Site redesign

I'm transitioning from Blogger to Wordpress, so you can now get to my blog directly at mattsees.com (instead of mattsees.com/blog). The old blog will be left up for now, but all posts will show up only on the new one. The new feed is available here.

My Sweet Ride

My car has needed a new paint job for some time now. Today it got one:


Take a look at what we're up to on feedhaiti.com. More care pics here.

Why should we not sin?

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”

- Romans 6:1-2

If our acceptance before God is based entirely on the righteousness of Christ, and consequently not on our performance, then why should we not sin? If we were just to let ourselves do whatever we wanted, wouldn’t that relieve a lot of pressure? And if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the reason we sin is because we enjoy it. So why not relax a little and get the best of both worlds?

There are many good and valid answers to this question. The one that’s most compelling to me is that when we sin, we don’t get the best of both worlds. When we sin, we force ourselves to miss out on the greatest possible experience of the greatest possible good. In its place, we get something that is both infinitely less valuable and that by its very nature keeps us from that which is best. Any way you cut it, that’s just not worth it.

God is infinitely more valuable than anything that is not God. He is our greatest possible good. And as a Christian, you get to experience this good through the most intimate of all possible relationships: God living through you. You cannot get any closer to God than that. You cannot experience God in any more significant way. To have God express Himself through you is the greatest possible way to get the greatest possible gift. That’s what it means to “walk in newness of life” (v 4). We get to do that! People who haven’t died to sin are “free in regard to righteousness” (v 20) – that is, they are free from life. All they get is what’s left over when life is taken out of the picture, which is a rotten deal.

Grace is God's gift of himself to sinners. When we see that sin keeps us from what’s best, and that we have been freed from sin so that we can have what’s best in the most profound, personal, intimate way possible, then the idea that we should sin to increase grace becomes self-contradictory. Sin keeps us from enjoying what grace gives us. The nature of sin is such that you cannot enjoy both God and sin at the same time. When we’re faced with temptation, we’re faced with a choice: the easy, temporary, God-excluding pleasure of death, or the difficult, eternal, death-excluding pleasure of life.

What shall we say then?

Redeeming the Time

Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.

- Ephesians 5:15-16

As we prepare to travel to Poland, I’m reminded of the lives that have been radically and unexpectedly altered during the last hundred years of that country’s history. I wonder how many Polish citizens – especially Jews – were taken totally by surprise when Hitler’s rampage overflowed into their country in 1939? How many successful businesses and comfortable lives were crushed without warning? And in how many ways were those people a lot like us?

The war in which our country is engaged is one that rarely touches most of us. For all practical purposes, we live in a time of peace. We’re free to come and go as we please, pursue our dreams, engage in business and pleasure, raise families, or travel the world (or explore it from home). And we generally expect things to stay that way.

But the fact is that we don’t know what our lives will be like tomorrow. We don’t know what our nation will be like tomorrow. That’s hard to grasp, living in a place where change generally doesn’t happen. I’m not espousing some kind of conspiracy theory, and I don’t really expect things to literally get turned upside down tomorrow. But history has proven over and over that things often change much more quickly and dramatically than people expect them to.

This reality could lead to paranoia, or it could lead us to a sense of thankfulness and dependence and urgency. We live in a time of unprecedented privilege and opportunity. Whether that changes six months from now or stays the same way for the rest of our lives, we’ll give an account for what we did with it. “From everyone who has been given much, much will be required” (Luke 12:48). That’s us.

We need to ask the Lord for a healthy sense of our own mortality. Not one that will throw us into a panic, but one that will wake us up, that will allow us to live wisely. I think that’s what Moses was after in Psalm 90:12: “So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.” Only this kind of wisdom will allow us to make the most of our time. We need to remember that “the days are evil” even when the days are easy.

This idea of living intentionally and redeeming the time is one of the big ideas we’re hoping to communicate about parenting while we’re in Poland. That’s why the title we’re using for our parenting seminars is “Parenting on Purpose”. Please pray that we would both teach and learn about these things in helpful and refreshing ways. Thanks for partnering with us in this effort!

FeedHaiti.com

Today we launched a new site designed to help fight the desperate hunger problem in Haiti. The Jr. Highers at Community Christian School (where I get to teach the Bible class) have a bunch of creative ideas about how to raise both money and awareness with regard to this issue, and we're hopeful that FeedHaiti.com will be a helpful tool in accomplishing that goal. Take a look!

The Hard Facts

"These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."

- John 16:33

Life is hard. We often have to endure physical, mental and emotional pain, and sometimes all at once. We want life to be easy, or at least to work. But life is not easy, and life is often messy. Just when you think you’ve got life figured out and neatly arranged for yourself, some unforeseen problem jumps out from around a corner and makes a mess of all your plans. And it’s usually not cancer or bankruptcy or your teenage son announcing that he’s pretty sure he’s a woman. Once in a while those big things come around and really nail us, but it’s usually something more subtle. And many times it doesn’t come from outside, but from within, which is why we don’t see it coming until it’s too late.

In this world, Jesus says, we have trouble. And I find that the primary source of my trouble in this world is something I can’t escape as long as I’m in this world. It’s me. No matter where I go, and no matter what circumstances I arrange for myself, there I am with myself, just waiting to mess up my life again. Other people help, but I am the primary source. Perhaps, if you look closely, you’ll find that your experience is similar. Maybe you can relate, as I can, with Paul’s complaint: “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24)

And in addition to making life hard for myself, I often make life hard for others. I don’t want to, but somehow I manage to anyway. And that makes life all the harder for me. Especially when I don’t want to admit that it was my fault, or when I’m insistent on justifying it because I’m sure the person I’ve hurt has done even more to make life difficult for me. Sound familiar?

There may come a time in your life when you are crushed under this reality. If you’re anything like me, you don’t want life to be hard. You’re willing for certain aspects of life to be hard, provided they either end soon or make life easier in the long run. But what does your heart do when you consider the possibility that you may not get a long, early retirement in a peaceful coastal village with a tropical climate? And what if you realize that even if you do, you’re going to have to take yourself with you?

I don’t say all this just to turn us into a bunch of pessimistic navel-gazers. I say it to help us come to terms with what Jesus has promised us. Because sometimes coming to terms with the promise that life will be hard is the first step toward taking hold of the promise that Jesus connects with it. And we must never stop at the first promise. We must not simply become cold, joyless stoics, determined simply to endure life even if it kills us. Though we can’t make sense out of it all yet, we must keep looking to that greater reality that governs our present problems – Jesus has overcome the world, and he’s done it for us. So we can (and must) take courage.

These things he has spoken to us, so that in Him we may have peace.

Hebrews 13:7-8: Looking Forward by Looking Back

Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

- Hebrews 13:7-8

When Scripture speaks of the faith that should motivate us to live for Christ, it speaks almost exclusively of a forward-looking faith. Backward-looking faith, including things like gratitude for past blessings, is important, as we will see. But when Scripture speaks of the kind of faith that should drive godly behavior, it almost always speaks of faith in what God has promised for the future. At the same time, Scripture speaks repeatedly about the importance of backward-looking faith, as it does even in this passage. And the connection between past-based faith, future-based faith and motivation is an important one. The only way we will live the kind of life God calls us to live is if we trust him for the future. And one of the most important ways to build trust in the future promises of God is by looking to the past. We look back for the purpose of looking forward.

In this case, the writer of Hebrews is urging us to look back on those who have benefited us spiritually by teaching the word of God to us. This can apply both to those who have taught us directly and to those who have handed the word of God down through past centuries. Whether we have known them personally or have been separated from them by many years, the lives of those who have faithfully taught the word of God have a powerful lesson to teach us.

But their lesson is not about them. Notice that we are not called specifically to imitate them, but to imitate their faith. Their conduct was a result of their faith, and we are to imitate that faith so that our conduct will be like their conduct, and will be used by the Lord to produce the same result. Look at what the writer says about them: their faith produced conduct which produced a result. We are supposed to consider the result, because when we see how valuable the result was, we will recognize the value of what produced it. The result was produced by a particular type of conduct, which was produced by a particular type of faith. And their faith is what we are supposed to imitate.

The question then becomes, what was so great about their faith? Was it, in some general way, their elevated ability to believe? Did they possess some kind of psychological or personal holistic superiority? Are they a particularly good example for us simply because they could rightly be described as people of eminent faith? To extend the question one step further, could we benefit in this way from the example of faith found in sincere Muslims or Hindus or atheists?

The simple answer is no, and the reason is simple. Faith has no value in and of itself. It is only as valuable as its object, and only as a way to take hold of its object. Faith could perhaps be described as a hand that takes hold of unseen things for us. If the unseen things of which it takes hold are valuable, then that faith is worthwhile. On the other hand, if it connects us to things that are either illusions or dangerous, then the faith itself is empty at best and destructive at worst. This is very important to keep in mind in a society where faith is treated as an unqualified virtue regardless of its object.

Perhaps a different example would be helpful. Imagine yourself using a metal detector on a beach, when all of a sudden the device begins responding to something. You begin to dig, and the beeping grows louder. Suddenly, two feet or so under the sand, you hit something solid. After some effort, you unearth a large, flat metal box, clasped tightly shut. You take it home, and as carefully as possible, you loosen the clasps. The box is shut in such a way as to be completely airtight, and when you finally open it, what you find amazes you. It is a large painting – a portrait – of a somber looking old man sitting in a straight-backed chair. At the bottom of the portrait is the signature – “Whistler”. Some eager phone calls to art galleries confirm that you have evidently unearthed a work long thought to have been lost: Whistler’s Father. The painting is perfectly preserved, and is virtually priceless. You are the first person to have seen it for at least a hundred years. (And as far as you know, you are the first person in history to have found something of significant value while searching a beach with a metal detector.)

What would you do? What would people think of you if you were to call an art gallery and offer to put yourself on display with your metal detector? A sufficiently avant-garde gallery might be interested for the sheer absurdity of it, but what would a normal gallery really be interested in? Not in you as the finder, or in your metal detector as the tool by which you found it, but in the treasure itself. And this is the way it works with faith. Like a metal detector, faith has the potential to connect us with great hidden treasure. And like a metal detector, faith is only valuable if it actually accomplishes this. The superiority of faith over a metal detector is a question of degree. The treasure to be apprehended by faith is infinitely more valuable than a priceless work of art.

This story reminds me of a comedian who thought it would be fun to bury metal objects on the beach with things like “you’re a loser” or “get a life” written on them. Faith is similar to a metal detector in that it has the potential to connect us with unseen treasures. On the same token, if a metal detector points us to a tin can with “you’re a loser” written on it, or perhaps to a land mine, such a device would be either worthless or hazardous. It is only worth what it gets for us. And it works the same way with faith.

And all this fits with exactly where this passage points us. The faith of those who taught us about Christ was great, but not because they were simply great people of faith. Their faith in Christ was great because Christ is great. Their faith in Christ produced service to Christ, which produced a result empowered by Christ. To phrase things as Jesus did, their abiding in him produced lasting fruit (John 15:4-16). This is abundantly clear from verse 8. The reason we are to look back on the lives of faithful believers and imitate their faith is that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”. The Jesus who was faithful and sufficient and merciful and holy and wise and loving in the past for men like Abraham and Paul and William Tyndale and John Newton is the same Jesus who will be all those things for you and me today and tomorrow and forever. Consider the results of their conduct, and imitate their faith in him.