Sunday, June 6, 2010

True Humility, Christian Living, Puritan Counsel, and Trembling at the Word

What Scripture says, God says.  And so Scripture carries the authority, truth, weight, and honor of God himself.  Small wonder then that trembling at this divine Word and heeding it heartily are commended again and again in holy Scripture itself.

Two texts with some comments (followed by an exhortation from Buynan):

"Whoever despises the word brings destruction on himself, but he who reveres the commandment will be rewarded (Prov. 13:13).  Notice here two options: despising the Word, or revering the commandment. Our common vain, third neutral option of fence sitting or indifference or "I'm just not a reader" is conspicuously absent.

"This is the one to whom I [YHWH] will look: to the one who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word" (Isa. 66:2).  In this text it is clear that humility, contrition, and trembling at God's Word go together.  Anyone who claims that true humility and contrition are possible when there is no knee-knocking before the Word doesn't get it.  There is no such thing as true humility and contrition without true reverence and deep esteem for God's Word.

Now the word from John Buynan about the effects of not revering Scripture as from the mouth of God himself:  The "want of reverence of the Word is the ground of all disorders that are in the heart, life, conversation, and in Christian communion."  If Buynan is substantially right, and there doesn't seem reason to doubt that he is, then the Christian life is massively simplified.  Is your heart disordered?  Tremble at the Truth.  Is your life dislocated?  Reverence the Revelation of God.  Is your walk bent and twisted and crooked?  Bow before the Word of God.  Is Christian communion fractured or fracturing?  Bend the knee before that Book of vast authority.  And revere your God.

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