1. What does the Lord abominate?

2. What is man in his highest moral splendor?

3. What is the first foundation?

1. What happens in believers each day?

2. What are our best works mixed with?

1. What will just one sin do?

1. What is the believers' righteousness always to be considered?

2. What two reasons keep a believers' work from being considered pure righteousness?

3. What is the pivotal point of dispute with the Schoolmen?

1. What are works of supererogation?

2. Does Calvin allow for them?

1. What tendency does holding to works of supererogation have?

2. What position does Calvin reject with regard to those who keep the law partly?

3. What cannot overcome a single sin?

1. Is it possible to go beyond what God requires?

2. What should we not boast of?

These are the questions for the readings for Friday, July 3, and those readings can be found here.

I have mentioned this difficulty before, but so far I have only been able to irriate numerous progressive oysters, and have very few conservative pearls to show for it.

When companies accept regulations, it is not long before they learn the rules of the new game -- they come to welcome those regulations, and more like them. The cost of them can be passed on to those poor saps who voted for affordable everything, and they will never figure out the grand mystery of how all these price increases happened. And the more burdensome the regulations, the more the old-timers in the game know their way through all the loopholes, and the more upstart competitors find it difficult to even get in the game.

Regulated industries develop the Stockholm syndrome, falling in love with those who took them hostage. A friend mentioned that in heavily regulated industries -- like hospitals, insurance companies, and auto companies -- the key to success is to "pull the ladder into the boat once you are inside." Lobbyists become much more valuable and necessary to a company's success, and schmoozing and dining the decision-makers becomes standard operating procedure. I wonder if such a wine, cheese and caviar event is deductible? Well, son of a gun . . .

Incidentally, while we are here, let me mention another perverse incentive that the government creates. How do we account for the lush, oriental lifestyles of many businessmen in the private sector? Surely I am not going to blame that on the government? Well, just most of it. But think about it for a minute. Suppose you are in a business that turns a tidy profit -- if you hang on to that profit in order to be responsible, the gummint will take a chunk of it away. But if you roll it into "business expenses," even if those expenses involve gold-plated door knobs, then they don't. What is going to happen now? Let me think about it for a minute . . .

This is not a problem that began with Obama. Let's go back to the era of the robber barons. The real robber barons were the ones who got the government to provide them with a bunch of 19th century freebies. But they are generally not the ones vilified down to the present day. The ones who are vilified are those who didn't do any actual robbing. You would think that robber barons ought to do some robbing, right? James J. Hill built the Great Northern Railroad without stealing anything from anybody, and by supplying a superior infrastructure and service. Meantime, Jay Cooke of Northern Pacific was paid by the government to lay track by the mile, creating (you guessed it!) perverse incentives. Hey, look at this meandering scenic route, wandering all over tarnation. Hill was a market entrepreneur. Cooke was a political entrepreneur.

Now, here is the deal. It is not possible for the government to intervene in the market without creating perverse incentives. The nature of these perverse incentives will be immediately obvious to honest men and honest women. But they are not obvious when hearts have been turned over to dishonesty of larcenous intent. The end result of all these interventions is that the government will wind up paying people to do things they ought not to be doing in the first place, and fining and penalizing people for doing the right thing. This is precisely the reverse of what the apostle Paul said the magistrate should be doing -- he is supposed to reward the righteous and punish the wrong-doer.

If you do the right thing these days, they will track you down and fine your sorry little business butt. But if you run your flashy little company car into the red ink pond, and then complain to the officials in charge that it was because your competitor was out there engaged in "predatory pricing," meaning that he is more efficient than you are and serves the customer more effectively, you might be able to get some regulations in place to slow that arrogant greedhead down. In golf, it is handicapping and we all understand. In basketball, this is called flopping. But in life, it is called cheating.

John Adams said that our Constitution presupposes a moral and a religious people. It is wholly unfit, he said, for any other.

INTRODUCTION:

We have seen that the apostle Paul continues to answer the question created by the gospel of grace. Gentiles are under sin. Jews are under sin. They are both under sin. God promised to remake the world through Abraham, and God did this by sending a final Adam. This glorious message can be twisted and distorted in various ways, and so Paul has to answer objections. Won't this introduce moral chaos? No. Won't this render the Torah as a superfluous moral distraction? No, not at all. The Torah had a pivotal role to play in our salvation, as we will see.

"Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful . . ." (Rom. 7:13-25).

Paul's purpose here is two-fold. He intends to vindicate the Torah (v. 12), and also to show how the Torah worked within Israel to reveal and exacerbate the reality of sin (3:20; 5:20; 7:13). Was the problem the Torah itself? God forbid (v. 13). The point was to have sin use the Torah in order to grow up to its full wicked maturity (v. 13). More on this shortly. Paul then continues to illustrate the problem of Israel in the vividness of a first-person narrative--Israel's Torah is spiritual, but Israel is not (v. 14). Israel is a slave--to sin, and to Rome because of sin. The national ideals are good, but they don't really get done (v. 15). The hypocritical failure reveals the goodness of the standard (v. 16). The national conscience doesn't want to go that way, but the national "id" has other ideas (v. 17). So Paul comes to a conclusion--Israel is in the flesh, and cannot do what Israel knows is right (v. 18). The good remains undone; the evil is pursued and embraced (v. 19). Don't blame the Torah, and don't blame Israel's conscience--there is something deeper going on (v. 20). That deeper thing is a law deeper than Torah, responding to it (v. 21). Israel really does delight in the Torah "in the inward man" (v. 22). But that is not all; there is another law there as well--it is the law of sin, using the law of God, in order to plunge Israel into exile and captivity (v. 23). Wretched man! Who will deliver (v. 24)? Paul thanks God for the Messiah, the new Israel (v. 25), and then sums it all up again. With the theological conscience, Israel was right to bind the Torah to itself (v. 25). And Israel was then right to be dismayed to find that this lawful binding resulted in spiritual disaster for Israel (v. 25).

The first qualification is that Paul is not describing this problem as a detached theological spectator. He is certainly talking about Israel (because he is discussing Israel throughout the entire epistle). But he himself was right in the thick of this problem; he was not one of the glorious exceptions of grace that we find described elsewhere (Heb. 11). He was a Hebrew of Hebrews (Phil. 3:5), and to personify Israel's problems in his own unconverted voice was not at all a stretch. Because of this we find that law and grace are always relevant categories.

Second, the Reformed doctrine of sanctification including a genuine internal moral struggle is correct. While it is not found here in Romans 7 (which way overstates the problem), that doctrine is found and well-grounded in Galatians 5. Too often Reformed exegetes take this as a description of the process of sanctification because those who deny it are usually theological perfectionists, which is clearly an error.

And third, to apply this to Israel in this way does not make this an irrelevant passage for us to meditate on. As Paul would say, God forbid. We are Christians, and in various places Paul tells us that as the new Israel we are called to learn the lessons that the old Israel failed to learn. We will see this clearly when we get to chapter 11 (cf. 1 Cor. 10). And God willing, that lesson is one that we will in fact learn.

Paul is simply digging deeper here. Romans 7 is simply the next pass at Romans 2:17-24. Romans 8 is the next pass at Romans 2:28-29, which explains why he needs to address the same, identical question at the beginning of chapter 3 and at t he beginning of chapter 9. "What is the point of being a Jew, then?"

Israel received the Torah, and then failed to keep it, meaning that Israel was another failed Adam. The fact that Christ was the final Adam should not blind us to the fact that Scripture shows us a series of Adams--founders who fail, founders who fall. Think of Noah, for example, or Solomon. Think of Israel, adopted at Sinai and given the very words of life. What did they do with this? They did what every Adam still in the flesh must do--they rebelled against those words of life and turned them into instruments of death. So it was not the case that Israel successfully escaped from Adam while the Gentiles did not.

Why did God want sin to grow to its full maturity? Why did God give a Torah that He knew sin would take full advantage of? Why did God deliberately grow sin up to its full height? He did this so that He could deal with sin once and for all. Israel was a greenhouse, enclosed by Torah's glass, and heated by the sun of God's holiness, so that the most noxious weeds could grow up to their worst potential, in stark contrast to the sign outside that proclaimed it a greenhouse full of rare and exquisite orchids.

God did this so that He could deal with sin foundationally. Just as He did not send Israel into Canaan until the iniquity of the Amorites was full (Gen. 15:16), so He did not send the new Israel into our Canaan until our evil had reached its full maturity. When Jesus collided with sin, He met it in full force. When Jesus took it all onto Himself, He took the full measure of it.

1. What are the four classes of men outlined by Calvin?

1. How does Calvin account for pagan virtues, where they exist?

2. Does he lump pagan vice and virtue all together?

3. What kind of blessing does God give such men?

1. Does Calvin account these pagan virtues as true virtue?

2. What is necessary for something to be truly virtuous?

1. What illustration does Calvin take from Augustine here?

1. What must we set the grace of God against?

2. Where does our first capacity for well-doing come from?

1. What were we before we were sprinkled through the Spirit with the blood of Christ?

1. What do the two middle categories of Calvin's four-fold division have in common?

These are the questions for the readings for Thursday, July 2, and those readings can be found here.

Second Timothy, Part 2

"To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord" (2 Tim. 1:2).

The apostle Paul thought of Timothy as a true and dear son, and addressed him that way. He had picked him up as a ministerial assistant several decades before this, when Timothy was probably around sixteen-years-old. He begins with a triune benediction -- grace, mercy, and peace -- and offers this in the name of the Father and the Son. The Spirit is not mentioned by name, but it is not as though He is excluded from Paul's concerns. Someone once said that when doing theology, you always have to say everything every time -- lest someone suspect you of heresy. But this is obviously not possible; Paul only mentions grace, mercy and peace here, but not faith, hope and love. What's the deal?

Not everything that is said has to be said. The Spirit is the one who proceeds from the Father and the Son both, and we see from our text that Paul pronounces a blessing on Timothy that comes from the Father and the Son -- Christ Jesus our Lord. The Spirit is here in the fruit He brings, which in this case is identified as grace, mercy, and peace.

If we have only two categories -- public sector and private sector -- we leave out some of the principal miscreants. Someone in the private sector who arranges for subsidies for himself, or barriers and restrictions for his competitors is certainly a businessman. He handles capital. But if we call him a capitalist simpliciter then we are blurring the very kind of distinction that words ought to equip us to make.

Public collusion with private interests is mercantilism at best and fascism at worst. It is not the free market at work. And if the bogeyman we are trying to avoid is that of "trusts" and "monopolies," then we are much more likely to create monopolies by allowing businessmen to get influence in the government. Why is Washington flooded with lobbyists from the private sector? Because they can get something there. That is like asking why ants come to picnics.

The only legitimate interest a business may have in lobbying is if it is trying to fight off intrusive legislation, or if it is supporting legislation that maintains a business climate that refuses to favor one business over another. But virtually all modern regulations, tariffs, taxes, and whatnot, do not fall into this category.

Take a current case in point, the great light bulb switch fiasco. Is anybody asking who stands to profit on the day when the good old fashioned Edison bulb is outlawed? Think about that. Outlawed. And don't come to me chattering about all that global warming line that you bought. How many people bought that line simply because it was fed to them through the approved channels? Someone who believes the global warming hysteria is someone who will believe anything, and he ought to be more ashamed of himself than he is. "Quick! The results aren't in, the science is not done, we can't really know -- but unless we take action now to suppress our competi . . . er, unless we take action now to save the planet, it could well be too late!"

This could all be made more transparent, I suppose, but not by much. It is as though the president of Acme Vacuum Cleaners testified before Congress that the moon was going to fall into the Pacific unless we shoot the president of Apex Vacuum Cleaners. And the hearing concluded with various congressmen thanking him for his public-spiritedness.

Question. Does Al Gore have any business interests lined up that might profit a little bit if some of the proposed legislation coming down the pike becomes law? If we all pull together today, if we direct cold glances at global warming deniers now, if we all pitch in with not a minute to spare, we really can reach our sustainable goals. Getting Mr. Gore three private jets, four if we really save the planet, is a sustainable goal. Don't you think?

1. What two things does Calvin aim at in this section?

2. Who rises up against God?

1. Where must the praise of righteousness remain?

1. How may a guilty conscience be quieted before God?

1. If we may depend upon works righteousness at all, what else happens?

2. Why does Calvin cite Augustine at this point?

1. What alone gives us peace of conscience and gladness in prayer?

These are the questions for the readings for Wednesday, July 1, and those readings can be found here.

But then, a small donnybrook broke out in Honduras, and the duly elected president (who was laboring mightily to make himself president-for-life) was grabbed where the pants hang loose and marched by their military to a nearby plane. President Obama denounced that little business on the same day it happened.

Ladies and gentlemen, students of logic, there is only one possible conclusion, and that is that the president believes that there has not been a history of American intervention in Central America. I search in vain for any other explanation.

26. Table Talk/Luther/fantastic

27. Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl/Wilson/fantastic

28. Nothing Serious/Wodehouse/lotta fun

29. The Road to Serfdom/Hayek/really fine

30. Money, Greed, and God/Richards/first rate

31. Blue Ice/Ewert/good writing

32. Rules for Radicals/Alinsky/gakk