Category Archives: Discipleship

Knowledge of God Through Suffering: With Reference to Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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When we suffer as Christians, we come to know God because we are no longer reliant upon ourselves, we have no resource in ourselves, and so we are pressed deep into the ground of our life in Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul understood this well when he wrote to the Corinthian church,

8 For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia: that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life. 9 Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead, 10 who delivered us from so great a death, and does deliver us; in whom we trust that He will still deliver us, 11 you also helping together in prayer for us, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the gift granted to us through many. -II Corinthians 1:8-11

When faced with the uncertainties of daily life, when pressed against the direst of consequences we really have nowhere else to go; it is really hard to deceive ourselves at that point, we are very vulnerable. This is the perfect scenario for God’s wisdom to reach us where we are truly at; we often do not realize how needy we are until we are needy. And this is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from his Nazi prison cell about God’s wisdom versus the religious wisdom of the world:

Here is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions. Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world: God is the deus ex machina. The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help. To that extent we may say that the development towards the world’s coming of age outlined above, which has done away with a false conception of God, opens up a way of seeing the God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by his weakness. This will probably be the starting-point for our secular interpretation.[1]

What suffering does for both the Apostle Paul and Dietrich Bonhoeffer is to tear back the un-reality, and un-truth of the human religions of the world; and instead, it shows us humans, especially us Christians (who may well have imbibed the wisdom of the world), how empty everything else is a part from our God who humbled himself to the point of deep suffering and agonizing death. It is in this instance in this moment when our suffering is seen to correlate with his suffering for us at the cross, and our knowledge of God increases in dependence upon his life; the life that death and suffering could not hold down.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 359-61.

*Written, originally, in 2014.

Confessions On Why I Do Theology

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I have been asked over the years why I do what I do; in regard to reading and writing theology. I’ve been asked if this is some sort of hobby for me (one time I was assertively told that that is all this ever could be). I am always taken aback by this question. I look at inhabiting Scripture as my life, not a vain thing. I look at good theology as an extension of, and deep dive into the inner-reality of Scripture; which is, Jesus Christ. I look at my Christian existence, and the doing of theology therein, as my lifelong discipleship project; as my sanctification; and this, wrapped in a doxological frame. But I didn’t arrive at this perspective without years of trial and tribulation. It has been those seasons of despair where the Lord has broken down all of the artificial and cultural structures funding my being, and rebuilding from there; on the foundation that only God alone can lay in Jesus Christ. And of course, these seasons ebb and flow continuously as the Christian’s life. I don’t view reading the Bible, reading theology, doing theology, practicing theology, as anything other than as an act of loving worship of my Father; indeed, of the triune life of my God.

I can sort of understand how that might look like a hobby to some. But at least for me, in the economy of God’s kingdom, I have no other categories through which to be in a constant growing and learning relationship with the living God. Indeed, I’m unsure how it is possible to really live the Christian life otherwise. It is false to reduce theology to a purely intellectual type of masturbation. This would indeed be some type of hobby of idolatry, wherein the person’s navel becomes something of their own holy of holies. God forbid that I would fall prey to ever viewing the engaging of theology as a hobby to massage the intellect with. For me, it is an Affective Theology that is at work, as that is grounded in the vicarious life of Christ whom I have come into the grace of adoption with. I have no categories for thinking the Christian life except through very intentional categories as those; indeed, as those are ever afresh anew apocalyptically inbreaking into my life as a Christian from this moment to the next by the mercy of the triune God.

My life, I always hope, is simply to be a witness to the ground of my life; who is the Christ. And in order for that to be an organically spiritual thing, it must be one that is deeply rooted in doing the work of rightly dividing the Word which is truth. For me, it has to be all or nothing. And even my all, apart from Christ, is never enough. But as Paul says: we aim for perfection. That is, we aim for the eschatological life of God to keep renewing us by both His death and life, as that is given expression through the mortal members of our bodies.

This is not a pietism. It is instead a devotion for Christ propelled by the very passion of His life for me, as my own. In other words, this approach of worship flips what is typically understood as a pietism on its head. It does this by understanding that the condition for living the Christian existence before God entails the concrete life of Christ as the ecstatic ground that it is, as He has come to us for us, and in turn, taken us with Him into the bosom of the Father. So, it isn’t a turn to the subject, and then only following, a reflexive turn to God. It is an immediate turn upward to God through the inner union Christians have come to have with Christ for them and in them by the Holy Spirit.

Everyone is a Theologian, Even the aTheologians

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Friedrich Nietzsche

I don’t think most know this: but every decision a person makes in this life is informed by theology. That doesn’t mean it is being informed by a genuinely Christian theology, but theology just the same. Many people presume that they aren’t religious, and thus further presume that they simply live a-theological lives. But the problem with that, one anyways, is that in a world that is contingent upon God’s Word, His eternal Logos, Jesus Christ, for its ongoing existence, everything in such a world necessarily becomes theological (“religious” even). If this is true (and be sure, it is!), it behooves the Christian and the non-Christian alike to work at having the good theology; indeed, as that is delivered afresh anew as Jesus Christ at the Father’s Right Hand, in-breaks into this world by the Holy Spirit into each one of our lives on the daily (second-by-second). You might think you’re free from this, oh dearest self-proclaimed “non-religious” person. Jesus makes clear that the Holy Spirit comes convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and the judgment to come. And so, this invites each and every one of us to live the repentant life. The life that Christ first lived for us every step, every breath He took for us as He lived here among us some two-thousand years ago. It is the life of the cross; we are called to take up the cross of Christ daily and follow Him. To be sure, He has already done that first for us. Hence, He has called us, and is calling us, and is calling you to walk in the power of His might, who is the Holy Spirit of the living God.

We are all theologians in this world, whether we might like it or not. Even if you think you’re an a-theologian (think atheist or agnostic, or “non-religious”), even so, you make “theological” decisions every day of your life. It is impossible not to whilst we inhabit a world that has been graciously created and recreated by the triune God; in a world where every single human life is held and made in the image of God, who is the image of Christ.

Suicide as Self-Deicide, A Theological Thought

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Barth in his continuing development of a Christian Ethic, in this section, has been discussing self-power versus real power, which is God’s. In this development he has arrived at a discussion on suicide. He is taking self-power, in abstraction from God’s power, to entail a pseudo-power (self-power), and reducing it to its logical conclusion; which ironically, is at the heights of illogicality. He refers to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thinking on this, even as Barth goes on to paraphrase Bonhoeffer’s position.[1]

To the best of my knowledge, the Ethik of D. Bonhoeffer (1949, 111–116) gives us the most cautious statement so far written on this matter. We cannot expect every man at every moment to know from his own experience the meaning of real affliction and assault, “when we are in the greatest distress and do not know which way to turn.” A man assailed and afflicted is hid from all others and sometimes even from himself. He is alone with God, and tortured by the terrible question whether God is really with him and for him, or whether he must regard himself as an atheist, i.e., a man who God has rejected and abandoned. Many theologians and theological moralists do not in practice know properly what affliction is because exegetically, dogmatically and even pastorally they know only too well in theory. In all cases, however, suicide is consciously or unconsciously this final assault and affliction. Even the most confirmed theological moralist ought to see this, and therefore to remember that perhaps he does not finally now what takes place between God and the suicide, nor therefore what is the decision which drives him to this dubious act. Is he really a self-murderer? A readiness to recognise that he may not have been a self-murderer at all is required of all who know what it is to be assailed and afflicted, even if only in theory.[2]

So, a twist. Indeed, suicide represents a complexity. In order to actually go through with a suicide a person must be at such a point of travail, by whatever antecedent and present circumstances, that it seems like the only choice left; the one last choice to take control in the midst of the utter chaos, pain, tribulation of whatever the moment is presenting the person with, and end it all (at least on the side where the visibly and physically seen predominates). I have been at these points myself; whether that be in the years long spiritual battle I had with anxiety, depression, dark nights of the soul; or whether that be at the tail end of my incurable/terminal cancer treatment (being so worn down, in so much pain, that it was starting to seem like “ending it all” might be the way out).

Conversely, as Barth paraphrases and riffs Bonhoeffer, even though it starts to become understandable why someone might feel the ultimate desperation of ending it all, even so, this remains a matter of self-power. It is an appeal to the body of death we inhabit to muster all of its resources and conjure up a solution to the desperation; particularly in the absence of that, in regard to the pastors, the doctors, the psychologists, psychiatrists, so on and so forth. Our frames are but dust, and God in Christ knows that, even experientially; and at heights we cannot begin to imagine. And yet, there are seasons of life when God seems utterly absent, as if he has left us alone to travail the path without the Light of His Lamp for us. And again, like Job, it is at this point that we have come to despair of existence itself. Job’s resolve, even in the face of “curse God and die,” was “though You slay me, yet shall I praise You.” This is the resource, beyond our bodies of death, that God in Christ alone provides for us. It is as we come to realize that we are genuinely participatio Christi, that we are constantly being given over to Christ’s death for us, that the mortal members of our bodies might exemplify Christ’s body in us, that we can have the Jobian resolve. Even so, it is as if we are merely hanging on at that point. The enemy of our souls keeps pushing us to refer to the resource and reserve of our bodies of death, which, as we have noted, concludes in suicide. It is only when we have bought the lie of Deicide, that suicide seems to be the final solution for our personal and individual existences. When we have self-deified, and concluded that the body of death we inhabit, these dusty apparatuses, in the face of tribulation and despair, that the only way forward is self-deicide (as if our body of death is ultimately the only real deity left to turn to).

[1] It isn’t often that you get a Barth paraphrase on Bonhoeffer.

[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/4 §55 [404] The Doctrine of Creation: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 77.

Theology as Discipleship

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Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. –II Timothy 2.15

For a long time, I’ve thought of reading and doing theology as an act of sanctification and discipleship. How else is the Christian supposed to act rightly (orthopraxis) without knowing rightly (orthodoxy)? These are bound together in a dialectical bundle whilst the one implicates the other, and vice versa. In short: without the work of prayerful and worshipful study before God there cannot be any Christian growth. When the disciple does a word study of the word translated ‘accurately handling’ what the student will notice is that this word entails toiling. That is to say, if the Christian, who are priests of God in and through participation and union with Christ’s priesthood for us (pro nobis), are going to ‘grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ’ (see the papal theology of the Petrine, Peter), this will involve a toiling work of engaging with Holy Scripture; indeed, with its res (reality), Jesus Christ.

With the aforementioned, what I am pressing is that the Christian existence does not ‘just happen’; there is no magic in the Kingdom of Christ. The Christian is called to separation unto God, in and through the separation unto God that Christ is for us, whilst in these fallen bodies (Rom. 7). In short, it takes real life daily and constant work if the Christian is really going to grow in a relationship with the triune God. The Kingdom is not cradled by a baby’s milk, but by the meat of the Holy Sanctuary of God as that is constantly provided for us by the One who, at the Right Hand, is constantly living to make intercession for us. As those who are constantly being given over to the death of Christ, that the life of Christ might also be made manifest through the mortal members of our bodies, we are beholden as slaves of God in Christ to stand in the power of God in Christ’s might, and take every thought captive unto the obedience of Christ; indeed, as this is prayerfully and worshipfully undertaken in a submission to the Logos of God. It is in this condition that the Christian might strive to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. That is from the loving obedience of the Son before the Father by the Holy Spirit for us.

The moral of this is that the Western church, by and large, remains weak because it is primarily populated by lazy people; that is, in regard to putting in the work to know and grow in a knowledge of God in Jesus Christ.

Disallowing Secular Unbelief to Dictate the Terms of God

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Secular, worldly unbelief. I think Christians often allow the bar to be set much too low. Much of Christian theology, for example, especially those that have taken shape in the natural theology forest, allow the skeptic’s unbelief to dictate the types of questions the theologians seek to answer. Primary of which are observed in Thomas Aquinas’ Prima Pars (first part) of his Summa Theologiae. Here, Thomas seeks to answer the questions of God’s existence, and whether or not it is coherent to believe that God exists (like a generic God; albeit, in Thomas’ context this would be applied to the Christian God simplicter, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case for him). Once Thomas felt that he had sufficiently answered the skeptic’s arguments, about what God is; he then proceeded onto other matters—which would entail the Trinity, the Church, Justification and all other theological matters. It isn’t really the order of theology, per se, that is problematic with Thomas’ method (although I would qualify and say: that the order is bereft because it starts with a Monadic conception of God; even so, it starts with God, just from the wrong place). But the fact that he feels compelled to first prove “a God’s” existence, and then only after that apply this “proven God’s” existence to some of the more Dogmatic questions of the Church has a highly disordering effect after all.

So, the above is an example of how I believe, at a high level, theology can take its cues and categories from the wrong unbelieving people; and then, of course!, end up with the wrong theological and biblical conclusions. But I think this happens to each and everyone of us, as Christians (at least those attempting to walk as intentional Christians), as we are constantly bombarded with the wares of our Secular Age. As the Apostle Paul counters, even as he is referring to the false teachings and antagonisms of the Pseudo-Apostles in Corinth:

Now I, Paul, myself urge you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am meek when face to face with you, but bold toward you when absent! 2 I ask that when I am present I need not be bold with the confidence with which I propose to be courageous against some, who regard us as if we walked according to the flesh. 3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. 5 We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, 6 and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.

I am looking at the principle embedded in the emboldened section in particular. Wherever these “speculations” are coming from, whether it be from Joe Pagan at work, or if it be Plato in the heavens, we are to discern such things for what they are, and “take it captive” unto Christ. The simple point I am drawing on is that it is a spiritual battle to ensure that the way we think God, as Christians, is only taken from, and in an immediate way, from God who has spoken to us (and speaks to us) in His Self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Even if there are hallowed traditions, some might call it the Great Tradition of the Church, without any further explication (i.e., it just is), these traditions themselves are always subservient to the reality of Holy Scripture, the theology of the Word, Jesus Christ. And this is the battle we face, on the daily, as Christians. This applies to all Christians, in one way or the other. We are faced with unbelief all around; that’s what this evil age entails. But we are to be more vigilant than theologians of glory, who seek to synthesize the wisdom of the world with the wisdom of the cross. Indeed, we are to be theologians of the cross; and by the wisdom of God, which is the cross of Christ, we are to recognize these false speculative and flighty ideas about God, even if they have many solid layerings and accretions of traditions behind them, in the name of the Church, and test them, in the face of Christ and the triune God, to see if they be so.

This is a prayerful way though.

God’s Triune Love-Knowledge as the Ground of Our Knowledge of God

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‘Without love all knowledge means nothing.’ Some, many, take this to mean that gaining knowledge, like deeper theological and biblical knowledge, necessarily entails that this is an unloving thing to do. Of course, the passage in I Corinthians 13 does not say that. It just says: that knowledge without love means nothing. So getting knowledge, like of Jesus Christ and the triune God, is really everything. And entailed within that, as that is first established for us in the vicarious humanity of Christ, the object of our knowledge, who turns out to be the subject and ground of our very lives, is in fact love. All I’m struggling to say is that being “anti-intellectual” (for lack of a better term) in the Christian frame necessarily fails precisely because the Christ-frame is in fact full of the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Also, I’m not promoting what is called an intellectualist anthropology, in fact, just the opposite. There are plenty of theologies out there, particularly in the Latin or Western world, that start in the intellectualist anthropological ground. This is primarily because these traditions have falsely appropriated philosophical notions of godness wherein what it means to be God is to be the Big Brain, the pure act (actus purus) in the sky by and by.

And of course, the aforementioned isn’t who God has Self-revealed Himself to be for us. He has Self-revealed Himself to be Father, our Father, of the Son, in the eternal felicity and bond of the Holy Spirit. This is why God just is love; because He’s an eternal Subject-in-Being interpenetrating perichoretic koinonial co-inhering communion of intimate oneness-in-threeness / threeness-in-oneness.

 

A Brief Soliloquy on the Phantom of the Lesser of Evils

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The “lesser of two evils”–on a slippery slope–reduces to utter chaos and travail. At some point on that slope, the Christian in particular, must step off before oblivion hits. At some point the realization must hit that within the current framework–whatever that is at the time–there must be a “redline,” which indicates that the most prudent thing to do is to jump off the slippery slope onto the solid ground of Christ’s kingdom. Canaan kept devolving, devolving, devolving, and on the logic of the “lesser of two evils” Christians would continue on with compromising, compromising, compromising, to the point that their convictions of two decades ago, for example, now look like the opposing party’s of that time. On a scale of “evil,” how can this approach consistently be one of a “lesser of two evils,” when the goal posts of evil are constantly being shifted and downgraded into something even more intense? Evil is evil. A compromise with evil is a compromise with death.

Christianity is not a Philosophy of Life: It is God’s Unilateral Life for Us

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Photo credit, Mikhail Shankov circa. 1995

John 14:

7 If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.”

8 Philip *said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus *said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. 11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves. 12 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. 13 Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

Just wanted to register a quick thought. Being a Christian isn’t a philosophy of life. It isn’t a personal, or individualist lived life as if the human agent can somehow live however they like. As a Christian we live the Christian life, by definition, as those in submission to our Lord; as those who desire to obediently follow the Father; as those who are about doing the will of our Father. We are not simply imitators or exemplars or mimics of what we perceive to be the Way, Truth, and Life. We are as Christians those who find life in obedience; we live life as Christians wherein keeping the commandments of God are not burdensome. This is not to say that we are legalists, that is, that we are justified by God based upon what we do; God forbid it! But it is to say that we are in such a status of unity and union with God in Christ that it becomes very difficult to not want to do the will of the Father. This is so, because as Christians the very ground of our lives, ontologically and ontically, is the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ Himself. As John says: “as He is so also are we in this world” and “apart from Him we can do nothing.”

In light of the above facts, Christians aren’t in fact free to make up their own version of what the Christian existence entails. It necessarily entails obedience to the Father; just because the very ground of our lives in Christ is based upon Christ’s life indeed, such that who He is for us, we by the Spirit become and are becoming. We are being transformed from glory to glory in Christ, but only as we are constantly denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Christ; and only as we are reposing in the fact that Christ has already done that and does that for us each and every moment of each and every day. This is what the Apostle Paul is so often opining about: that is, that we, as Christians, those indwelt by the Holy Spirit, have resurrection power, resurrection life as the very ground of our lives.

If we fail to live out of the One we claim to be our life (and whether we claim that or not, at an objective level, He is), then we deny our very existence as human beings. Since, Jesus Christ alone is in fact God’s humanity, God’s human, God’s image for us, it is impossible to live as human beings without bowing the knee, moment by moment, in obedience to the Father; just as that knee was first bowed for us in the obedience of the Son to the Father to be for us and not against us.

Again, I wanted to register this because I witness way too many so-called Christians who live at odds with the very ground of their self-proclaimed life in Jesus Christ. The Gospel is not a philosophy of life. The Gospel is God’s reality and Yes and No for us, confronting us afresh anew every day, telling us that we are not Lord, but that God in Christ alone is. We are, as Christians, by definition, those who have come to understand that the Word of God gets to determine for us what in fact genuine human life entails; that we acknowledge that our way is not the best way, but that God’s Way alone is the only way to genuinely live life from God’s life for us in Christ.

We all struggle, indeed. But we must be engaged in the battle. We are not allowed to make up excuses for why we perdure in our favorite sins. We are not allowed to construct a philosophy of life based on Christianity, as if Christianity is an idea. Christianity, and its Gospel, is not an idea, it is a person, God’s triune life and person in Jesus Christ. It is His unilateral movement towards us, with us, and ostensibly in us that contradicts our plans and ways, with His plan and Way in Jesus Christ. We are to submit to this, God’s Way, and no longer submit to our base desires and ways based on submission to the word of the serpent. It is Christ’s love that constrains us, as such, our lives ought to reflect this type of constraint; even, and especially when we sin. David was a man after God’s heart, not because he didn’t sin and fail miserably, but because he always, even after a season, came back in repentance to the Way and the will of God. The Christian’s life is the repentant life; it is God’s life lived for us in Jesus Christ.

 

Defeating False Condemnation by Resting in the Humanity of Jesus Christ

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Wanted to provide a brief word on sin, and being free from it and any sense of condemnation it might bring into our lives post-confession/repentance. I have past sins that the accuser of my soul likes to bring up at points. I have to dig down with the Lord in prayer, and almost mechanically/analytically work through what He has done for me and how that implicates who I am now as a new creation in Christ. Douglas Campbell highlights how sin functions in the Apostle Paul’s thinking quite well:

The seriousness of Paul’s account of human wrongdoing here needs to be noted. If sin is just a series of bad choices that proceed from a fundamentally healthy nature, then Jesus needs to provide only a clear example of how to behave, along with some additional teaching about right acting. That he had to die, executing our condition, then resurrecting human nature in a new form, suggests that there was something irredeemably corrupt and contaminated in the old one. As some scholars would put it, our problem is radical (from the Latin radix, meaning “root”), suggesting that our problem goes down into the very roots of our nature.[1]

The assumption of our humanity, by Christ, and then Him putting it to death suggests (strongly) that sin has penetrated our very natures (ontology) as human beings; that nothing short of that ‘old man’ being put to death and a ‘new man’ being re-created in the resurrection of Jesus Christ will do. It is only through union with Christ, through participation with Christ’s vicarious humanity that the Christian comes to have fellowship with the Holy and triune God. It is in this where the Christian lives into what it genuinely means to be human coram Deo.

With the aforementioned as the background let me provide a scenario. I’m humming along, all of the sudden the enemy pops up his grubby face and starts attempting to remind me of past sins. Before I knew how to handle this, this sort of accusation would trip me up very badly. Now I no longer fall for this, since I am not ‘ignorant of the devil’s devices.’ What I do when this happens is turn to the logic of Romans 8:

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 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.

1) I recognize that in my fallen heart I am even worse than what the loser enemy is accusing me of. 2) I recognize that ‘He who knew know sin became sin for me that I might become the righteousness of God in Him.’ 3) I recognize that Jesus Christ took that old man that the devil seeks to thwart me with, condemn me with, and has put it do death in His humanity. 4) I recognize that because I am ‘in Christ’ in His death and burial, that likewise I am always and forever in Christ in His resurrected humanity. 5) I recognize that the enemy is attempting to condemn a humanity that the living God of all creation took for Himself and me with Him. 6) I recognize that if the enemy wants to attack anyone He must attack and condemn the ‘Son of Man.’ 7) I recognize that that poser god, the devil, already tried to condemn the Christ, and all that resulted in was Jesus triumphing over him, and his minions, making a public spectacle of him at the cross. 8) I recognize that who I am is so inextricably bound to who Christ is for me that the enemy no longer has a target to hit in me. 9) I recognize that I am not in a place, nor is the sucker evil one to condemn anyone. 10) I recognize that God is the only One who can rightfully condemn anyone. 11) I recognize that the Judge became judged for me, that I might have and find my life in His. 12) I recognize that the enemy is a beaten foe, and a chump; I tell him to eat skubalon in the name of Jesus Christ.

This is the exercise I have been going through over the last couple of days. To God in Christ alone be the Glory!   

[1] Douglas A. Campbell, Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 116, n.7.