Patty was gone to a conference this past week, leaving Wednesday night and not getting back until late Sunday night. She spent most of those days at “The Groaning Cosmos: Sin, Suffering, and the Gospel,” which was a conference for the Association of Biblical Counselors, hosted at The Village Church in Flowermound, Texas. If you’ve got some free time, google it – buy the audio, I promise it’s worth it; and most of the speakers there (Paul Tripp, Matt Chandler, Jeremy Lelek, Tullian Tchividjian, Bob Kellemen, and Elyse Fitzpatrick) either have free podcasts or are frequent twitterers. But this isn’t a plug.
This past week was a very, very long week with Patty gone. I found myself constantly wanting to call or text, hoping someone would buy me an iPhone so we could have some facetime. I listened to songs that made me think of her and paused from time to time at the home screen on my phone, where my wallpaper is one of her bridal portraits. In the midst of it, I started thinking about my older sister, who lost her husband in an accident a few months ago, how, with red face and running mascara, she would sit and look at his pictures on her phone or camera, occasionally pausing to touch the small digital face smiling back at her. And in the midst of all that we felt in those times, I found myself feeling and thinking one thing more poignantly than all: how I yearned to feel that way for Christ. This is why I feel compelled to write the following:
A Brief Discourse in Logic: The Hope, Beauty, and Reason of the Gospel
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs. – Hebrews 1:1-4
I think of a watershed, in which the ocean fuels the clouds, rain falls and forms the headwaters, which forms rivers and creeks and flows through valleys, pooling into lakes and trickling down into aquifers, from which I draw water through the tap in my kitchen. Suppose I lived in a land where the ocean were toxic, the rain subsequently so, and where the headwaters were poisoned by that rain: each part in the process would likewise be tainted, including what fills my glass and, truly, all water that leaves my house and returns to the ground. One could see that all we consumed and all we exuded was tainted, and that this slowly kills everything. To combat this, one might install filters and build treatment plants by which to combat the toxin; this sounds reasonable, but if the ocean is poisoned, then the toxin in the rain on these headwaters is equally pervasive, and therefore the poison rains upon the whole country, infiltrating every substance under the sky. So, would the materials tainted by toxic rain be effective in cleansing the water of the toxin of which they themselves are comprised? No: the whole country is poisoned. No effort to use broken things to fix other broken things ever ends in a fix. A broken machine that manufactures broken tools will never be repaired by the broken tools it manufactures.
So we struggle in efforts to construct a better filter and build a better treatment plant. We struggle to clean the waters before we drink them, and then shake our fists when the water that leaves our home is toxic still. In all of human history, we have suggested and strained toward better filtration, but have never succeeded. Though we alter the color by inserting dyes of various hues, or the taste by injecting something to cover the palate, or the odor by mixing in a fragrance, we have never made any advances in removing the toxin. In this land, no man has ever poured for himself a glass of pure water.
What would happen if there were a change in the ocean? Suppose that pure water fell from pure clouds, formed pure headwaters that filled pure rivers. How long before the water I drank became pure? How long before the water I returned to the ground were pure? There would naturally be no poison in my glass or pan or tub or sink, and subsequently no poison flowing from my house back into the ground. There would be no need for filtration and treatment plants, which never achieved what they were built to accomplish. The greatest problem was a source issue, only solved by a change in the source, and all of the subsequent toxicity could be purified by that root change. But how do we wash what is defiled when what we have to wash it with is itself defiled?
So what hope have we? We see that the poison spoils all, fatal from its source. The only hope is for someone or something big enough to change the source. But for such a task, who must this being be, and what must he be like? He must necessarily be entirely untainted by that toxin if there is any hope that he could cleanse it. Therefore, he must be perfect in power to change the source and to remain untainted by it, and perfect in purity, not being from this spoiled ecosystem. However, to have the power to purify and the desire to purify are two different things; therefore, he must have motive, for what would a being perfect in power and purity find for himself in powerfully purifying our land? We may answer, “What if he also be perfect in love?” But if he is perfect in love, he must love perfectly that which is most lovely and perfect, and that would obviously be himself, perfect in power, purity, and love, not us or our poisoned world. If he is perfect in these things, then he has no need, especially from toxic creatures in a toxic world. Therefore, we come, seemingly, to a dead end: even if there be one who can change the source, what reason can there be for him to choose to do so? The who seems the easier answer; the why is more perplexing. Here at this impasse, perhaps, it is revealed that the toxin has so perpetuated itself in our bodies and our country that our vision is blurred.
If this being, perfect in power, purity, and love, who perfectly loves what is perfectly lovely, namely himself, then is it not in the nature of love to display and share what is lovely? When I’ve found a great restaurant or recipe, isn’t my first reaction to share the news of it? If I love a musician’s work, don’t I play it for others to hear? If I love my wife and her beauty, do I not naturally praise her and remark on what I find beautiful in her? By nature, love brings forth admiration, and admiration naturally brings forth praise of the object loved; praise is a public proclamation of the worthiness of that object to be loved, and naturally compels the lover to share it, and we delight to see others love it, as well. Therefore, if there be a perfect being, perfect in love, he must love himself most highly as he is the very thing most highly worthy of love; and in this highest and purest love, would he not naturally seek to share it, and have others delight in it? Though love can be poisoned, twisted to end on the lover rather on the object loved, one who is not tainted by the toxin would not be prone to do so, and indeed would be unable to do so, just as one who is not wounded is unable to bleed. Does it not follow that, if he loves perfectly what is perfectly lovely, namely himself, his greatest delight would be for his loveliness to be seen and delighted in? Wouldn’t his greatness happiness be in displaying his perfection, that others may see it and delight in it? So would not a being, perfect in power, purity, and love, delight to display his perfection by instigating contact with a poisoned world, changing the source of the toxin by providing a pure source that only he could offer, and thus rescue the citizens of that world from the poison, and see them turn to him and say joyfully, “How perfectly lovely you are!” This does not betray a deficiency in the being that needs affirmation and adoration, but a glad being that delights in the gladness that others find in what is perfectly lovely: himself.
This is the Gospel, that a perfect God, out of an overflow of His perfection, created all things and created within all things a longing to delight in what is most lovely. We introduced a toxin in Sin, which is by its very nature a rebellion against the perfect God by whom and for whom all things were created. Our poison has pervaded and infiltrated every corner of the country we inhabit, from the cosmic to the atomic, visible and invisible, and we are poisoned people in a poisoned world playing with poisoned things in an effort to fill a hole meant for an untainted Perfection. This is the necessity for the Gospel. The hope of the Gospel is for a perfect God who is perfect in power and purity that He may be able to rescue us. The joy of the Gospel is that through His Son Jesus Christ, He has rescued us! Christ was and is the antidote, plunged into the very heart of the poison, to absorb all of the poison, to become Himself the poison, and to be justly and rightly expunged from the land. In triumph, perfect in power, purity, and love, He conquered the venomous Sin and the end of Sin, Death; He conquered it fully and perfectly, being raised again untainted and alive, sounding the death knell of Sin and Death, and sitting at the right hand of the perfect God, making purification for the poison that plagued the land. Now, those whom He has purified, out of their delight in His loveliness and perfection, run back into the countryside to announce to all that hope has come, that there is a new ocean, a new rain, a new headwater from which flows living water. They sing unending songs for the Unending Beauty and gave all things for the Greatest Pleasure, which is the One who has come, to rescue and to be delighted in.
“It is the chief end of man to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.”
-John Piper
