J-Curve Chapter 10 — J-Curve Educational Classes

Class Description: Session 9, Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Dying to self: Understanding Different J Curves

Not every J Curve shares that same origin. Some suffering comes to us unsought and from a source we haven’t expected. Some suffering we enter because of sacrificial love. We carry, absorb and pay the freight for suffering that we see in those for whom we care. But often, the most poignant forms of suffering come as a result of the sinful inclinations still alive and well within us.

Class Notes:

· Is there any suffering you’ve intentionally embraced recently because you recognized an opportunity to be united to Christ in it? Share if you’re able.

· Were you able to incarnate the gospel in your suffering?

· Were you able to rejoice in your J Curve?

· What did resurrection look like? How convinced are you that resurrections always follow J Curves?

· Was it helpful to think about justification being your foundation as you suffered?

Chapter 10 Dying to self: Understanding Different J Curves

In chapter 9 we considered justification by faith that stops short of J Curve living. This week PM will begin introducing us to various kinds of J Curves. He’ll show us J Curves in the past when Christ died, was buried and then was resurrected, as well as our initial J Curve of faith that united us with Christ. As we move through the chapter he’ll introduce us to the unique shapes of various present J Curves that we encounter in the here and now.

PM begins the chapter by describing the warp and woof of three different kinds of J Curves: the love J Curve, the suffering J Curve, and the repentance J Curve. Let’s attempt to accurately understand each.

1. Pp. 87-88 (Diagram on p. 88) Love J Curve: Phil. 2:5ff. 5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

a. How would we describe a Love J Curve?

b. What examples does PM give of his own love J Curves?

2. Pp. 87-88 (Diagram on p. 88) Suffering J Curve: 2 Cor. 12:7ff Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

a. How would we describe a Suffering J Curve, and how is it distinct from a Love J Curve?

b. Examples?

3. P. 88 (Diagram on p. 88) Repentance J Curve: Col. 3:5ff 5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.

a. How would we describe a Suffering J Curve, and how is it distinct from the other two?

b. Examples?

c. I shared w. you last week that David Powlison wrote an insightful chapter categorizing our sin as potentially our most poignant source of suffering... During the summer of 2016 I was on sabbatical, during which I wrote a book (not published) about battling with indwelling sin. In chapter 2 (pp. 13-18) of that book I included a number of paragraphs from Powlison’s chapter (you’ll see the footnote information in the photocopies I’ve given you.) I’ve copied the entire chapter for you if you have interest.

4. P. 89 Paragraph just above the graphic...

a. Let’s read the passages attached to each of these J Curves

b. Jesus’s J Curve 1 Cor. 15:3ff. 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

i. PM is identifying this as a proclamation of Jesus’s past J Curve - it happened in the past.

c. Faith J Curve Rom. 6:3ff. 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

i. So here PM is again looking at a J Curve that took place in the past w. our initial expression of faith in Christ and in baptism. This is a historical reality for every baptized, confessing believer.

d. Present J Curve: (Love, Suffering, Repentance) Phil. 3:10ff 10 I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

i. These are the J Curves we experience in everyday life now.

5. Bottom of p. 89 - 90 PM uses a word I’m finding helpful: ‘imprint’. (Read pink highlights)

a. From https://www.dictionary.com/browse/imprinting noun Animal Behavior, Psychology. rapid learning that occurs during a brief receptive period, typically soon after birth or hatching, and establishes a long-lasting behavioral response to a specific individual or object, as attachment to parent, offspring, or site.

b. mark made by pressure; a mark or figure impressed or printed on something.

6. P. 90 top paragraph “Our suffering doesn’t pay....”

a. There’s a fine line between being identified in Christ’s sufferings and somehow seeing our own suffering as meritorious. Let’s reiterate that point.

7. Pp. 90-91 connecting paragraph:

a. How do these kinds of J Curves sanctify our emotional life and allow our emotions to come alive?

b. How can sanctified emotions serve us in the pursuit of being united with Christ?

8. P. 90 Two paragraphs beginning w. “I frequently experience...”

a. In describing his sadness PM says that he has become sensitized to his sadness. What do you think he means by that, and how is this different than functioning on the basis of ‘feelism’ as he’s been defining it thus far?

b. Final sentence of the second paragraph... How is this not a sour grapes mentality? How can we be simultaneously putting that sin nature to death while not believing that we’re settling for second best? (think John Piper)

9. P. 92 “The resurrection side of....” (This is really the answer to the last question.)

a. What is PM talking about when he’s discussing John 6? Vv. 51-55 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” 52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.

b. The expectant look forward to the coming miniresurrection as well as the ultimate resurrection are anything but a sour grapes mentality. They are instead a refusal to be satisfied with anything less than Christ. We so often settle for too little!