Garments of Salvation

By Eric M. Pazdziora

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?”

—Jesus (Matthew 6:28-30, NIV)

Why do we worry about clothes? Ever since Adam and Eve’s sin made them ashamed of their nakedness, there’s something about the subject of clothing that makes people a little tetchy. Just ask, “Is it OK to wear this?” and everybody will chime in with an opinion until you’re too dizzy to care.

Jesus, of course, was talking to people who were worried about whether they’d be able to get any clothes at all, helping them remember God’s faithfulness to provide. Lots of other things make people worried about clothes, though. Am I overdressed? Am I underdressed? Is this tie too geeky? Will that skirt be too chilly? Is this too revealing? Will that cause a brother to stumble, or will he stumble on his own? Why exactly is it so horrible to wear white after Labor Day? And of course the all-time classic: Does this make me look fat?

Living under a system of rules is a great recipe for worry. Especially religious rules: if you have to do the right thing to glorify God, what if you do the wrong thing? Yet most Bible teachings about clothing are crammed with moralistic, rules-based readings of Scripture, especially once they get to “modesty.” I think we’ve missed the point.

Just As You Received Christ...

by Eric M. Pazdziora

Suppose you asked someone what the Gospel is: how does a person receive salvation in Christ?

How would you respond if the answer was...

“The Gospel is the good news that we have to keep all of God’s Laws and rules, because there’s no salvation apart from trying hard to do good things. By really making an effort to live up to the Bible’s teachings and principles, we can become good enough for Jesus to save us. Salvation is the reward you get for living a godly life, being devout, and having good values and morals. You won’t be saved if you don’t do enough good things. If you’re good enough and totally committed to the Lord, you’ll be saved and make it to heaven, maybe.”

Clean

By Eric M. Pazdziora

I have felt dirty and unworthy of a clean slate with God ever since my experience, ever since that meeting with Mrs. H---, this feeling has plagued me for years.... The struggle that has lingered from my TM days is guilt.

--Anna (on Recovering Alumni)

Everybody’s felt that.

You feel dirty.

You feel unclean.

You feel unworthy.

You feel guilty.

And all the religious people in the world decide they agree with you.

That’s the part that hurts the most, maybe.

Reader Question: Beagles, the Bible, and Birthdays

By Eric M. Pazdziora

Ali writes:

Have you written on "birthdays?" My parents taught us the bible teaches that birthday celebrations are wrong and selfish. I remember King Herod being an example. I also was the example for my younger sisters as on my 6th birthday I acted selfish and ungrateful and I ruined having birthday celebrations for my 3 younger sisters. I don't honestly remember how I acted, but it must have been terrible to ruin "birthdays" for my 3 younger sisters.

I can understand why some religious folks get uneasy about certain popular movies or books or styles of clothing or genres of music. But birthdays? Sometimes you can push a line of thought too far and pull the whole thing down with it.

Apparently, the argument goes something like this. The Bible doesn’t have much to say about birthdays—certainly not whether we should celebrate them—and what it does say doesn’t show them in the most flattering light. Pharaoh had someone executed on his birthday. Job cursed the day that he was born. Herod threw a wild birthday party that included him ogling his stepdaughter’s exotic dance and wound up with John the Baptist getting beheaded. So, the Bible never says outright that we should celebrate birthdays, and the few times they’re mentioned at all, it connects them with sinful things. That proves birthdays are evil, right?

Wrong.

God's Prescription for Your Discouragement

by Eric Pazdziora

     I've been saving this for a rainy day, and I think it's gotten sufficiently damp. This got its start a few years ago as a comment on someone else's blog post and quickly gained a life of its own.
     The blog post in question was written by a person who had recently become a Christian and felt guilt and remorse over their past sins. "At the time," they wrote, "I thought nothing of it, but now I feel dirty and ashamed. I feel I have let God down and that my relationship with Him will never be at its best because of my indiscretion."

When Rest is Hard

by Eric M. Pazdziora

ast week, my wife Carrie got a cold. It was the kind of cold where medicine doesn’t really do much; until it gets better, you just have to wait, take some time off, and rest. The problem is that Carrie prefers to be active, so she’s not used to having nothing to do but lie back and take it easy. “You know,” she complained to me, “it’s hard to rest!” 

True. Sometimes it is. We like to keep ourselves busy. When we’re faced with the prospect of having nothing to do—or worse, having to do nothing—we tend to say, “But who’s going to take care of this and that and the other? Shouldn’t I be doing something? I don’t want to feel useless!” 

Rest is hard when we want to work.  

Maybe that’s why some people have a hard time with the idea of grace. Someone once asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Luke 18:18). The thinking is astounding. You don’t get an inheritance because you do anything; you have an inheritance because you were born, or maybe adopted, into a family. It would be nonsensical for you to try to work for something you can’t get by working, or for something you already have.  

Without Me You Can Do Nothing (A letter from John Newton)

t would be hard to imagine a more remarkable journey to grace than the one John Newton took. A hard-living, reckless, profligate young sailor in the 18th-century British slave trade, Newton openly blasphemed God and actively influenced others to abandon their faith. His life led steadily downward until he wound up enslaved and abused by the slaves themselves in Africa. Certainly, he would never have made anyone’s list of “Most likely to become a minister and a hymn writer.” Maybe that’s one reason he began his best-known hymn with the words, “Amazing Grace!”

Newton’s autobiography is a treasure well worth reading in full; no summary (especially the kind you get in books like 534 Stories of Great Hymns) can really do justice to all its subtle and amazing twists and turns. Today, though, instead of recapping his life story or studying his hymns, I want to bask in a lesser-known selection from his writing.

As a writer, Newton was full of humility, home-spun insight, the vigor of old-fashioned English prose, and a sublime consciousness of his dependence on God's grace. I can't read him without coming away more inspired. To Newton, the idea that his redemption was none of his own doing was not a mere theological dogma but a matter of practical experience. God's amazing grace, as Newton recognized, is not just for saving us--"'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home."

So here's a letter John Newton wrote to Lord Dartmouth about living by grace.

--Eric Pazdziora

February 23, 1775

My Lord,

I assent to our Lord's declaration, "Without me you can do nothing," not only upon the authority of the speaker, but from the same irresistible and experimental evidence, as if he had told me that I cannot make the sun to shine, or change the course of the seasons. Though my pen and my tongue sometimes move freely, yet the total incapacity and stagnation of thought I labor under at other times convinces me that, in myself, I have not sufficiency to think a good thought; and I believe the case would be the same, if that little measure of knowledge and abilities, which I am too prone to look upon as my own, were a thousand times greater than it is.

For every new service, I stand in need of a new supply, and can bring forth nothing of my supposed store into actual exercise, but by his immediate assistance. His gracious influence is that to those who are best furnished with gifts, which the water is to the mill, or the wind to the ship, without which the whole apparatus is motionless and useless.

I apprehend that we lose much of the comfort which might arise from a sense of our continual dependence upon him, and, of course, fall short of acknowledging as we ought what we receive from him, by mistaking the manner of his operation. Perhaps we take it too much for granted, that communications from himself must bear some kind of sensible impression that they are his, and therefore are ready to give our own industry or ingenuity credit for those performances in which we can perceive no such impression. Yet it is very possible that we may be under his influence when we are least aware of it; and though what we say, or write, or do, may seem no way extraordinary, yet that we should be led to such a particular turn of thought at one time rather than at another, has, in my own concerns, often appeared to me remarkable, from the circumstances which have attended, or the consequences which have followed.

How often, in the choice of a text, or in the course of a sermon, or in a letter to a friend, have I been led to speak a word in season! and what I have expressed at large, and in general, has been so exactly suited to some case which I was utterly unacquainted with, that I could hardly have hit it so well, had I been previously informed of it. Some instances of this kind have been so striking as hardly to admit a doubt of divine agency. And indeed, if believers in Jesus, however unworthy in themselves, are the temples of the Holy Ghost; if the Lord lives, dwells, and walks in them; if he is their life and their light; if he has promised to guide them with his eye, and to work in them to will and to do of his own good pleasure, --methinks what I have mentioned, and more, may be reasonably expected.

Turn Your Eyes Upon...

By Eric M. Pazdziora

funny thing happens when you spend time with someone. When I was in college, I studied music with a composer named Edwin Childs. I had several classes and weekly lessons with him, absorbing as much knowledge as I possibly could. Music theory, harmony, counterpoint, hymnology, you name it.

One day when I was home for summer break, my dad looked at me quizzically and asked why I wasn’t unbending two fingers on my left hand. I didn’t realize I’d been doing anything of the sort. Then it hit me. A few years before I met him, Dr. Childs had had a severe injury that left him partly paralyzed on the left side. I thought I was only learning music, but without any effort or even realization, I’d unconsciously picked up my teacher’s physical mannerism.

When you spend time with someone, you tend to become like them.

A lot of people miss this truth when it comes to the Christian life. They see in the Scriptures that living for Jesus entails that we avoid things like sin and worldliness—which it does—so they fixate on avoiding things like sin and worldliness.

That’s a problem.

Don’t get me wrong; I certainly don’t like worldliness or sin. I just wonder if they’re worth so much attention. Consider this often-quoted verse:

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. (Philippians 4:8, NASB).

When you look at this for what it says, you see that it’s stated in purely positive terms—“Think about good things,” full stop. Yet so often, people preach, “Don’t look at W and X and Y and Z because they’re worldly and sinful, and Philippians 4:8 says not to—” It doesn’t say not to do anything. Rather, it encourages us to think about things that are like Jesus. That’s all.

It’s not that we should go out and fill our minds with sin or lies or obscenity or whatever. But we have a choice what to dwell on—Jesus, or something else. Avoiding sin and worldliness counts as something else. If you focus on Jesus, you’ll become like Jesus; if you focus on worldliness—even in order to avoid it—you’ll become worldly.

Take the doctrine of separatism, for example. Some people teach that, if worldliness is so bad, we should divide ourselves completely from it and take ourselves out of the world altogether! No more ungodly influences, no corrupt entertainment, no secular music, no sinful friends… what could possibly go wrong?

Well, for one thing, you could find out that the Bible calls you worldly:

[The apostles] said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. (Jude 18-19, ESV)

He who separates himself seeks his own desire, He quarrels against all sound wisdom. (Proverbs 18:1)

The King James translation of Jude is even more pointed: “These be they who separate themselves” (v. 19). According to the Scripture, separating yourself from worldly people is a worldly thing to do.

The problem is that separatists may have filtered themselves from a few nagging gnat-like sins, but not from camels like elitism, selfishness, and pride. Are you really so much better than all those sinful people, or are you a sinner yourself? Is your own spiritual state more important than other people’s, or do they need to be shown God’s grace and love just as much as you do?

But doesn’t Paul write in the New Testament to “come out from among them and be separate” and “be not unequally yoked” and “touch not the unclean thing”? Indeed he does. But that has to be considered with the rest of what he has to say:

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. (1 Corinthians 5:9-10, NASB)

To Paul, it’s self-evident that believers should associate with people in “the world,” even immoral ones, greedy ones, crooks, and idolaters. Otherwise, he concludes in what’s evidently meant as a punch line, the result would be absurd—you’d have to go out of the world! Clearly, you can separate yourself from sin without having to separate yourself from sinners.

When we look to Jesus, all this suddenly becomes clearer and simpler. Jesus, who Himself was known derisively as “a friend of sinners,” prayed this for His followers:

My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. (John 17:15)

Lord, deliver us from sin, not from sinners. Deliver us from evil, not from evildoers.

Other attempts to avoid sin and worldliness fall just as flat. Some people make rules and laws and guidelines about sin to get as far from it as possible and to appear as godly as possible. Some people in the New Testament tried that, too. They called themselves the P’rushim, the Separated Ones—Pharisees, in English. Jesus wasn’t impressed. He called them hypocrites.

What did Jesus have against rules-based religion? He recognized that paying attention to rules about what we should do or shouldn’t do in this world takes our attention away from things we might do spiritually—loving God, loving our neighbors, stuff like that.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” (Matthew 23:23-24)

The Pharisees’ rules were fastidious about small things—even tithing mint and spices—but they missed what God was all about. Their preoccupation with avoiding little sins turned them into bigger sinners.

The sad irony is that all this fixation on avoiding worldly things, for all its appearances of piety, is not a good way to keep from being fixated on worldly things. A legalist can be just as obsessed with worldly pursuits (by trying to avoid them) as a libertine is. Not only does legalism not make you godly, it doesn’t even keep you from being worldly.

Paul writes to the Colossians in prose that crackles like fire:

So if, through your faith in Christ, you are dead to the principles of this world’s life, why, as if you were still part and parcel of this world-wide system, do you take the slightest notice of these purely human prohibitions­—“Don’t touch this,” “Don’t taste that,” and “Don’t handle the other”? “This”, “that” and “the other” will all pass away after use! I know that these regulations look wise with their self-inspired efforts at piety, their policy of self-humbling, and their studied neglect of the body. But in actual practice they are of no moral value, but simply pamper the flesh.

If then you are raised up with Christ, reach out for the highest gifts of Heaven, where Christ reigns in power. Be concerned with the heavenly things, not with the passing things of earth. For, as far as this world is concerned, you are already dead, and your true life is a hidden one in God, through Christ. One day, Christ, who is your life, will show himself openly, and you will all share in that magnificent revelation.

(Colossians 2:20-3:4, Phillips)

The message of Christianity is not “Worldliness is bad.” It’s “Jesus is Lord.”

It’s not “Try not to sin.” It’s “Think about Jesus.”

When you look to Jesus, you see that your urges to sin are suppressed on their own. When you look to Jesus, you see peace, love, joy, freedom, better than anything in the world. When you look to Jesus, you see you don’t need any worldly pseudo-religious substitutes for closeness to Him. When you look to Jesus, you see that in Him you are already dead to the world. When you look to Jesus, you see that in Him you are already alive.

When you spend time with someone, you tend to become like them.

Spend time fretting about all the problems of sin and worldliness, and you may become just as sinful and worldly as those things. Spend time focusing on Jesus and all His goodness, grace, and love, and you’ll start to become like Him. Maybe without even knowing it.

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Eric M. Pazdziora is a composer, editor, writer, and songwriter. He lives in Chicago with his wife Carrie. Information about his new CD of original hymns about grace, "New Creation," is available from his website at ericpazdziora.com.

Broken

By Eric M. Pazdziora

broken arm is painful. A broken glass is dangerous. A broken mirror is unlucky. A broken heart is depressing. A broken toy is sad. A broken promise is wrong.

So it’s strange that some well-meaning devotional writers tell us that spiritual brokenness is something we should aspire to, an attitude that we should constantly maintain. The doctrine has it that God uses suffering to break us spiritually, forcing us to depend on Him and making us willing to serve Him.

The Bible says the opposite. Spiritual brokenness is destructive and unbearable:

The spirit of a man will sustain him in sickness,
But who can bear a broken spirit?
(Proverbs 18:14, ESV)

A merry heart does good, like medicine,
But a broken spirit dries the bones.
(Proverbs 17:22, ESV)

Life has a way of hurting us, injuring us, breaking us. Sin, grief, injury, pain, suffering, bereavement, all of them act on our spirits like a hammer on glass. Some people may be in denial about it; some may be suffering from it every moment; some may be slowly recovering. Whatever the case, nobody needs to break us. We don’t need to break ourselves. We’re already broken.

That’s not a good thing. That’s an awful, painful, horrible thing. But it leads us to the only verse in Scripture that seems to put brokenness in a positive light:

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
(Psalm 51:17, NASB)

That might be where some of those misguided teachings were extrapolated from. In reality, the verse is much simpler, deeper, and better than that. David wrote this psalm while he was in anguish over the guilt of his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah. Sin breaks our spirits; remorse breaks our hearts.

When we’re broken like this, in our shame or despair or pain, we start to think that God doesn’t want us, that we’re not good enough for Him, that we have to wait until we’re whole again before we go to God. Who wants a broken heart lying around cluttering up their house? Broken things belong in the trash, not in the throne room.

Not so, says penitent David. God doesn’t despise us if we’re broken. God wants us to bring our brokenness to Him. God wants us to come to Him fractures and all. God will take any heart you have to give Him, even a broken one. Especially a broken one.

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted
And saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
But the LORD delivers him out of them all.
(Psalm 34:18–19, NASB)

Brokenness is an affliction (not an aspiration), but the Lord is in the business of saving people from afflictions. The Lord doesn’t just want you to bring your broken heart to Him; the Lord sees your broken heart as a reason to come near to you.

The Lord does not break us in order to heal us any more than a doctor breaks your leg in order to put a cast on it. Why should He break you when He wants you to be whole? Isaiah said as much a few thousand years before:

A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice…
(Isaiah 42:3, NIV)

God doesn’t break you. But if you’re already broken or hurting, God heals you. If you have a broken arm, you go to the doctor. If you have a broken sprit, you go to the Great Physician.

I will seek the lost,
bring back the scattered,
bind up the broken,
and strengthen the sick…
(Ezekiel 34:16a, NASB)

He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
(Psalm 147:3)

God heals you by taking your brokenness onto Himself. In the person of Jesus Christ, God Himself was bruised, rejected, beaten, bloodied, broken.

Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
(Isaiah 53:4–5, NKJV)

…this is My body which is broken for you.
(1 Corinthians 11:24, NKJV)

This is one of many reasons we worship our Lord by making a sacrament out of broken bread. That was our brokenness on that Cross. You don’t need to be broken anymore—by His wounds we are healed. And when we are broken, we can look past the brokenness of the Cross to the empty tomb. What is broken will be made whole. What is dead will be brought to life.

Brokenness isn’t something we need to achieve. Brokenness is something we already have. Brokenness is something Jesus heals.

Jesus’ Heart

What can bring hope to a broken heart?
Only a heart that’s been broken too;
And Jesus Christ had a broken heart
When He spilled His blood for me and you.

What can bring warmth to a frozen heart?
Only a heart with the fire of love,
And Jesus Christ has a heart of fire
With the tenderness of God above.

What can bring peace to a troubled heart?
Only a heart that has conquered pain,
And Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace,
For He gave His life and He rose again.

What can bring help to a sinful heart?
Only a heart that is free from sin,
And Jesus Christ has a perfect heart—
Will you give your heart to be cleansed by Him?

(Music and Lyrics by Eric M. Pazdziora. Copyright © 1999.)

Eric M. Pazdziora is celebrating his mumblemumbleth birthday today, and he got a new CD of his original settings of hymns about grace. There are copies for everyone else, too. His wife Carrie sings on it, so it's really good. If you want one, some details are on this post at ericpazdziora.com.

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Martha, Martha: In Which the Author Fails to Get the Point

By Eric M. Pazdziora

he joke’s on me.

I was thinking and praying about my topic for this week, and one story just wouldn’t get out of my head—Mary and Martha. We all know it, it’s really simple, but sometimes it does us a world of good to go back to the basics.

So I started my usual round of studying, reading, praying, trying to find the shape of the idea, maybe a profound insight, a unique twist, something unexpected, something new. The weekend went by, and I still had only a handful of scattered notes and observations. Nothing was coming together.

Writers don’t like that, or at least I don’t. I get a bit frazzled and start to fidget, especially when I know there are a lot of people waiting for me to meet a deadline. My other articles so far have all been enjoyable to write, but this one was just not working. Yet I couldn’t get away from the topic. I was starting to get worried and upset, wondering if I would have to work harder than usual to make a good post that would really serve you.

And then all of a sudden it hit me. I was getting distracted and worried by all the work and service I had to do…

…while trying to write an article on Mary and Martha.

Yeah, sometimes it takes me a while.

Now, as Chesterton said, I’m the fool of this story, thank you very much, and I’ll have no one coming to topple me from the jester’s throne. But really, my own thick-headedness makes the point (better than any illustration I could have thought up) of just how easy it is at any moment for any one of us to get a case of Martha’s Disease.

“But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3, NASB).

Martha just wanted to serve—to serve Jesus, in fact. Serving is a good thing; serving Jesus is an even better thing. But that was the problem. It’s not the best thing. Strictly speaking, it’s not even a necessary thing. Only one thing is needed.

Mary found it. She found it at Jesus’ feet, just sitting, listening, and being. And even though someone close to her berated her for it with the best of intentions, nothing could take it away. Not then, not ever.

It would be a mistake to say “We need to be more like Mary.” The whole point of what Mary was like is letting go of sentences that begin “We need to.”

“One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” (Psalm 27:4)

So, nothing fancy today. You don’t need me to tell you what you already know; you can just stop and remember it again. Let’s go back to the story we all know and spend some time listening to what Jesus has to say. Read it slowly and reflect and bask in it. Spend some time at Jesus’ feet. That’s all.

As Jesus and His disciples were going along, Jesus came to a village where there was a woman named Martha. She welcomed Him as a guest.

She had a sister named Mary, who came and sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what He said.

But Martha was distracted, pulled this way and that with all her serving.

She came up to Jesus and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister is leaving me to do all the serving alone? So tell her to help me!”

“Martha, Martha,” Jesus answered. “You’re worrying and bothering about so many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is best, and it will not be taken away.”

—Luke 10:38–42, paraphrased EP.

(Recommended hymn with that: Jesus, I Am Resting.)

Eric M. Pazdziora wishes he could practice what he preaches as much as he practices the piano. He writes music and words in Chicago with his wife Carrie, who guessed where this article was going before he got there. A forthcoming CD of his settings of hymns on grace, New Creation, can be found along with more writing at ericpazdziora.com.