Jesus Hearts Piper

Here's the thing with this "Piper goes to far" battalion: they are simply trying to force Dr. Piper to say things which it cannot be demonstrated that he is saying.

In the last few days, the other side of this hoopla have tried to say that Piper's view somehow thwarts God's sovereignty because Piper is here instructing pastors to "make people feel" like they need to be saved. Unlike, I guess, Peter at pentecost, where the folks listening were cut the the heart and were pleading with him, "what shall we do to be saved?"

I guess.

But here's the thing: that troublemaker Jesus was also on about how our affections relate to our standing before God. There are a couple of places I think this is demonstrated pretty clearly, but here's one that is simply to obvious to ignore.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. [ESV, Mat 6]

Right? And this version of this statement is even less invasive than the parallel passage in Luke 12, amen?

Where your -treasure- is, there your -heart- will be. Jesus' words here say explicitly that your treasure -shows- where your heart is.

See -- God's sovereignty is not hardly at stake here: your ability to measure yourself is at stake here. And while we would all affirm -- Dr. Piper included -- that the foundation of our salvation is the finished work of Christ, and the basis for being assured is that Christ saves, our hero Mark Dricosll made a keen point about Grace in his recent "Ask Anything" sermon on the topic.

There was a guy who was a member of Mars Hill Church, and he was a serial adulterer. Married one grrl (that's how they spell it in Seattle), cheated on her, and married that one with whom he cheated. Did it a second and a third time. When Driscoll sat down with the guy, his response was classic: "Jesus forgives all my sins."

Driscoll's response is also classic: "Dude, while I can't see your heart or your soul, in my professional opinion, you do not know Jesus."

That statement is not legalism. It is the assessment that this guy's affections are not Christian affections. He wants worldly sex, not Godly sex. His treasure is laid up in the lap of women who are not his wife, and not at the feet of a savior who paid the highest price for his sin.

This is what Piper is talking about. This is how he is talking about it. Encouraging other pastors to talk about it this way is not hardly a vice -- because it turns out that this would actually be the most serious sin of the American church.

And I'll line that out, and finish up this Pyro-free week on this topic, tomorrow.

UPDATED:

Piper speaks for himself, and if you don't understand him after this, I'm not sure I can help you. The really-vigilant will listen to the audio as it has nature embellishments that the text here doesn't necessarily represent.

I'm a little dizzy ...

I got linked by Justin Taylor and monergism.com today ...

... I ... um ... I ...

I need a talking monkey graphic or something. I'm going to bed ...

Seriously now ...

In the last 7 days, I have had civil conversations with iMonk and Kevin Johnson, and I'm brawling in the meta with Al Sends.

I feel a little creepy.

Things Change

The t-shirt for the blog has changed. It's time to change your t-shirt.

Please.

Hosea Hearts Piper

See: yesterday I gave the short form of Moses giving Piper some air support for the idea that our affections must be God-centered, and two objections have come back from that. The first is this, from brother Stefan:

No argument with the substance of your post. Strictly speaking, however, the passage you cited—verses 10 to 14— follows immediately after the Sh'ma (verses 4 to 5, as cited by Jesus in Mark, followed in Jewish religious practice by verses 6 to 9, 11:13-21, and Numbers 15:37-41).

He brings that up because I said "Sh'ma" and technically the part I listed was not the Sh'ma.

Fair enough. Why make that mistake? I mean, was it a mistake, or was it my point?

See: the passage I cited was the reason for the Sh'ma. God is saying to Moses here, "Dude, I'm about to take you people into a land which, frankly, has all the comforts of home. But when you get there, you will forget that you didn’t dig the wells, or plant the orchards, or put the roofs over your heads. It's easy to forget God-who-delivers when your tummy is fat and happy."

The exhortation to "love God" comes as a warning in spite of circumstances. We should love God when it doesn’t take a miracle to get water from a rock: we should love Him when we have received the blessing and don’t see our needs quite so clearly.

Love. God.

But then there's the second objection, which is really the original complaint, that if God is telling this to Moses, isn’t this the Law? Isn’t it a standard that we can't live up to, so we only get conviction from it?

Yeah, no.

Listen: Hosea knew a little bit about love, and God told him to say this --

For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Look at the comparison there: the burnt offerings are the requirements of the Law, and they are contrasted with what the KJV calls "mercy" and the ESV here calls "steadfast love".

God doesn’t want your penance, or your religious work, or your bulls and sheep and rams: God wants your love, dude. And love, it turns out, is not a fruity emotional cocktale – even in that little snippet from John Piper which is getting so many angry eyebrows this week. Setting our affections on God is not the same thing as sending Him a Valentines Card every day. It is also not, as some have intimated, somehow a dismissal of God's sovereignty.

We'll talk about that tomorrow.

Moses hearts Piper

Since the meta template ate the red pill or something yesterday, and the conversation there went nowhere as far as I'm concerned, I have a second volley on the question of whether or not John Piper is preaching some kind of emotive legalism.

This one comes from Moses:

And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God— lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.[Deu 6, ESV]

And this is interesting because when Jesus gets questioned about the greatest commandment, this is the one he cites, right? "Love the Lord your God"? Go open your Bible and check it out, in case you don't repeat the Sh'ma to yourself every morning.

It's Moses who starts that crazy idea that men owe their affections to God, and Jesus signs off on it.

So when Dr. Piper says that people who love football more than God might not have faith in the savior of men, maybe what he means is that Moses knew something about faith in God which the rest of us would do well to reconsider.

More on this tomorrow.

double hockey sticks

I think I just broke Haloscan. Or the new Template did, anyway.

It works good enough to work right now, but the cool alternating thing is in the trash, and all font formatting in off.

Sheesh.

Well, it is Monday after all ...

I apologize for starting the week out both with embedded video and with a response to something iMonk said over the last couple of days, but this is Phil's week off and people need something to chew on.

Here's what iMonk said:

Several months ago I stopped listening to or reading John Piper on any regular basis. Gave away all but six of the books. Unsubscribed to the sermons. Gave away two big boxes of tapes. (I kept quite a bit of audio and video in our ministry’s audio/video library. Don’t think I had a bonfire. I love the man, and I owe him much.)

Steve Brown and I talked- on and off the interview- quite a bit about Piper and what’s going on. We both agreed that the command to feel an emotion is not the foundation of Christian assurance. (That’s Spencer, not Brown, so don’t write him. He can speak for himself.)

Here’s what I’m talking about. Much good, but at the core, my assurance is what I do and what I feel.

To which he linked the above video, Yes? Here's the transcript of the Piper video:

Catch on to the affectional nature of Christianity, conversion. It is not merely a decision to believe a fact. It is a heart treasuring Christ and His glory more than football, sex, money, power, play, toys. You gotta make this an issue Sunday after Sunday so that they feel scared that they're not saved.

You know, I think some pastors are so afraid that somebody might walk up at the end of the service and say, "you really jostled my assurance this morning." If we don't -jostle- people's assurance when they're not saved, we send them to hell.

We must preach in such a way so that people can test -- Test Yourself! 2 Cor 13:5 says, "test yourself to see if you are in the faith". Well, one of the tests is do you love Football more than you love Jesus? Do you love Golf more than you love Christ? What does your heart say about Christ? Late at night, all alone, in front of an internet screen, mouse ready to click, what does your heart say about Christ over pornography?

You gotta get in their faces about this because there are a lot of people who've grown up in the church -- baptist churches, methodist churches, presbyterian churches, Catholic, Lutheran churches -- for whom their faith is all tradition, all all head. There's no power in their life to love Christ, to cherish Christ, to have similar kinds of affections for divine things that they have for earthly things.

Make that an issue.

So I'm prayin' that across this convention, there would be a one-mindedness that we must all Yes! Love Justification! Love Redemption! Love Propitiation! Love Deliverance! Love the healing power of God! Love escape from Hell! Love entrance into Heaven! Love restoration with the relatives!

But all of it is a means to an end! Namely, do you love Christ? Do you know Christ? Do you embrace Christ? Do you want Christ? If you've got cancer? And you don't know how long?

Can you say from your heart, "To die is gain! God will take care of Noel. To die is gain!" And feel it! That's a challenge. Then the rubber meets the road.

Do you feel, "this would be good. This would be a gift. This would be sweet."

Pastors, let's do this. Let's help our people be saved.

Now, does Piper here say that my assurance is in my emotional state? Or does he instead say that his assurance causes an emotional state?

It is possible that someone could make a case that Piper is saying, "you don't know if you're saved unless you feel happy that you're going to die." I'd be willing to hear that person out. It is my opinion that Piper is saying instead that the goal of the Gospel is to love Christ in spite of circumstances. That is, entertainment and tragedy are two states which misdirect us from keeping God in the right place in our affections.

Think about this: he gives two kinds of examples here -- that we should love Christ more than football, and that we should love Christ when we are diagnosed with cancer. In the former case, I think Dr.Piper is implying that there are no football games around which we should schedule our devotion to Christ -- that if we have to choose between serving and savoring Christ and the Superbowl, we should miss the kickoff for the sake of our savior. Amen?

But what's he mean when he's talking about Christ and cancer? Is he saying something like, "I won't have any moments of doubt when I find out I'm dying"? Or is he saying, "it is my affection for Christ, my faith in Christ as savior, which will overcome my doubts and overcome my fear for my family so that I can trust Him with them as well as with my soul"?

But these have something in common: it is the love of Christ which motivates us. It's not some glum mysticism: it's the fact that He lives and it means something to me.

Let's hear from the other side. I think they are simply mistaken about Piper, but I'd like to see their exposition of his excerpt here. I have done the transcription work for them, so let's see what they can do with it.

banned from church?

WELCOME WSJ READERS!

Dear Ms. Alter,

This week via e-mail, I received a link to your WSJ feature from Jan 18, 2008 entitled "Banned from Church". I am sure by now you have received a veritable onslaught of reactionary mail/e-mail calling you a variety of names, and for that I am sorry. Those people undeniably represent the church of Jesus Christ -- albeit in a frankly-sad way. I am sure you can recognize that those sort of screeds aren't worth reading. They don't represent themselves very well, and they don't represent the Gospel very well.

I have read your article twice now, and it was a disappointment to me for two reasons. The first is that it simply assumes that a church has no right or responsibility to audit in some way what it stands for. I think of the problem this way: the WSJ has a right and a responsibility to maintain some kind of journalistic raison d'être, and in that it has the right to seek out those who will contribute to that purpose as well as release from employment those who do not -- either because they are unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to maintain the organization. I use WSJ as an example because, I hope you will agree, it is not merely a "business" but an institution which seeks to do more than just make a buck.

In the same way, as a second set of examples, I think it is entirely reasonable that the NAACP, the NY Yankees, the GOP, and any university affirm their right each to select those who will be members of their organizations and choose to separate themselves from those who frankly do not share their respective institutional visions.

It is a simple fact: any institution exists for express purposes, and for any institution to advance those purposes it must be open and honest that those who do not share those goals ought not to belong to that group. Some are not qualified to pursue those goals, and other are simply not willing. Any institution which fails to recognize this is simply going to cease to exist.

In that way -- which is a wholly practical matter -- it seems right to me that churches ought to exercise some kind of process which recognizes that they do not exist as a body which stands for nothing, and which gives them a clear process for working that out in real life.

It turns out that the Bible recognizes this in its charges to local churches. The topic is addressed in the Gospel of Matthew, the book of Acts, Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and the letters to Timothy and Titus, among other places. And this fact leads me to my second disappointment with your article: you failed to distinguish between the practice described by the Bible (and by most reputable pastors) and the practices (as you lined them out) of "spending time in the stocks" and "shunning".

I have no idea what your relationship to the Christian faith is -- and in that, I invite you to establish a clear relationship to it, and to its author and finisher, Jesus: know for certain that he is both Lord and Christ. But that said, it seems a little bit like those who would hurl e-mails at you with threats or insults to imply that all church discipline is of the same calibre as "shunning" or "blacklisting", or that the practice somehow has a disreputable history.

For example, one matter of church discipline is that members attend church services regularly -- that they maintain a clear connection with the local body. But the -purpose- of such a thing is not to drive someone off: the purpose it to remind them that their profession of faith in Jesus Christ is not merely lip-service. The passage in Matthew 18 which speaks to this -specifically- says that the goal of bringing up wrong-doing is -not- to cast out one's brother or sister, but to "gain your brother" -- to win him back.

Think of it: if we were talking about a local softball team which was removing its Shortstop from its roster for failing to come to games, it seems like a no-brainer. No one would question such a thing.

But to be as serious as possible, this process doesn't always win people back. The example you focussed on -- Mrs. Caskey at Allen Baptist in Michigan -- is sort of notorious in the blogosphere, and I think it is a very clear example of how this process can go bad on all sides. But even the statistics you cited on how church discipline usually works out indicate that this sort of thing is not common, and churches which actually implement -discipline- rather than lynching or shunning or some other disreputable practice actually benefit from it.

Is it possible that some churches will abuse this process? Yes, certainly -- while we confess to be people of God, we are still people and not God. That can't paralyze an institution into inaction, and it cannot cause a church in particular to forgo its charter to make disciples anymore than one mistake in hiring or firing at WSJ would stop them from going to press the next day.

Let me close by recommending a few books to you:

Handbook of Church Discipline
By Jay Adams

Corrective Love: The Power of Communion Discipline
By Thomas C. Oden

Restoring Integrity in Baptist Churches
By Thomas White, Jason G. Duesing & Malcolm B. Yarnell III

I realize that often in journalism, one doesn't get all the time one needs to become an expert on a subject before one has to go to press. However, especially in the context of the WSJ, its high level of integrity, and its inherently-conservative perspective on our culture, getting the basics of "church" right ought to be a higher priority that zinging a misunderstood practice.

My thanks for your time. I hope this note finds you in good health and spirits.

Grace and Peace to you.

~Frank
http://centuri0n.blogspot.com

note: thanks to Alex in Canada for correcting my french illiteracy. :-)

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

The Meta is undergoing some detail work, and for the next hour or so it'll be unreadable.

After that, I can't tell yet. If my scripts work, I think it'll be fun ...

UPDATED: Pheh. It's legible right now. That's the best I can hope for today. Will work more on this tomorrow and the weekend.

UPDATE #2: It's saturday morning as I type this, and I'm a little, um, vexed by the template right now. You will see all manner of weirdness in it over the next 48 hours. If at some time during that process you develop strabismus or cephalalgia, consult your doctor or join the club.

UPDATE #3: OK -- now you can see your comments, and your don't have to try to figure out who said what, and mostly the gravatars are pointed at by the dialog ballooons. And the comments logo header is in place. But I think you can't actually post comments right now as I have somehow dropped the input form. And I have to take my son to basketball this morning.

Stay tuned. Note to twitchell -- if I stopped sleeping, I'd stop waking up with stupid ideas like this which fuel my time-deficit lifestyle.

UPDATE #4: Yeah, I think I'm done now. I may add one last update to the layout this afternoon, but you-all can actually add comments again. I know you were not sleeping well knowing that you couldn't actually comment ...