Saved from the Swollen Self

Jeff Wencel

I BELIEVE

The Gospel of the Kingdom in the Risen Lord Jesus

God is. He simply is. He possesses being—necessarily. He lives everlastingly, no beginning, no end, dependent on no one and nothing, possessing life in himself. His being therefore defines all reality.

When there was nothing, there was God, God existing in the fullness of divine glory: self-sufficient, selfsustaining, self-satisfied, exuberantly joyful, bursting as a cataract with unending, limitless holy happiness. Before any man was made, before land and sea were formed, before any thing sprouted up or moved on earth, the Three-in-One and One-in-Three possessed complete bliss and peace in their infinitely full divine fellowship. God the Father eternally perfectly generating and delighting in the Son, God the Son eternally perfectly reflecting and delighting in the Father, and God the Spirit eternally perfectly flowing back and forth between Father and Son as unending, limitless love, light and life. And God was without need, without lack, without defect.

And then the triune fellowship overflowed. God spoke. He spoke in his Son—the Word. And worlds were fashioned. Matter was made (for God likes it). Man was made in our world of matter in God’s image. The Spirit was moving.

The first man was named Adam (meaning “man”). From his flesh woman was taken; and she was named Eve (meaning “life,” for she was the life-bearer). Man, unable to contain himself for joy, poured forth poetry: “Bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh!” God put the couple in a garden full of romance and beauty. In that

garden of grace, we read of the first wedding—the only wedding ever where two sinless, spotless humans would lock lips untainted by unholy speech.

As Maker of heaven and hearth, of man and marriage, the Creator was King in his world. How could it be otherwise? And he made all things good. Very good.

But something the very opposite of very good entered the King’s realm. Rebellion. Sedition. Sabotage. Seduced by Satan, the sinless pair believed a lie about God. Rather than trusting (as the lovers had every reason to do) the truth of the King whose covenant communication was life, light and love, Adam and Eve embraced bad theology. They exchanged the glory of the immortal Creator for images of the creature. They then began to speak words contrary to the Word. They exalted the Self over their Sovereign and entered the kingdom of darkness and death under hard taskmasters— Satan, Sin and the Swollen Self. The Self became the center. Man became in man’s mind the measure of all things.

So, in Adam all fell, and fell hard. The holy King of creation had to react in wrath and exact a price as sin’s penalty. Ruination and wreckage followed. The light of God’s loving face was lost. The wonderful world of life, light and love became a world of darkness and death. Sin entered the world through the Swollen Self insubordinate to the Word, and death through sin, and so death spread to all because all sinned. Now a divine curse hangs over humanity: man is estranged from his Maker and has lost his sweet fellowship with the Father, Son and Spirit.

But the Word would not let Satan, Sin or Self have the last word. God promised life for the world in the seed of the woman—the lifebearer. Eve would bring forth the promised King to crush the Serpent, Sin and Self under foot. Good news! The King would come, a second Adam, taking to himself our flesh—bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh(!)— and live the life we should have lived, trusting God fully, loving God supremely.

The Son wrought miracles, went about doing good and spoke the truth. He loved and obeyed his Father fully, submitting to a kangaroo court under a pagan prefect—even to the point of a shame-filled death on a cursed cross. At the cross, the second Adam paid the full price of man’s rebellion. At the tree he obeyed, eating the bitter fruit appointed for him, absorbing in his spotless person the full weight of the wrath of God. Full atonement! Salvation to the uttermost! Satan defeated, Sin put away and the Swollen Self put in its proper place.

Christ then rose triumphant over his enemies—exalted as King of the nations and beginning of the new creation. Seated at God’s right hand, pouring out his Spirit, promising to come in power and glory to judge the living and the dead, the King is making all things new!

Starting with a new humanity raised in Christ no longer devoted to the Self, the Savior is renewing his creation to submit to his sweet service, hear his lovely voice and magnify the Creator- Redeemer. Risen Reality has restored God to the center. When he is finished folding his own into his life, light and love, God will be loved supremely, neighbor will be loved as oneself and the earth will be “as full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” Man in Christ will enjoy full fellowship with the triune God in a great garden-city, the new Jerusalem. There the greatest wedding feast ever will be celebrated with divine joy in the everlasting kingdom of God. And God, not man, will be all in all.

The Risen Lord Jesus Dispels Darkness in the Gospel

This retelling of the good news meeting bad news is the storyline into which I was born. It’s where I feel compelled to begin to tell my tiny part in the greatest story ever told. If I had never existed, this storyline would still be gloriously true, and still redound endlessly to the glory of God in Christ. And wonder of wonders, God in his great mercy has given me a part to play.

Now for my part in the story. In the year of grace 1976, I was born into a nominal Roman Catholic home. And yet, it wasn’t Muslim. It wasn’t Buddhist. It was Christian at some level. Though not born again at the time, I was baptized into the name of the triune God. I now believe it was a valid baptism, one that signified the reality that would later be sealed in my life. I memorized the Apostles’ Creed in second grade. There was some Christian moral influence. I’m thankful for all of it to this day, even though I am now firmly committed to a Protestant understanding of the faith.

I was also born in sin. As all parents know, the inbred sinfulness of a child comes clear quite quickly. It was no different with me. I was also significantly shaped, of course, by the surrounding culture. This culture exalted the Self and belittled God. So, I did not know God savingly and was not being shaped by a thoroughly Christian vision of reality—one defined by the Word made flesh and crucified and risen as Lord of all.

The dominant influence in my childhood and teenage years was the dominant secular worldview of the time suffused with modern and postmodern assumptions. The deities holding sway over my Swollen Self included naturalism, rationalism, deism, relativism, romanticism, humanism and popular psychology. None of it was embraced with understanding. It was just the air I breathed. These were hard taskmasters. Sin only gained ground in my life as I grew into adulthood—that is, until the sovereign grace of God visited me in the gospel.

Much of my life was lived enslaved to the Swollen Self, and none of it was aimed at giving glory to God. As my God-given lungs took in divine air moment by moment in this staggering theatre of divine glory, I did not give thanks to God. Under an avalanche of ten thousand creational mercies (every day), I did not seek to know and make much of his light and love. Instead, even given the gift of a divinely designed conscience, I suppressed the truth in unrighteousness and put the Self in the place of God. I was lord of my life. To my shame, I served Self until twenty-two years of age when God in Christ was restored to the center—when the risen Lord Jesus met me in the gospel. And decimated the Swollen Self! Delivered me from my Self!

I sought to make much of me. By nature and birth, I was curved inward; by culture and context, I was nurtured to seek the Self’s glory. My life was a living death. In God’s universe, it is not fitting to savor the Self. We were not made to live a life of taking selfies. I was made to look at the worth of God and make much of his beauty, truth and greatness. There alone are life, light and love found. There alone is true freedom. But I was not even aware how bound I was in my self-imposed devotion to Self. Deliverance and understanding awaited the light of the gospel.

Ghastly to behold, I traded the Fountain of Living Waters for “broken cisterns that can hold no water.” I did life not according to God’s design, but according to my desires. I flouted the Lord’s righteous rule to be my own lord. I did not love with heart, soul, mind and strength the One who made and sustained me. Not surprisingly, I did not love my neighbor as I loved my Self. I did not do so in great part, no doubt, because I was not gazing at God’s glory in Christ and reflecting that same glory into my neighbor’s life.

In my early twenties at Northern Illinois University, I came under the sway of the gospel. My blessed mother, coming under evangelical conviction, started giving me Bibles (yes, multiple: when one didn’t take, she’d try another). At one point, she gave me a sermon on the need to be born again. I recall knowing I did indeed need new life and reconciliation to God, but I was too enslaved. I said: “Not now; later. I’ll cry out at the end.” For I did not want the Swollen Self’s grip on sin loosened. I did not realize what a miserable existence I was living.

But God. God moved: his steadfast love pursued me. Sovereign grace reached down when I wasn’t reaching up. With a Godgiven nagging sense that I needed salvation from my Self, I attended a Bible church in DeKalb at a friend’s invitation. There the risen Jesus met me on my Damascus road—a road aimed at the great Self at the end. But it was hell bound, headed for an eternity with my miserable Self, separated from my gracious Master and my God.

Pastor Dumbacher was preaching through the Gospel of Luke. It was at that place of preaching (in a pew in a little brick building on Fisk Avenue) that sight and sanity were restored: light broke in as the Lord of love and life made much of himself through the gospel of God—and drove the darkness away! At long last, I beheld by faith the glory of God in the face of the once-crucified-and-now-risen Lord Jesus. He overpowered my stubborn self-centered rebellion. For months I would sit on the edge of the pew tender with tears for sorrow and for joy. My heart finally found rest not in the restless Self but in the Sovereign Savior.

My old Swollen Self, encouraged by the therapeutic Self and its near relatives, needed to meet Risen Reality. He decimated and displaced the Swollen Self and took its place at the center. Finally, I was oriented on reality as Reality-Incarnate-and- Risen alone can define what really is. To this orientation I shall now turn.

The Risen Jesus Is Lord of All in All of Life

“Jesus is Lord” is the basic Christian confession. I believe it needs to be recovered as part of a much-needed recovery of the full-orbed biblical gospel in our time. Turning from a truncated therapeutic gospel for the Self, to deliver us from the Self and for the sake of reformation and revival in the church, we need to recover the whole Christ. When we do—when Jesus is being acknowledged and confessed as Lord of all—then we shall see, I believe, a new day of God being magnificently glorified in the gospel going forth in power, in millions upon millions of lives lived for Christ.

Reborn of free grace, I have been acknowledging for over twenty years now that Jesus is Lord—Lord of all. Little by little, year after year, sight and sanity continue to be restored. Yes, the old Self rears his ugly head. But he is dead. He is defeated. With the world, he is passing away. So, I have been enabled to live more in line with the way things really are, not in some dream world devised by the Self suppressing the truth. This brings me to spell out just a bit of the progress God has graciously granted as I seek to live with the Lord Christ at the center. Passing over years of the reign of grace in my life, I’ll speak primarily to the present.

“It’s not about you, it’s not about me—it’s about the glory of God!” My wife, Emily, and I chose this theme for our wedding over twelve years ago, and it is indeed the theme of our lives to this day. Inscribed on our wedding rings is: “To the glory of God.” In our marriage, we are aiming to make much of him, not each other, and certainly not the old self who was crucified.

In recent years we have been working to recover a view of parenting as discipleship and Christian ministry. Discipleship and Christian ministry do not occur in only a few designated areas of life (for example, church programs or service projects). The gospel of the kingdom reigns over every square inch of the King’s realm. Emily and I did not have children for our own sake, but for the sake of Christ. We exist and our children exist for his kingdom—for his good pleasure and purposes.

After eight years at New Covenant in Naperville, Emily and I have now been joined to College Church for four years. For months now, in the year of our Lord 2020, we have been unable to gather with God’s people. The gathering on the Lord’s Day, to my mind, is unquestionably the high point of every week and most important thing we do as the Lord’s new humanity. In my home I have been seeking to cultivate a high view of this gathering in Jesus’ name under God’s Word. I confess missing it something fierce. I have also missed the sweet fellowship of brothers at Bible study. Men studying theology together is surely a significant step in gaining gospel ground in the world. Not least in a day when what it means to be a man has been significantly mangled.

Other dimensions of discipleship where I’ve been seeking to grow include service and giving and praying. The Lord Jesus in his message on the mount teaches us about giving in secret, doing good deeds in secret, and praying in secret. In a day when man is the measure of things, I think it’s too easy to do things, even “in the name of Jesus,” with an eye on being seen by others. So, I’ve been making it my aim, as much as possible, to serve, pray, and give in secret. I do not wish to trumpet my Self but the Word of the Lord, and he knows how far my deeds fall short of the perfection the Father demands.

With this reminder of what the Father demands, I desire to end my witness to the risen Lord Jesus with a word of thanksgiving. I am exceedingly grateful to our holy God for having mercy on me in my misery. Apart from his mercy, I could expect only the hottest hell. So, I am grateful for my Lord’s dying love in bearing my punishment. I am grateful the Lord has become my righteousness. And I am grateful, above all, for the Godcenteredness of God. Without it, life would be a living hell. But God is good. God is great. And God will be all in all in the end. Jesus is Lord. Lord of all.