Free Will

“Love God and do what you want.”

It’s probably my most favorite Martin Luther quote.

Rather than getting hung up on the is-this-God’s-will-for-my-life question (like so many do) resting in the comfort of his downright all-around big-ness.

Sovereign.

This is not a pithy word. Something which means supreme ruler ought to catch us, shake us up a bit and toss our brains around to get the idea that the one this adjective describes is the supreme (i.e. better than everything) ruler (i.e. in charge).

“O but wait, I may choose the wrong person and end up messing up the will of God.”

…

There’s no nice way of pointing out the massive logical inconsistency wherein one confesses to believe in a 'sovereign' God whose will can be screwed up by his subjects. It’s just ignorant and amazingly prideful to think the creature can highjack the Creator.

“But free will…”

If an example can be given where a will is free then I’ll believe free will to be true. But until a will is not in reaction or precaution to any outside stimuli I cannot submit to the idea or ‘doctrine’ of man’s free will. (Even outside of Christianity I cannot see free will as true. We eat, beacue we need it, we sleep because we need it, we procreate because of biology. Outside stimuli crontrol us even outside of Christianity.)

Rather submission to the Sovereign God is a bit sounder than that of my own flimsy desires.

Love God and do what you want. It’s a twofold deal. First, love God. Second, do what you want.
You see a fundamental change within us is required for a dead sinner to love the Living Perfection, which is God (Eph 2:1-10). First there must be life given to the dead (John 3:1-21), and then the sinner must be washed clean of their unrighteousness (Ezekiel 36:24-27). But none of that is contingent on the will of man.

Love God… and do what you want. These two things are completely apart from the will of man. If I am free I will not love God (1 John 4:19). If I am free my wants are a slave to sin. God loves us, therefore we love him. God saved and now we are slaves to him (Eph 2:10).

“But I don’t like that.”

I don’t like that I don’t have an iPhone 4s, but that won’t change the reality of my having just a sad little iPhone 4. I don’t like that it’s cold outside but my not liking it won’t change it. I don’t like whinny people, but people whine (… I whine).

Are you catching my drift? What we like and don’t like won’t change reality.

It’s a trust deal in the end. Do we trust God to change our wants to be more in line with his own, or do we trust ourselves to see ourselves through our lives?

I’d submit if one fears messing up the plan of God, then one is trusting in themselves and not in God.

He is either the Soveriegn God (in complete control of your life) or he is not God.

Obsessed

So, I’ve got a cold. Last night I was up off an on the whole night (2:53-4am all at once. Bam.), not really feeling icky just awake. But my mind was racing with thoughts and images and ideas (probably why I couldn’t sleep).

Recently I was hooked on Lost. The show that was all the rage a while ago (I know, I’m behind.) I also started reading The Hunger Games. The thoughts shooting through my dome last night were everything from, “How do they get Claire back? (Lost)” to, “Is The Hunger Game trilogy three different Hunger Games or does the story stay with Katniss?” (If anyone tells me the answer to either it’ll be a bad day… for them.)

I was obsessing. I restlessly tossed and turned. Luther (the cat) just sat on the bed watching.
But then the thought occurred to me, “What’s the point? These fictions are taking over my reality.”

We obsess so easily about different little things shows, books, relationships and I am chief offender. But to be obsessed with the glory of God would be another matter entirely.
Think about it.

Men who’ve been in this line of obsession have and do shape our present. The Apostles, Augustine, Martin Luther etc… Consumed by one thing, seeing God glorified over and above all else.

Creature

I got a cat. The Wichita Eagle had a classified add for, “Absolutely free kittens.” I called, went over with my sister and took one (his name is Luther and he’s at current intently watching me type while he lays upside down).

As we were leaving the place my first thought was, “These people are really going to let me walk out of their house with one of their pets? I’m not responsible enough for this! This has to be a crime.” But they did. (O and he’s litter box trained.)

Anyway, enough about the cat.

The point is responsibility, and knowing life isn’t about you. Sure you get a critter to love and nurture, but you also have to wake up to feed them, make sure their healthy, and clean up after them (it’s like an infant on an incredible light scale - but infants don’t have claws).

Learning to put others before you in a small way to begin with. Fighting your (my) sin of workaholic because there’s a creature at home.

Fighting sin to the glory of God should weigh in on many of our decisions.

Luther's Words for All Now

"Here then, I see, you suppose that the truth and the utility of the Scriptures are to be weighed and judged of according to the opinion of men, nay, of men the most impious; so that, what pleases them or seems bearable, should be deemed true, divine, and wholesome: and what has the contrary effect upon them, should at once be deemed useless, false, and pernicious.

"What else do you mean by all this, than that the words of God should depend on,

stand on,

and fall by,

the will and authority of men? Whereas the Sctripture, on the contrary saith, that all things stand and fall by the will and authority of God: and in a word, that "all the earth keeps silence before the face of the Lord." (Hab 2:20)

"He who could talk as you do, must imagine that the living God is nothing but a kind of trifling and inconsiderate pettifogger decalaiming on a certain rostrum, whos words you may if you be disposed, interpret, understand, and refute as you please, because He merely spoke as He saw a set of impious men to be moved and affected." ~Martin Luther

To overlook orthodoxy is to place Scripture in subjection to what one wants.

It is to misunderstand the Gospel.

It is to misunderstand God.

Deism

Deism is not Christian. This is something I’m rather forceful about. Deism is not Christian. The happy-clappy huffy-fluffy religion associated with Christianity is not Christian. Let me explain the main major difference between what most would call “Christian” and what actually is Christian.

Deism has nothing to do with Jesus. That is the difference. Deism is the idea of a god creating all things and then actively (or passively) having no part of it. But somehow this idea of deism has been married with Christianity and there are many who don't realize that deism has absolutely no power to save.

Christians stake their hope on Jesus, not a list of good morals or the therapeutic idea of one’s own worth (moralistic deism).

Christians understand this life will be a continually war against their own natural depravity, not thinking themselves as naturally good people (thereapuetic deism).

Christians know God who is present in failure as well as victory, not some god who is disinterested in the lives of his creation (deism).

Christianity is nothing like deism. In Christianity God is vastly more beautiful and powerful than the apathetic god of the deist.

So what am I saying? I’m saying this heresy of moralistic therapeutic deism should be done away with. I’ll agree with Martin Luther, “I feel indignation against the matter also, that such unworthy stuff should be borne about in ornaments of eloquence so rare; which is as if rubbish, or dung, should be carried in vessels of gold or silver." So do away with speaking of a god who has no strength, grace or mercy and come to know the God who is devestatingly exqusite.

The 95's Relivence for Now

494 years ago today Martin Luther nailed his 95-Thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. Today the whole list is still timely and relevant. For we have replaced indulgences with our legalism and we have sought to be made whole by all other means rather than the cross.

Here are a few of his thesis which I feel are worth being pointed out, the rest might be found here.

1. “When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said ‘Repent’, He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” It is, I fear, often the hope of many churches to have a ‘new-believer’ to sign the card after they’ve walked the isle. To not call for a life of repentance but rather to cushion their number of those they’ve ‘saved.’ (The notch in the belt, jewel-in-the-crown routine.)

32. "All those who believe themselves certain of their own salvation by means of letters of indulgence, will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.” “I’m righteous because I prayed a prayer when I was 5.” Yet now they live like hell and all manner of sinfulness and un-repentance is the life lead. It is simply pure foolishness to place stock and value in your past action, if this is your reason of salvation.

60. “We do not speak rashly in saying that the treasures of the church are the keys of the church, and are bestowed by the merits of Christ.” Gospel, Gospel, Gospel. There is nothing more for the church to teach than the merits of Christ. Yet, there are many who teach much less than the merits of Christ. The term is Moralistic Therapeutic Deism; if Paul heard it he’d be furious, if Luther heard it he’d cuss them out. But we stand by and let the garbage flow from the mouths of ‘eloquent preachers.’ Either you teach about Jesus or nothing at all.

62. “The true treasure of the church is the Holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God.” If you want to hear something more than the Gospel of Jesus which brings the glory and the grace of God, then you don’t get (understand) the Gospel.

92. “Away, then, with those prophets who say to Christ's people, "Peace, peace," where in there is no peace.
93. Hail, hail to all those prophets who say to Christ's people, "The cross, the cross," where there is no cross.
94. Christians should be exhorted to be zealous to follow Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hells.
95. And let them thus be more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through a false assurance of peace.”

Fight the good fight of faith, put on the armor of God and stand firm in these dark times. Welcome to the Christian life, welcome to the war against the demonic and sin. Jesus bids us to come and die. He is our only hope.