← The Daily Blade: Joby Martin & Kyle Thompson
The Daily Blade: Joby Martin & Kyle Thompson
#274 - Kyle Thompson // Mere Christianity: The Reality of the Law
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Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.
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All right. Welcome to a new week of the Daily Blade. So I get asked for book recommendations a lot. So a long time ago, I put together the 100 books every modern Christian Man Should Read list. So you guys can get that at Undaunted Life Book List. But to make the list more accessible from the beginning, I decided to break the list up into different categories. So I wanted men to be able to browse the categories to see what they were interested in. And then, you know, we would just choose from the curated list what they wanted to read from each category or whatever. And the categories are things like apologetics or Leadership in Business, Marriage, Literature, Money, history, philosophy, and there's some others. But one author, and one author only has an entire category just dedicated to his books. And that author is Clive Staples Lewis, better known as CS Lewis. So CS Lewis is one of the most important Christian authors in history. He wrote over 30 books which have been translated into dozens of languages and have sold, you know, millions and millions of copies at this point. So he has non fiction classics like the Screwtape Letters, the Abolition of man, the Great Divorce, and fiction classics like the Chronicles of Narnia series. But even amongst all of his classics, for my money, at least one of his books stands head and shoulders above them all, and it's Mere Christianity. So the content for the book was actually collected from a series of radio broadcasts on BBC that Lewis delivered between 1941 and 1944. So the material was put into three separate volumes before it was actually combined into a single volume titled Mere Christianity and published in 1952. And for me, it's the most important Christian apologetics book written in the 20th century, if not ever. And I absolutely mean that. So because of its importance, we're going to be looking at five different sections of Mere Christianity on the Daily Blade this week. Sections that really get to the heart of a man and the centrality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Today, we're looking at the reality of the law. So here's a passage from the end of book one, chapter one, the Law of Human Nature. That is to say, I do not succeed in keeping the law of nature very well. And the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it there, starts up in my mind A string of excuses as long as your arm. The question at the moment is not whether they are good excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, we believe in the law of nature. If we do not believe in decent behavior, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much. We feel the rule or law pressing on us so that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it. And consequently we try to shift the responsibility for you notice that it is only for our bad behavior that we find all these explanations. It is our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry. We put our good temper down to ourselves. These, then are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings all over the earth have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the law of nature. They break it. These two facets are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. So, guys, this is a core human struggle. So I've certainly been in this place. I've felt it, you felt it, we've all felt it. We feel this sense of right and wrong that we can't explain, but that overrides our brain's ability to excuse. And the apostle Paul knew this well when he wrote his letter to the church in Rome. Reading now from Romans 2, verses 14 and 15. For when Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness. And their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. So the law is not only universal right, but it's encoded in us. It's internal. And so there's really no way to escape it. It's that way for all of humanity and has always been that way. So this is God's answer to the question of, well, how can people know what is right and wrong? And doesn't it depend on where they were born? And doesn't it depend on their upbringing? And doesn't it depend on the system of government that they were raised under? Now, of course, all those things have an impact on a person. But what Paul is saying is that even in spite of all those things we have been given the law, we can't escape it. It's inside of us. We may not be able to explain it, but we know it's there. And now the question becomes this. What are we supposed to do with it? How are we supposed to perform now? And can we be perfect? More on that tomorrow.
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Thank you for listening to today's episode. Before you go, if you want to help, equip other men for the fight, share this podcast around and leave us a five star rating and review. Stay sharp.