powlison.... has God said???

From this detailed description of the armor to be worn by the disciple of Christ we learn something very important regarding the kind of battle we are in. Note that each weapon represents a Christian doctrine. That is, each component delineated by Paul corresponds to one of the essential truths of the gospel itself. This strongly suggests that spiritual warfare is a battle for truth. Satan’s most powerful weapon is the lie, more specifically, false doctrine. This is also evident in the wilderness encounter between Jesus and the devil. Even earlier, we see the same satanic strategy employed in Genesis 3:1 where the devil asks, “Indeed, has God said . . . ?” (for more on this issue see David Powlison, Power Encounters: Reclaiming Spiritual Warfare. Baker Books, 1995)

Stott on Christians and Social Structures & Authority

Stott paragraph… thinking clearly about Christian view of social structures

#1. There has been abuse and Xns should be vanguard to bring liberation

#2. Liberation does not equal no role distinctions

Our initial reaction to these liberation movements, I do not hesitate to say (although I shall qualify it later), should be one of positive welcome. For we have to agree that women in many cultures have been exploited, being treated like servants in their own home; that children have often been suppressed and squashed, not least in Victorian England in which they were supposed to be ‘seen and not heard’; and that workers have been unjustly treated being given inadequate wages and working conditions, and an insufficient share in responsible decision-making, not to mention the appalling injustices and barbarities of slavery and the slave trade.
We who name Christ’s name need to acknowledge with shame that we ourselves have often acquiesced in the *status quo* and so helped to perpetuate some forms of human oppression, instead of being in the vanguard of those seeking social change. Nothing in the paragraphs we are about to study is inconsistent with the true liberation of human beings from all humiliation, exploitation and oppression. On the contrary, to whom do women, children and workers chiefly owe their liberation? Is it not to Jesus Christ? It is Jesus Christ who treated women with courtesy and honour in an age in which they were despised. It is Jesus Christ who said ‘Let the children come to me’ in a period of history in which unwanted babies were consigned to the local rubbish dump (as they are today to the hospital incinerator), or abandoned in the forum for anybody to pick up and rear for slavery or prostitution. And it is Jesus Christ who taught the dignity of manual labour by working himself as a carpenter, washing his disciples feet and saying ‘I am among you as one who serves.’

CS Lewis quotes on INFECTED WITH ZOE

He is the origin and centre and

life of all the new men. He came into the created universe, of His own will,

bringing with Him the Zoe, the new life. (I mean new to us, of course: in

its own place Zoe has existed for ever and ever.) And He transmits it not by

heredity but by what I have called "good infection." Everyone who gets it

gets it by personal contact with Him. Other men become "new" by being "in

Him." CSL

The difference between Biological life and spiritual life is so

important that I am going to give them two distinct names. The Biological

sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in

Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept

up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc.,

is Bios. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which

made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain

shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance

there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who

changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a

change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real

man.

And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great

sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the

shop that some of us are some day going to come to life. CSL

The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into

the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to "inject"

His kind of life and thought, His Zoe, into you; beginning to turn the tin

soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part

that is still tin. –CSL

My goodness! The “Let’s Pretend” section of Mere Xnity seems amazing at glance.

For you are no longer thinking simply about right and wrong; you are trying
to catch the good infection from a Person. It is more like painting a
portrait than like obeying a set of rules. And the odd thing is that while
in one way it is much harder than keeping rules, in another way it is far easier. –CSL

Communion Helps... Prep your heart

“The very fact that Jesus instituted this practice (Holy Communion) for His disciples is an indictment of our own tendency to forget the reality, necessity, and cost of our redemption. It is also a testimony to Christ’s wisdom and love in providing us with an ongoing, regular, and dramatic reminder of these saving truths.” --Tom Ascol

John Gerstner, “The thing that really separates us from God is not so much our sin, but our damnable good works.”

HC Question 81: For whom is the Lord's supper instituted?Answer: For those who are truly sorrowful for their sins, and yet trust that these are forgiven them for the sake of Christ; and that their remaining infirmities are covered by His passion and death; and who also earnestly desire to have their faith more and more strengthened, and their lives more holy. But hypocrites, and such as turn not to God with sincere hearts, eat and drink judgment to themselves.