Daily Meditation

The Triumphant Shame of the Cross

Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:25-26)

John Piper

It isn't to be taken for granted that there should be a welcome for sinners in heaven.

God is holy and pure and perfectly just and righteous. Yet the whole story of the Bible is how such a great and holy God can and does welcome dirty people like you and me into his presence. How can this be?

Verse 25 says that Christ's sacrifice for sin was not like the sacrifices of the Jewish high priests. They came into the holy place yearly with animal sacrifices to atone for the sins of the people. But these verses say Christ did not enter heaven “to offer himself repeatedly . . . for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.”

If Christ followed the pattern of the priests, then he would have to die yearly. And since the sins to be covered include the sins of Adam and Eve, he would have had to begin his yearly dying at the foundation of the world. But the writer treats this as unthinkable.

Why is this unthinkable? Because it would make the death of the Son of God look weak and ineffective. If it has to be repeated year after year for centuries where would be the triumph? Where would we see the infinite value of the sacrifice of the Son? It would vanish in the shamefulness of a yearly suffering and death.

There was shame in the cross, but it was triumphant shame. “He despised the shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

This is the gospel of the glory of Christ, the image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4). I pray that no matter how dirty with sin you are you will see the light of this glory and believe.

Enslaved

Suicide Bombing Is An Attractive Option

Islam ranks as one of the heaviest works-religions in the world.  Consequently, it reduces its acolytes to a form of pervasive slavery.

It is full of duties and instructions on virtually everything.  In order to achieve salvation one is obligated to follow the live out the Five Pillars of the faith.  These are:

• Confession of the faith
• Prayer
• Fasting
• Giving alms
• Pilgrimage to Mecca (at least once in adult life)

These are said to be obligatory duties.  There is no escaping the obligation to perform them.  On top of these there is a long list of other practices said to be necessary and expected to be done.  But they are not said to be obligatory.

There are lots of additional rules, regulations, and practices laid down, for example, as to how each of the Five Pillars are to be performed.  One has to be faithful in carrying all these out because salvation comes by doing them.  Adherents are told they will be saved only if the balance of good deeds outweighs their bad deeds.

Flaming Swords East of Eden

A Tortured, Confused Prophet

John Steinbeck is one of the more notable secular prophets of our age.  Consider, then, the following recitation from the "Steinbeck Confession of Faith":

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder.  Humans are caught--in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too--in a net of good and evil.  I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence.  Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners.  There is no other story.  A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil?  Have I done well--or ill?  [John Steinbeck, East of Eden (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1980.  First published in the USA by The Viking Press, 1952), p. 413.]

The first thing which strikes us is that this statement accurately reflects how most unredeemed, fallen sinners think.  It is indeed an apt statement of faith for most men born "East of Eden", driven out of the Garden of God to a wild desert place, and kept from returning by the swords of the flaming angels.

It begins by presupposing the existence of good and evil.  But Steinbeck must know that at the same time he has no standard to determine what is good or evil.  He, like so many, assumes that there is such a standard, a moral measuring stick, but it hangs on skyhooks, grounded in no certain foundation.  Steinbeck would likely not have survived the moral agosticism and radical relativism of the post-modern world in which we now live.

Steinbeck lived in an age of "works-righteousness" where it was believed possible to construct a weighing balance, with good one one side of the balance, and evil on the other.