For he wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal.

They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.

“In this world of sin no Christian individual and no Christian organization can be positive and constructive till after it has been negative and destructive. To deny and ignore this fact is to deny or to ignore the fact of sin.”

Cornelius Van Til
Essay On Christian Education, p. 187

When I was a lad I contracted a serious infection. This infection required the scrubbing of my wounds until they bled followed by the administration of the proper ointment on the bleeding wounds. To this day the memory of those scrubbing sessions jolts me upright. And yet, without the cleansing work of the scrubbing, the ointment could not have done its work. The medicine that was intended to heal could not work until I was first wounded.

In many quarters of the West today the Church is deeply wounded. There are no solutions that do not start with being scrubbed of her infected wounds. And because of the necessity for her wounds to be scrubbed (the negative and destructive work that Van Til speaks of) she will not submit and so will not be healed.

“Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.” Hosea 6:2

Prayer

God of all sufficient grace, be so kind as to wound us that we might be healed. Cease not with thy severe mercies that lead us to rejoice in thy tender mercies. Deliver your church from being stiff necked and cause us to yield to your hammer blows of grace as you shape us on the anvil of thy rough kindness.

In Christ’s name,

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

6 thoughts on “For he wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal.”

  1. Perhaps this has happened to you:

    Many times when someone tries to speak to some particular area of unfaithfulness in church practice, someone else will respond with the famous, “Calvin said it takes 20 years to change a church.” However I suspect this has become a favorite excuse for never doing anything, ever. Why put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether?

    It seems reformed churches cannot even enforce their own confessional standards without an uprising. And so they don’t. “We need to be positive” is the new “Peace, peace.”

    Reply

      1. I have heard that one countless times. It always seems to favour the status quo of leftward dirft.

        More than one observer has commented that conservative-minded people look at those to the left as misguided, while liberals simply see conservatives as evil. It is a very striking observation — and certainly borne out by personal experience. The trouble is, it means a virtually impassable gulf; it means compromise with liberals is suicide; it means we can’t fight on the same team.

        Unity today means nothing less than the marginalization of truth, and when the church dissuades its people from standing on principle it becomes lukewarm.

      3. Secular leftists are intellectually dishonest, vicious hypocrites. I’m still not quite sure what to make of all the “conservative reformed” leftists in the church.

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