Thou Art The Man!
No.136: December 2, 2022
Dear Friends,
I’ve just finished a 12 hour drive that included a trip over an icy and snowy Sierra-Nevada divide, and I’ve got a dinner to get to, so I need to make this short and sweet. Because I’m really tired and hungry. So this will be more like a quick reminder of how gracious God really is.
Imagine. To have done dark and terrible deeds and to have them exposed. To lose one’s job and livelihood overnight—and forever. To have it be the case that the deeds require something like vocational capital punishment in the field in which you work—molding the minds of children. The shock, the realization that what you thought hidden is now in plain sight. To hear the words “Thou art the man!” (2 Sam.12:7)
The ultimate moment of testing.
Dishearteningly, if you read my Wednesday newsletter, you might remember that this week a young man failed the test. He responded, “I am not the man!” But he was, in fact, the man. And I do not write this to pile on his misery. I write this to encourage all of us—you and me included—to remember something it is so easy to forget. An obvious thing that we forget.
It is so very like Lewis’s The Silver Chair, when Aslan tells Jill Pole all of the important signs to remember. He tells her that when she descends from the mountaintop into Narnia, the air is thicker down there and her head will get foggy. She will have trouble remembering the signs. We are like that, too. We know the good news of Jesus Christ. We know what it entails. And at the moment of testing, it is prone to simply slip our minds. And it is at this very moment, this crucible, that we see what Jesus meant when he said:
If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it (Matt.16:24-25).
Repentance is death. That is what it feels like. Even physically. We try to save our lives. If I own up to this, if people knew about this, then my life is over! Jesus says that there is only one way of saving your life. To deny yourself and to take up the instrument of crucifixion—that is: be slain.
“I am the man!”
That seems so impossible. And that is why, friends, we seem to live in a day and age in which nobody can ever seem to really apologize.
But that “be slain!” done for the sake of Christ, to acknowledge the truth of God’s evaluation of us, to repent in dust and ashes, to say “I am the man!” is the only way to life. Because the one who slays us with the truth about ourselves is the one who raises the dead and forgives sins. Did you hear that? FORGIVES SINS! Hallelujah! And he does so because HE was slain for those very sins.
Oh, it truly breaks my heart to hear the professing Christian say, “I am not the man!” when he is, in fact the man. Cast yourself on the mercy of God in Christ! The exposure of sin is so brutal, so “death-like,” his judgments are so severe; but they are a severe mercy. I hope that young man comes to know that this affair was not his condemnation, but God’s astounding mercy—to not let him go the way of damnation, but to mercy and glory.
I am typing this on my phone and traveling and do not have the time to pull up just now a passage from Herman Bavinck. It is on the final two pages of his section called “The Judgment of Sin” in Volume 3 of his Dogmatics. Paraphrased: He says it is a far better thing to fall into the hands of the living God than into the hands of men. Because when men judge, they do so harshly with no hope in their condemnation. But God is merciful when men are not. They would grind you down to nothing and treat you like an animal. But God is rich in mercy. He convicts not to “cancel” you, but to save you.
If you ever happen to be “the man!” acknowledge it and throw yourself upon the merciful one. It feels like death.
Take up your cross and lose your life. Because he raises the dead.
Thanks for reading this week! I hope you have a wonderful weekend.