Victorious Faith

How do we stand in the midst of so many differing viewpoints?  Listen in!

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You know this stuff! (a little late)

Thanksgiving was a great week but I took a couple days off and one of the things that didn’t get done: posting my sermon .    Listen in as we consider 1 John 2:18-27 as John exhorts us about the importance of faith in the Son.

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Overflowing to our Community

As we seek to love others, we must remember to treat others unequally and we must do the small things of love that God will do big things with.

[podcast]http://www.cbcames.org/media/sermons/20090308AM.mp3[/podcast]

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Gratitude, the Debtor’s Ethic, and John Piper’s Future Grace (part 1)

John Piper in 1995 wrote Future Grace. I’m finally getting around to reading it. His main premise is that faith in future grace is what drives our righteous behavior before God now.   He says, “I pray that you will hear and follow the call to find your joy in all that God promises to be for you in Jesus. And I pray the the expulsive power of this new affection will go on freeing you for the fleeting pleasures of sin and empower you for a life o sacrifical love.  If in this way, we prove that God is prized above all things, then living by faith in future grace will be to the praise of his glory.”   To be clear, I agree with his premise.  However, as he talks about gratitude in his first chapters, I think he is lacking in perspective on all that gratitude can give.

First, let’s notice what Piper says about gratitude and faith.

A definition: “We easily forget
that gratitude exists because sometimes things come to us
“gratis”—without price or payment. When that happens, we
should feel a pleasant sense of the worth of what we’ve received and the
goodwill behind it. This pleasant sense is what we call gratitude.”  (Future Grace [FG], 31)

“God meant gratitude to be a spontaneous
expression of pleasure in the gift and the good will of another.” (FG, 32)

Piper’s main concern at first is to show that gratitude should not result in what he calls the debtor’s ethic.

The debtor’s ethic says, “Because you have done something good for me,
I feel indebted to do something good for you.” (FG, 32)

This is good because we can all easily slip into trying to pay God back for all the good He does us.  This, however, violates a true picture of who God is.  Paul explicitly asks in somewhat of an echo of Is. 40, ‘who can give to God that he should be repaid?’   We cannot repay God for any good we do is ultimately from His grace (Eph. 2:8-10).

Piper explains, “In the debtor’s ethic the Christian life is pictured as an effort to pay back
the debt we owe to God. Usually the concession is made that we can never
fully pay it off. But “gratitude” demands that we work at it. Good deeds and
religious acts are the installment payments we make on the unending debt
we owe God. This debtor’s ethic often lies, perhaps unintentionally, beneath
the words, ‘We should obey Christ out of gratitude.’”  (FG, 33)

Is then gratitude a vital part of a sanctifying faith and growth in Christ?

Here’s how Piper explains it: “As I said before, this is not nit-picking or incidental; it is amazing. Gratitude is not set forth in the Bible as a primary motive for Christian living.
Gratitude is a beautiful thing. There is no Christianity without it. It is at the
heart of worship. It should fill the heart of every believer. But when it comes
to spelling out the spiritual dynamics of how practical Christian obedience
happens, the Bible does not say that it comes from the backward gaze of
gratitude, but that it comes from the forward gaze of faith.”

Here than we see a final part to Piper’s perspective on gratitude.  It is oriented toward the past and not the future.  Piper does not see gratitude as a primary motive for Christian living.  Is he correct?  I want to lookat that in part 2.    But, before we analyze that, some practical questions:  is gratitude a part of your worship? Are you daily grateful for the gift of eternal life?  Do you regularly look at God’s blessings to you?  These questions are vital because they reflect a heart of biblical worship.

However, we also should not slip into a debtor’s ethic.  Trying to repay God for what He has done.  It is very easy to conceive of our relationship to God based on things he gives us and things we owe to him in return. This ultimately is a perversion of grace because it conceives of grace as coming with strings attached.  It also subtly conceives of God as not able to do what we think needs to be done without us doing something.  How easy is it to slip into the debtor’s ethic?  What do you think?

Ps. 131 anti-psalm by David Powlison

Ever feel like this:

Self,
my heart is proud (I’m absorbed in myself),
and my eyes are haughty (I look down on other people),
and I chase after things too great and too difficult for me.
So of course
I’m noisy and restless inside; it comes naturally.
like a hungry infant fussing on his mother’s lap
like a hungry infant, I’m restless with my demands and worries
I scatter my hopes onto anything and everybody all the time.

Rather we should train ourselves by the grace of Christ:

Be still, my soul, the Lord is on thy side;
bear patiently the cross of grief or pain
leave to thy God to order and provide
In every change he faithful will remain
Be still, my soul; thy best, they heavenly Friend
through thorny ways leads to a joyful end

Seeing with New Eyes by David Powlison

This is so true especially as regards ministry. We cannot change people but we can obey God. We cannot change our children but we can trust in Him.