As many of you know, I had a serious-rare cancer last year (desmoplastic small cell round tumor-sarcoma) — you can read more about that by clicking here ) — in fact the statistical survival rate for my kind of cancer is that 15% to 20% of those diagonosed with my cancer don’t make it to 5yrs, and if they do they basically have to live with it as a chronic illness on chemo until they finally succumb (I was declared “cancer-free” about a month and a half ago).

I just wanted to praise the LORD, that He is not the God who is determined to be who He is by the statistics. That nothing in creation holds Him captive, that everything He does ‘for us’ in Christ is shaped and flows out of His inner-life of love and is acted out through the fullness of grace and truth, for us, in Christ! Going through the hell of cancer and treatments and surgery and procedures and blood transfusions and infections and edema and mouth sores and fissures (in places you don’t want them) and etc. makes you realize how utterly dependent you are on an ‘ecstatic’ and ‘received’ life; that there is nothing in your own resources that should allow you to come through all of that, and live.

It was really just prior to my diagnosis that I had come to the point in my thinking where I was willing to label myself an ‘Evangelical Calvinist’. But going through the cancer, usually, at most points, I could care less about that ‘label’, I could care less about debates surrounding Calvinism, Arminianism, Barthianism, etc. All that I cared about was ‘Who’ God was. And the only way I knew ‘Who’ He was, was by looking at Jesus. What stood out to me the most, conceptually (when able), in those moments of deep darkness was that I had a vicarious High Priest. That the life of suffering that I was living in, was a life already lived ‘for me’ (us) in Jesus Christ. That He so intimately identified with me in His humanity — which was/is my humanity — that the suffering He endured, the death He died, are now something that I was (and am) being given over to (cf. II Cor. 4.10). These are things that I am participating with Him in (not as if these are present realities for Him, in this time of “now” vs. “not yet”), but, amen, the good news is that the participation doesn’t stop at the grave; the participation pushes through into the resurrection and ascension, all the way to the right hand of the Father (cf. Heb. 7.25).

This is some of the ‘practical’ truth that ‘EC’ provides in times of deep trouble. There is an emphasis of deep ‘wedded’ union with Christ, brought about by the ‘arabon’ (guarantor) or Holy Spirit that is sustaining like an anchor in the deep stormy waters. In real life, the ‘label’ of ‘EC’ doesn’t mean a hill of beans; in actual fact, it’s the conceptual-theological-evangelical truth (which the label ‘Evangelical Calvinist’ only serves as its symbol) that provides the stalwart in times of both cursing and blessing — so that we know that even the cursing is also the blessing. To me, vicariousness is a touchstone provided by ‘EC’ that can’t be beat, there is nothing better than knowing that we have a ‘high priest’ who can sympathize with us in every way; because He too has been ‘tempted/tested’ like us (He knows what it is to suffer without sin unto death).

Anyway, I thought I would share this testimony, just to give a more developed or round look at what I think ‘EC’ offers and is. It is more than a blog name, or mediating position between Calvinism or Arminianism; it offers a deep and wide, sound view of a God who is love, and He demonstrates that by becoming a man ‘for us’ (and not just ‘for us’ in the past, but a God who will always be ‘for us’ in Christ into the great escaton).