NOTES ON PAYING THE IRON PRICE II: SHEPHERDS – STEEL YOURSELVES AND ACT LIKE MEN! – (WITH VIDEO)

1. THEOLOGY

SCRIPTURE. “Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh [and died for us], arm yourselves [like warriors] with the same purpose [being willing to suffer for doing what is right and pleasing God], because whoever has suffered in the flesh [being like-minded with Christ] is done with [intentional] sin [having stopped pleasing the world], so that he can no longer spend the rest of his natural life living for human appetites and desires, but [lives] for the will and purpose of God. For the time already past is [more than] enough for doing what the [unsaved] Gentiles like to do-living [unrestrained as you have done] in a course of [shameless] sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties, and wanton idolatries.

In [connection with] all this, they [the unbelievers] are resentful and surprised that you do not [think like them, value their values and] run [hand in hand] with them into the same excesses of dissipation and immoral freedom, and they criticize and abuse and ridicule you and make fun of your values. But they will [have to] give an account to Him who is ready to judge and pass sentence on the living and the dead.” – 1 PETER 4:1-5, AMP

KEY TERM: “SUFFER.” ‘PASCHÓ’ [παθὼν]: “‘To experience a painful sensation or impression;’ also, to undergo a hardship or affliction; to endure an agony or evil.” NOTE: “The Greek verb ‘paschó’ primarily means to suffer or endure pain, hardship, or distress. In the New Testament, it is often used in the context of physical suffering, persecution, or the trials faced by Jesus Christ and His followers. The term conveys a sense of enduring hardship with patience and faith.”

QUOTATION. “‘The Cross is laid on every Christian.’ The First Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to Abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship, we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His Death—We give over our lives to Death. Thus, it begins; the Cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. ‘When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.’” ― DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, The Cost of Discipleship, 1937; edite

COMMENTARY. “‘Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh’ – Since he as a Man has died for us. See the notes at 1 Peter 3:18. The design was to set the Suffering Redeemer before them as an Example in their trials. ‘Arm yourselves likewise with the same mind!’ – That is, evidently, the same Mind that He evinced – a Readiness to suffer in the Cause of Religion, a Readiness to die as He had done. This Readiness to suffer and die, the Apostle speaks of as ‘armour,’ and having this is represented as being armed. Armour is put on for offensive or defensive purposes in war; and the idea of the Apostle here is, that that state of mind when we are ready to meet with persecution and trial, and when we are ready to die, will answer the purpose of armour in engaging in the conflicts and strifes which pertain to us as Christians, and especially in meeting with persecutions and trials. We are to put on the same fortitude which the Lord Jesus had, and this will be the best defense against our foes, and the best security of victory.

‘For he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin’ – Compare the notes at Romans 6:7. To ‘suffer in the flesh is to die.’ The expression here has a proverbial aspect and seems to have meant something like this: ‘When a man is dead, he will sin no more;’ referring of course to the present life. So if a Christian becomes dead in a moral sense – dead to this world, dead by being crucified with Christ (see the notes at Galatians 2:20) – he may be expected to cease from sin. The reasoning is based on the idea that there is such a ‘Union’ between Christ and the believer that His Death on the Cross secured the death of the believer to the world. Compare 2 Timothy 2:11; Colossians 2:20; Colossians 3:3.” – ALBERT BARNES, Notes on the Old and the New Testament, 1884; edited

II. TEACHING

For some time now, the Christian Right has made it clear to nearly all Churchgoers in America that we are under assault and severely persecuted by the Progressive Left. Therefore, Jerry Fallwell’s Moral Majority, birthed in 1979, and all who followed his lead convinced us to fight to Dislodge and Dominate those dirty Pagans in order to:

‘Make America Great Again.’

AMERICAN NOSTALGIA. You know, like we used to be in all those American ‘Good ‘Ol Days’ we hear so much about today.

As when we had Slavery from 1607 to 1865 followed by Jim Crow Laws from the late 1800s through 1965. Or when President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced 60,000 Native Americans from 18 tribes to move to poverty-ridden Reservations along the bloody “Trail of Tears” that killed thousands of men, women and little children along the way. Or when we struck the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the our declared War with Mexico, forcing the Mexicans to cede 55 percent of its territory to the United States in dubious execution of its self-constructed policy of “Manifest Destiny.”

Those days, beloved, remember them? No? I do. I do.

And all the more so since Donald Trump has seized unfettered Executive Presidential Power to bring them back again. But not just ‘Return’ to them, beloved, but rather to ‘Exalt them!’ But not by the time-honored process of Constitutionally legislated policies by the US Congress, but rather ‘by Executive Order (i.e., Royal Decree)!’

Those who “Comply,” shall be deemed good citizens, given all the rights and privileges owed them – by the President. Those who “Refuse to Comply” will be ‘forced’ (there’s that nettlesome little word again) into become “American Untouchables,” pariah, social outcasts, and thereby toward joblessness and poverty, deportation, or I fully believe a bit later – incarceration and even execution.

That America, my friends, Trump’s New America. It’s already being constructed on the dust heap of presumed Biblical and Constitutional Law and Moral Order. ‘Presumed,’ that is, since it is clear that we have never had a Uniform Society of equal rights under the law.

‘That is historical fact!’ And Christians are to be trafficking in the Truth, so let’s begin there, and dispense with all the cultural shibboleths and fanciful myths about past American righteousness.

CHRISTIAN DUTY. One of our brighter lights in the Church and one of my unapologetic favorites is that belonging to DR. JOHN PIPER, American theologian and Pastor in the Reformed Baptist tradition. He is also Chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, having received his academic credentials from Wheaton College, Fuller Theological Seminary, and the University of Munich.

The title of his excellent piece so pertinent to our conversation, “Do [White] Christians Really Suffer in America?” (Desiring God, Aug. 14, 2023; edited). I took the reasonable liberty of inserting the word, “White” in the title, since that is undeniably the audience he is addressing.

Here are his FIVE MAIN IDEAS in bullet point format, that address his suggestions that Christians will need to be Remain Faithful as we transition from a relatively Comfortable America to a severely Uncomfortable America under the Trump Regime.

1. PRESS INTO THE DARKNESS. “Both Jesus and the Apostles said that if we are faithful Christians, we will experience some measure of persecution and other kinds of suffering in the path of obedience. Paul said in 2 Timothy 3:12, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” They will be. Jesus said in Matthew 10:25, ‘If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.’ In John 15:20, He said, ‘If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.’ And Paul taught in Acts 14:22, to every new believer, ‘Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.’ If we never taste any affliction or persecution or maligning for Christ’s sake, we probably are not pressing into the Darkness of the World for Christ as far as we should.”
2. WALK THE PATH OF SELF-DENIAL. “Jesus calls us to a kind of Death to our Old Selves into a New Life of joyful Self-Denial — not morose self-denial, not self-pitying, but ‘Joyful Self-Denial.’ ‘If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it’ (Matthew 16:24-25). So, we don’t just wait for others to persecute us and take away our pleasures and privileges and securities. Instead, we voluntarily make choices that deny ourselves some of these things freely, willingly, joyfully, in order to serve others.”
3. LEARN TO FACE [AND LOSE] PLENTY. “Paul said that he had learned not only how to be abased, but also how to abound. ‘I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me’ (Phillipians 4:11-13). Paul did not say it was a sin to abound or a sin to face plenty. He said it takes a certain learning, a certain God-given secret, not to sin when you face plenty, not to sin in need. And not only that, he said in 1 Timothy 4:4-5, ‘Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.’ In other words, Self-Denial is not the only way we honor God with the good things of life.”
4. PURSUE LOVE [AND TRUTH], NOT PAIN. “Don’t pursue Pain; pursue Love [of God] no matter the Pain. Freely chosen Self-Denial or Unchosen Persecution is never an end in itself. The aim is Love [for the Lord and His Ways]. ‘Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things’ (1 Corinthians 13:7). ‘Love does no wrong to a neighbor.’ Love blesses. Love praises. Love does good. Love serves. ‘Therefore love is the fulfilling of the Law’ (Romans 13:10). Therefore, Pursue Love — love for [God and] people, not Pain. There will be Pain enough.”
5. LIVE TO MAKE CHRIST KNOWN. “Finally, yes, God has given most of the developed countries, East and West, a season in these centuries of spectacular wealth and leisure and comfort and health and peace and security. Why has he done that? What’s the meaning of this Providence? And I think the answer is in Psalm 67: “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us.” And here’s the answer: ‘that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations’ (Psalm 67:1-2). ‘The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, shall bless us. God shall bless us’ (Psalm 67:6-7) … God has made America and the West and parts of the East wealthy and healthy and secure, so that we would not lay up treasures here on Earth, but use our freedom and our wealth and our peace for the sake of reaching the Nations with the Message of Salvation (Psalm 67:4-5).”

DK NOTE. Dr. Piper wrote this essay fully 18 months before the Trump Political Juggernaut gripped the Nation. During the Biden Administration, there was not this current Chaos that this Presidency has strategically engineered. Trump’s close friend and advisor STEVE BANNON once put it plain: “I am a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the State and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down and destroy all of today’s Establishment” (VICTOR SEBESTYEN, “Bannon Says He’s a Leninist,” The Guardian, Feb. 6, 2017; edited).

Thus, do Dr. Piper’s somewhat moderate instructions become a resounding ‘Battle Cry’ given the current Critical Social, Political and Spiritual Chaos all around us, beloved. Selah.

III. LAST THOUGHTS

To this urgent and even Desperate Point, beloved. Given the dismal and theologically anemic state of the American Church today, we cannot reserve any hope at all in it. The Churchmen first come to severe terms with their historic Dereliction of Duty over the last ten years, Repent, and then follow the Great Apostle’s Trumpet Blast to us all in this Critical Hour.

Yet I see no evidence of Church Repentance anywhere, Any Where!

THE CALL. “Be alert and on your guard; stand firm in your faith (your conviction respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, keeping the trust and holy fervor born of faith and a part of it). ACT LIKE MEN and be courageous; grow in strength!” – 1 CORINTHIANS 16:13, AMPC

Now then, to conclude, just what does this mean in real time in everyday American Life in the Year 2025 and beyond? We turn once again to the Desiring God journal in the person of GREG MORSE. Author and graduate of Bethlehem College and Seminary, Mr. Morse provides for us a crystal-clear delineation of The Answer in his timely essay, “Act Like Men!” (Desiring God, October 7, 2023; edited).

Here now are his FIVE PRINCIPLES that I strongly commend to all of our Last Days Remnant and all Church Leaders.

THESIS. “‘The Christian man who makes women and children and the Church safe, is the man who makes demons and the wicked uneasy.’ A Shepherd, his staff and rod comfort them. ‘Gentle,’ ‘meek,’ and ‘compassionate’ actually mean something because he is not merely these. Like the Warrior-Hero of old, the Christian man ‘shares many characteristics with the monsters he conquers, as he must if he is to conquer them’ (Leon Podles, The Church Impotent, 1999, p. 95). ‘In other words, the Christian man must be strong!’”

1. MEN DEMONS RECOGNIZE. “‘Act like a man!’ was a common Commission given to the generation about to enter the Promised Land. I can’t recount how many times my own retreating spirit has needed to drink from Joshua’s Chalice. His Lord charged him, ‘Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous [andrizomai]. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go’ (Joshua 1:9). Joshua, and indeed all of Israel, would need to ‘play the man’ to conquer their own fears and enter the land swarming with enemies fierce and fortified (Deuteronomy 31:6). God had already executed the cowardly spirit of the spies by a forty-year march through the wilderness. Only the two soldierly spirits who trusted their God survived: Caleb and Joshua. Joshua is charged repeatedly — by Moses before all the people, by the Lord himself, and by the people themselves: ‘Act like a man and be strong! (Deuteronomy 31:6-8, 23; Joshua 1:1-19, 16-18).”
2. SIN OF TIMIDITY. “How is it, then, when you visit more than a few Christian quarters today, you might assume Paul instructed, ‘Stand firm in your feelings, take it easy, act like androgenous beings, embrace your unchanging (and unchangeable) weakness?’ The call to ‘gentleness,’ in these cases, has not accented the Christian man’s strength but bludgeoned it! Love has not ordered the strong soul but trumpeted its retreat. King David could soothe with the harp and harm with the sling. The Lord himself bade the children come and yet was consumed with zeal for his Father’s house and drove the moneychangers out. Are we in their lineage? ‘Be more tender’ cannot be the only message for a generation increasingly unschooled in being assertive, convictional, or heroic … [As] as a Pastor [Charles Spurgeon] borrowed from Shakespeare’s militant Coriolanus, ‘Why did you wish me milder? Would you have me false to my nature? Rather say I, play the man I am’ (3.2.15). ‘A man of God is a manly man!’ declared Spurgeon. ‘A true man does what he thinks to be right, whether the pigs grunt and the dogs howl’ (A. Bradstock, ‘A Man of God Is a Manly Man,’ Masculinity and Spirituality in Victorian Culture, 2000, p. 211).
3. SOUL-DESTROYING POLITENESS. “C.S. Lewis wrote in his day, ‘They that know have grown afraid to speak. That is why sorrows that used to purify now only fester’ (The Great Divorce, 1945, p. 106). Will we summon the strength of soul, to tell the Unbeliever living in Vanity Fair that his way leads to Hell, his god is an idol, his hopes but drunken dreams? [“Love the sinner, Hate the sin”]. Spurgeon roars, ‘Men are perishing, and if it be unpolite to tell them so, it can only be so where the Devil is the master of the ceremonies. Out upon your Soul-Destroying Politeness; the Lord give us a little honest love to souls, and this superficial gentility will soon vanish.’  Will sorrows that once purified now fester because Christian men grow afraid to speak — or speaking, slash the force of what we say with mumbled apologies?”
4. SHARPENING OF BROTHERS. “Perhaps Christian men don’t speak more courageously to their neighbor because they don’t speak more courageously to one another. Where they remain, men’s accountability too quickly devolves into secular therapy sessions where the listeners can only empathize and affirm the drowning man. We’ve forgotten how to spar, how to sharpen as iron, how to act like men among men … Remember PETER’S VISION for the Christian life. His is one of Divine Power for the believer to make every effort and actually to increase in holiness, one with a calling to God’s own glory and excellence, one of progress and precious and very great promises, one of confirming our calling and election as we campaign our way with the saints to the Celestial City (2 Peter 1:3-11). Setbacks? Certainly. Sin? Who could deny it? But growth? Absolutely. ‘Onward Christian soldier!’ is our inheritance. The Church Triumphant marches behind ‘Christus Victor,’ and The Battle begins in our own souls and processes into glory.”
5. ACT LIKE CHRISTIAN MEN! “This brings us to the final point: God’s call to masculine strength is distinctly Christian. The Christian man does not rely on self or chariots. He does not strut around like Gaston, singing, “As a specimen, yes I’m intimidating!” ‘The story of Joshua, a story the Author of Hebrews calls us to appropriate’ (Hebrews 13:5-6), teaches us that the man of God is strong and courageous because he believes God’s Promise, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ Mighty men know that their strength is utter weakness apart from God. ‘Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of HIS might’ (Ephesians 6:10) … As the Adage goes, ‘The best of men are men at best.’ If God does not go with us, down goes our strength. With God, we stand Bold as a lion. Without him, we melt into a puddle.”

CODA. For the past ten years, I have watched former Pastors of mine who I thought were godly men disintegrate into Willowy Wisps of Spiritual Jello under the dark shadow of Trump Nationalism at a rate that is breathtaking. And indeed, Soul-Killing. Their Congregations have become their Idols for Destruction, borrowing again from that piercing work by Herbert Schlossberg of the same title (1983).

Beloved, God is calling for “A Few Good Men,” but so far has found precious few takers. May those of you who are reading, viewing or listening to this Shout from His Rooftops, be willing to imitate the Great Prophet:

 ^“Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for Us?’ Then said I, ‘HERE AM I; SEND ME!’ And He said, ‘Go and tell this people, Hear and hear continually, but understand not; and see and see continually, but do not apprehend with your mind.’” – ISAIAH 6:8-9, AMPC

Selah. Selah.

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/4nkjxkD0Q5M