Notes from Far Away

The Abundance of His Blessings

“We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ.  We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else.  If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is ‘of him’.  If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing.  If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth.  For by his birth he was made like us in all respects that he might learn to feel our pain.  If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge.  In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.  Some men, not content with him alone, are borne hither and thither from one hope to another; even if they concern themselves chiefly with him, they nevertheless stray from the right way in turning some part of their thinking in another direction.  Yet such distrust cannot creep in where men have once for all truly known the abundance of his blessings.”

Calvin’s Institutes, 2.16.19

In the same flesh

Accordingly, our Lord came forth as true man and took the person and the name of Adam in order to take Adam’s place in obeying the Father, to present our flesh as the price of satisfaction to God’s righteous judgment, and, in the same flesh, to pay the penalty that we had deserved.  In short, since neither as God alone could he feel death, nor as man alone could he overcome it, he coupled human nature with divine that to atone for sin he might submit the weakness of the one to death; and that, wrestling with death by the power of the other nature, he might win victory for us.

Calvin’s Institutes, 2.12.3

Who else could do this?

The Mediator must be true God and true man.

This will become even clearer if we call to mind that what the Mediator was to accomplish was no common thing.  His task was so to restore us to God’s grace as to make of the children of men, children of God; of the heirs of Gehenna, heirs of the Heavenly Kingdom.  Who could have done this had not the selfsame Son of God become the Son of man, and had not so taken what was ours as to impart what was his to us, and to make what was his by nature ours by grace?  Therefore, relying on this pledge, we trust that we are sons of God, for God’s natural Son fashioned for himself a body from our body, flesh from our flesh, bones from or bones, that he might be one with us.  Ungrudgingly he took our nature upon himself to impart to us what was his, and to become both Son of God and Son of man in common with us.  Hence that holy brotherhood which he commends with his own lips when he says, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17).  In this way we are assured of the inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom; for the only Son of God, to whom it wholly belongs, has adopted us as his brothers.  “For if brothers, then also fellow heirs with him” (Romans 8:17).

For the same reason it was also imperative that he who was to become our Redeemer be true God and true man.  It was his task to swallow up death.  Who but the Life could do this?  It was his task to conquer sin.  Who but very Righteousness could do this?  It was his task to rout the powers of world and air.  Who but a power higher than world and air could do this?  Now where does life or righteousness, or lordship and authority of heaven lie but with God alone?  Therefore our most merciful God, when he willed that we be redeemed, made himself our Redeemer in the person of his only-begotten Son.

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.12.2

On Achilles (and the nature of men)

whokilled:

Today in my Ancient History class we discussed an old painting depicting Julius Caesar after he had been killed. He was surrounded by, in the words of my Prof, several “women who were lamenting his death” in front of Rome. For a minute, I wanted to be Caesar.

But Caesar wanted to be Alexander the Great. On one of his expeditions Caesar was marching with his army when they came upon an old, enormous, statue of Alexander the Great. Caesar broke away from his troops, stopped to study the statue, and fell to his knees. He remained there staring at Alexander while his troops marched forward. A concerned general came over to make sure Caesar was all right. Caesar was weeping before the statue, saying he had done nothing with his life.

But Alexander the Great wanted to be Achilles. Throughout his many travels Alexander always kept a copy of The Iliad with him. He reportedly told his friends that his only regret was that there wasn’t a poet like Homer who could immortalize him, the way Homer had done for Achilles.

But Achilles? No. Achilles wished to be NO-ONE ELSE.