Near the end of the week, I share several things brimming from my reading, study, and musings throughout the week.

Herman Bavinck on sanctification

Sanctification is the process whereby the Spirit applies the holiness of Jesus to our lives practically, as Bavinck so clearly articulates.

Many people acknowledge that we must be justified by the righteousness that Christ has acquired, but believe—or at least act in practice—that we must be sanctified by a holiness we bring about ourselves. . . .

[Gospel-informed] sanctification, however . . . consists in the reality that in Christ, God grants us not only righteousness but also complete holiness, and does not impute it, but also inwardly imparts it by the regenerating and renewing work of the Holy Spirit until we have been fully conformed to the image of his Son.

The connectedness between justification and sanctification is firmly grounded in the Spirit. For the Spirit whom Jesus promised to his disciples and poured out in the church, is not only a Spirit of adoption, who assures believes of their status as children, but also the Spirit of renewal and sanctification.

Reformed Dogmatics volume 4, 248, 251

A wife confronts her husband, a pastor, about idolizing the ministry

In his book A Praying Church, Paul Miller recounts how his mother gently but firmly confronted his father, Jack Miller, about letting his ministry sap energy from their marriage. Ouch! But so right.

As I watch you in your struggles and labors and your desire to be God’s man in this 20th century, I also see the mission work and the church taking your time and energies. They are the source of your deepest joys and greatest fears. You nourish and cherish them as a bridegroom his bride. When we wake up in the morning your thoughts are usually on the church, the discipleship group, neighbors, church, your writing, the missions team, and your teaching and preaching.’

Your daytime energies are directed in these areas, and at night, they are still with you. I don’t mean to imply that this is all in the energy of the Flesh. No one could do all these things unless empowered by the Holy Spirit. I am saying that, as I study Ephesians 5, I read that there is a holy energy that goes into marriage from the husband to the wife.

The other day when I asked if we could have tea together or just go out, I wanted to say some of these things, but your response was: “I thought we had enough of problems.” I forgive you, and I forgive for making the church and the mission your first love, but I’m not sure I am helping you by keeping quiet.

I have learned to accept this as a way of life, but is it God’s norm? You often say you want to be a man controlled and compelled by the promises of Scripture, a man of prayer and patience, and a perpetual learner. God is making you all of this, but I rarely hear you desire to be taught how to nourish and cherish your wife as Christ does the church.

G. K. Chesterton: Are you strong enough to exult in monotony?

We grow bored with monotony. Is it because we have lost the “eternal appetite of infancy”? G. K. Chesterton reflects on this in his book Orthodoxy.

Grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in montony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have grown old and our Father is younger than we.