Lenten Devotional (6) and NSA CALLED Conference 2023
The Spirit of Lent
Lenten Meditation (6)
It was the Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness. The Devil didn't draw Jesus out to battle. Our Lord was led by the Third-Person of the Godhead, revealing the Triune unity.
The Spirit plays a fundamental role in this season. According to St. John, the coming of the Spirit is to convict the world of its sin, of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment (Jn. 16:8).
While Lent focuses on the Messianic journey and the reality of the cross, Lent is also a season to magnify the Spirit’s work in convicting us of our sins. The Church season of Lent is only beneficial when the Spirit works within us to produce fruits, virtues, faith, and vigor in our walk. And since the Spirit is conforming us to the image of the Son through these virtues, thus we have a calling to fight in harmony with the Spirit. In short, Lent is the harmony of the Spirit’s work with Spirit-empowered saints. He is the one who equips us and leads us to battle.
Just as the Lenten journey was a road of struggle, prayer, and communion for our Lord, so too, our walk to bear and reflect such fruits will demand struggle, prayer, and communion with our Lord.
Our entire lives can be summed up in warfare.
Lent reminds us that the environment of sin is the Christian’s constant battleground. There is no monastic flight away from it. The remaining weeks stress our need to repent of those things which easily entangle us in a web of deceit. Only the Spirit can lead us well to fight our evil foe. Only the Spirit can lead us to see the victorious Lord who defeated evil for us at Calvary's cross.
Lent is Spirit-centered. None of us can ever expect to gain from fasting and godly habits apart from the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. We trust in him in all seasons, especially in this Lenten journey.
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Notations:
*Leithart’s thesis in The Priesthood of the Plebs is superb. He argues in his dissertation that baptism arises in a particular history of God’s dealings with Israel (2). Therefore, baptism is fundamentally Jewish. Ancient and modern explanations of baptism are either rooted in feelings (Schleiermacher) or experientialist (Barth). He refers to these models as “Marcionite sacramental theology” (5). The solution is the Augustinian “typological lectio” (7) which roots baptism in the ancient patterns of the Hebrew Scriptures.
*I am a true fan of evangelical theology. We are reading, as a family, through the Heidelberg Catechism with commentary by Rev. Kevin DeYoung. There is nothing more evangelical than this statement:
The first thing we need in order to experience the comfort of the gospel is to be made uncomfortable with our sin.
*Proverbs 10 offers two tongues: the prolific and productive. Both tongues have a telos. The prolific keeps talking along the journey without ever considering other options to the destination. The productive tongue travels in community. It seeks guidance from those who have experience in the journey.
*The news is out! I will be the keynote speaker at the CALLED Conference 2023 in Moscow, ID. Here is the video and registration info.