Doing The Hard Work Of Nothing

In “Jesus + Nothing = Everything” Tchividjian writes, “Jesus won for me, I was free to lose” and “Jesus succeeded for me, I was free to fail” (p.24). Throughout the book Tchividjian encourages us to remove our attention from what we do in sanctification. He writes, “I think too much about how I’m doing, if I’m growing, whether I’m doing it right or not” (p.174). He tells us such thinking is wrong and will only make us “neurotic and self-absorbed” (p.174). After all, in Christ, he tells us, “it’s all said and done” (p.174).

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Contradiction alert

Here Tchividijan is writing a book telling people the right way to do it (growing in Christ) is by not worrying about whether one is doing it right. How is the prescription to do it right by not worrying about whether one is doing it right any different of a prescription then the one that teaches that doing it right is by worrying about doing it right? Tullian’s advice requires just as much work and is potentially just as promissory of failure. How does one know if one’s lack of worry is not enough lack of worry? Could we not begin to worry that we are not “not worrying” enough? Does Jesus’ not worrying about how His performance did or did not please the Father satisfy when we fail to preform well enough our not worrying work?

I know I regularly worry that I don’t not worry enough.

I fear Tchividijian is teaching me to be neurotic and self absorbed in all of his writing about the importance of my work of not worrying in sanctification.

The point is that Tullian is requiring me to do nothing and I am exhausting myself making sure that I do the good work of nothing in my sanctification.

If it really is all said and done then Tullian shouldn’t be writing books saying that we must not concentrate on the God pleasing work of “not doing.”

Further, if I’m free to fail and free to lose does that mean that if I win and succeed that somehow I have failed and lost because I didn’t fail and lose but if I was free to fail and lose and winning and succeeding is failing and losing then that means winning and succeeding is really something that I am free do to…. right? Or does this mean that God is only pleased with me when I fail and lose? And if God is only pleased with me when I fail and lose shouldn’t I try to please God by failing and losing all the time? But then I might worry that I am not losing and failing enough and God might be displeased with me… right?

The Return Of The Jedhi — Antinomianism Attacked

“Tullian Tchividjian commits the same errors as many seventeenth-century antinomians. He holds that “sanctification is the daily hard work of going back to the reality of our justification.” This way of theologizing impacts his exegesis of Philippians 2:12–13. According to Tchividjian, “We’ve got work to do—but what exactly is it? Get better? Try harder? Pray more? Get more involved in church? Read the Bible longer? What precisely is Paul exhorting us to do?”

Tchividjian’s answer: “God works his work in you, which is the work already accomplished by Christ. Our hard work, therefore, means coming to a greater understanding of his work.” How does this fit with Paul’s exhortation to work out our salvation with fear and trembling? Paul surely did not reduce Christian living to contemplating Christ—after all, in 1 Thessalonians 5, toward the end of the chapter, Paul lists over fifteen imperatives. But Tchividjian’s type of antinomian-sounding exegesis impacts churches all over North America. Of course, he also uses antinomian-sounding rhetoric himself. In his view, “a lot of preaching these days has been unwittingly, unconsciously seduced by moralism.” He adds, “So many contemporary sermons strengthen this slavery to self. ‘Do more, try harder’ is the constant refrain.” In fact, “Many sermons today provide nothing more than a ‘to do’ list…. It’s all law and no gospel (what Jesus has done).”

This may well be true, though I suspect that the last part is overstated. But Tchividjian’s theology is not the solution to the problem of moralism. Swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction has never effectively combated error. True, for a time, people may feel refreshed, but eventually the initial boost of the “Pepsi” begins to cause damage if that is the sum total of the preaching diet they are under! Sanctification is not “simply” the art of getting used to our justification, however appealing that dictum may sound.”

“In addressing the issue of rewards, Owen responds to the criticism that “to yield holy obedience unto God with respect unto rewards and punishments is servile, and becomes not the free spirit of the children of God.” Owen could perhaps have listed several prominent antinomian theologians who never tired of making this point. John Eaton, for example, castigates legal preachers for extorting good works out of saints by “hope of rewards.” This objection has again surfaced in our day, with even Michael Horton claiming that fear of punishment and hope of rewards, as “a sound motivation for Christian holiness” , is a “disastrous pattern of thinking.” If fear of punishment and hope of reward provide the only motivation for holy living, then Horton certainly makes a valid point. However, this is yet another area where the Christian life is both-and, not either-or, on the matter of motivation. The fact is, one will have a difficult time finding many classically Reformed theologians denying that Christians should hope for rewards as a motivation for holiness.”

–From Mark Jones’ “Antinomianism”

For years now I’ve been screaming about what I have called “public square antinomianism,” a component aspect of R2K. Now a book has come out that has substantiated my “Canary in the Coalmine” routine. Dr. Mark Jones takes on the antinomianism that is oozing out of the putatively Reformed Church. This quote above is dealing the New-Calvinism sported by types like Tullian Tchividjian but the book exposes the antinomianism we find rampant in many quarters today. The spirit of John Saltmarsh and Tobias Crisp lives on in much of the Reformed Church today.

Jones is so serious about this endeavor that recently he put out a video savagely and righteously mocking the White Horse Inn crew for their latent antinomianism. Since then that video has been pulled. You can get in a great deal of trouble for tweaking the nose of the Reformed Establishment. In the video Jones was wearing skinny tight pink jeans while sporting a bottle of Whiskey. He even “accidentally” said “White Horse Inn” in his commentary covering it up with a “er uh, I mean … ” He was mocking the libertinism of the antinomian crew.

Dr. Mark Jones gets it and understands the stakes of this new public square antinomianism. Still, with all the evidence there is Jones has to pull his punches because of the influence of the antinomian establishment. He says of Tchividjian “he uses antinomian sounding rhetoric himself” and references Tchividjian antinomian sounding exegesis. That is extraordinarily diplomatic and is a tip of the cap towards the powerful influence of the antinomian establishment.

Here’s hoping his book will help many other people get it.

And in the context of this post, this should be kept in mind.

http://patrickspensees.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/the-divisiveness-of-antinomianism/

The Extent Of The Atonement & The Ongoing Prayer Life Of Our Lord Christ

If one believes that the Lord Christ only intercedes for His people per Romans 8:34 and Hebrews 7:25 then they must, if they desire to be consistent, believe that Christ only died for those same people for whom He intercedes. Both the death of Christ and the Intercession of Christ are subsets of His great work as our Great High Priest. To suggest that Christ died for everybody as the Great High Priest but only intercedes for the elect is to introduce contradiction into the very being of Christ as Mediator.

If Christ only prays for His people then He, by necessity, only died for His people.

Not to worry though … if you don’t agree you can always invent a Mystery Box in which to throw your contradiction.

Colorado Obama-care Advertisements — Wickedness on Parade

A new add that the Obama administration is running in order to encourage young adults to sign up for Obama-care.

http://www.denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=5538569

A few points of analysis,

1.)A tyrannical government is always interested in involving the citizenry in true moral guilt for a citizenry that is burdened by its own true moral guilt will never be free to enter into righteous protest and if necessary rebellion against Governmental anti-Christ rebellion and against the Tyrant State for its own guilty actions against God and against the citizenry. People who have their own true moral guilt are helpless to hold accountable a State with a long record of its own true moral guilt. That is one reason why this poster makes sense. An immoral people will never overturn an immoral Government. As such it is in the interest of immoral governments to involve the citizenry in immorality.

2.) Notice that the female in the Obama poster is the aggressor and the pursuer. It is wicked enough to live in a culture where men do not honor women enough to not practice their natural male aggression to sexually triumph over women but it is doubly wicked when the State is contributing to the turning of the unwed female into the aggressor in pursuit of giving up her virtue with every “Nate hot to trot” they meet. Clearly Obama desires to turn our daughters into whores.

3.) It is not unimportant that the couple in the poster are white. In order for a Cultural Marxist social order to finally exercise total cultural hegemony more white people have to be compromised into that mindset. White people still are the majority representation in this country (for now) and everything possible must be done in order to strip them away from their Biblical Christian heritage. As such, the poster is pointed to young white people in order to turn them into Cultural Marxist voters thus assuring the death of Christianity in this country.

4.) Note the connection between enrolling in Obama-care and getting to have sex without consequences. The young lady has Obama care and so can get free birth control pills so she can go on the hunt for unsuspecting male prey. This is the continued work of separating sex from both marriage and children. Of course that in turn continues the divorce culture as the ability for young people who have slept find it difficult to create a marital bond that can last. Having been sexually bonded and unbonded so many times with so many different mates when marriage is finally entered into it can easily be dissolved since sexual coupling and decoupling has been repeatedly practiced prior to entering into marriage.

5.) Note the fine print at the bottom. The add insists that condoms protect from STD’s but that is a well documented lie. The microbes that carry STD’s are not always stopped by condoms. A person using condoms can still contract STD’s. Using condoms to stop STD is like playing Russian Roulette. Every once in a while your going to pull the trigger with a bullet in the chamber. The small print is a HUGE lie.

Clearly the Obama administration is at war with traditional Christian America. As such all Biblical Christians should be at war with the Obama administration lest they be found negligent in championing the cause of their great High King.

Body Mutilation Considered

Leviticus 19:28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am Jehovah.

Body mutilation — and here I’m not talking about a pierced ear or a tiny tiny pierced nose or a tiny flower on one’s hip — is one of the sure signs that we are returning to anti-Christ paganism. In cultures influenced by and seeped in Biblical Christianity the problem of guilt is understood, by the “in Christ individuals” in that culture, as having been dealt with in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Further, any real moral guilt that comes into a believer’s life subsequent to their union with Christ is confessed, repented of, and taken to the Cross of Christ and left there in light of the pronounced absolution of sins that happens week by week in Church, by the voice of Christ as heard over the vocal chords of the minister, or that is everywhere pronounced in Scripture. Christians don’t carry their guilt around because they have a Great High Priest and Savior who has relieved them of their guilt. For a Christian to carry their guilt around is to announce that Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension is not sufficient.

However in cultures where sin and guilt have no answer, the individuals in that culture must provide themselves ways to deal with their guilt. The only options that are available are either for one to pay for that guilt one’s self — thus leading to masochism — or for one to try to fob off their guilt on someone else, thus leading to some form of sadism. Guilty people will always try to find ways to relieve themselves of their guilt burden. If they refuse Christ’s sacrifice for guilt they will offer up themselves or someone else as a guilt sacrifice.

Body mutilation is one of the forms of masochism whereby our culture is reflecting that it is seeking to shed its real moral guilt via self mutilation (masochism). Where there is no understanding of guilt being taken by Christ in the Atonement there one should not be surprised to find a tattoo, piercing and body mutilation culture where atonement is being sought in punishment of self for one’s real moral guilt. They have no Christ to suffer for their guilt and so they do things to themselves to make themselves suffer for their real moral guilt.

Secondly, at the same time, one can see the body mutilation culture as an attack on the image of God in man. Man, is — both body and soul — created in the image of God. The self defacing of God’s handiwork, via body mutilation, is an attempt to cast off the image of God in favor of an image as created by the autonomous self. The rebel against God will not have God rule over him and one way to cast off and deny God’s rule is to mar one’s self so that the mirror doesn’t reflect back the image of God that is so violently hated. What better way to get rid of true moral guilt then by attacking the one whom one refuses to go to for the only relief from guilt possible? (By the way, this idea of attacking the image of God in one’s self, I believe accounts a great deal also for the rise of sodomy and lesbianism as well. As sexuality is tied up very closely with the image of God in men and women, overturning God’s intended order for sex in an effective short term attack on the image of God in men and women.)

Thirdly, I think a lot of the mutilation we see is a manifestation of the fixation our culture has with rejecting boring “whiteness” in favor of spiffy tribalism with its tatoos, piercings, weird hairstyles, goofy clothes, etc. Everywhere it is being shouted how evil white people are. (This is, by the way, another form of displaced guilt. Guilt is not taken to Christ therefore guilt will be passed on to white people in a sadistic fashion in order to relieve others of their guilt.) Body mutilation allows white people to seriously alter their whiteness thus relieving themselves of white guilt.

Finally, in body mutilation there is always the sinful “look at me” dynamic going on. Those outside of Christ are especially self centered, desiring to have all of reality and all attention orbit around them. Body mutilation allows the mutilator to be the center of constant attraction.