Friday, May 25, 2007
Caltrops on the Road to Glory
Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”
—John 5:14
Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
—John 8:10-11
A long while ago—at least in the history of this blog—I wrote a piece called “Whatever Happened to Sin?” CMM adherents will recognize the title as being from an old Steve Taylor song. Jesus adherents will simply ask the question again. See, they remember sin.
In an age where Osteen-ism rules the land, we don’t hear much about sin anymore. Church growth pundits suspected sin didn’t play in Peoria, so they found a way to dismiss it. This explains why Christians crash and burn more frequently today than I remember. Or else their faith doesn’t hold up when the time of testing comes.
An ancient weapon used in war, the caltrop is a nasty piece of work. Throw them on a path or road and they land with a vicious spike always pointing straight up. History says the Romans came up with caltrops to permanently remove chariots from the battlefield.
The kind shown at right does its work on tires. Hollow, it allows air to rapidly escape even from self-sealing tires. Run your Pirellis over a few of these and you can forget your Roman Holiday.
Sin is like caltrops. Every time we sin, it’s like tossing a bucket of caltrops behind us. But what’s behind us is behind us, right?
Funny thing about life is we sometimes must revisit the way we came to get to where we’re going. And those sins we left behind? Well, they’re sitting in the middle of the road, sharpened steel tips up, waiting to put a halt to our journey—or at least make it nastier.
Weirder yet, sin’s caltrops have a way of landing behind us, yet winding up ahead of us at the same time. They get you coming and going. The double-whammy. They seem to to multiply ahead, too. Sow a bucket of caltrops behind, reap a highway-full ahead.
So when one of us finds our plans and dreams going up in smoke, when adopting that Osteen positive attitude makes no difference in the face of despair, do we ever take a step back and wonder if our sin finally caught up with us? I don’t hear people saying that this setback or that can be attributed to personal sin. Do you?
Sure, it might be obvious in the promiscuous girl who gets pregnant and lands in a beat-up trailer with an abusive Cro-Magnon of a husband got on the end of Daddy’s shotgun. But is it so obvious in the lives of mature Christians who stuff it down in hopes that no one will ever find out?
I’ve got to believe that at least some of the grief in your life and mine comes from running over the caltrops of sin we scattered on the road to glory. But where’s the sermon on fleeing sin? On repentance? On restitution?
Too outré? Too pietistic?
Perhaps we need some good old pietism in the Church today. After all, Jesus Himself confronted two folks in His part of the world and told them outright, “Stop sinning.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t see any addenda from the Lord on that command. No “Only by God’s grace and power” or “You’re not the one in control, God is” or even a “You can’t do it in your own strength.” I just see the admonishment to stop sinning.
We used to revere men and women who wised up and stopped sinning. Now we try to find something wrong with their theology. Or we use that our own brand of theology to make excuses when one of us today tries the same approach only to fall back into sin. I’m beginning to wonder if folks two hundred years ago who turned and shunned their sin and never looked back AREN’T better people than we are today. They sure seemed to take God’s wrath a lot more seriously than we do.
After a promising start down the life’s highway, are we staring at four Bridgestones that look like deflated porcupines? Did we run over the consequences of our own sin, those nasty caltrops we sowed, the ones we thought would never catch up to us? They did, didn’t they?
Well, let’s not just sit there moping because past sins caught up with us. Clear the road! If we made the mess, we need to deal with it. And stop throwing the caltrops down, too! Yes, Jesus provides forgiveness. He forgave the man at the pool of Bethesda who tried to game the old familiar system. He told the hooker He didn’t accuse her. But He also told them both to stop sinning.
If life’s not treating you the way you want it to, stop sinning. And if not for you, then for your progeny. Because the sins of the fathers have a way of working themselves down through the generations. That promiscuous girl in the trailer with the abusive husband? Chances are that’s how her own mother got started. We can’t think our kids won’t inherit our little problems. (Note: Lying to oneself is a sin.)
So stop sinning. No excuses.
The Mission of Jesus, Part 2
Part 4 of series: The Mission of God and the Missional Church
Yesterday I began to summarize the mission of Jesus in light of the mission of God in the Old Testament. I based my discussion on a passage from chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel. Here’s that passage, once again:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come (Luke 4:18-19).
On the basis of this text, which is a citation from Isaiah 61, I explained that:
1. Jesus was sent by God in the power of the Holy Spirit.
2. Jesus was sent to proclaim the good news.
Today I’ll continue where I left off yesterday.
Fourth, Jesus was sent to form a community of the good news. Although not explicitly stated in Luke 4:18-19, when the poor, the blind, and the captives received the good news of God’s kingdom, they also had the opportunity to join the community of kingdom people, who, once reconciled to God, experienced reconciliation with each other as well. In Luke 5 Jesus called a few fishermen to form the core of His disciples, promising that they would now fish for people (Luke 5:1-11; 6:12-16). The community of Jesus’s followers live under God’s reign, demonstrating love and justice as servants of God and of each other (Mark 10:43-44; Luke 11:42; John 13:34-35). Even during the earthly life of Jesus, His followers were empowered to join in His ministry, proclaiming the good news of God’s reign and demonstrating that good news through works of healing and liberation (Luke 9:1-2; 10:1-17). Their sharing in the ministry of Jesus foreshadowed an even greater work to come.
So, even as in the Old Testament God’s mission involved forming a people through whom to restore His kingdom on earth, Jesus’s mission was not simply about getting individuals right with God. He was also in the business of forming a people to proclaim and live out the reality of God’s kingdom. This is perhaps one of the major oversights in much of American Christianity, which has allowed the individualism of American culture to obscure the essentially communal nature of Jesus’s mission. Yes, He came to secure individual salvation and to call individuals as His disciples. But full salvation includes restoration as God’s people. True discipleship is always a shared endeavor. There are no “lone ranger” disciples in the kingdom of God (or at least there shouldn’t be).
Fifth, Jesus was sent to consummate the good news through His death and resurrection. Though He embodied and inaugurated God’s reign on earth, human response to Jesus was still limited by sin. Without experiencing the most profound kind of liberation – from sin, our rebellion against God – we cannot be reconciled to God. Until we are cleansed from our sin, we can long for God’s kingdom, but we cannot fully enter it. Jesus was sent not only to proclaim and to demonstrate the good news of God’s reign, but also to consummate that good news by overcoming the barrier of sin. He came, “not to be served but to serve others, and to give [His] life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He was sent to fulfill the mission of Isaiah’s suffering Servant of God, the one who would be “wounded and crushed for our sins,” upon whom “the Lord laid . . . the guilt and sins of us all” (Isa 53:5-6). Because God’s rightful reign over us was shattered by sin, the shattering of sin by the death and resurrection of Jesus enables us to be reconciled to God. Once reconciled, then we can live in full fellowship with him as citizens of His kingdom. The cross of Christ invites us into the kingdom of God and restores us into intimate fellowship with Him as God’s subjects, servants, and beloved children.
In my next post I’ll show how this kingdom-centered mission of Jesus has been passed on to us.
The Church and Israel
In light of my post concerning 2 Thessalonians 2, some of you might find this interesting. I found a post over at the Thomas Goodwin site that lists 20 reasons why the church is the true Israel, which is the typical view of covenant theologians. I agree with him that the term “replacement theology” is not helpful because we are not talking about replacing Israel. We are talking about becoming the one true people of God through the true Israelite-Jesus Christ, which means we are ulimately talking about Christology. Below you will find his comments and 20 reasons why the Church is Israel.
Every promise is ‘yes and amen’ in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). Christ is the One who fulfills every covenant and makes Gentiles partakers on an equal level with the Jews in every covenant promise (Ephesians 2:11-13; 3:6).
The gospels are all about Jesus’ reconstitution of Israel around Himself. Miss this and you’ve missed much of the point. At every point He challenges the symbols of Judaism — Torah, Temple, land, nation, food, people, Sabbath, etc. — and by His praxis and teaching presents a new way of being Israel with Himself in the center.
1. Jesus is Israel called out of Egypt (Matthew 2:15).
2. Jesus’ Body is the new Temple (John 2:19-21; Ephesians 2:19-22).
3. He is the new tabernacle (Acts 15:16-17; John 1:14).
4. His people are the true kingdom of priests and kings (1 Peter 2:9; cf. Exodus 19:6).
5. He is the true Son of God (cf. Exodus 4:22).
6. He is the founder of the twelve new tribes (Matthew 10:1-4; Revelation 21:12-14) and the one who appoints the new seventy (Luke 10:1; cf. Numbers 11).
7. He is Israel’s eschatological resurrection hope embodied (Acts 26:6-8). He is the new creation.
8. He is the One who displaces Jerusalem as the place of worship (John 4:20-24) and forms the new body of true worshippers (Philippians 3:3) who go to the true, new Jerusalem on Mount Zion (Galatians 4:25-26; Hebrews 12:22). The old shadowy Jerusalem has been replaced with the far more real heavenly Jerusalem (Revelation 21) that will one day be brought down to earth.
9. His people are the new Elect (Colossians 3:12; 1 Peter 2:9; cf. Deuteronomy 7:6).
10. The Church is now the true circumcision (Philippians 3:3).
11. Christ has accomplished the new Red Sea Crossing (1 Corinthians 10:1-2; Hebrews 13:20; cf. Isaiah 63:11), the new Exodus (Luke 9:31), the new Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7), the new feast of firstfruits (Acts 2), He gave the Spirit where Moses gave the Law.
12. He is the Angel of the Lord leading the people by the cloud of the Spirit (Romans 8:14).
13. He is the fulfillment of Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:24), Torah (Romans 10:4) and Word (John 1:1-18).
14. He is the embodiment of true Sabbath and is the Lord of it (Mark 2:28).
15. He calls Jewish people to abandon their possessions, their fathers and mothers, their inheritance in the land and follow Him as the true inheritance. The future kingdom is already present in Him.
16. He is the new Lord of all the nations (Matthew 28:18). He cast out the ruler of this world (John 12:31; 16:11) and is the heir of all things (Hebrews 1:1-4).
17. He is the fulfillment of offices of Prophet, Priest and King.
18. He does away with the Old, broken Covenant that constitutes the old Israel and brings in the New Covenant that we all partake of fully in Him.
19. He is the true fulfillment of the covenantal promise of God to dwell in our midst. He embodies man and God in perfect union.
20. All promises are ‘yes and amen’ in Christ; those promises in the OT (Gen. 3:15; 12-17) are ours by virtue of union with him. Both to Jews and Gentiles.
"Trust Your Heart and Good Intentions", Right?
 |  If the message of a man's own good works compares favorably to everyone else's-- i.e., if they are not noticeably meaner or viler than his neighbor's--he thinks he can pass God's inspection. Before the Holy Spirit can convict such a person of his need of Christ, he must agree with God that all his righteousness is but filthy rags. It may help him understand his own wickedness if he sees how utterly polluted the spring is that incessantly feeds it. Can you somehow get a mental picture of the monstrous intensity of Satan's wickedness? Then you have an idea of every man's potential for evil. The finest human being -- the most sincere philanthropist or moral crusader--has within him the same seeds of corruption, the same potential for wickedness as the devil himself. If his true nature has not yet shown through, it is because God's grace is intervening. For until you are made a new creature in Christ, you are of the same brood as the Serpent; his seed is in you. And the devil can only beget a child like himself. Sinner, if you do not blossom into Satan's likeness here on earth, you can be sure you will in hell. There the flames will wash off the paint that hides your true complexion. In heaven, the saints will be like angels in alacrity, love, and constancy to God; in hell, the damned will be like the devils, in sin as well as in punishment. Before you excuse yourself by claiming "good intentions", know this; If your heart is good, then so is the devil's! His nature is wicked, and so is yours! The blemishes which you think are so small and insignificant are symptoms of a deadly disease within. Without Gospel medicine--the blood of Christ--applied to you personally, you will die a leper. Sin is a hereditary disease that increases with age: a young sinner will be an old devil. And the malady is always passed on to the next generation.
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The Ties That Bind: five foundational truths that distinguish all authentic churches
By John MacArthur @ http://www.sfpulpit.comHave you ever noticed how different the individual members of the same family can be? One child may be melancholy while another is a live wire. One may be especially gifted in music, and another, who has no interest in music, may excel in sports. In some cases they look nothing like each other or even their parents. Yet the members of a family share a bond stronger than their differences.
In the same way, within the Body of Christ churches develop their own unique personalities. Some may insist on formal worship services, while others thrive in a relaxed atmosphere. But the most important thing about a church isn’t the superficial things that make it different, but what it has in common with other Christian assemblies.
There are certain truths—fundamental doctrines—that every true church is committed to. These doctrines are unalterable; they cannot be compromised in any way. They are non-negotiable. Yield on any one point, and the church ceases to be a church. Here are five foundational truths that distinguish all authentic churches.
A High View of God
It is essential that a church perceive itself as a body of believers designed for the glory of God. Unfortunately, most churches today have deviated from that priority and developed a human focus: meeting man’s felt needs. Instead of faithfully proclaiming God’s sufficient Word to direct people’s minds toward God, church leaders respond to superficial needs with temporary solutions like psychology, self-esteem, entertainment, or a myriad of other diversions.
As a result, the church is no longer an organism that emphasizes knowing and glorifying God; it is an organization that tries to help people feel good about themselves. But if you know and glorify God, you don’t need to be concerned about your needs because “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10). When your relationship with God is right, your perspective on your needs will also be right. That doesn’t mean we should ignore people’s needs—we are to be concerned about people the same way God is. But there must be a balance, and it begins with a high view of God.
We must take God seriously and exalt Him. Yes, we are to reach out to people with the love of Christ, but God must be the focus of our worship and our life.
The Absolute Authority of Scripture
A second non-negotiable truth is the absolute authority of Scripture. God reveals Himself primarily through the pages of Scripture; that is why we must uphold it as our absolute authority.
Because we believe Scripture is true, we must proclaim it with conviction and without compromise or apology. The Bible makes bold claims, and Christians who believe it ought to affirm it boldly.
Anyone who faithfully and correctly proclaims the Word of God will speak with authority. It is not our own authority. Insofar as our teaching accurately reflects the truth of Scripture, it has the full weight of God’s own authority behind it. That is a staggering thought, but it is precisely how 1 Peter 4:11 instructs us to handle biblical truth: “If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God.”
If the Bible is true, then it is also authoritative. As divinely revealed truth, it carries the full weight of God’s own authority. If you claim to believe the Bible at all, you ultimately must bow to its authority. That means making it the final arbiter of truth—the rule by which every other opinion is evaluated.
Sound Doctrine
Another non-negotiable for the church is sound doctrine. If you have a high view of God and are committed to Him, you will obey His Word. The content of God’s Word is sound doctrine.
Countless Christians today are vague about doctrine. Many pastors offer short sermons that might excite or make their congregations feel better, but they have little to do with truths that matter. We need truths that we can hold on to—truths about God, life and death, heaven and hell, man and sin, redemption through Christ, the ministry of the Holy Spirit and angels, the believer’s position in Christ, and Satan and his realm. You need to be able to read a biblical text, discover what it says, and draw out divine principles. God’s people need solid doctrine to build their lives on.
Personal Holiness
We must draw lines when it comes to personal holiness and be careful what we expose ourselves and our children to. We dare not lower our standards to those of the world. Christians are called to live a pure life, and we can’t compromise that.
Second Corinthians 7:1 says, “Having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” A church must enforce that standard (see Matt. 18:15-17). That’s why we implement church discipline where I pastor. If someone sins, we confront him or her for their own good and the good of the church as a whole.
Many Christians aren’t as concerned about their personal holiness as they should be. Where are you in terms of holiness and real communion with the living God? Church leaders aren’t the only ones who should live holy lives. You can’t have a half-hearted commitment to God and expect Him to work through you.
Spiritual Authority
One more component that’s true of a biblical church is spiritual authority. A church must understand that Christ is the head of the church (Eph. 1:22; 4:15) and that He mediates His rule in the church through godly elders (1 Thess. 5:13-14; Heb. 13:7, 17).
Hebrews 13 says to submit to those over you in the Lord, for they watch your souls. Follow their example. Paul says to “recognize those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake” (1 Thess. 5:12-13).
I am one of many leaders at our church. I happen to be the one whom God chose to preach, but I am one elder among many. While there are variations in the giftedness of spiritual leaders, there is still an equality of spiritual authority among those the Bible calls elders or overseers. Such spiritual leadership is essential to the church of Jesus Christ. That’s why the church must be committed to training and obeying godly leaders.
There is room for diversity within the Body of Christ. But every true church is united by certain non-negotiables. Make sure you and your church are committed to the ties that bind.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Old Baptistries, old Baptists? and Ambrose
Dear friends, here are pictures taken by the ever-faithful Matt Schmucker. The first picture is of a 4th-century baptistry in Ravenna.
Evangelicals know about Augustine, but we tend to be less familiar with Ambrose. He was a fascinating figure in his own right. Born in 339AD of an aristocratic Roman family, he trained to be an upper level Roman bureaucrat. But he was elected bishop of Milan in 374, before he had even been baptized! (That's a long story, but let me simply say that immediately upon his election, he was baptized.) He is the first figure from history that we know read silently. He baptized Augustine in this pool on Easter, 387AD. Ambrose was the same age then that I am now. So when I was there, I prayed that God would lead people to Christ through my preaching, and that I would have the joy of baptizing those this year who would be of immense use to the kingdom.
There are some things about Ambrose that I don't like. He preached the OT allegorically. (Augustine actually loved this!) And he was one of the first to develop ideas of transubstantiation.
But there are many things about Ambrose that I DO like! He thought the pastor's main job was preaching Scripture. Ambrose preferred to preach expositional series. He believed that we would not know anything about God if God did not reveal Himself first. He denied that any bishop was legally superior to any other, or that Peter had taught any kind of supermacy of one bishop over others. He wrote hymns that became popular. He was a staunch opponent of the Arian heresy. He wore no special clerical dress (though neither did any other preachers at the time; that only came much later).
Ambrose broke fellowship with French pastors when they first used state power to carry out church punishments. He led the way in using passive resistance to oppose state-sponsored injustices. He made it clear that the power of the church was in no way dependent upon the state. And he made this most clear in his dealings with the Roman emperor Theodosius, who resided in Milan 388-391.
During those years, Emperor Theodosius ordered the slaughter of thousands of innocents in Thessalonica. The world was shocked. Ambrose, as his pastor, excommunicated him. He required the emperor to appear in church without his imperial regalia, and to confess his sins publicly and testify repentance of them before Ambrose would again admit him to the Lord's table. Citing Ezek 3:18, explaining that he himself would become guilty of Theodosius' sin if he didn't so rebuke him, Ambrose publicly opposed the emperor for some time. Finally, Theodosius apparently relented, and came and confessed his sins to the congregation, just as Ambrose had required. Theodosius was then again admitted to communion.
Ambrose fell sick in 397 and, when asked to pray for his own recovery, responded, "I have not lived among you in such a way, that I would have to be ashamed to live longer; but I am also not afraid of death, for we have a good Lord." He died on April 4, 397.
And I also like the fact that Ambrose used a really big baptistry!
"Science of the Gaps"?
by Melinda @ http://str.typepad.com
I was discussing the ABC news debate with someone and noticed something I'd missed. Some of you probably already noticed it. Kelly, one of the atheists, responded to Ray's design argument by posing what she clearly thought was the unanswerable question: If everything needs a cause, then who created God?
Ray didn't get the chance to answer, but this is well-tread territory in philosophy and apologetics (not everything is a scientific question). Briefly, God is a "first cause," which is sufficient in an of itself to stop the infinite regress of "well who created that" and provide a sufficient answer. "First causes" belong in a category of philosophy that stretch back to ancient times. It's not an ad hoc, desperate move. It's a very rational answer. (For much more information on this, see William Lane Craig's work on The Kalam Cosmological Argument.)
It isn't only the Christian who has to answer this question of the first cause, so does the evolutionist. We know the universe isn't eternal, otherwise the finite energy would have run out. We know that all event have a cause. But for the atheist and evolutionist, all causes and events are natural so the "first cause" has to be a natural one, and so far no natural cause can stop the infinite regress since none is sufficient to be the ultimate first cause. This universe clearly had a beginning so evolutionists point to something prior to that beyond this universe and time. There are several theories about what this could be, but since that is also a natural state then something had to cause that and the infinite regress starts up again. So far there's no sufficient answer in science for the first cause.
There's a gap in the explanatory power of evolution and atheism. Who's punting to faith and who's inserting a "god" into the gap?
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Ken Samples offers five reasons God exists on YouTube.
The Mission of Jesus, Part 1
Part 3 of series: The Mission of God and the Missional Church
Permalink for this post / Permalink for this series
If you were to ask the average Christian, “What was the mission of Jesus?” you’d no doubt hear that Jesus came to die on the cross for our sins, so that we might have eternal life. I believe this is true, profoundly and wonderfully. But I also believe it’s not the full story. The mission of Jesus, though ultimately centered in the cross and though leading to life after death, was far more inclusive than many of us have been led to believe. In this post and the next I’ll give a quick overview of the mission of Jesus as seen from the perspective of the Old Testament mission of God.
Hundreds of years after the Hebrew prophet Isaiah delivered the message of the coming kingdom of God, another man recognized as a Jewish prophet emerged on the scene, bringing a message reminiscent of Isaiah’s. In a nutshell, he proclaimed: “At last the time has come! The Kingdom of God is near! Turn from your sins and believe this Good News!” (Mark 1:15). Could this man, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth, be the one whom God sent to “bring good news of peace and salvation, the news that the God of Israel reigns” (Isa 52:7)?
One sabbath day Jesus went to the religious gathering place in his hometown. He was given the scroll containing the prophecies of Isaiah. Turning to the 61st chapter, He read:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has appointed me to preach Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come (Luke 4:18-19).
The passage from Isaiah 61 which Jesus applied to Himself highlights several essential features of his mission. First of all, He was sent by God in the power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:18). Even though Jesus was the divine Son of God, He was empowered by the Holy Spirit for His ministry. Even though His birth was a miracle of the Spirit, at His baptism by John in the Jordan River, Jesus received the Spirit in a dramatic way (Luke 3:21-22). From that time onward He was guided by the Spirit (Luke 4:1).
Second, Jesus was sent to proclaim the good news (Luke 4:18). At the core of His earthly ministry was the proclamation of God’s reign. The Gospel of Mark provides a concise summary of Jesus’s message: “At last the time has come! The Kingdom of God is near! Turn from your sins and believe this Good News!” (Mark 1:15). Notice that Jesus’s own preaching was not primarily about Himself, but about the coming of the long-awaited kingdom of God, that which the prophets had promised and for which the Jewish people prayed every day.
What is this kingdom of God? In the Old Testament, the kingdom of God was not somewhere up in the sky, or something we experience only after death. Rather, it was God’s reign or rule on earth, a reign that would continue into eternity. The establishment of God’s kingdom on earth brings reconciliation between people and God, and extends that reconciliation throughout the world. Hatred and injustice are replaced by the love and justice of God. Sickness and death are consumed by God’s wholeness and eternal life. Human rebellion against God’s reign is replaced by loving obedience. (For much more on Jesus’s preaching of the kingdom of God, see my series: What Was the Message of Jesus?)
Tomorrow I’ll continue my quick overview of the ministry of Jesus.
Doctrine Is Practical
By John MacArthur @ http://www.sfpulpit.comI have in my library a book by the spiritual father of a quasi-Christian cult. It argues that structured doctrine and systematized theology are contrary to the spirit of Jesus’ ministry.
The idea that Christ is anti-doctrine is a foundational belief of that cult. But no idea is further from the truth. The word doctrine simply means “teaching.” And it’s ludicrous to say that Christ is anti-teaching. The central imperative of His Great Commission is the command to teach (Matthew 28:18-20).
Unfortunately, cultists aren’t alone in their bias against doctrine. Some evangelicals have almost the same perspective. Because they view doctrine as heady and theoretical, they dismiss it as unimportant, divisive, threatening, or simply impractical.
People often ask why I emphasize doctrine so much. Now and then someone tells me frankly that my preaching needs to be less doctrinal and more practical.
Of course, practical application is vital. I don’t want to minimize its importance. But if there is a deficiency in preaching today, it is that there’s too much relational, pseudopsychological, and thinly life-related content, and not enough emphasis on sound doctrine.
The distinction between doctrinal and practical truth is artificial; doctrine is practical! In fact, nothing is more practical than sound doctrine.
The pastor who turns away from preaching sound doctrine abdicates the primary responsibility of an elder: “holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict” (Titus 1:9). We teach truth, we teach error, or we teach nothing at all.
Building on the Truth
Practical insights, gimmicks, and illustrations mean little if they’re not attached to divine principle. There’s no basis for godly behavior apart from the truth of God’s Word. Before the preacher asks anyone to perform a certain duty, he must first deal with doctrine. He must develop his message around theological themes and draw out the principles of the texts. Then the truth can be applied.
Romans provides the clearest example. Paul doesn’t give any exhortation until he has given eleven chapters of theology.
He scales incredible heights of truth, culminating in 11:33-36, where he says, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”
Then in chapter 12, he turns immediately to the practical consequences of the doctrine of the first 11 chapters. No passage in Scripture captures the Christian’s responsibility in the face of truth more clearly than Romans 12:1-2.
Resting on eleven chapters of profound doctrine, Paul calls each believer to a supreme act of spiritual worship — giving oneself as a living sacrifice. Doctrine gives rise to dedication to Christ, the greatest practical act. And the remainder of the book of Romans goes on to explain the many practical outworkings of one’s dedication to Christ.
He follows the same pattern in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1 Thessalonians. The doctrinal message comes first. Upon that foundation he builds the practical application, making the logical connection with the word therefore (Romans 1:1; Galatians 5:1; Ephesians 4:1; Philippians 2:1) or then (Colossians 3:1; 1 Thessalonians 4:1).
Living by the Truth
We have imposed an artificial meaning on the word doctrine. We’ve made it something abstract and threatening, unrelated to daily living. That has brought about the disastrous idea that preaching and teaching are unrelated to living.
The scriptural concept of doctrine includes the entire message of the gospel — its teaching about God, salvation, sin, and righteousness. Those concepts are so tightly bound to daily living that the first-century mind did not see them as something separate from practical truth.
The New Testament church was founded on a solid base of doctrine. First Timothy 3:16 contains what many expositors believe is an early church hymn: “God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory” (KJV). There, in capsule form, is the basis of all Christian teaching. Without that, no practical application matters.
Departing from the Truth
The next few verses of 1 Timothy describe what happens when men depart from the basis of biblical truth: “Some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth” (4:1-3).
Lying, hypocrisy, a dulled conscience, and false religious practices all have roots in wrong doctrine.
No ministry activity is more important than rightly understanding and clearly proclaiming sound doctrine. In 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, Paul commissions two young men to the ministry. His central theme is the importance of adhering to sound doctrine.
Paul charged Timothy: “In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following” (1 Timothy 4:6). “Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching,” Paul adds, “persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you” (v. 16).
Titus 2:10 says we “adorn [or honor] the doctrine of God” by how we live. When it comes to affirming sound doctrine, what we do carries far more significance than what we say. That’s why it’s disastrous when a pastor, seminary professor, or any kind of Christian leader fails morally. The message he proclaims is that his doctrine becomes merely an intellectual exercise.
Hearing the Truth
True doctrine transforms behavior as it is woven into the fabric of everyday life. But it must be understood if it is to have its impact. The real challenge of the ministry is to dispense the truth clearly and accurately. Practical application comes easily by comparison.
No believer can apply truth he doesn’t know. Those who don’t know the Bible’s principles for marriage, divorce, family, childrearing, discipline, money, debt, work, service to Christ, responsibilities to the poor, care of widows, response to governments, eternal rewards, and other teachings will not be able to apply them.
Those who don’t’ know what the Bible teaches about salvation cannot be saved. Those who don’t know what the Bible teaches about holiness are incapable of dealing with sin. Thus they are unable to live fully to God’s glory and their own blessedness.
The Dangerous Book for Boys
The book instantly recalls the great Victorian era of books for boys -- books about boy heroes, adventurers, soldiers, and naturalists. Those books, often recognizable in their ornate cloth covers, were read and read again by boys as they grew older. The Dangerous Book for Boys is a worthy successor to that tradition.
This book will tell a boy how to read cloud formations, make a battery, make a periscope, and construct "the greatest paper airplane in the world." Boys are told of the essential gear of boyhood -- including Band-aids. Young adventurers will also learn of famous battles, the history of artillery, and how to understand girls.
On the subject of girls the authors warn that young females are likely to be "unimpressed by your mastery of a game involving wizards, or your understanding of Morse Code." Boys are also soberly warned that girls, as a general rule, "do not get quite as excited by the use of urine as a secret ink as boys do." This is important to know.
On the other hand, boys are told to help girls who need assistance. Take this sage advice, for example:
If you see a girl in need of help--unable to lift something, for example--do not taunt her. Approach the object and greet her with a cheerful smile, while surreptitiously testing the weight of the object. If you find you can lift it, go ahead. If you can't, try sitting on it an engaging her in conversation.
That advice will help a middle school boy greatly. It just might help a good many college-age boys, for that matter.
The Iggulden brothers believe that boys need to get away from the computer screen, go outside, and learn to enjoy the world and make their way in it. "Boyhood is all about curiosity," they advise. Boys need to know how to build a treehouse and how to find north in the dark -- and they need to know that they know these things. As the brothers explain:
How do latitude and longitude work? How do you make secret ink, or send the cipher that Julius Caesar used with his generals? You'll find the answers inside. It was written by two men who would have given away the cat to get this book when they were young. It wasn't a particularly nice cat. Why did we write it now? Because these things are important still and we wished we knew them better. There are few things as satisfying as tying a decent bowline knot when someone needs a loop, or simply knowing what happened at Gettysburg and the Alamo. The tales must be told and retold, or the memories slowly die.
Boys are introduced to Shakespeare, coin tricks, spiders, and "Latin phrases every boy should know." They learn how to waterproof fabric, juggle, and understand rugby.
The book's runaway sales in Britain surprised the publishers, but not the authors. Here is how Conn Iggulden explained the book's success:
In a word, fathers. I am one myself and I think we've become aware that the whole "health and safety" overprotective culture isn't doing our sons any favors. Boys need to learn about risk. They need to fall off things occasionally, or--and this is the important bit--they'll take worse risks on their own. If we do away with challenging playgrounds and cancel school trips for fear of being sued, we don't end up with safer boys--we end up with them walking on train tracks. In the long run, it's not safe at all to keep our boys in the house with a PlayStation. It's not good for their health or their safety.
Expect the book to catch attention fast in this country as well -- and for the same reason. Iggulden gets to the heart of the book's attraction to boys and their dads:
You only have to push a boy on a swing to see how much enjoys the thrill of danger. It's hard-wired. Remove any opportunity to test his courage and they'll find ways to test themselves that will be seriously dangerous for everyone around them. I think of it like playing the lottery--someone has to say "Look, you won't win--and your children won't be hurt. Relax. It won't be you."
I think that's the core of the book's success. It isn't just a collection of things to do. The heroic stories alone are something we haven't had for too long. It isn't about climbing Everest, but it is an attitude, a philosophy for fathers and sons. Our institutions are too wrapped up in terror over being sued--so we have to do things with them ourselves. This book isn't a bad place to start.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, there are now over 400,000 copies of the book in print. The publisher now expects to sell as many as four million copies in the United States. Reporter Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg explains:
The unapologetic message is that boys need a certain amount of danger and risk in their lives, and that there are certain lessons that need to be passed down from father to son, man to man. The implication is that in contemporary society basic rules of maleness aren't being handed off as they used to be.
The book aims to correct that. It does so with a pretelevision, prevideogame sensibility, and also by embracing a view of gender that has been unfashionable in recent decades: that frogs and snails and puppy dogs' tails are more than lines in a nursery rhyme, and that boys are by nature hard-wired differently than girls.
But "The Dangerous Book for Boys" is also aimed at boomer dads, who nostalgically yearn for a lost boyhood of fixing lawn mowers and catching snakes with their fathers -- even if that didn't really happen as often as they think it did.
A rival publisher took the book home to his eight-year-old son, who promptly jumped up from in front of the television and talked his dad into testing paper airplanes long after bedtime. "That's the good news," the dad said. "The bad news is that he now expects me to build him a treehouse."
Jane Friedman, Chief Executive at HarperCollins, is herself the mother of two sons and two stepsons is sticking by the book. There is no plan for a girls' version, she said. "Boys are very different," she observed.
Yes they are, Ms. Friedman, and that is why books like this are important. Boys want to be taken seriously as boys, and taught how to become men. To reach this goal, they will need far more than the fascinating lessons found in The Dangerous Book for Boys -- but this is a good place to start.
So put this book in your boy's hands and turn off the television and the PlayStation. Then get ready to watch the paper airplanes fly and the water bombs burst. And, to be honest, it wouldn't hurt to keep a few Band-aids handy . . . just in case.
Carson: What Is the Gospel?
By Justin Taylor @ http://theologica.blogspot.com
Some very rough notes on Don Carson's first lecture at the Gospel Coalition, using as his text1 Cor. 15:1-19.
"It is easy is to be prophetic from the margins; what is needed is to be prophetic from the center."
Eight Summarizing Words
1. The gospel is Christological. It is Christ-centered. Not a bland theism or an impersonal pantheism; it's irrevocably Christ-centered. "The gospel is not preached if Christ is not preached" (Stott). The gospel embraces not just Christ's person, but also his death and resurrection. It's not enough to emphasize Christmas and downplay Good Friday and Easter. Jesus is the promised messiah who died and rose again.
2. The gospel is theological. It makes no sent to pit the mission of the Son against the mission of the Father. Some surveys of redemptive history depersonalize the wrath of God. From the beginning sin has been an offense against God. When we sin in any way, God is invariably the most offended party (cf. Ps. 51:4). God gets most angry at idolatry, the de-Godding of God.
4. The gospel is apostolic. There were 500+ witnesses, but attention is drawn in particular to the apostles.
5. The gospel is historical. The burial (death) and appearances (resurrection) are historical, in datable sequence. They combine to form a nexus. The claims are irreducibly historical. In other religions, there is nothing intrinsic in the leader that is required for its truth. But for Christianity, part of the validation of faith is the truthfulness of faith's object--in this case, Christ's resurrection. The Bible never asks us to believe anything that's not true.
6. The gospel is personal. The gospel is not merely a historical event, but also sets out a way of personal salvation.
7. The gospel is universal. Christ is the new Adam (vv. 22, 47-50). There is a comprehensive vision, drawing people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. It does not save every person, but it is gloriously universal in its comprehensive sweep.
8. The gospel is eschatological. Some of the blessings we receive now are end-time blessings brought back into today. But there is also a final transformation. All of the fruit of the gospel will appear in the new heavens and the new earth.
Five Clarifying Sentences
1. This gospel is normally disseminated in proclamation. ("I . . . preached to you.") There's almost always a connection in the NT between the "gospel" and words for "heralding" it. It must be announced and explained.
2. This gospel is fruitfully received in authentic persevering faith. Cf. Col. 1.
3. This gospel is properly disclosed in the context of personal self-humiliation. Cf. 1 Cor. 15:9. John Newton:
I am not what I want to be.
I am not what I hope to be.
But by the grace of God, I am not what I was.
When the gospel truly does its work, "proud Christian" is an unthinkable oxymoron.
4. This gospel is rightly asserted to be the central confession of the whole church.
Cf. 1 Cor. 4:17; 7:17; etc. Be suspicious of any church that flaunts what it is doing differently than everybody else.
5. This gospel is boldly advancing under the contested reign and inevitable victory of Christ the King. Phil. 2. "Christ must reign until he has put his enemies under his feet" (1 Cor. 15:25). Verse 58: "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain."
Taking Stock
1. It is striking how cognitive the gospel is.
2. The gospel is not the gospel if it remains exclusively cognitive. Chapter 15 comes at the end of a book, the previous chapters of which work out the gospel in various ways and situations. For example: The gospel is not only God's wisdom, but God's power. There is no place for triumph in the place of the blood-bought. Where the gospel triumphs, relationships are transformed.
3. The gospel must transform all realms of our lives.
Loritts: Passing on the Gospel
By Justin Taylor @ http://theologica.blogspot.com
Crawford Loritts on "Passing on the Torch," using Psalm 78:5-7:5 He established a testimony in JacobThe character of God and the content of Scripture must be poured into our lives. Don't ever get cute; don't ever wander away from it. Therefore Asaph reminded them of God's history in their lives.
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
6 that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
7 so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments.
1. a passion (for the character of God and the content of Scripture)
2. a process (looking to future generations, realizing it ain't about you)
3. a product. There are three outcomes ever succeeding generation needs:
(1) It will give them a sense of confidence, so that they will be "set their hope in God." (It's all about him, what he's doing).
(2) It will give them a sense of history. There's an absence today of strong leadership, lack of passion, lack of certainty--because the stories of God's faithfulness are missing.
(3) It will give them a will to obey, to "keep his commandments." We need not only theological accuracy, but also biblical transformation. The point of good theology is to give people a right vision of God.
- What signature are you writing on the souls of future generations?
- What's in your hands?
- Is there a clear pathway that can be seen in how you approach ministry back to the character of God and the content of Scripture?
- How are you thinking about what God has entrusted to you.
Keller: Gospel-Centered Ministry
By Justin Taylor @ http://theologica.blogspot.com
Rough notes on Tim Keller's address, "Gospel-Centered Ministry," from the Gospel Coalition conference.What does ministry profoundly shaped by the gospel look like?
Peter was addressing a church being actively and passively persecuted. Peter is seeking to show how the gospel should shape how we should live.
Text: 1 Pet 1:1-12, 1:22-2:12.
Peter shows us that there are seven features used to describe the gospel:
1. The gospel is historical.
The gospel is good news, not good advice. Lloyd-Jones: Advice is counsel about something to do that hasn't happened yet, but you can do it. News is about something that has happened. If a king defeats an invading army, he sends back messengers (heralders, good-newsers) who bring a report: respond with joy and live in because it's all been the defeat has happened. Every other religion sends military advisors.: rites, rituals, laws so that the people can fight for their lives. One is a response of joy; the other is a response of fear. And in the short run, they look alike.
Ministry implication: the significance of declarative preaching is irreplaceably central. If Tim was teaching an advanced homiletics course, he'd make everyone read C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words. Last chapter: you don't use words to instruct someone how to tie a tie. But words are required to explain a historical event. How-to's require modeling. But if you believe the gospel is good news, declarative preaching will be irreplacably central.
"Preach the gospel--and if necessary, use words." That's a misunderstanding of the gospel.
2. The gospel is doxalogical. Doxology is the basis of the entire Christian life.
Luther's Larger Catechism: the first commandment summarizes all the rest. Underneath every sin is idolatry in general, and underneath that is some form of works righteous. First commandment: believe the gospel and you can't look to anything else for your justification--and that's the basis for everything else.
Everything from eating disorders to racism is functional worship--the heart's imagination dotes on something more than God (my thinness, my race, etc.). The only way to change is to worship.
Sometimes we have X on "video" and God on "audio." When audio and video are on at the same time, video wins. You say it but don't believe it. The solution is worship.
Ministry implication (from Edwards): the purpose of preaching is not just to make things clear, but to make them real. We need to make things vivid. The heart is one's core commitments, capturing our imaginations. JE is rational, persuasive, logical--but he uses images. We must teach Christ vividly and practically, from a change life. We can't just take a narrative approach or a commentary
The first and primary object of preaching is not only to give information. It is, as Edwards says, to produce an impression. It is the impression at the time that matters, even more than what you can remember subsequently . . . It is not primarily to impart information; and while you are writing your notes you may be missing something of the impact of the Spirit.Thomas Chalmers:
It is seldom that any of our tastes are made to disappear by a mere process of natural extinction. At least, it is very seldom, that this is done through the instrumentality of reasoning. It may be done by excessive pampering - but it is almost never done by the mere force of mental determination. But what cannot be destroyed, may be dispossessed and one taste may be made to give way to another, and to lose its, power entirely as the reigning affection of the mind.3. The gospel is christological. Jesus gave an advanced hermeneutics seminar in Luke 24: everything in the OT points to me. Here in Peter there is an echo in 1 Pet. 1:10-12.
It is thus, that the boy ceases, at length, to be the slave of his appetite, but it is because a manlier taste has now brought it into subordination - and that the youth ceases to idolize pleasure, but it is because the idol of wealth has become the stronger and gotten the ascendancy and that even the love of money ceases to have the mastery over the heart of many a thriving citizen, but it is because drawn into, the whirl of city polities, another affection has been wrought into his moral system, and he is now lorded over by the love of power. There is not one of these transformations in which the heart is left without an object. Its desire for one particular object may be conquered; but as to its desire for having some one object or other, this is unconquerable....
Thus may we come to perceive what it is that makes the most effective kind of preaching. It is not enough to hold out to the world's eye the mirror of its own imperfections. It is not enough to come forth with a demonstration, however pathetic, of the evanescent character of all its enjoyments. It is not enough to travel the walk of experience along with you, and speak to your own conscience and your own recollection, of the deceitfulness of the heart, and the deceitfulness of all that the heart is set upon....
Ministry implication: every subject of every sermon should be Jesus. Tim doesn't want to have a party spirit here. (I'm of Goldsworthy; I'm of Chapell; etc.) Kathy's feedback to Tim years ago: when you say "here's what you ought to do" I already know. Sometimes you say, "But you can't do it, here's one who did. If you believe in him, you'll begin to be able to do it, too--to the degree you truly understand the good news." That's when the "lecture" becomes a "sermon." You gotta get to Jesus. If you don't get there, you're just wailing on people's wills.
Read Sinclair Ferguson: Preaching Christ from the Old Testament. Most people not only don't preach Christ in the OT, but not in the NT either. The Bible is mainly about Him, not about you:
Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us.(HT: audio via gilbert)
Jesus is the true and better Abel who, though innocently slain, has blood now that cries out, not for our condemnation, but for acquittal.
Jesus is the true and better Abraham who answered the call of God to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go out into the void not knowing wither he went to create a new people of God.
Jesus is the true and better Isaac who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us. And when God said to Abraham, "Now I know you love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love from me," now we can look at God taking his son up the mountain and sacrificing him and say, "Now we know that you love us because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love from us."
Jesus is the true and better Jacob who wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserved, so we, like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us.
Jesus is the true and better Joseph who, at the right hand of the king, forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them.
Jesus is the true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant.
Jesus is the true and better Rock of Moses who, struck with the rod of God's justice, now gives us water in the desert.
Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer, who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends.
Jesus is the true and better David whose victory becomes his people's victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.
Jesus is the true and better Esther who didn't just risk leaving an earthly palace but lost the ultimate and heavenly one, who didn't just risk his life, but gave his life to save his people.
Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so that we could be brought in.
Jesus is the real Rock of Moses, the real Passover Lamb, innocent, perfect, helpless, slain so the angel of death will pass over us. He's the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the true lamb, the true light, the true bread.
The Bible's really not about you – it's about him.
4. The gospel is personal and individual. Imputation and the historic understanding of the gospel are in dispute right now. Packer: to understand grace, you have to understand both (1) how great your debt is; (2) the magnitude of the provision. They may only believe that Jesus died the death I should have died ( he died for our sins and paid our penalty, hence I better live a pretty good life"). But you must also believe that Jesus lived the life I should have lived.
Some people are changing the gospel in response to the misunderstanding-distortions of the legalistic moralists and the easy-believing liscentiousness.
The gospel is individualistic: individual sinners are saved from the wrath of a personal God. But...
5.The gospel is cultural. The gospel creates a culture--called the church. It's not just a collection of sinners. The gospel is massively transformational and creates a counter-culture, and also makes us relate to the people around us. Those of us who believe in an individual gospel often miss the communal implications.
1 Pet 2:11-12: "Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation."
The gospel says there are dangers of both cultural accommodation and cultural withdrawal. No one sees your good deeds of those who withdraw from the world. On the other hand, people who accommodate the culture are never persecuted.
We're to go in deeply, but to stay very different. We need to seek the welfare of the city (Jer. 29:7).
Those who want to be prophetic tend not to be priestly. Those who are servant-hearted tend not to talk about hell and wrath.
1 Peter depicts an effective, persecuted counterculture. You'll always be both attracting people and facing persecution.
6. The gospel is the basis for a worldview; it's massively transformational.
7. The gospel is wonderful. 1 Pet 1:12, "It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look." Tim's been thinking about this verse for 20 years. Angels are very smart people! They're like us except they don't die, so they know more. They "long" (Gk. epithumaio) to look into the gospel. Gospel ministry is endlessly creative, ever new, never boring. It's not the ABCs of Christianity. It's the A-Z. The gospel drives everything we do. It's the solution to every problem. Every theological category should be about expounding the gospel.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Piper's Pastoral Accountability
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By: Abraham @ http://www.desiringgod.orgHearts can harden fast. The writer of Hebrews drives this point home: "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin" (3:13).
So for pastors—and for all of us—yearly or quarterly or perhaps even monthly accountability is dangerously rare. The hardness that creates "an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God" (Heb. 3:12) can happen in a day.
John Piper and the other pastors of Bethlehem Baptist Church know this, and so, among their other strategies for sanctification, they hold each other accountable with a simple questionnaire (PDF) that they each fill out weekly. It addresses issues from days off to diet, personal devotions to pornography.
They would all agree that filling out the form is not what matters; what's important is the heart behind it—the desire to be pure and holy.
I think they would also all agree, however, that committing to answer these simple and straightforward questions each week is an invaluable tool in the fight of faith.
Understanding Legalism
How do we define legalism? Because the term legalism is a very serious one (and because my heart is especially susceptible to it) I frequently think about how the roots of legalism sprout in our lives. So today I want to work towards a definition.
Three events from last year (that all took place back in Omaha in the same week) reveal why clarification on the dangers of legalism are necessary. First was a conversation with a woman who had decided it was okay that her daughter skip church for soccer games. “I don’t want to be legalistic about church,” she said. Another encounter was with a man who defined legalism as “living by lots of rules.” And the third encounter was over an issue concerning alcohol and how those who say Christians should not drink are legalists.
I’m not saying these people are right or wrong in their convictions. What I am saying is that each statement sadly reveals a misunderstanding about legalism. What we commonly forget is that legalism is dangerous whether your biblical convictions are right or wrong. Holding biblically accurate convictions does not automatically protect from legalism.
Rules are not the problem
The danger of legalism does not seem to be found primarily by living with rules or not living by rules — whether you attend church every week or not, whether you drink wine or not.
Jesus says, ‘take every precaution you need to prevent your heart from sinning.’ “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matt. 5:29).
If you apply the entire bible to the Christian life, you can end up with a long list of helpful rules and reminders (like the “one anothers”). Count how many times the phrase “do not” occurs in the Proverbs. It’s no wonder that Jonathan Edwards came up with his long list of resolutions.
Rules are not the central problem in legalism.
A false gospel
Legalism is (most dangerously) a soteriological problem. That is, legalism is a false gospel. Legalism is the damning lie that says God’s pleasure and joy in me is dependent upon my obedience.
It is legalism that causes the Pharisee to look proudly into the sky in the presence of a tax collector. It is legalism that causes a missionary in Africa to think God is more pleased with him than the Christian businessman in America. And it is legalism that causes the preacher behind the pulpit to think God is more pleased with him than the tatooed Christian teenager sitting in the back row.
The common salvation (Jude 3)
Legalism is the lie that God will find more pleasure in me because my obedience is greater than others or that God looks at me with disgust because I am not growing in grace as quickly as my friends. It is the failure to remember that God’s pleasure in us comes outside of us (in Christ). Legalism causes the heart to forget that God sings over us because of the work He has done, not because of what we have done (Zeph. 3:15-17).
Believers equally bring pleasure to God because the pleasure He receives in us is the purchased pleasure of the substitution of Jesus Christ. Any imagined superiority to other Christians (not rules or a lack of rules) is the sure sign of the legalist.
The irony of legalism
The great irony (and danger) of legalism is this … If you think God is more pleased with you because you take your child to a soccer game instead of church, if you think God is more pleased with you because you do not live by rules, and if you think God is more pleased with you because you do drink alcohol – you are just as legalistic as the man who thinks that perfect church attendance, lists of rules and abstaining from alcohol makes him more pleasing to God.
Whether our convictions are biblical or unbiblical is another issue altogether. Legalism is not so much objective (are my convictions biblical or not?) but subjective (what do my convictions get me?). So legalism is just as dangerous whether your convictions are biblically accurate or not. From what I hear, this is not the common definition floating around the broad Evangelical landscape.
Sadly, churches that do not train their sheep to boast only in the righteousness of the Cross of Christ, but are frequently carried into other controversies and debates, or pride themselves in a lack of rules and regulations, can equally create a breeding ground for self-righteous legalism. And this is true even if the church is biblically correct every time on every debate.
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Related: Living the Cross Centered Life by C.J. Mahaney
What’s Inside the Trojan Horse? Pragmatism
What is pragmatism? Basically it is a philosophy that says that results determine meaning, truth, and value — what will work becomes a more important question than what is true. As Christians, we are called to trust what the Lord says, preach that message to others, and leave the results to Him. But many have set that aside. Seeking relevancy and success, they have welcomed the pragmatic approach and have received the proverbial Trojan horse.
Let me take a few minutes to explain a little of the history leading up to the current entrenchment of the pragmatic approach in the evangelical church and to show you why it isn’t as innocent as it looks.
Recent History
The 1970s, for the most part, were years of spiritual revival in America. The spread of the gospel through the campuses of many colleges and universities marked a fresh, energetic movement of the Holy Spirit to draw people to salvation in Christ. Mass baptisms were conducted in rivers, lakes, and the ocean, several new versions of the English Bible were released, and Christian publishing and broadcasting experienced remarkable growth.
Sadly, the fervent evangelical revival slowed and was overshadowed by the greed and debauchery of the eighties and nineties. The surrounding culture rejected biblical standards of morality, and the church, rather than assert its distinctiveness and call the world to repentance, softened its stance on holiness. The failure to maintain a distinctively biblical identity was profound — it led to general spiritual apathy and a marked decline in church attendance.
Church leaders reacted to the world’s indifference, not by a return to strong biblical preaching that emphasized sin and repentance, but by a pragmatic approach to “doing” church — an approach driven more by marketing, methodology, and perceived results than by biblical doctrine. The new model of ministry revolved around making sinners feel comfortable and at ease in the church, then selling them on the benefits of becoming a Christian. Earlier silence has given way to cultural appeasement and conformity.
Even the church’s ministry to its own has changed. Entertainment has hijacked many pulpits across the country; contemporary approaches cater to the ever-changing whims of professing believers; and many local churches have become little more than social clubs and community centers where the focus is on the individual’s felt needs. Even on Christian radio, phone-in talk shows, music, and live psychotherapy are starting to replace Bible teaching as the staple. “Whatever works,” the mantra of pragmatism, has become the new banner of evangelicalism.
The Down-Grade Controversy
You may be surprised to learn that what we are now seeing is not new. England’s most famous preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, dealt with a similar situation more than 100 years ago. Among churches that were once solid, Spurgeon and other faithful pastors noticed a conciliatory attitude toward and overt cooperation with the modernist movement. And what motivated the compromise? They sought to find acceptance by adopting the “sophisticated” trends of the culture. Does that sound familiar to you?
One article, published anonymously in Spurgeon’s monthly magazine The Sword and the Trowel, noted that every revival of true evangelical faith had been followed within a generation or two by a drift away from sound doctrine, ultimately leading to wholesale apostasy. The author likened this drifting from truth to a downhill slope, and thus labeled it “the down grade.” The inroads of modernism into the church killed ninety percent of the mainline denominations within a generation of Spurgeon’s death. Spurgeon himself, once the celebrated and adored herald of the Baptist Union, was marginalized by the society and he eventually withdrew his membership.
The Effects of Pragmatism
Many of today’s church leaders have bought into the subtlety of pragmatism without recognizing the dangers it poses. Instead of attacking orthodoxy head on, evangelical pragmatism gives lip service to the truth while quietly undermining the foundations of doctrine. Instead of exalting God, it effectively denigrates the things that are precious to Him.
First, there is in vogue today a trend to make the basis of faith something other than God’s Word. Experience, emotion, fashion, and popular opinion are often more authoritative than the Bible in determining what many Christians believe. From private, individual revelation to the blending of secular psychology with biblical “principles,” Christians are listening to the voice of the serpent that once told Eve, “God’s Word doesn’t have all the answers.” Christian counseling reflects that drift, frequently offering no more than experimental and unscriptural self-help therapy instead of solid answers from the Bible.
Christian missionary work is often riddled with pragmatism and compromise, because too many in missions have evidently concluded that what gets results is more important than what God says. That’s true among local churches as well. It has become fashionable to forgo the proclamation and teaching of God’s Word in worship services. Instead, churches serve up a paltry diet of drama, music, and other forms of entertainment.
Second, evangelical pragmatism tends to move the focus of faith away from God’s Son. You’ve seen that repeatedly if you watch much religious television. The health-wealth-and-prosperity gospel advocated by so many televangelists is the ultimate example of this kind of fantasy faith. This false gospel appeals unabashedly to the flesh, corrupting all the promises of Scripture and encouraging greed. It makes material blessing, not Jesus Christ, the object of the Christian’s desires.
Easy-believism handles the message differently, but the effect is the same. It is the promise of forgiveness minus the gospel’s hard demands, the perfect message for pragmatists. It has done much to popularize “believing” but little to provoke sincere faith.
Christ is no longer the focus of the message. While His name is mentioned from time to time, the real focus is inward, not upward. People are urged to look within; to try to understand themselves; to come to grips with their problems, their hurts, their disappointments; to have their needs met, their desires granted, their wants fulfilled. Nearly all the popular versions of the message encourage and legitimize a self-centered perspective.
Third, today’s Christianity is infected with a tendency to view the result of faith as something less than God’s standard of holy living. By downplaying the importance of holy living–both by precept and by example–the biblical doctrine of conversion is undermined. Think about it: What more could Satan do to try to destroy the church than undermining God’s Word, shifting the focus off Christ, and minimizing holy living?
All those things are happening slowly, steadily within the church right now. Tragically, most Christians seem oblivious to the problems, satisfied with a Christianity that is fashionable and highly visible. But the true church must not ignore those threats. If we fight to maintain doctrinal purity with an emphasis on biblical preaching and biblical ministry, we can conquer external attacks. But if error is allowed into the church, many more churches will slide down the grade to suffer the same fate as the denominations that listened to, yet ignored, Spurgeon’s impassioned appeal.
Make it your habitual prayer request that the Lord would elevate the authority of His Word, the glory of His Son, and the purity of His people in the evangelical church. May the Lord revive us and keep us far from the slippery slope of pragmatism.
Christianity Confronts Islam
On this edition of the White Horse Inn, Dr. Michael Horton talks with former Muslim and professor of Shari'ah Law, Sam Solomon, about the true nature of Islam and the significant threat it presents, not only to the western world in general, but specifically to all weak and sentimental forms of the Christian faith.
RELATED ARTICLES
Islamization of Europe, by Shane Rosenthal
The Convert, by Cal Thomas
RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Islam & the Cross, by Samuel M. Zwemer
Londonistan, by Melanie Phillips
MUSIC SELECTION
Artist: Roger Hooper, Song: "India Mission"
Album: Unreleased
COMMENTARY
Christianity Confronts Islam (Part 1)
Christianity Confronts Islam (part 2)
COMMENTARY
Christianity Confronts Islam (Part 2)