Raising the Dead

"Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works."
                                                                        - Robert Farrar Capon

remembering JWMG

One year ago yesterday (May 5) we buried our baby boy, Jack Wesley Martin Glover.  He was delivered premature after struggling but seemingly getting stronger in the womb over Trina's 6 week hospital stay in Vancouver.  He lived outside Trina's womb for an hour and a half but his under developed lungs couldn't hold enough breath to sustain his little life.  Trina got to touch him and talk to him as the doctors frantically tried to sustain his life.  However, God's plan for Jack was not for length of days.  His Heavenly Father and our Great Physician took him home.  Another week in the hospital afterwards for Trina's recovery...the hardest week of all.  Then home to be with our other four healthy children, who were very much missing their parents, and whose parents were aching to be with them.

Tim Bayly writes about parents and churches commemorating the lives of children who are stillborn or who die at a very young age.  He points out that there are big differences with what people in the church believe ought to be done when children die in the womb or when they have lived only a short time.  But he makes a good point that, perhaps especially in our culture of easy and common abortion, the church makes a strong statement when it commemorates the lives of these little ones.  Still, he asks some important and difficult questions, some of which I don't think can be answered in a concrete, one-size-fits-all way.

Trina and I are thankful for loving family, friends and church family who cared for our children and supported our family during the difficult time from February to May of last year, and we are grateful for people's understanding and love in the weeks and months following.  We are also very grateful to all who commemorated Jack's life with us at his funeral as well as to those who upheld us in prayer or were with us in spirit. 

To many people, it is more natural or feels more appropriate to have either a private service or no service at all for a life of such short duration.  But short as it was, Jack's life was a real life and he was woven together by God in his mother's womb no less than any 4 year old, or 14 year old or 84 year old.  Jack's days were numbered by God, and the length of his life was ordained by the one who knows all things and works them all according to his glory and our good, though we may not understand his purposes...yet.  And the primary value of a life is not in what a person accomplishes, or how long they live, or who they know or what they have.  Rather it in the fact that they are made in the image of their Maker.  That fact alone makes even the shortest life a valuable and precious thing.

Self Examination and the Lord's Table

Over the last while, a number of people have asked me about the practice of self examination prior to partaking of the Lord's Supper.  Self examination prior to partaking is certainly commanded of us (1 Cor. 11:27-34).  However, there is a common and long standing idea in the evangelical church that we are to examine ourselves to see if there is any outstanding or unconfessed or unresolved sin issues in our lives and if there are, we are to exempt ourselves from the table until those sin issues have been resolved.  I think this is a confusion between and a jumbling up of the above instructions by Paul and the teaching by Jesus on making things right with a brother before bringing a gift to the altar in the temple (Matt. 5:23-24).  It needs to be said that these are two different situations.  In Paul's instructions, we don't see Christians being told to temporarily excommunicate themselves from the table until they've gotten their sanctification act together.  Rather, in its context, Paul's instruction is one of examining one's overall loyalties.  Are they to Christ or are they to sin?

Doug Wilson has some helpful words on what we are looking for when we examine ourselves prior to partaking of the Lord's Supper.

C.S. Lewis on the Moral Law of God

"Now we cannot...discover our failure to keep God's law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing).  Unless we really try, whatever we say there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that if we try harder next time we shall succeed in being completely good.  Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder.  But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home.  All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, 'You must do this.  I can't'."

"The road to the promised land runs past Sinai.  The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is not transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims upon them, and then tried with all their strength to meet that claim, and fairly and squarely faced the fact of their failure."

"There is nowhere this side of heaven where one can safely lay the reins on the horse's neck.  It will never be lawful simply to 'be ourselves' until 'ourselves' have become sons of God."

"No creature that deserved redemption would need to be redeemed."

"We all agree that forgiveness is a beautiful idea until we have to practice it."

"[Jesus] told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured.  He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses.  This makes sense only if He really was God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin."

                                                                                                       - C.S. Lewis

Don't follow your heart, lead it

Desiring God has a great post about the dangers of following your heart here.  Rather than following our hearts, Scripture teaches us they need to be led.  Our hearts are not reliable shepherds but wayward sheep.  We ought not follow our hearts but rather to lead them.  And the place we need to lead them is to Christ as revealed in God's Word. 

A failing grade of 99.99%

"...the law cannot give life because it has not power to do so.  The law does not offer assistance to obey it and does not grade on a curve.  It only announces the penalty of death for those who fail.  Even a 99.99 percent obedience rate earns a failing grade."

                                             - David Garland, New American Commentary on 2 Corinthians, p. 172

a living hope

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.  In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith - more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.  Though you have not seen him, you love him.  Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."

                                                                                                    - 1 Peter 1:3-9

"But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.  We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.  But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.  For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."

                                                                                                  - 1 Corinthians 15:13-22

I spoke to an old friend today who has forgotten these truths.  I pray God gives him remembrance...all the way down.