glorycloud's Diaryland Diary

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the Bible is like Christ's love letter to His Bride, the Church

�Therefore, he who would find Christ must first of all find the church. How would one know where Christ and his faith were, if one did not know where his believers are? And he who would know something of Christ, must not trust himself, or build his own bridges into heaven through his own reason, but he must go to the church, visit, and ask of the same�for outside of the church is no truth, no Christ, no salvation.
The Holy Christian Church is the principal work of God, for the sake of which all things were made. In the Church, great wonders daily occur, such as the forgiveness of sins, triumph over death,�the gift of righteousness and eternal life.
The problem with the Roman Catholic position was that it offered people Christ in places where He had not promised to be found. People were not clear on where and how to find God�s grace. In addition to this, grace was treated as a depersonalized substance by some. If we are saved by the infusion of a substance called grace a number of problems arise. The personal face of God�s grace is obscured and the object of faith is no longer clear.
The problem that Protestants had with the doctrine of ex opere operato is related to this. The problem with the doctrine was not with the idea that the sacraments confer the grace that they signify, but with the idea that they contain the grace that they signify. Protestants realized that �grace� must be understood as God�s personal favour and the gifts that express this favour, rather than as any sort of substance. If grace is reified or depersonalized we will get into trouble.
Without God as its object, faith cannot survive. Faith must have a clear view of its object if it is to grow. FV proponents argue that baptistic and revivalistic theologies have obscured Christ as the object of our faith. Baptistic theology treats Baptism, the Lord�s Supper and the Church primarily as functions of our faith, rather than as places where Christ promises to be genuinely present and where God is gracious to us, irrespective of our internal disposition. Baptism is my act of obedience, an outward sign of my faith; the Lord�s Supper is my subjective remembrance of Christ�s death; the Church is the place where I gather with others who have had shared the same subjective experience of salvation.
There is also a low view of the Word of God in many such circles. The Word is seen to be there to tell us about Jesus; it does not actually form a relationship with Jesus. God�s presence in His own self-revelation is not clearly stressed. One could argue that most of our speech is not used with the primary goal of informing, but with the goal of forming, sustaining and deepening relationship. This is how it is with Scripture. Scripture informs us, but only as part of the greater goal of conveying God�s presence, love, comfort and grace. We need to read Scripture as God�s personal Word to the Church, of which we are members through Baptism into Christ. In many respects, the Bible is like Christ�s love letter to His Bride, the Church. The goal of a love letter is not the conveying of mere objective truths, but the deepening of a relationship.
Far too many people today read the Bible as if it were intended to be a systematic theology, designed to tell us objective truths about God, Christ and salvation. A systematic theology is not designed to form a relationship between the writer and the one who reads it, as a love letter is. Read this way, when the Bible talks about the �elect� it is talking about a particular category of people in the abstract, rather than to a concrete body of people that can be clearly identified � the Church.
Once you have grown accustomed to reading the Bible in this way, you begin to wonder how you can begin to hear God�s word of grace addressed to you personally. It is all very well hearing about God�s love and grace towards the elect, but how do I know about His love and grace towards me? For many the answer to this question has been sought by means of a grueling search for assurance. Assurance of God�s grace towards us as individuals is looked for in feelings of His presence, internal dispositions, conversion experiences and the like.
Once the Word and sacraments have been treated in such a manner, faith is thrown back onto feelings, internal dispositions, conversion experiences and the like. Faith becomes a work, trying to cultivate a particular internal disposition, or gradually fades away as it waits for its object to appear. Rather than simply receiving and living in the gracious relationship that God opens up with us in the Church, the Word and the Sacraments, the conversion experience and faith itself are regarded as the gift of a relationship with God. Consequently, when I am seeking to ascertain whether God is gracious to me I end up looking at my own faith and conversion experience, rather than to the places where God has promised to be graciously present in His Son.

In response to all of this, a number of FV proponents have presented their teaching of the �objectivity of the covenant�. The design of this teaching is to make the object of faith clear once again so that faith may never become a work and can draw strength from Christ in the places where He has promised to be present. The �objectivity of the covenant� teaches that Christ is objectively present in the Church, Word and Sacraments and that we are called to receive Him by faith alone. God is genuinely gracious to us in bringing us into relationship with Himself in Baptism, irrespective of our internal disposition. We are called to abide in this gracious relationship by faith.
Against some of the misconceptions of the positions being put forward by FV proponents on this issue, it is important to recognize that no one is saying that Baptism does away with the need for faith and works salvation mechanically. One of the biggest problems in this area is that many of the critics of the FV think of Baptism as a function of our faith and fail to recognize that the FV conceives of Baptism primarily as God�s gracious work towards us. For these critics, when FV proponents say that Baptism objectively accomplishes something, irrespective of our internal condition, they hear the FV proponents saying that if you do the particular work of Baptism you are automatically, mechanically saved and that there is no longer any need for personal faith � you have been saved by your �work� of Baptism. This is not what is being said at all. What is being said is that God forms a new type of gracious relationship with us in Baptism, adopting us into His family and engrafting us into Christ. Faith is the way in which we properly receive God�s gift and abide in it.� from a paper titled �Approached to Justification with the Federal Vision� by Alastair Roberts

At lunch this afternoon I asked Carol and Beth if they believe when those who claim to be Christians gather in a building does God manifest in a different way then He does to a Christian during the work week? Does God convey "special grace" during a church worship service? Is Christ present with those who claim to be Christans in a special way when they gather for a worship service?

I asked Carol "Why would the Lord Jesus manifest Him in a gracious way if the elders in this church were not showing spiritual care for those under their spiritual oversight?"

How many people who go to a church building on Sunday are seeking a powerful manifestation of God's holy presence?

Where in the New Testament do we find biblical evidence for a special divine presence of God when Christians gather for spiritual fellowship? I do believe Christians should have fellowship (1 Corinth. 12:1ff).

Does God give grace when a Minster delivers a sermon during a Sunday worship service?

I have too many questions.

Carol went to bed for the day and Beth turned on the television. I can not think with the television on so I will close to go to my cell and seek the face of the Lord Jesus Christ.

music: Lucero self-titled

1:03 p.m. - 2006-06-11

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