Nathanael Szobody on From day to day in life and love
We live in the now
We seek what’s to come,
Earth our dwelling, heaven our home.
We need not know how
Or why we have come
To be what now we have become.
To see life with eyes from above
Nathanael Szobody on “You have been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of his beloved Son–in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
You have been bought with a price. You are not your own. You have not been delivered unto your own wiles, but into the kingdom of Christ. Your price of slavery was the blood of the Son of God so that you may be owned, not by this world, nor by your own self, but that you may be a servant of righteousness–delivered into the blessed slavery of the kingdom of the risen Son of God.
The gospel is not your self-improvement project.
The gospel is your beautiful, gracious, taskmaster. It is your master because you have been adopted by its Author, our loving heavenly father; its task is to deliver others from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
Nathanael Szobody on In Romans 12:1 the Apostle Paul says: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” There is a curious use here of the physical body as a spiritual sacrifice. This use would not be so curious in the Old Covenant as there are many physical sacrifices to be found in the law. But in the teachings on the New Covenant we need to stop and think about what exactly he means; it’s not quite as obvious as the symbolism of slaying an innocent lamb for sins.
When we come together as the body of Christ in a worship service we sing and listen to the Word taught and fellowship. This is called worship. The word used in the verse quoted above for ‘spiritual’ is ‘logikhn’;Sometimes this word can mean ‘reasonable’ or ‘rational’. In any case it is dealing with the nonphysical reality of a concept, that is, the idea of it, the perfect idea of it in it’s essence. So in this case we speak of worship, or service; words used in the context of the priest’s service in the temple, and in Paul’s writings, of the service that believers render to God as a living priesthood. So the perfect idea of worship in its essence is spiritual. One may also argue that ‘divine’ is a good word to use. And indeed, many Christian traditions have called the liturgy the “divine service”.
What Paul is speaking of then, is a worship that is a service, like that of a priest who is a ‘slave’ of sorts to God, and it is a service that is very real in its spiritual significance. It is of the essence of what worship is all about; that is the meaning of ‘logikhn’: it is of the essence.
But how does one go about doing this? “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” So this is not a mindless sacrifice, as if we are causing ourselves to suffer just for the sake of being a sacrifice. Rather, we are to make this sacrifice of ourselves, a true spiritual and divine sacrifice, by a radical change in the way that we think. The sacrifice is not a destruction, but a transformation.
Our paradigm for this is of course the cross, where Jesus both died and rose again as a complete, perfect and acceptable sacrifice to God on our behalf. He was not destroyed
Nathanael Szobody on “All of created reality is only a flimsy shell of the being that is hidden in [God] but becomes visible in some way through the appearance of all that is visible. Every reflection will pass away on that day when God will no longer reveal himself through his reflections, but rather will plainly show forth all that he is. Once our spiritual sight is awakened and strengthened by the light of glory, then the world will no longer please us. We look beyond a shadow once the body that has cast it appears. We are no longer interested in a portrait once the actual person arrives. A mask loses its appeal when the face is uncovered. In the same way, all will seem to us mere appearance, mask and nothingness whe God will reveal himself fully to our souls.”
— Jean-Jacques Olier
Nathanael Szobody on The human is by nature of a contingent will.
Because humanity is contingent, there is a finite number of possible scenarios in which they can exist. Therefore their choices are limited to pre-established, finite possibilities. It is from these pre-established dispositions that they ‘choose’ with the will. Because they are restricted and thus choose according to a certain existential pre-determination, their context and possibility of choice is of a certain exclusive character. This exclusive character is their nature. Therefore what a person chooses is indeed of themself, and what is of themself is of their nature and therefore exclusive. In this way any choice excludes the other possibilities within their nature and leaves them with a more restricted nature than before: slavery to sin.
In God all things are possible and the choice to continue to exist in this possibility is the choice to not choose anything but what is already given in God. When humanity chose something finite which was not already given, they chose necessarily to have an exclusive nature whose character was that without the infinite possibility of God’s provision, i.e., death necessarily. So the choices now available to the will are exclusive to death.
The solution of Christ is that he shares of the non-contingent life of God; the first premise does not apply. Though he took on contingent flesh, dependent on his father also spiritually, althewhile he remained non-contingent God. He has a nature whose exclusive character is God and so is the only one able to give to the contingent person God’s life by exchanging a nature exclusive to death for the nature exclusive to life as the non-contingent son of God in contingent humanity.
When a person receives this life of God by faith in Jesus they have all the possibilities that are in the infinite God, with infinity defined as God’s will; and they rest in them, not grabbing one or the other, but trusting in him who provides all. So then they are free and have a freedom in regards to all things, yet the very joy of that freedom is essentially in the rest and not in the exercise of choice (which would in fact leave the person in a more exclusive position) but in the exercise of submission to the non-contingent will of God.
Nathanael Szobody on 7 What should I say, is Greek grammar a linguistic sham? Not in the least; but I would not have know my wrong translation but through Greek grammar, for I would not have known that ‘en’ could signify a dative of means had not Greek grammar said “‘en’ does not always mean ‘in'”. 8 And folly of the subconscious, seizing only on the point that ‘en’ usually means ‘in’ as implied by the very grammar rule stated, produced in me all sorts of narrow translations. 9 Formerly I was oblivious to such a distinction, but when the rule was stated, the narrow translation of ‘en’ sprouted up all over 10 and I lost all integrity as a translator, and found that because of my lack of critical thinking the rule that was meant to be instructive proved my downfall; 11 for when my laziness sought refuge in the rule, the rule killed me. 12 So the rule is good and Greek grammar is instructive, and useful and beneficial. 13 So the good rule was my downfall? No, of course not; but that my error might be pointed out as such, it used the good rule to bring about my downfall so that a slight mistake might be known as a serious grammatical error through the rule. 14 For we know that the grammar rule has the final say; I am but a student, paying through my nose to get a piece of paper that says I know something. 15 I don’t have a clue what I’m doing here; cuz I don’t mean to write what I end up translating; I actually think my translation is pretty hysterical. 16 But atleast if I recognize its absurdity I’m acknowledging the purity of the original Greek grammar–that it does actually make sense. 17 So it’s not really a reflection of my integrity that my translation is bad, but only a recognition of the limited extent of my learning. 18 For I’ll confess I hardly remember a thing I studied in Machen, that is conscientiously, cuz I can remember the rule when I see it, but I can’t reproduce the results in my translation; 19 for I can’t remember the rules that I know are correct, and so even though I don’t want to produce a horrible translation that’s exactly what I end up doing. 20 But If I didn’t mean to butcher the grammar so badly, it’s not really something you can hold against me personally, but it just shows you what empty pockets and a bad memory does to you. 21 So the general principle is that the more I try to memorize rules, the more I realize what a horrible rule memorizer I am; 22 Cuz I love Greek as far as that is concerned, personally and all, 23 but I see the constant struggle with my limitedness and bad memory just taking over my actual translations. 24 I really am a hopeless case. Who can get this stuff pound into my head? Thank God his Word is greater than my linguistic prowess. So I can say I really enjoy translating the truth, althewhile recognizing that, as a translation, it’s really worthless.
Nathanael Szobody on In grafting we divide and open up the trunk, which will receive the graft. Now the fruit of this graft, selected by the gardener, is not the ordinary fruit of the tree to be grafted. In a similar fashion, the eternal Father whom the gospel mentions as the divine cultivator of the gospel, chose a wild plant from the earth (if we consider it in its origin and nature), which is humanity bearing the likeness of sinful flesh. God separated the nature from the person that would have been proper and connatural to it and that would have flowed out of its essence once it was actuated and existing. He substituted the heavenly graft, and the divine subsistence, the very person of his Son in the place of the human subsistence, which had been negated. Therefore this plant, divided in this way and wounded in what is most intimate, most appropriate and most connatural to its being, bears fruits that are different and do not belong to it, but rather to what was grafted onto it.
–Pierre de Berulle
Nathanael Szobody on That Christ is the word means more than just “word” by itself. It means that He is God’s communication, his mouth piece to man and the expression of himself to his people. In the beginning God created the world by speaking it into existence: there’s Christ. He is the creator, as it says in Colossians, “He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of creation, for all things were created by him, whether, thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things for in him all things hold together.” He is God’s creative power. That means that all physical things even on this earth are expressions of Christ (that is, in their perfect form before the fall).
The only way we know God is in his communication to us, and his communication, or word, is Jesus. So when God wanted to communicate salvation to us, it is his word that he sent to become flesh and communicate all of his love, and all of his will in redemption, ‘explaining’ through his own actions the gospel, as he himself was and is the gospel, the word of truth.
He is called the first-born of creation because he created all things, but also because he himself became a part of creation and as such was the only perfect created man; thus he is said to be the firstborn, meaning the best, but also meaning that he became apart of creation, while having existed long before creation. Because of his power as creator and the first born of creation, the new creation, it is he who has the power to create new life in us and make us a part of the new creation. He did so at the beginning of the world by creating all things through his word, and he does so now by creating in us new life by his word, the gospel, Jesus himself in his death and resurrection.
Nathanael Szobody on Continued from I peter
There is no aspect of the Gospel which is not in Christ. He is the mystery of God for all time in this world. He is the second Adam who accomplished everything that the first Adam did not, and he accomplished it for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.
What is that ‘becoming’ but repentance of sin and a union with the life of God? And this is possible not because we met God’s salvation with our repentance
Nathanael Szobody on In reply to Michael
Baptism is God’s gift of unity with Jesus’ death for the power to live the life of the resurrection through faith