Chad Bird - Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul

NIGHT DRIVING

Notes from a Prodigal Soul

CHAD BIRD

WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive NE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505

www.eerdmans.com

2017 Chad Bird

All rights reserved

Published 2017

26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 171 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

ISBN 978-0-8028-7401-6

eISBN 978-1-4674-4826-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bird, Chad, author.

Title: Night driving : notes from a prodigal soul / Chad Bird.

Description: Grand Rapids : Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2017. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017029706 | ISBN 9780802874016 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Christian life. | Spiritual formation. | Spiritual healing.

Classification: LCC BV4501.3 .B496 2017 | DDC 248.4dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029706

Contents

L ONG AGO, a handful of German theologians got together and summarized the essentials of the Christian life and faith in a document called the Heidelberg Catechism. It is set in the classic question-and-answer format, and its famous for the first question and answer:

Q.What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A.That I am not my own, but belongbody and soul, in life and in deathto my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by

These words articulate one of great paradoxes of the gospel. Its all about us and our comfort. And its not about us at all.

Its about us in this sense: In accordance with what he did and revealed in Jesus Christ, wrote theologian Karl Barth, God willed from all eternity not to be without man.

The apostle Paul put it this way:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will. (Eph. 1:3-5, NIV)

So intent was God on making us family, he would not let human stupidity, weakness, indifference, or even outright rebellion dissuade him from accomplishing his pleasure and will toward us. So the gospel is,

Yet more crucially, the gospel is not about us. That is to say, we have done nothing to bring this extraordinary good news to bear. In fact, we have done a great deal to thwart it, undermine it, and disrupt it. All to no avail, of course. Sinners have a pretty high opinion of their ability to sabotage the purposes of God. God, for his part, just laughs and says, Ill show you. And while we were sinners, he died for us.

And thus the just consequences of sin were meted out. The rebellion that would destroy our relationship with God was itself destroyed. The alienation between God and humankind was healed. As Paul put it, on the cross itself, in the darkest of times when God had seemed to forsake his beloved, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting peoples sins against them (2 Cor. 5:19).

Note the obvious, which for some reason is not as It is in this respect that the gospel is not about us and all about what God has done. Our livesfrom first to last, in times glorious and hours black and bleakare not our own but have been and will continue to be in the hands of a good and gracious God.

We like to imagine that weve had something to do with all this: Its the result, at least in part, of our good judgment in receiving the gospel, our commitment to stick with Jesus in the hardest of times, our disciplined spirituality, which includes an accountability partner! To be sure, we say, it is all due to Gods grace, but day to day, were tempted to lean on at least a sliver of effort on our part. Its this sliver that sets us apart from unbelievers and the nominal in faith, isnt it? Its this sliver that makes us worthy of being called children of God. And its this sliver, however tiny, that we wear like a talisman, like a badge of merit.

Chad Bird, in a theological tradition that began with the apostle Paul, reminds us that the talisman is an idol. Or better, the sliver is not even that. Its a fantasy to believe weve had anything to do with the grace that God showers upon us. The only difference between us and the common lot of sinners is that were the sinners who, by Gods grace, recognize the truth of our situation: That I am not my own, but belongbody and soul, in life and in deathto my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

As we let that reality sink inand it takes a lifetime for it to penetrate to the deepest recesses of our soulswe realize there is nothing more comforting. To not be in control means that another, more just and gracious than we can imagine, is.

The way Chad talks about all this will make some readers nervous. The careless reader is going to think that Chad doesnt give a rip about Christian ethics, that hes indifferent to how we live in Christ. Some are going to accuse him of antinomianismthat he believes the law of God is pass, that in light of Gods amazing grace, morality is bunk.

When I hear reactions like this to any discussion of grace, it makes me think about the greatest treatise on gracethe book of Romans. In that exposition, Paul has to interrupt his argument repeatedly to answer one particular objection. He is so emphatic about the inconceivable, unmerited nature of grace, his readers naturally exclaim, What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? (Rom. 6:1). And each time Paul repeats, By no means! And then he goes on to explain that grace is the only conceivable ground of true Christian ethics.

Chad doesnt deal with this question in this book, but anyone who has read his essays on marriage, on sex, on a number of topics, recognizes that Chad believes what Jesus said about himself, that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17), and that it is the gospel that transforms the human heart to gladly obey Jesus day to day. So Chad would echo Paul in responding By no means!

But in this little book, Chad has a singular purpose. He want us to get one thing straight. Before we talk about anything elseespecially before we talk about ourselves, what we think or dohe wants us to be absolutely clear about what God has done for us in Christ. He wants there to be no mistaking that, even in the darkest of times, we are not our own but belong to another, to one who has our best interests at heart and will never let us go. The more firmly we grasp that, the more we will know a comfort that surpasses human understanding, and then and only then will everything else we are to know and do fall into place.

MARK GALLI
Editor in Chief, Christianity Today

T HERE COMES A TIME in almost everyones life when they feel like Adam must have felt the first time he watched the sun set. All the beauty and warmth of light morph into night. It doesnt happen instantly. Its not like the flip of a light switch. First theres fear as the sun crawls toward the horizon, then bewilderment as it vanishes, then shock as the world we once knew envelops us with darkness.

In this darkness, we grope about for objects once familiar to us. We look for mementoes of a former life bathed in light. But every direction we pivot, we see our world blanketed by losses we cannot even begin to accept, much less understand. Were paralyzed, crouching amidst the ruins of the life we once had. And we fear the rays of hope will never reappear.