'Selma' and the sanctity of human life

Linda and I saw "Selma" in the movie theater yesterday. There is much to be said about it: It is disturbing, yet inspiring; the Christian roots of the civil rights movement come through; the courage of downtrodden people in the face of great evil shines; David Oyelowo gives a powerful, multi-layered performance, portraying Martin Luther King Jr. as a brave, sensitive, flawed leader with doubts who received needed encouragement from others.

But "Selma" also is a pro-life movie. It is a movie about the sanctity of human life. It is a movie that demonstrates the truth made known by God's words in the first chapter of the Bible -- every human being is made in His image (Gen. 1:26-27). Here are some ways the sanctity of human life is reflected in the movie:

-- The focus of the movie -- as with the focus of the civil rights movement -- is that all human beings "are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," to put it in the words of the Declaration of Independence.

-- Dr. King and his fellow leaders are portrayed as being unwilling to compromise their movement's core principle that every human being, regardless of the color of his or her skin, is equal in value to every other human being.

-- MLK is shown reacting in pain when black men and women are beaten for peacefully protesting and with deep grief when people are killed by racists for their willingness to stand courageously for equal rights.

-- He is depicted as deeply concerned about the lives of those marching with him by being unwilling to lead them into a possible ambush.

-- Dr. King is characterized as being committed to live with the "fog of death" that engulfed him and his family in order to uphold the sanctity and equality of black human beings -- and therefore all human beings.

In His providence, God raised up Martin Luther King Jr. and used him, despite his sinful failures, to proclaim in a long-lasting way this reality -- every human being is made in the image of God.

* -- Photo source.

A missed opportunity on Christmas eve

We had the privilege of all being together as a family for Christmas. We were all in one home in Montgomery, Ala., for most of Christmas eve and Christmas day.

One of the highlights of our 30 hours or so together was to participate in Christmas eve worship at a local church. The church our son and his family are part of did not have a service that evening, so we gathered with a full house of others at a nearby, gospel-centered church. It was an unprecedented opportunity for all nine of us to be together on the same pew. It was a blessed experience to sing some great songs of our faith about the coming of our Savior and to hear Christ exalted from the pulpit.

And yet, one element of the service fell short of what it could have been. A family -- father, mother and five children -- gathered around an advent wreath and candles at the front of the auditorium. They lit the four advent candles, as well as the Christ candle in the center. The father then read about the lighting of this final candle. It was good. It was meaningful. But it was a missed opportunity.

I have nothing against families observing Advent by lighting candles. We did it in our family when our children were much younger. And I think it was good to have such a ceremony at the beginning of a church's Christmas eve service.

But a different group of people gathered around the Advent wreath would have made the ceremony far better -- and would have far better symbolized what the church was doing in worship. This was the family of God gathered, not just a nuclear family gathered. The church was together as those who are united through the life, death and resurrection of the One whose birth we were gathered to celebrate.

How much better it would have been to have a group something like this gathered together to light the candles -- a young married couple, a widower, a single mom, a middle-school boy, a college-age female and a 40-something, mentally impaired man. A mixture of different skin colors and ethnicities among these seven believers would have made this sight even more beautiful.

The church is not a collection of blood-related tribes. The church is the new, peculiar people united by the gospel that cuts across families, genders, ethnicities, ages and social classes. We are the family created by Jesus and His finished work. This is who the church is, and this is what we should remember as we gather together each week.

Praying God's words back to Him

One of the things I have not done well is incorporate God's words into my prayers. Don Whitney appears to be doing the church a great service with a new book scheduled to be released in July. The book from the professor of biblical spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is titled Praying the Bible. I hope to read it. If I do, I am sure I will benefit from it.

For a change, however, I did pray God's words back to Him today. I am using a Bible reading plan this year that consists of reading from a different genre of Scripture each day of the week. Wednesdays are for Psalms.

Since this is the first Wednesday of 2015, I read Psalms 1 and 2, as called for in the reading plan. Here are the first three verses in the English Standard Version of the first psalm:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, not sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

I had not planned on using my Bible reading in prayer this morning. But when I read these first three verses, I began petitioning God. I prayed something like this:

God, please don't let me walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers, but help me to delight in Your law, in Your Word. And help me meditate on Your law, Your Word, day and night. Please help me to bear fruit and prosper, becoming more like Christ.

May this kind of Scripture-infused prayer be more common in my life. May it be so in all of us who are following Jesus. We can have strong confidence that the prayer that originates with God has power with God.

Fourth Sunday of Advent: He came to give joy

(This is the fourth post in a four-part series that seeks to help Christians observe Advent, that season celebrating the coming of our Savior and leading to Christmas Day. This series is designed for use on each Sunday of Advent, but it can be used at any point -- and this one will have to be, since it is late, for which I apologize.)

God the Son came to earth as an embryo in a virgin's womb and as a baby born in a stable to give His people the kind of existence they otherwise could never possess.

He came to give life to those who trust in Him. The apostle John testified to this truth in his first letter, saying, "By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him" (I John 4:9).

We were dead in our sins, as the apostle Paul wrote in Eph. 2:1, but God, "being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)" (Eph. 2:4).

The Son came to give us life, but it is not just any life or life only as opposed to physical death. During His public ministry, Jesus proclaimed this reality, saying, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10).

This abundant life could be described as a life of joy. It is not an abundant life based on the possession of things or the absence of pain. It is not an abundant life based on self-fulfillment. It is a life centered on Christ Jesus -- knowing Him and making Him known, valuing Him pre-eminently.

John Piper has famously written, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." He has gone on to make the point that God's glory and our joy are not at odds.

God the Son came to give His people joy. True joy can only be found in Another, not in ourselves. That One in whom true joy is found is the One whose coming we celebrate at Christmas. That joy is in an unchangeable, indestructible King who rules over an unshakable kingdom. As citizens of that kingdom, we can experience a joy that always rules despite our circumstances.

May we realize that anew this Christmas and place our hope for joy in Him and not in any of the trappings of the season.

Here is Chris Tomlin's version of "Joy to the World," which we have sung the last two Sundays.

Third Sunday of Advent: He came to glorify His Father

(This is the third in a four-part series that seeks to help Christians observe Advent, that season celebrating the coming of our Savior and leading to Christmas Day. This series is designed for use on each Sunday of Advent, but it can be used at any point.)

Christmas represents not only the human-ward work of God the Son to save sinners but His God-ward work to glorify His Father.

This was the testimony of Jesus on the eve of His crucifixion. He prayed that night, "I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given me to do" (John 17:4). He could speak even before He died of fulfilling what the Father intended for Him to do in coming to earth. God the Father sent God the Son to earth with something to do. The purpose behind that mission included the glory of the Father.

Jesus testified to this purpose earlier in His ministry. Jesus compared His coming death to a grain of wheat that must die before it bears fruit. He said in John 12:27-28a, "Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, 'Father, save Me from this hour?' But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name." His Father responded by confirming with a voice from Heaven, "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again" (John 12:28b).

God the Son came to earth to glorify God the Father. That meant He must not only live a rightoues life but die a propitiatory death -- a death that satisfied fully God's wrath against sin. His Father sent Him to die.

And the Son gladly and willingly became a human embryo and baby in order to die as a man for His Father's glory.

In The Pleasures of God, John Piper explains it this way:

[T]he depth of the Son's suffering was the measure of his love for the Father's glory. It was the Father's righteous allegiance to his own name that made recompense for sin necessary. So when the Son willingly took the suffering of that recompense on himself, every footfall on the way to Calvary echoed through the universe with this message: The glory of God is of infinite value! The glory of God is of infinite value!

God the Son's mission even at His birth was to give His life to ransom sinners. And the fulfillment of that mission brought great glory to His Father.

Here is "Born to Die," a song by Bebo Norman that fits with this theme:

Preach this to yourself: No condemnation

If we would prevent gospel amnesia in our own lives, we should preach the gospel to ourselves -- including its benefits.

One of these glorious benefits is described by the apostle Paul: "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1, NASB).

This means God does not condemn those of us who have trusted in Jesus to save us from our sins. It is not that we will be condemned if we don't embrace the gospel of Christ. It is that we have been rescued from the condemnation we already were experiencing. Paul teaches this truth in other passages, and Jesus testifies to it.

In Rom. 5:18, Paul writes: "So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men." Our condemnation was the result of the sin of one man, Adam. As his descendants, we are under condemnation.

In Eph. 2:3, Paul says, "[We] were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." God's wrath was upon us just by virtue of being human beings with a sinful nature.

John 3:17-18 is a great Christmas passage in which God the Son explains a reason He came to earth as a man -- and points to the condemnation all humanity lives under. He says, "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God."

As sinners by nature, we are condemned; we are under wrath; we are judged. That all changes when God saves us by His grace because of the powerful gospel work of His Son. Now, we are no longer under condemnation -- forever. Nothing can reverse that verdict.

That is the kind of benefit we should regularly remind ourselves of. At Christmas, we can remember -- God the Son came to deliver us from the condemnation that dominated us. That is cause for rejoicing in Jesus and His gospel.

* -- Photo source.

Second Sunday of Advent: He came as a baby

(This is the second in a four-part series that seeks to help Christians observe Advent, that season celebrating the coming of our Savior and leading to Christmas Day. This series is designed for use on each Sunday of Advent, but it can be used at any point.)

It is a story that could only be described as myth or fable except that it is recorded in the perfect Word that has the perfect God as its author: The Creator of the cosmos becomes a man. Even more stunning, He does not take on flesh as a full-grown human being. He becomes human the way all humans do -- by conception -- with one all-important difference: He has no earthly father.

The God who has made and regulates all things becomes an embryo. Early -- really early -- in His gestation, another unborn child and his mother recognize He is the long-awaited Messiah (Luke 1:39-45). In a virgin's womb, He matures as other unborn children do. His body takes shape and grows until the nine months of pregnancy come to their end, and His humble mother delivers Him in a humble location. He arrives in the outside world through the labor and pain of a young mortal.

As J.I. Packer wrote in his book Knowing God:

[T]he Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the incarnation.

Yet, this same person who humbled Himself to become an embryo and to die a criminal's death as a man is the One whose exaltation to the highest place is assured. Phil. 2:9-11 describes God the Father's elevation of His Son this way:

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

This is the story of Christmas -- a baby born in a Middle Eastern town is Lord of all.

Here is "Gather 'Round, Ye Children Come," a song by Andrew Peterson that fits with the theme of this post: