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On the ABC News on this date, there came an interesting supplement to the topic of News 74. It was simply this. It is now found that the use of anti-biotics on ANIMALS is causing a decrease, a dangerous challenge, to the effectiveness of this piece of medical warfare, for humans. Not merely has the danger long been present - my specialist uncle warning of it in the fifties - for undue HUMAN use of this medicine; now it is stressed that its use on pigs and other animals can bring it into the foodstuffs we eat in such a way that these drugs have diminished impact on us. Indeed, more and worse may be to follow than mere diminution.

There is no easy way out. It is not a mere matter of intelligence versus brute force. We are not made by brute force but with exceedingly cute and deft wisdom (cf. Proverbs 8:12).

In the end, it is not a counter to calamity but a necessity of repentance which faces us.

It is the same with old-age "cures" and the telomeres, with money to weak nations, hopeful 'cures' by 'inducing' democracy. It is not so simple. Sin sits smiling in the cockpit of too many human aeroplanes, national, professional and individual,  for any safe flying. Moreover, the Air Commander has His own disciplines. When your Creator is the Judge, it is quite useless to seek spiritual, physical, medical or other shenanigans to avoid the point. This of course does not imply that medical works of mercy are either inept or unnecessary. It is good to seek to serve and to enable what is good. However it most certainly does mean this: that defiance can no more succeed with science (merely a category of knowledge) than with will, or machines, or dive-bombers or political dreams. The CAUSE of the ultimate disease of man is in the heart. It is there that it must be resolved.

In fact, it would be well to look a little more closely to precisely what the apostle Paul says in Romans 8:20-23.

• "The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body."

 
• Note first that there was a SUBJECTION, which is described as NOT a willing one. Hence there was an object, the creation, which was averse to, not inclined towards what was coming to it. It was not a congenial, a desirable thing. Yet it came. It was not an option. It was an imposition. It was not a continuance unchanged; it was a transforming penalty. In part this is personification, but since man was among the creation, in part it is simple fact; and in part, it is an empathetic read-out, for the whole creation was, as man's place of potential rule under God (Psalm 8, Geneis 1:26), now in the throes of the results. As the 'householder' fell, so his household paralleled his plight, and indeed, both expressed it and became part of it!

 
• Penalty, then ? Yes, the subjugation, the subjection was for a reason. It was an action fraught with "HOPE" (Romans 8:20). Yet the result is "BONDAGE". Now to what bondage does one subject something, in HOPE ? To that of discipline. Per se, it is unattractive; but its fruits are needful! That is the way with discipline, dutiful, dedicated discipline.

 
• Thus in Romans 5:15, we read this: "But the free gift is not like the offence. For if by the one man's offence many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the One Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many." Indeed, verse 17 adds: "For if by the one man's offence, death reigned through the one ..."

 
• To what then is the subjection made, and where does it lead ? It induces 'futility' or vanity, things not conducive to the most fluent, fulsome forwardness, but inclusive of frustrating circumstances, barriers and embargoes as is normal in discipline. Indeed, it is not only this; it is far more severe.

It is a "bondage of corruption". What is that ? It is something not merely restraining and resisting the caresses of self-will, the wings that soar unrestrained in self-affirmation, world-affirmation, human racial affirmation, that worst of all racisms (cf. SMR pp. 509ff., 1008ff.). Rather it is a restraint which leads on to corruption. The corruption is both mental and spiritual, and physical. It is parallel to man's equipment.
 
• It leads to "groans",  to "labours", and "birth-pangs" in the format of "hope". Not all have hope; for them, the labours may be significant of doom, dirt, disgust, cynicism. That is merely disordered thinking resulting from the rejection of hope, the ignorance of the Maker and the error of dismissing His current (Gospel) provisions, the integrity of the word of God, like some sulking child, remorse not equal to the resentment of the discipline. This sulking condition can be aided and abetted almost without limit, by desire, the desire to be Headmaster, to be ruler, to be more important, even ... most important. That sort of desire is coming, and it has come; it is noticeable in the vaulting New Age theo-logisms or theogenies,  quite often (cf. SMR pp. 866ff.) , but when it comes finally, it will be the very cynosure of revolt, the paradigm of rebellion (II Thess. 2:8ff.).

 
• The discipline has expression  physiologically in such areas as our now better researched telomeres, where age settings are apparently in view, cell duplications being limited: the provisions being planned and purveyed for human age.


It is in plagues, where impudence pretensions meet their barriers with realities. It is in microbes, where adaptations inbuilt or re-written, enable action to dispel the concept of blithe immunity, as if we were gods, and the earth arrived thoughtlessly, only awaiting our pleasure. It is in insects, as in the fastidiously brilliant surgical equipment of the mosquitoes with its various means and methods, probes and piercings, sensors and manoeuvrabilities - proverbial, indeed - flying jolts with a rather ironical humour.
 

• Man the great, then,  is pursued by this! as mere bagatelle, a minor thing, which nevertheless in persistence, shall we say - in penetration and in power is a mockery of all pretension! yet the result is not little. It can kill, for the precise and tiny instruments from the little  hypodermic machine can inject the stuff of plagues! In this, it is like sin: the small thing which was the work of a minor penetration of the psyche, can lead to slander and slaughter, to presumption and assumption, and blow away much - for after all, the world is in sin, and looks and acts, just like it! ONE MAN started it; and many other individuals echo the chorus of dissent from deity, indifference to call, command and welfare. ONE act again and again attests its endemic nature, the sickness being as broad as the race, as deep on the face as the pit-marks of small-pox.

 




THE RESPONSES OF MAN ARE NUMEROUS,
IGNOBLE IN MULTITUDES AND NORMATIVELY UNHELPFUL




• The responses are numerous. Some are angry and aggressive in declared revolt. Others seek to remove the Headmaster, the aerodrome rules, to change the figure, and fly blind. Others again, seek to laugh in the face of adversity, yet more to be stoical in composure in the face of it, as if to rescue dignity by devices, and ignore the realities of birth and death as though they were mere extras in the cast. Again, some become 'neutral' know-nothings, intent perhaps merely on propagating the species, the bank balance and the social standing. But in all this, there is no neutrality. One might as well declare neutrality to the face of the Black Death. It is not particularly interested in 'cop-outs', in hide-aways, in diligent indifferent as a form of rebellion.


The case is there; the disease is present; and indifference, as it used explicitly to be regarded in the Air-Force in World War II, can be taken as mere studied impudence. For the God-disposer: it is like being indifferent to your father in his wrath, to his just anger at your self-importance, self-sufficiency, when all the time HE IS PAYING. You neither made yourself nor your future, your birth is not at your pleasure and discretion, and your attitudes, where they do not reflect reality, endure as self-dupings, as much injurious as the work of thugs and muggings from outside. In this case, however, the agent is giving a self-inflicted wound.
 




THE MEANING AND REMEDY ALIKE ARE
IGNORED WITH INDUSTRY AND FREQUENCY

In some cases: OPERATION OR DEATH.

This is such a case.

"For we are saved in this HOPE" (Romans 8:24 - capitals added). Saved from what ?
 

• By now this is quite clear. It was from that discipline which includes death and dearth, which requires repentance and, as we find, is to that destiny which is suffused with grace available - as appeared to be  the case in the seemingly all-conquering anti-biotics - through a narrow channel. The narrowness of the channel, as was the case there, is in marked contrast to the amplitude of the result. It is rather like passing through a very difficult series of rocks when canoeing down a rapid. If you go where the rocks are not, adapting and adjusting, thrusting and watching, then the narrow pass is a means of escape from the rollicking waters in their surging energies. If you do not, you hole the canoe and limit all progress.

Such is the way of His grace. The means is not a mere means; it is personal, sacred and special, involving the death of the disciplinarian's Son, His only Son; for He is loving and although to the rebel, love may at times be felt as the final insult, rebellion is never apt when it is against the realities of our sins and failings, our fantasies and our self-assertions, whether individual, racial or national, scholarly or ignorant. This love is as patronising as agony, as uncaring as anguish, as artificial as death, as bogus as perfection, as weak as all-power over death and disease, as sudden as a millenium pre-announced. In short, it is all that could ever be hoped in mode and substance.

It is more than could ever have been imagined. God is not a solitary. He is not alone. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit: He is Expresser, Expressed and the Spirit about. He is Speaker and Word and the Communication medium. One can seek, however imperfectly, to give some of the elements in this not-compartmentalised perfection, the trinity. It is very simple in outline: as to Being, God is ONE, and as to Persons, He is three. Our social elements are not without foundation, any more than our rational ones. Our reconciliations are not without relationship to our need with Him! Our communications with each other must be seen on the foundation of His communication with us! (Cf. A Spiritual Potpourri 12  - and 16, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 14, Biblical Blessings 13; see also SMR Ch.7, Section 4).

What then does Romans say ? In Ch.5 we have this:

• "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous" - 5:19.

Then why ? It was because the love of God for this world, with all its brawls and squalls and insolences and insolvencies of heart, mind and spirit, was SUCH THAT, as the mathematicians say, HE GAVE.
Now what did He give ? His fortune, power or name ? No HIS SON. Which one, the higher or lower ? There is ONLY ONE, for God and His word are in eternal mutual embrace of love and co-operation.

HE GAVE THE ONLY ONE. He presented Him in incarnation, expressed Him in lowly magnificence of person, mighty performance and marvellous kindness, with attention unremitting to duty, and once He was killed by envy, yet so as to be a sufficient because perfect sacrifice for the sin which requires death as its penalty. Then He raised Him in power. The curse ? Read it in context. CHRIST BECAME ACCURSED THAT WE MIGHT BE FREE (cf. Galatians 3:1-13). Instead of lounging in pretentious neutrality, squandering time in infelicitous pretence, it is necessary to repent and seek the Lord and being thankful for this magnificent provision, adopt, accept and receive it - being yet more thankful indeed, that it is in fact HIM, a person - and so be saved from this uncomical situational drama upon the earth (Luke 13:1-3, John 1:1-14). Being saved, then serve. Serving then love; and loving, be a child of God.

This love is uncoloured by the climate of culture as sovereign, being the love of God. It is what we are here for. Indeed, it is unfortunate to be so musing on the situation, that one forgets the sovereign, so ostracising the penalty as to forget its path to remission; so dwelling on the hopes as to forget the HOPE; for in Him there is no death, and curse is forgotten. That is the sort of thing ONLY HE could take; and He took it. It is time to take Him.

Christians ? then rejoice, for nothing shall separate us from this love of God in Christ Jesus, neither past things nor present, neither future nor impending, neither disastrous nor enticing, neither higher powers nor lower, neither fallen sin nor contriving seducer: our sufficiency is in HIM (Romans 8:31ff., II Corinthians 3:5), and it is HIM that we have acceptance before God (Ephesians 1:6,11).