thumbing

Wow. I haven't posted anything in December yet – and while I'm sure some of you are pleased with such a thing, I have a reputation to keep up.

Yes, I know: that's what you were afraid of.

Those of you who enjoyed my last post would enjoy this sermon by John Piper about the Prodigal son, and if you can't figure out how the two are related, let me sketch it out for you.

Last time, we were talking about this bus which is salvation from the wrecker, and how those of us on the bus have an obligation to stop the bus and get off from time to time to get other people who are broken down on the side of the road in busted jalopies which are only worthy of the trash-heap – we have to get off and tell them that this is the only bus which isn’t going to the scrap yard where the worm doesn't die and the fire is never quenched.

But on the one hand, we have the problem of sometimes getting off the bus dressed like we're not really able or willing to help, but our heart's in the right place. But on the other hand, some of us have another problem. A couple of us get off the bus, get a couple jalopy-drivers to get on the bus, and suddenly when we all go to get back on the bus, one among us will say something like this:

"Listen – I can't get back on that bus. I mean, I've been faithful for a long time to do everything that the bus driver requires of me – and I was grateful to do it, right? – but he's letting these people who don’t really appreciate how great this bus is sit in the same seat that I sit in. They get to sit next to the window, just like me. Their chairs really recline nicely and they get to pick which movie we're going to watch next – just like me. I can't get back on that bus until I'm sure those ingrates have shown me that they know exactly how good they have it, and they walk it off a little by doing some of the work around here."

Yes: sometimes we forget to wear working clothes for the work we're going to do, and at the same times, sometimes we expect everybody to be able and willing to do the work we're doing right now – that somehow they're not really Christians unless they are at least at the same place walking it off they we are.

But here's what the bus driver says about that:

My child, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to be merry and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found.

I want you to think about this carefully today, because I think the point is a sharp one: in the same way that the bus stops for the one who hasn’t gotten on yet, it also stops for you who got on a long time ago. That is, the driver is waiting for you to get on and rejoice with the other people, none of whom deserve their place there.

"None of whom" includes you, and it includes me. And at the place where we can't see how undeserving others are because we are so blinded instead by how undeserving we are, maybe then we'll really be on the bus rather than just thumbing our nose at a ride.

UPDATED: wow -- I almost forgot the reason I wrote this post. These guys are getting people on the bus, and they are a mission church. Support them if you are able and willing, especially at Christmas.

Ben (withering)10

Last week Ben Witherington posted a little something he titled, "For God so loved Himself?" Is God a Narcissist?, which has received a little bit of play and a (brief) response from John Piper.

I had a long week last week, so I didn’t quite have the time to shake out that post, but I happen to have an hour this morning, and I'm sure Ben is glad that the dark side of town has finally gotten to his opinion on the subject of God and His Glory.

Let's make sure we "get" that this is s critique of Ben's post and not of what's going on in the meta of that post, which may deserve its own treatment. That said, here we go:

I was recently reading through the proofs of a new book on New Testament Theology, and it was stated that the most basic theme or thesis of NT theology is --'God magnifying himself through Jesus Christ by means of the Holy Spirit'.

There were various nuances and amplifications to the discussion, but the more one read, the more it appeared clear that God was being presented as a self-centered, self-referential being, whose basic motivation for what he does, including his motivation for saving people, is so that he might receive more glory. Even the sending of the Son and the work of the Spirit is said to be but a means to an end of God's self-adulation and praise.

I have to admit that one of things about this post that seems not quite right is how one-sided it is. That is, not one-sided in opinion, but one-sided in discussion. Because Ben is reading a book not yet in print, he may have an obligation not to cite it directly – which, I guess, is fine. But it's hard to compare or substantiate what comes next when what we get is a one-sentence summary of a doctrine which, frankly, requires a little more nuance than Ben delivers here.

Does God receive "more glory"? Well, more glory than what? And when one objects to God being "self-referential", doesn’t that overlook God's ontological position among everything in which He is creator and everything else is not?

And what about the well-known first question of the Westminster Catechism –

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Is that statement making God "self-centered"?

I think what has happened here is that Ben has simplified someone's theology farther than is justified, and has left out a bunch of stuff. Which, you know, happens. But when that happens, maybe one should be careful about saying things like this:

What's wrong with this picture? How about the basic understanding of God's essential and moral character?

Somehow the point that God's essential character, and God's moral character, are in fact self-referential. That is, as God would say: "I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you." (Is 45 for the verse number wonks)

It is in that which there are effects of God's character – such as love for creation, specifically for man; judgment on creation, specifically on man; mercy on creation, specifically on man; and so on. To try to segment God's reliance on God alone before approaching the rest of this stuff kinda misses the point of who and what exactly God is.


I think that's why I found this particularly disturbing:

For instance, suppose this thesis stated above is true-- would we not expect John 3.16 to read "for God so loved himself that he gave his only begotten Son..."?

In fact, no we would not expect that – because this expectation is seeded by the idea that there is only one goal or one tier of goals in the divine will. May I suggest that there is certainly more than one tier of objectives in God's plan – even to the most divinely-fixated Edwardsian thinker. And in that, in John 3 Jesus is not speaking to the ultimate or highest tier of God's will but to the meaning of redemption in God's will.

To say that God loves the world does not nullify God's jealous love of Himself and His own holiness and perfection – and to anticipate that the only love God would speak of is His view of Himself does make God like us, but neither the common Edwardsian or the nuttier ones you might encounter go that far.

Or again if this thesis is true, would we not expect Phil. 2.5-11 to read differently when it speaks about Christ emptying himself? If the Son is the very image and has the same character as the Father, wouldn't we expect this text to say--'who being in very nature God, devised a plan to glorify himself through his incarnation' if God really is so self-referential? In other words I am arguing Christ, the perfect image of God's character, reveals that God's character is essentially other directed self-sacrificial love. God loves people, not merely as means to his own ends, but as ends in themselves.

I think the irony here is that Ben is asking us to believe that the writer of the book he is considering is making an either/or proposition: either God is glorified –or- a man or mankind is somehow glorified or made right. Can't it be both, where one is an effect of the other – an intended and intentional effect where both objectives are effected to their best possible outcome? Why must it be bifurcated into either God is glorified or God loves man enough to save man – doesn’t it seem more sensible that God is glorified by His love for man and by His saving of man – but that as much as man is saved, the greater objective is the demonstration of who God is because God is, in fact, the greater being both ontologically and spiritually?

Or take Heb. 12.2-- we are told that Jesus died for our sins, not 'for the glory set before him', and in view of how this would improve his honor rating but rather 'for the joy set before him'. That is, he despised the shame of dying on the cross, which death was the least self-glorifying thing he could do, because he knew of how it would benefit his people thereafter, and he took joy in that fact.

Ben's view is that "the joy which was set before [Christ]" is –only- the salvation of His people – but reading this passage closely renders two outcomes which, I think, Ben overlooks:

[1] That the joy set before Christ is parallel to the race set before "us", and that the goal of both seems to be the same goal.

[2] That salvation per se is not listed here as the joy of Christ but that being seated at the right hand of the throne of God is listed as the outcome of Christ's endurance.

The parallel here is that we should reflect Christ's obedience so that we may end up where Christ is -- which is, frankly, in a glorified state. Certainly our salvation is purchased at the cross – but this passage is not talking about propitiation directly: it is talking about our endurance as it reflects Christ's endurance – and the end of such a thing is to end up in glory as Christ is himself in Glory.

Or re-read Hosea 11 where God explains that his love for his people is not at all like the fickle, self-seeking love of mere human beings. But rather God keeps loving his children, whether they praise or love or worship him or not.

This may be the most puzzling part of Ben's riff here because, again, it speaks specifically to God's self-referential nature in that even if men change or are evil, God is still good and faithful! That is, that God isn’t going to get jerked around by the infidelity of men – even of Israel! God will be God and do what He intends.

Let me be clear that of course the Bible says it is our obligation to love, praise, and worship God, but this is a very different matter from the suggestion that God worships himself, is deeply worried about whether he has enough glory or not, and his deepest motivation for doing anything on earth is so that he can up his own glory quotient, or magnify and praise himself.

Dr. Piper has already sent a salvo of scripture over this statement, but my small contribution here is this: what is evident in the Bible is not just that it is "right" that we worship God: it is what God desires for us and from us. That is, God desires the worship of men. Does that really need a proof-text? Do we have to outline the books of Moses to show how God defines worship and take extraordinary time to define what it means to worship him? Or to point of that Hosea makes the case that the real sin if Israel is giving worship to false gods and not to God who desires and deserves it?

It is difficult to frame what Scripture says about worship except by noting how God frames the matter and the problem in that He thinks we desire to worship Him less than He himself desires us to worship Him.

If we go back to the Garden of Eden story, one immediately notices that it is the Fall and sin which turned Adam and Eve into self-aware, self-centered, self-protecting beings. This is not how God had created them. Rather, he had created them in the divine image, and that divine image involves other directed, other centered love and relating. It follows from this that not the fallen narcissistic tendencies we manifest reflect what God is really like, but rather other directed, self-giving loving tendency.

I think Ben would be hard-pressed to demonstrate that from the text. I would enjoy discussing that with him specifically. Until such a time, I think it's appropriate to say, "that definition of the image of God is imaginative at best – and overlooks the definition of the image of God provided, for example, by Gen 1:26-29 and Gen 9:6."

I like the remark of Victor Furnish that God's love is not like a heat-seeking missile attracted to something inherently attractive in this or that person. Rather God's other-directed love bestows worth, honor, even glory. Notice exactly what Psalm 8.5 says--God has made us but a little less than God (or another reading would be, 'than the angels') and crowned human beings with glory and honor. Apparently this does not subtract from God's glory (see vs. 1) but simply adds to it. God it would appear is not merely a glory grabber, but rather a glory giver.

It seems odd that Ben can get this – that God's glory and some other objective can coexist and even be co-terminus – but then stand by his criticism of God-centeredness. But even in that, I think he mistakes the point of Ps 8 – which is that God is glorified by the things He has done.

I suppose we should not be surprised that in a culture and age of narcissism, we would recreate God in our own self-centered image, but it is surprising when we find orthodox Christians, and even careful scholars doing this.

I think what is surprising is that Ben doesn’t really understand the thing he is criticizing here very well. He's a well-respected guy with a very popular blog and quite a few books published – but it seems he doesn’t really get how God-centeredness works. That is to say, the greatest commandment is, "Love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul and strength", and that the Lord commanded this knowing it is for our own good.

Smartest. Friends. Ever.

James Swan is officially the smartest guy on the internet, bar none. May his tribe increase.

Hiatus

I've been on vacation for almost two weeks, which was nice. However, part of that time was spent assessing personal priorities, and it turns out that as much as I like blogging and believe I have something to say, it's at the bottom of the list of personal priorities -- and things which I say I value more than the blog are getting pushed out.

For example, I have a lot of weight to lose; you can't lose weight if you don't exercise, and I only have a fixed number of hours in the day. I also have two children who deserve to have a better Dad than the one who sits in front of that stupid flat screen monitor half the time, and I have a wife who works much harder than the average wife who deserves not to have to work that hard -- she deserves to have a better husband than I am.

There are also the issues of whether I am doing in real life what I blog so passionately about here, and again there being only so many hours in the day, you get the idea. What about my church? What about that trailer park? What about my pastor? What about the Gospel and lost people?

So that all said, thanks to you loyal readers. Keep your powder dry. booyah.

Universal Health Care

I'm pretty sure nobody who reads this blog day in and day out is in favor of universal health care, but I have an axe to grind about the subject (not related to the previous post), and I have 10 minutes, so here goes.

Obama has apparently just come out with his version of universal health care. As you all know, Hillary is also an advocate for such a thing. No doubt all the candidates on the Left are going to come out in favor of it this Presidential season. (gosh, it started early, didn't it?) And let's face it: when they spell it out in the broadest terms possible, it sounds like a no-brainer.

Seriously: let's imagine some guy who's just an average Joe. He's 40, he's worked all his life in his own business (he makes a living doing lawn services like mowing and tree trimming), and up until about 5 years a go, he was doing pretty good. But 5 years ago he started developing some weird symptoms, and when he goes to see his doctor he is informed that he has Hepatitis C -- the blood-born kind which you can only get by blood-contact, sexual contact or by sharing needles. Well, he never did any drugs, but it turns out that his ex-wife had cheated on him in many ways, and he picked up the virus from her.

Now, after 5 years of progressive advance of the disease (he never had any health insurance), he's too sick to work consistently, so he's at the mercy of the welfare system. He worked hard for those years, and now he's too sick to work, but he's a relatively young man. His blue book value, so to speak, should be pretty good, but he's got a bad liver that's getting worse.

The existing medicade/SSI system will not help Joe. He's too young to retire, and liver disease is not considered a top-shelf disability. It takes him literally years to get anything approaching nominal treatment -- they drain his feet occationally from the fluid that's building up, and they tell him to alternate motrin and advil for the pain, but he has to go easy on those because they actually make his liver worse -- but he's given psychological care to make sure he doesn't go postal or commit suicide.

Joe becomes a homeless, unemployable person -- and for the most part, it is because his wife cheated on him, that made him sick, and then health care became a luxury he couldn't afford. The no-brainer for Joe is universal health care: everyone should have access to whatever degree of health care they need and cost should not be an issue. After all, he's a human being in God's image, right? Saved or not, Joe as a human being ought not to have to die sleeping under a bridge because he didn't have the money for a specialist.

Here's the problem for the no-brainer: Joe is already in the system receiving health care for free. He's on medicare and SSI. The problem is not that the treatment doesn't exist for Joe but that the system has already decided to what extent Joe should get health care. It has decidied what it is willing to pay for Joe's treatment. And the question, really, is if having this system expanded to every person in the country will increase Joe's chances of getting treated, or if it will decrease his chances of getting treated.

See: Joe's already a goner. The best case for Joe is that he can stabilize his current condition and live the rest of his life as an invalid. If that's where he's at medically, won't hundereds and perhaps thousands of cases get more funding and attention than his? Isn't the point of triage -- which is what has to happen in a situation where medical resources are finite and are exceeded by the number of patients in line -- to put the resources available in the right place to only stabilize the patients in line so that the most survive rather than are cured to the best of the existing technology's ability?

I bring this up because I think there's a Gospel answer to this question, but we have to get the matter of the local church resolved to answer it. You know: if the local church is merely the number of people who have the right-hearted reverence of Christ, and once in a while they get together and sing praise songs and hear a really good and passionate speaker, that local church has no Gospel solution to the problem of Joe.

Think about that as I reconstruct the lost part 3 of my pet peeve: did Jesus intend the local church to have a response to guys like Joe, or did Joe never occur to Jesus?

Just for the record

God is bigger than Google Analytics. I will never tell you what I mean by that, but today God gets a big "halleluia" from me for what He is able to do.

A weekend post

It's unusual, really, for me to post on the weekend. I have small kids, and the weekend is family time no matter what. This weekend my son helped me tend the yard, which is a new thing for him, and we played baseball (he drove in a run, and made the play at second for the first time).

That's a pretty good saturday, if you ask me.

But why bring it up? You know: my wife doesn't want me talking about our family on the blog because we don't want to be "famous" in the pejorative sense. All the blog stuff -- the arguments, the critiques, the jokes, whatever -- are fine, but we want to live a real life and not a staged life which has to correspond to the preconceptions of others. If I want to write, and it fills up the blog, that's fine: I'm just not going to make what happens at our house the subject of some kind of blog version of reality TV.

That said, I have something to say about the life I have right now -- and if I was smart, I'd take my own advice and avoid making a "this is where I am right now" post for the good of my readers, and for mine. But here's the thing: I think it is relevant to whoever you are, so I'm going to let you have it.

About 15 years ago, I was living in the basement of my parents' house, and I was no longer an atheist. I had read the book of John, and some other scraps of the NT, and I was (as I would reckon right now) "saved" and trusting Christ to forgive me based on my confession to Him that I was a filthy sinner, but I was a pretty lousy Christian. I'm not even sure I would have called myself a Christian at that point, but in the theological sense I surely was -- even if my theology was pathetic and sloppy.

Back then, I did a lot of things that I was good at, and that I enjoyed -- and as I look at my life today, I have given almost all of it up. Except for speaking in English and wearing clothes, and some sins which I'd rather not discuss today, I have a hard time thinking of anything I did 15 years ago which I still do today -- and that includes the things I did well.

You know, for instance, 10 years ago I made almost twice as much money as I make today. I had more direct reports and more responsibility at work. I managed a business with annual sales of about the same size as the company I work for right now. A lot more people had to actively respect me -- fwiw, that's when I picked up the internet handle "centuri0n". I had a new car. I had a lot of hobbies. I was, as they say, "promotable". I was going someplace -- at least, that's what a lot of people thought.

If I compared what I was then to what I am right now, I'll bet that I could find a lot of reasons to say that I am really a failure -- I'm going backwards. Somehow, God is punishing me or something because I haven't been able to keep all those really cool things He gave me back then.

But here's the bizarre thing: I think I'm better off today. Making half the money, working for someone else, sort of dead-ended in my job, I am better off today. I am better of because I am closer to Christ than I was 10 or 15 years ago. I see Him more clearly today. I lean on Him and He is more precious to me today than back then. What I have today is beautiful rather than complicated or sophisticated, and it is satisfying rather than expansively-consuming.

God willing that the same happens to you and yours. God has been a blessing to me in spite of the money and the authority. Seek Him first, and His righteousness, and the other stuff will be given to you -- and you really will see it as other stuff rather than the most precious thing on Earth.

Yes, this one, too

5. God’s distribution of suffering is not equal, and one hard thing may prepare for another.

When Lisa was 15 her father suffered an aneurysm at work and died the next morning in the hospital. Lisa: "When my father died, faith wasn’t so easy anymore. . . . I spent five years asking why, expressing my anger saying it’s not fair, before God helped me realize that he is who he is all the time – in good circumstances and bad. He is all-powerful and all-loving, but that doesn’t mean that as a citizen of this fallen world he protects us from every ‘bad’ event." (Modern Reformation, 25)

What a witness to God’s goodness and sovereignty the world would be missing today if God had not prepared Lisa Beamer for this loss by the death of her dad!

Read that one, too. Shut up and read it.

filler

Since I am going to be swamped today, I thought I'd get some filler in here from some pastor in Minnesota:

t is profoundly wrong to turn the cross into a proof that self-esteem is the root of mental health. If I stand before the love of God and do not feel a healthy, satisfying, freeing joy unless I turn that love into an echo of my self-esteem, then I am like a man who stands before the Grand Canyon and feels no satisfying wonder until he translates the canyon into a case for his own significance. That is not the presence of mental health, but bondage to self.

Think about that today: the cross is not a mental health program meant to build us up in our own eyes.

Read the rest. This definition of joy and worthiness is one we all need to consider.

More about Love

This love of Christ is effective in protecting us from separation, and therefore is not a universal love for all, but a particular love for his people – those who, according to Romans 8:28, love God and are called according to his purpose.

This is the love of Ephesians 5:25, "Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her." It is Christ’s love for the church, his bride. Christ has a love for all, and he has a special, saving, preserving love for his bride. You know you are part of that bride if you trust Christ. Anyone – no exceptions – anyone who trusts Christ can say, I am part of his bride, his church, his called and chosen ones, the ones who verse 35 says are kept and protected forever no matter what.

You needed that, and the rest of that message, today. I know you did.

How-to

I got an e-mail from a faithful reader today who asked me, "So how do you pick a child to sponser through Compassion International?"

My advice: you can't pick. It's too heartbreaking. That red ribbon graphic -- you understand what that means, right? How can you look at these kids and not want to take them all in? My suggestion is to use the "pick a child for me" link on the left at the top of the page when you click through from this blog (the blue button in the right sidebar).

If you do not sponsor a child through Compassion (or some other Christian relief org; Compassion is my org of choice), you should stop reading my blog. Stop reading right now. You are using my blog to prop up your conscience rather than doing something -- and believe me, you can't do less than what they expect from you at Compassion and be doing anything at all -- and I hate that. Don't read my blog if you can't do something about the things that get discussed here.

It's $32 a month. You spend more than that on Cokes every month, dude. You could drink water from the cooler and save up enough money to sponsor one of these kids. You could Eat PB&J on Mondays for lunch and save that money to do this thing.

Just don't come around here complaining about your sad, sorry, non-reformed local church if you personally aren't reformed enough to minister to orphans and give mercy to the poor and oppressed.

not insincere

So an important distinction must be made. God loves believers with a particular love. It is a family love, the ultimate love of an eternal Father for His children. It is the consummate love of a Bridegroom for His bride. It is an eternal love that guarantees their salvation from sin and its ghastly penalty. That special love is reserved for believers alone.

However, limiting this saving, everlasting love to His chosen ones does not render God’s compassion, mercy, goodness, and love for the rest of mankind insincere or meaningless. When God invites sinners to repent and receive forgiveness (Isa. 1:18; Matt. 11:28-30), His pleading is from a sincere heart of genuine love. “‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?’” (Ezek. 33:11). Clearly God does love even those who spurn His tender mercy, but it is a different quality of love, and different in degree from His love for His own.

-- John MacArthur, The God Who Loves, pp. 14, 16

HT: SFPulpit

Back from Sick

And I’m off the medication, too, so you all will be very happy with me today, I am sure.

I have a sort of backlog on the blog here which I think needs to be cleared up, and in part it revolves around a link provided by reader “scott” to Matt Lauterbach’s blog about what missional means. I give it here for a context, and I have two reactions to it.

The first is this: his exegesis of 1 Cor 6:9-11 is sloppy. Paul’s point in saying what he says in 1 Cor 6 is not, “boy, it’s a sloppy mess when you convert the sinful”. His point is that the Corinthians, who are supposed to be “called to be saints” and “enriched in speech and in knowledge”, don’t have the ability to settle their own disputes: they take their alleged problems to secular courts for judgment. In that, Paul says they disgrace themselves when they have to have the ungodly settle their alleged wrongs against each other. And the admonition that none of these kinds of sinners will inherit the Kingdom of God is made to make the point clear: you are not like this anymore, so don’t give these people authority over you.

And this is a transition from the fact that the ungodly should not judge those in Christ to the fact that those in Christ ought to treat each other as if they were in Christ. That is: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

Paul is not talking about missiology here in the sense Pastor Lauterbach is. Paul is saying that our witness to the world ought to be that we have power (cf. 1 Cor 4), and that we are different than what we used to be. That is a missiological statement, but it is couched in ecclesiology and frankly Christian ethics – not in talking about how messy it is to be a person being reformed by the Holy Spirit.

But that said, here’s the real question: what is the mission of the church to those people Pastor Lauterbach has listed by example in his post here? Do we have one – or can we write off the partnered homosexuals who find methods for getting children, the single moms who adopt, the tattooed, the pierced, the surrogate mom, all the people who not only don’t look like “us” but also probably cannot ever “look” like “us”?

I think it’s a great and important question. But there’s a really big problem in the way Pastor Lauterbach frames it: he has implied that somehow “Republican” values are inherently “Christian” values. You know what? That’s a root-cause problem in this discussion.

Yes: I vote Republican – over one issue only, and that’s right-to-life. But I’d vote for a Mormon for public office if he was going to dedicate his political career to the end of abortion. But I have no inherent love for the Republican party. They do not represent me on the matter of the institution of marriage (I’m for the Genesis 2 model – how many laws are based on Genesis 2?). They do not represent me on the matter of public prayer (I’m for the Acts 2-3-4 model of public prayer). They do not represent me on the matter of freedom of religious expression (I’m for the Rom 1:16-17 model of freedom of religious expression). They do not represent me on the matter of race relations (I’m for the Eph 2 model).

So the idea that somehow the Republican party is a template of Christ-in-culture bothers me.

Which brings us, thankfully, back to the matter of Gospel being the solution to culture. The solution to culture is to refute all the errors of culture with the truth of Jesus Christ. And since Pastor Lauterbach brought it up, 1 Cor is a great example of how Christ leads the way for us to be in a culture and at the same time be contra mundum.

For example, Paul says this:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people – not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler – not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. "Purge the evil person from among you."[1 Cor 5:9-12]

Listen to Paul. In this passage, he is saying, on the one hand, the church has an obligation to deal with men and women who do not repent of sin but instead abide by their own sinfulness if they want to be called part of the family of God. But equally necessary here is what Paul is saying about those outside the church: you cannot be cut off from these people who have not been saved. You cannot come out of the world.

That is missiology, my friends. If that is not missiology, then there is no such thing, or else it is the shabby thing I have been on about in my last few posts to iMonk. The church must be something which is radically set apart from the world and at the same time in the very presence of the world for the sake of showing them the truth.

Paul says more about that here:

For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things. [1 Cor 4:9-13]

Paul doesn’t say, “Gosh, we have a good footing in the political arena and now we can go do God’s work.” And he doesn’t say, “I’m glad I have, at last, become my own reality TV show so that I can influence the culture.” He says, (I paraphrase) “God has made me suffer greatly in all things so that I can be theatron for angels and men and everything in the world.”

Theatron. Listen – that’s got to slap you in the face no matter who you are. Paul says he is made sport of for the public amusement for the sake of Christ; he’s the object of scorn. It doesn’t mean he’s in people’s face with some kind of insult: it means, as he says clearly here, that he makes a fool of himself for the sake of Christ.

He is not seeking anyone’s respect. And why is that? Does he say why? I think he does – it’s the premise of what he is telling the Corinthians here:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Paul says that his mission was itself not to gain anyone’s trust or to gain anyone’s approval but to in fact to deliver a message which, by any other standard except God’s standard, is a folly -- so that God will be glorified.

Now, please hear me clearly: I’m still the guy who thinks that the message of Jonah has a lot to do with what our missiology ought to be. I’m still the guy who thinks that Stephen delivered the Gospel to the council of the High Priest. I’m still the guy that believes strongly that God is just as glorified by His love as He is by His justice and holiness. But my point here is that we are not sent here to get anyone’s approval but God’s.

You must speak to people in an idiom they grasp, and you must use the aspects of the Gospel which will have the most impact on culture. You know: in a nearly-monolithic American Republican culture, the truth that Jesus Christ demolishes the demands of the Law is devastating. And in a nearly-monolithic American Democrat culture, the truth that Jesus Christ fulfills the Law and demands repentance from sin is equally devastating. And in a popular counterculture where nihilism and radical autonomy is exalted, the fact of Jesus as Lord and Christ sweeps the ants off the anthill without and regard for their outrage.

These are all expressions of the Gospel – all cross-centered, Christ-exalting, God-filled visions of what the world is and they do not contradict each other. But they do create a culture which contradicts what the world demands of us.

This is missiology: being something in the world which is an affront to the world and a stumbling block to its ideas of wisdom and status. The mission of the church is not to try to make Republicans out of disenfranchised bar hoppers, gender role breakers and all manner of prostitutes: it is to make sinners grateful to God for grace, and to make them repentant that they have tried to reinvent His law, and to make them humble in love and service to men. It might obviously cause them to vote against abortion and those who protect it, but that doesn’t mean it’ll make the world into a suburban Tennessee cul de sac.

When the finger starts wagging about “missiology”, let’s not forget that the purpose here is not to become as much like the culture as we can before we fall into just being the culture: the purpose is frankly to devastate the idols of culture and all their sacraments in order that Christ may be lifted up.

It’s nice to be back.

Called Enriched and what?

OK: I opened this can of worms at TeamPyro before bringing this here, but there are two aspects of this issue which I wanted to get after. The first one was, “what about my poor local church which I am sick of?” I covered that as an intro to this topic at TeamPyro, and you can read about that there.

The larger question is this: what about my poor local church which I am more than sick of? What about a church which is about to take sides and split over something like how often and what kind of Lord’s Supper is presented, or whether the deacons can drink alcohol ever, or over a sort of popular makeover to appeal to a broader demographic?

What do I do then?

Listen: let me tell you that your problem is not a new problem. Your church’s problem is not a new problem. And the solution is not a solution which no one has ever heard of before. But the question is whether your church is going to follow its advice.

That is: are you personally going to follow that advice?

Here’s the advice, btw, which I cited in part yesterday:

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Cephas," or "I follow Christ." Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

... According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw-- each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness," and again, "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile." So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future--all are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

For those who are very urgent to know the citations, that’s 1Cor 1:10-17, 3:10-23.

Now, it might be useful for you to review Acts 18 in order to remember how Paul reached the Corinthians. But think about this: Paul, the apostle, is telling the Corinthians, “listen: you are called by God (1 Cor 1:2) to be saints, and to that end you are enriched by God with the right words and right knowledge. So when I hear that you are trying to follow men instead of Christ who saved you, I wonder what it is you think you are doing.”

And in all of Chapter 2 and all of Chapter 3, Paul is all over the litany of examples of people with circumcised flesh but uncircumcised hearts, and how men think they are wiser than God until God makes fools of them.

But Paul doesn’t end his concern with a sort of “you knuckleheads” dismissal of the Corinthians: he ends this section with what I would call a beautiful image of who they are if Christ has saved them: they are temples of God, a place where the Spirit “dwells”. Think about that: it’s the same word Paul uses a little later in 1Cor 7 for what a wife ought to do with her husband – that is, to make a home. The Greek verb actually comes from the noun “oikos” or “house”.

And think on that: what we are doing when we take up sides against our brothers and sisters in a local church is reproaching the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit.

Now, I hear the objections already: “Cent, these guys want to use a fire truck for a baptistery”, “Cent: these crackers want childrens’ church to be a fraud”, “Cent: these people want to let a woman speak from the pulpit.”

I hear you. I know what you’re objecting to because I object to these things. I reject those things.

I do not reject those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells who, in my local church, do not reject those things. That doesn’t mean they get a free pass and a piece of the budget to enact their ideas, but it does mean that I will approach them as if they have the Spirit of God living inside them.

Because you know something: the Bible tells me so. If my church starts siding up saying, “I’m on Pastor’s side” or “I’m on the Deacon’s side” or “I’m with you, cent,” or “By Gawd I am on the BUY-bul’s side,” that’s all trash. That’s self-important hogwash – it’s jockeying for position, which is ultimately what Paul is condemning in this first part of this first letter.

What Paul says here to the Corinthians is that what is critical is not to elevate yourself by association but to elevate others by association. That last part of this passage – “all are yours, and [all of] you are Christ's, and Christ is God's” – simply sends out a trumpet blast of clarity which you have to put into your theological orchestra. The question is not “am I part of Christ and a dwelling-place of God” (which is a high honor – a humbling honor, yes?), but “Aren’t all of us in Christ and a dwelling place for God?”

All of you. Even that person who can’t tell the difference between “oikos” and “oinos”. Even those of us who can. There is a dignity which is required in the house of God, and if we cannot demonstrate it, we condemn ourselves.


I have some more on this which I will turn out tomorrow. Until then, take care of yourself as you are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.

No Apology

I was taking inventory of my friends this morning, and I realized I have quite a few friends named “James” who all have the same passion for deep thought and, as a consequence, apologetics. You know: who blames them? There’s really a lot of trash running around claiming to be “theology” and/or “Christianity”, and as the book of Hebrews points out to us, the ability to discern good from bad is a mature skill, not the entry-level stuff.

At any rate, James the New Jersian, AKA TQuid, is roiling the Catholics this week for their new superhero ex-Calvinist convert, and I have to admit something. The whole discussion left a bad taste in my mouth.

Now, before we start taking bets as to when I’m going to go to confession and renounce my Baptist baptism and start worshipping bread as God or selling statues of St. Century21 to bury in the front yard to help sell your house, a lot of the bad taste comes from watching Catholics try to talk out of both sides of their mouths.

On the one hand, there’s the necessary and obsessive smack-talk about “authority” – the Pope has authority; the Bishops have authority; the Church has authority; the Protestants have no authority; even the Bible is nothing without the Pope; etc. etc. etc. yes, very compelling, I am sure. That’s why so many Priests and Bishops are engaged in apologetics and so many of these other guys are under the direction and supervision of Magisterial fact-checkers. Not.

See: all that talk falls apart when we start thinking about who these guys are and how they are allowed to operate in terms of speaking about and (allegedly) for the Roman Catholic Church. “I’m not inventing this stuff, I’m just reporting it,” comes one version of the common reply, but seriously: you’re not authorized to report it, bub. So when you take your own relationship to this authority even half as seriously as you want me to take it, you can come back and try out those arguments again and see if they look any better framed in a way which your bishops will sign off on.

And while it would be fun or useful to consider the matter of the current Catholic Catechism which is promulgated for the explicit purpose of educating the faithful about what they are supposed to be faithful to, I’m not going to go through all that today. There’s a log in our own eye – those of us who are reformed and not catholic or Catholic – which I’d like to talk about which constitutes the other 20% of the bad taste in my mouth this morning.

It’s become a sort of maxim in my repertoire lately, but the truth is that we Baptists like a good fight. We like a good tussle – either in a business meeting, or when Dan Brown publishes trash, or when some kook walks into my bookstore and tries to sell me The Trail of Blood, essentially trying to say what the Catholics say, but instead of a guy in Rome he’s convinced that it was Baptists what first loveth Jesus (John, after all, was a Baptist), or whatever. We don’t mind breaking out our Formal translations at 10 paces and doing our worst.

And listen: sometimes, that’s necessary and important. Any pastor ought to be able to defend the faith from error. There’s no question about that. But when that’s the primary mode of evangelism we resort to, we have forgotten that the people Jesus argued with were not people who ultimately came to Him.

Let me give you an example, and I’m obscuring the identities of the people involved because they didn’t ask to be blogged today. There’s this guy I know who has been a Catholic all his life, and he what you might call a “committed Catholic” – it’s not that he’s all enamored by the nuances of Lumen Gentium and all that, but he’s been a Catholic since he was baptized as an infant, and that’s the only expression of faith he has ever known. He reads his Bible a lot, and is somewhat fixated on the book of Job, but his Bible reading has made sense out of his life, and his view is that if he has any hope in this life or the next, it is in Christ.

There’s another guy I know who was talking to this first guy, and it came up that the first guy had the opinion that while Christ was his only hope, it is also true that he didn’t know explicitly if he was saved or not. He said to the second guy, in words to this effect, “I hope what I have done in this life tells me something about what will happen to me in the next.”

Now, the second guy listened to the first fellow carefully, and asked him, “I guess I don’t know what you mean by that, First Guy.” And the first guy looked a little taken aback – because he thought he was saying something somewhat obvious and profound. But he thought about it a second and said, in words to this effect, “I hope the faith I have in this life is proving it will be the faith which saves me when I see Christ.”

The second guy then opened up a Bible and talked to First Guy about Acts 2, and Peter’s charge to the crowd that they should “therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ”. That is, on the one hand, we shouldn’t doubt that Jesus is who we say He is, and on the other, if He is who He says He is, He is “Lord” – that is, Adonai, God, the one with the authority to Judge – and “Christ” – that is, “Messiah”, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who has come to save, and does in fact save. And in that, if our faith is in Him, He will save us. Assurance is a function of who Christ is, not a function of how well we serve Him.

It was something First Guy had not considered before, and he found some comfort in it.

But there was something else which happened after that conversation – First Guy was watching Second Guy to see whether he believed this stuff or not. That is, after they discussed this Jesus whom those in Jerusalem crucified, First Guy was watching Second Guy’s life – the way he treats his kids, the way he treats his wife, the way he acts with others, the things they do as a family, the commitment he has to doing other things besides making a theological point.

And as I type that, let me say clearly that my many friends named James all seem (to me, anyway) to pass this test well. They contend for the faith earnestly, and the live as if they believe what they have contended for.

But as First Guy watched Second Guy’s life, he realized that Second Guy wasn’t kidding around or just trying to win a fight. Second Guy was about the work of God in Christ. And Second Guy isn’t some international hero of sanctification and evangelism: Second Guy is a guy with two jobs, a hard working wife, busy and smart kids, and a church which needs more people to turn the corner and stop sitting in their own pew. He has a house on a street full of people he doesn’t even know – he’d admit that. But He puts his hand to the plow God has given him. And he doesn’t look back.

And in that, First Guy doesn’t have an argument with Second Guy: he has a problem which he has to resolve. He has to resolve whether the comfort of a ritual is causing him to do what is right for the sake of a Jesus who is Lord and Christ, or if he is using his comfort as an excuse to call himself a disciple.

So the other 20% bad taste in my mouth is the backwash of internet apologetics. It has a serious and significant problem: it is only half the work. By any account, it falls far short of real evangelism even if it is foundational and necessary for real pastoral work and real evangelism to take place. And if you, today, are visiting my blog and you are looking for an argument about Jesus, my argument is this:

Know for certain that Jesus is both Lord and Christ – know it because He is raised from the dead, and know it because you can see my life changed. It must be both. It must be both. My argument to you is a worthless piece of trash – a clanging cymbal – if this Lord is not my Lord, and this Christ is not my Christ.

Not not about love again

After reading my own post and thinking about that post for a bit, I had a couple of more thoughts I wanted to share, like this: my opinion is that covenant keeping is not a stoic endeavor of will and grit.

See – I think that covenants aren’t made as algebraic or actuarial transactions, or made just to make a point. A covenant isn’t a steely-eyed hedge against betrayal – as if it was only a contract, or a legal transactions between two disinterested parties.

There is something behind a covenant, or before a covenant, which seems to me to be necessary in order to even think of the matter of covenant making or covenant keeping.

Here’s what I mean:

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

The covenant of marriage “refers to” the covenant Christ made in His own blood with the church. And in that, Paul says, Nobody ever hated his own flesh.

To make that part clear, let’s think about me for a minute. I hate that I am overweight. Hate it! I hate this fat body. If I could change it like changing a suit of clothes, dude, I’d change it like soiled britches. But while I am disappointed in this fat slob-o-rama, and frankly scared about the implications of high blood pressure and the potential of diabetes in the long term, I still eat.

That is, I still take care of my body. It’s mine and I need it. I wash this blubbery mass daily. I brush its teeth. I cut my hair in a way that doesn’t look too bad. I wear clothes that somewhat conceal my lard.

No one ever hated his own flesh. Even if it was ugly flesh, he doesn’t hate it. He hopes for better, or hangs out with people even uglier than himself to make himself look good. Or maybe he works out and sticks to it so he can have arms like BlueCollar Baptist even if he (this person, not BC) has a face like ScoobyDoo.

So in that, the example is two-fold. The first level is that people don’t hate their bodies – they care for them. But in that, Christ cares for His body in a way which “nourishes” and “cherishes” the body. That word there – “cherishes” – doesn’t mean “stakes a high value on it, like a ruby or a bag of money”. It is related to the word “to keep warm”. It means “to foster with tender care”. Paul uses it in 1 Thes 2 to say, “a nurse cherisheth her children”. It’s loving care, a care motivated by something other than mere obligation. In fact, it might be said that it is a love which comes without any obligation and without duress – it is a willing love.

Christ loves the Church like that, and we ought to love our wives like that.

But here’s the other thing: this is not a matter of the will bending love. This is a matter of love bending and forming the will. I’m not talking about emotions leading the way here, because that’s a disaster waiting to kill you and your marriage. I’m talking about the affirmation that Love – like the love demonstrated at the Cross, and the love demonstrated in mercy, and the love demonstrated in the willingness to offer forgiveness for repentance – will change what you are willing to do.

You won’t do it with a big fat sigh and a mopey face. You won’t resign yourself to doing it. You will do it with the same zeal you blog – you might even give up a little blogging in order to do those things better. You’ll want to do it – both intellectually and personally.

Because you’ll love like Christ loves the church. Christ isn’t a stoic. He’s not a Vulcan. He doesn’t want you to live a rational transaction and every seven years either mate or die. Keeping the covenant is not merely a duty but a goal.

And that’s really the other thing: is a covenant like that established to force you to do something you don’t already want you to do, or is it for the sake of demonstrating to the world explicitly and propositionally what you’re doing here?

You know: God could have just made a plan to bless Abraham and kept it to Himself. God could have been a blessing to Israel and just not said anything about it – they’re His people, and He’s going to give them this and protect them from that, but it’s none of your business. It’s a private relationship.

But no: all the covenants – including the New one in Christ’s blood – are public expressions. Christ wasn’t knocked off in a corner, as Paul said to Festus and Agrippa – none of these things have escaped the notice of anyone who can read. The covenant is made to tell people what’s going on.

So the covenant is marriage is a public covenant – and the way you keep it says something about you, not about the covenant.

Did you make a covenant for the sake of love – Godly, incorruptible love – or did you make a contract that’s still under negotiation? You think about that, and then go do something about it – the right thing.

Who loves whom

ome of you may have thought I forgot about the conundrum I have posed in my own writing way back when the Chan video was causing the internet to start checking baptisms and requiring detailed statements of faith. (That was like 2 weeks ago). For those who have forgotten what I said, here’s what I said:

So the command is Love. You love people. You have to love that person – you have to give to them, and you have to do for them, and you have to be honest with them, and on and on through all of Leviticus. You have to love them – that’s the Law.

And this love is for their benefit, not for your benefit. This is the thing which kills me about this discussion. You (a person) don’t love them to be self-fulfilled: you love them so that they get something they didn’t have before. When we say, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”, we are saying, “God loves us by giving us something we couldn’t have without Him.” Love is not self-fulfilling: love is pouring yourself out for the good of someone else.

Now, let’s put one thing on the back burner before we go forward: the meaning of “love God” given this definition of Love. The really smart readers who are already mad at me for saying Love is glorious and gives Glory to God are already typing on this subject, and I will come back to it after I do the “common language” thing. Are we giving something to God He didn’t have before when we love God? Stay tuned.

Some of you, I am sure, lost sleep over this. Because, you know, if we have demeaned God by saying we give Him something He didn’t have before, we don’t have a reformed soteriology or we can’t really be monergists or some such other thing – there must be a heretic in there somewhere.

Please: let’s all go back to having a good night’s sleep. One of the great statements in the NT on this subject comes as Paul closes the letter to the Ephesians. And he says it almost off-handedly:

Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.

Now, what is that all about? As Paul closes this letter to the church at Ephesus, he offers three things to the church – peace, love and faith. But from where? Peace in a quiet chair? Love from your own heart? Faith by means of your own IQ or study? No: peace, love and faith from God the Father and (from) the Lord Jesus Christ.

The peace they ought to have ought to be the peace the Father and the Son give. The faith they ought to have ought to be the faith the Father and the Son give. And, for the purpose of what we’re talking about here, the love they ought to have ought to be the love the Father and the Son give.

And this point is underscored boldly as Paul also offers them “grace” if they “love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.” Now, is human love “incorruptible”? When does the Bible ever call human love or the product of the human heart “incorruptible”? Never. Not ever once.

So the love we give back to Christ but be the Love God has already given to us. That is: we do not give something to God He never had or couldn’t get. We give, as is always true, what God has already given us. This love is from God, and belongs to God, and ought to come back to Him.

And that’s really the point here. Even going back to my oldest example of Jonah and what God does to sinners and why Jonah is mad-to-death over the matter of Nineveh, God has poured out love to the whole world. I was listening to an S. Lewis Johnson MP3 yesterday, and he was doing an hour on John 3:16, and he made the statement that the worst error anyone ever made – the common knowledge – about John 3:16 is that this verse says God loves everyone exactly the same way.

He’s right. This verse doesn’t say that. But it does say that God loves the world, and has given a special benefit of that love to all believers. God loves the whole world. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. God showed love by delivering Christ to the Cross so that the offer of repentance is made clearly and irrefutably. but it is one kind of love to actually make the offer, and another to actually save.

You have the love of God shown to you in Jesus Christ, and in the mercy upon mercy God provides to you every day. God is showing you love right now – the same kind of love He showed to Nineveh. Receive it and show it back to Him – do something about God’s mercy today. Believe that His Son is the ultimate and final act of mercy, and that if you admit your sin to Him, and turn away from your human love of things to a divine love of the Creator who made you, He will not turn you away.

He loves you. Right now. Show Him the love He is showing you.

Monday Piper

He said this in his Podacast on Friday, and it bears deeper consideration:

I am only going to touch on this today and save most of it for the next two weeks. Two simple points:

First, not everyone can say, "There is now no condemnation over my life." Only those "who are in Christ Jesus." Some are in him and some are not. Paul assumes this everywhere in his writings. There are those "in Christ" and there are those "outside." Paul is not a universalist. He says explicitly in Romans 9:3, with grief, that there are those who are "accursed, separated from Christ." The opposite of the precious phrase "in Christ" (en kristõ) is the terrible phrased "[separated] from Christ" (apo tou Kristou) Where are you? In Christ? Or separated from Christ?

The second point is this: only by being in Christ does Christ's condemnation become your condemnation. If you want to be able to say now and at the last judgment, "There is no condemnation for me, because Jesus endured it for me," then you must be "in Jesus." If you are in him, what happened to him, happened to you. If you are "separated from him," you have no warrant for saying that what happened to him happened to you.

If you say, "Ah, but he died for the whole world. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." Yes, indeed. And what that means is that there is infinite room in Jesus. Christ is not a small hotel. There is room for everyone. And everyone is invited and commanded, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden. . . . Let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost. . . . The one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out" (Matthew 11:28; Revelation 22:17; John 6:37).

But what if you don't come? What if you don't believe? What if you don't receive the free gift? Jesus tells us in John 3:36, "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." The wrath of God – the condemnation of God is taken away in Christ. Not outside Christ.

So where are you? In Christ? Or outside Christ? Free from condemnation? Or under condemnation? You don't have to stay under condemnation. There is room in Christ. There is always room in Christ. And Christ's word to every sinner is, "Come! Trust me! Enter! I will be your life, your righteousness, your pardon, because I have been your condemnation."[Desiring God Radio, 1/26/07]

Noble Cause

There's no question: this presentation is, by far, more theologically rich than anything in dispute at this or any other blog in the last 3 weeks.

No question.

Why am I a Christian? I can give you lots of reasons why the Bible is word of God; I can give you lots of reasons why I believe Jesus rose from the dead; I can … I can argue all those things, but fundamentally, why am I a Christian? Because I believe fully by God’s grace, as a very young person, I recognized that if God is good, if God has all power, then if I break God’s rules, if I rebel against the one who made me, there are dire consequences to doing that. I was a very young child, so I – I couldn’t use real complex language to describe that, but I do remember to this very day, realizing that because I was who I was, I had done things in God’s sight that were wrong. And from the world’s perspective I was a good little boy, but I knew in my heart of hearts that I did things that I knew were wrong. And I knew if God was truly good that he would have to punish me. And I didn’t like that idea. And I thankfully had heard the Christian message, and talked to my parents, and I said, “I don’t want to be punished by God. What do I do?” And they explained to me that there is only one way of escaping the punishment of God. It was – Jesus took it in my place. Will you believe in him, follow him?

And as a child, I said, “yes, I will.”

Now, you need to understand one more thing. When you say, “why are you a Christian?” There is a very real sense in which the reason that about 4 decades have gone by in my walk with the Lord that I’m a Christian today. It actually has nothing to do with me. What I mean by that is, that faith which expressed itself as a very young child in fear of punishment from God and the desire to know who Jesus was and to know how he can save me, that faith has continued not because of anything special about me but because that faith comes from God. It’s by something we call grace.

Grace is God’s way of working with people who don’t deserve anything from him, in fact they deserve his wrath, but instead for reasons that glorify him and him alone, God is gracious to people who don’t deserve anything but God’s wrath. And so the reason that even that day my heart was opened to understand the danger of the situation that I was in as a sinner, and why to this day I continue to believe, it all goes back to that one word “grace”. God has sustained me; God has kept me as a Christian. He’s done what I could not do in and of myself.

And so, why am I a Christian? On the one hand you might say it’s because I have seen all of these things, and I’ve agreed that these things are true. And in another sense, the reason I’ve done all of those things is because God in his grace has been merciful to me.

And so I ask a question of you: if you are not a Christian, why are you not? You know that God is holy. You know that God is your creator. You know that he is there; you’ve always known that he is there. Every time that you have sinned, every time you have gone your own way, there has been the sense that you’re being watched. Even when you were alone, you felt that guilt. You know God is there. And you know that you’re not at peace with him. So why aren’t you a Christian? Have you found some other way that can actually give you true peace with God? Is there truly any foundation that you’ve found to believe that by doing something in some religion you can buy peace with God?

Isn’t it obvious that the only way that you could ever have peace with God is if God is the one who provides it? And that in a very special way?

You say, “what am I supposed to do?” Cry out for mercy. Cry out for mercy!

You say, “that’s all?” The person who cries out for mercy is the person who has already confessed, “I need mercy. I’m justly condemned. I need mercy.” I can tell you this: God has never ever ever rejected one who has come to him in the name of his son seeking mercy. And he will not reject you.

So one last question you might ask is, if you’ve told many people this, why aren’t everybody Christians? Because sometimes you can tell this to someone and they’ll honestly look you in the eye and say, “I don’t care. I love myself. I love my life. And I’m not going to give it up for anything.”

Which one are you? If you realize, if you sense, if you know, if you recognize, “yes, I have broken God’s law – I – I know what’s right and wrong, and I know, I know the only God who makes sense is a God who must punish sin.” Does that make you numb? Does it make you want to run away and have nothing to do with it? If in your heart of hearts you desire to cry out for mercy, remember he will always, always be found in mercy for those who cry in mercy.

Amen. Who can argue with that?

Small Talk [2]

This post is sorta already made in the meta of part 1 (or maybe part 1.5), but here's what I'm thinking: does my mechanic ever say to me, "you should repent of missing your oil changes"? Or does your spouse ever say to you, "if you don't repent of your lousy attitude toward housekeeping, I'm going to stop helping with the laundry"? How about a police officer who gives you a warning instead of a ticket -- does here ever tell you, "you need to repent of driving too fast"?

My opinion -- and I use that word to qualify this post strictly -- is that "repent" became a Christian idiom, removed from normal conversation, some time in the late 19th century, but Christians -- being as in-touch with the culture as we are (cf. CCM, ECPA, CBA) -- didn't realize that people don't say "repent" to each other under any circumstances except during moments of extreme evangelism. So "repent" doesn't mean "turn away from sin and toward God by means of thought and action immediately" anymore: it means, "I'm going to use a King James word on you because that's how I think about this stuff -- it's ancient truth, and if you don't know what it means that's your fault."

Now, listen: plenty of people "get saved" by people giving them the perrenial "repent-and-believe", with "repent" meaning "pray a prayer" and "believe" meaning "WWJD bracelet - check!" So that's bad, right? And plenty of people have received the "wrath of God is upon you, so save yourself from this crooked generation" by hearing the word "repent" come from their "friendly" (Pro 27:6) neighborhood evangelist. So that's good, right? So what's at stake is really what people mean by "repent", isn't it?

Well, yes. In fact, this is what is at stake. What is at stake is if we are delivering the Gospel, no? So whether we use the word "repent" or the word "justification" or the words "penal substitutionary atonement" or the word "Christ" -- which will be the real rub for some people, certain to create its own pocket controversy in this hoopla -- is not half as important as making sure that when we say something to people about this, we are saying "turn away from your breaking of God's Law" and "be right with God by the means He has established" and "through the death of Jesus, which pays the price for our sins in a way which we could never pay ourselves" and "this Jesus who is the only son of God, and who was both wholly man and wholly God, whom God had planned from before there was even time to sacrifice for the sins of men".

Seriously: the small talk is good -- when I talk to other Christians, it's good to have a guild language we can use because the rest of that stuff is a mouthful. But should we talk to people who need this stuff but don't have it in the way l33t speak to n00bs -- that is, as if they should just get up to speed? It's good -- enriching, edifying, useful, and need I say God inspired -- to have words like "repent" and "justified". But you know something? I was a Christian a long time before those words were anything but buzzwords to me.

We have to speak to people about this stuff the way my doctor talks to me about being fat: clearly, and without the extensive human biology class or the first-year med-school vocabulary. People need to know that they have a problem to which only Jesus is the solution. They shouldn't think of Jesus and what He has done and is doing right now as religious artichocosis -- they should think of Him as the only one who saves men from their sins.

And how can they hear that unless someone tells them?

UPDATED: This is what I'm talking about.