What is man, that You are mindful of him?

I am quite overwhelmed by several things.

1. The depth and spread and reach of God's love and mercy and grace and care and tenderness and faithfulness and intervention and Providence. There is nothing they cannot reach, there is nothing that can hide itself from them. And I rejoice in this.

2. The depth and spread and reach of God's love and mercy and grace and care and tenderness and faithfulness and intervention and Providence, in spite of my wayward heart and the slow pace I seem to be holding in sanctification. His patience blows my mind. His faithfulness, even more so.

3. How people can mistake the creature for the Creator. How even fellow Christians mistake the work of the Creator for the work of the creature. There is only One who can work goodness and love in us. There is only One who can fix the mess that we are born into and live in. There is only One who can say to me, You are justified in Christ, now walk in Him. There is only One who can put His exquisite and unique and satisfying love into a heart that has never known anything like it. 

4. How all of Creation shouts and proclaims the beauty of the Creator. And how magnificent common grace is - Who could have even thought of blessing all, both righteous and unrighteous, but a God whose character is that of love and grace and kindness? Who would have ever thought that Someone would care so much for what He has made - to the extent that He would sacrifice Himself! to salvage the good work of His hand, that had intentionally ship-wrecked itself for the selfish pleasure of it? But God who is rich in mercy...

...how can this not be overwhelming?

BB Warfield & Revelation

"The one [general revelation] is adapted to man as man; the other [special revelation] to man as sinner; and since man, on becoming sinner, has not ceased to be man, but has only acquired new needs requiring additional provisions to bring him to the end of his existence, so the revelation directed to man as sinner does not supersede that given to man as man, but supplements it with these new provisions for this attainment, in his new condition of blindness, helplessness and guilt induced by sin, of the end of his being."

- B. B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 74.

This quote really helped clarify in my mind the purposes of both "stages" of divine revelation.

Os Guinness & Oswald Chambers

"If we have never had the experience of taking our commonplace religious shoes off our commonplace religious feet, and getting rid of all the undue familiarity with which we approach God, it is questionable whether we have ever stood in His presence."

- Oswald Chambers

Wow, what a powerful thought. It is true that God calls to His children as their loving Father, but we must never forget the nature of such a Father - One who is Holy and Utterly Separate from us. Indeed, we must approach Him with fear and trembling, and live a life that pants after holiness, for just as He is holy, so we too must be holy in all we do. We must unshod our feet from the worldly shoes that are quick to sprint off the narrow road, and we must (however slowly) endeavor to tread the Way with bare feet. For, as one great saint put it, "better to stumble along the narrow way, than to run quick and sure out of it."

Another quote that cut me to the quick was from Os Guinness.

"To follow the call of God is therefore to live before the heart of God. It is to live life coram Deo (before the heart of God) and thus to shift our awareness of audiences to the point where only the last and highest - God - counts."

 - Os Guinness, The Call

This is something that I struggle with on a day-to-day basis. How I long to repeat St. Paul's words after him, "If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ." (Gal. 1:10) But I find myself quite prone to living according to the affirmations of others, and worst of all, myself. May I ever seek to find my affirmation in Christ and by Christ - for it is only in Him that I am affirmed as an heir, and it is only because of Him that I am named a son.

A Return To Van Til

"Christ walks indeed a cosmic road. Far as the curse is found, so far His grace is given."1

Amen. Restoration will come.

1 Cornelius Van Til, "Nature and Scripture," The Infallible Word: A Symposium by the Members of the Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary 2nd Ed. (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing Company, 1967), 271.

Murray's "Systematic Theology"

"When any generation is content to rely upon its theological heritage and refuses to explore for itself the riches of divine revelation, then declension is already under way and heterodoxy will be the lot of the succeeding generation." 1

The Reformational concept of "always reforming" to the truth of God's Word is essential to both orthodoxy and orthopraxy. 

Good show, Murray, good show.

On a different note, Wild Sweet Orange tastes good to my ears.

1 Murray, John. Collected Writings, "Systematic Theology," p. 8.

More Bridges.

"We must build up with both hands - with our doctrine and our life. We must be what we preach ... A holy sermon is but for an hour. A holy life is his [the minister's] perpetual sermon - a living, practical commentary of his doctrine - the gospel to the senses."1

Wow. This book is full of gold!

1 Bridges, Charles. The Christian Ministry with an Inquiry into the Causes of its Inefficiency (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, reprinted 2006), 159.

Charles Bridges

"Our Divine Master never intended, that we should confine our religion to the services of the sanctuary. As men of God, we should have it at heart and in hand, spreading a spiritual savour over the common walks of society, and stamping us with the mark of confessors of Christ in the midst of a world, who hold him still in the same contempt, as when eighteen centuries since they nailed him to the cross."1

Wow. Am I stamped with the mark of a confessor of Christ in such a way as to draw the contempt of the world? That is a serious question. Do I preach with my words and deeds the Rock of Offense, which makes men to stumble and fall? Do I live for Christ? Am I living as one stamped by His blood? Do I confine my religion? Am I slow to have it at heart and in hand in every sphere of society?

God help me.

1 Bridges, Charles. The Christian Ministry with an Inquiry into the Cases of its Inefficiency (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, reprinted 2006), 115-116.