Many are called but few party

"What then do I make of, 'Many are called but few are chosen'? Just this. The sad truth of our fallen condition is that we don't want anything to do with a system of salvation that works by grace through faith. We want our merits, sleazy though they may be, rewarded--and we want everyone else's obviously raunchy behavior punished. We are like pitiful little bargain-hunters going to a used-car lot with $265 worth of hard-earned cash in our pockets and looking for the ultimate transport of delight. But just as we are about to give up and go away, the salesman comes up to us with a smile on his face. 'You really want a car?' he whispers in our ear. 'Come around to the back of the lot. Have I got a deal for you!' And back there, gleaming in the sun is a brand-new Porsche. 'It's yours for free,' he says. 'The boss just likes you; here are the keys.'
Many are called: there is no one in the whole world, good, bad, or indifferent, who isn't walked around to the back of the lot by the divine Salesman and offered heaven for nothing. But few are chosen: because you know what most of us do? First thing--before we so much as let ourselves sink into the leather upholstery or listen to the engine purr--we get suspicious. We walk around the car and kick the tires. We slam the doors. We jump up and down on the bumpers to test the shocks. And then, even if we do decide to take it, we start right in worrying about the warranty, fussing about the cost of insuring a sports car, and even--God help us--fuming about whether, if our no-good neighbor came in here, hemight be offered a Roles Royce Silver Cloud. But God doesn't help us--at least not with all that tough-customer routine. He just sits up there in the front office and remains Mr. Giveaway, the Mad Dog Tyson of Parousia Motors, the Crazy Eddie of Eternity whose prices are insane. He gives heaven to absolutely everybody: nothing down, no interest, no payments. And he makes hell absolutely unnecessary for anybody. The only catch is, you have to be as crazy as God to take the deal, because your every instinct will be to distrust such a cockamamy arrangement. You have to be willing to believe in an operation that would put any respectable God out of the deity business.
Which, nicely enough, lands us right back at the parable: a king who throws parties any other king would be ashamed of, representing a God who refuses to act like one; and a hell only for idiots who insist on being serious."

-Robert Farrar Capon

Innocence-that-pre-dates-Adam-Party

We celebrate an innocence that pre-dates Adam’s fall! We have allowed an illegitimate sin-consciousness to prevail in our theologies and worship! The prodigal son’s Father had no reference or remembrance of past sins; imagine how that would spoil the party!
(Note on 2 Tim 1:3 The Mirror) -Francois Du Toit

Contests cancelled

"God has arranged for salvation on the basis of no contests at all: not in singing, not in cooking, not in starving.......we commemorate the cancellation of such eternal gong shows." Robert Farrar Capon

Repentance

Probably should call this page Robert Capon quotes ha, here is another one from his book:'Light theology and heavy cream':"Repentance is not a work done antecedent to salvation; it's a response subsequent to a free and irrevocable gift of salvation already given." -Robert Farrar Capon

New person altogether

This means that our knowledge of men can no longer be based on their outward lives (indeed, even though we knew Christ as a man we do not know him like that any longer). For if a man is in Christ he becomes a new person altogether - the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new. All this is God's doing, for he has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ; and he has made us agents of the reconciliation. God was in Christ personally reconciling the world to himself - not counting their sins against them - and has commissioned us with the message of reconciliation. We are now Christ's ambassadors, as though God were appealing direct to you through us. As his personal representatives we say, "Make your peace with God." For God caused Christ, who himself knew nothing of sin, actually to be sin for our sakes, so that in Christ we might be made good with the goodness of God.

J.B Phillips Translation 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Extended Everlasting Party

Our daily life is now the extension of the Passover celebration; feasting on sustained innocence! The old sin conscious-system, the leaven-mindset, (always anticipating and tolerating sin) is replaced with an understanding of our unleavened innocence.......
1 Corinthians 5:8 Mirror

Goodness me, the fun of unearned innocence that was freely given to us ALL as a free gift. Leaping like a lamb, frolicking, playing in sustained innocence: we don't have to do anything to maintain the goodness. Playgrounds like leper colonies, pubs, jails, hospitals, dumps, streets or anywhere else your imagination can dream up will not make you any less/more innocent. All are Innocent already, before the foundation of the world. God saw you that far off ! (with reference to how far off the party-good-Father saw the innocent-son in the so called "prodigal son" parable{not sure about that name it is more about the goodness of the Father for me}) The goodness-happy-party-playful -Daddy saw you that far off and saw that you were GOOD. A big party has been thrown already and continues happily feasting on never ending innocence (The best wine and lamb was freely given already: Jesus).

Home free fun

"The incentive is that the gospel is fun........it's a hoot: it's the only really good news the world will ever hear. it may be mysterious, or absurd, or outrageous; but it will make you gladder than anything the world will ever tell you. As a matter of fact all the world will ever give you is a lifetime's supply of threatening incentives to get your act together, or else. People always assume that the church's primary business is to teach morality. But it isn't; it's to proclaim grace, forgiveness, and the free party for all. It's to announce the reconciling relationship of God to everybody and to invite them simply to believe it and celebrate it. Morality, law, rules, prescriptions-- those are all the world's business. And the world keeps up a steady drumbeat on those subjects: you must do this; you mustn't do that; you're out until you can prove yourself worthy of being let in. But that's just a thinly disguised way of saying that most people aren't going to be in for very long and that none of them can be in for good. Nobody, from Adam to the last person on earth, can pass a test like that. And therefore God simply doesn't risk it: by the Mystery of the Incarnation, he cancels all the tests and gives a blanket hundred percent to everyone. In the Mystery of Christ's death, he drops all the rotten works in the world down the black hole of his own forgetting; and in the Mystery of Christ's resurrection, he makes a new world in which we're all home free."
Robert Capon

Glad tidings: Brownie-point-earning rigmarole cancelled.

I have been having a good old time catching up on some old writings from Robert Farrar Capon. Here is some quotes that stood out from the first chapter of 'The Mystery of Christ & why we don't get it' :

"If even the law of God can't be an instrument of salvation, your own home-brewed laws certainly can't be.......
In Jesus's death and resurrection, the whole test-passing, brownie-point-earning rigmarole of the human race has been cancelled for lack of interest on God's part.... Not only can he handle it, he's already handled it: he has all our messes fixed in Jesus --right now even before we make them.........

In church, when we sing' 'Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world,' we don't add, 'except for repeated adultery, multiple rape, persistent child abuse, or the systematic watering of the stock of every widow in town.' For one thing, it would ruin the music. But most of all, it would bury the Good news under a pile of scholastic logic-chopping --not to mention the fact that it would limit the reach of Christ's forgiveness to a smarmy bunch of moral overachievers."

"The whole thing was accomplished before it started." -Robert Farrar Capon

The following is taken from an Interview with Robert Farrar Capon (RC).

Interviewer: Tim Brassell (TB)

Published in: Christian Odyssey

This is a portion taken from say the middleish ha:

"......TB: Does this tie in, would you say, with Romans, where Paul says, "Nothing separates us from the love of God?"

RC: Of course. It’s very hard for the human race to accept that cold: "Nothing separates us from the love of God." We think there must be some breaking point where God would give up on us. "Well, what about if we…?"

Sin is not a problem with God. God solved all his problems with sin before the foundation of the world, in the beginning—and it’s done. The iceberg that lies under the surface of history is the Son of God; redemption is the mystery behind all history. Sin is a permanent irrelevancy. And God is the one to say, "Look, I have taken away the handwriting that was against you."

I like the translation in Matthew, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." What do we do when we don’t forgive somebody else’s debts, or literally, their sins? We carp on what they owe us. We look at the chits that we have saved. This is what you owe me and you haven’t given it to me. There is an IOU I hold against you, and I gotta have this…. Well, it’s not that way with God. With God, it’s done—there is no handwriting against us. It’s done. He’s not holding IOUs.

TB: So why do we have such a love affair with legalism?

RC: It’s something that’s afflicted the church from the start. Humans have a hard time believing that God doesn’t hold IOUs. But Paul says the law cannot save. He says, "He has made him to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him."

TB: Have you found an effective way to present the gospel to a legalist?

RC: No (laughter). The reason I say no is because all that you’re going to do is present it and shock them. If you try to do it in a winsome way, which I always do, and try to do it to show them the freedom of it, then you’ve got a chance. A small chance, not a big one, but you’ve got a chance—because, when it happens—people go, "Wow!"

I was made visiting professor of something or other in religion at the University of Tulsa for the fall term back in the ’80s or ’90s. I had two classes. One was a 39-week beginning course. I taught the parables, and I had, I would say, everybody against me. All these youngsters were against me because what I was saying was against everything they had ever heard. I pounded and pounded and pounded for 39 weeks. I went through every parable.

One young lady came up to me at the end and said: "You know, when I first came here I didn’t like anything you said, because it contradicted everything I knew. But, you have done something. For the first time in my life I see that it really is good news" (laughter). They thought the gospel was bad news! That’s what legalism does to people."

Find the whole interview here: Robert F. Capon Interview

Life of the party: keep the feast

Luke 5: 33 They asked him, "John's disciples are well-known for keeping fasts and saying prayers. Also the Pharisees. But you seem to spend most of your time at parties. Why?"
34 Jesus said, "When you're celebrating a wedding, you don't skimp on the cake and wine. You feast.- Message