Category: Peter Leithart

Leithart richly exalts and defines justification:

Justification means being made right with God through Christ, through the faithful death of Christ.

Justification by faith means that righteousness is given to us, not through the law but through the cross, which we receive by faith.

Justification means that Christ lives in me, and I no longer live and the life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God.

Justification means that God has created a community of the justified, a community united without division of Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, Lutheran or Methodist, Baptist or Catholic.

Justification means that righteousness has come, the righteousness by which God will restore the world.

Justification means that God’s promises to Abraham have been fulfilled, and that we are swept up in that fulfillment.

Justification means that God is blessing the families of the earth through the seed of Abraham.

Justification means that the Spirit has been given to those who hear with faith, the Spirit that fulfills the promise to Abraham, the Spirit of righteousness and justice, the Spirit of life and renewal.

Justification, finally, means that this is all God’s work, and that all of God has done all this.   The Father sent the Son whose death brought righteousness, which is the gift of the Spirit.   The Father counts as righteous those who are in the Son, and shows His acceptance of us by giving us the Abrahamic promise, the Spirit.  Justification means that the Triune God is God, Just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus.

Justification means that in Christ’s death and resurrection, the Triune God has revealed His righteousness, the undying commitment of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit to their own eternal communion, the eternal, undying, triumphant commitment to incorporate us, the seed of Abraham, into that communion.

Peter Leithart remarks:

Christ has poured the oil of the Spirit upon us, anointing us with the fragrant oil of priesthood.  In Christ, we are living sacrifices, spreading the aroma of Christ, a savor of life and death.  Because we are enveloped with the aroma of the Spirit, we are a sweet savor to the Father.  We are quickened not only by hearing the Name of Jesus, but by its aroma, since His “name is like oil poured out.”

Adam was created to be a priestly guardian in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15) and to rule as king by subduing and filling the earth (Genesis 1:26-28). Because of his sin, the sons of Adam fail to fulfil this double calling as God intended. Sinners still serve as priests, but they serve in the shrines of Moloch and at the altars of Baal; fallen humanity still subdues and rules, but only to make a name for themselves and to construct a city on the blood of innocent brothers (cf. Genesis 4:8, 17). The gospel announces that in Christ, sinners are restored to godly worship and godly dominion. By union with the new Melchizedek, the priest-king, we are made kings and priests to God. –Peter Leithart

In his excellent, The Kingdom and the Power, Peter Leithart writes:

The church is the disciplined regiment of holy warriors, the household of God, the flock of the Good Shepherd. Because of our baptism into the church, we are under the protection and care of our Master. A shepherd protects and feeds the sheep that bear his seal, as a master does his own slaves (190).

I am glad Osama bin Laden is dead.  He was an evil man.

And I think the surgical method used to kill him is commendable.  The Bible, especially Judges, endorses assassinations: Kill the head, and the body becomes powerless .  Wars slaughter thousands, or hundreds of thousands of relatively innocent young men, always on both sides.  War is costly, especially in human terms.  Better to destroy war-mongers who start wars.

That said, my enthusiasm for this operation is tempered by the recollection that the US made Osama bin Laden.  Michael Moore is right on this point, if nowhere else: We supported bin Laden in his battle against the Soviets, as we also supported Saddam Hussein so long as he was fighting Iran.  We had a hand (how direct is a matter of dispute) in creating bin Laden, creating the Taliban, creating al-Qaeda.

Americans have a right to breathe a sigh of relief.  Yet the lesson is not, as President Obama, Charles Krauthammer, and others have suggested, that “we do big.”  The lesson is that we’re pretty good at creating messes, and that we’re occasionally good at the mopping-up process.  When the euphoria is over, will we take the opportunity to reflect seriously on our record of cultivating the serpents we later kill?

Leirthart notices that bricks are typically associated with idolatry in Isaiah. He writes:

Babel is the first brick construction in Scripture (Genesis 11:3).    They burn earthy clay to make it into building material for the city and teh tower that reaches to heaven.  Egypt also deals in brick, and puts Israel to work making the bricks for its storage cities, its neo-Babels (Exodus 1:14; 5:7, 8, 16, 18-19).

The next time bricks are mentioned in Scripture is Isaiah 9:10, where the men of Ephraim respond to the collapse of “bricks” with the plan to build instead with hewn stones (Isaiah 9:.  They are Babelites, constructors of a new oppressive Egypt, from which the faithful remnant will have to be redeemed.  In context, the word “brick” (lebenah) puns with the “great hearts” (leb) of the men.

What are they building from bricks?  The only other use of the word in Isaiah may help: Isaiah 65:3 refers to idolatrous offerings of incense upon “altars of brick.”  In chapter 9, they are building brick altars; Yahweh makes them “fall” by His word that “falls” on Israel (v. 8); no matter, say the brick-hearted Babegyptians of Samaria, we’ll build it again, better this time.