Why faith, as a grace, in particular

Look at this simple passage from Thomas Watson's Body of Divinity. It's one of those striking things that when you see it explained like this you wonder why you never thought of it before:

+ + +
What is the condition of the covenant of grace?

The main condition is faith.

Why is faith more the condition of the new covenant than any other grace?

To exclude all glorying in the creature. Faith is a humble grace. If repentance or works were the condition of the covenant, a man would say, It is my righteousness that has saved me; but if it be of faith, where is boasting? Faith fetches all from Christ, and gives all the glory to Christ; it is a most humble grace. Hence it is that God has singled out this grace to be the condition of the covenant. [emphasis mine]
+ + +

What I'm getting at is not the fact that with faith is no boasting (vs. works, etc.) and all that. That is basic doctrine. What I'm getting at is even *thinking* about why 'faith' is *the particular grace* (and not any other) that is the condition of being in the covenant of grace (basically of being saved).

In other words, that word faith we just kind of say; and it gets knocked around, of course, by the atheists and others (blind faith, no evidence, etc.), and as a believer one just basically accepts the word and the act. But it seems vaguely abstract still. Yet we can see it more practically with the above explanation from Watson.

(And, again, for any who don't know me, I am not having a bell rung in my head over the fact that faith is different from repentance or works. The point is, basic doctrine aside, it's unusual to think 'why faith rather than any other grace.' Christians don't generally have that question enter our minds. Not in the way Watson presents it above.)

How's this for a simple effort

Here's a simple Work effort: self-remembering/non-identifying while reading the Bible complete.

That would guarantee x number of hours of self-remembering effort anyway. 100 hours? I don't know. Havn't figured it out. Doesn't matter. The value is being in the third state while taking in the words of the Old and New Testaments.

A really very simple and easy-to-remember goal. (No falling into waking sleep while reading though. You'd have to be honest. Mark out a section and do it. If you don't have an end point for each session you'd just drift into mechanical-ness. Chapters are obvious and would work, but probably aren't ideal; but if you have a Bible with section headings that might be more helpful in identifying complete sections.)

An observation on the potential shock of illness

There is a pastor of a popular big church who recently was diagnosed with a brain tumor that has spread. He had a seizure in Nov. and has been through the hospital mill for a month, including having an operation.

I don't want to name him, but here is just an observation I had regarding him. I saw him in a video, and he struck me as the usual 'church' type, with the churchy language, breathy, God is so good to us, I just love you all so much, we just have such a loving God, etc., etc.

In his recent Twitter feeds, after the shock of this major illness and the dire prospects ahead of him, he sounds different.

Like: well, today was at least something of a normal day. Sheesh.

I havn't heard him actually talk (havn't seen him on video) since his operation, so I'm just going by impressions from words he writes, but I think you can see a normalization process after the shock. I really think many of these church types are so dead asleep and fake (I don't necessarily mean that in the negative way), caught up in how they are supposed to be and to sound and stuck in an artificial groove that it may take such a shock to shake them out of it.

Nobody needs such an illness, or wants to talk about such an illness blithely, yet when one asks why do such things happen to people we can't assume the person effected doesn't need the shock.

Note left at Parzival's

It's serious, C Influence. It's true what the Work says, it isn't repeated because it is somebody's effort. Focused effort. If there are no students it ends. There's no point.

The written word is foundational and lasts as long as its published or saved. But conscious influence itself is the direct effort of a person. I appears, is used or not, and if not goes away.

One can become a source of C Influence oneself. Through time even. Here is where you see the effort involved. To be a source you have to make the effort to be awake yourself. It's real effort and doesn't last as some mechanical force.

The Holy Spirit is different, but I believe He operates along similar lines. One can have more or less of the Spirit, and one grieves the Spirit more or less. If one is indifferent to the Spirit then...does the Spirit lessen in you? I didn't say forsake you (once in you always there in a salvation sense), but in a sanctification sense one can be in a dry desert.

Conscious influence, wherever it is coming from, is Holy Spirit influence. I.e. if it is truly conscious then there is only one source, ultimately, for it. We can get it from the source, and we can get it from the communion of the saints. The saint doesn't have to be present in our time. Connected to our circle of time, perhaps, but not necessarily present.

A string quartet from Joseph Haydn

The Op. 33 String Quartets are generally thought to be under-noticed. Here is a good live performance of No. 1:

1st movement 5:59
2nd movement 2:23
3rd movement 5:36
4th movement 3:11

Beethoven's 2nd Symphony, and - not connected - a passage from Kline's Kingdom Prologue

Pretty good performance of Beethoven's 2nd Symphony. Complete in one video. Herbert von Karajan.

In Kline's Kingdom Prologue there is a striking passage (which I can't copy from the PDF) where he states what triggers the end of history. It involves common grace. The children of the devil have always been permitted by God to live if they recognize coexistence with the children of God. When the children of the devil, though, begin to assert a claim to total domination of this world then God's common grace for them ends. They cut off the branch they are sitting on.

You see this happening today. In the end days the devil deceives the nations which means all the devil's peoples the world over (which is unique) unite against the people of God. Iran's crazy leader back slaps with Venezuela's crazy leader saying they will destroy America. Islam proclaims they will take over Europe. Etc.

If you have discernment for good and evil you see this.

Of course these things happen in other eras, but the question is is it different today due to the world-wide nature of it? It probably is. America was a safe place for Christians to take refuge in. Now America has been breached by the devil's children in a unique way as never before with the fall of the two towers.

The new global leftist schemes to create global tyranny are part of it (the craziness of climate change treaties are just a part of this but representative). The note is on 'global.' Total domination. *No where to run, nowhere to hide.* No refuge for God's pilgrims. No right to exist without capitulating to the great anti-Christ idol.

In demanding sole dominion on this planet the devil and his followers are sowing their own destruction.

This is part of the anti-Christ crisis Kline outlines. It happens prior to the flood as well. When it happens now it triggers the end of history.

Go to this link and read from page 214 (the actual page number in the book) starting at the heading 'A. Anti-Christ Crisis', and read that 'A.' section through page 216. It's very short, yet the language is worth engaging.

This is an example of the kind of insights Kline's works provide that are unique in mainstream theology.