True repentance

In my quiet times, I've been reading Christopher Ash's wonderful explanation of Romans. The book is called, 'Teaching Romans', but it's packed full of penetrating application and insight.
Commenting on Romans 2:6-11, Christopher writes,

What does it mean for the believer to be judged, 'according to what he has done' (v.6)? This cannot mean that we will get what we deserve, for then none would be saved. Nor can it mean that our deeds need to reach a certain standard before we die... It means that our works are the public evidence of our faith. In the Last Judgment the full disclosure of our lives will accurately prove whether or not we are real believers. It will be no use in court to say that mentally I believed or verbally I professed faith in Christ. That will cut no ice. The only evidence will be a changed direction of life. Without that evidence we shall be condemned as frauds. And so we are saved entirely by God's grace, but judged entirely by our works; for true grace is always grace which works by changing the heart (cf 1 Cor. 15:10).

If this is true, then I really must repent. This is the force of Paul's argument. I, who have such well-developed strategies for avoiding repentance, really must repent.

Christopher Ash, 'Teaching Romans', Vol 1 (Christian Focus, 2009), p99, italics added.

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Music snobbery

I came across this amazing piece in the Oxford Companion to Music. It's best read out loud with a plum in your mouth!

"Church Music
2. The Question of Good Taste. There are those who maintain that the importance of this last great purpose [viz. to 'go into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.'] justifies the use of any kind of music. To the musician this sounds very like the false doctrine of 'doing evil that good may come.'...
It is very difficult to argue with those who support the use of bad music to lead men into good ways, since usually they are, from some natural incapacity, or through lack of early musical environment, incapable of feeling the difference between good and bad in music, and, sometimes, even of realizing that 'bad' exists... Association with the 'bad' in any department of life has a 'cheapening' effect on the mind, whereas association with the 'good' raises it. Hence if two pieces of music, good and bad, have equally strong attractive qualities the ultimate end in view will be better attained by the use of the good...
And had such evangelistic leaders as General Booth and Messrs. Moody and Sankey enjoyed the advantage of possessing literary and musical taste they would have gained and held just as many ardent converts by means of wholesome, simple, popular song as they did by the simple reiteration of some elementary religious thought set to a 'catchy' rhythm."