The Knowledge of God (Tues. Founder's Week)
This morning's message from Christian Barbosu was used by the Spirit of God to convict many of us, and as with Dr. Easley's sermon last night, covered a broad spectrum of information relatively quickly. While most of my thought during Mr. Barbosu's sermon was on his major theme, my mind wandered to one of the points he made in passing as I filed through the lunch line on Culby 2. Well, that and the fact that he sounded eerily like Bela Lugosi, anyway.
That minor point was concerning the knowledge of God. This is, of course, a touchy subject with implications in every aspect of theology (and thus in every aspect of life). Mr. Barbosu spoke specifically concerning II Cor. 10:1-5
"I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!— 2 I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. 3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, 6 being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete."
This plays so stongly into our context here in the Moody world, and will be even more important when we leave (that isn't intended as a reference to graduation [seriously, get out of here every once and a while]). If we are talking about the knowledge of God (I take this to be 'knowledge concerning God'), what does it mean to "not [wage] war according to the flesh"?
Mr. Barbosu made an excellent point against mankind's rationalistic approach to God. In this sense, man thinks first of himself and all other subjects subordinately. In his mind, he is the final judge of what is logical, and thus believable. When a rationalist considers Christianity, he thinks of himself primarily (as judge) and of God secondarily (as the subject of judgement). If the rationalist decides God is up to par with his idea of what is logical, he becomes a Christian.
Of course, this comes into a problem. The Christian's knowledge of God is not arrived at by means of our evaluation of God, but by His gift of the mind of Christ (I Cor 2:14-16). This means post-modernism is under the gun as much as modernism is - even if a non-Christian doesn't value the modernist's faulty understanding of logic, he still acts as God's evaluator. To illustrate, think of either of these systems as a ladder. If we expect modernists to climb the ladder of modernism as high as it goes and then become Christians, we're expecting him to jump ladders. And I'm not talking about hopping up a couple of rungs, but leaping over to a ladder he simply can not reach - while staying at the same level. After all, he's been reasoning one way his whole life and now he's got to switch it all around. The same goes for post-modernists. To think that we can climb up with ourselves in the judgement seat and then become Christians and continue from the same place upward is absurd. It's impossible - we'd be denying the validity of the way we got there! If our method wasn't valid, how can our conclusion be valid?
We know according to I Cor 2 that the only reason we can understand the things of God is due to His giving of the mind of Christ. Instead of us climbing and jumping, he takes all of us - modernists and post-modernists alike - and places us in something altogether different, something altogether perfect as compared to our previous theory of knowledge, which was altogether absurd.
Our system of truth revolves around this imputation of the mind of Christ. We do not arrive at true knowledge of God via modernism. We do not arrive at the true knowledge of God via postmodernism. We arrive solely by His gracious hand, which pulls us off of our position on our futile ladders of false knowledge.
A man is not converted when he decides to find in favor of God, but when God finds in favor of him on the basis of Christ's completed work on the cross - God is the judge and we are what we are corresponding to what He wills.
In our daily challenge to "bring every thought captive" we must consider a few things. We have spoken of the objective placement that is common to all Christians. We all have the mind of Christ, due solely to God's work. Paul applied this specifically to the issue at hand in the Corinthian church - so how now do we "think Christianly"?
That minor point was concerning the knowledge of God. This is, of course, a touchy subject with implications in every aspect of theology (and thus in every aspect of life). Mr. Barbosu spoke specifically concerning II Cor. 10:1-5
"I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!— 2 I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. 3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, 6 being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete."
This plays so stongly into our context here in the Moody world, and will be even more important when we leave (that isn't intended as a reference to graduation [seriously, get out of here every once and a while]). If we are talking about the knowledge of God (I take this to be 'knowledge concerning God'), what does it mean to "not [wage] war according to the flesh"?
Mr. Barbosu made an excellent point against mankind's rationalistic approach to God. In this sense, man thinks first of himself and all other subjects subordinately. In his mind, he is the final judge of what is logical, and thus believable. When a rationalist considers Christianity, he thinks of himself primarily (as judge) and of God secondarily (as the subject of judgement). If the rationalist decides God is up to par with his idea of what is logical, he becomes a Christian.
Of course, this comes into a problem. The Christian's knowledge of God is not arrived at by means of our evaluation of God, but by His gift of the mind of Christ (I Cor 2:14-16). This means post-modernism is under the gun as much as modernism is - even if a non-Christian doesn't value the modernist's faulty understanding of logic, he still acts as God's evaluator. To illustrate, think of either of these systems as a ladder. If we expect modernists to climb the ladder of modernism as high as it goes and then become Christians, we're expecting him to jump ladders. And I'm not talking about hopping up a couple of rungs, but leaping over to a ladder he simply can not reach - while staying at the same level. After all, he's been reasoning one way his whole life and now he's got to switch it all around. The same goes for post-modernists. To think that we can climb up with ourselves in the judgement seat and then become Christians and continue from the same place upward is absurd. It's impossible - we'd be denying the validity of the way we got there! If our method wasn't valid, how can our conclusion be valid?
We know according to I Cor 2 that the only reason we can understand the things of God is due to His giving of the mind of Christ. Instead of us climbing and jumping, he takes all of us - modernists and post-modernists alike - and places us in something altogether different, something altogether perfect as compared to our previous theory of knowledge, which was altogether absurd.
Our system of truth revolves around this imputation of the mind of Christ. We do not arrive at true knowledge of God via modernism. We do not arrive at the true knowledge of God via postmodernism. We arrive solely by His gracious hand, which pulls us off of our position on our futile ladders of false knowledge.
A man is not converted when he decides to find in favor of God, but when God finds in favor of him on the basis of Christ's completed work on the cross - God is the judge and we are what we are corresponding to what He wills.
In our daily challenge to "bring every thought captive" we must consider a few things. We have spoken of the objective placement that is common to all Christians. We all have the mind of Christ, due solely to God's work. Paul applied this specifically to the issue at hand in the Corinthian church - so how now do we "think Christianly"?
posted by Adam Fites at 10:58 PM
2 Comments:
In the vein of "thinking Christianly," I struggled somewhat with his application in regards to art (music, movies). He seemed to be advocating firm abstinance rather than spiritual evaluation. Are we called to a Puritanical withdrawl from anything "worldly," or a sanctified interaction with culture?
How can we make this decision in light of "the Word?"
I've got a question.
what is the proper Christian response to homosexuality? my roommate and i were just discussing this today: do we side with "Godhatesfags.com" or with "i'm going to go to a church that has a gay pastor and says it's not really against Scripture"? or do we find a midway?
what do we suggest
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