Who gets the credit?

We may say therefore that Christ evokes faith, begets faith, gives birth to faith, elicits faith, with the understanding that it never becomes a possession of our own that we can take credit for, but is always a work of his own.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 330–31 (emphasis original)

In My Heart There Rings a Melody

633 In My Heart There Rings a Melody

1 I have a song that Jesus gave me,
   It was sent from heav'n above;
   There never was a sweeter melody,
   'Tis a melody of love.

Chorus:
   In my heart there rings a melody,
   There rings a melody with heaven's harmony;
   In my heart there rings a melody,
   There rings a melody of love.

2 I love the Christ who died on Calv'ry,
   For He washed my sins away;
   He put within my heart a melody,
   And I know it's there to stay. [Chorus]

3 'Twill be my endless theme in glory,
   With the angels I will sing;
   'Twill be a song with glorious harmony,
   When the courts of heaven ring. [Chorus]
                         Elton M. Roth
                         Hymns for the Family of God

It's a whole lot more than "acquit"

God’s righteousness involves not only a great reversal (“the first will be last”) but also an actual transformation and re-creation. When radicalized in terms of Vaclav Havel’s insight about the line that runs through each person, the dikaiosyne of God means that no human being whatsoever will be exempt from or immune to his justifying action. Taking this a step further, we begin to see that when we say God will “justify” rather than merely “acquit,” the action has a reconstituting force — hence the insufficiency of the courtroom metaphor “to acquit.” God’s righteousness is the same thing as his justice, and his justice is powerfully at work justifying, which does not mean excusing, passing over, or even “forgiving and forgetting,” but actively making right that which is wrong. 329 (emphasis original)

He's Everything to me

In the stars His handiwork I see,
On the wind He speaks with majesty,
Though He ruleth over land and sea,
What is that to me?
I will celebrate Nativity,
For it has a place in history,
Sure, He came to set His people free,
What is that to me?

Till by faith I met Him face to face,
and I felt the wonder of His grace,
Then I knew that He was more than just a
God who didn't care,
That lived a way out there and

Now He walks beside me day by day,
Ever watching o'er me lest I stray,
Helping me to find that narrow way,
He's Everything to me.
                         Ralph Carmichael
                         Hymns for the Family of God

So, what does it mean?

Thus, “righteousness” does not mean moral perfection. It is not a distant, forbidding characteristic of God that humans are supposed to try to emulate or imitate; there is no good news in that. Instead, the righteousness of God is God’s powerful activity of making right what is wrong in the world. When we read, in both Old and New Testaments, that God is righteous, we are to understand that God is at work in his creation doing right. He is overcoming evil, delivering the oppressed, raising the poor from the dust, vindicating the voiceless victims who have had no one to defend them.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 328 (all emphasis original)

Stop it! Just stop it!

God did not change his mind about us on account of the cross or on any other account. He did not need to have his mind changed. He was never opposed to us. It is not his opposition to us but our opposition to him that had to be overcome, and the only way it could be overcome was from God’s side, by God’s initiative, from inside human flesh — the human flesh of the Son. The divine hostility, or wrath of God, has always been an aspect of his love. It is not sep-arate from God’s love, it is not opposite to God’s love, it is not something in God that had to be overcome.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 323 (emphasis original)

Tozer for Tuesday

If your Christianity depends upon the pastor’s preaching, then you are a long way from being where you should be. If you do not have a private, secret conduit, a pipe leading into the fountain where you can go anytime all by yourself; Whether there is a pastor there or not, whether you have heard a sermon in a year, you have nevertheless an anchor; you have a root, you have a conduit, you can get the water from God.—A.W. Tozer, Experiencing the Presence of God, 171

I Know Whom I Have Believed

631 I Know Whom I Have Believed

1. I know not why God’s wondrous grace
   To me He hath made known,
   Nor why, unworthy, Christ in love
   Redeemed me for His own.

Refrain:
   But “I know Whom I have believed,
   And am persuaded that He is able
   To keep that which I’ve committed
   Unto Him against that day.”

2. I know not how this saving faith
   To me He did impart,
   Nor how believing in His Word
   Wrought peace within my heart.

3. I know not how the Spirit moves,
   Convincing men of sin,
   Revealing Jesus through the Word,
   Creating faith in Him.

4. I know not when my Lord may come,
   At night or noonday fair,
   Nor if I walk the vale with Him,
   Or meet Him in the air.
                         Daniel W. Whittle
                         Hymns for the Family of God

<idle musing>
Hymnary.org inserts a verse after verse 3:

4 I know not what of good or ill
   May be reserved for me,
   Of weary ways or golden days,
   Before His face I see.

</idle musing>

As it happened: the KJV vs. the Geneva Bible in North America

As the American settlements widened and deepened, and their political processes matured, the need for a separatist gospel ebbed. The relationship of Puritan church and Puritan state in early America soon became, strangely enough, as close as any relationship between the Jacobean Crown and the Church of England. In early Massachusetts, heresy, witchcraft, profanity, blasphemy, idolatry and breaking the Sabbath were all civil offences, to be dealt with by civil courts. The new Americans may have dispensed with bishops, surplices and the Book of Common Prayer, but they had not replaced them with a Utopia Of religious freedom. Seventeenth-century America was a country of strictly enforced state religion and as such needed a Bible much more attuned to the necessities of nation-building than anything the Separatists’ Geneva Bible could offer. It is one of the strangest of historical paradoxes that the King James Bible, whose whole purpose had been nation-building in the service of a ceremonial and episcopal state church, should become the guiding text of Puritan America. But the translation’s lifeblood had been inclusiveness, it was drenched with the splendour of a divinely sanctioned authority, and by the end of the seventeenth century it had come to be treasured by Americans as much as by the British as one of their national texts.—God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, 229–30

Really, we are all guilty…

Allowing the law-court imagery to predominate places us in the realm of legal standards — right and wrong, guilt and innocence. This immediately causes almost everyone to start thinking that there are guilty people and innocent people, whereas we have been taking pains to show that “the line runs through each person.” If we are faithful to the gospel as “the justification of the ungodly” (cf. Rom. 4:5), we will not talk about being morally right according to a set of legal commandments, but about being delivered from hostile, enslaving Powers that are waging war against God’s purposes. If we begin by talking about being acquitted in the courtroom, we are working from a diminished perspective. If legal language is introduced from the outset, biblical interpreters will find themselves in trouble because they will be operating in the realm of morality, not cosmology — and that will render the church theologically impotent in our geopolitically interlocked world.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 320 (emphasis original)

There Is Sunshine in My Soul Today

630 There Is Sunshine in My Soul Today

1 There is sunshine in my soul today,
   More glorious and bright
   Than glows in any earthly sky,
   For Jesus is my light.

Refrain:
   O there’s sunshine, blessed sunshine,
   When the peaceful happy moments roll:
   When Jesus shows His smiling face,
   There is sunshine in the soul.

2 There is music in my soul today,
   A carol to my King,
   And Jesus, listening, can hear
   The songs I cannot sing. [Refrain]

3 There is springtime in my soul today,
   For when the Lord is near,
   The dove of peace sings in my heart,
   The flowers of grace appear. [Refrain]

4 There is gladness in my soul today,
   And hope and praise and love
   For blessings which He gives me now,
   For joys "laid up" above. [Refrain]
                         Eliza E. Hewitt
                         Hymns for the Family of God

<idle musing>
Lest you think that this hymn is just a light, fluffy little piece, take a look at the bio of the author. Seems she developed a spinal malady that kept her a shut-in. And yet she wrote this hymn...
</idle musing>

He Touched Me

628 He Touched Me

1 Shackled by a heavy burden,
   'Neath a load of guilt and shame—
   Then the hand of Jesus touched me,
   And now I am no longer the same.

Refrain:
   He touched me, oh, He touched me,
   And oh, the joy that floods my soul;
   Something happened, and now I know,
   He touched me, and made me whole.

2 Since I've met this blessed Savior,
   Since He's cleansed and made me whole,
   Oh, I will never cease to praise Him—
   I'll shout it while eternity rolls. [Refrain]
                         William J. Gaither
                         Hymns for the Family of God

Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus

621 Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus

1. O soul, are you weary and troubled?
   No light in the darkness you see?
   There’s light for a look at the Savior,
   And life more abundant and free!

Refrain:
   Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
   Look full in His wonderful face,
   And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
   In the light of His glory and grace.

2. Thro' death into life everlasting,
   He passed, and we follow Him there;
   O’er us sin no more hath dominion--
   For more than conqu’rors we are!

3. His Word shall not fail you--He promised;
   Believe Him, and all will be well:
   Then go to a world that is dying,
   His perfect salvation to tell!
                         Helen H. Lemmel
                         Hymns for the Family of God

But I don't like it that way!

If every possible system of merit has been swept away by Christ and buried with him in his death (Rom. 6:4), then we have nothing of our own to rely on. If the “balance sheet” has been torn up and discarded forever, we are in the position of the laborers in the vineyard who are angry because someone who worked fewer hours was paid as well as they were. That’s what we don’t like about God being the Judge. If human nature were the judge in such a situation, we would pay according to hours and productivity. Not so God, who, like the landowner in the parable, says, “Do you begrudge my generosity?” (Matt. 20:15). So God being Judge is a two-edged sword; on the one hand it slices the way we like because God is for us; but on the other hand it slices in a way we don’t like because he is also for everyone else without the usual distinctions, and that means no more A list and B list, and therefore no more building up of our own egos at someone else’s expense.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 318

Whom do we want as judge?

So in the end it comes down to who we want our judge to be. We don’t want to be judged by other people, and we don’t want to be judged by God, so that leaves ourselves. Down where it really counts, we want to be our own judge. We want to be in charge of evaluating ourselves. We want to be able to sing with Frank Sinatra, “I did it my way.”—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 317

I Will Sing the Wondrous Story

618 I Will Sing the Wondrous Story

1 I will sing the wondrous story
   Of the Christ who died for me.
   How He left His home in glory
   For the cross of Calvary.

Refrain:
   Yes, I'll sing the wondrous Story
   Of the Christ who died for me,
   Sing it with the saint in glory
   Gathered by the crystal sea.

2 I was lost, but Jesus found me,
   Found the sheep that went astray,
   Threw His loving arms around me,
   Drew me back into His way.

3 I was bruised, but Jesus healed me;
   Faint was I from many a fall;
   Sight was gone, and fears possessed me,
   But He freed me from them all.

4 Days of darkness still come o'er me,
   Sorrow's paths I often tread,
   But the Savior still is with me;
   By His hand I'm safely led.
                         Francis H. Rowley
                         Hymns for the Family of God

<idle musing>
Many hymnals combine the verses such that verse 1 and 2 are verse 1, etc. And many also don't include the refrain. Many also include another verse (the second half of which this version uses as a refrain):

3 He will keep me till the river
   Rolls its waters at my feet;
   Then He'll bear me safely over,
   Where the loved ones I shall meet.
   Yes, I'll sing the wondrous story
   Of the Christ who died for me,
   Sing it with the saints in glory,
   Gathered by the crystal sea.

</idle musing>

The antiquity of the word "judgmental"

Perhaps we need some perspective on the matter, for this is a very recent development. The 1971 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary does not contain the word “judgmental” at all; the closest thing to it is the rare “judgmatical,” with the largely positive meaning of “judicious, discerning.” The next edition of the OED indicates that its first significant appearance with the negative connotation of today was in <>1965<>!—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 313 n. 22 (emphasis original)

We are all complicit

When I was a young activist in Virginia in the ’60s, my comrades and I loved the fierce passages from the Hebrew prophets. We envisioned them as God’s judgment on all the Southern conservatives who were still laboring in outer darkness concerning civil rights and the Vietnam War. Like many young idealists, we thought of ourselves as bringers of light. Later I learned that we are all in this together. I also am implicated in “grinding the face of the poor.”—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 310 n. 17

A Prayer

610 Prayer

Give us
A pure heart
That we may see Thee,
A humble heart
That we may hear Thee,
A heart of love
That we may serve Thee,
A heart of faith
That we may live Thee.
—Dag Hammarskjøld Hymns for the Family of God

Ransom

A passage in Isaiah [60:15–19] depicts God as the redeemer who brings precious gifts to reclaim Israel for his own. It certainly sounds like a “ransom,” and a “king’s ransom” at that — only it is not the king who is being ransomed; rather, in a true gospel reversal, it is the king who is doing the ransoming.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 300 (emphasis original)