Zack Eswine on Significance in the Ordinary

Zack Eswine on Significance in the Ordinary from Crossway on Vimeo.

Armstrong, Livestrong, Die Stronger

Lance. Big surprise? Um, No.

Baseball: Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Canseco, Petite, A-Rod, Clemens, their mothers, and their dogs.
Football: Spygate, Bounty Hunting, Brett Favre's cellular indiscretion, Vick and the aforementioned HGH dogs .
Golf: Tiger.
Basketball.
This guy

(ps. government too!)

As earth orbits the sun, so do professional athletes orbit scandal--they cannot elude its inescapable gravitational pull. Don't believe me? Watch Sportscenter for a week.

But now that performance enhancing drugs have since devoured Floyd Landis and latched their tentacles around cycling's golden boy, the public reaction has taken on a particular flavor. The public has taken two distinct sides. The Armstrong's cry fraudulent disqualification, the Livestrong's proclaim result-driven qualification. Neither will suffice. In times of blatant failure (defiant in Lance's case), only dying stronger than you "armstrong" or "livestrong" will suffice.

Armstrong
Public outrage is climaxing at this point. After years and years of scathing, indignant refutation, Lance finally admitted to what he so vehemently denied for at least a decade. As with the rest of our athletes who have fallen so far off the pedestal we insist on elevating them to, Lance's heart has proved to be black. And the public is ready to exile him. Strip the jerseys! Remove the medals! Exterminate the awards! Impeach him from his nonprofit! CONDEMN HIM. Rick Reilly, an ESPN sports columnist and close friend of Armstrong who defended Lance the past decade, outright rejects Lance's personal apology and condemns him by publicly and permanently burning the bridge they so freely traversed in the past. "It does not matter what he's done," the Armstrong's say. "On the inside he's a liar and a cheat, and he's disqualified!"

Livestrong
In the midst of disqualifying accusations, there's a murmuring of those who say, "Hold on a sec, he still qualifies. Look what he's done for cancer. Look what he's done for the sport. He's been such an inspiration!" One tweet reads, "Beat cancer, raise millions of dollars for cancer research, bring back a dead sport, then judge Lance #Armstrong. People piss me off." 55 million wristbands! Millions and millions of dollars for research! "It doesn't matter what he's like on the inside," the Livestrong's say. "It's the external that qualifies this man! Look at all he's done!"

Here's the problem: According to the public, Lance has fallen so far and so fast that there is absolutely nothing he can do to rid him of this permanent and career-wrecking stain. The internal condemnation is thick and heavy and it is not going anywhere. Additionally, the external can clearly do no good in transforming the internal. Lance ran his Livestrong campaign brilliantly while doping with EPO for all 7 Tour de France victories. Polished and sparkly outside, moral decay inside. The yellow wrist band I bought in 4th grade can't change Lance's heart. At least everyone thought I was cool.

So it seems that when we judge others and ourselves, we go one of two options:

1. We recognize we don't measure up. We see that we're total failures. We drown in the cesspools of guilt created by our moral failure. We convince ourselves that we are unlovable. We collapse under the weight of condemnation, and cling to anything we can get our hands on in a vain attempt to pawn off the perpetual weight of ongoing failure. When we find out others are just as bad or even worse than us (based on our own faulty perception of morality), we make sure we drag others down with us. With an undeserved pat on the shoulder and a fake fleeting smile, we leap frog ourselves up a rung on the moral ladder. "At least I'm not as bad as Lance! He's horrible! I'd never do that!"

2. We think we do measure up. We fight and claw for a pristine moral portfolio to present to God and to others, and insist that they accept us. The external justifies the internal. "I'm a pretty good person. I don't lie, cheat or steal. I'm not a murderer or a rapist." When others are caught in a scandal (especially in a scandal we ourselves could be guilty of), we fight for their external records. We do this because by fighting for their external qualifications, we're actually fighting for our own.

Die Stronger
There's always a 3rd way isn't there? Scripture doesn't leave us with either of these options. Road blocks both ways. The Bible tells us to ditch ourselves entirely. Death to self, life in Christ. The imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ simultaneously rescues us from our self-loathing, and deflates the limp balloon of our self-righteousness. Christ forbids our despair and scoffs at our efforts to measure up. There are no options of self left.

"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him" (Romans 6:5-8) 

We ask frenetically with word and deed our entire lives, "How do I qualify??" As my friend answers, "Know you don't." As Tim Keller says, "The gospel is this: we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope."

It is time to decisively push off shore from our tit-for-tat legalism and self-atoning that has been unfortunately familiar to us our entire lives. We don't sulk in abject despair. Nor do we run the unending race of moral manipulation. We fling ourselves overboard the USS Self entirely, and cling to the only Vessel capable of navigating the tempestuous seas of despair, confusion, desperation, frustration, pain, disappointment, anxiety, fear, sin, and death. The liberating power of the gospel is that our qualification no longer has anything to do with us. Our spiritual portfolios are filled with the riches of Christ. We're invited to joyfully jump off the cliff of safe moralism. The world says it's death. They're playing it safe. Risk is good. Jump. Christ is all. "Hallelujah, all I have is Christ. Hallelujah, Jesus is my life."

Will Not Let Us Go

George Whitefield:

"Nothing could possibly support my soul under the many agonies which oppressed me when on board, except a consideration of the freeness, eternity, and unchangeableness of God's love to me.

I need not fear the sight of sin when I have a perfect, everlasting righteousness wrought out for me by Jesus Christ....

May he enlighten me more and more to know and feel the mystery of his electing, soul-transforming love. There is nothing like it, to support us under present and all the various future trials. But the Lord has apprehended us and will not let us go. Men and devils may do their worst; our Jesus will allow nothing to pluck us out of His Almighty hands."

HT: Dane Ortlund

'You Are The Very Person'

Spurgeon:

I have no gospel to preach to the self-righteous, no, not a word, Jesus Christ Himself came not to call the righteous, and i am not going to do what he did not do, No, I ask you rather to look at that righteousness of yours till you see what a delusion it is. It is not half so substantial as a cobweb. Be finished with it! Flee it!

"They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick" (Mark 2:17). Is it not equally clear that the great remedies of grace and redemption are for the sick in soul? They cannot be for the whole, for they cannot be of use to such. If you feel that you are spiritually sick, the Physician has come into the world for you. If you are altogether undone by reason of your sin, you are the very person aimed at in the plan of salvation. I say that the Lord of love had precisely such as you in his eye when he arranged the system of grace.

He that is a dirty sinner is the kind of man that Jesus Christ came to make clean, Come in your disorder. Come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. come to Jesus just as you are: leprous, filthy, naked. Come, though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon your chest like a horrible nightmare.

-All of Grace

.....

That is a shot of joyful hope for sleepy souls such as mine.

"You No Longer Have to Spend the Rest of Your Life Chasing Your Tail"

He Refuses to Play That Game

1 Timothy 1:15-- "Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief."


Keller comments,

"Not I was chief, but I am chief. Or 'I am the worst.' This is off our maps. We are not used to someone who has incredible confidence volunteering the opinion that they are one of the worst people. We are not used to someone who is totally honest and totally aware of all sorts of moral flaws--yet has incredible poise and confidence.

We cannot do that. Do you know why? Because we are judging ourselves. But Paul will not do that. When he says that he does not let the Corinthians judge him nor will he judge himself, he is saying that he knows about his sins but he does not connect them to himself and his identity. His sins and his identity are not connected. He refuses to play that game. He does not see a sin and let it destroy his sense of identity. He will not make a connection. Neither does he see an accomplishment and congratulate himself...So, although he knows himself to be the chief of sinners, that fact is not going to stop him from doing all the things that he is called to do."


Tim Keller, The Freedom of Self-forgetfulness, p.30 (emphasis added)

Hallelujah, All I Have Is Christ

Hebrews 4:14-16

"Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

Hallelujah, Jesus is my life.

No Fishing Allowed

Per Tucci and Lawrenz ... thanks for reposting this fellas. Awesome. Get back here for Egg Harbor and 2v2. I got the new Droses. Get wrecked.

Tullian:

"What the Pharisee, the prostitute, and everyone in between, need to remember every day is that Christ offers forgiveness full and free from both our self-righteous goodness and our unrighteous badness. This is the hardest thing for us to believe as Christians. We think it’s a mark of spiritual maturity to hang onto our guilt and shame. We’ve sickly concluded that the worse we feel, the better we actually are. The declaration of Psalm 103:12 is the most difficult for us to grasp and embrace: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” To be convinced in our hearts, said Martin Luther, “that we have forgiveness of sins and peace with God by grace alone is the hardest thing.” Or, as Corrie ten Boom once said, “God takes our sins—the past, present, and future—and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing allowed.’” This seems too good to be true…it can’t be that simple, that easy, that real!

It is true! No strings attached. No but’s. No conditions. No need for balance. If you are a Christian, you are right now under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ. Your pardon is full and final. In Christ, you’re forgiven. You’re clean. It is finished."