I love my mother.

She gets on my nerves sometimes…. but that’s normal. West Indian parents sometimes have this huge problem of detaching from their grown children and want to still treat them like kids. To my mother, I’ll always be her ‘baby son’.

But it’s good to have her around still.

I spent some good time with her yesterday, helping her with some stuff for her discipleship class. My mother attends New Antioch Baptist Church of Randallstown. Average traditional black baptist dispensational church. I’ve seen their membership manual and they do hold to a few shaky things here and there (i.e. – believer has an ‘old nature’ and a ‘new nature’/carnal Christian concept), but not enough to warrant me telling her to completely leave her home church. In fact, I’m glad she’s there – she’s slowly starting to build some relationships with folks at her new church and that’s a GOOD thing.

I helped my mom solidify her thoughts on Romans 6 yesterday, which was good for me too. Recently, in dealing with my own sin and my daily struggle to live right, I’ve been musing exactly on ‘what died’ and ‘what now lives’. Sure, I can recite stuff from the confessions, I can recite explanations as to what happened, but it’s still sinking in, so to speak. My understanding on what exactly a believer was/is as a ‘new creation’ still had some of the dross of old dispensationalism attached to it – the ‘old nature/new nature’ paradigm.

Well, in going through Romans 6 on the topic of obedience, something about the whole passage came alive to me and really made sense. MacArthur said some good comments on this recently – the Christian life isn’t ‘addition’ (a new nature to our old sin nature). Rather, the Christian life is indeed a ‘new creation’ as Romans 6 reminds us constantly.

In fact, the entire chapter 6 of Romans is a restatement of this very fact. The believer has truly been changed on the inside – not just ‘given something else in addition to’. There is no ‘old nature and the new nature’ – there is ONLY the new nature in the believer. The slave to righteousness. Paul goes into great detail again and again – consider yourselves dead to sin, freed from sin, no longer a slave to sin, just as death no longer has dominion over Christ as He rose from the dead so too sin doesn’t have dominion over the believer any longer… and much more.

So why do we still sin ?

Well, we still live in unredeemed flesh. Unredeemed flesh still sins, still dies. Unredeemed flesh desires sin and to fulfill its’ lusts and wants. The new man on the inside of the believer, on the other hand, desires to serve righteousness. And this is the ‘fight’ we come to in Romans 7. It all makes sense now.

Now for the record, my old pastor at New Song also taught this. But honestly – with the old paradigm taught in the discipleship classes at New Song (Master Life), this paradigm (new creation) doesn’t fit or make sense. I wish I’d have noticed the discrepancy earlier.

Anyway, that’s my lightbulb moment for the day.

My last post got some attention, so Blogs and Other Stuff will become a regular feature around these here parts.

And with that….

– Adrian Warnock notices my blog and says it appears there aren’t too many black Christian bloggers. Meanwhile, Rae notices Adrian’s post and pledges to write some higer-level stuff to help bolster the black Christian blog presence. Coincidentally, Rae’s also a black Calvinist (though, I’m THE BlackCalvinist). Both gents will be going on the blogroll very shortly (I need to update that thing! )

– Speaking of black Calvinists, Reformation 21 blog tossed out a short blurb about Reformed Blacks of America. I got a glimpse of this site prior to Ref21 blogging on it and those of you who visit the main ministry site will notice I already have them linked on the front page. But to save you a trip there, you can visit Bro. Xavier Pickett and company at http://www.reformedblacksofamerica.org/. Xavier’s been nice enough to link back to us as well.

– Speaking of more black Calvinists, both of Anthony Bradley’s blogs ( this one and this one ) finally found their way past my browser today. I’m RSSing to both of them quickly. Bro. Bradley is also part of the faculty at Covenant Theological Seminary, the PCA’s seminary.

– Steve Camp has a spectacular post from Spurgeon’s sermon ‘Holding Fast to the Faith’. “Truth, Courage, Humility and Contrition …admire the bear?” is a very creative title, but aptly describes how we should view the faith of our anscestors and appreciate its’ depth and theological richness in a world enamoured with ‘the new’. Take a read at it.

– Speaking of Christian history, Jason Engwer at NTRMin posts another GREAT Spurgeon quote under Through Faith They Still Speak. I appreciate his posts tremendously because he and others are striving daily to reconnect modern Christianity with its’ very rich 2000+ year history. Too many folk walk around as though there was ‘Jesus, the Apostles, Paul, then my church.’ I’m probably going to repeat myself until I’m blue in the face, but much of modern ‘Churchianity’, in trying to invent some ‘new’ way to market the gospel or to ‘do church’, simply echoes some old heresy that’s already been rehashed in church history and probably condemned. The Downgrade Controversy is simply repeating itself in today’s modern church. Much of what I’ve read in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce is probably more applicable to todays’ church than the ones in his day. Postmodern/Existential thought was a disease then as it is now. Biblically illiterate professing Christians showing no desire to grow were a problem then just as now. Folks willing to set aside truth in the name of some farcical ‘unity in love’ were prevalent in Spurgeon’s day just as today. No heretic ever comes up mean and unloving. Clark Pinnock, for example, is one of the nicest guys (at least according to people who’ve interacted with him). Yet, he’s one of the current voices in the visible church teaching that God doesn’t know the future, God is limited and salvation is possible without cognitively (that is, mentally acknowledging) knowing Jesus Christ as Lord, God and Savior.

So when you see me go off on a rant of sorts (like this one) , it’s because the truth needs to be stated and restated and restated. Much of the evangelical church today is like a class full of 7th and 8th graders (which I happen to teach). You can say something once, twice, three times, but it only sticks with a few of the kids because their minds are distracted by other things. It’s not until the third, fourth or fifth time or once a voice is raised loud enough to overcome the din of distractions, side conversations and such, that the kids pick up that there’s something important going on they need to hear. So too it is with the visible church – our minds are distracted with marketing programs, practical cares of life, entertainment, self-centeredness and much more – and the ONLY solution to this is to get our focus back on the WORD OF GOD. So a few of us have decided to scream at folks about the Five Solas of the Reformation, Church history, expository preaching and learning from all of the mistakes in church history down to the present so that they are not repeated.

– Tim Challies does an excellent post on the retreat of Repentance from the evangelical gospel today. Of interest is also his brief posting of Rick Warren’s rather incomplete definition of what repentance is. Amen, Tim. Amen.

– Machaira at Twoedged Swordplay and a regular in #prosapologian posts a very lengthy reply to a regular channel visitor on the Sovereignty of God in salvation. Keep cracking that nutshell, Mach.

and in the political realm:

– While LaShawn hasn’t commented on Bush’s selection for the justice to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, Michelle Malkin has. Not too happy about it, it appears.

– Chris at The Black Republican doesn’t sound too happy, either.

Let’s see how much more upset the political sphere can be on this one. I’m all for commenting on politics and being involved, but I’ve learned (and am still learning) to take all politics with a grain of salt. Ultimately, no one candidate will meet all our expectations and they will ALL fail. Only when Christ comes will we have a ‘GREAT’ leader (but duh…you knew that, right ?)

Gone to eat. Been blogging since 6 and this one’s taken a while to get together.