I closed yesterday’s Daily Article with Philip Yancey’s quote, “Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.” I had no idea at the time that his statement would be so relevant to his personal life.

I have followed Yancey’s work for years and consider him one of the most thoughtful and authentic writers in the evangelical world. It was therefore devastating to learn yesterday that he engaged in an affair with a married woman for eight years and is now retiring from writing and speaking.

In an emailed statement to Christianity Today, an outlet for which he has written for decades, he confessed the affair and added:

I am now focused on rebuilding trust and restoring my marriage of fifty-five years. Having disqualified myself from Christian ministry, I am therefore retiring from writing, speaking, and social media. Instead, I need to spend my remaining years living up to the words I have already written. I pray for God’s grace and forgiveness—as well as yours—and for healing in the lives of those I’ve wounded.

His prayer highlights one side of the Christian life, the “amazing grace” about which Yancey wrote so often. In The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Tim Keller famously wrote, “The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me.”

But Yancey’s confession also points to a dangerous downside of evangelical faith as many understand it.

“The one secret of a holy life”

Think of history as an hourglass lying on its side. The story begins with the cosmos, expansive beyond our imagining and created by the God who pronounced it “very good” (Genesis 1:31). It narrows to the human race, then to one nation within that race, then to one surviving part of that nation, then to one teenage girl and her newborn Child.

When this Child grows to adulthood, the story begins to expand again: to twelve disciples, to 120 believers in an Upper Room, to three thousand baptized souls, to a movement that expanded to include Samaritans (Acts 8), Gentiles (Acts 10), the West as well as the East (Acts 16), and ultimately the “ends of the earth” (Acts 28). Today, this movement numbers more than two billion believers living in virtually every nation on earth. It is a movement fueled by the divine grace that forgives all we confess and saves our souls for eternity.

For many evangelicals, this is how the story ends. Now we try our best to do our best and we confess our sins when we fail, all the while waiting for heaven and the day our struggle is done.

But God’s ultimate purpose is not just that all people might be forgiven and granted eternal life with him in heaven. It is that the flourishing and beauty with which God began our story might become our story once more.

To this end, he does not just pardon our sins—he remakes our very nature. When we are “born again” (John 3:3), we “become children of God” (John 1:12), a “new creation” as “the old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

As God’s recreated children, we are intended to demonstrate our Father’s spiritual “genetics.” His Spirit works to manifest his “fruit,” the character of Christ, in our character (Galatians 5:22–23). It’s not that we try harder to be more like Jesus—it is that Jesus makes us like himself.

This is not a new concept. “Theosis,” the belief that Christ is working to make us like himself, has been central to some theological worldviews for centuries. Oswald Chambers gave it full and practical expression when he asserted:

Sanctification is an impartation, not an imitation. The one secret of a holy life lies not in imitating Jesus but in letting his perfections manifest themselves in my physical body. . . .

Jesus gives me his patience, his love, his holiness, his faith, his purity, and his godliness. All these are manifested in and through every sanctified soul. Sanctification isn’t drawing the power to be holy from Jesus; it’s drawing his own holiness from him. It’s having the very same holiness that was manifested in him manifested in me.

“Make me love you as I ought to love”

I recently found a hymn by the Irish Anglican priest George Croly (1780–1860) that gave me new insight:

Spirit of God, who dwells within my heart,
wean it from sin, through all its pulses move.
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as you are,
and make me love you as I ought to love.

I had not thought about asking God to “make me love you as I ought to love.” Since our Father honors the free will with which he created us in his image, how can he “make me love” him or anyone else? But then I realized: if I exercise my free will to ask him to change my free will and my heart, he does not violate my freedom in answering my prayer.

Such a prayer is not only theologically permissible—it is spiritually essential. As Henri Nouwen warned, “Anyone who wants to fight his demons with his own weapons is a fool.”

But when we ask Jesus to change our hearts, he transforms us into our best selves as we fulfill his perfect will for our lives. This is because he now lives his life in and through ours (Galatians 2:20; Colossians 1:27) as we experience the risen Christ himself (1 John 1:1–4).

Our Father wants to be as real to us in this world as he will be in the next. This is the greatest need of the human heart: to experience personally the God who made us and made us for himself. Otherwise, “our hearts are restless until they rest in him,” as St. Augustine testified personally.

More than anything else, we want and need to know that God is real. And we learn that he is real when he becomes real in us.

“My heart an altar, and your love the flame”

If Philip Yancey can fall into sin that devastates his marriage and his ministry, so can I. So can you. Let’s therefore use his confession as a call to seek the moral and spiritual transformation only Christ can effect in our lives. Let’s take time even now to pray, “Make me love you as I ought to love.” And let’s do whatever the Spirit leads us to do as we partner with him in answering our prayer and manifesting the character of our Lord.

George Croly’s prayer continues:

Teach me to feel that you are always nigh;
teach me the struggles of the soul to bear,
to check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh;
teach me the patience of unceasing prayer.

Teach me to love you as your angels love,
one holy passion filling all my frame:
the fullness of the heaven-descended Dove;
my heart an altar, and your love the flame.

Is your heart his altar yet today?

Quote for the day:

“With the goodness of God to desire our highest welfare, the wisdom of God to plan it, and the power of God to achieve it, what do we lack? Surely we are the most favored of all creatures” —A. W. Tozer

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I need to begin today with a confession.

Deadly clashes have erupted in Iran as demonstrations sparked by anger over the rising cost of living entered their second week. Unlike those in past years, these protests are seeking regime change and taking down regime symbols, posters, and statues.

At least 285 locations in ninety-two cities have witnessed protest gatherings. At this writing, more than two thousand citizens have been arrested, and at least thirty-four protesters have been killed. If Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s forces fail to quell dissent, he has reportedly made plans to flee to Moscow.

I am old enough to remember the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis vividly. I have written often about Iran’s horrific jihadist ideology and have called its leaders “the world’s most dangerous regime.” It would be in the best interest of Iran, Israel, the Middle East, and the world for them to fall and flee.

But while I believe I have reacted to this news with the right analysis, I have done so in the wrong spirit. The same has been true with regard to recent events in Venezuela.

Let me explain.

The alliance of transcendence and immanence

Religions across human history have focused on transcendence or imminence, but not both. To the Greeks and Romans, the gods lived atop Mt. Olympus and used humans for their personal, often nefarious ends. To Muslims, Allah is remote and removed from the human condition. To Hindus and Buddhists, by contrast, there is no personal Ultimate Being; the focus is on personal enlightenment and oneness with reality. The mystery religions of the Greco-Roman world similarly centered on rites and rituals intended to lead to personal empowerment.

Then came the prophetic declaration fulfilled by the birth of Christ: “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel’ (which means, God with us)” (Matthew 1:23, fulfilling Isaiah 7:14). This transcendent God who was with us became immanently one of us.

In one sense, his earthly life could not have been more lowly:

• He was born to a peasant teenage girl and adopted by a peasant carpenter father.
• His birth was attended by field hands so ritually unclean that they could not attend synagogue or temple services.
• He grew up in a town so obscure that it is not mentioned even once in the Old Testament.
• He was baptized among sinners.
• He experienced temptation, hunger, thirst, weariness, and pain.
• He lived in a friend’s home because he had “nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58).
• He died a criminal’s death between condemned prisoners.
• He was buried in a borrowed tomb.

In another sense, however, his life could not have been more exalted:

• His birth was celebrated by angels.
• His baptism was marked by the Spirit’s descent and the Father’s affirmation (Matthew 3:16–17).
• He regularly demonstrated divine omniscience, omnibenevolence, and omnipotence.
• His death was marked by “darkness over all the land,” the rending of the temple curtain, a violent earthquake, and the opening of tombs (Matthew 27:45–53).
• His burial led to his glorious resurrection and ascension to heaven.

Across his ministry, he interacted with every dimension of the cultural spectrum:

• He befriended tax collectors and “sinners” (cf. Matthew 9:11).
• He touched lepers and healed demoniacs.
• He engaged with Gentiles, Samaritans, and Jews.
• He ministered to a Roman centurion, taught a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, and witnessed to the highest officials in the country.

Now he continues his earthly ministry as he prays for us (Romans 8:34) while his Spirit dwells within us (1 Corinthians 3:16) and empowers us as the “body of Christ” in the world today (1 Corinthians 12:27).

No other religion in history has conceived of such an astounding combination of immanence and transcendence—all of it for us.

“Sons of your Father in heaven”

Now there is no temptation we cannot trust to our Savior, knowing that he has been “tempted as we are” and will empower our victory over our common enemy (Hebrews 4:15). There is no problem we cannot bring to him, knowing that we can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace” where we will “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (v. 16).

And there is no soul on earth with whom we should not stand in compassion and solidarity.

Jesus loves even Ali Khamenei and Nicolás Maduro. Our Savior would have died just for them. The more they and others like them reject God’s word and will, the more they need our intercession, witness, and ministry. And the more we pay forward the grace we have received, the more we give our broken world what it can find nowhere else.

Jesus assured us that when we “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” we demonstrate that we are “sons of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44–45). Then, though we live “in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation,” we “shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life” (Philippians 2:15–16).

“The goal of a materialistic Utopia”

By contrast, our broken culture can claim neither divine transcendence nor immanence. Secular society has no God who is for us, much less a God who lives in us and works through us.

George Orwell’s 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier describes socialists in a way that is just as true of secularists today: “With their eyes glued to economic facts, [they] have proceeded on the assumption that man has no soul, and explicitly or implicitly they have set up the goal of a materialistic Utopia.”

You and I know better. We know that a “materialistic Utopia” is a contradiction in terms. We know that man not only has a soul but is a soul. We know that God’s love can change any heart in this world for the next.

But we also know that such love has to be incarnated to be believed, first in Christ and now in “Christ in you” (Colossians 1:27).

You may not have the chance to be the presence of Christ to world leaders, though you can and should pray for them to follow Jesus. But you can demonstrate the grace of Christ today to someone you are tempted to reject but called to love.

Philip Yancey noted,

“Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.”

So should we.

Quote for the day:

“‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.” —John Newton

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A woman protesting against the Venezuelan government in 2021 was disfigured when military forces tossed boiling water on her. Yesterday, she took part in demonstrations in New York City, where she begged a Manhattan federal judge to lock up dictator Nicolás Maduro for as long as possible.

She identified herself only by her first name because she said she has family back in Venezuela and fears for their safety since she’s speaking out. “I was tortured for expressing myself and having an opinion,” she said. By contrast, Maduro told the judge at his court appearance, “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.”

In other headline news:

• Today is the fifth anniversary of the attack on the United States Capitol in Washington, DC.  Many blame President Trump for what happened that day, while others fault then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for allegedly refusing to deploy the National Guard.
• Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced yesterday that he would not seek a third term so he can focus on fraud issues plaguing his state. He blamed President Trump and Republicans for exacerbating the problem, while others blame his administration.
• And federal health officials on Monday announced what the New York Times calls “dramatic revisions to the slate of vaccines recommended for American children.” Some public health experts protested the revisions, while HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, “We are aligning the US childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus while strengthening transparency and informed consent.”

In each case, we are left to debate who is right and who is wrong, which leads to my larger point today.

 “The indispensable pillars of modern civilization”

Klaus Schwab is the founder of the World Economic Forum and author of the new book, Thriving and Leading in the Intelligent Age. In it he states, “Our economies, our institutions, our very concept of what it means to be human are all being transformed by forces of intelligence. These changes are not abstract; they are already redefining how we learn, how we work, how we govern, and how we relate to each other and to our planet.”

This transformation is clear to anyone who follows developments with regard to artificial intelligence and technology. But in a Time article published yesterday, Dr. Schwab writes, “Beneath a surface of political volatility and technological acceleration lie two quietly deteriorating foundations: truth and trust. Their erosion is reshaping the global landscape more profoundly than the events that dominate headlines.”

He notes that “in past decades, societies could rely on a shared understanding that truth, however contested, was worth pursuing.” However, “Digital networks and algorithmic curation have fragmented public life into discrete informational universes.” Synthetic media and AI have accelerated this fragmentation. Consequently, “It is increasingly difficult for citizens to determine whether what they see and hear is authentic. As a result, the very idea of a shared reality is weakening.”

He concludes:

The warning is clear: no society, no institution, no technological system can stand for long on foundations that are no longer believed. Truth and trust remain the indispensable pillars of modern civilization—and the degree to which they can be restored or reimagined will determine the contours of our future.

Three logical assertions

Watching US politicians react to the news regarding Venezuela along such starkly partisan lines reinforces his point. A “post-truth” society cannot sustain itself, since consensual truth is essential to the consensual actions by which society functions.

In response, I’d like to suggest a brief apologetic framed around three logical assertions.

One: Objective truth exists by logical necessity. To make the postmodern claim that “there is no such thing as objective truth” is to make an objective truth claim.

Two: Objective truth must logically be grounded ultimately in a source that transcends our fallen minds and subjective opinions. We require a compass for direction, a dictionary for the meaning of words, a Constitution for framing laws, and laws for framing personal behavior. In the same way, humans require a transcendent truth that our fallen minds cannot produce. Such truth must come not from our fallen creation but from our Creator.

Three: If God is “the truth” (John 14:6), God’s “word is truth” (John 17:17), and “God is love” (1 John 4:8), his character logically requires him to make his truth available to humanity. A loving father wants his children to know what is right so they can do what is right. This impulse explains the work of God’s Spirit in inspiring, preserving, interpreting, and applying biblical truth (cf. 2 Peter 1:21). God wrote a book, and we can read, understand, and obey it today.

When “God opens his mouth”

But any book, even God’s book, must be read to accomplish its intended purpose.

According to Klaus Schwab, our future as a society depends on “the stability of the conceptual architecture that supports collective life.” The Architect of such life intends us to depend upon his word because he knows that such dependence is the only path to our highest flourishing.

The good news is that if you and I choose this path today, the Spirit will then “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). We will discover for ourselves that “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

And our changed lives will become the change we wish to see as the Spirit uses our godly character and compassionate witness as a catalyst for moral and spiritual awakening. Thus it has been across our nation’s history, and thus it will be again in our time.

Tim Keller was right: “A perfect God could have nothing less than perfect communication with his people.” Mark Batterson added: “When you open your Bible, God opens his mouth.”

And the Scottish theologian Alexander Whyte (1836–1921) observed,

“There are two ways to read Scripture: the way a lawyer reads a will and the way an heir reads a will.”

Which way will you read God’s word today?

Quote for the day:

“The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into him, that they may delight in his presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God himself in the core and center of their hearts” —A. W. Tozer

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