The Truth by its Own Truth

"The truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power." 
From Dignitatis Humanae, the Vatican II document on religious liberty, as quoted in the essay, The Moral Basis for Economic Liberty by Robert A. Sirico



"Nicodemus said to Him, 'How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born, can he?' Jesus answered, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.'" John 3:4-8


"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.'" John 14:6


"I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you." John 14:16-17


"Therefore Pilate said to Him, 'So You are a King?' Jesus answered, 'You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.'" John 18:37


"For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." 1 Corinthians 1:18

Political and Economic Liberty

The following quote is from Robert A. Sirico, writing in his essay, The Moral Basis for Economic Liberty, which appears in an anthology of essays titled Rediscovering Political Economy:

"Political and economic liberty is misunderstood...if it is seen as resulting in a completely secularized and libertine society or if it entails the notion that citizens animated by religious ideals may not be permitted to have an impact on their communities. Political liberty does not demand theological or moral relativism. It merely guarantees that moral and religious ends are not achieved by political means: that is, that they are not coerced by the state." Robert A. Sirico

How Not to be Swept Away in Conversations

Have you ever found yourself saying something that, as soon as you said it, realized it went against your walk with Christ?

The book of James is the place to go for refueling:

“If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless” (James 1:26).

Wow. Pretty motivating, isn’t it, to clean up our conversational act?

But how do we do that? More pertinently, how do we do that, in the moment, in the actual real-time throes of a conversation? In other words, how do we prevent ourselves from getting swept along by the current of conversation around us?

First of all, we agree with God that any conversation containing or instigating gossip, self-promotion, cursing, bitterness, pejorative joking, whining, maligning, falsities and exaggeration are sin.

And then we live out that agreement with God by being watchful and attuned so that the minute untoward statements are made by others (or by ourselves), we immediately hear the Holy Spirit’s pricking of our conscience to stop and don’t go there! 

Think of Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka as he calmly and quietly warns the little boy with “Stop. Don’t. Come back.”  

Or think of the slogan, “Stranger Danger.” For us, it is “Slander Danger: damage is about to take place with the tongue, either mine, or someone else’s!” 

Or think of the advice we give young people: “Decide before you go to the party what you will do if drugs and alcohol are being used: know that you will not participate before you go to the party.”

We can do these same things with ourselves regarding our tongue: Know what constitutes sinful conversation; agree that it is sinful; live out our agreement by being “sober minded and alert” (1 Peter 5:8); pray before social activities that we will not sin with our mouth or engage in the sinful talk of others; and make a commitment to God that we will not “go there” in conversations.

In this way, we can, indeed, keep a  “tight rein on our tongue.” 

But alas, it is a battle. And battles are ugly. And take time. And so it is with us. 

“We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check” (Jame 3:2).

“…no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8).

We often fail with our tongues because we do not see our failure as losing a spiritual battle:

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm” (Ephesians 6:10-13).

Once we realize that the reason we can’t put a rein on our tongue is because we have been trying to do it in our own power, then half the battle is already won!

But God is the one who girds us for victory in the battle, not us. 

“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Notice this verse says that to fight off temptation is to endure. Endure the temptation by relying on the Spirit’s resisting it within us; don’t indulge the temptation!

But what we so often do is cave in: because—let’s be totally honest—it is easier from a human perspective, and feels better--to give in, or to not see conversation as a temptation to sin in the first place! 

But as we grow in Christ, if we are truly growing in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus as the Bible commands us (2 Peter 3:18), we will become increasingly sensitive to all sin, including the sin of the tongue.

And so we must sit there, in a room full of conversationalists, chomping at the bit to contribute our two cents worth to a sinful conversation, and not do it; not contribute. 

We must endure, not indulge, the temptation. 

And we can endure, and we will, because God says, right there in 1 Corinthians 10:13, that He will provide the way of escape. 

Okay, so the question then is, “Will we take it? Will we take the way of escape He gives?” 

If we say “No, I won’t,” then we will sin with our tongue.

If we say, “Yes, I will,” then we won’t sin with our tongue.

And saying “yes” means putting on the “full armor of God” that we just read about in Ephesians 6:10-13.

What is that armor that causes us to stand firm against sin?

God’s truth, the breastplate of His righteousness, His Gospel of peace, and the “shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (the full verse is found in Ephesians 6:10-17). 

In this, we can “be on the alert with all perseverance and petition” in the Spirit (Ephesians 6:18).

This is our life preserver; our paddle to hold firmly against the current of unwholesome talk. This is God’s navigation of us to His “quiet waters;” His “paths of righteousness for His name’s sake” (Psalm 23).

Because, in the end, isn’t that what we’re all about: God’s name? God’s glory? His sake?

If we understand that nothing is any longer about us, and everything is only about God in Christ, then it will be a privilege to not sully His name with our unfit-for-His-kingdom conversation. 

Copyright Barb Harwood

That Place of Confidence in Christ Alone

This morning I sat with my coffee, and quite out of the blue, the quiet, strong confidence of Christ welled up and consumed me. It settled in and emanated a joy so quiet—and yet loud; restorative—and yet jubilant. 

This confidence is ironic in that, in it, I abhor any thought of self-boast about it (wondering, even, if I can put into words the conveyance of its being completely unbidden by me, uncreated in any way by me, and solely the gifting of the indwelling Spirit, supplying what I acknowledge I have lacked). 

I describe it as the meeting of a dire need, a supernatural imparting of an unequivocal knowing that this confidence of Christ is where I want—-need—-to be, but haven’t consistently been, and where I desire to stay and live out the rest of my days.

In this confidence, the world—and all that swirls in it—along with my own human feelings and discombobulations, including the struggles of the hour, don’t matter in the sense that any reliance upon the state of their circumstances is moot: any rassling I would attempt in these matters only morphs them into enormous illusions and undue heaviness, taking me farther adrift from Christ. 

This is why I cannot boast. Because too many times, I have resisted this confidence. 

Today, it arrives as a surprise visit from a dearly beloved.

Jesus said, in Mark 2:17 and Luke 5:31:  

“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  

Jesus is including all of us here. And we make ourselves more diseased by ingesting—insanely at times—the placebo of worldliness, inner feelings, pride and discouragement. 

Even on a good day, we have a pre-existing condition of being sick and in need of a Savior, and the absolute crazy truth is that Jesus “doctors” us in His comfort, teaching, correction, guidance, and His hearing and enduring reassurance—every minute, hour and day.

Christ is confidence and thus imparts confidence because He only does and speaks what His Father in heaven tells Him.

In John 5:19b-23 Jesus says, 

“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent Him.”

Jesus goes on to say,

“By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me” (John 5:30).

“For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken. I know that his command leads to eternal life. So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say” (John 12:49-50).

And now, at this time, Jesus is advocating for us at the right hand of our Father, God. Advocating, I say! Nobody does that for us on a 24-hour basis! No earthy advocate even comes near to Christ’s perfect advocacy. 

“But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’” (Acts 7:55-56).

“Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Romans 8:34).

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way” (Ephesians 1:18-23).

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your heart on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1).

Even when we fail, even when we try to wrest the reigns of our life away from Christ, rejecting the help of His Spirit in us, Christ is right here with us up there next to God. 

“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27).

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

     ‘For your sake we face death all day long; 

      we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’

No, in all these things we are conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35-39).

That is where this place of confidence arrived from this morning as I sat, with my coffee, in my own little corner of the world. It came from Christ alone, as He advocates at the right hand of our Father God in heaven. 

Amen.

Copyright Barb Harwood

A Defensive Heart is a Hardened Heart

I have come to understand God’s way of peace through reconciliation. 

First, Salvation is being reconciled through faith in God in Christ through Christ’s death for us on the Cross (and not by our works: sola fide). 

God says that we are also to be reconciled to each other (2 Corinthians 5:18; Matthew 18:21-22; James 3:14-18)). 

And He also says we are to be reconciled to our self (2 Corinthians 5:16-21).

Through the utter coming to the end of myself, I, thankfully, count myself among the Christians who have experienced all three instances of reconciliation.

I am reconciled to God in Christ.

I am reconciled to and with myself in Christ.

I am mutually reconciled to some people in Christ.

I say “some” because I am not mutually reconciled to others. However, after many years, I have  become reconciled with myself and God in regards to those people.

And now I understand Christ’s tears over those who “would not” (Matthew 23:37): those who wanted nothing to do with His reconciliation.

This is a marvel, since Jesus never did anything to cause their “would nots.”

But I have. 

I have caused others to not want to have anything to do with me. 

I have caused others to hurt.

I have caused people to wince and roll their eyes.

I have caused embarrassment—knowingly or ignorantly—participated in one-upmanship, used the silent treatment out of self-righteous anger and put my foot in my mouth too many times to count…..

In short, I have been the cause of the need to be reconciled with people in the first place!

And so have all of us (if we think we haven’t, then we need to go back to the first reconciliation—that with God through and in Christ).

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). 

No one is righteous or good in and of themselves (Romans 3:9-20).

So it’s not surprising to me to have an offer of reconciliation met with sarcasm, skepticism, resentment, disbelief, incredulousness and “you gotta be kidding me’s.”

But the offer for reconciliation, in order to continue on in sanctification with Christ, must at some point be made. 

And God will allow us to finally submit that offer when we give the circumstances entirely over to Him via full-on agreement with His full estimation of the situation and our, and others, roll in it. 

I praise God that that reconciliation has come, face to face, one-on-one, over coffee or in an exchange of letters or emails, with some people. 

In this, I have experienced forgiveness. 

More importantly, for true reconciliation to take place, I have received their acceptance of my fallenness, my sin and my selfish pride. The reconciliation took place because they owned my faults with me and didn’t deny me in this. They didn’t try to brush off their own discomfort by saying “Oh, don’t worry about it,” or “You didn’t do anything wrong,” or “I know you’re a good person.”

Because comments like that leave the person who is saying them going away usually thinking and believing the total opposite: 

“What a jerk. They think they can just apologize and everything is okay?” Or “It was nice that they attempted to own up to their mistakes, but seriously, why did they make that stupid mistake in the first place?” 

Do you see how this form of  “reconciliation” is a surface level parody? The only thing it breeds is more resentment, while the person who has apologized is thinking everything’s swell when it’s not.

True reconciliation takes place like this:

In honest, genuine contrition, we admit our sin and ask forgiveness. We lay the groundwork for this to happen by inviting the person to come into our life one-on-one so we can begin the dialogue. 

This is what we have with Christ. We invite Him in in utmost contrition, convinced, finally, that we are fallen and can’t remove our own sin from our selves or our life, and we cannot remove it from others. 

And Christ continues this relationship with us here, although we are yet sinners, and perfectly, in eternity. 

Reconciliation with ourselves happens next. Finally understanding that we don’t--and can’t--save ourselves, or reconcile ourself to ourself, we accept Christ’s gift to face into who we were, who we are now in Christ, and who we can and are, becoming in Christ. 

This is something that is now safe to do because Christ, via His Holy Spirit, does it in us.

Ultimately, we do this with others by inviting them out for coffee. By telling them we love them in spite of differences. By reminding them that, although things may have been dicey between us, we have not forgotten them. 

And we actively hope and pray that they will take us up on our invitation. We desire that, just as we knocked and Christ opened the door, they will walk through the door we’ve opened for them (but if they have never walked through Christ’s door, this might yet be impossible for them).

But it is up to them to walk. They have to want to accept the invitation. They have to desire to face into an honest assessment of the situation, the relationship, our self and their self. 

Christ does not force anyone. And neither do we.

In tears Jesus looked out over Jerusalem and lamented that they would not let themselves know the truth (Luke 19:41, Matthew 23:37). 

And they would not because of hearts hardened by defensiveness. 

People do not understand the concept of pride as a negative. 

In our society, just as in Bible times, people were raised to take pride in themselves, their family line, their occupation, their wealth, their beauty, their passions, their intellect, and their independence. 

So when confronted with the truth about themselves, which Christ revealed—and still does to us today in His Word—they wanted to stone, chase out of town and malign Him and His followers and refute and corrupt His teaching. 

They were in full protective mode of their hearts that could not bear the threat that He and His followers, and His wisdom, posed. 

They sensed that if they listened to this Man they would no longer be in control of themselves or others. They would no longer be the pride of their own life. They could no longer maintain the high regard for themselves, their lineage, their education, their marriage into a respected family, their income, their self-righteousness. They could no longer deny an honest assessment of their actual condition.

Therefore, they defended themselves and their thoughts, feelings and opinions at all costs.

In favor of a hardened heart, they paid the ultimate price and forfeited new life with Christ, His forgiveness and peace, and reconciliation with our Father God.

I have sent invites; many of us have. 

I have said, “I love you in spite of our troubles.” I have affirmed that “I have not forgotten you but recall you fondly.” 

For some, as it would have been for me at one time, this is just too much to ask, again, especially if we have at times been the one pushing or pulling away. 

Just because healing has taken place for us through Christ (and it may have taken many years), does not mean others are ready, especially if they do not have the understanding of what true reconciliation is because they have not yet been reconciled to God through Christ and thus, have not been reconciled with themselves.

But we can still be reconciled to them before God.

God says,

 “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18). 

We can sleep like a baby, and finally experience the deep and lasting joy of having—in all contrition, sincerity and hope—sent the invitation to reconciliation. 

Our burden no longer exists, knowing that, from our end, the door remains open and will remain open. And that this time, it is real, not an “ought to” (although it may start as that, and that’s okay because we are at least beginning with obedience, which often opens the door to greater insight and knowledge about God’s processes).” 

The reconciliation we then have even with those who stubbornly refuse it is still reconciliation because our hearts, through the power of Christ and His Spirit alone, and through our repeated requests to God, have been cleansed of all unrighteousness towards these individuals (Psalm 51:10). 

And that, as cousin Eddy says in the comedy movie Christmas Vacation, “Is the gift that keeps on giving.”

If rejected or ignored, our invite remains an unconditional offer:  without  pushing, pulling, forcing, guilting, cajoling or enabling. 

We graciously leave them to themselves in our love, going on in their lives at a distance in the peace of Christ, and in gratitude for and embracing of the reconciliation that has occurred, and confident that only Christ can soften a hardened, defensive heart. 

We know that because He softened ours. 

Copyright Barb Harwood