Included in the last part (7) is this statement which bears further investigation and consideration:
Wouldn’t sober consideration of the cross be sufficient to persuade any man (if sober) that here he is dealing in and with realities that plainly speak of a firmness beyond mere pleasures as a man might assess?
Surely we are not prohibited here from any (or even all, if allowed) investigation; Paul himself being a chief expositor of those matters revealed as to what took place “there”. What is/was accomplished as the man Jesus was nailed to the tree. Surely he did not write of these things that we would not know of them, but rather that in receiving them as from a faithful witness of such revelation, we too, would be brought to it, and thence into it. O! but this matter of trust runs so very deep. For if we do not trust Paul as faithful, we cannot trust the God of whom he testifies as faithful. And so we would conclude for every word of the apostles.
Listen, God knows every man is created (He is Creator) with a need to see for himself. That is to “know for himself” in reality, through experience, that there are both matters of ultimate truth (truth does indeed exist) and that all of such truth is found in the person of Jesus Christ, who is Himself found only in, and of God.
Please understand what is not being said. It is not being said that there is truth and on top of that, as superior to that (or in some way different from that) there is the truth of Jesus Christ. No, this is not it.
There is truth. And only found in and of Jesus Christ as given to man through His revelation by the spirit of God.
With this in mind (if one is able to receive it) we can consider what was proposed for further consideration:
Wouldn’t sober consideration of the cross be sufficient to persuade any man (if sober) that here he is dealing in and with realities that plainly speak of a firmness beyond mere pleasures as a man might assess?
“Mere pleasures as a man might assess” in sober consideration of the cross. Again, if he is able to receive the work of the cross and the sufferings of Christ as reality. For here, on a most fundamental level (that Paul was not too timid to either enter nor address, being made so) we are confronted with matters of pleasures; their appearance to man, esteem by man, understanding of man. Even that most fundamental of issues for man that: “if it pleases me, it must be good”. Do not make the naive mistake of thinking “but I am so far past that” or worse, “I am a man who has always been immune to the allure of pleasure establishing itself as goodness to me.” Such will only show how little they know of the cross of Christ.
O! yes, even the most novice of us can recite with some knowing “sin hath pleasures for a season” seeing that once things that were pleasurable have shown themselves in consequence (by some light of Christ given) of a dying and death. Yes, we each have our version, made true to us: “All that glitters is not gold”.
But now we are speaking of the cross of Christ, the sufferings of Christ; a matter beyond the slight mayhem we may have touched in our own disobedience. We are touching that particular matter (all of obedience!) by which all creation (of the old) is undone, and made completely and utterly, new. Let us not mistake our experience of a torn fingernail (and its effects upon us, alone) for what God has done in all, and to all, things. There are matters of scale and magnitude we dare not deny. But we are made able to follow…even if only a seeming trail of crumbs (bread has indeed been broken for us) that must lead us to the most fundamental of matters where truth is confronted to be seen. And, we are to see Christ.
We cannot escape the reconciling of this, not because a man has said it, not because it makes for sound doctrine, not because it will be a “help” (though all of these matters are matters of fact) but because God Himself declares it of Himself through a prophet whose words were found worthy by Jesus in quoting (for He is their origin, these very words). Isaiah.
And it is here that no man can go without a guide, without a navigator, without a secure comforter given, without some means provided for reconciliation to a thing (or matter, or person!) that is all and otherwise completely, utterly, ineffably, incontrovertibly beyond his grasp, and so far beyond that it itself is an immeasurably glorious gift to even recognize the puzzlement of it…(that a man might be provoked to enquire)…
Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief
Do you see? Do you see how this must (and does) totally upset (overturn, rebuke, rebuff, contradict) all of our own, all of a man’s own, all of every man’s own understanding of pleasure as relative to truth? You see, this is truth. This is the truth of God. And there is no other, if any yet need be reminded. This is the truth of our God.
Our God is pleased to have crushed His own Son. And that of His love. His delight. And any man would be (O! but so rightly) puzzled, and righter still if provoked to ask “how can this be?”! For it is. And there is no “work around” for this, there is no escape of its confrontation, no escape of all it summons up in a man as to what he has considered pleasure and pleasing things…in the light of what God declares as pleases Himself to do, and have done. Here all must be overturned by truth, even, and especially that peculiar matter to which every man has been subject to bondage in mind and heart, and that is, to whatever measure it has been embraced (and every man has!) “if it pleases me, it is good”.
For here is “the Good” (God) declaring the truth of what pleases Him, and has, in His doing. Here is a frank confrontation with all previously assumed of what “good” is, what it (He) looks like, experiences, knows…and works according to. And as all already know in such matters …”something’s gotta give”.
Something will, and must, buckle under. While another shows sovereignty.
Happy is the man who buckles. For now, rather than working continually backward (even in disobedience) to an opposition unrelenting, even hostile, and at all enmity with all thinking of flesh to a perfect frustration thereof…(provoking even further hostility in the man) a man finds rest.
Yes, everything is turned upside down, so they might be rightside up. God is different than me! There is “another”. I am not alone (even though He seem so very very different!) And here we face a square matter, so squarely in truth that matters not once seen clearly, once seen as though through a veil in our pursuit that the discerning of them was so unclear, so obscure, so able to be used to trick and fool us into all condemnation in our confusion of pleasure’s relation to truth, and truth’s relationship to pleasure.
And here a verse of scripture begins to display a mother lode of glory as we are exercised in our eating of a loaf broken for us. And the revelation of how “broken” broken is…for us in service to God. A loaf broken to deliver us from the tyranny of being deceived by our own pleasures into such bondage to death; broken for us, given for us, and to us, as all of life itself (Himself!)…that is life indeed. (For there is no other!)
For if we will be persuaded to the goodness of truth being our joy and pleasure rather than past assumptions of our pleasures indicating goodness, we will see the hope extended to such, with a likewise salvation from a very matter not subject to contradiction (as it is of God ordained):
For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
“because they received not the love of the truth…but had pleasure in unrighteousness”
Don’t be deceived by the power of pleasure to so leave a man in all resistant to truth. And God forbid we be deceived to think “God would not further enforce that to a man”.
But it takes God (and no less) to show through the cross and work of Jesus Christ how much a man is given to pleasing himself…thinking it good…but that leads to all condemnation. And how, according to pleasure he esteems all things relative to himself and is indeed locked up to it unless appointed to see otherwise. What pleases him, he accepts, what displeases him, he rejects. And the received things, working according to his pleasure, become to him, truth.
A man must be saved. And, salvation is of the Lord. As is all judgment, no less. No other.
Stay hungry. And find food everywhere.
A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, But to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.
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