Mark Horne » Blog Archive » Not all who wander are lost.

So lets add some Lewis to my Tolkien:

Now… we don’t know when he [Aslan] will act. In his time, no doubt, not ours. In the meantime he would like us to do what we can on our own…

Thus spake High King Peter (Prince Caspian, chapter 13, opening page), when he was in a hole surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy army.

Israel began as a tribal “confederation” (actually much less than that in civil structure) and was given the Law. Then Israel was transformed into a kingdom, and we get new documents, songs and wisdom.

In the bizarre Evangelical morass of trying to work out “law and gospel” or “law and grace,” people forget that God glories in watching children grow up to independence.

Metaphysically, we are always dependent on God to sustain us.

Relationally and ethically, the only reason we have standing with God is due to his grace and the substitutionary work of Christ received by faith alone.

But God is not satisfied that we should stop there in our thinking and living. He commands us to grow up. He commands us to become managers and stewards whom he leaves alone and comes back later to evaluate. The law, Paul tells us, is for children in their minority, with all its simple but numerous commands and boundaries. But we are supposed to grow into freemen who distinguish between good and evil by wisdom and discernment.

Have we found a way to avoid becoming kings and queens through trials? I wonder if many slogans (allegedly centered on “the Gospel” or “grace”) are actually attempts to make us into perpetual babies. Always hugged. Always comforted. Always nursing. Infants forever.

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.