Father, we come to you this morning as people who need to be redeemed. We need to be made whole. We confess that we need You to heal us for we cannot heal ourselves.

We confess our wandering hearts. We run after acceptance, prestige, wealth, order, pleasure and novelty in a desperate effort to heal our hearts. None of these can redeem us, none of these can make us whole. Yet we are slow to learn. Forgive us we pray.

We confess our faithless hearts. We have looked for redemption everywhere but in your arms. We haven’t looked there, because we doubt your love for us. Forgive us we pray.

Now, Father, accept our confession and receive us gladly. We ask this not upon our deserving it, or even the honesty of our confession, but for the sake of Jesus. You rejected Him, the innocent, in order to embrace us, the guilty. Amen.

What do I talk about most on Eucatastrohpe? Snap Shirts tells you what it thinks with the “word cloud” image to the right. What’s a “word cloud?” you ask.

“A word cloud is a visual depiction of content (words) used in a body of text. The word clouds we use at snapshirts.com are arranged alphabetically and depict more frequently used words in progressively larger fonts.”

(HT: Crosstraining)

I fly out of Newark for Scotland tomorrow to attend The Epistle to the Hebrews & Christian Theology 2006 conference at St. Mary’s College of the University of St. Andrews. I’m extremely thankful for the grant from Backus Books that made this trip possible. My intention is to give a full report of the conference (and of the tour I’m taking), with pictures, on my blog once I return. Here are some of the scholars presenting papers:

Craig Blomberg, Denver Seminary
Ardel Caneday, Northwestern College
Richard Bauckham, University of St. Andrews
Edward Adams, King’s College London
John Polkinghorne, Queens’ College, Cambridge
Richard Hays, Duke University (Keynote Address)
Harold Attridge, Yale Divinity School
I. Howard Marshall, University of Aberdeen
John Webster, University of Aberdeen (Keynote Address)
Bruce McCormack, Princeton Theological Seminary

I’m convinced that I cannot be real with others or myself without the gospel. It’s not a “cannot” like “I cannot eat ice cream because I’m on a diet.” No, it is more like “I cannot leap tall buildings in a single bound.” It’s an impossible cannot, not a voluntary, self-imposed cannot. Without the gospel, being real with others is an impossibility for me. If I lose sight of the gospel, it’s not long until I find myself saying this or doing that so that people will view me one way and not another. As soon as I begin to say or do things so that others think I’m like this or like that, I’ve ceased to be real with them and with myself. This is hypocrisy. When the gospel loses its central place in my consciousness, my modus operandi is to attempt to create and sustain an identity with which those within my circle of relationships will be impressed.

The main problem with this failure to be real with others and myself is not that I’m failing to be real with others and myself. That’s a problem for sure, but it’s not the main problem. So what is it? It’s my failure to be real with God. My main problem when I’m saying and doing things for the purpose of influencing how people think of me is that, ultimately, I’m failing to be real with God Himself.

Consider two ways in which these two failures are connected. First, when I fail to be real with others, I’m guilty of exalting man’s view of me over God’s view of me. It means I care more about what man thinks of me than I do about what God thinks of me. This is idolatry because it essentially puts another god before my eyes, namely, the god of human opinion. To be real with people means having no other gods before the God (Exodus 20:3).

Second, when I fail to be real with others, I’m guilty of relying upon human works to make myself presentable rather than upon God’s grace. It means that I’m seeking acceptance on my own terms rather than resting in the acceptance that has come to me by grace. Trying to be who I am not before others is a form of works righteousness. It is the kind of thing we do when we are not resting in God’s gracious provision in Jesus. Choosing not to be real with others is ultimately an affront to God’s grace.

Only through the gospel can I admit who I really am to others or even to myself. When I lose sight of the gospel, there’s no way I can bear up under the weight of the knowledge of the sin that lurks within the recesses of my own heart. If I can’t bear it myself, I certainly can’t bear allowing other people to see it. But through the gospel I can bear to acknowledge the depth of my own sin, whether to myself or to others, because it has already been judged in Jesus. As Paul says, for those who are in Jesus the Messiah there is no longer any condemnation (Romans 8:1). The gospel says that because of the work of Jesus not only do I not have a sentence of condemnation hanging over my head but I also have God’s full and gracious acceptance. Only when I see those two twin truths in the gospel, namely, that I’m no longer condemned but rather graciously accepted because of the work of Jesus the Messiah, can I truly be real with others and begin to give God His rightful place in my life.

Beyond this, the gospel also announces God’s provision for my ongoing struggles with being real. It reminds again and again that God has dealt with all of my sin, even my hypocrisy, in Jesus. He accepts me not because I’m being real but because Jesus was real in my place in his life and death. Only the gospel enables me to press forward in my quest to be real with God, others, and myself.

I took these shots in Lushan National Park, Jiangxi, China.

Noah, 2 1/2, is our youngest. I had the privilege of interviewing him last week.

me: “Noah, what does Superman do?”

Noah: “Ahh, Fly.”

me: “What does Spiderman do?”

Noah: “Hmmm, Climb.”

me: “What does Dash do?”

Noah: “Run fast.”

me: “What does Buzz Lightyear do?”

Noah: “Fly.”

me: “What does Woody do?”

Noah: “Pulls a string out of his back, ‘There’s a snake in my boot.’”

Go Woody!!!

*Pic of Noah was taken by agirlwithacamera. Thanks!

I took all but one of these pics:

I don’t plan on posting many written pieces this summer. It’s summer-blogging-break time for me. But I do intend to post pics from my recent trip to China. Our trip to the Fuzhou orphanage was remarkable. Here’s the first installment of pics: