Memorable and interesting quotes from great books. We can only change permanently as”īookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, You cannot change such things through mere will-power, through learning Biblical principles and trying to carry them out. Human approval, professional success, power and influence, family and clan identity-all of these things serve as our heart’s “functional trust” rather than what Christ has done, and as a result we continue to be driven to a great degree by fear, anger, and a lack of self-control. We believe the gospel at one level, but at deeper levels we do not. We habitually and instinctively look to other things besides God and his grace as our justification, hope, significance, and security. So Luther says that even after you are converted by the gospel your heart will go back to operating on other principles unless you deliberately, repeatedly set it to gospel-mode. “Your computer operates automatically in a default mode unless you deliberately tell it to do something else. Keller, quote from The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith Ultimately, elder brothers live good lives out of fear, not out of joy and love.” This gets to the root of what drives an elder brother. A slave works out of fear-fear of consequences imposed by force. The word “slave” has strong overtones of being forced or pushed rather than drawn or attracted. In the same way, elder brothers are fastidious in their compliance to ethical norms, and in fulfillment of all traditional family, community, and civic responsibilities. There is no joy or love, no reward in just seeing his father pleased. But the elder brother shows that his obedience to his father is nothing but duty all the way down.
Often we don’t feel like doing what we ought to do, but we do it anyway, for the sake of integrity. The older son boasts of his obedience to his father, but lets his underlying motivation and attitude slip out when he says, “All these years I’ve been slaving for you.” To be sure, being faithful to any commitment involves a certain amount of dutifulness. “Another sign of those with an “elder brother” spirit is joyless, fear-based compliance.
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