Showing posts with label videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label videos. Show all posts
Three Minute Theology 4.6: Law and Grace
One of the secrets behind Mozart’s musical genius was his ability to improvise. They say he once gave a concert where he took a simple musical theme and improvised on it for over an hour with such creativity that it astonished everyone in the audience.
One of Mozart’s piano concertos, in fact, has long sections where the score is unfinished. Scholars believe this is because Mozart was writing for a deadline, and to save time, he planned to improvise these unfinished sections during the performance.
Christians aren’t legendary composers, but this kind of improvisation helps us get at the relationship between Law and Grace in the Christian life.
It’s one of the basic teachings of the Bible that those who are in Christ are no longer under the Law, but under Grace. But what does this actually mean?
When the New Testament talks about being “under the Law” it’s referring in particular to the Way of Life that’s described in that part of the Bible we call “The Old Testament.”
And being “under the Law” means trying to maintain and experience a relationship with God by following the details of this way of life—its rituals, traditions, and regulations—as strictly as possible.
So for example, when the Book of Deuteronomy prohibits God’s people from eating pork; or when the Book of Leviticus tells people not to trim the sides of their beards, let’s say ... “Being Under the Law” means seeking to maintain and express a right relationship with God by practicing all these things.
The Law also talks about loving the Lord your God; being truthful and faithful and chaste; loving your neighbour as yourself. So “Being Under the Law” means holding yourself to the moral standards of the Law, too.
Part of the Christian Message is that through his death and resurrection, Jesus has fulfilled the requirements of the Law—he’s fulfilled the meaning of all its rituals and traditions, and he’s satisfied its moral code.
And because he’s fulfilled the Law for us, anyone who is in Christ is no longer under the law. They no longer express and maintain their relationship with God by keeping the rituals and traditions of the Old Testament Law. They’re under grace.
But does that mean that the Way of Life we see in the Old Testament doesn’t matter anymore? Does it not matter how Christians actually live? Is there no moral standard that God wants to follow?
May it never be!
And this is where Mozart comes in. Because in one sense, the Old Testament Law is like a majestic Symphony, a master-piece by a Master composer, where every part is carefully orchestrated to make a harmonious whole. And to perform this piece means playing your part perfectly, note for note.
Being “under the Law” is a bit like playing in that orchestra.
But imagine this Master Composer wrote a piece that only laid out the basic melody and the broad themes of the music. He’s chosen the key, and planned the movements, but has left individual parts unwritten because he wants the musicians to improvise their parts.
What will they need to perform this piece? Obviously, they can’t play just any old notes. The rules of musical theory, the song’s key, and so on, all mean that some notes will “fit” and others won’t. So the musicians will need to have mastered these things and respect them as they play.
More than that, they will have to know the work of the composer himself, inside and out—his musical mind and soul—if they want their improvisation to reflect his heart for the piece.
But once they have all this, there will be a million different combinations of notes that they could play that would equally fulfill the composer’s intent for the performance.
Being under grace is a bit like this; it requires us to know the Master’s Heart for the Song, to respect the Musical Rules he’s given, but within that, to discover a million ways to creatively interpret what Life with God looks like, given our place in the orchestra.
Labels: 3 Minute Theology, theology, videos
Three Minute Theology 4.5: Magnifying Glass
When rays of light pass through a magnifying glass, they refract, or bend in towards each other. The spot on where these rays of light converge is called the “focal point,” and the intensity of the light at the focal point is determined by the ratio between the area of the lens and the area of the focal point.
If, for instance, you had a lens with a diameter of 10 cm and it focused the sunlight to a point 1 mm wide, the ratio of the lens to the focal point would be 78.5 to 0.0314, or 2,500 to 1. In other words, the power of the sunlight at the focal point would be 2,500 times more intense than it is when it comes through the lens.
If you’ve ever lit a piece of paper on fire using a magnifying glass before, you’ve experimented with this property of a convex lens, the way it concentrates the energy of the sun to a burning point.
So: one of the basic truths of the Gospel is that, for Christians, our entire life with God depends on God’s grace, not our works. It is by grace we have been saved, the Bible says in one place, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. And, of course, if there was anything we could do to merit, earn or generate God’s grace on our own, it wouldn’t be grace.
The obvious challenge here is just that: if it really is all grace, does that mean that there’s nothing Christians need to do? Is there no expectation that our lives will change as a result of our relationship with God? Is there no actual requirement for holy living?
The Bible is quite clear in a number of places that there is. There are some very concrete things that Christians can and must do if they want to grow and mature in their salvation, even though salvation is entirely a free, unmerited gift.
One theologian, a guy named John Wesley, called these things “Means of Grace.” The word “means” here is meant in the old fashioned sense, like a “means to an end.” And the means of grace are things Christians do as a “means” towards the “end” of experiencing God’s grace.
Wesley divided the means of grace into two broad categories. There were what he called “Works of Piety”—things Christians do to grow in their love for God—and there were “Works of Mercy”—things that express God’s love to others. Works of Piety include things like: baptism, receiving communion, studying scripture, prayer, fasting, and so on. Works of Mercy include things like: visiting the sick or the prisoner, feeding and clothing those in need, or sheltering the stranger.
It is important to realize that, though they are necessary for the Christian, these works of mercy and piety are not ways we earn or merit or deserve salvation; they are simply the “means” whereby we experience it more brightly and clearly and intensely.
You might say that the Means of Grace are to God’s salvation like the magnifying glass is to the sun. The sunlight is always shining over us, warming us and lighting our way, but it won’t light any paper on fire until it’s been focused to a point by a magnifying glass. The glass doesn’t light the fire, of course. The sun does. But still the glass is necessary if the fire’s going to start.
In the same way, God’s grace is continually shining over us, but if it’s to light any fires in our lives—spiritually speaking, that is—it must be concentrated to a point by the Means of Grace. And so when we pray or we help the vulnerable, when we study the scriptures or we feed the hungry, and so on—these things don’t save us—they don’t light the fire—but they do bring God’s grace to a focal point in our lives, so that the fire of salvation can burn, deepening our love for God and broadening our love for others.
Perhaps, this is what the Bible means when it says: We are God’s workmanship created in Christ to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Labels: 3 Minute Theology, videos
Three Minute Theology 4.4: Good Vibrations
There’s this interesting phenomenon in physics, where sound vibrations in one object can cause a nearby object to produce sound, if the original sound is produced at just the right frequency, or pitch.
All material objects have what is called a “resonant frequency,” which is the natural frequency at which it vibrates, and a sound wave oscillating perfectly at the object’s “resonant frequency” will cause it to start vibrating spontaneously.
If, for instance, you were to hold down the G note on a piano, so that the string it is free to vibrate, and then you plunk the G note an octave below it, the vibration of the lower note will cause the higher string naturally to sound, even though you didn’t strike it, simply because the lower note is vibrating at the higher string’s resonant frequency.
A note that is sounded at the resonant frequency of a crystal goblet, if it is loud enough, will cause the goblet to vibrate so much that it shatters.
This is called “sympathetic vibration,” and not only does it make for some fascinating science experiments, it also provides us with a vivid analogy for an aspect of the Christian life that is absolutely vital but often overlooked, something called “Sanctification.”
Sanctification refers to the process whereby Christians become holy; it is about acquiring and living in holiness, and the Bible’s quite clear that this is essential to the Christian life. In one place it says it as bluntly as can be: that without holiness no one can see God.
The challenge here is that often, the language of holiness conjures up for us images of sombre people who have a long list of things they do or don’t do, and who feel they need to impose this list on everyone else.
But this is not the way the Bible conceives of holiness. The Bible continually describes it as something that God does in us and through us, as he claims us for himself and works his holiness out in us; in one place it says, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly ... the one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” Jesus himself prayed that God would sanctify us in truth, because his word is truth.
In this sense, Holiness is an objective characteristic, or quality that God imparts to those who belong to Jesus, not a subjective quality that we obtain through moral effort.
We are, in one sense, passive recipients of our holiness.
And yet at the same time, holiness is, in fact about a way of life—it is about men and women actively thinking and speaking and living in a way that reflects God’s own holiness. In one place the Bible says we are to present ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God; in another place, that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
These two pictures of holiness—that it is something we passively receive, but also something we actively pursue and work out—can be brought together perhaps, if we think about it with the analogy of sympathetic vibration.
Because in sympathetic vibration, the sounding note is at just such a frequency that it causes the adjacent object to vibrate spontaneously; and at the same time, there is something about the nature of the object that it will vibrate, if it meets a sound wave at the perfect pitch.
Our holiness is a matter of our sympathetic vibration, so to speak, with God’s own holiness. The sounding note, you might say, is the Holy Spirit, and because this note is indeed a perfect pitch—perfectly conveying, as it does, God’s perfect holiness—when it comes into contact with our hearts, passive though we may be, it causes our lives to begin vibrating in sympathetic harmony with Him—that is to say, our thoughts take on the character and quality of his thoughts; our words and deeds are prompted by and reflective of his words and his deeds.
In this way, we are altogether passive in our sanctification, and yet deeply, deeply active, as we live in harmony with his holiness. Or like the Bible says it: we will be holy, because He himself is holy.
Labels: 3 Minute Theology, theology, videos
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