“For we walk by faith and not by sight.” So says the apostle Paul in 2Cor 5.7. Paul is, of course, dealing with a particular issue there in that context, but this statement is a general principle of the Christian faith that he is applying to that context. Paul is laying down the way that all Christians must walk in every area of life: by faith. Faith is relying upon what God says and having your thoughts, actions, and desires shaped according to his word. Faith is thinking Christianly.

Learning this way of life is a struggle. We have enemies within and without. Our own sin that seeks to exalt itself and our own word of authority fight submission to what God says. We hear the voices of the world echoing the words of the devil, “Has God really said?…” God’s authority is challenged in our lives at every turn. We are tempted not to listen to him and exalt our own word or the words of others above his, conforming our lives to those words.

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In the beginning, after the final act of creation was done, God saw everything that he made and declared it “very good.” This declaration included man himself, man and woman. Since that time man has had the need to be approved, vindicated, or justified in the eyes of God himself and those who represent him in our lives. Children need to hear “Well done” from their parents, reflecting the divine pleasure of God himself. A spouse needs to hear approval from the lips and attitude of his wife or her husband. The employee needs approval from his employer in the form of praise or pay. A peer needs vindication from his peer group that he is accepted. We are beings created with a need to be judged and found acceptable.

One of the problems we have in our sin is that we set up false gods, gods who make themselves readily available, to judge us by the wrong standards and give us the acceptance we crave. This vindication is quick and easy. The echo chambers we create in our society through social media and other avenues gives us a great cloud of judges surrounding us to tell us that we are accepted, that we are justified because of the way we think, act, talk, and the positions we take on issues. These gods are all too happy to grant us quickly the justification we long for, and we are all too happy to be satisfied with their judgments. The more they approve of us, the deeper our affection for these gods.

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Every year around this time the internet is flooded with essays and interviews concerning Lent: Should we observe it? If we observe it, how should we observe it? And so on. Good folks disagree about these issues. But it is a good discussion to be having. I thought I’d chime in on the issue. Hopefully, I can help keep people thinking through the issue.

First, let me clear some ground here. I agree with many of my brothers who despise some of the Lenten practices. There are people who have superstitious views of the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday, for instance. I’ve even heard of one church who set up shop in a local business so that you can get your ashes to go. This was a one-stop shop for groceries and a dose of humility and repentance. People who do this sort of thing are, in most cases, viewing the imposition of ashes as some type of talisman that is going to keep God off their backs for a little while longer. I have witnessed people through the years from many branches of the Christian church act as if the religious ritual itself (whether it is the imposition of ashes, fasting, attending worship, going to revival services, or whatever) was an end in itself. After you do the deed, then you are free to live any way you want outside of the time of that special rite. According to what God said through the prophet Isaiah in his opening salvo, he has never taken kindly to superstitious views of religious rituals (cf. Isa 1.10-20. Mind you, the rituals that God is condemning in Isaiah are the ones that he himself set up. These were not manmade rituals. These were God’s own rituals that were being abused by superstitious views.) Superstitious views of the imposition of ashes or even fasting have no place in the Christian Faith.

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Baptisms are glorious events. Looking at the baptism of Jesus, we understand why they are glorious events. Jesus’ baptism provides the archetypal pattern for every subsequent baptism into Christ. Whether infant or aged, when a person is baptized into Christ, heaven is opened, the Father declares the baptizand his loved child, and the Spirit is poured out. Though we don’t see all of these happen with the naked eye we know that they happen to us because they happened to Christ Jesus, the one with whom we share baptism.

But sharing Jesus’ baptism is not where our identity with Jesus ends. In baptism we come to share in the life of Christ, and that life moves from baptism into the wilderness. The Spirit poured out in baptism is the same Spirit that leads us into the wilderness to be tested by the devil (Lk 4.1-2). To be declared “son of God” in baptism is a vocation as much as it is a standing before the Father. Part and parcel to that vocation is to be tested in a world that is hostile to us by a Father who graciously withholds from us good things until the proper time.

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Growing up in rural, Baptist, revivalistic culture in South Louisiana, I heard quite a few “turn or burn” sermons. People were warned of the horrors of hell and called to turn to Christ. I preached several of those sermons myself. Those types of sermons are appropriate on occasion. As I preached them on the street and in churches, what I found is that people wanted to turn from hell but not from sin. However, following Christ just doesn’t work that way.

When John the Baptizer bursts on the scene in the wilderness at the Jordan River, he proclaims a baptism of repentance. When people come to be baptized, instead of immediately welcoming and baptizing them, he calls them “a brood of vipers,” children of the serpent himself, and calls them to repentance. They ask, “What then shall we do?” He doesn’t tell them to seal the deal with a “sinner’s prayer.” Neither does he tell them that there is nothing they can do because salvation is a gift that doesn’t require one doing anything. He tells the ungenerous to be generous, the tax collecting thieves to stop stealing, and the bullying, extorting soldiers to be content with their wages (Lk 3.10-14). These are the fruits in keeping with repentance. This is what repentance looks like.

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