Drawing near to God

A timely piece from Ray Ortlund:

“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” James 4:8

How can we draw near to God in 2012? Let me propose two ways, consistent with the gospel. They are not heroic. They only require faith and honesty.

One, at those very places in our lives where we are the most sinful, the most defeated, let’s face it and admit it. Whatever view we take of Romans 7, surely every one of us can say, “I do not understand my own actions” (Romans 7:15). And beyond admitting the impasse which we thought that, by now, we’d have grown past, let’s trust God to love us at that very point in our existence. It is his way. God loves grace into us (Owen, Works, II:342). Let’s open up. If Jesus is a wonderful Savior in every way except where we are the most hypocritical, then he is no Saviour for us. But the truth is, he draws near to broken sinners who own up. What if we saw, in our very sins, the nearness of God awaiting us with greater mercy than we have ever known before?

Two, let’s confess our sins to one another and pray for one another. No one grows in isolation. We grow in safe community. Sadly, such an experience is rare in our churches. It should be common among us gospel people. It should be our lifestyle. We should be obvious, even scandalous, as friends of sinners. But so often, someone must break the ice. I see no revival in our future without a new culture of confession. Personally, I have found a good way to measure my own honesty is the level of my embarrassment. If I’m not embarrassed by my confession, I’m still holding out. But it is freeing to come clean with a brother or sister and receive the ministry of prayer (James 5:16). What if in 2012 we were, to one another, unshockable friends, down on our knees together, not judging one another but praying for one another? Surely God’s nearness would be there.

Christmas Day's sermonette

Galatians 4: 4-7

From an idea from Phil Ryken

Ready for Christmas?

HT: Charles Schultz

Hi everyone, have a richly blessed, Christ-centred, God glorifying Christmas!

Good people all, this Christmas time

'The Wexford Carol'

Good people all, this Christmas-time,

Consider well and bear in mind

What our good God for us has done,

In sending His beloved Son.

With Mary holy we should pray

To God with love this Christmas Day:

In Bethlehem upon that morn

There was a blessed Messiah born.

Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep

Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep;

To whom God's angels did appear,

Which put the shepherds in great fear.

"Prepare and go," the angels said,

"To Bethlehem, be not afraid;

For there you'll find, this happy morn,

A princely Babe, sweet Jesus born."

With thankful heart and joyful mind,

The shepherds went the Babe to find,

And as God's angel had foretold,

They did our Saviour Christ behold.

Within a manger He was laid,

And by his side the Virgin Maid,

Attending on the Lord of life, 

Who came on earth to end all strife.

Happy Birthday Beethoven!

HT: Charles Schulz

Gospel: passion for God, love for others

"The goal of the gospel is to produce a type of people consumed with passion for God and love for others... A Christianity that does not have as its primary focus the deepening of passions for God is a false Christianity, no matter how zealously it seeks conversions or how forcefully it advocates righteous behaviour.  Being converted to Jesus is not just about learning to obey some rules.  Being  converted to Jesus is about learning to so adore God that we would gladly renounce everything we have to follow Him."
JD Greear, Gospel:  Rediscovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary (Nashville: B and H, 2011), p.10.

A believer's unbelief

Sunday's sermon (Luke 1)

Christmas is about ... Jesus!

From St Helen's, Bishopsgate, London

Donkeys, Carrots, Sticks and the Gospel

Uberblogger Justin Taylor draws attention to this piece by Fitzpatrick and Thompson which highlights how 'Gospel motivation' towards obedience is radically different from the traditional 'carrot and stick' method.  Its focus is upon how we should encourage children towards God-glorifying obedience, but it really speaks into all of our lives...

Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus (Crossway, 2011) pp. 107-108, explain a common motivational paradigm for obedience:

First, you could dangle a carrot in front of the donkey, fooling the donkey into thinking that if he pulls the cart far enough, he’ll get to eat the carrot.

The second is to prod the donkey along the road by hitting him with a stick.

If the donkey is motivated by the ultimate reward of a carrot, the stick won’t be necessary,
but if he’s not really all that interested in carrots, then the stick will be employed.

Either way, through reward or through punishment, the cart driver gets what he wants.

Then they show how the gospel turns this on its head:

Because both parents and children obstinately refuse to pull the cart of God’s glory down the road, the Father broke the stick of punishment on his obedient Son’s back.

Rather than trying to entice us by dangling an unattainable carrot of perfect welcome and forgiveness incessantly in front of our faces, God the Father freely feeds the carrot to us, his enemies.

He simply moves outside all our categories for reward and punishment, for human motivation, and gives us all the reward and takes upon himself all the punishment. He lavishes grace upon grace on us and bears in his own person all the wrath that we deserve. Then he tells us, in light of all that he’s done, “Obey.”

Yes, we do have promises of rewards in heaven, but these are not earned by us through our merit.

Yes, there are promises of punishment, but not for those who are “in Christ.” All our punishment has been borne by him.

The carrot is ours.

The stick is his.

Manage [your children] with beans in a jar if you must, but be sure to tell them that it isn’t the gospel. And perhaps, once in a while, just fill the jar up with beans and take everyone out for ice cream, and when your son asks you, “Daddy, why do we get ice cream? How did the jar get to be full?” you’ll know what to say, won’t you?

There is no end to Gospel exploration

"The angels never get tired of looking into the gospel [cf. 1 Peter 1:10,12].  This means that there is no end to gospel exploration.  There are depths in the gospel that are always to be discovered and applied not only to our ministry and daily Christian life, but above all to the worship of the God of the gospel with renewed and vision.
"The underlying conviction in my preaching, pastoring, and writing is that the gospel - this eternally fascinating message craved by the angels - can change a heart, a community, and the world when it is recovered and applied.  The gospel is life giving, because it generates changes that are received only by grace through faith.  This foundational truth, however, gets bypassed, obscured, and forgotten, because, as Martin Luther noted, religion forms the default mode of the human heart.  It is essential, then, that we distinguish religion from the gospel.  Religion, as the default mode of our thinking and practices, is based upon performance: 'I obey; therefore, I am accepted by God.'  The basic operating principle of the gospel, however, is, not surprisingly, an about-face, one of unmerited acceptance: 'I am accepted by God through Christ; therefore, I obey.'  To understand this paradigm shift at a life-altering level requires that the gospel be explored and 'looked into' at every opportunity and in regular, systematic ways...
"It is one thing to understand the gospel but is quite another to experience the gospel in such a way that it fundamentally changes us and becomes the source of our identity and security.  It is one thing to grasp the essence of the gospel but quite another to think out its implications for all of life.  We all struggle to explore the mysteries of the gospel on a regular basis and to allow its message to influence our thinking..."

Tim Keller, in his introduction to JD Greear's 'Gospel: Rediscovering the Power that made Christianity Revolutionary.'  This is as good a summary of Keller's Gospel-centricity, which has been so helpful and influential to so many, as I have read anywhere.  It also sets JD Greear''s  book wonderfully.  It is so well worth reading.  Available here.

A faith for all seasons

This morning's sermon outline from Luke 1: 26-56

Yes, just what is the point?

Comic strip - HT: BW

"Man's chief end [or purpose in life] is to glorify and enjoy [or 'by enjoying'] Him forever."

Westminster Shorter Catechism: Q1

"Christianity: the easiest religion, the hardest religion" (Francis Schaeffer)

Francis Schaeffer (1912 - 1984)

"If it is so true that there are good and sufficient reasons to know that Christianity is true, why doesn't everybody accept the sufficient answers?

"We must realise that Christianity is the easiest religion in the world, because it is the only religion in which God the Father and Christ and the Holy Spirit do everything.  God is the Creator;  we have nothing to do with our existence, or existence of other things.  We can shape other things, but we cannot change the fact of existence.  We can do nothing for our salvation because Christ did it all. We do not have to do anything.  In every other religion we have to do something - everything from burning a joss stick to sacrificing our firstborn child to dropping a coin in the collection plate - the whole spectrum.  But with Christianity, we do not have to do anything:  God has done it all.  He has created us and He has sent His Son;  His Son died and because the Son is infinite, therefore He bears our total guilt.  We do not need to bear our guilt, nor do we even have to merit the merit of Christ.  he does it all.  So in one way it is the easiest religion in the world.

"But now we can turn it over because it is the hardest religion in the world for the same reason.  The heart of rebellion of Satan and man was the desire to be autonomous; and accepting the Christian faith robs us not our our existence, not of our worth (it gives us our worth), but it robs us completely of being autonomous.  We did not make ourselves, we are not the product of chance, we are none of these things; we stand before a Creator plus nothing, we stand before the Saviour plus nothing - it is a complete denial of being autonomous.  Whether it is conscious or unconscious (and in the most brilliant people it is occasionally conscious), when they suddenly see the sufficiency of the answers on their own level, they are suddenly up against their innermost humanness - not humanness as they were created to be human, but human in the bad sense since the Fall.  That is the reason that people do not accept the sufficient answers and why they are counted by God as disobedient and guilty when they do not bow...

"It is not that the answers are not good, adequate and sufficient. Unless one gives up one's autonomy, one cannot accept the answers."

Francis Schaeffer, The God who is There (Complete Works, I, 182-183)

We are far too easily pleased

Outside of the Bible itself, there are a number of key passages, or significant paragraphs from seminal Christian authors down the ages, that the thoughtful disciple would do well to consider, and consider deeply.  Here's one worth meditating upon.  It's  from the opening of CS Lewis's sermon, The Weight of Glory, preached in 1941.  You can find the whole sermon here.

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, Isubmit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. 

The work of the pastor is difficult

Just for the record...
The work of a pastor is difficult. Very few Christians lose sleep over the state of their church, the spiritual health of the body, the collective faithfulness or unfaithfulness of the congregation. But pastors do. This is something very few people who aren’t pastors can understand, isn’t it? While pastors carry the weight of their own struggles, and likely the weight of the struggles of their friends and family, they also carry the weight of the struggles of an entire church. They are responsible for more; they are accountable for much. 
 Jared Wilson, Gospel Wakefulness, p. 192.


HT: Justin Buzzard

Ah!  The old free-will v determinism debate!
Thanks Bill!

Sherlock Holmes and the curious case of the search for meaning

Benedict Cumberpatch:  BBC's Sherlock

In his recent book of published lectures, Surprised by Meaning, renowned theologian and academic (and Northern Irish born) Alister McGrath, unexpectedly begins by highlighting our cultural obsession with detective fiction.  Dorothy L Sayers' explanation for this was humanity's "deep yearnings to make sense of what seem to be an unrelated series of events".  The detective novel, says McGrath, appeals to our implicit belief in the intrinsic rationality of the world around us and to our longing and ability to discover its deeper patterns.

The point of this?  "We long to make sense of things. We yearn to see the big picture, to know the greater story, of which our story is but a small but nonetheless important part.  We rightly discern the need to organise our lives around some controlling framework or narrative.  The world around us seems to be studded with clues to a greater vision of life." (p.2-3)

But in our present age, confronted with a growing deluge of diverse and incoherent information, it is tempting to believe that grasping a universal 'meaning', if one is there at all, will be beyond us.  For many, to live in such a world considered 'meaningless' is unbearable.  Without meaning, life is pointless.
For others, including such vocal partisans as Richard Dawkins, science, which it is claimed alone offers the best answers to the meaning of life, tells us that there is no deeper meaning or significance to the universe, having "no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference" (River Out of Eden).
So, in our relentless search for 'meaning' for life, the universe and everything, where may such meaning and purpose be found?  McGrath answers, like CS Lewis's hidden door into Narnia, there is a new way of understanding, of living, of hoping:  faith.  Not an irrational blind leap into the dark, but a God-given and God-sustained vision which enables us to see what others cannot, to see what is really there.

"Faith is about seeing things what others have missed, and grasping their deeper significance (see Mark 8: 22-25; 10:46-45)...Faith does not contradict reason, but transcends it through a joyous deliverance from the cold and austere limits of human reason and logic.  We are surprised and delighted by a meaning of life that we couldn't figure out for ourselves.  But once we've seen it, everything else makes sense and fits into place. The framework of faith, once grasped, gives us a new way of seeing the world, and making sense of our place in the greater scheme of things... 

"[Re Psalm 23] The Christian tradition speaks of God as our companion and healer, one who makes sense of the puzzles and enigmas of life.  The world may seem like the shadowlands; yet God is our light, who illuminates our paths as we travel." (p.6-7)

A Prayer abut two very different Fridays

On the far side of 'the Pond', today is 'Black Friday', when, having been so demonstrably thankful for so much the day before, the American public realise there's so much more to be had, and so come out onto the streets in their droves and fill the shops looking for the bargains on offer.  We Brits and Irish are no less consumer or materialistically driven.  We used to have the 'January sales'.  But now, immediately after showering our nearest and dearest with gifts at Christmastime, and not being in the least grateful for what we have received, we too fight and scramble in High Street shops for more, looking for that  one 'thing' that will bring us lasting joy and satisfaction.  How easy we forget about  and fail to cherish God's gift to a lost and dying world, Jesus.

Pastor Scotty Smith has been thinking about this as well.  Here's his prayer for today ...

So do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matt. 6:31-33

Lord Jesus, there’s more traffic than usual on the roads early this morning, but not as much as last year. Though it’s just a little after 4:00 am, Black Friday got a jump start this year with doors opening at midnight. People have already been pushing against doors, running up aisles, and grabbing for items for many hours now.
Jesus, I’m not sitting here in condescending judgment of anyone, for there’s no one, by nature, more greedy or grabby than me. I am just as inclined to “run after these things” as anyone else. I thank you that I get to live in a time and place of abundance. I praise you I’ve never had to be concerned about what I’ll eat, drink, or wear. And I’m grateful that many people will enjoy fine savings and get real bargains today.
But all the hubbub of Black Friday, simply makes me more grateful for another Friday—for Good Friday and what you accomplished that day for us on the cross.
At your expense, the riches of grace are freely lavished on ill-deserving people, like me. It’s only because of you, Jesus, that I know God as Abba, Father—who knows my every need; who answers before I ask; who gives me all things richly to enjoy; who satisfies my hunger and slakes my thirst, with the manna of the gospel and the living water of the Spirit; who has clothed my shameful nakedness with your perfect righteousness.
Anybody that knows you is wealthy beyond all imagination, measure and accounting. We praise you. We adore you. We worship you with humble and grateful hearts.
Two days after this Black Friday we will celebrate the first Sunday in Advent. As we reflect upon the promises of your coming and the wonder of your birth, teach us anew what it means to seek your kingdom first, above anything and everything else. What new chapters of your story of redemption and restoration would you write through us?
Even as your righteous has come to us by faith, how might it come through us to the broken places in our communities? Rather than spending more money on ourselves, how would you have us invest our time, talent, and treasure in serving others? We praise you for your transforming kingdom and we long for its consummate fullness. So very Amen we pray, with grateful hearts and great anticipation. 

'The Greatness and Miserableness of Man'

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921)

The conclusion, therefore, is that of Augustine, who said that the heart of man was created for God and that it cannot find rest until it rests in his Father's heart. Hence all men are really seeking after God, as Augustine also declared, but they do not all seek Him in the right way, nor at the right place. They seek Him down below, and He is up above. They seek Him on the earth, and He is in heaven. They seek Him afar, and He is nearby. They seek Him in money, in property, in fame, in power, and in passion; and He is to be found in the high and the holy places, and with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit (Isa. 57:15). But they do seek Him, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him (Acts 17:27). They seek Him and at the same time they flee Him. They have no interest in a knowledge of His ways, and yet they cannot do without Him. They feel themselves attracted to God and at the same time repelled by Him.In this, as Pascal so profoundly pointed out, consists the greatness and the miserableness of man. He longs for truth and is false by nature. He yearns for rest and throws himself from one diversion upon another. He pants for a permanent and eternal bliss and seizes on the pleasures of a moment. He seeks for God and loses himself in the creature. He is a born son of the house and he feeds on the husks of the swine in a strange land. He forsakes the fountain of living waters and hews out broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13). He is as a hungry man who dreams that he is eating, and when he awakes finds that his soul is empty; and he is like a thirsty man who dreams that he is drinking, and when he awakes finds that he is faint and that his soul has appetite (Isa. 29:8).

Science cannot explain this contradiction in man. It reckons only with his greatness and not with his misery, or only with his misery and not with his greatness. It exalts him too high, or it depresses him too far, for science does not know of his Divine origin, nor of his profound fall. But the Scriptures know of both, and they shed their light over man and over mankind; and the contradictions are reconciled, the mists are cleared, and the hidden things are revealed. Man is an enigma whose solution can he found only in God.

Herman Bavinck, 'Our Reasonable Faith', Baker Book House. 1956. Pages 22-23.
HT:  IIIM Ministries

Psalm 13: a psalm for the despondent

Yesterday's outline ...

The human heart: an infinite and terrifying abyss

I mentioned sometime on Sunday Pascal's famous dictum, that there was a God-shaped void or hole in every human heart.  Here's the full quotation, updated for modern minds...
"What else does this craving and this helplessness proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This, he tries in vain, to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself."
Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) Pensees 10.148

HT:  Glenn Chesnut

The Church: the bastion of rationality in a world of unreason?

I've been really enjoying Lesslie Newbigin's Foolishness to the Greeks.  It's not an easy read, but well worth the effort.  Here's Newbigin's clarion call to the church (now from over 25 years ago, but quite prophetic) to 'think' in order to missionally and effectively engage with a post-Enlightenment Western culture.
"When the ultimate explanation of things is found in the creating, sustaining, judging, and redeeming work of a personal God, then science can be the servant of humanity, not its master.  It is only this testimony that can save our culture from dissolving into the irrational fanaticism that is the child of total skepticism.  It will perhaps be the greatest task of the church in the twenty-first century to be the bastion of rationality in a world of unreason.  But for that, Christians will have to learn that conversion is a matter not only of the heart and will but also of the mind."

L.Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, (SPCK, 1986), p. 84  

Mr and Mrs Goudy - the next generation ...

HT:  Paul Grant

You never, never, never, never ... outgrow your need for the Gospel!

5 Indicators that Your Church’s Average Age Might Have Increased Without You Realizing

Here's an interesting list from Will Mancini that we would do well to think about very carefully, and urgently!

#1 The senior pastor has been there for over 10 years and is still preaching over 90% of the time. (No team presence)

#2 You could not tell the difference between the worship (music, praise, liturgy) last Sunday and a video of worship 5 years ago.

#3 There are no leaders under age 40 among the top twelve leaders.

#4 There is no one under age 40 participating in the worship planning, programming or leadership.

#5 A majority of the top leaders still laugh about the fact they don’t do social media.

Jonathan Edwards: a universe of personal relationships

The final chapters of George M. Marsden's biographical masterpiece, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, powerfully and effectively highlight the dominant themes of Edwards' life and ministry.  It may appear cliche'd, but the final paragraphs of the book are profound...

"Among other things, Edwards challenges the commonsense view of our culture that the material world is the "real world".  Edwards' universe is essentially a universe of personal relationships.  Reality is a communication of affections, ultimately of God's love and creatures' responses...

"God's trinitarian essence is love.  God's purpose in creating a universe in which sin is permitted must be to communicate that love to creatures.  The highest or most beautiful love is sacrificial love for the undeserving.  Those who are given eyes to see that ineffable beauty will be enthralled by it. They will see the beauty of a universe in which unsentimental love triumphs over real evil.  They will not be able to view Christ's love dispassionately but rather will respond to it with their deepest affections.  Truly seeing such good, they will have no choice but to love it.  Glimpsing such love, they will be drawn away from their preoccupations with the gratifications of their most immediate sensations.  They will be drawn from their self-centred universes.  Seeing the beauty of the redemptive love of Christ as the true centre of reality, they will love God and all that he has created." (p. 503, 505)

This day next week ...

Hopefully, events will not turn out like this ... (but there's no guarantee!)

'Heightening our sense of speechless privilege'

The good people hosting the 'Of First Importance' daily blog, encouraging us with short pithy quotes "to live each day in the good of the Gospel" - are currently on a roll!  What about today's offering from the pen of Don Carson regarding us being caught up in the perfection of love among the persons of the Trinity? Ecstatically wonderful indeed!

"The Son’s will is to please his Father, not just to save us; and the Father’s will is to have all men honour the Son, not just to forgive us. To grasp the divine relationships in the drama of redemption is to humble our pride and heighten our sense of speechless privilege. To be saved and renewed, to be recipients of new life, to be forgiven, all because we are caught up in the perfection of love among the Persons of the Godhead, is unutterably solemn, ecstatically wonderful."

Spiritual lethargy, apathy, stupidity ... and glory of Jesus

"Do any of us find decays of grace prevailing in us; deadness, coldness, lukewarmness, a kind of spiritual stupidity and senselessness coming upon us? Do we find an unreadiness unto the exercise of grace in its proper season and the vigorous acting of it in duties of communion with God? And would we have our souls recovered from these dangerous diseases? Let us assure ourselves there is no better way for our healing and deliverance, yea no other way but this alone, namely, the obtaining a fresh view of the glory of Christ by faith, and a steady abiding therein. Constant contemplation of Christ and his glory putting forth its transforming power unto revival of all grace, is the only relief in this case."
John Owen
HT:  OFI

Our hearts are no longer heavy, they are light!

This evening at the 'Wycliffe Live' missions event in Coleraine Baptist, the following video clip was shown.  It's the very moving record of the dedication service in which the Kimyal tribe in Papua New Guinea receive the first printed copies of the New Testament in their own language.  Notice the tears of joy at having God's Word for themselves.  

How complacent and ungrateful many of us, who claim to love the Lord, have become when we fail to spend time with the Lord by giving only a few begrudging moments - if at all - to reading our Bibles and meeting with God.  

"...you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia." 1 Thess 1: 6-7

How the New Testament Describes Conversion

Dane Ortlund has very helpfully complied a list of how the New Testament writers graphically draw upon ideas, both universal and from their contemporary culture, to describe this multi-faceted wonder of God's grace, our 'salvation'.  The following are what he considers to be the most important... 

• Justification – the lawcourt metaphor (Rom 5:1; Titus 3:7)
• Sanctification – the cultus metaphor (1 Cor 1:2; 1 Thess 4:3)
• Adoption – the familial metaphor (Rom 8:15; 1 John 3:1–2)
• Reconciliation – the relational metaphor (Rom 5:1–11; 2 Cor 5:18–20)
• Washing – the physical cleansing metaphor (1 Cor 6:11; Titus 3:7)
• Redemption – the slave market metaphor (Eph 1:7; Rev 14:3–4)
• Purchase – the financial transaction metaphor (1 Cor 6:20; 2 Pet 2:1)
• Liberation – the imprisonment metaphor (Gal 5:1; Rev 1:5)
• New Birth – the physical generation metaphor (John 3:3–7; 1 Pet 1:3,23)
• Illumination – the light metaphor (John 12:35–36; 2 Cor 4:4–6)
• New Creation – the redemptive-historical metaphor (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15)
• Resurrection – the bodily metaphor (Eph 2:6; Col 3:1)
• Union with Christ – the organic or spatial metaphor (Rom 6:1–14; 2 Tim 1:9)

Ortlund concludes:  "Inexhaustible richness. Luther was right--

If a person is without warmth about matters pertaining to God and salvation, as the common man does, then the devil merely laughs. But if your words are aglow in your heart, you will put the devil to flight. (LW 22:357)"