The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God
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Kindle Notes & Highlights
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behold the loveliness of God in himself,
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second main objective in a curriculum for Christlikeness. That, as we have said, is the breaking of the power of patterns of wrongdoing and evil that govern our lives because of our long habituation to a world alienated from God. We must learn to recognize these habitual patterns for what they are and escape from their grasp.14
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It is assumed by Paul that “sin will not govern in our physical bodies to make us do what it wants, and that we will not go on giving our bodily parts to sin as tools of unrighteousness, but give ourselves to God as those whose physical bodies have already died, and our bodily parts to God as tools of righteousness” (6:12–13). The problem currently is that we have little idea—and less still of contemporary models—of what this looks like. Consumer Christianity is now normative. The consumer Christian is one who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness and the services of the church for special ...more
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Now, in fact, the patterns of wrongdoing that govern human life outside the kingdom are usually quite weak, even ridiculous. They are simply our habits, our largely automatic responses of thought, feeling, and action. Typically, we have acted wrongly before reflecting. And it is this that gives bad habits their power. For the most part they are, as Paul knew, actual characteristics of our bodies and our social context, essential parts of any human self. They do not, by and large, bother to run through our conscious mind or deliberative will, and often run exactly contrary to them. It is rare ...more
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HABITS AND THEIR IMPACT ON OUR FORMATION
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it is a matter of one’s inner condition, of one’s obsessive desires (epithumias). Without these, even God cannot tempt anyone. But when one receives and harbors them, one is “pregnant with evil, gives birth to sin and the consequence is death or separation from God” (1:12–15).
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This is the true situation: nothing has power to tempt me or move me to wrong action that I have not given power by what I permit to be in me. And the most spiritually dangerous things in me are the little habits of thought, feeling, and action that I regard as “normal” because “everyone is like that” and it is “only human.”
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The mind or attitude in question is that of the loving servant to the good of others.
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Therefore we are to “work out” the salvation we have (2:12). The word here, katergazesthe, has the sense of developing or elaborating something, bringing it to the fullness of what in its nature it is meant to be. But we do not do this as if the new life were simply our project.
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WORD STUDY ON WORK OUT - DEVELOP OR ELABORATING SOMETHING, BRINING IT TO THE FULLNESS OF WHAT IN ITS NATURE IT IS MEANT TO BE
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golden triangle of spiritual growth.”
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But reliance upon what the Spirit does to us or in us, as indispensable as it truly is, will not by itself transform character in its depths. The action of the Spirit must be accompanied by our response, which, as we have seen, cannot be carried out by anyone other than ourselves. This active participation on our part has two aspects, represented by the bottom angles in the triangle.
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Paul’s letter to the Colossians is perhaps the best overall statement on the spiritual formation of the disciple in the New Testament. I suspect this is because it was written to people whom Paul had never met and had never had the opportunity to teach. So he gives them a well-rounded presentation of exactly what we have been talking about in this chapter. Chapters 1 and 2 correspond quite closely to the first primary objective of a curriculum for Christlikeness as presented earlier. Chapters 3 and 4 correspond precisely to the second primary objective.
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Colossians Overview
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Being a man of the scriptures, Jesus understood that it is the care of the soul or, better, the care of the whole person, that must be our objective if we are to function as God designed us to function. This is the wisdom of the entire scriptural tradition. “Put everything you have into the care of your heart,” the book of Proverbs says, “for it determines what your life amounts to” (4:23). “You will keep those in the peace of peace,” Isaiah says, “whose minds are fixed on you, because they trust in you” (26:3). The blessed person is one who “meditates in the law day and night” (Ps. 1:2; Josh. ...more
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But exactly what are these “spiritual disciplines”? What is it about a practice that makes it a spiritual discipline? Well, they are, first of all, disciplines. A discipline is any activity within our power that we engage in to enable us to do what we cannot do by direct effort.17
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But spiritual disciplines are also spiritual disciplines. That is, they are disciplines designed to help us be active and effective in the spiritual realm of our own heart, now spiritually alive by grace, in relation to God and his kingdom. They are designed to help us withdraw from total dependence on the merely human or natural (and in that precise sense to mortify the “flesh,” kill it off, let it die) and to depend also on the ultimate reality, which is God and his kingdom. Thus, for example, I fast from food to know that there is another food that sustains me. I memorize and meditate on ...more
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But his use of solitude, silence, study of scripture, prayer, and service to others all had a disciplinary aspect in his life. And we can be very sure that what he found useful for conduct of his life in the Father will also be useful for us. It was an important day in my life when at last I understood that if he needed forty days in the wilderness at one point, I very likely could use three or four.
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There has been abuse and misunderstanding, no doubt, but the power of solitude, silence, meditative study, prayer, sacrificial giving, service, and so forth as disciplines
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In particular, I had learned that intensity is crucial for any progress in spiritual perception and understanding. To dribble a few verses or chapters of scripture on oneself through the week, in church or out, will not reorder one’s mind and spirit—just as one drop of water every five minutes will not get you a shower, no matter how long you keep it up. You need a lot of water at once and for a sufficiently long time. Similarly for the written Word.
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These are, on the side of abstinence, solitude and silence and, on the side of positive engagement, study and worship.
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Remember that the second primary objective of the curriculum is to break the power of our ready responses to do the opposite of what Jesus teaches: for example, scorn, anger, verbal manipulation, payback, silent collusion in the wrongdoing of others around us, and so forth.
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These responses mainly exist at what we might call the “epidermal” level of the self, the first point of contact with the world around us. They are almost totally “automatic,” given the usual stimuli. The very language we use is laden with them, and of course they are the “buttons” by which the human surroundings more or less control us. They are not “deep”; they are just there, and just constant. They are the area where most of our life is lived. And in action they have the power to draw our whole being into the deepest of injuries and wrongs.
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As a major part of this, our epidermal responses have to be changed in such a way that the fire and the fight doesn’t start almost immediately when we are “rubbed the wrong way.” Solitude and silence give us a place to begin the necessary changes, though they are not a place to stop.
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are. One of the greatest of spiritual attainments is the capacity to do nothing. Thus the Christian philosopher Pascal insightfully remarks, “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they are unable to stay quietly in their own room.”19
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The cure for too-much-to-do is solitude and silence, for there you find you are safely more than what you do. And the cure of loneliness is solitude and silence, for there you discover in how many ways you are never alone.
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TWO DISCIPLINES OF POSITIVE ENGAGEMENT: STUDY AND WORSHIP.
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Once solitude has done its work, the key to this progression is study. It is in study that we place our minds fully upon God and his kingdom. And study is brought to its natural completion in the worship of God.
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The Twenty-third Psalm, for example, is an exquisite summary of life in the kingdom. The mind of the disciple should have it prominently displayed within, to always foster the joy and peace of the kingdom as well as to orient all of his or her actions within it. The Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount, Romans 8, Colossians 3, Philippians 2–4, and a few other passages of scripture should be frequently meditated on in depth, and much of them memorized. This is an essential part of any curriculum for Christlikeness. Positive engagement with these scriptures will bring ...more
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Now we have briefly touched upon four specific spiritual disciplines—solitude and silence, worship and study—around which a curriculum for Christlikeness should be framed. It must be clear how strongly they will nourish and be nourished by the first principle objective of such a curriculum, that of bringing the disciple of Jesus to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength. Other disciplines, such as fasting, service to others, fellowship, and so on, might be discussed as well, and, indeed, in a full treatment of a curriculum for Christlikeness they must be discussed. But if these four are ...more
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Anger and contempt toward others is only removed by the vision and experience of God being over all, ensuring that all is well with me and that others are his treasures. I no longer need to engage in the violence of name-calling, for I do not need to “put others down” in order for me to be “up.” I no longer need to secure myself in life, for I am secure.
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Of course, that does not mean we no longer serve Jesus. He remains our Master, and a favorite term of New Testament writers for themselves is “slave of Jesus Christ.” But it is now on a different basis, a basis of loving cooperation, of shared endeavor, in which his aims are our aims and our understanding and harmony with his kingdom are essential to what he does with and through us.
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Confidence in and reliance upon Jesus as “the Son of man,” the one appointed to save us. Relevant
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But this confidence in the person of Jesus naturally leads to a desire to be his apprentice in living in and from the kingdom of God.
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The abundance of life realized through apprenticeship to Jesus, “continuing in his word,” naturally leads to obedience. The
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Love of Jesus sustains us through the course of discipline and training that makes obedience possible. Without that love, we will not stay to learn.
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Obedience, with the life of discipline it requires, both leads to and, then, issues from the pervasive inner transformation of the heart and soul. The
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Finally, there is power to work the works of the kingdom.
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Great power requires great character if it is to be a blessing and not a curse, and that character is something we only grow toward. Yet it is God’s intent that in his kingdom we should have as much power as we can bear for good. Indeed, his ultimate objective in the development of human character is to empower us to do what we want. And when we are fully developed in the likeness of Jesus, fully have “the mind of Christ,” that is what will happen—to his great joy and relief, no doubt.
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Looking back over this progression, one of the most important things for us to see and accept is that, once confidence in Jesus lives in us, we must be intelligently active in stages or dimensions 2 through 5. We do this by unrelenting study under Jesus, and in particular by following him into his practices and adapting them to form an effective framework of spiritual disciplines around which our whole life can be structured.
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Each of us must ask ourselves how are we doing it. What, precisely, is our plan?
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That they are coming to the end of their present life, life “in the flesh,” is of little significance. What is of significance is the kind of person they have become. Circumstances and other people are not in control of an individual’s character or of the life that lies endlessly before us in the kingdom of God.
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It presents the universe as a created system that responds to and is pervaded by what is not a part of it but of which it is a part or product. Therefore the cosmos is not a system closed off to itself. And it is determined in its present and future course by personal factors—sources of energy and direction—that cannot be discerned by means of the physical senses or dealt with by the physical sciences.
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We will not sit around looking at one another or at God for eternity but will join the eternal Logos, “reign with him,” in the endlessly ongoing creative work of God. It is for this that we were each individually intended, as both kings and priests (Exod. 19:6; Rev. 5:10).
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Thus, our faithfulness over a “few things” in the present phase of our life develops the kind of character that can be entrusted with “many things.” We are, accordingly, permitted to “enter into the joy of our Lord” (Matt. 25:21). That “joy” is, of course, the creation and care of what is good, in all its dimensions. A place in God’s creative order has been reserved for each one of us from before the beginnings of cosmic existence. His plan is for us to develop, as apprentices to Jesus, to the point where we can take our place in the ongoing creativity of the universe.
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Stated in other words, the intention of God is that we should each become the kind of person whom he can set free in his universe, empowered to do what we want to do. Just as we desire and intend this, so far as possible, for our children and others we love, so God desires and intends it for his children. But character, the inner directedness of the self, must develop to the point where that is possible.
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(Isa. 65:17–25)
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The power of God’s personal presence will, directly and indirectly, accomplish the public order in and among nations that human government has never been able to bring about. Truth and mercy will have met and kissed each other at last, like long-lost friends (Ps. 85:10). Grace and truth are reconciled in the person of the Son of man (John 1:17).
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It is well known how hard it is to provide a benign order within human means. For the problem, once again, is in the human heart. Until it fully engages with the rule of God, the good that we feel must be cannot come. It will at a certain point be defeated by the very means implemented to produce it.
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Divine presence replaces brute power, and especially power exercised by human beings whose hearts are alienated from God’s best.
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To be sure, some groups are caught up for a unique role in those purposes, but it is never for their benefit alone or because they have some special claim or corner on God.
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It is humanity, simply, that is God’s focus in earth history, as it must be ours. It is to the world—the entire world—that he gave his Son.
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The God in question, as we have seen, is an interlocking community of magnificent persons, completely self-sufficing and with no meaningful limits on goodness and power. The reality of this God, who also is the source and governor of all creation, is what we have meant by saying we live in a Trinitarian universe. This is the universe of The Kingdom Among Us.