Legalistic remorse says, ‘I broke God’s rules,’ while real repentance says, ‘I broke God’s heart.’ Legalistic repentance takes sin to Mt. Sinai, gospel repentance to Mt. Calvary. Legalistic repentance is convicted by punishment, gospel repentance becomes convicted by mercy.
-Timothy Keller
I’m grateful that today is a holiday, so instead of going to school very early in the morning, I got to spend a lot of time reading my Bible, and a good book called, Why I am a Christian, written by John Stott.
Earlier, I meditated on Acts 17: 26-27, and was reminded of God’s sovereignty. Although the immediate context speaks of God’s control over the length of our lives and the places of our birth, I think the verses could be extended to include God’s sovereignty over everything. (Anyway, the Bible is full of instances showing that God is indeed in control of everything—the experiences of Job, for example). That someone wiser, holier, more loving and more powerful than I am is in control of everything brings me much comfort, especially during times when I struggle with sin.
John Stott’s book is likewise an encouragement as it points the reader constantly back to Christ. I haven’t finished the book yet, but let me share one very good quote. On the question of why God does not simply forgive us without the necessity of the cross, Stott says:
It is when we begin to see the gravity of sin and the majesty of God that our questions change. No longer do we ask why God finds it difficult to forgive sins, but how he finds it possible.
That I may always have a sense of God’s greatness and sin’s utter horribleness!
Elie Wiesel, to my mind, has caricatured best the horrible massacre of people, of humanity, and of faith during the holocaust in his memoir, Night. (Although he might have the “best” retelling of the story, the story itself is worse than “worst.”) In a hundred pages or so, Wiesel is able to recount in vivid detail and in the simplest of language how families are separated from each other forever; how a single soldier, by merely pointing his finger to a man, woman or child can so easily decide his death; how prisoners had to do hard labor with nothing but crumbs of bread in their stomachs and in between lashings of a whip; how prisoners morph into helpless animals, and their captors into brutal beasts in a single day; how men who used to believe that God is as real as the next breathing person across the room soon find themselves echoing Nietzche: God is dead.
It is in the simplicity of the retelling that it is most haunting. But no matter how depressing the atrocities are, I know that’s all anyone who has never been in that concentration camp can ever do: be depressed, be disgusted, be enraged, take pity, vomit. Reading through the story I could feel in my bones the crushing defeat of Elie as he looked on a young boy (as young as he) suspended between heaven and earth in a rope, his tongue lolling as he desperately pants for breath, wanting to die but never quite dying yet. I could feel, but I could never have known.
And I hope I never would. I hope no one ever would.
And then I remembered the story of Job, and how he has suffered, too. How his wealth and kin disappear in a snap of a finger; how he is told the news that his properties are all gone; and how, no sooner than he learned of this, without even a chance to recover from a terrible blow, he is told again that all of his children are dead. So I am amazed when Job is able to declare: The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.
From where did this faith come? This faith that would set aside the sharp and piercing claws of suffering to focus more on praising God? This, indeed, is grace. Purely grace.
(Photo credit: Lance)
Blinded on the way to Damascus. Almost drowned to death. Jailed many times. Shared the gospel. Ministered to churches. Labored hard for the Lord. Although he knew Christ, his heart’s cry was, “I want to know Christ.”
When you think you know all about Christ, you’ve barely scratched the surface.
Yesterday, I went to the Law Christian Fellowship meeting. I had wanted to go for the longest time. But, for the longest time too, my class schedule wouldn’t allow me. I enjoyed every minute that I wasn’t scouring over my books or marking any of my cases. It was refreshing just to be sitting there, and looking into the eyes of five or six people who have a deep love for the Lord. BJ talked about Ezekiel, particularly that chapter on the Valley of the Dry Bones. It made all of us remember how law school can sap us dry to the bones, and rip all of our flesh and sinews apart. More than that, it made all of us remember that God is able to restore the dead–and the dying–back to life.
Yesterday, I went to see Transformers. I like the movie a lot because, as one classmate put it, “It’s a popcorn flick, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a popcorn flick.” I watched with two of my friends, and in the middle of the movie, epiphany struck me in the same way it did the boy in James Joyce’s “Araby”: These robots used to grace the cover of my notebooks in second grade!
Today, I woke up knowing that I needed to be reminded of my own weaknesses, of my propensity to sin and disobey God; so that in all these, He could be my strength. I read Romans 8, and the first verse is so powerful it could propel a badly beaten and exhausted soldier back in the thick of battle : “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Indeed, it is a joy to know that I can wake up everyday, and nothing in the world can ever change my position in Christ.
Today, I went to church for the second part of the Estudyante Blues of the Youth Fellowship of my church. Last Saturday, Kuya Oscar talked about Christians being the salt and light of the world (by the way, I’ve written something on this subject several months ago here). This afternoon, Kuya Lito talked about Christian fellowship–or koinonia in Greek. I pray that God would work wonders in the lives of those who went to the activity.
Tomorrow? Well, it is yet another day which will have worries of its own. But praise be to God whose compassions are new every morning.
I can hear the monotonous dribbling of basketball outside of my apartment. From the heaving and the occasional expulsion of grunts that accompany the dribbling, I would guess that the sound comes from three males in their twenties, their hair probably unkempt, and their body excreting more than normal amounts of sweat. They must have realized that it is healthier to play basketball under this heat than to eat halo-halo everyday that it is summer.
As for me, not having the appetite, much less the skill for basketball—or anything where running is involved, for that matter—the searing heat induces me into some kind of a melancholy mood conducive for writing.
I sit in front of my computer, staring at the blank Microsoft Word document in the monitor, hopeful that, in a while, I would be able to fill it with my thoughts. In the meantime, Fernando Ortega’s rendition of an old church hymn resonates from the speakers. His voice is gentle and soothing, yet quite powerful. The emotions are genuine, I can tell. When I close my eyes, I can picture him on my mind falling prostrate on the ground, desperately begging, “Oh, I need Thee every hour.”
I sing with him, and the song becomes mine.
Oh how I need my Father, indeed. I need Him every hour. Law school Life is one hostile jungle, and I am one scared cat in the midst of a multitude of lions and hyenas. How can I survive a day without Him? And my heart. It is deceitful above all else. It is haughty. Proud. Arrogant. It is riddled with lust and sin. I am utterly powerless to save me from myself.
I need You in joy or in pain. Shield me from the flaming arrows of my enemy. Stay nearby or temptations will sweep me like mudflow ravaging any life form that comes its way. Come quickly and abide in me, dear Lord; otherwise, life is in vain. Teach me Your will and fulfill Your promises in me.
I need Thee every hour.
If I were to list down my favorite spots in UP Diliman, the Sunken Garden will make it to the top–that submerged patch of land area at the heart of the campus which is home to football players (and wannabe-football-players alike), to couples and their love affairs and catfights, and to people like me who just want to breathe in a dose of silence and solitude.
There are points in my college life when I just wormed my way from the noise and the chaos of the metropolitan jungle of Quezon City, and retreated into the Sunken Garden for a peaceful and quiet afternoon, no matter how momentary.
One of those points was when I was about to graduate from college. At that time, I had already taken up the law aptitude exam together with thousands and thousands of people fighting it out for the two hundred slots available. I thought I did poorly in the exam–what with the only ten math questions I answered out of forty-five. And I’m not even sure if I got the entire ten correctly!
You see, I have always dreamed of becoming a lawyer from the time my mother successfully dissuaded me from pursuing the medical profession early on in my gradeschool days. She had this spiel about doctors being at the beck and call of patients round the clock, and doctors not ending up in lucrative careers despite having gone to school in who-knows-how-long.
So after that exam, the future was as uncertain as the mood of a menopausing woman. I remembered going to the Sunken Garden with my Bible one Sunday afternoon. I just sat on the grassy area near the gnarled root of the Acacia tree in front of the College of Law. There, I lifted up my eyes to the heavens, and the words of Oswald Chambers came into mind: Be certain of God in your uncertainty. I opened my Bible to the Psalms and was reassured that God is sovereign and in control. I closed my eyes and laid down everything before Him. I asked him to teach my fainting heart to trust Him and His will.
That was almost one year ago.
Now, I’m in the U.P. College of Law. But my trips to the Sunken Garden didn’t end there. When I received the results of my first exam in law school–which I miserably flunked, I retreated to that same spot–that grassy portion near the gnarled root of the Acacia tree in front of the College of Law, and there, I poured out my heart before God. Then, I remembered that moment almost one year ago, and realized that the only reason I was in law school was because of His grace alone; and the only way I could stick it through for the next four years is only by His grace alone, as well.
I lifted up my eyes to the heavens, and I knew God would see me through.
Bob Kauflin, as well as several other Christian bloggers who are linked in his site, provides some helpful biblical perspective on blogging. Here is a sneek peek into what he has written:
As Christians, blogs present one more arena in which we can be an aroma of the Gospel to a world that rarely sees people acting with “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” as we proclaim and demonstrate this great salvation we've received. Let’s make every effort to seize the opportunity.
He also poses a question that every blogger who professes to be a Christian needs to answer:
While there are countless reasons people blog, ultimately it comes down to two – am I blogging to bring glory to God or myself?
For today's Sunday service, the pastor of our church here in Marbel expounded on 1 Peter 3: 1-6, which begins with, "Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives…"
Indeed, the Bible explicitly commands submission: slaves to their masters (1 Peter 2:18); believers to governing authorities (Romans 13:5), to fellow believers (Ephesians 5:21), to God (James 4:7); and wives to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22)
As I was listening to the preaching, what caught my attention is the goal of the command, which is not the attainment of unity nor of peace, but the proclamation of the power of the cross of Christ. Wives, as the text says, should be submissive to their unbelieving husbands so that they may be "won over" to embrace the gospel. The goal then is largely evangelistic!
Come to think of it: Christ Himself demostrated this submission to the will of the Father, and as a result, the wandering sheep are ushered back into His fold.
Oh, what folly it is
for a believer to trade his joy in Christ
to the fleeting pleasures of sin!
