Skip to main content

A prodigal God



Can God be prodigal?

Definition:
- spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant
- having or giving something on a lavish scale

Richard Sibbes again: "In Christ there is not only abundance, but redundance, a diffusive and spreading goodness... as in the sun to send forth beams. As Christ is full of grace and truth... so there is an overflowing of all that is good for our good. He that could multiply bread for the body, he can multiply grace for our soul. If he gives life, he gives it in abundance (John 10:10). If he gives the water of life he gives rivers, not small streams. If he gives peace and joy... his scope is to fill up our joy to the full. As he is able to do for us far more abundantly than we are able to think or speak (Eph. 3:20)." (Third Sermon on the Song of Songs)

What exactly is this abundance? Sibbes describes it, as the Bible describes it, as a feast (Isa. 25:6; 55:1-2; Prov. 9:1-5; Matt. 8:11; 22:4; 25:10: Rev. 19:9). And what exactly is that feast? Jesus himself. "All the several graces and comforts we have, and the several promises whereby they are made over and conveyed unto us, are but Christ dished out in several manner" (Sibbes, Third Sermon) And how exactly do we partake of this feast? "The vessels wherein Christ conveys his dainties are the ministry of the Word and sacraments. By the Word and sacraments we come to enjoy Christ and his comforts and graces" (Third Sermon).

So what is our response to be? To go to church and happily dig into the feast and enjoy Him together. "We see then that we cannot please Christ better than... by cheerfully taking part of his rich provision. It is an honour to his bounty to fall to" (Third Sermon).
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holding together restlessness and optimism

Piper has a great section in his Marks of a Spiritual Leader  where he holds together two vital biblical leadership virtues: 1. RESTLESS Spiritual leaders have a holy discontentment with the status quo. Non-leaders have inertia that causes them to settle in and makes them very hard to move off of dead center. Leaders have a hankering to change, to move, to reach out, to grow, and to take a group or an institution to new dimensions of ministry. They have the spirit of Paul, who said in Philippians 3:13, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Leaders are always very goal-oriented people. God’s history of redemption is not finished. The church is shot through with imperfections, lost sheep are still not in the fold, needs of every sort in the world are unmet, sin infects the saints. It is un...
Post a Comment
Read more

Everlasting gobstopper theology

The idea here is that there are layers to Christ's fullness and when the biblical authors present Christ to us they might only explicitly refer to one layer but as they do that the underlying layers are also implied. Or to put it another way, the glory of the underlying layers shines through the layer that is presented to us. That might sound strange, abstract and not particularly helpful but let me try to explain.  The incarnation implies the pre-existent Word When John identifies "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh" as the key test of orthodoxy, Augustine asks (Homily 6 on 1 John) how can this be when so many heretics happily affirm the humanity of Jesus but deny his deity? Augustine then asks us to dig a bit deeper and consider: From whence did he come? "Was he not God?" Simon Gathercole demonstrated (in his 2006 book, The Pre-existent Son ) that Jesus' phrase in the synoptic gospels, "I have come", implies divine pre-existence.  So whenever we ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A prayer for the summer

LORD God, our God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, our Father, as your children in the northern hemisphere enter this season of the academic year, please give us fresh grace to walk, stand and sit aright. May those of us who enjoy running and walking in your creation give thanks to you for that privilege but not be as concerned about the daily step count on our trackers as in taking practical steps this summer in kindness, in compassion, in forgiveness, in building others up, in pleasing the Lord - steps of progress in gracious, sacrificial, Christ-like loving (Ephesians 4-5).  May those of us who look forward to getting out of the city give thanks to you for the privilege of travel but not ultimately be as concerned about the physical location in which we stand (whether "beneath the boughs" or on a hot and sweaty tube train) as about our location "in Christ" - the address of every spiritual blessing, complete forgiveness, intimate sonship, total security (Ephesians ...
Post a Comment
Read more