righteousness

Hunger for Righteousness

June 25, 2019 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Mt. 5:6). In this bread and wine You are offered a blessing. The blessing is of a refreshment––a satisfaction––which cannot be derived from mere bread or mere wine. The refreshment and blessing which you crave is only found in righteousness. It is found in right standing with God.

But check your pockets. All you’ll find there are the grimy leaves of self-righteousness. Audit your moral books. You’ll only find a ledger covered in red ink: ethical debts you can’t repay, good work checks that have bounced, well-intentioned I.O.U.’s which remain unfulfilled.

The blessing which accompanies this meal is that those who are fed up with their own righteousness will be fed with Christ’s righteousness. This meal gives rest from works righteousness.

You hunger and thirst to be accepted by God, and here is the token that those that have put on Christ by faith are reckoned as righteous by God the Father. Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed, because they will be satisfied. You can be satisfied because in Christ, God the Father is satisfied with you. As Paul states in 2 Corinthians 5:21 – “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

So come in faith, and welcome to Jesus…

Turning a Profit on Disobedience

March 23, 2018 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

If you grew up in the conservative Christian community, as I did, and if you often attended worldview conferences, as I did, then this verse is perhaps one of the most familiar to you.

“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (Two Cor. 10:5).”

This passage presents such a vivid picture of what it looks like to engage with falsehoods. It is vital in both our inner man and our cultural engagement to embrace a disposition of demolition experts when it comes to lies, heresies, deceptions, etc. If lust is niggling at your mind, you must tear it down. If jealousy is crowding out all other thoughts, you must bring out the mental bulldozer. If our culture is parading lust down the street, we must engage it with all the gentleness of a polemic atom bomb. If jealousy is passed via legislative spending bills, we need to bring in the wrecking ball.

Imaginations and high things that exalt themselves agains the knowledge of God must be cast down, and brought into captivity. Note that Paul is writing to a congregation, not just an individual. Of course, within our own mind and inner man we must have this ruthless attitude towards internal struggles with sin, doubt, and falsehood. But this is addressed to a community. Thus, it is the community’s responsibility to do something about wicked actions and attitudes within our community, and those which are infiltrating our community.

All of this, though, has to do with obedience to Christ. It is not for the preservation of a peaceful community or a placid inner stability. It is so that our thoughts, both individually and corporately, are obedient to Christ. We don’t just want a pile of the rubble of our disobedience, we want revenge.

We don’t just want a pile of the rubble of our disobedience, we want revenge.The next verse states: “And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled (Two Cor. 10:6).” So, while we are commanded to demolish falsehood, we are not just to leave a smoking crater of destruction. We are to replace falsehood with the towers of truth. The rivals to Christ must be ground to powder, but in the end Christ must be exalted. It does no good to tear down your idols, but fail to obediently worship Christ. In fact, you’ll find more and worse idols crowding in if they are not replaced with adoration for Christ.

When we find that disobedience has been present within us or our community we are to be ready to revenge that disobedience. Disobedience to God’s law is sin, and sin has consequences. But Paul here is teaching us to turn a profit on our sin. You blew it? Great…don’t wallow it, but confess it, use it to drive you to have a greater love for a forgiving and cleansing Savior; let the bitterness of sin cause you to do whatever it takes to flee that sin in the future. If you stole, make restitution four times more than you should. If you are full of seething hate for your brother or sister, leave it and labor to love them sincerely. If we have embraced madness and murder in our laws, we must not only remove those laws, but work to never again enshrine sin in our laws.

Revenge your sin. When you fail, confess it, and do as the Psalmist teaches: “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it (Ps. 34:14).” We flee from evil, in order to do good. Confessing your sin and disobedience by tearing down the idol is part one of obedience. But, revenging your disobedience is that the next time you are tempted to do that sin, you do what is righteous instead. Obedience to Christ is two-fold. On one hand, we confess our sin. On the other, we…you know…actually obey. Christ doesn’t save us merely to forgive our sins and help us stop sinning, but so that we would actually do righteously (1 Jn. 3:7).

In short, in demolishing falsehood we mortify the disobedience, but by erecting the truth by vivifying the fruits of righteousness we revenge our former disobedience. Where once was a monument to sin and self, stands a monument to the exalted Christ. For instance, where there are now Planned Parenthoods, there must soon be birthing centers. This is the ultimate revenge. This is how we turn a profit on our disobedience.

The Debt We Owe

May 2, 2017 By Ben Zornes Leave a Comment

Every time we sin we are breaking a part of His creationHe declared His creation “good”, and thus, every time we sin we are breaking a part of His creation. It’s like the fellow who recently went into an Apple store with a rock and smashed up thousands of dollars of merchandise. But imagine him doing this daily, and as a result, the debt he would be racking up in lost merchandise. His income would certainly never allow for him to pay off his obligation to make restitution with Apple!

The only hope for such a debt is for it to be forgiven, but as any good economist would tell you, “Ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” Our forgiveness was costly, as someone had to “eat the cost” of our sins. God must judge sin, and the wages of sin is death. This is why Christ’s death is spoken of as a ransom, a payment made on our behalf which satisfies the justice and mercy of God. When we think of Christ’s merit, we must take from our minds the Catholic notion that Mary and the saints have some too which, all told, can get us across the finish line to heaven. Rather, all our human “merit” is itself tainted by evil. Christ alone is able to pay the debt we owe, and by faith in Him He freely applies His righteousness to our account.

Our Old Rag Collection

October 15, 2015 By Ben Zornes

I’m reading through a book right now called “Essentialism”, and apart from being a really helpful book, it is also full of several anecdotes, illustrations, etc. One of them has really struck me and stuck with me. There is a term called “sunk-cost bias” and the basic idea of it is that once we’ve invested our resources into something, we tend to have an irrational loyalty to it, despite the fact that the continued pursuit or investment isn’t solvent, is a wasted ventured, or is heading towards disaster.

This is why casinos work so well, because they exploit this irrational tendency to continue to invest in something, even though we’re losing money and gaining nothing, simply because we’ve invested in it. The classic example of this was the Concord planes that Britain and France built; it became clear very quickly that these planes cost more to build, run, and maintain than they were worth. The market was never there, and never would be there and still the governments continued to prop these planes along, despite continuing and increasing losses. [Read more…] about Our Old Rag Collection