Our log is not only so large but also so near to us that it blocks our vision and we do not even see it. Jesus is the one who gives sight to the blind. He reaches out His hand to our log and pulls it out. "This must go. I want you to see." Jesus takes the logs out of our eyes. He drags them to Calvary, and on the timber that blinds and kills, He is killed. Jesus dies for our sins, and the wood we have supplied becomes, by His death, a declaration of that sin's forgiveness. When the logs from our eyes have been through Calvary, we see. -- Norman Nagel,
Selected Sermons, page 170.
This is certainly a very pious saying, but I have difficulties with the categories in which Dr. Nagel expresses himself. The problem I see is that Scripture makes it abundantly clear that it is the Holy Spirit who makes us an entirely new creation and thereby enables us “to see”. The Apostles certainly had no clue what it was all about until the Holy Spirit “gave them power”, as our Lord promised just before He ascended. I listened to the one hour interview with Dr. Nagel on the subject of “The Person & Work of the Holy Spirit” in order to get an idea of how, if at all, this subject relates to the “taking the logs out of our eyes.” Strangely, he said very little about the Holy Spirit in that program, and not once did he mention that the Holy Spirit dwells in every one of God’s children. He did say that the Holy Spirit is unhappy when we talk about Him, because this somehow shifts the focus from our Lord Jesus. This troubles me.
ReplyDeletePeace and Joy!
George A. Marquart
Dear George,
ReplyDeleteI think what's in view here is the way the Symbols speak in FC SD II:65,66, 88. As regenerate (which regeneration is wholly work of the Spirit) we (in the new man) cooperate in the Holy Spirit's works, though in great weakness.