Tag: perseverance of the saints

Not Flourishing, Enduring

Published on by D. G. Hart47 Comments

The Bar Jester keeps it real about human existence:

I don’t want an early spring. I don’t want the buds to get duped. I don’t want the fruit trees to flower and then get stung. I just want the trouble—the full brunt of the trouble until it’s time, really time, for the darling buds of May at last to come out. And I say this, of course, as an avowed lover of winter—as someone whose favorite seasons are, in this order, winter, fall, spring, and summer. At winter’s end I’m ready for my third favorite season. I’ll not deny that. But I can’t get excited about hot days and high humidity. Life isn’t like a hot sticky day that air conditioning mitigates the misery of. Life is like a hard wind in temperatures below zero. Life isn’t like salubrious days in fall and spring. It’s like unseasonable days in winter and summer. Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure.

Or, to put it another way, you might sink the forty-foot putt (because you might misread the thing so badly that dumb luck actually has a chance to kick in), but you also might three-putt as well—and probably will. Life isn’t like a birdie; it’s like a double-bogey. Life isn’t like a gentle draw; it’s like a snap-hook. Life isn’t sun-bathing on Daytona Beach in the afternoon with your sorority sisters from I Felta Guy; it’s milking a cow on a cold January morning in a dark barn by yourself while college boys earning their degrees in business are still hard at work playing poker in the frat house (I Felta Thigh, Tappa Kegga Beer), drinking Captain Morgan and stupidly counting on luck when only trouble’s sure.

Why would you as a Christian who takes sinfulness seriously, so serious that the Son of God had to die for your sins, ever talk about human flourishing or cultural transformation the way that Homer talked about the Land of Chocolate?

Forensic Friday: Hodge on Romans 5: 1-11

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The first consequence of justification by faith is, that we have peace with God, ver. 1. The second, that we have not only a sense of his present favour, but assurance of future glory, ver. 2. The third, that our afflictions, instead of being inconsistent with the divine favour, are made directly conducive to the confirmation of our hope; the Holy Spirit bearing witness to the fact that we are the objects of the love of God, verses 3-5. The fourth, the certainty of the final salvation of all believers. This is argued from the freeness and greatness of the divine love; its freeness being manifested in its exercise towards the unworthy; and its greatness, in the gift of the Son of God, verses 6-10. Salvation is not merely a future though certain good, it is a present and abundant joy, verse 11. (Commentary, p. 131)