Those who are awakened to lifelong conversion by the Spirit never cease to be sinners themselves. Yet despite their continuing sinfulness, the miracle of grace never ceases in the hearts (183).
What the miraculous operation of the Holy Spirit brings about [in conversion] . . . is not essentially restoration or healing but resurrection from the dead (184).
Since to be a sinner means to be incapacitated, grace means capacitating the incapacitated despite their incapacitation. Sinners capacitated by grace remain helpless in themselves. Grace does not perfect and exceed human nature in its sorry plight so much as contradict and overrule it.
In this miraculous and mysterious way, by grace alone—that is, through a continual contradiction of nature by grace that results in a provisional conjunction of opposites (coniunctio oppositorum)—the blind see, the lame walk, and the dead are raised to new life (cf. Matt. 11:4) (185).
“capacitating the incapacitated”
Psalm 34 - God’s Hidden Presence and the Righteous vs. the Wicked
Text: Psalm 34:15-1
15 The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.
16 The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.
17 When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.
18 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
19 Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.
20 He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.
21 Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
22 The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.
Context:
The title of Psalm 34 begins: “Of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away.” The story of David and king Abimelech (or, Achish) is recorded in 1 Samuel 21:10-15. On the run from Saul, David is captured by a foreign army and taken before the king of Gath with this somewhat anecdotal charge: “Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances, ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?” (1 Sam. 21:11). In other words: “Here we have found a foreign trespasser, a royal enemy of the state, and an incredibly dangerous and brutal one at that.” Fearing for his life, v. 13 tells us that David “changed his behavior before the [unsuspecting] king” and began to “pretend to be insane.” Upon seeing David’s condition, Abimelech chastised his soldiers and sent David away.
What’s interesting to me about this Psalm is how absent God appears in 1 Samuel 21, and yet how full of praise to God David is when he reflects back on the incident. Everything about the narrative points not toward a miraculous rescue by some mysterious, divine Presence, but to a much simpler explanation: David saved himself. After all, it was David’s quick thinking and clever actions that fooled the king of Gath and led to his freedom. Nowhere is it mentioned that God was at work. And yet, all through Psalm 34, David gives God the glory for his deliverance.
Another interesting element is the clear delineation (particularly in vv. 15-22) David sees between God’s treatment of the righteous and his treatment of “those who do evil” (i.e., “the wicked”). For example: God’s “face” is toward the righteous, His ears are open to their cry, and He delivers them from “all their troubles.” On the other hand, the Lord’s face is “against those who do evil” to “cut off the memory of them from the earth.” Similarly, while affliction, although besetting the righteous, will never ultimately overtaking them, it will (in the end) destroy and condemn the wicked. In all of this we see that, although God is a God of love, He is also a God of unrelenting justice.
Implication (Gospel):
My problem with God’s justice is this: I’m on the wrong side of it. Contrary to the fears and anxieties that most commonly beset me (fears about money, relationships, and reputation mostly), in reality, the biggest problem in my life is God himself. You see, if God’s orientation toward a person is so deeply effected by their righteousness (or lack thereof) what hope do I have of getting anything other than the worst that Psalm 34 says awaits the wicked?
The gospel answers this question by telling me that real hope lies not in cobbling together some pathetic and self-glorifying righteousness of my own, but instead in admitting my abject spiritual poverty and laying hold of Christ. Take vv. 15 and 16 for instance: the only reason God’s eyes are upon me and his ears “open to my cry” (v. 15) is because (on the cross) He set his face against Jesus to cut him off the memory of “those who do evil” from the earth (v. 16). In other words, Christ, the righteous, became as “those who do evil” so that I, the one who really does “do evil,” might become righteous.
Or, to use vv. 21 and 22: on the cross, Christ took the place of the wicked—being slain by my afflictions and experiencing the condemnation I deserved (v. 21)—so that, through this act of substitution, my life might be redeemed and the promise fulfilled: “none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned” (v. 22).
Application (Life):
Today I will focus on two things: one, recognizing God’s help and aid in the mundane things of life (i.e., in those place where I wouldn’t naturally see Him act work); and, two, giving up my worthless and prideful pursuit of earning righteousness in order to relying more and more on Christ.
Psalm 33 - What Do You Trust In?
Text: Psalm 33:16-17
The king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great might it cannot rescue.
Context
Though not attributed to David himself, Psalm 33 serves well as a commentary on the life of a man who great hope and only Deliverer was the Lord. In contrast to the rest of the Psalm’s positive tone, verses 16 and 17 serve first to expose and then to immediately deconstruct the sources in which many of us are tempted to place our trust and hope: namely, human power. We so naturally love what we can see and rest secure in what is (by our estimation) “great.”
The underlying point is this: whatever we hope in most, wherever our ultimate trust lies, there we will find our “god.” It really doesn’t matter whether we pay lip-service to God or not. Whatever finally makes our hearts secure and enables us to sleep peacefully at night, that thing (and not the resurrected Christ) is what we worship.
Of course, the flip-side is also true: whatever we fear most, whatever thing, if we lost it, would make us a miserable, anxious mess, that (again) is our god. The profoundly useful thing about fear is that we often don’t know what we’re trusting in until it’s taken away. As long as our army is great, our bank accounts are full, our families are safe, and our reputation’s intact, it’s easy to say, “I trust in the Lord.” It’s only when those false hopes are demolished that we finally see (and more importantly, feel) what it is we truly hope in.
Implication (Gospel):
In the gospel, we see the ultimate contradiction in human hope and trust: it is not by might that we saved, but by weakness. The cross signals the end to any hope we might have had in what we consider great (or wise, for that matter). The cross ushers us into the truth that it is only through death that new life comes. And this Christ-shaped pattern now defines our lives. Through the gospel we are enabled to release our trust, as Psalm 22:7 says, in “chariots and horses,” and to instead anchor ourselves on “the name of the Lord our God.”
Application (Gospel):
Today I will confess to God all those things I’m naturally inclined to trust in—whether it’s my job, my reputation, my body, my money, my family, or even my religious efforts. In their place, I will (as Paul put it in 2Corinthians 12:9) “boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
Psalm 31 - Suffering, the King, and the Cross
Psalm 31:5 & 9-13
5 Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.
9 Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also.
10 For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away.
11 Because of all my adversaries I have become a reproach, especially to my neighbors, and an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me.
12 I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel.
13 For I hear the whispering of many—terror on every side!—as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.
Text:
Taken up later by Jeremiah, Jesus, and author of Psalm 71, Psalm 31 is an intense, authentic, and (in the most meaningful sense of the word) raw expression of one man’s suffering and ultimate salvation. Utterly devoid of the usual religious pretenses, platitudes, and banalities, David writes with unflinchingly clarity of the stark emotional realities that living in a fallen, broken world create. And yet, although he is brutally honest, he is not hopeless. Two times in this Psalm, David walks the reader through his pain and in both instances he emerges on the other side clinging to the God who, as the Psalm begins, is a refuge, deliverer, rescuer, rock, and fortress. In this way, Psalm 31 is a powerful model for teaching us how to bring our suffering to God without belittling Him or our suffering itself.
Context:
In the context of the Bible’s overarching story, Psalm 31 bridges the gap between the failed kingship of Saul, the ascension of David himself, and the establishment of the Davidic Covenant/Dynasty (i.e., the “partial kingdom”).
Implication (Gospel):
As was briefly noted above, Jesus himself took up the words of Psalm 31:5 as his final, extinguishing prayer in Luke 23:46. However, even without this direct, cross-borne quotation, the Psalm is virtually teeming with the predictive/prophetic pattern that 1Peter 1:11 defines as “the sufferings of the Messiah and the subsequent glories.” In this way, Psalm 31 functions as a sort of internal monologue or emotional commentary on Jesus’ own physical and spiritual suffering. The only difference being that where David was merely “forgotten like one who is dead” and simply “became like a broken vessel,” Jesus was literally destroyed.
For example, as verses 15 and 20 intimate, despite David’s initial suffering the king himself was ultimately rescued from the hands of his enemies and persecutors, covered by God’s presence from the “plots of men,” and stored in God’s shelter from the “strife of tongues.” Far to the contrary, in the case of Jesus, on the cross we see God’s great and final King delivered into the hands of his enemies and persecutors, victimized by the plots of men, and openly exposed to the strife of tongues. And yet, it is out of that suffering and through the resurrection that the gospel takes shape.
Application (Gospel):
No matter how awful, pathetic, or seemingly hopeless my situation, even if as the Psalm says there is “terror on every side,” I can be secure in my suffering knowing that, because Christ died in my place, I will never ultimately be forgotten like one who is dead or become like a broken vessel. In fact, whatever suffering I face, because of the cross, becomes merely a window into the suffering Christ endured on my behalf. Because of this, suffering (of whatever sort) now serves to draw me closer to God and invite me deeper into his love.
Today I will regard my suffering as a opportunity to understand more deeply (without ever being forced to undergo its fullness myself) the wrath that Christ endured to save me from my sin.
Psalm 30 - Text, Context, Implication, Application
Psalm 30:1-5, 9 & 11-12
1 A Psalm of David. . . . I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
2 O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
3 O LORD, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
4 Sing praises to the LORD, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.
5 For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
9 “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?
11 You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness,
12 that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever!
Text:
Attributed to David and described by its subscription as a “Song at the Dedication of the House [or, Temple],” this Psalm is a heartfelt celebration of God’s victory in delivering the persecuted king either from one of his many political-military enemies or some sort of physical sickness. Most likely the first of the two (based on the biblical stories of David recorded in 1st and 2nd Samuel), either way David praises God for rescuing him from the very brink of destruction: “you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me . . . . you have healed me. . . . you have brought up my soul from Sheol [‘the grave’]; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit [to ‘death’]” (vv. 1-3). David’s joy is found not merely in a good outcome or a happy providence, but in God’s great reversal of his circumstances: from the pit to the palace, from dust to dynasty, from mourning to dancing, from sackcloth to gladness, and ultimately from death to life (v. 9).
Context:
In the context of the Bible’s overall story, Psalm 30 is located very near the beginning of Israel’s official geo-political monarchy: what Vaughn Roberts calls the “partial kingdom.” Immediately after the dethroning of Saul and prior to the kingdom’s split, collapse, and ultimate exile, Psalm 30 celebrates God’s victory in establishing David’s kingship while simultaneously looking forward to the perfect kingship of Jesus Christ.
Implication (Gospel):
What David describes in figurative terms, Jesus—Great David’s Greater Son—literally experienced. For those that argue the concept of resurrection is an exclusively New Testament idea, implied only briefly in places like Ezekiel 37 (and there only metaphorically as a symbol for the people of Israel’s return from exile), Psalm 30 functions like a prophetic signpost pointing toward (though, admittedly, not exhausting) the hope of resurrection as a “whole-Bible” doctrine. However, unlike David who was rescued from death, Jesus Christ was rescued through death so that we who justly deserve to “go down to the pit” might be raised up with him. His death becomes our death, so that his resurrection might become ours as well.
Verse 5 is particularly meaningful in this Christ-centered sense: “For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Upon the cross we see God’s infinite anger at sin—his holy, perfect, and consuming wrath leveled squarely the evil and corrosive cancer eating away at his creation—dealt with “in a moment”; while in the resurrection we see his “favor” forevermore. Weeping tarried in the dark night of Gethsemane; but joy arose Easter morning. God’s great reversal of David’s earthly circumstances is only a dim foreshadowing of the cosmic reversal accomplished in the gospel.
Application (Gospel):
As simple and trite as it may sound: there is nothing too hard for God. No matter how dire our circumstance, no matter how hopeless our condition, no matter how powerless our ability, God is in the business of bringing life out of death. As Psalm 30, the life of David, and the gospel itself all illustrate, God loves to get the glory of being the miraculous deliverer when nothing else could possibly help. Focusing on the gospel enables me to face life with profound hope and confidence, regardless of my poverty, pain, or past. Having this stable foundation also enables me to support and encourage those around me who have forgotten the gospel (even momentarily) with the very hope that supports me as well. Today I will focus on the power of God displayed in the gospel instead of the difficulties that confront me.
Psalm 28 - Text, Context, Implication, Application
Text: Psalm 28:1-3 & 7-9
1 Of David. To you, O LORD, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit.
2 Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift up my hands toward your most holy sanctuary.
3 Do not drag me off with the wicked, with the workers of evil, who speak peace with their neighbors while evil is in their hearts.
7 The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.
8 The LORD is the strength of his people; he is the saving refuge of his anointed.
9 Oh, save your people and bless your heritage! Be their shepherd and carry them forever.
Context:
Psalm 28 is, most likely, the third in a triplet of Psalms (Ps. 26-28) designed to be read together and to focus its reader on, first, the need for preservation in times of trouble and persecution and, second, the inevitable (through labored for) joy in the Person and Presence of God. Attributed to David, we may assume these Psalms were either written during or as a reflection on the troubled king’s first hand experience of such persecution as well as God’s ultimate deliverance: “he [the Lord] is the saving refuge of his anointed [i.e., ‘his king’ or ‘his messiah’]” (28:8).
Implication (Gospel):
Though we, as sinners, justly deserve to be “dragged off with the wicked” (v. 3) and to have God “be deaf to us” so that we “become like those who go down to the pit” (v. 1) [i.e., like those abandoned to the grave and to hell], yet in and through His Son, God himself has taken the punishment we deserve. Jesus was, as Luke 22:37 (quoting Isaiah 53:12) says, “Numbered with the transgressors.” In other words, Jesus himself was both literally and spiritually “dragged off with the wicked,” in our place and for our good.
Because of this, God the Father, who was once our judge and enemy, has instead become our “our strength and our shield” (v. 7). God has blessed his people precisely by saving his anointed, that is, not simply by saving David as the Psalm indicates but by saving the ultimate David, God’s true King, Jesus Christ. Jesus has become (not only a “shepherd) but our “Good Shepherd” and he will carry us (that is, love, provide, and transform us) forever.
Application (Gospel):
Because Jesus has taken the wrath that I deserve and “carried me” like a shepherd, I can bear with the sins of those around me, not only putting up with them and forgiving them, but serving them and even “carrying” them when their own mistakes cause them to stumble. Today I will look for ways to care for the people around me, especially when they mess up and don’t deserve it.
Psalm 103 . . . Applied
Because God forgives all my iniquity . . . I can rest safely in His presence without fear of rejection, condemnation, or judgment (v. 3a).Because God heals all my diseases . . . I don’t have to heal or fix myself; instead, I can rely on Him to heal and fix me (v. 3b).
Because God redeems my life from the pit [i.e., the grave, death, destruction] . . . I can trust Him to bring me out of any situation, no matter how dire, bleak, or painful it is. (v. 4a)
Because God crowns me with steadfast love and mercy . . . I don’t need to provide glory [i.e., “crowns”] for myself, nor do I need to go about earning God’s love and mercy; instead I can simply accept them and rest in them (v. 4b).
Because God satisfied me with good . . . I can stop incessantly worrying about how to care and provide for myself and, instead, concentrate on meeting the needs of others (v. 5).
Because God works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed . . . I don’t have to defend myself or prove that I’m right (v. 6).
Because God is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love . . . I can fully entrust myself to him without fear of rejection and with full confidence in His perfect, fatherly love (v 8).
Because God does not keep His anger forever . . . I can let go of my anger and resentment (no matter how “righteous” it might feel) (v. 9).
Because God does not deal with me according to my sin nor repay me for my iniquity . . . I can depend unreservedly upon His grace and extend that same grace to people I feel have wronged me (v. 10).
Because God shows compassion to me like a father . . . I can lean upon Him as my ultimate and perfect Father and not demand that my earthly caregivers meet my needs (v. 13).
Because God has established his throne in heaven and because His kingdom rules over all . . . I can be secure in all circumstances knowing that nothing can come into my life apart from His good and sovereign purposes (v. 19).
Grace and Law (Revisited)
Paul F.M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life
The law crushes the human spirit; grace lifts it up.
The story of the Bible is the story of this perpetual war between law and grace. Law comes in . . . and human beings become excited by it. They become excited to resist it. The law, which is any form of external command, provokes the opposite reaction from the one it is in intended to provoke. Instead of inciting obedience or submission, it incites rebellion. It provokes revolutionary resentment (1).
Any judgment, any evaluation—even if it approves and speaks a blessing—will be heard as a negation. This is an absolute first principle of this book. Law is an attack. It is heard as a negation by its recipients. All laws are negation. God’s law is the negation (6).
The gospel of Christ has to do with guilt and with the ashamed response of imperfect people to a perfect God. The gospel represents a transaction involving guild and the shame of being caught in the reality of human being and human action, which is powerfully self-deceived. The gospel is about the relation between law, which is crushing, stunning, and wrecking, and grace, which is restoring, repairing, and recreative. . . . The gospel is about force and effect, punishment and rehabilitation. The focus of this book is on the gospel, the leverage of Christianity in relation to human resistance and brokenness . . . . The focus of this theology of everyday life in on how Christianity works (28).
Law, whether biblical and universally stated or contextual and contemporarily phrased, operates in one way. Law reduces its object, the human person, to despair (29).
[T]he law dispossesses love in every place to which it speaks (32).
What is grace? Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable. It is being loved when you are the opposite of loveable (emphasis added).
Let’s go a little further. Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so-called “gifts” (whatever they may be). It reflects a decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, that negates any qualification the receiver may personally hold.
Grace is one-way love.
The one-way love of grace is the essence of any lasting transformation that takes place in human experience (36).
One-way love lifts up. One-way love cures. One-way love transforms. It is the change agent of life.
Grace depends on the fact that its origin is wholly outside myself. This is the heart of love; it comes to me from outside myself. Moreover, while it almost always elicits a response, which is my love in return, it comes toward me without any reference to my response. One-way love does not deviate on the basis of its goal. It is determined solely by its source.
One-way love is the change agent in everyday life because it speaks in a voice completely different from the voice of the law. It has nothing to do with its receiver’s characteristics. Its logic is hidden within the intention of its source. Theologically speaking, we can say it is the prime directive of God to love the world in no relation to the world’s fitness to be loved.
One-way love is also irrational because it reaches out to the specifically undeserving person. This is the beating heart of it. Grace is directed toward what the Scripture calls “the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Not just the lonely, not just the sick and disconsolate, but the “perpetrators,” the murders and abusers, the people who cross the line. God has a heart—his one-way love—for sinners (37-38).
The grace of God assumes the worst concerning the human situation. It assumes the lowest possible reading of our anthropology. . . . Grace, which is one-way love, happens only at the point at which hope is lost (42-43).
For grace to be grace, there must be one-way love. For grace to be grace, it is necessary that I play no role whatsoever in that love. . . . The love of God, the true love of anyone, in fact, is a one-way love that travels from the deserving to the undeserving (59).
Grace as one-way love comes out of nowhere into a world determined by two-way love (“I will love you if you will love me”) and half-way love (“I will love you but I need a little sign, just a little one”) (62).
Grace is about life from death, or better, life to the dead (63).
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