating the obvious. Man is God’s creation, created by him for his purpose. Man was not created for himself, but for another. That we are God’s instruments is hated by those who do no know him but for those who are called by his name, it is the glory of God revealed. By creating he neither adds to nor diminishes his glory, rather by it (by us) establishes it. He does not do so out of necessity, but that it is what it is, is necessarily true. Again, at this juncture you departed in to a dialectic discussion, e.g.
You juxtapose reprobation with election as if to say that without that knowledge we could not know. I countered with, no, the knowledge of the reprobate is only necessary in:
We also have this:
These verses compliment one another. On the one hand we have the message of God’s wrath toward sin, on the other the means of proclaiming the removing of that wrath. And the answer that is given to you in the second, is that it is God’s pleasure, and that is what makes it necessary. It is not of necessity, that is in adding anything to God, but merely of his good pleasing. It is what he did, it is what is. The natural man though does not receive this with gladness. To him there must be more, something beyond God’s decree, something that would give God reason to be and to do as he does. The fact is no, there is nothing outside of God, no reason to which he must bow, no purpose outside his own glory for anything that he does.
Nathan has asked a valid question. Does the question by the creature of “why” constitute disobedience? When the answer has already been given: “I AM.” Or, as Paul would state:
Or as Isaiah said:
Thomas writes: “It is not of necessity, that is in adding anything to God, but merely of his good pleasing. It is what he did, it is what is. The natural man though does not receive this with gladness.”
Then asks: “Do you know him?”
Implicit from your comments (and perhaps even from Scripture) is that one simply cannot know Him. He is “Good”, but “good” has no meaning to us since what is deemed as “good” is good because God commands it and not for any other reason. So I think you’d side with Emil Brunner regarding the Euthyphro Dilemma who writes:
What I think this implies, then, is that murder, for example, is wrong if God forbids it, but good if He commands it. In fact, God did tell Abraham to commit murder by slicing his son open. Abraham was ready to oblige Him, even though it might have been inconsistent with what he thought he knew of God’s character.
What if, upon Christ’s return, human sacrifice is restored as a public good? Would you participate? Yes, it might violate what Scripture says is good, but God has commanded it before, and it’s His prerogative to command as He wishes as He defines what is “good”, yes?
This isn’t a trap into getting you to somehow admit you’re less moral than I am, since my only knowledge of what is “good” is my instinctual revulsion towards violence and what I think I know God approves of. I’m not sure I’m in a philosophically better position.
Again, you confuse categories. Answer the question.
Does God command murder? Where? When the Father decreed that man would crucify his son, was it good or evil?
You obviously have philosophical training that I do not, still, as I explained, you cannot even engage unless you have dialectical categories. So, deal with this: And he (Jesus) said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.”
Instinct does not inform, it drives blindly impulses. The categories again you confuse. Human action is contemplative, instinct, is not. What you do refexively, can only be know good or not based in some reality outside yourself. Even language, by which you categorize, does not arise from within you. The categories that you need to place your reflexive instinctual drives into, were give to you from without.
So, answer the question, do you know Him? Because you have been informed as to what is good by another, not from youself. The question is, is the source from where you have derived your conclusions the Truth?
And, again, anser Nathan, is everything for the glory of God? Even the creatures that he has made?
James, since you mentioned the Euthyphro Dilemma, I wanted to recommend this article: “A Christian Answer to the Euthyphro Dilemma”
http://www.theologyonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47024
Sam,
Of course, Bob Enyart’s view is clearly outside the bounds of the Christian faith and of the scriptures once for all delivered to the saints. Open theism, though appealing to the humanistic self-righteousness of man, is a heresy in it’s limiting God’s knowledge of the future, and I don’t appreciate you posting this here –on a site which clearly communicates convictions that guide the conversation here.
Indeed, the open theistic god is no god at all.
Nate, then how does a Calvinist approach these issues? Is whatever God decrees “moral” simply because He commands it? If He deemed it “moral” to murder one’s mother, would you do so? If you say He would never command that, then it suggests God Himself adheres to a standard from outside Himself. If you say He could command it, then it suggests that God’s decrees are arbitrary. What today is “good” might not be so tomorrow.
You may find Enyart’s approach lacking, but he at least attempts to answer these difficult questions that others avoid or ignore completely. Of course, there are those like Christian writer Vox Day who admitted that if God commanded him to kill every infant on the planet, he would do so. He’s at least honest I guess!
This issue is important, I feel, because though many matters of life are relatively obvious in terms of what is ethical, there are many times when ascertaining what is “right” is not clear at all.
James-
You are still demanding oppositional categories to establish truth but you have yet to explain:
You demand that killing equals murder. That is a false dilema, a product of your own systematic which is the determining factor in your assertions that God, if he exists at all, must exist according to your categories. But, murder does not necessarily equal killing. So answer: Are you accusing God, the God of Scripture, of murder? Or, is the execution of his son as a propitiation for the wrath of God against sin an act of righteousness based in the perfect justice of God?
And do not engage in duadinal contervalences. If Scripture says that God is good, it is obvious that there is no standard outside of him to which he must bow. That is a form of gnosticism, and you know it, and not the God that is defined within Scripture. But, what you have demonstrated is that you reject the revelation of the One who is good and in his stead put yourself as the arbiter, that is the determiner of good and evil, the very essence of what Scripture declares as sin, the nature opposed to the Good.
Isaiah said it best:
Or as Paul put it:
You may wish to accuse God of caprice. But, do you know his mind? The end of reason is that one arrives at the first cause, the reason for the actions that follow. And when you have arrived at it you say that it is the end, the eurika. Then why are you not willing to accept that the first cause of all things is Good? Instead you must have a god without resolution, entangled in the timelessness of oppositional forces, the yin and yang. You must appeal to a why God would do as he does as if the reason could not resolve simply in his goodness. And that is the beginning of this thread, the Glory of the One who is Good and for the Good He is, seeks his own Glory. For you God must be as man; doing so that he arrives at the resolution, the reason for his action, which is outside himself. But, your reason for pursuing reason is that you may arrive at the terminus, the first cause of what is. What you afford to be the reason of reason, will you not agree with yourself that there is a resonable answer? Or, is it really irrationality by which you operate such that there can be no reason, that is the first and final cause? You appeal that there must be a reason which is the same as saying there is an end to you inquiry. So, why do you need to propose that there must be further reason than God. It is then not caprice but the first cause which is by definition the reason that all things proceed from it. What you do not want to accept is that all that we know flows from the Glory of God; his Goodness. Because, for you, the myopic view that you have is the standard by which man judges and thus you attempt to climb into heaven as if to bring God down to your level that you might put him to the test in the scales of justice that are of man’s making. If you are to judge God, his motives and ways, is it not that you make yourself the standard outside of God such that He is not God but the god of your imagination; that you have placed yourself in his throne judging him as if you were above it? You are irrational in doing so, for in the final analysis your measure will still have the flaw: Why? Because the measure with which you judge arises within you. The very measure of things that you are not willing to afford God.
Step back. Will you judge infinity by the finite? How foolish then you would judge the one that holds infinity in the palm of His hand.
Thomas, I ask these questions more to understand where YOU, the believer, are coming from. I don’t pretend to know or judge the mind of God. He is not knowable.
So I ask YOU: if you were told to murder your mother by God, would you do it? Yes or no? It’s a simple question. Let’s make it the most horrific type of murder imagineable too: let’s say drawing and quartering. Would you do it? Why or why not? God might or might not ask such a thing: that’s irrelevant. The question is what would you do if He did?
I’m not being argumentative: I’m trying to understand how you, the believer, attempt to approach ethical dilemmas when you are implying that you do not have or trust your own innate sense of morality.
First, yes God is knowable. That is the distinction that you refuse to admit into the argument.
Second, I answered your question. God does not command murder, ever. So it is not a question of what if. He has already told us that he would not. And, as I have explained, you have no innate sense of morality. Any ethical teaching you have has been drawn from either instruction or conclusions you have drawn from them. We all have a moral sense, which is predicated upon guilt, a guilt that we have, not as a sense from instruction, but one from the innate nature, which in Christianity is the guilt of Adam’s transgression. It is this which we come to understand through the anothen gennao – as I have told you already; through God’s grace, as revealed both in creation, General revelation, and then specifically through the Revelation of Jesus Christ we understand. It is only when:
Until that happens, the answers you seek will never be sufficient even though you are told because :
As Jesus said:
Which he said to those who accused him of having being mad, that is having a demon. Which is exactly that they were accusing him of being a murderer. But, as he declared, he was from above and not from below as they were and so of an entirely different nature. He is God and is neither a liar, a thief, nor a murderer. And as we understand him we know that:
Sin is not in God- his nature is Good. He does not temp, he does not command to murder. It’s the murderer who accuses God of being one, thinking that God is as a man. But he is not and cannot command murder. You do not understand us because:
Now, this is about a dozen times you have been told this, yet you cling to the accusation that God is a murderer by transaction. And I said
You accuse God who is beyond the infinite, his ways surpassing our uncovering them. We are finite and cannot even discover infinity. Yet you would judge the motives of God and then claim innocence?
Do not be so naive. By even suggesting that God could possibly require his creature to murder, you have accused him of being one. If you cannot see that, all that I can say is that wisdom is established by her children. Listen to what wisdom says:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
“By even suggesting that God could possibly require his creature to murder, you have accused him of being one. ”
Thomas, He asked this of Abraham, did He not?
Genesis 22:1-2 “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
What was Abraham’s response? God didn’t ask Abraham to send his son off to war, He asked Abraham to lay his son on an altar and set him on fire. “So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac; and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. ”
In light of this, what should Abraham’s response have been, then? “No, God would not ask us to murder” or “Yes, Lord, I do as thou will”?
Again, you make the categorical error. Show me where it states that God ordered Abraham to murder his son. You can’t. It only becomes murder by fiat of your imposition on Scripture of categories rigidly designed to prove the point that you are making.
First of all, God has consigned all men under sin. The penalty for sin is death, so, even if God had ordered the death of Isaac, it was the just penalty for violation of the righteousness that God demands from his creation. So, it would not be murder anyway, but the just execution of a guilty man. Second, even if there had been no reason to justify the execution, this is God’s creation. He can without charge do as he wishes with what belongs to him. Your presumption is that you have some right to the life that you live. But that life belongs to God, not you. And, it is not caprice as I explained above, for caprice only exists where there is an alternative. In the case of the Eternal God, there is no shadow of turning in him. It is not as if God could do other than what he does. What he does is who he is, and who he is Good, always. But, caprice is not, for it is born out of the possibility that something other than the will of God can be done. But, God cannot contradict himself. Therefore, there is no possibility that God should lie, or that he might make one choice against another when no other is available, because what is available is of the first order, that which he knows as the only truth, the first reason, his own glory. Being the highest good, God seeks only the highest good, which is his own glory, for their is no greater.
Again, quit putting words in the mouth of God. Show me where he orders the murder, and not the just execution of men. Your problem is that you are sinner in need of a Savior, just as it is mine.