Once Not But Now Are
When Jews and Gentiles confess Jesus as Lord, they do so as people who had now received mercy, whereas previously they were the No Mercy group. When Jews and Gentiles confess Jesus as Lord, they do so as God’s people, though formerly they were the Not My People people.
While there are many quotations of the Old Testament in the New, there are far more allusions to the Old Testament in the New. The New Testament authors wrote with a worldview drenched in the ancient Scriptures of Israel. An example of this is the language in 1 Peter 2:10.
In 1 Peter 2:10, the apostle tells his readers, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” A rhythm is created with these words. Look at them like this:
- Once you were not a people but now you are God’s people
- Once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy
The “once…but now” language captures the readers’ former and present situation. Before conversion, the readers were not God’s people. Before conversion, the readers stood under God’s condemnation and had not received mercy.
With the language in 1 Peter 2:10, the apostle is connecting us to Hosea 1. In Hosea 1, the prophet was to marry a woman of unfaithfulness, and the names of their children would signal the theological situation of Israel. When Hosea’s daughter was born, God said, “Call her name No Mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all” (Hos. 1:6).
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New Resolve After 55 Years in My Wheelchair
Aging with quadriplegia may be filled with extra challenges, but it doesn’t demoralize me. With God’s help, I hold everything lightly. I try not to grasp at my fragile life, nor coddle it or minimize my activities at Joni and Friends just because I’m getting older, growing weaker, and dealing with more pain. Rather, I find great comfort and joy in dying to self and living every day to serve the Lord Jesus and others around the world whose disabilities are far more profound than mine.
I sometimes wonder, Who am I, God, that you have brought me this far? Lately, I’ve been whispering that question from 1 Chronicles 17:16: “Then King David [said], “Who am I, O LORD God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?” Who am I to enjoy a platform on national radio for 40 years? Who am I that I should be so blessed in marriage to Ken for 40 years? And how did I ever have the strength to survive 55 years as a quadriplegic in a wheelchair?
The truth is, I don’t have the strength. I still wake up every morning needing God desperately. Like David, I often confess, “I am poor and needy” (Ps. 40:17). Perhaps that’s how God brought me this far. I cannot say, but I do know that “the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chron. 16:9, NIV). God is searching high and low for weak people who love him so that he can pour into them his strength. Maybe that’s my story, but how I arrived here is not for me to say. I just keep praising my sovereign God with every milestone I pass.
It’s the noble cause of Christ to which I’ve dedicated myself for decades, and I can’t think of anything that gives me more joy. Yet as I reach the milestone of 55 years of quadriplegia—not to mention two bouts of cancer, severe breathing issues, COVID-19, and chronic pain—I hold tightly to Acts 20:24 (NIV): “I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.”
And with this anniversary marking 55 years in my wheelchair, I’m reflecting on more than a few milestones through which God has done amazing things.
Anniversary of the Disabilities Act
When a broken neck upended my life 55 years ago, leaving me depressed and devastated, the last people I wanted to be around were wheelchair users like me. They made me feel awkward, so I basically ignored anyone with a disabling condition. Imagine my amazement when a little over a decade later, God used my own affliction to birth an international disability ministry. Somewhere within that decade, I rose above my fears of the future and my disdain for others with disabilities. God transformed my heart, changed my attitude, and showed me there are more important things in life than walking.
I landed in a wheelchair at a time when there was very little access for people using mobility equipment. Back in the 1970s I would arrive at a restaurant, only to be told to wheel down an alley, past smelly dumpsters, into a side door that led through a crowded, noisy kitchen in order to reach my dining table.
I remember getting stuck in a boutique dressing room while trying on clothes. My wheelchair had become wedged tightly between the swinging door and the wall; the store manager had to come and jerk me free. My wheelchair left scuff marks all over the dressing room. I was terribly embarrassed. That was the way things were in the early 70s, before the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
With each passing year, I racked up more embarrassing incidents of being stranded, getting stuck, and navigating long, winding detours to get into movie theaters, restaurants, churches, and stores. I finally had my fill of embarrassing episodes, so I began to actively advocate for myself and for others with disabilities.
In the late 1980s, I somehow landed a position on the National Council on Disability under President Reagan.
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When Being a Christian Is like Being a Californian
Written by J. Warner Wallace |
Sunday, January 14, 2024
As Christians, we can defend what we believe about Jesus evidentially. We can make a case with the evidence from the first century and the universe around us. I pray that you and I, as Jesus followers, can become “Evidential Christians.” In the increasingly antagonistic culture in which we now live, we no longer have the luxury of being a Christian the way I am a Californian.I live in California; that makes me a Californian. I’ve lived here in gorgeous, temperate, beautiful Southern California my entire life (are you jealous yet?) I’ve got a right to call myself a Californian, even though I often take it for granted. After all, without doing some research online, I’d have great difficulty telling you when the state of California was even established or what that historic process looked like. I really don’t know the precise structure of California state government (i.e. how many members are in the state legislature). I also have no idea how the state government operates (i.e. the rules that govern how a bill is turned into a law), or the content of any of its core value or mission statements (if it even has such things). I barely know the names of the counties in my area, let alone the northern part of the state. I’m a rather poorly informed Californian, I will have to admit. But I do know that I like it here. It’s comfortable. It’s familiar. It’s sunny.
So if you ask me why I’m a Californian, I guess I’d really have little to offer you aside from the fact that I was born here, am comfortable here, enjoy my proximity to the beach and the beautiful weather.
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A Time for Confidence
Theologians refer to Christ’s work in terms of His active obedience and His passive obedience. In His passive obedience, He paid the penalty for sin; He atoned for sin. In His active righteousness, He earned righteousness on our behalf. No other message and no other means can save us or deliver us. Paul spent decades and piled effort upon effort in attempts to white-knuckle his way to God. All to no avail. Then, on the road to Damascus, Saul came to an end as Christ, “the Man in white,“ brought Paul to Himself.
Paul was likely one of the most intelligent people to have ever lived. He certainly is one of the best writers. He was extremely ambitious. He knew adversity, yet he persevered. If anyone “thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh,” Paul tells us, “I have more” (Phil. 3:4).
Yet, Paul realizes that “whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ” (v. 7). He counts all his accomplishments, all his strivings after righteousness, as “rubbish,” a polite word for “dung.” All of Paul’s abilities and accomplishments simply serve to underscore his utter inability to achieve righteousness.
Instead of putting his confidence in the flesh, Paul learned to put his confidence in Christ and in the gospel. Paul wanted to be found in Christ. He writes, “That I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (v. 9). The theologian Francis Turretin expresses it this way:
God grant that, dismissing a vain confidence in our own merit, we may rest in the most perfect merit of Christ alone and so keep faithful in him and fight the good fight even unto the end that we might receive the crown of righteousness; due not to our merit, but most graciously promised to us from the heavenly rewarder.
Johnny Cash wrote a novel on the life of the Apostle Paul. Yes, one of country music’s icons and one of American music’s legends wrote a biography of Paul. Cash called it The Man in White, and it is a piece of genius. The “man in white” is actually not Paul. It’s Christ. Therein lies Cash’s genius. (Similarly, Augustine is not the main character in his autobiographical Confessions. God is.) Paul is not the main character in Cash’s biography. He’s the prominent and predominant character as the pages unfold. But all along, we get the sense that there is far more to the story than what we are seeing on the page. Behind the scenes of Paul’s life, there is One at work, orchestrating all the details to one desired end and one certain outcome.
Paul knew he had to put his confidence in the gospel, because nothing else can turn the human heart and nothing else solves the human dilemma. People think the human dilemma is many things. Some say it’s poverty or the unjust distribution of resources and wealth. Some say it’s war and our penchant for war. Some simply think the human dilemma is internal and psychological. As R.C. Sproul has often said, “The human dilemma is this: God is holy, and we are not. God is righteous, and we are not.” Our problem is not lack or abundance of wealth or resources. Our problem is not that we are a few degrees short of finding utopia. Our problem is the wrath of a holy God. No amount of righteousness that we might produce can solve that dilemma. Paul testifies to only one solution: the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ.
When we think of Luther’s main doctrine, we think of justification by faith alone. That doctrine hinges upon one word. In fact, the entire Reformation and the protest the Reformers launched against the Roman Catholic Church could very well be summed up in this one word: imputation. The doctrine of imputation teaches that our sin, which cuts us off and alienates us from a holy God, gets imputed to Christ. Christ paid the penalty for our sin, and so our sins are forgiven. The doctrine of imputation also teaches that Christ’s righteousness gets imputed to us. If Christ’s work only accomplished the forgiveness of sins, we would be right back to where we were in the garden before Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Christ’s work overcame the curse and restored “Paradise lost.” Christ’s work also leads to “Paradise regained.” We now stand in the very presence of God clothed in Christ’s righteousness. The “Man in white” took our filthy rags and gave us His white, pure, and righteous robe. Paul says it plainly in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God.”
Theologians refer to Christ’s work in terms of His active obedience and His passive obedience. In His passive obedience, He paid the penalty for sin; He atoned for sin. In His active righteousness, He earned righteousness on our behalf. No other message and no other means can save us or deliver us. Paul spent decades and piled effort upon effort in attempts to white-knuckle his way to God. All to no avail.
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