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Justin Taylor presents 100 quotes on sanctification. Good reading. My favorite is John Calvin (I know shocking.):

"The whole lives of Christians ought to be a kind of aspiration after piety, seeing they are called unto holiness (Ephesians 1:4; 1 Thessalonians 4:5). The office of the law is to excite them to the study of purity and holiness, by reminding them of their duty. For when the conscience feels anxious as to how it may have the favor of God, as to the answer it could give, and the confidence it would feel, if brought to his judgment-seat, in such a case the requirements of the law are not to be brought forward, but Christ, who surpasses all the perfection of the law, is alone to be held forth for righteousness."

Salvation is a very low bar.
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Todd Rhoades posts a Facebook post and asks how to react. Here is the Facebook post:


Look, there are people in the church that hate homosexuals - but most of us don't, we just know that homosexual practice is wrong. But reading this it is making more out of declaring something wrong than is really there. Saying,"You're wrong," is not hate - it is simply a declaration and it is generally born of love. When your parents told you not to touch a hot stove they were not telling you becasue they hate you, they were telling you because they love you and do not want to see you burned.

And if they are unwilling to listen to that then there are the words of Christ:

Mark 6:7-11 - And He summoned the twelve and began to send them out in pairs; and He was giving them authority over the unclean spirits; and He instructed them that they should take nothing for {their} journey, except a mere staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belt; but to wear sandals; and He added "Do not put on two tunics."

And He said to them, "Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave town. "And any place that does not receive you or listen to you, as you go out from there, shake off the dust from the soles of your feet for a testimony against them."
(NAS)

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Leroy Huizenga @ First Things:

In recent years, however, while continuing to play in worship bands, I began to become increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of “contemporary worship.” As Rich Mullins, to this day one of my heroes, once said, contemporary Christian music is great entertainment, but it doesn’t belong in worship. (Ironic, indeed, coming from the guy who gave us “Awesome God” and “Sometimes by Step.”) I realized I was standing up front, on a stage, cranking hard on a guitar, or a bass, or a trap set, while leading a coffee-clutching congregation in singing lyrics that (as one internet graphic has it) involve “bad metaphors about God that seem oddly sexual.” I came to a point a few years ago where I realized our Sunday morning worship has hardly that at all; it looked and felt much more like a Top-40 pop-rock concert geared toward making an audience feel good than something designed to bring us to an encounter with the Almighty God revealed at Sinai and ultimately in Jesus Christ.

[...]

Form and content are not finally separable, for the medium is indeed the message, or more cautiously, the form affects the content greatly. If our modern forms are emotive and superficial, we will wind up with a vision and experience of God that is emotive and superficial. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi—how we worship shapes how we believe and thus how we live.

We need not make up worship, for liturgy is something given, something revealed, something objective, not something we concoct out of our own desires or feelings. In broad strokes, Christian liturgy comes from the Old Testament and Jewish culture fulfilled and interpreted by Jesus and the apostles. The liturgy of the Word comes from the liturgy of the synagogue, which involved prayers, Scripture, and preaching. The liturgy of the Eucharist (or Holy Communion, if you prefer) comes from Jesus’ institution of the Lord’s Supper as the fulfillment of temple sacrifice. Of course there are many different rites across the times and spaces Christian history comprises, but they (should) stand in continuity with liturgical tradition going back to Eden, the first temple, and be theologically informed.

'Nuff Said - read the whole thing
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Todd Rhoades reprints the new Code of Ethics published byt eh National Association of Evangelicals and asks:

Is a code of ethics really necessary for pastors?

I am appalled at the question - seriously. Anybody seen "Elmer Gantry?" And that was intentional. The church is full of unintentional scandal as well.

I honestly think much more than a "code of ethics" is called for. There needs to be accountability mechanisms to that code. Everytime I have worried about some misstep a pastor has done, I have been reminder that "Pastors are sinners too." Which is precisely the point.

I know way too many that have gotten into ministry becasue they thought they were better than the rest of us - which means they are far more prone to sin than the rest of us. If you aks me, a code of ethics is not enough.
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Tags: cartoons, catblogging, Aggie, Flash, LoganV

Dan Edelen makes one heck of a point:

One of the things that bothers me most about believers in today’s churches, especially Western churches, is our assumption of superiority. Many of us church people display an inflated sense of arrival, as if we are the pinnacle of Christian expression in all of human history.

Those fellow believers in some old cave somewhere who wrote about their experience of the Faith? Morons. Those Middle Ages Christians who hid from “the infidel” and saw their numbers martyred? Know-nothings. Those theologians from the halls of 18th-century European centers of learning? Mental midgets.

Only we get it. Ours is the only understanding of Christianity that matters. The foundation upon which we stand is little more than a pile of spiritual-sounding ideas whose time has passed. Our knowledge and praxis are the epitome of what it means to be a Christian, and no one who came before us has anything to say to us about what to believe and how to live.

Dan then goes on to state that while science may have advanced, man has not essentially changed - so why the disregard? Why is precisely the question that interests me.

For one there is the essential "me" focus of thinking that the past has nothing to offer. Most Christians these days think Christianity is about them. It's their salvation, it's their worship, it's their Jesus. But nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus saves us for His ends, not ours. Somehow our approach to evangelism has got to begin to make this apparent. All the blatant appeals to personal interest that we make DO NOT serve the Kingdom.

Secondly, people are just lazy. They don't want Christianity to be about study - they want it to be about feeling good. Studying does not feel good. Christianity is a delayed gratification sort of thing. Study, among other things restores us to our created state - and nothing feels better - but it is a slow burdensome process. Again we do ourselves no favor when we offer a faith that satisfies now.

Our faithfulness is a small price to pay for God's goodness. The problem is we do not help people understand the real worth of the Christ offers them. Maybe that is becasue we do not understand it ourselves.
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