Happy Friday

I’ve been remiss in my Happy Friday offerings of late.  So here – have two.

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Brant Hansen draws our attention to the latest development in Wii-ship.  (Codepoke will be thrilled I’m sure).

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And Ben Myers toys with an e-mail scammer.  Very funny.

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Why I am a Trinitarian Hedonist

You might think I have it in for John Piper.  You’d be wrong.

I once spotted the great man at the back of All Souls (he’d come to hear John Stott preach).  I came bounding up to him after the service intending to tell him that I’d quoted him in my sermon that morning.  But for some reason I decided that this would be proud – as though I was bragging about being a preacher.  (I know that’s nuts.  But not as nuts as what happened next).  Having rejected my opening gambit mid-bound, I found myself in front of him with nothing to say.  And what did I blurt out?   I can’t quite remember it exactly but it was something very close to “I’m a big fan.”

Can you imagine a less Piper-esque line??  He didn’t know what to say.  Which made two of us.  The whole embarassing situation was only resolved when my wife, God bless her, held out her hand and asked him about his trip.

If you ever catch me shaking my head ruefully and tutting, chances are these 90 seconds are running through my head.

Anyway, I love John Piper.  I’ll never forget a mission trip to central New South Wales in early 2002.  I’d just read Desiring God and the idea of a happy God and that my satisfaction in Him was the way to glorify Him – it was truly liberating.  And I remember being inspired to greater service by my enlarged appetite for joy.  In 40 degree heat, I spent my time carrying around trays of ice-cold water for everyone and beaming at the thought of my reward (Matt 10:42).

And I loved (and still love) quotes like this from the opening of chapter 4:

Disinterested benevolence toward God is evil.  If you come to God dutifully offering Him the reward of your fellowship instead of thirsting after the reward of His fellowship, then you exalt yourself above God as His benefactor and belittle Him as a needy beneficiary – and that is evil.

In 2003 I ran a discussion group on Desiring God and enthusiastically recommended it.  But with one significant caveat.  Chapter 1!  I didn’t like chapter 1.  I lacked a lot of the vocabulary to articulate what I didn’t like, but I didn’t like it.  And neither did anyone else in the discussion group.

Chapter 1 sets out the foundation for Christian Hedonism – the happiness of God.  But the happiness of God is defined explicitly in terms of His self-centredness.  “The chief end of God is to glorify Himself.”  And this God-talk was not really trinitarian.  In fact, talk of God pre-eminently loving Himself came before talk of how the Father loves the Son.  First His happiness is spoken of as the glory of His unrestrained sovereignty, the magnification of His own divine perfections etc.  Then Piper turns to say “one of the best ways to think about” God’s self-glorification is to think about the Father-Son relationship.  Why?  Because the Son is the Father’s Image, therefore loving the Son is a way of God loving Himself.

Do you see the logic?  First it is asserted that God loves Himself – and this is supported largely on philosophical grounds (i.e. God’s the best, He’d be unrighteous to value anything higher than what’s best, ergo He must be supremely interested in Self).  Then he turns to Trinity and says, “See?  God loves His Image – He’s a self-lover.”

But if we begin with Trinity then the Father’s love for the Son reveals not a self-centredness but an other-centredness.   God is happy not because He is self-absorbed (no-one – not even God is happy in self-absorption!).  God is happy because He is other-centred.  There is an over-flowing life of mutual self-giving in the triune relations.  That is the happiness of God.  And that is what we are invited into.

So once we’ve made that correction I am happy to call myself a Christian Hedonist.  (How could a hedonist be other than happy to be so!?).  I continue to see problems in Piper’s doctrine of God and I still want to challenge the ‘glory’ which he speaks of.  But I’ve very much valued his teaching on hedonism.  And I think it can be strengthened (not weakened) by the insistence that happiness is found – from Top to bottom – in self-giving love.

Anyway, if you want to see how I ran the Desiring God discussion group – the handouts are here.  Session 1 is where I diverge from the book.

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Beginning with the Creator?

Here’s the John Piper quote I’ve been discussing:

And so the biblical mindset starts with the assumption that God is the center of reality. All thinking starts with the assumption that God has basic rights as the Creator of all things. He has goals that fit with his nature and perfect character. Then the biblical mindset moves out from this center and interprets the world, with God and his rights and goals as the measure of all things.  (Source)

In my last post on this I raised the following kinds of issues about that first sentence:

• Of course ‘God’ is central – theo-centrism is inescapable. The big question is ‘which theos? which God?’
• Our all-consuming passion to be centred on God says nothing about whether God’s ultimate passion is to be consumed with Himself.
• To map our ’should’s onto God commits an anthropocentrism every bit as dangerous as the person who thinks God should exist for their sake.
• God-centredness must be our response to Him – but there is no ‘must’ about His own Self-regard!
• Therefore theocentrism is indeed our theological method – but it’s not necessarily our doctrine of God.
• To determine our doctrine of God we need to look to His revelation of Himself. (John’s gospel might help here).

And it’s with those issues in mind that we turn to the second sentence.  Piper says “All thinking starts with the assumption that God has basic rights as the Creator of all things.”

His self-confessed starting point is God the Creator.  Those who’ve been following Peter Leithart’s recent posts on Athanasius might be hearing alarm bells.

Athanasius identified Arius’s problem at precisely this point.  He said:

“It is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate.”

Arius began with God the Creator.  At the centre of his thinking was a God who was defined by creation (and defined in opposition to it).  Now at the heart of Arius’s problem is that this definition of deity begins by excluding Christ from full membership!  If “God = unoriginate” then the Son (whose origin is the Father) must be less than fully divine.  Arius will never get to a proper christology, because he has not begun with a proper christology.  We must begin defining God’s being as a life that includes the Son as ‘God from God’.  Only that will allow us to make sense of Christ.  But also – only that will help us to make sense of creation.

One of Athanasius’s arguments was that Arianism makes Christ dependent on creation and not the other way around.  God – who, remember, is definitionally and down to His bootstraps (so to speak) in opposition to creation – needs a mediator in order to create.  An Arian account of transcendence will not allow God to interact with creation and so Christ is the first creature who is made precisely so that God can create.  Christ is an exalted but nonetheless created mediator for the messy job of making icky matter.  Do you see – for Arius, Christ is dependent on creation.  It is God’s desire for creation that causes Christ.

But the exact opposite is the case for the trinitarian.  It is the Father’s eternal love for Christ that causes the universe.  There is a love for the Other in eternity that is spread abroad in creation.  Here we see that creation is grace.  There is not a needy Creator standing behind the world whose ultimate goal is to ‘get what’s coming to Him’.  Rather at the back of the universe is a God who is already overflowing as a Fountain of love.

If we begin with Father, Son and Spirit rather than ‘Creator’ it becomes clear that before and behind creation is fullness not emptiness – offer not demand.  Creation is a product of, and a testimony to, an inherent out-going-ness.  There are no depths to God’s eternal being that are deeper than this ’spreading goodness’ (as Richard Sibbes would say, see Ron Frost’s excellent blog).  Whatever needs we might dare to speak of in God (and if we’re trinitarians we must speak of a Dependent God) we must be equally clear that such needs are met by the dynamic reciprocity of the Persons in their mutual in-dwelling.  In these triune relations it’s God who meets God’s needs.  It’s God who upholds and satisfies God’s rights.  Or in other words – all that the Father demands, the Son accomplishes in the power of the Spirit.  It is this out-going and other-centred life that pre-dates, causes and shapes creation.

Therefore the principle of creation is the other-centredness of the Father, Son and Spirit.  When we begin with trinity we see that creation is ultimately testimony to what God is pleased to give, not what God demands to get.

And this is where I’d disagree with the way Piper sets things up.  He begins with God the Creator who has rights.  And this is a crucial decision.

I’m not suggesting for a second that he’s Arian or anything of the sort.  But I am saying that Athanasius has shown us a better starting point and set us on a better trajectory.  If we head out in error by just a degree, the divergence down the track can be considerable.

When Piper begins with ‘rights-bearing Creator’, His glory will be readily identified with getting His rights.  And then, once we bring to bear the utterly Scriptural notion of God ‘acting for His own glory’, what do we have?  We have God doing all things for the sake of getting. What is ultimate to God is, apparently, His desire to maintain His rights.

What do we want to say in response?  Well – for one thing glory as revealed by Christ and Him crucified is radically different to this.  At the cross we see that glory is not about what God ‘gets’ as much as what He gives.  And this is really where our different starting points have brought us.  Beginning with ‘Trinity’ and ‘grace’ will get you to this cross-shaped definition of glory.  Beginning with ‘Creator’ and ‘rights’ sets you off in a different direction.  Getting to the cross from here will take a grand cross-country detour and something will get distorted somewhere.

Now, let me be clear, God indeed acts for the sake of His own glory.  In fact He does all things for the sake of His own glory.  That’s totally biblical and it’s not at issue.  The issue is – what is this glory?  And I’m saying it’s God’s utter self-giving.  As CS Lewis says, “Self-giving is absolute reality.”  So when God does things for His own glory – He’s declaring that what moves Him from the depths of His being is a radical and blood-earnest other-centredness.  It’s not that we get the grace and God gets the glory.  It’s that God’s grace is His glory.

Craig, a regular commenter here, gave an excellent illustration recently.  He said he was once walking down a corridor ahead of a woman.  He stopped and held the door open for her.  She scowled and said “I hope you’re not holding the door open because I’m a lady!”  He said, brilliantly, ‘No, I’m holding it open because I’m a gentleman.’

That’s what I’m talking about!  When the LORD insists that He’s acting for His own glory, He’s declaring to the world that He’s not responding to our worth or lack of it.  Instead He’s acting according to His own loving purposes.   He loves us because He loves us.  He’s a Gentleman!  That’s why He creates, that’s why He redeems.  It’s His very nature to be out-going, self-effacing, sacrificial, other-centred.  That is His glory.

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Self-giving is absolute reality

[I]n self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm of all creation and of all being. For the Eternal Word gives Himself in mortal sacrifice; and that not only on Calvary. For when He was crucified on Calvary He did that in the wild weather of His outlying provinces what He had done at home in glory and gladness. From before the foundation of the world, Christ surrenders begotten Deity back to begetting Deity, in obedience. And as the Son glorifies the Father, so also the Father glorifies the Son. …From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes the more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so forever. This is not a… law which we can escape… What is outside the system of self-giving is… simply and solely Hell… that fierce imprisonment in the self… Self-giving is absolute reality.

C. S. Lewis in The Problem of Pain, ch 10, p157

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Read it and weep.

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Great links

I know I still have a couple of posts on the Piper quote to write.  I’ll get to that…

Have you noticed the recent addition to my sidebar?  You can read some recommended posts I’ve found helpful or at least provocative.

They all seem to be by Peter Leithart.  How did that happen?  Simple.  He writes far and away the most interesting stuff.  And it makes me wonder what the rest of us are playing at…

Anyway – of particular interest to me recently has been his blogging on Athanasius and especially how we must conceive of the divine attributes in thoroughly Trinitarian ways. (e.g. here or here on ‘the dependent God’)

Athanasius argued that the Son was and is the Wisdom of the Father eternally so, such that the Father without the Son would not be wise.  Athanasius is so sure of this logic that he uses it as an argument against the Arians.  The argument goes like this – The Son is the Wisdom of the Father, the Father has never been without wisdom, therefore the Son is eternal.  Good argument huh?

But do you see the assumptions?  It does not assume that each Person has each attribute ‘in Himself’ considered apart from the Others.  Rather they possess each attribute because they possess each other.

Leithart puts it like this:

Does the Father have wisdom “in Himself”? Yes, because the Wisdom that is the Son dwells in Him  by the Spirit.  Does the Father possess His being “in Himself”?  Yes, because the Son is the fullness of His deity, and the Son indwells Him through the Spirit.  Vice versa: Does the Son have wisdom considered in Himself?  Yes, because what is “in Himself” is the fact that the Father dwells in Him in the Spirit, so that His existence “in Himself” is His existence as the Son indwelt by the Father.

And so on.

This allows us to speak of Father and Son distinctly; it also makes it clear that the Father is not Himself except as He has and is indwelt by His Son, nor is the Son Himself except as He has and is indwelt the Father.

Halden picks up on these thoughts in this stimulating post on Trinity and attributes.

It’s stuff I tried to argue a while back in these two diagrams

Another brilliant Leithart post is here on Gethsemane – Christ crushed that the oil of His anointing Spirit might spread to the world.

And you can’t beat the Old Adam doing what he does best here – offering the gospel in all its beautiful and stark freedom.

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Jesus is God-sized – God is Jesus-shaped

Preached on John 1:1-2 this morning (audio here).

My last two points were this:

Jesus is God-sized

and

God is Jesus-shaped

 

I wonder whether much of our evangelism is aimed at persuading people of point number one.  And I wonder whether that emphasis, if divorced from the second point, is quite dangerous.

Here’s what I mean – when we tell an unbeliever that Jesus is God, this is what they hear:  “You know the god of the pub discussion – the distant, arm-chair deity, uninvolved and uncaring?  That god is who Jesus is!”

“Oh” says the unbeliever.  “Because Jesus looks quite different to that.”

“Yeah, I know” we say.  “But you need to look past all that stuff.  Whatever you see in Jesus that doesn’t look like ‘the god you’ve always believed in’ – that’s just Jesus’ human nature.  No, that’s dispensible.  What you really need to know is that Jesus is God.”

And what’s the result?  Well how many Christian testimonies run something like this…

“I have always believed in some kind of god.  And then I met Jesus.  And the preacher told me that Jesus is the god-I-always-believed-in.”

Do you see what’s happened here?  Some supposed natural knowledge of God is determining a person’s view of Christ and determining it from the outset.

It should be the other way around.  Knowledge of Jesus should revolutionize our view of God. We should tell people not only that Jesus is God-sized, we should tell them that God is entirely Jesus-shaped.

As Archbishop Michael Ramsey once said (riffing on 1 John 1:5): “God is Christlike, and in Him there is no unchristlikeness at all.”

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Are we afraid of preaching news that’s too good?

I dunno, this isn’t based on anything but a vague gut feeling (yeah, yeah, as opposed to my usually well-researched and even-handed analysis!)  but…

Are we afraid of preaching news that’s too good?

I just wonder whether that ‘honey mouthed’ Puritan preacher, the ’sweet-dropper’, Richard Sibbes was surrounded by a more bitter fraternity of preachers.  You can imagine them, can’t you.  Consoling one another behind closed doors that their dull and tasteless offerings were the more faithful for it.  “Sibbes is nice, but you can make the good news too good sometimes.  We need to be more measured.”

Now obviously we must preach judgement – I’m all for that. (As was Sibbes).  I intend soon to write some stuff about preaching hell.  But can we manage to preach judgement in such a way that the gospel is magnified?  I hope so.  (Cue enthusiastic comment from TheOldAdam!)

But yeah – it just seems like an unspoken rule among conservative evangelicals that the gospel offer we hold out is allowed to be somewhat encouraging.  We can even make it quite appealing, so long as we guard it around with enough conditions and qualifications.  But I do sense an unspoken fear of really and freely offering Christ in all His life-giving, Spirit-anointing goodness.

Is it just me or does anyone else feel the invisible hand of some well-meaning wowser keeping us in our chairs and urging us not to get too carried away but rather to content ourselves with being ‘challenging, clear, faithful, helpful’ and all that.  Who is that guy?  And what’s the big fear?

Anyway… just a thought I had when I should have been finishing off my sermon.  Must go and make it plainer.

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I am 2. Who are you?

I began blogging two years ago today. Thanks to Bobby who suggested it (please pray for him and the family at the moment as they wait on troubling medical tests).

To mark this momentous occasion, I am blogging this entry from my mobile phone. Get me. Surfing the cutting edge of the information super-highway and such.

By far the most rewarding thing about my blogging experience has been to receive the many many comments you’ve written. Some of you I have known from the real world, some I’ve met here and then face to face, some only via the blog and email. But you’ve all been a tremendous encouragement to keep focussed on Jesus. So thanks!

But it occurs to me that there are those out there who read but never comment. Well here’s your chance to emerge from the shadows. Why not say hello in comments – maybe tell me where you’re from too if you like. Be great to e-greet you.

Don’t be shy now…

Avoiding a fourth [Thawed out Thursday]

No (good) trinitarian theologian wants to have a fourth thing – a divine substance considered apart from the Three Persons.  But it’s important to be aware that this error (effectively having a quaternity) has two versions.  There is a vulgar quaternity and a more insidious one.

The vulgar one looks like this:

Here is the “shamrock” trinity – three bits growing out of an underlying stuff.  In practice this is, roughly, how many unthinkingly view the trinity.  Such a vulgar quaternity is rightly rejected by theologians.  It can be seen immediately that the ‘Godness of God’ is considered at a completely different level to the three Persons in their roles and relations.  What makes God God is fundamentally impersonal attributes that may be expressed in the Persons but not constituted by their mutual inter-play.  So we can safely reject this version of things.

But I find that many theologians, having rejected the vulgar quaternity, congratulate themselves prematurely.  There is also the insidious quaternity to be dealt with.  There is another way of having a fourth…

Fundamentally this error consists in conceiving of the one God separately to a consideration of the three Persons in communion.  Recently I read a theologian say “God is both one and three – both a person and a community.”  This is an example of the insidious quaternity.  One-ness and Three-ness are laid side by side to uphold a belief in the equal ultimacy of one and three.  Yet the one-ness of God is conceived of as a uni-personal one-ness – that is, it is separately considered to the multi-personal three-ness.  One and Three were not mutually interpreting truths but instead the ‘one God’ is thought of in non-communal (that is, non trinitarian) terms.

This is the approach taken by by so many doctrine of God text books where De Deo Uno (on the One God) is addressed prior to De Deo Trino (on the Trinity).   Yet, unless the two section are integrated at the deepest levels then there is grave danger of a fourth thing – i.e. “God plus Trinity” or “God apart from Trinity.“

When this theological method is followed, often (not always but most times) section one unfolds such that the Three Person’d interplay takes no meaningful part in the discussions of the attributes.  Yet, typically, these attributes are asserted to be the virtue by which God is God.  On this view it is still possible to discuss the ‘Godness of God’ without reference to the perichoretic life of the Three.  Here One-ness and Three-ness are considered to be non-competing perspectives on the same God.  This effectively means that it is possible to speak in non-triune terms about the living God.  ’God’, then, is not the same thing as ‘the Three Persons united in love’.

This is also a quaternity.  Just a more insidious one.

And the only way I can see to avoid this fourth thing is to side with the Cappodocians: God’s being consists without remainder in the Three Person’d perichoresis .

The one-ness of God is not a simple divine essence but the very unity of the Three.  The being of God is not an underlying substance (contra the vulgar quaternity).  But nor is it a separately conceived essence (contra the insidious quaternity). Rather God’s being is the very communion by which the Three are One.

Trinity is not a perspective on the one God.  Rather the only God there is is trinity.  And the only way to conceive of Him is in triune terms.  ‘God’ is ‘Trinity’.  Unless this strict identity is maintained a fourth enters in.

Thus we must never conceive of the one God in any other terms than trinitarian ones.  (Re-write the text-books!).  God’s being is in His communion (to use Zizioulas’s phrase).  His One-ness is in His communion.  And (let’s not forget) His Three-ness is in His communion – the Three are only who they are in this eternal perichoresis.   To put it another way: God is love.

Therefore let’s guard against a ‘fourth’ whenever it threatens.  Let’s reject the vulgar quaternity, but let’s also reject the insidious quaternity.  And if people call us ‘extreme social trinitarians’ or ‘tritheists’ or whatever, let them.  The dangers on the other side are far greater.

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This is a re-working of an older post on One-ness and Three-ness.

Irenaeus on the Old Testament

Leon Sim (sometime commenter here) has written a cracker of an essay on Irenaeus’s understanding of the Old Testament.  Of course that understanding is explicitly christocentric and Trinitarian.

Here are a couple of great quotes from the essay:

Not only does Irenaeus see Christ and the Trinitarian God to be the object of revelation, but he also sees Christ to be the subject or agent of God’s revelation. For Irenaeus, it is not merely incidental, but crucial, that it is the Word who spoke to the patriarchs and prophets, and “preach[ed] both Himself and the Father alike,” (Against Heresies 4.6.6.)…

…In one sense, Irenaeus reads the Old Testament Christologically and Trinitarianly because He sees that the Father does everything through the Son by the Holy Spirit. In another sense, he also does so because he holds creation, salvation and revelation together, that is, it is the Father’s purpose in creation to save and bring men to Himself through the revelation of His Word by the Spirit. Hence if there is to be salvation for humanity in the Old Testament, it must be through the revelation of the Spirit-anointed Son…

…According to Irenaeus, therefore, anyone who follows in the non-Christological interpretation of the Old Testament – assuming that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were unknown or unrecognisable through the Old Testament itself – have followed unbelieving Jews in departing from the true God and any knowledge of Him: “Therefore have the Jews departed from God in not receiving His Word, but imagining that they could know the Father [apart] by Himself, without the Word, that is, without the Son; they being ignorant of that God who spake in human shape to Abraham, and again to Moses.” (Against Heresies 4.7.4.)

Read the whole thing here.

Download an easier to read format here.

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Watch out for the Bible Bloggers

^“38 Jesus said “Watch out for the Bible Bloggers.  They love to parade their stats and gain comments from their adoring readers, ³⁹ to be linked on all the best sites and highly ranked on Technorati. ⁴⁰ They devour the weak and vulnerable and, for a show, make lengthy posts.  Such men will be punished most severely.” 

(Mark 12:38-40, Glen’s Literal (and self-condemning) Translation)

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Thank you preacher- that was boring, uninspired, obscure and moralistic

Of course the words they use are ‘faithful’, ‘clear’, ‘helpful’ and ‘challenging’.

But we all know what they mean.

By the way – when did ‘faithful’ become a synonym for boring? 

I want to be understood on this point – when I advocate gospel-alone evangelism - that is not a licence for boring preaching.  There are illegitimate solutions to boring preaching of course.  These involve taking a shallow gospel understanding and dressing it up with rhetorical flourish and cultural references.  No – that’s not the solution.

But still, boring preaching is a big problem.  Because Jesus is not boring.  So how do we address this?

Go deeper with the gospel.  Be more obsessed with that counter-intuitive word of the cross.  Because this truly evangelical theology (which alone can make sense of the world) will speak into the world radically, surprisingly, provocatively.

If we’re not radical, surprising and provocative – we’re not just being ‘boring’, we’re also being ‘unfaithful’.

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I don’t open the bible to receive a lecture…

I open the bible to receive Christ.

Here’s my sermon on John 20:30-31.  Audio here.

The Scriptures bring me Jesus.  Jesus brings me life.

Sermon text below…

Some more thoughts on glory

I will return to the Piper quote when I’ve got some time.  Meantime, here are some jottings I did a while ago on glory in John.  They are not joined up thoughts, it’s all a bit scattershot…

Jesus insists He will not glorify Himself, but His Father glorifies Him (John 8:50,54).  Glory is other-centred – even for God.

John 13:31 – “Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified IN HIM.”

Let’s think about the ‘Now’.  The Now is the cross.  The cross glorifies God.  This truth has two aspects, both of which need to be held together:

The cross glorifies GOD.

and

THE CROSS glorifies God.

The first is important, and we’ll unpack its trinitarian character below.  But too easily we can trumpet the first without realizing the radical truth latent in the second affirmation.  The cross glorifies God.  God is glorified in His gracious, self-motivated, self-sacrificial, saving action.  Where the Son is lifted up in ignominy, in weakness, in apparent folly – there God is glorified.  What kind of God is glorified by this?  What is His glory, if this is it?  It can be nothing other than His incredible self-giving.

What else to say…

The Father is glorified in the Son and the Son in the Father (17:1-4).  This is an eternal, intra-trinitarian truth.  But it also flows out via the incarnate Son and through His work.

This eternal glory is displayed at the cross. (17:5,24)

It doesn’t stand behind the cross, it IS the cross.

The cross is not a bridge or stepping stone to something else called glory.  The cross is the display of God’s eternal glory.  Whatever Jesus brings us into at the cross, it is the eternal glory of God.

Can we begin to grasp this?  The cross and eternity, eternity and the cross – Jesus wants us to hold these things together somehow.

The glory of God is not simply locked up in eternity – not simply an impenetrable family secret between Father and Son.  It’s not a banqueting hall replete in itself and Christ crucified is merely the door into it.  Christ crucified and the bride He would thereby win is at the heart of it.  The bride is certainly in by grace and not by nature – yet it is God’s glory to include us in His eternal life.

John 17:10 – Jesus speaks of His church and says, “I am glorified in them.”  (KJV)

Again we need to hold onto both sides of this:

JESUS is glorified in the church

and

Jesus is glorified IN THE CHURCH

Wow.  Just as the Father is glorified in the Son, the Son is glorified in His people.

Wrap your head around that one!  The eternal Christ is glorified in His Church.

Now obviously glory is not a something we give to Jesus.  As He says:

“I do not receive glory from men.”  (John 5:41)

We’ve got nothing to offer in the glory stakes.  So then, how is Christ glorified in His church.  It must be because His glory simply is to give Himself to us in incarnation, cross and exaltation.  In this way He is glorified.  Because His grace is His glory.

We therefore participate in the divine glory.  How?  By receiving it.  (John 5:44). 

And so we find ourselves on the receiving end of God’s glory, which IS His trinitarian life overflowing in creation, salvation and judgement.

But not only does this glory spread out from Father to Son and Son to Church, such glory is meant to draw in the whole world:

“I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”  (John 17:23)

So then:

God’s glory is the cross.

It is other-centred.

It is ecstatic (‘ek’ – out of; ’stasis’ – where you stand) and eccentric (out of the centre).

It overflows to include us.

We do not add to it but it is His glory to make us part of it!

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Trinity Day-Conference in Swansea

UPDATE:  If you’re going from London, can you give Josh VB a lift?  See details in comments

How about a day of teaching on the Trinity from Paul Blackham, Richard Bewes and Martin Downes, hosted by Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, Swansea!  Sounds good to me.

Saturday 14 November from 10am, £10 including lunch. 

Paul Blackham will present two sessions on the Trinity in the Pentateuch.  Richard Bewes will speak on the pastoral implications of the Trinity.  Martin Downes will ask ‘Whatever happened to the Angel of the LORD?’ 

If I could make it, I’d be there with bells on.  Steve Levy, the pastor there, has assured me that they can provide accommodation for anyone travelling from a distance.  You can contact Steve and the church via their website.

So if you’re in the UK and free next Saturday – do yourself a favour and be encouraged and stimulated by the greatest of biblical themes and some wonderful teaching and fellowship.

The Truth that is in Jesus [Thawed out Thursday]

Given our current discussion about apologetics, thought I’d thaw out this post…

 

We’ve noted the danger of fiting Jesus into a pre-fab system of truth. We don’t want to do that.  But Missy has asked the $64 000 question.  It’s basically this: What do we do when speaking to a non-Christian - isn’t it desirable at least sometimes to bring Christ to them according to their preferred programme?? 

I’m not going to be able to answer this very well.  But I’m just going to give some thoughts as they occur and then I’d love if others chimed in with how they go about this.

My first thought is this:  If we’re doing evangelism then we are necessarily relating Christ to non-Christian thought-forms.  Even if all we do is read out the sermon on the mount it will be heard from within a pre-existing mindset.  What’s more it will be heard as remarkably similar, if not completely continuous, with human philosophies.  Think about it.  We all live in a universe made by, through and for Christ and which proclaims Him in every detail. Everyone is working with the same conceptual raw materials and can do no other than come up with some re-arrangement of Christian truth.  When the pure stuff is brought to bear on discussion people will say ‘Yeah, yeah.  That’s just like X.’

But is it?  And is it ever true to say to a person ‘You know it is just like X.  And I’ll add Y and Z to your X and we’ll build towards saving knowledge of Christ.’

Well let’s think about the nature of truth.  Paul says we find truth in Christ – hidden in Him in fact (Eph 4:21; Col 2:3).  Jesus says He is truth (John 14:6) and even goes so far as to say that God’s word (which He also calls ‘truth’) when not related to Him, leaves people in terrifying ignorance.  (John 5:39f; 17:17). 

Truth is relative.  It stands in strict relation to Christ the Truth (good name for a blog I reckon).  His subjectivity is the one objectivity.  What is there outside of Him in Whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden?  Rearrangements of Christian reality yes – but because of that re-arrangement they are rendered blasphemous falsehoods.  The true test of a proposition is not its conformity to an abstract notion of reality or reason or scientific law.  The true test is its relatedness to Jesus.

It is simply not the case that discrete parcels of truth lie around the universe largely intact.  It is even less true that sinful humanity has some capacity (or inclination!) to assess these propositions, divorced as they are from Christ.  It’s outright Pelagian heresy to imagine that such ‘discrete propositions’ and such ‘objectively assessed’ truth will lead a person to Christ.  Christ leads us into the truth.  Study of abstract truth does not lead us to Christ.

Now, what about non-Christian philosophies?  Can a Christian take a sentence from Homer (either Simpson or the poet!) on their lips and use it to testify to Christ?  Of course!  But in doing so they have vindicated Christ not Homer.  They have not given testimony to the rightness of that proposition in its own context.  They have commandeered it and pressed it into Christ’s service – the service it should have always rendered.  This is precisely the language of 2 Corinthians 10:5 – taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ.

In this verse Paul paints the picture of these renegade ‘thoughts’ that have gone AWOL from Christ.  We arrest them and press them back into the Lord’s service.  But what we don’t do is grant these thoughts a civilian existence, as though they’ll do the Lord’s service no matter what uniform they’re wearing.  No.  Either they’re in obedience to Christ (explicitly wearing the uniform) or they’re a pretension setting itself up against the knowledge of God (2 Cor 10:5).

Ok, but now we’re back to the inescapable problem.  Here is a non-Christian with all their presupposed notions of truth that can only lead them to error.  Now here comes Christ the Truth.  And we’ve already conceded that the non-Christian cannot but hear Christ according to their presupposed notions.  So what do we do?

Well here’s one tempting response.  Simply oppose everything they say.  They buy into post-modernism – we counter with modernism.  They’re comfortable with irrational claims – we respond with rationalism.  They say ‘truth is relative’ – we insist ‘truth is absolute.’  They indulge in immorality – we preach morality.  Well you may well get a discussion going.  But have you brought them to Christ?  Or to the 1950s? 

Tim Keller ministers among the groovy lefties of Manhattan.  What’s his approach?  Traditional religious values?  No, as he likes to say the bible is not left wing or right wing – it’s from above.  Whatever we say into these debates must make that clear.

Another thought.  Jesus did not come onto the world stage addressing ‘universal human concerns’.  He wasn’t born into the Areopagus as the Ultimate Philosopher.   He did not open with: ‘We all know the truth about relationships, money, power etc.  I’ve come to bring you the ultimate experience of these.’  No.  He comes specifically and almost exclusively onto the Jewish scene, addressing Jewish hopes and concerns.  He comes as Messiah into a very specific, encultered setting which He had been meticulously preparing for Himself for centuries.  A people had been formed, a law had been given, a land, kings, prophets, priests, the Scriptures.  And the understanding, ideals, hopes and problems of this people are actually quite strange to the natural ear.

They worried about ceremonial cleanness and atoning sacrifice; about land and exile; about Sabbath and the throne of David.  They were a particular people with particular patriarchs and a particular God called Yahweh who was (and is), among other things, their tribal deity.  They were concerned about His particular promises – His covenant – and their particular fulfilment.  The Jesus-shaped hole at the heart of Israel was a very peculiar shape indeed – at least to modern sensibilities.  It is, in many ways, very different to what contemporary evangelists consider as the Jesus-shaped hole of today’s ‘enquirer’. 

And so when the LORD incarnate comes as His own Prophet, He does a couple of peculiar things that we modern evangelists don’t really do.  First He comes in fulfilment of the Scriptures.  All the Gospel writers do this but Matthew especially introduces Jesus as the fulfilment of the Old Testament.  Here is the One at the centre of this history and this people and these hopes.  Do we present Jesus like that? 

The other peculiar thing Jesus does is to begin by saying ‘Repent and believe the gospel.’  That’s not His punchline – that’s His opener.  ‘Repent and believe the gospel’ He commands.  And then He unpacks the life of the kingdom.  On those terms He speaks of relationships, money, power etc.  First the beatitudes – the gatehouse to the kingdom – then a description of this kingdom life.

What would evangelism look like that followed this pattern?  Something like this I think: “You’ve been speaking to me about love / freedom / fear / power / addiction / sexuality / abortion / capital punishment / healthcare / education / the state / animal rights / whatever.  Jesus has a lot to say on those issues but I’m going to have to back up from our discussion and give you a bird’s eye view.  Let me give you the bible’s view on X in three minutes.”  If your friend isn’t willing to do this then they’re not willing to have a serious discussion anyway.  Present your biblical theology of the issue with Jesus at the centre.  Now Jesus is your non-negotiable.  He is the vantage point from which you address the subject.  He is not in question – everything else is.  Even use language like “For the sake of argument, work with me on this.  I’m describing Christ’s universe – He made all things, He came into the world to reconcile them etc etc…  Doesn’t that explain perfectly what we find when it comes to X?’

What you don’t want to do is say ‘X is absolutely true.  Now please investigate Jesus and I hope you find that He fits the criteria already established by X.’  I find Karl Barth’s warning on this particularly salient:

The great danger of apologetics is “the domesticating of revelation… the process of making the Gospel respectable. When the Gospel is offered to man, and he stretches out his hand to receive it and takes it into his hand, an acute danger arises which is greater than the danger that he may not understand it and angrily reject it. The danger is that he may accept it and peacefully and at once make himself its lord and possessor, thus rendering it inoccuous, making that which chooses him something which he himself has chosen, which therefore comes to stand as such alongside all the other things that he can also choose, and therefore control.” (II/1, p141)

More Barth quotes here.

Anyway I’ve got a few more things to say but I’ve rambled on too long.  Maybe a worked example or two would help.  See this example from a wedding sermon.

But I’ll leave it there for now.  What do you think?

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The Gospel is not a good idea

I’ve just come back from a prayer meeting focussed on mission events we’re holding next year.  The woman I was praying with earnestly asked the Father,

Lord, we don’t want to persuade people that the Gospel is a good idea.  We want them to meet the living Lord Jesus and be born again.

My Amen was hearty indeed!

We all love the phrase: ‘The Gospel is not good advice, it’s good news.’   Or at least, we should love it.  It’s an essential reminder that we don’t preach a moral ladder to Jesus.  Instead we announce that He has come down.

But I am worried about a similar error in our evangelism.  It’s thinking that the Gospel is a good idea - even the best idea.  The crowning ‘world view’ among ‘world views’. 

In reality this is precisely the  ‘good advice’ problem transposed to epistemology.  Where ‘good advice’ preaching proclaims a moral ladder to Jesus, ‘good idea’ preaching proclaims a reasoned ladder to Jesus. 

Both approaches are just as opposed to the good news as each other.  One is moral pelagianism, the other is intellectual pelagianism.

But for people who believe in Scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone – let’s please preach the gospel alone.  That is evangelism to the glory of God alone.

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You’re in good company

Just so my regular readers know, you’re vastly outnumbered on this blog by image searchers (so wordpress tells me).

The most popular searches  are ‘kebab’, ‘waterfall’, ‘puffer fish’, ‘fat cat’ and ‘ned flanders’…

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…which, I think you’ll agree, represents with eloquent simplicity the profound and far-reaching concerns of Christ the Truth..

Theo-centric?

In a previous post I asked for feedback on this quote:

And so the biblical mindset starts with the assumption that God is the center of reality. All thinking starts with the assumption that God has basic rights as the Creator of all things. He has goals that fit with his nature and perfect character. Then the biblical mindset moves out from this center and interprets the world, with God and his rights and goals as the measure of all things.

No prizes for guessing this comes from John Piper.

In the comments of the last post people mentioned lots of the same issues that I have with it.  Let me go through my beefs.  I’ll post this in stages.  Today I’ll just talk about the first sentence.

1) In the first sentence we are encouraged to be God-centred.  Good.  But which God?

Cue groans from across the blogosphere.  I know you’re thinking ‘Glen, go and drink some beer, shoot some pool and cut the man some slack.’   But before you think I’m just being nasty or pedantic, let me just say there’s nothing wrong with this sentence and I don’t at all begrudge Piper saying it.  You’ll find such sentences on my own lips.  I’m just picking up on this phrase to highlight some of the things that go on in theological discussions.

Here’s the point.  The person who cries ‘God-centred’ the loudest is not necessarily the most biblical.  (Nor is the person who cries ‘biblical’, but that’s another story).  The absolutely key question is what kind of God is central to our thinking.  And that question is not resolved in the slightest by saying He’s central.  In fact to say that ‘God’ is central to our theology is basically a tautology.

As Simone Weil says:

“No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. Consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol.”

We’re all God-centred.  The question is, which God?

I have little patience for theologians or bloggers who claim a superiority because they are ‘God-centred’.  Often it’s accompanied by the accusation that their opponent is ‘Man-centred’.  (And one of these days I’ll write a post about how they’re both wrong – we should be ‘God-Man (i.e. Christ)-centred’).  But really, in Simone Weil’s sense, we’re all ‘God’-centred.  What we really have to do is sort out who this God is who is central to our thinking.

But let’s note well:  the fact that our theology should be (and, in a sense, always is!) utterly consumed by and radically focussed upon God, in no sense tells you whether God Himself is consumed by and focussed upon Himself.  Those are two entirely separate questions.

One is about our theological method, the other is about the ‘theos‘ who, of necessity, stands at the centre of it.

Of course we should have our hearts and minds fixed on the living God, and of course if we fixed our ultimate affections elsewhere that would be idolatry.  Ok, great.  What bemuses me is the claim that God Himself must fix His affections on Himself lest He be an idolater too.  Do you see how theo-centrism as a theological method gets confused with theo-centrism as a doctrine of God?

And, more dangerously, do you see how such a method is in fact anthropocentric? It’s an argument that says ‘We would be idolaters to set our affections on lesser beings, so God must be an idolater if He did that.’  It’s a theology from below.  And yet I find it on the lips of the very people who want to accuse all around them of man-centredness.

So let’s be clear – everyone is already God-centred in their theology.  The real issue is what kind of God we’re talking about.  And the question of theo-centric method does not at all settle the question of God’s own being.  While we must be theo-centric, we have to admit that God Himself is higher than the ‘musts’ that apply to us.  The theologian who says God “must” love Himself higher than the creature has actually followed a theo-logic that is less than God-centred.

We do not by nature know the kind of being that God is.  And we cannot reason it out from the basis of how we find life as creatures.  To tell a person that ‘God’ must be at the centre of their thinking will not tell them anything really.  God cannot be assumed from the outset, He must be revealed.

The fact that all the gods of human religion are self-centred means nothing.  The fact that we are called to be ‘God-centred’ means nothing for God’s own life and being.  It neither means that God should be centred on us, nor on Himself.  The question of His own being is the key question and it can only be resolved as God reveals Himself.

Now I’m not saying that this first sentence from Piper commits him to any of the things I’ve outlined here.  As I’ve said, you could find the same sentence on my own lips.  I’m just trying to clear some ground and say what being ‘theo-centric’ is and isn’t and how it can and can’t be used in these discussions.

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More to follow…

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Four hands better than two

From

10 reasons blogging might be ok after all

In the last 48 hours the following has happened in my blogging world

1. I’ve been part of a fascinating discussion on a cutting-edge topic in contemporary theology.  And little old me got to sit at the table along with PhD specialists and theological educators in the field.  Great fun.
2. I’ve been able to help someone via email as they make their journey into Christian faith.
3. I’ve been able to share ministry resources with people that first appeared on the blog.
4. I’ve read wonderfully heartwarming things and been gobsmacked by extremely insightful comments.
5. People I know have been able to contact me by searching me online.
6. People I don’t know but who share common interests have come across me and we’ve corresponded.
7. Discussions about seemingly disparate topics on different blogs have converged around common themes, giving added insight.
8. Via email I’ve learnt about another blogger’s background and Christian story – very encouraging.
9. Commenters have helpfully pointed out where my tone has been unhelpful and obscuring.
10. Maybe best of all, when a comment crossed the line there was repentance and reconciliation (as opposed to nastiness and retaliation).  More of that please.

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He loves us because He loves us

I wasn’t a huge fan of this paragraph quoted on Tony’s blog (as my comment makes clear).

But I love this one:

Thomas Manton, from a sermon on John 3:16

“Love is at the bottom of all. We may give a reason of other things, but we cannot give a reason of his love, God showed his wisdom, power, justice, and holiness in our redemption by Christ. If you ask why he made so much ado about a worthless creature, raised out of the dust of the ground at first, and had now disordered himself, and could be of no use to him? We have an answer at hand, Because he loved us. If you continue to ask, But why did he love us? We have no other answer but because he loved us; for beyond the first rise of things we cannot go. And the same reason is given by Moses, Deuteronomy 7:7–8: ‘The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people, for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you…’ That is, in short, he loved you because he loved you. All came from his free and undeserved mercy; higher we cannot go in seeking after the causes of what is done for our salvation.”

–Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, 2:340–341.

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Huh?

Huh?

That’s what I’m talkin about.

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What do you make of this?

Here’s a quote.  A quote about foundations and starting points.  What do you make of it?

And so the biblical mindset starts with the assumption that God is the center of reality. All thinking starts with the assumption that God has basic rights as the Creator of all things. He has goals that fit with his nature and perfect character. Then the biblical mindset moves out from this center and interprets the world, with God and his rights and goals as the measure of all things.

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Glory is not…

Glory is not a something that God gets.  Glory is the display of who God is. 

And this display, shining out from Christ and Him crucified, reveals the overflowing plenitude of God’s being as Giver.

Glory is not what lies behind the cross (the cross considered as a veil or mere stepping-stone).  God’s glory is this self-giving cross.

It’s not ‘the Giver gets the glory.’  It’s – ‘God’s glory is His giving’

Glory is not what God gets.  God’s grace is His glory.

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Beating importunately on Scripture

A friend preached a wonderful sermon on the bible last Sunday.  He spoke, among other things, of Luther’s attitude to the bible:

The whole reformation was birthed by a tenacious asking, seeking and knocking at the door of Scripture:

I beat importunately upon Paul at that place (Rom 1:17), most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted. At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words… There I began to understand… I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open doors.

Do I beat importunately upon Scripture?  Luther spoke of treating the bible like the rock in the wilderness – smiting it with the rod until water gushes out.  Do I do that?

When he lectured on Ecclesiastes he found it tough.  He wrote to a friend “Solomon the preacher, is giving me a hard time, as though he begrudged anyone lecturing on him. But he must yield.”

Wow!  It’s been a while since I’ve wrestled with Scripture like that.  Do we really believe that there’s life-giving Waters in this book?  Well then, let’s smite it till our thirst is slaked!

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I in Christ, Christ in me

You who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ  (Gal 3:27)

I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you  (Gal 4:19)

Christ put on me

Christ formed in me

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Christ surrounding me

Christ birthed in me

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Christ already

Christ progressing

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Christ: My status

Christ: My stature

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I in Christ

Christ in me

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Did you meet safely yesterday?

Then be thankful:

ht OldAdam

Here’s a website where you can write to Christians imprisoned for their faith.  They will tell you the background to different prisoners, translate your encouragements into the approapriate language and tell you where to send your letter.

Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow-prisoners, and those who are ill-treated as if you yourselves were suffering.  (Heb 13:3)

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It was Mormonism I was looking for all along

A good and busy Sunday.  I’ll get around to answering comments and emails soon.  Just wanted to blog this while it’s still fresh.

This afternoon I had two very different meetings with a similar theme.

One person – a really great Christian – confessed to me that they’d prayed for God to enter their life many thousands of times but never got the answer they were looking for.  I could relate – this describes the entirety of my teenage years.  (See this talk for more)

The other meeting was with some Mormons who knocked on our door.   They both told me they became convinced Mormons when they prayed for an experience of the Holy Ghost.  This apparently confirmed to them the truth of the gospel as restored by Joseph Smith.  As the little leaflet they gave me says: “The Holy Ghost confirms the truth through feelings, thoughts and impressions.”  Both of them described this as a private experience of peace and joy.  It was unclear how this brief religious feeling related to the status of Joseph Smith as a prophet and priest, or the truth of the book of Mormon.

But apparently this is the way to become a Mormon.  As with Smith himself, pray James 1:5 and something will happen.  My leaflet tells me, “This knowledge can be miraculous and life changing [Smith met the Father and the Son personally!!] but it usually comes as a quiet assurance.”

Clearly the missionaries I met were at the ‘quiet assurance’ end of Holy Ghost experiences.  But it struck me after they left that they had found what my friend was after, and what I’d been seeking as a teenager.  I wanted a private religious experience – shining lights, weak knees, woozy stomach.  I wanted peace and joy as I perched on the end of my bed.  I wanted some kind of numinous glow, wordless ecstasy, love and groovy vibes.  Now that I think about it – I was very much into Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground at the time.  I think I basically wanted spiritual heroin.

But again the question would have to be asked – what exactly is the link between this spiritual experience and the truth that is supposedly being authenticated?  The Mormons had a spiritual high – but that doesn’t answer the question, ‘which spirit has produced it?’  A Mars bar could give me warm fuzzies, what’s that got to do with Jesus?

Perhaps this is another case where we need to reconsider faith in more biblical ways.  We commonly think of faith as our work (a feeling to be generated) and as something related to religion in general.  On this understanding, all kinds of people have ‘faith’ because they manage to work up generic religious sentiments.

In the bible, faith is simply our receiving Jesus.  Not our work but God’s.  And its content is not ‘religious feeling’ in general, but ‘Christ and Him crucified’ in particular.

And how is Christ received?  Not perched on the end of my bed.  He is received in word and sacrament.

Ever noticed how parallel Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 are?  Well look in particular at Eph 5:18-20 and Col 3:16-17.  Being filled with the Spirit is parallel with ‘letting the word of Christ dwell in you richly.’  Want to be filled with the Spirit?  Be filled with His words.  And these words are the words of Christ – He Himself is communicated in them.

So I don’t say to my friend that spiritual experiences are unimportant.  But neither do I advocate the Mormon route.  God is found in Christ and Christ is found in His word.  We ought never to stop short of a personal encounter with the living Christ.  But we should never seek such encounters apart from where He Himself is given.  And He is freely given in word and sacrament.

It’s just interesting to me that a cult founded in mistrusting the word and trusting personal experience can foster spiritual understandings that are so close to home.  Let’s give up on looking for the spiritual heroin – it’s such a sordid, selfish and unsatisfying fix.  Let’s instead receive fellowship with the living Christ, not because of our own quest for experience but on the basis of His prior and utter self-giving.  The encounter is already real and true in the gospel – He is yours.  “The Son of God loved you and gave Himself for you.” (Gal 2:20)   If you’ve believed that sentence, you have experienced the Holy Spirit’s assurance.  If you haven’t received that word, then you must know that you’ll receive Christ in no other way.  Continue to ask, seek and knock by all means.  But return continually to the place where He’s already freely offered.  Right there you already have Him.

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The Church in the Wilderness

Over the past 6 weeks I’ve been preaching on the Church in the Wilderness.

We are just like the Israelites – saved from the kingdom of darkness, saved through the waters of baptism, headed for our promised hope.  But in between we are in a time of testing, hardship and discipline.

We’re no longer in Egypt.  But we’re not yet in the promised land either.  Instead we must go through many troubles to enter the kingdom of God.

In the meantime we have the assurance of His blood, empowerment by His Spirit, provision for every need, guidance for the day and a Leader who, unlike Moses, has made it into the promised hope as our Fore-runner, Champion and Priest.

It’s not an attempt to plumb the depths of Exodus and Numbers.  It’s really just trying to get our expectations for the Christian life straight.  We are in the Wilderness.  Christ is in the Promised Land.  We are in Him.

Co-ordinating those truths in our hearts and minds is a large part of living wisely in this overlap of the ages.

Here are the sermons:

Introduction: What’s the wilderness all about? (1 Cor 10; Deut 8).

Text.  Audio.

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Passover:  The LORD’s salvation through judgement (Exodus 12-13).

Text.  Audio.

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Red Sea:  Not just sheltered – brought out (Exodus 14-15).

Text.  Audio.

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Provision:  He gives us today our daily bread  (Exodus 16-17).

Text.  Audio (first half of sermon audio missing).

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Presence:  The LORD is with us (Numbers 9; Genesis 15).

Text.  Audio.

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Leaders:  Moses falls short but Jesus is our great Joshua  (Num 27; Heb 3-4).

Text.  Audio.

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If Satan’s got that much cheek, there’s no way I’m gonna have less!

Wednesday afternoon bible study.  Hebrews 4:14-16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence…”

Sheila pipes up with my favourite bible study comment ever:

Well of course I’m going to approach with confidence.  I mean the blinking devil waltzes into God’s throne room doesn’t he?!  What a nerve!  Blasted devil walks straight in.  Well if Satan’s got that much cheek, there’s no way I’m gonna have less.

Job 1:6

Are rugby players the best theologians?

A friend and I were discussing the negative impact of a certain theologian on the evangelical landscape.  (No, not him.  Nor him.  I haven’t blogged about this guy).

Anyway my friend brought up an aspect of his personal life that exemplified the problems in this theology.

I said, “Yeah, but when discussing this publicly, you can’t raise that.”  He said “Why not?”

Hm.  Good question.

I found myself falling back on a sporting analogy (which is a sure sign you’ve lost the theological argument).  I said “Well, you need to play the ball and not the man.”  There was a pause on the other end of the phone line.  My friend’s thick Welsh accent came back:  “You’re not a rugby player then?”

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See, in  rugby you watch the ball and you take out the man in possession.  You take him down with a ball-and-all tackle and you pile on.  And if the ball goes to someone else, you take them down.

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You don’t play the man without the ball – but if he’s got the ball, your orders are to ‘terminate with extreme prejudice.’

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My friend continued… “Just read the theological debates of the reformation.  They played the ball and the man.  You can’t separate them.  Theology is personal.”

Well, what could I say.  I’d been exposed.  I could only pray he wouldn’t ask me what sports I did play.  You see my winter sport was hockey.  And not ice hockey – that would be a fine Lutheran pursuit wouldn’t it?  You can just imagine a huge body check on Erasmus, face pressed into the plexiglass.

No, my winter sport was field hockey.  You know – the game where the referee blows foul every 30 seconds because of some kind of obstruction, stick check, foot violation.  It’s the most clinical of sports.  You play the ball only.

And my summer sport?  Cricket.  This abstracts man from ball by a good 22 yards.  But actually it leads to a very passive-aggressive atmosphere.  You bowl the ball, and it doesn’t matter who’s at the other end.  But off the ball, in between deliveries, the fielding side take the opportunity to cast aspersions on the batsman’s technique, girth and sexual orientation.

The lesson?  Never debate a cricketer.  They’re all clinical and polite on the surface – dressed in white for goodness sakes.  But you just know they’re dissing your momma behind your back.

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Anyway, what do you think?  Do we take the man out along with the ball?

And how do your sporting experiences shape the way you engage theology?

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No merit in man’s receiving – only in God’s giving

“To be bursting with thanksgiving is a true witness of the Spirit within us. For the voice of thanksgiving speaks without ceasing of the goodness of God. It claims nothing. It sees no merit in man’s receiving but only in God’s giving. It marvels at his mercy. It is the language of joy because it need look no longer to its own resources.

The Christian rejoicing in this blessing of a thankful heart will have his eyes fixed upon the right person and the right place, Christ at God’s right hand. He cannot be taken up with himself without being immediately reminded that everything he possesses is the gift of God.”

R.C. Lucas, The Message of Colossians and Philemon

ht Rosemary

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Thanksgiving for a God who is already good, merciful and radically, super-abundantly giving.  Daddy already looks good, and I’m just grateful!

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Whitefield on The LORD our Righteousness

Lex Loizides quotes Whitefield’s oft repeated sermon: The LORD our righteousness.

‘Alas, my heart almost bleeds! What a multitude of precious souls are now before me! How shortly must all be ushered into eternity! And yet, O cutting thought! Was God now to require all your souls, how few, comparatively speaking, could really say, ‘the Lord our righteousness!’

‘…You need not fear the greatness or number of your sins. For are you sinners? So am I. Are you the chief of sinners? So am I. Are you backsliding sinners? So am I. And yet the Lord (for ever adored be his rich, free and sovereign grace) the Lord is my righteousness.

Come then, O young man, who (as I acted once myself) are playing the prodigal, and wandering away afar off from your heavenly Father’s house, come home, come home, and leave your swine’s trough. Feed no longer on the husks of sensual delights: for Christ’s sake arise, and come home!

‘Your heavenly Father now calls you. See yonder the best robe, even the righteousness of his dear Son, awaits you. See it, view it again and again.

‘Consider at how dear a rate it was purchased, even by the blood of God. Consider what great need you have of it. You are lost, undone, damned for ever, without it. Come then, poor, guilty prodigals, come home…’

Do check out Lex’s blog, he’s taking us through the Great Awakening in such a heart-warming and exciting way.

Happy Creation Day

Once again, Happy Birthday creation!!

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(h/t Archbishop Ussher)

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And lest we ever forget – it’s also a big Happy Birthday to Weird Al Yankovic

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A website I just checked says he’s only 49.  Goes to show, you can’t always trust the ages widely reported.

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And if you weren’t around then, here’s the link to our epic 94 comment discussion on creation and evolution: the evolution of a creationist. Fascinating stuff.

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Australians rejoice at new book title

Tim Chester’s new book title thrills the heart of Aussie Anglophobes:

Living Pom Free

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But it looks like it might be a good read.

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Nicene Trinitarianism (a re-post, slightly reworked)

The trinity is a very old doctrine. See The Trinitarian Old Testament for just how old.

But the council of Nicea gave us certain terminology that is accepted by both East and West.  The creed that came from it (and here I refer to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381) is basic to all Christian churches.  Yet its doctrine of God is a particular one – one that is sometimes unwittingly (sometimes wittingly) side-lined, ignored or opposed.

The first thing to notice is Nicea’s doctrine of ‘the one God.’  To the untrained eye, it looks like it doesn’t have one.  It simply says ‘We believe in one God’ and then immediately goes on to speak of ‘the Father Almighty’, ‘one Lord Jesus Christ’ and ‘the Holy Spirit’.  In this it follows Paul in 1 Corinthians 8:6

“For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.”

The one God and the one Lord are the Father and the Son.  It is not the case that the one God is the omni-being of philosophical theism and the Persons are sub-species of this divine stuff.  No.  Nicea gives absolutely no definition of the one God except to unfold His being in the description of the Three.

No doubt many later theologians would have loved to have travelled back in time to Nicea and inserted a lengthy treatise on the ‘omnis’ somewhere between “I believe in God…” and “…the Father Almighty”. But Nicea doesn’t go there.  There’s not even a footnote between the two.  The one God is the Father Almighty, to Whom is joined the Lord Jesus Christ in the unity of the Spirit who is the Lord, the Giver of life.  Athanasius and co. will not let you force a breach between a description of the One and the Three.  To describe the One is to unfold the Three.

And what does Nicea tell us about the ousia (being) of this triune God?  Again a typical western theologian may be disappointed.  The only reference in the creed to this ‘ousia’ is that controversial phrase ‘homo-ousios’.  Jesus, the Son, is ‘homo-ousion tw patri‘ (of one being with the Father).  Please note, the creed does not give us a prior definition of ‘ousia’ which is then mapped onto the three Persons.  (See these diagrams).  Instead we infer what the ‘ousia’ is from the fact that Father and Son are ‘homo-ousios’.

Jesus, in all His difference from the Father – i.e. born of a virgin, crucified, buried, raised, ascended – is still homo-ousios with the Father. In His difference He is divine.  And in His divinity He is ‘God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made.” Even in His divinity He is ‘ek tes ousia tw patri‘ (out of the being of the Father). There are important differences between Father and Son that are not papered over but rather affirmed by, and included in, the homo-ousios.

The homo-ousios does not denote three-fold repetition but rather, in TF Torrance’s words:

“The Father/Son relationship falls within the one being of God.” (Trinitarian Faith, p119).

Homoousios “meant that the Son and the Father are equally God within the one being of God.” (ibid, p122)

The homo-ousios upholds the distinction (as well as unity) of Father and Son. Remember that you can’t be ‘homo’ with yourself.  And it points us to the fact that the Father is Begettor, the Son Begotten.  The Father from Himself, the Son from the Father (even according as He is God, contra Calvin but with Nicea!).

There are genuine differences in Persons that in no way compromise their equality of divinity. There is never a time when the Son is not homo-ousios with the Father nor is there a time when the Son is not begotten of His Father. Therefore there is not an ousia of the Father that could ever be separately conceived and then assigned in equal measure to Father, Son and Spirit. Instead the ousia of God is a mutually constituting communion in which Father, Son and Spirit share.  The ousia of the trinity consists in three Persons who are ‘homo’ with one another.  While Nicea does not say explicitly that the ‘ousia’ is the communion of Persons, it points decidedly in this direction. (See Torrance’s ‘Trinitarian Faith’ for more).

All this is to say that distinctions between Father, Son and Spirit are upheld within the divine nature. The divine nature is not a set of pre-determined attributes which are identically mapped onto the Three. The divine nature is constituted by difference, distinction, mutuality, reciprocity – it is a divine life (a dance even!) not a divine stuff.

Compare this with so much doctrine of God in the west.  First an ousia of ‘omnis’ is determined.  The one God is discussed for 600 pages in terms of ‘uncreated Creator’.  And then we face the Three.  What do we then do?  Simply give to each Person this CV of attributes and insist that this is what the Nicene homo-ousios demanded!  On this understanding all difference, distinction, mutuality and reciprocity is banished from the status of deity.  In preference to the lively interplay of Father, Son and Spirit, a ’simple’ doctrine of the One is forwarded.  And God’s own being is conceived of as a stuff not a life.

Think I prefer Nicea!

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Christianity Explored – week 3 – Why did Jesus come?

My talk from last night.  (I’ll publish text and other talks later)

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Preaching resources

Jason Goroncy lists many resources helpful for the evangelical preacher.

Of his list he says:

I have here, on the main, deliberately chosen to not list books that attend primarily to issues of homiletical method (there are a plethora of excellent studies available on this) but rather to draw attention to those in which the evangelical content of preaching is the main concern. This decision was made because it is here at this point that the church faces its greatest crisis. We have loads of ‘excellent speakers’ and ‘gifted communicators’ who have absolutely nothing to say that’s worth hearing, let alone the Word of God.

Kind of what I was saying with: We don’t need better preachers, we need to preach a better gospel.

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We make God look like a jerk, He makes looking like a jerk truly glorious

A further thought:

What do you look like when you hold out your arms to obstinate people?  (Rom 10:21)  You look like a jerk.  You look completely foolish.

But God makes this arms-outstretched, suffering love His glory.  In spite, not because of us.

If we’re going to oppose synergism (and we should) let’s be thorough-going about it.  Just a thought.

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Now Jimmy, don’t make Daddy look bad, He’s counting on you

I’m not sure I like this from John Piper.  Not sure I like it at all.  It’s an illustration directed at kids in a 1999 sermon, recently quoted by Justin Taylor.

Your daddy is standing in a swimming pool out a little bit from the edge. You are, let’s say, three years old and standing on the edge of the pool. Daddy holds out his arms to you and says, “Jump, I’ll catch you. I promise.” Now, how do you make your daddy look good at that moment? Answer: trust him and jump. Have faith in him and jump. That makes him look strong and wise and loving. But if you won’t jump, if you shake your head and run away from the edge, you make your daddy look bad. It looks like you are saying, “he can’t catch me” or “he won’t catch me” or “it’s not a good idea to do what he tells me to do.” And all three of those make your dad look bad.

But you don’t want to make God look bad. So you trust him. Then you make him look good–which he really is. And that is what we mean when we say, “Faith glorifies God” or “Faith gives God glory.” It makes him look as good as he really is. So trusting God is really important….

…Faith glorifies God. That is why God planned for faith to be the way we are justified.

What’s odd to me (among other things) is that this comes from the man who most loudly champions the self-glorification of God!  He’s forever saying that God’s chief end is to glorify Himself, God is the most self-centred being in the universe, etc, etc.

Now I’ve written elsewhere my problems with this kind of theology of glory (here, here and here).  Fundamentally I think Piper lacks a trinitarian/incarnational shape to this glorification language.  He needs to be talking about the other-centredness of Father, Son and Spirit.  When we think out our theology from an explicitly trinitarian logic then actually it is the glorification of the Other that defines the being of God.  The Father glorifies the Son by the Spirit and the Son glorifies the Father by the Spirit.  Wonderfully, when the Son is born of a woman, born under law, He comes to be glorified by the Father as Man and to glorify the Father as Man.

Now this is the sense in which God glorifies Himself.  The Son offers to the Father the true obedience, trust, worship and sacrifice. He does this in my place, on my behalf and as my substitute.  And even when I don’t desire or glorify God, Christ does.

It’s for this reason that TF Torrance can say in Theology in Reconstruction:

[A truly trinitarian and incarnational theology is] not concerned simply with a divine revelation which demands from us all a human response, but with a divine revelation which already includes a true and appropriate and fully human response as part of its achievement for us and to us and in us.

And the upshot of all this is that we don’t have Daddy on the sidelines needing little old us to make Him look good.  He has Big Ol’ Jesus to do that, which is good.  Because frankly I’m not up to the job and neither are you.  And to be honest it’s not the most attractive doctrine of God is it? Feed me, Seymour!

But then only a deeply and thoroughly trinitarian doctrine of God can ever avoid making God look needy (see this sermon).  It’s always a good diagnostic to check – if in my theology I have a needy God, I’m probably not being trinitarian enough.

I’m afraid to say I sense a lack here with Piper.  (I mean ‘I’m afraid’ because I reckon I’ll get some serious resistance to this.  Btw, have I mentioned I have deep and ongoing respect for the man?  I do, I promise!  But occasionally fresh-faced, big-mouth with a red guitar, three chords and a blog gets something stuck in his craw).

And if anyone complains that I’m taking an illustration for kids too far, I’d invite you to read some more Piper.  He writes the same stuff for grown-ups too.  A lot actually.

Now you might say – this is not about saving faith, it’s about daily trusting the Lord.  I’d reply a) there are still problems and b) look again at the final sentence.

You might ask, why the picture at the top?  Well, maybe it’s becoming more clear.  I believe Piper has his theology of self-glorification backwards which means something else has to be brought in to do the job of giving God His due – little old us.  And in the end, it just looks silly.

My blogging’s been very dull for the last couple of weeks.  Maybe this will spice things up!

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Paul Blackham spoils everything (by stating the obvious)

Tim Keller likes the up-hill approach to a sermon.  Create tension, heighten the tension, resolve it in Christ.

As we’ve seen, Karl Barth thought sermons should run down-hill – from Christ.

Here Paul Blackham lets the cat out of the bag early.  But as he says “It’s not a mystery!”

Paul’s recent Daniel sermons…

Daniel 1

Daniel 2

Daniel 3

Daniel 4

Daniel 5

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Sermon introductions

It’s confession time:  I began my sermon tonight with “”a joke”".  You know, feed-line, punch-line, wait for response, polite church laughter, tenuous link to sermon.

ugggh.  I think I need a shower.

I post this quotation as penance.  Here’s Barth warning us all away from such ‘plain heresy’:

The theological damage of sermon introductions is in any event incredibly extensive… For what do they really involve at root?  Nothing other than the search for a point of contact, for an analogue in us which can be a point of entry for the Word of God.  It is believed that this little door to the inner self must first be found and opened before it is worthwhile to bring the message.  No! This is plain heresy…. We have simply to approach people knowing that there is nothing in them that we can address, no humanum, no analogia entis of any kind that we can put in touch with the divinum, but only the one great possibility which has no need of our skills, which alone is efficacious, and which does not need us as advocates… We have simply to assume the attitude of a messenger who has something to say.  We have no need to build a slowly ascending ramp, for there is no height that we have to reach.  No!  Something has to come down from above.  And this can happen only when the Bible speaks from the very outset. (Homiletics, p124-125)

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More on union

Some new Mike Reeves talks on union with Christ.

Some talks by Mark Garcia also on union (haven’t heard them yet but they’ve been recommended by Dave K)

UPDATE:  Dave also recommends these by Richard Gaffin (though he hasn’t heard all of them)

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Justified in union with Christ

Having just thought about Calvin and union with Christ – here is Mike’s second talk on justification.  We receive His righteousness in Jesus.

Do give some time to these talks.  It’s a chance to be refreshed and liberated by gospel truth.

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Calvin – theologian of union with Christ

Here’s 5 minutes with Lane Tipton.  Or just read the summary quotes below.  Good stuff.

ht Bobby.

“In the contemporary setting today… there is a tendency to emphasize the forensic element of the gospel as being perhaps the whole gospel, such that justification begins to eclipse the very Person of Christ Himself.”

[Instead Calvin's theology is a theology of union with Christ.  Therefore...] “You first possess Christ and then in Christ you are justified.”

“Likewise if you want to be holy you must first possess Christ and then in Him you will be holy.”

“The priority for Calvin is Christ.  And that breeds a very healthy christocentrism – a very healthy Christ-centredness in the Christian life.  Believers are united to a Person.”

“… In offering the church a theology that focusses on union and communion with the living Person of the Son of God, Calvin avoids pushing us in the direction of accepting abstract benefits of the gospel and points us to the crucified and resurrected Benefactor of the gospel in terms of Whom we receive every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”

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You always knew Bert was a Gansta Rapper

Ernie doesn’t convince me.  But Bert was born to it.

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Why should I let you into my heaven?

From Doug Wilson:

I was talking to a woman one time… and she told me sheepishly about her first reaction to that great grace question hypothetically presented at the pearly gates — “why should I let you into heaven?” The right answer of course is a variant of “because of the blood of Jesus Christ, plus nothing.” She told me that her first instinctive reaction was, “Gee, I hope I remember to say that.”

See how faith can so easily be turned into a work?

If you are going to ask and answer this question, I think this is a much better response (from De Regno Christi)

[When I'm asked 'Why should I let you into my heaven?']  I’ll bow and be silent. Then I’ll hear a voice,
“Father, he’s mine.”

Do you see?  It’s not your faith that saves.  It’s Christ.

Here’s Spurgeon (read the whole magnificent devotion here):

Remember, therefore, it is not thy hold of Christ that saves thee–it is Christ; it is not thy joy in Christ that saves thee–it is Christ; it is not even faith in Christ, though that be the instrument–it is Christ’s blood and merits; therefore, look not so much to thy hand with which thou art grasping Christ, as to Christ; look not to thy hope, but to Jesus, the source of thy hope; look not to thy faith, but to Jesus, the author and finisher of thy faith. We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, or our feelings; it is what Jesus is, not what we are, that gives rest to the soul. If we would at once overcome Satan and have peace with God, it must be by “looking unto Jesus.”

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Six Thoughts on the Sermon of Creation

Here’s a thawed out Thursday repost with the addition of a sixth point.  If you’ve read it before, scroll on down to number 6.

1) The sermon of creation is not a minimal thing – it’s maximal.  Romans 1:19 ‘what may be known about God… God has made plain.’  Colossians 1:23 ‘the gospel… has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven.’  Psalm 19:2 ‘Day after day they pour forth speech.’

2) Our blindness/deafness to this sermon is not minimal either – it is maximal. Note that in Psalm 19 David trusts that the creation daily pours forth speech in intentional evangelism.  In Ecclesiastes 1 his son sees the exact same heavens.  Yet even with all his wisdom, the ‘teacher’ of Ecclesiastes finds it utterly meaningless.  The circuit of the sun which was such a vivid portrait of the Bridegroom Champion in Psalm 19 becomes, in the eyes of the ‘teacher’, a futile and meaningless cycle.

Humanity is blind to the things of God (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:21). We cannot judge what the sermon of creation is saying by what we see. We naturally only see what we want to see.

3) The sermon of creation is not a static thing, it’s dynamic, it’s about movement and action and inter-relation. Literally Ps 19:2 says “Day unto day is a pouring forth of speech; night unto night is a displaying of knowledge.” The sequence of day and night and day and night is itself a display of knowledge.  This proclamation involes ’sun, moon and stars in their courses above.’  The sermon of creation is expressed in dynamic action, it does not simply speak to us in static snap-shots of beauty.

So often people simply characterise the sermon of creation as something like “Look at a snow-capped mountain range, doesn’t it fill you with awe. Well, now you should direct that awe to the God who is big enough and clever enough to have made it.” That is certainly an element to what creation is saying, but it’s not what David is drawing our attention to.

Psalm 19 highlights the progression of day and night, the movement of the sun across the sky, the heavens in their courses.   The dynamic sermon of creation tells far better of the Glory of God who is not a static, unmoved deity simply waiting for people to give Him glory. The Living God acts and moves and relates.  And His Glory, according to the Bible, is His Son acting, moving and relating. The theist will think of the sermon of creation in static terms because her god is static. The Christian knows the sermon is dynamic – just like our God.

4) The sermon of creation is ‘the word of Christ.’  It is not about abstract qualities of power or wisdom but about the Son.  Of course this is so since Jesus is eternally the image of God (Col 1:15).  There is no revelation that is not in Him.

In Romans 10 Paul asks if any have not heard the word of Christ (v17)?  He answers, of course not and quotes Psalm 19!  The sermon of creation is the word of Christ.  When we examine Psalm 19 we see this to be so.  His example of the sun is a dead giveaway.  This sun is like a Bridegroom Champion who moves from east to west (like the journey the high priest makes from altar to ark) as the light of the world. (Ps 19:4-6; cf Ps 45). Here is a sermon regarding Christ.

Think also of John 12. When Jesus picks up a seed He doesn’t say “How pretty and how intelligently designed” – He says “This seed proclaims my death and resurrection and, though this, the life of the world.”  The sermon of creation is a gospel word concerning Christ.

5) The sermon of creation is seen only through the spectacles of the Scriptures (Calvin’s famous image).  Ps 19 continues ‘The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving/converting the soul.’ (v7)  That which left even Ecclesiastes’ ‘teacher’ looking into the meaningless cycle of life and death is that which, through the spectacles of Scripture, becomes the dynamic proclamation of Christ and His gospel.

6) Now with Scripture’s spectacles on, we can learn much from creation.  We can ‘go to the ant… consider its ways’ (Prov 6:6); we can ‘consider the ravens’ (Luke 12:24); we can ‘reflect on’ farming, athletics and soldiering (2 Tim 2:4-7) and be given insight.   This revelation is in a sense beyond Scripture.  But it is never apart from it.  We learn more from Christ’s creation by doing this than if we stay in church and read our bibles.  But if this ‘more’ is to be considered a revelation – if it is ultimately about Christ (which it really is) – then such learning must begin in the Scriptures and be co-ordinated by them.

But now, bible in hand, the Christian becomes an eager biologist, geologist, cosmologist, anthropologist, etc, etc.   As we happily march off to our labs and digs and libraries the naturalists will frown at us and accuse us of treating the bible like a science text-book.  Of course, this accusation is backwards.  The real problem is that they treat naturalism like a revelation. But, never mind.  This just shows how much they need the Scriptures.

The truth is that the Bible is not a container into which the Christian tries to shrink all scientific knowledge.  It is a lens through which we hope to see the heights and depths.  We do not think that the Scriptures exhaustively reveal the world to us. Instead, we believe that they uniquely reveal the way to know this world – by the Spirit and in Christ alone..

A little web surfing and spiritual poverty will come upon you like a robber

If watching this for 7 minutes saves you from another 7 minutes of wasted web-surfing, it’s done it’s job.

Full sermon here.

ht prognosis.

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Mike Reeves on Justification part 1

Hour long talk.  Mike opens with the story of justification. Really, really good.

Here’s an early stop along the road.  The Epistle to Diognetus:

He himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! that the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!  (Epistle to Diognetus, ch9)

Sorry I’m only posting links at the moment.  I’ve been wasting a lot of time trying to get my hands on workable video creating software.  No joy yet.

We always imagine technology will side-step the curse.  It’s always a shock to realize technology just forces us to engage it all the deeper!

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Christianity Explored – week 1

Here’s my introductory talk to Christianity Explored.

Audio here.

Text below.

Basically a bit of Reeves’ “Which God are you talking about?”, a bit of Tice “Christianity is Christ” and a bit of Keller “Since it’s a relationship, don’t make Him into a Stepford Jesus.”

Amazing Grace

How sweet the sound.

66 minutes of the marvellous Menon on grace.  He plunges us to the depths then takes us to the heights.  Balm for the soul, as Will would say.

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Should I tell him? The marriage could never survive it

A friend of mine was counselling a woman who’d been cheating on her husband.  She ended the affair and resolved never to tell her husband about any of it.  She said “If I told him it would put a bomb under our marriage.”

What would you reply?

My friend’s answer was inspired:

“The bomb has already gone off.  You’ve already exploded it.  It’s torn through the heart of your marriage.  There are people bleeding to death and you’re wondering whether you should tell someone?”

Maybe you’re reading this and you’re the one who’s set off the bomb.  You must tell.  It’s the only way forward.

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1 Samuel 17 – Rhapsodically

ht Timothy

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Thawed out Thursday – The Way of the LORD

A re-post

From Genesis 1, the way of the LORD has always been forming, then filling.

The filled-out reality is there by anticipation even in the forming. The intention for filling is included in the forming. But still the order is ‘form, then fill.’:

• In Gen 1:2 – a formless and empty creation is then formed (days 1-3) and filled (days 4-6) as the Word of God is revealed (Gen 1:3ff).
• (This is similar to both the tabernacle and the temple where first it is formed, then filled by the Glory of the LORD).
• Adam is formed (from dust) and then filled (by the breath of the LORD God).
• Humanity as male and female is first formed in Adam and then filled out in Eve’s creation and their consummation.
• The first Adam is filled by the Last.
• The people of Israel as the seed of Abraham are filled by Christ, the Seed of Abraham.
• The law is the form of the covenant and is filled by the gospel events.

In all this we remember that the intention for filling is already anticipated in the forming. The very forming reveals a long-intended desire to fill. The forming sets everything on a trajectory towards something beyond itself.

Is it too much to suggest on this basis alone the supralapsarian tendencies of the Living God? I’ll do it anyway!

Eden is not the point. Adam is not the point. Adamic humanity is not the point. Israel and its worship is not the point. All these things are forms, intended to be filled-out by realities to which the forms themselves point but which they do not themselves contain. The intention is always to move through Eden and beyond to the New Jerusalem; through Adam and beyond to the Heavenly Man; through Israel (and its worship) and beyond to the Church of Jesus Christ.

Tellingly, this movement goes through death and out the other side to resurrection.  Thus…

• The day is not always bright (as it will be in the new creation). Instead it goes from darkness into light.
• The tree is not first, first comes the seed (John 12:24; 1 Cor 15:37)
• There are not blessings and curses for Israel as alternative present tense realities but rather the blessings come after the curse. (see Deut 4:23-31; Deut 28-29 culminating in 30:1ff).
• The cross comes first and then resurrection.
• The LORD makes the old covenant and then the covenant renewed. (though the new covenant reality is grasped by faith long before both old and new covenants purchased).
• The LORD makes the old earth and then the earth renewed.
• First comes my body of flesh and then my spiritual body. (1 Cor 15:44)

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The Christian therefore knows two incontrovertible facts:

1. All things are forward-looking. The best is yet to come (let’s never yearn for Adam, for Eden, for Israel, for old covenant).

2. The path to better things is through suffering: the road to resurrection blessing always goes through the cross.

Psalm 30:5 For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favour lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

Psalm 126:6 He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.

1 Peter 5:6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.

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Robbie Williams on the scope and effect of the atonement

If Jesus really died for me /             Then Jesus really tried for me

Bodies

..

./

How do you say the first line with conviction without the second line sounding like a well-meaning but ineffectual gesture?  That’s at the heart of the debate between limited and universal atonement.  Well put Robbie.

Pity the song’s rubbish.

I like the way Peter put it:

4 to whom coming — a living stone — by men, indeed, having been disapproved of, but with God choice, precious, 5 and ye yourselves, as living stones, are built up, a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 Wherefore, also, it is contained in the Writing: ‘Lo, I lay in Zion a chief corner-stone, choice, precious, and he who is believing on him may not be put to shame;’ 7 to you, then, who are believing is the preciousness; and to the unbelieving, a stone that the builders disapproved of, this one did become for the head of a corner, 8 and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence — who are stumbling at the word, being unbelieving, — to which also they were set.  (1 Peter 2:4-8, Young’s Literal Translation)

Christ through His cross is really set forth as Cornerstone.  And His proper office is to build up a spiritual house.  But, get this.  His effect (in an accidental rather than proper sense) is also to determine those in unbelief.  Not even unbelievers can ’set themselves‘ against Jesus.  Instead they are set in their unbelief.  They do not avoid the Stone, but stumble over Him.  They cannot escape His atonement.  They cannot free themselves from the Stone.  Either they fall on Him or He crushes them (Luke 20:18).  One way or another they are determined by Him.  In fact they find that even their rejection of Him makes Him to be the Capstone.  The cross is precisely the point where rejection is made to further not thwart His saving agenda.  Through His cross, Christ shows Himself to be so great His enemies serve His purpose.  This is the universal effectiveness of the cross.  What a crazy gospel!  But wonderful.  The Lord has done this and it is marvellous in our eyes.

Therefore Christ’s atonement is for universal salvation – that is its proper effect.  Jesus did not come to condemn the world but to save it.  There is though an accidental and incomprehensible effect – rejection.  Yet even this rejection is taken up at the cross and through the cross to serve the saving purposes of God.  It is universally effective.

Jesus really died for you.  And Jesus more than tried for you.  At the cross He has entirely determined your existence..

Is Jesus likeable?

People hate the church but like Jesus right?

Really?

Read this

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Bobby McFerrin is my kinda cool

Doug Wilson’s reminded me of my love for Bobby McFerrin.  The man is just awesome.  I even do the chest-slapping human drum thing too.  People tell me it looks lame and sounds nothing like Bobby.  I tell them ‘Envy rots the bones’ (Prov 14:30).

Anyway, here’s three videos demonstrating the brilliance of McFerrin and the wonder of congregational singing.  Pity the middle one is idolatry!

Grinning?

Thought so.

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O May Christ Glorify Him Incessantly

Sometimes I use the Valley of Vision prayers like a starter motor for my own prayer life.  (Some of them are here).

This morning I was praying through Consecration and Worship.  It reminded me of a lot of the issues I tried to raise with my ‘Christ our Substitute‘ video.  Here’s the prayer.  Note the ending especially:

My God, I feel it is heaven to please Thee, and to be what Thou wouldst have me be. O that I were holy as Thou art holy, pure as Christ is pure, perfect as Thy Spirit is perfect! These, I feel, are the best commands in Thy Book, and shall I break them? must I break them? am I under such a necessity as long as I live here?

Woe, woe is me that I am a sinner, that I grieve this blessed God, who is infinite in goodness and grace! O if He would punish me for my sins, it would not would my heart so deep to offend Him; But though I sin continually, He continually repeats His kindness to me.

At times I feel I could bear any suffering, but how can I dishonour this glorious God? What shall I do to glorify and worship this best of beings? O that I could consecrate my soul and body to His service, without restraint, for ever! O that I could give myself up to Him, so as never more to attempt to be my own! or have any will or affections that are not perfectly conformed to His will and His love! But, alas, I cannot live and not sin.

O may angels glorify Him incessantly, and, if possible, prostrate themselves lower before the blessed King of heaven! I long to bear a part with them in ceaseless praise; but when I have done all I can to eternity I shall not be able to offer more than a small fraction of the homage that the glorious God deserves. Give me a heart full of divine, heavenly love.

I can pray this prayer with heartfelt devotion.  I empathise completely with the sense of inadequacy from which it springs.  But I always feel a little odd about it.  As though the Father will be forever short-changed.  As though angels and men will do their best into eternity but it won’t be enough.  I mainly feel odd because Christ our High Priest – i.e. our Worshipper! – is not being credited with a job well done.  So, I think I’d like to rework it:

I confess Father that I do not consecrate my soul and body to Thy service and I grieve over my dry and sullied devotion.  Indeed Father, I cannot consecrate myself as I might, as I would, as I ought.  Woe, Woe is me that I am a sinner.  Therefore I look again to Thy Son – given up to Thee, without restraint and without ceasing; every will and affection perfectly conformed to Thy will and love.  I look to Jesus, the heavenly Worshipper, the Director of music, the eternal High Priest.

O may Christ glorify Thee incessantly.  He who stooped to depths far deeper than men or angels have trod; He who has paid homage at infinite cost; He whose blood speaks a better word than all creation ever could; He who is full beyond measure with Thy Spirit of truth and of glory and grace; He who was born and baptised, who was raised and appointed to be Thy Priest and mine – may He offer my praise.   And will you accept mine from Him – my Amen a faint but hearty echo from below.  I thank Thee and bless Thee for Thy perfect rest in Christ, confident of a full share in that homage that echoes into eternity with ceaseless praise.

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Christ our Substitute

My first effort at a video.

The making of it was very fiddly – Powerpoint slides then Windows Movie Maker.  There’s things I’d like to change but alterations are a bit too time consuming I’m afraid.

Hope it’s an encouragement to some…

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He rescued me because He delighted in me

I preached that verse about a month ago (Ps 18:19).  And you know my first reaction as I was preparing?

Hmmm, tricky, how on earth should we understand this…?

I hope you’re all saying: But why Glen – it seems perfectly straightforward.

Well, there’s the slightly tricky part about how we take the verse on our own lips.  Clearly it’s Christ speaking of His Father.  But once we’re all happy to sing the Psalm in Christ then I hope you’re all saying to yourselves: Glen, it’s perfectly obvious.  The Lord saves us because He loves us. What could be difficult about that?

Ah, but you see I regularly fall into a foolish and horrible error – perhaps you’re the same.  I start thinking that Jesus died so that God could love me.  I imagine that God saves in order to love.  He cleans me up a bit and then gives me His grace.  His atonement leads to love, (rather than love leading to the atonement).  Do you see my error?

And so when Psalm 18 spoke of the Lord delighting in me and therefore rescuing me?  Well it seemed backwards.  And so I really had to let the word confront me again.

Because in the bible God loves the world and so sends the Son to save (John 3:16-17).  In the bible it’s ‘because of His great love for us that God makes us alive’, even when we were dead in sins (Eph 2:4).  In the bible God demonstrates His own love for us in that Christ died for powerless, ungodly, sinful enemies (Rom 5:6-11).

Do you see what these verses are saying?  God loves and so He saves.  It does not say – God saves and so He loves.

Why’s that important?  Well for one thing it means that Christ loves me – SINNER THAT I AM. It’s not a case of Christ loving the saved me (though of course He does).  But it’s the radical gospel truth that Christ has loved me at my putrid worst.  He doesn’t clean me up in order to love me.  He loves me and so cleanses me through His atoning death.

Which means when I ask myself, ‘Does God love me?’ – I can look to the cross alone.  I don’t have to check my own saved status.  I don’t have to worry whether the cleansing has taken sufficient effect to allow me entrance into His affections.  I can simply look at Christ crucified and say – God loves me.  There is His demonstration – a love for sinners at war with Him.  He has not fixed His love on me at my best.  He has fixed His love on me at my worst.

My salvation – won through His blood alone – proves His love for me.  His love is not a bonus for the godly but is specifically aimed at enemies.  Such love is the very ground of all He does. If I’m looking at the Son lifted up on the cross then I’m seeing God’s love for me because there I’m seeing my salvation.  This salvation in Christ is infallible proof of God’s immovable, inexhaustible and unfathomable love for me.

He rescued me because He delighted in me. (Ps 18:19)

Christian, God speaks that word to you right now.  Believe it.

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Christ our Fountain of Blessing

“We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ (Acts 4:12). We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it from anywhere else. If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is of him (1 Corinthians 1:30). If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects (Hebrews 2:17) that he might learn to feel our pain (Hebrews 5:2). If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross (Galatians 3:13); if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other”.

Calvin’s Institutes, II.xvi.19

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Words cannot describe…

Mesmerising.  Like a car crash.

You’ll have probably seen enough after about 4 minutes.

From here, via The Old Adam.

Even in the psychadelic imaginings of HR Puffenstuff, never did they conceive of something as bizzare as this.

I can’t even think of the correct interrogative to attach to those puppets.

Who?

What?

Why?

How?

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Calvin on the proper and the accidental office of the gospel

Last week Dave Kirkman helped me to distinguish between what Luther called God’s ‘alien work’ and His ‘proper work’.

Death is the alien work.  Life through death is gospel and God’s proper work.  But it’s extremely important not to view death and life as equivalents in God’s eyes.  One is the alien work, transformed by the proper work of resurrection.  This has many implications for theodicy – the study of God’s justice in the face of evil.  The LORD may indeed kill and make alive, yet He is not so capricious that they are both alike to Him.  Rather, they belong together as one redeeming work – the former being the alien, the latter being the proper. (cf Isaiah 28:21)

Anyway, I came across Calvin using a similar distinction between the ‘proper’ and the ‘accidental’ office of the gospel.  (And again 2 Corinthians 3 was important – just as it was to Luther).  Calvin discusses the fact from 2 Corinthians 2:15-16 that the gospel hardens unbelievers.  This we know.  But we also ought to know that this is not its proper work.  It’s proper work is as a ‘ministry of life’ (2 Cor 3:6).  How do these relate?  The last sentence is fascinating.

The term odor is very emphatic. Such is the influence of the Gospel in both respects, that it either quickens or kills, not merely by its taste, but by its very smell. Whatever it may be, it is never preached in vain, but has invariably an effect, either for life, or for death.”  “We are the savor of death unto death. But it is asked, how this accords with the nature of the Gospel, which we shall find him, a little afterwards, calling the ministry of life? (2 Corinthians 3:6.) The answer is easy: The Gospel is preached for salvation: this is what properly belongs to it; but believers alone are partakers of that salvation. In the mean time, its being an occasion of condemnation to unbelievers — that arises from their own fault. Thus Christ came not into the world to condemn the world, (John 3:17,) for what need was there of this, inasmuch as without him we are all condemned? Yet he sends his apostles to bind, as well as to loose, and to retain sins, as well as remit them. (Matthew 18:18; John 20:23.) He is the light of the world, (John 8:12,) but he blinds unbelievers. (John 9:39.) He is a Rock, for a foundation, but he is also to many a stone of stumbling — “Of offense and stumbling.” (Isaiah 8:14.) We must always, therefore, distinguish between the proper office of the Gospel,  — “The proper and natural office of the Gospel.” and the accidental one (so to speak) which must be imputed to the depravity of mankind, to which it is owing, that life to them is turned into death.

Calvin on 2 Corinthians 2:15 in his commentary:

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Not just sheltered – BROUGHT OUT

Not just Passover, but Red Sea crossing.

Not just saved by the blood, but delivered over to new life.

Not just baptised into His death, but sharing in His resurrection

That’s the gist of this sermon on Exodus 13 and 14 – preached last night.

We looked at Passover last week.  We rejoiced in the fact that we are saved by our Passover Lamb, Christ, apart from works.  But commonly these are the kinds of responses people make to that message:

Great! He’s handed me a blank cheque to sin

Well, maybe, but He doesn’t love me now or He’d save me from these troubles

Fine, but I’m still stuck in sin.  His salvation doesn’t seem to help me today.

But as we look at Exodus 13-14 we see that each of these responses is faulty.  Rather, we are SAVED… FROM THE OLD LIFE… THROUGH HARDSHIPS… WITH DIVINE POWER.

Sermons so far:

Church in the Wilderness 1 – Introduction

Church in the Wilderness 2 – Passover

Church in the Wilderness 3 – Crossing the Red Sea

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Glorifying the Other – the heart-beat of God’s own life

From Halden:

“I do not seek my own glory” (John 8:5). With these words Jesus set a precedent for all those who claim to follow him. Fundamental to the call to discipleship is the renunciation of seeking to glorify, to magnify, to enhance and promote oneself.

It is often thought that this calling is based on the distinction between God and humanity. God should be glorified, not us. Therefore we refuse to glorify ourselves and instead glorify God. Indeed, aspects of the Reformed tradition insist that God’s whole aim in being involved with the world is to glorify God’s own self. Thus, we glorify God rather than ourselves because God wants to glorify God’s self rather than humanity.

However, this is all entirely wrong. Jesus, according to the Christian confession is God’s very self come among us. Thus, when Jesus reveals that he does not seek his own glory, he is stating something that is not only to be true about us, but preeminently about God’s own life. God’s life consists in the refusal to seek self-glorification. Rather, the life of the Godhead itself consists in the loving mutuality of the trinitarian persons who only seek the glory of one another. Thus, Jesus seeks the glory of the Father rather than his own, and so also the Father seeks to glorify Jesus (John 7:18). Finally, God also fundamentally desires to glorify humanity: “those he justified he also glorified” (Rom 8:30).

So, we do not reject the quest of self-glorfication to somehow “make room” for God’s desire to self-glorify. Rather we reject self-glorification because that’s precisely what God is like. To reject the quest for self-exaltation is, counterintuitively, the very epitome of what it means to be God-like. We don’t reject self-glorification because self-glorification is reserved for God alone. We reject it because self-glorification in any form is demonic.

Two questions regarding Piper on Wilson

1) How does Piper square his love of Jonathan Edwards with his own pre-mill and credo-baptist theology?  Is there anywhere where he talks about parting company with Edwards?

2) Does anyone see the irony of two young guns bumping fists behind Piper just as he lays into the dumb guys that surround Wilson?  Or was that irony intended by said young guns?

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Anthropogenic?

There’s a mouthful of a word.

Perhaps we’re aware of the term ‘anthropogenic’ to describe climate change?  The climate is changing – climate always does – the question remains, is man (anthropos) the cause (genesis)?

A lot of people say yes.  Some say no.

This guy says “maybe… some… but that’s not really the issue.”

h/t The Old Adam

I’m entirely unqualified to make any scientific adjudication, but I make two observations.  One is that the Kiwi presenter seems a really lovely guy.  Just lovely.  The other is that something like Professor Carter’s position sounds psychologically and theologically very plausible.  It sounds like the kind of explanation in which fear and pride play the kind of role we know they do in people and in societies.

Well how might fear and pride lead to a view on anthropogenic climate change?

On the fear point – we love to conceive of our problems as anthropogenic because we find it intolerable that things just happen. If the economy goes down, show me the banker and let’s make him pay.  If we get sick, show me the diet, exercise, medicine regime and I’ll take back control.  Don’t whatever you do tell me that economies just fail, or illness just happens, or volcanoes just erupt or climate just changes – that’s way too frightening.  We’d even rather that the blame fell on us if it meant taking back some measure of control over this scary world.

And as technologies and affluence advance in certain parts of the world we become increasingly used to comfort and control.  And, ironically but demonstrably, we become increasingly fearful and so demanding of such comfort and control.  Fearful hearts need control – we need to be in charge of things, even things as impossible as the future!

On the pride point – we’d love our problems to be anthropogenic because then our solutions must, almost by definition, be similarly man focused.  We take back control of our destiny when we cast the problems of the world as lying in man’s power.  And with renewed vigour we set off on our own salvation project.  The is the ‘feel good factor’ that Professor Carter speaks of.   There’s the feel good factor of a works righteousness based on reducing my carbon footprint.  There’s the solidarity of a global movement mobilising for change.  There’s the sense of significance that comes from saving the planet – taking charge of our destiny.  These can legitimately be described as religious affections and they have a massive effect.

Now you may ask: Would fear and pride play so significant a role that the assured findings of the scientific community would be affected?  Well, again such mis-perception and mis-interpretation sounds theologically plausible to me.  If you’ve hung around this blog for long enough you’ll know something of my deep suspicion of the fallen mind!

I raise this as a little thought on our human nature in the context of a debate that is, admittedly, way above my pay grade.  I’m sure you can shoot me down as a red-necked, anti-science, conspiracy theorist.  I’m just saying that I see Professor Carter’s position as theologically very credible.  And I hope that counts for a lot among my reader here.

The desire to see our problems as anthropogenic is as old as Adam.  He thought nakedness and shame were the problem.  So he thought sewing fig leaves was the solution – simple human problem with an attainable human solution.  All the while his Real Problem was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.  But he didn’t want to face his Real Problem (who was also his Only Solution).  So he hid.

And ever since, the race of Adam has continued to put ourselves at the centre.  We would love to be this world’s problem, we really would.  But this world’s problem is not us – it’s Jesus who is coming on a day set by the Father and subject to nothing but His own gospel patience.  Be advised, our problem (and solution!) is in the highest heaven.

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Happy Friday

Here’s a literal take on Take On Me.  But I bet you’ll smile more because of the original.

What’s the Problem?

This is a Thawed-out Thursday Re-post.  There a reason why I’ve chosen this one, but I’ll let you in on it later…

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Once I was in a preaching seminar with 15 other young guns.  We were being taught by someone you might call a living legend.  One session was on how to preach Romans 3:21-30.  The point came when the living legend asked us what we thought the application should be.  Now aside from my various misgivings about application I reasoned to myself that if an application was there in the passage it was probably worth flagging that up.  I looked down and sure enough I saw what I thought was a pretty clear “”application”” of Paul’s teaching:

Where then is boasting?  It is excluded. (v27)

So I stuck up my hand and suggested that the application might be humility.  More particularly it seemed that, since Christ had taken the work of salvation entirely into His own hands, it was out of ours and therefore we ought gladly to shut up about ourselves, our morality, religious pedigree etc etc.

“Wrong!” said the preacher.  “The application should be ‘Repent!’”

“Oh”, I said. “Why?”

I immediately regretted asking ‘why.’  Dagnammit we’re evangelicals, we’re supposed to preach repentance, it’s union rules.  Besides, I don’t want to appear soft in front of the 15 other young guns and this living legend.  The living legend was more than a little irked by my question and replied: “Because, dear boy, verse 23 says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Sin is the problem, therefore I would have thought that repentance would be a very good idea!!”

Those who know me may be surprised to learn that I didn’t answer back to this one.  Oh I wanted to.  How I did want to!  But judging by the alarm in the preacher’s voice and the mood of the room it felt wise not to imperil my standing any further among such sound folk.

But sometimes I fantasize about what would have happened if I’d said what I really thought.  The fantasy goes something like this:

I stand slowly, deliberately, with all the solemnity of the lone, faithful prophet.  All eyes are upon me as I bellow with righteous ardour:

“Sin is not the problem!   S i n   i s   n o t   t h e   p r o b l e m !!!“

All hell breaks loose.  Outrage.  Pained howls.  Torn garments.  Hurled stones.  I am immovable in the midst of the storm.

“… Sin is not the problem… God’s wrath at sin is the problem!  Nay… moreover… God’s wrath at us in our sin – this!  this is the problem!”

At once they are felled by Truth as by lightning.  Cut to the heart, the stones drop to the floor first.  Then the men.  One by one they slump to the ground, the hand of the LORD heavy upon them.  In breathless awe they ask: “Brave herald, what is this teaching you bring us?  It resounds from the very heights of Zion against our presumption and folly.”

Sporting a fresh cut across my chiselled jawline, I am otherwise unruffled.  Ever magnanimous I continue:

“Dear friends” (the dust in the air has now leant a husky tone to my rich, commanding voice). ”Dear friends, let us not define our predicament so anthropocentrically.”

I leave this dread word hanging in the air.  The mere mention of ‘anthropocentric’ elicits groans from the already contrite gathering.  Here was their shibboleth used against them.  It stung.  Yet they could not deny that they were indeed guilty of this greatest of liberalisms.

“I commend you friends…”  They look up nervously – could there yet be grace for them?  “…While many have merely scratched the itch of modern ears, you have refused to pander to felt needs. You have proclaimed the problem of sin and for this I commend you.”  I pause.  “And yet… and yet… you have defined the problem so poorly, so slightly.  You have defined the problem from below.  You have told them that the problem lies in their own hands.  How can they not then imagine that the solution also lies in their hands?  Should you not have told them that our problem is above us - as indeed is the solution.  The problem is not fundamentally our sin, the problem is the Lord’s wrath upon us.”

“What’s the difference?!” cries out one of the younger preachers, “Our sin, God’s wrath, it’s all the same…”  He is hushed by the living legend who slowly shakes his head.  It is clear now how wrong he has been.

He stands, still shaking his head, unable to look at me or the others.  Eventually he speaks, “Glen’s right. He’s always been right!”  It looks as though the living legend has been hung from the ceiling on meat hooks.  In great anguish he exclaims, “You must understand…  We faced such terrible dangers in preaching.  We still face such dangers.  I wanted – we all wanted – to resist the me-centred pulpit.  I was so sick of hearing about ‘filling the Jesus-shaped hole in your life’.  I couldn’t stand the invitations to ‘let Jesus into the passenger seat of your life’.  I wanted people to turn.  I still want people to turn.”

I put a re-assuring hand on his shoulder. He meets my eye for the first time and continues.  “I just thought, if we can show them that ‘fulfilment’ isn’t the issue – that sin is the issue, well then maybe they’d come to their senses.  Maybe they’d see their errors and turn from them.”  I give a look to the living legend, he nods, “I know, I know, that’s the problem.”

“What’s the problem?” asks one of the young guns.

The living legend sighs deeply and turns to the others.  “It puts the focus on us.  If we just preach sin and repentance the whole focus is on us.”

“It’s anthropocentric” mutters a young gun, latching onto his favourite word.  He looks around to see if anyone else has noticed his firm grasp of the issues.

“I don’t get it” pipes up another, “I thought sin and repentance was God-centred preaching?  Isn’t that what you taught us??”

The living legend is speechless.  I break the silence.  Crouching down to their level, I ask, “If we simply preach sin and repentance how exactly is God at the centre?  He may well be over and above our conceptions of sin and repentance – but how is He in the middle?  In such a sermon isn’t God actually on the periphery?  He’s hardly the principal Actor!”  At this stage the one who muttered ‘anthropocentric’ is nodding the way failed quiz show contestants nod when they’re told the right answer.

I go on, “It’s like our passage from Romans 3.  Sin is certainly there!  Sin is certainly a problem.  From verse 9, have we not been told that all are under sin?  And has not verse 20 proclaimed that observing the law can never redeem us.  But since this is so, would it not be strange if Paul then told us that ‘repentance’ was some new work that was better than the old Mosaic works?  And yet Paul does not mention our works in this passage, not our obedience, not our repentance.  No, what does Paul point us to?  Verse 25, the blood of Jesus – a propitiation for our sins.  Now we all know what propitiation means…”

Young noddy blurts out “A sacrifice turning away God’s wrath!!”  I gesture with my hands, trying to calm his wild-eyed enthusiasm.

“Ok, yes. Well done.  It turns away God’s wrath.  Because that’s the real problem.  The problem is, chapter 1 verse 18, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against us.  It will culminate in, chapter 2 verse 5, a day of wrath.  And Paul is at pains to say we all deserve it, we are all unrighteous and there’s nothing moral and nothing religious we can do to turn aside this wrath.  We are helpless.  BUT, a righteousness beyond us has come.  And He is the sacrifice who turns away God’s wrath.  Through His redemption we are justified freely.  That is the gospel.  That’s what we preach.  And who is at the centre of this story?  Not us.  Him.”

“So we shouldn’t preach sin and repentance?” asks another.

“Of course we should.  But those are comprehended within a much more profound perspective.  Wrath and redemption are the deeper truths.  Let us leave behind the moralistic sermons regarding committed sin and sanctification.  Instead let us preach original sin and justification!  Let us plunge them to the depths and then take them to the heights!  Enough of this middle of the road preaching that puts us at the centre!”

A couple of young guns knowingly mouthe ‘anthropocentric’ to one another.

I continue “Take Islam.  It’s a classic religion of repentance.  God remains far above, it’s down to us to clean up our act.  In fact all human religion is man justifying man before a watching god.  But the Gospel is God justifying God before a watching humanity.  He takes centre-stage and we need to move off into the audience to watch Him work salvation for us.  Christianity is not a religion of repentance, it’s a religion of redemption.  And that’s quite a difference don’t you see?”

As I speak, the young guns have been picking themselves off the floor one by one.  The room has been won to the side of Truth.  I look upon them with fatherly benevolence.

“So now friends – now that you know these things: What would be a good application of Romans 3?”

In unison they reply “Humility!”  And for a moment all is right with the world.

Until, that is, one of the young guns speaks up:

“Hey, if humility is so important, how come you’re so proud?”

Harmony is shattered.  Another piles in “And how come you’ve been dreaming us up for the last 10 minutes to feed your ego.”  Here’s where the fantasy turns pretty nasty.

“What kind of egotist spends his time winning theological debates in his head??”

“Yeah, debates he never actually won in the real world!”

Another pipes up: “I think I know ‘Where then is boasting?’ – he’s standing over there with a fatuous, smug face!!”

From here on the fantasy is basically unsalvagable.  So then, I hate to do it, but sometimes you just have to pull rank.

“Quiet all of you!  This is my fantasy.  Either you submit adoringly to my theological genius or you can get out now.”

Faced with those options they instantly choose non-existence.  One by one they vanish, though somehow their looks of betrayal and disgust seem to linger on.

“You’ll be back” I say to the departed phantasms.  “Pretty soon I’ll need to feel right about something else and you’ll be right back in my imagination, bowing to my unquestioned brilliance.

“Ha!” I say.  The laughter echoes around my empty head.

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No Richard, I don’t believe in that god either

Dawkins was asked in an article – Where does evolution leave God?  He answered:

“Before 1859 it would have seemed natural to agree with the Reverend William Paley, in “Natural Theology,” that the creation of life was God’s greatest work. Especially (vanity might add) human life. Today we’d amend the statement: Evolution is the universe’s greatest work. Evolution is the creator of life, and life is arguably the most surprising and most beautiful production that the laws of physics have ever generated. Evolution, to quote a T-shirt sent me by an anonymous well-wisher, is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.

[...]

“Where does that leave God? The kindest thing to say is that it leaves him with nothing to do, and no achievements that might attract our praise, our worship or our fear. Evolution is God’s redundancy notice, his pink slip. But we have to go further. A complex creative intelligence with nothing to do is not just redundant. A divine designer is all but ruled out by the consideration that he must at least as complex as the entities he was wheeled out to explain. God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.”

Again ask the question – who or what has Dawkins taken aim at?  He’s railing against a divine designer entirely dependent on its own creation.

Rail away Richard.  Christian theology does a far better job, but if it makes you feel better – go for your life.

And if you want to lay the smackdown on some god-of-the-gaps who is posited simply to explain the inexplicable, then please don’t let us stop you.

And if you’re invigorated by venting splenetic rage on a god ‘ruled out’ by the logic of its own creation well Richard, who isn’t?  I’m regularly energized by such disdain.  And we certainly have no wish to spoil your fun.

While you heap adolescent contempt on those gods, we’ll be over here – stoning modern-day Paleys for providing you with such irrelevant and idolatrous targets.

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By the way – if you read the Dawkins quote and thought to yourself ‘Aha, but who created the laws of physics!?’ – you are Paley.  And I’m coming to get you.

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Prayer is a bloody thing

Though I wasn’t keen on Tony’s quote - I really liked this post.

The only pathway to the Living God is paved with Blood

Read the whole thing.

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Christ Alone, Grace Alone, Revelation Alone

I’m halfway through Mike Reeves’ excellent lectures on a theology of revelation.  Go and listen now if you haven’t done already.

Maybe I should put them somewhere prominently and permanently on the blog because they explain much better than I can the thinking behind ‘Christ the Truth’. 

To be an evangelical theologian is to have your method entirely shaped by God’s coming to us in Jesus.  Just as we are saved through God’s grace alone by Christ alone, so we know God by God’s grace alone and through Christ alone.  This being the case, we need to be saved from our ‘wisdom’ every bit as much as we need to be saved from our ‘works.’

Anyway, all these sorts of thoughts were circling through my head when I came across this quote posted on Tony Reinke’s blog.  It’s all about how we should ‘restore the bridge’ from classical literature to Christ!

“What then shall we say if we would restore the medieval bridge from Homer, Plato and Virgil to Christ, the Bible and the church? Shall we say that Christianity is not the only truth? Certainly not! But let us also not say that Christianity is the only truth. Let us say instead that Christianity is the only complete truth. The distinction here is vital. By saying that Christianity is the only complete truth, we leave open the possibility that other philosophies, religions and cultures have hit on certain aspects of the truth. The Christian need not reject the poetry of Homer, the teachings of Plato, or the myths of the pagans as one hundred percent false, as an amalgamation of darkness and lies (as Luther strongly suggests), but may affirm those moments when Plato and Homer leap past their human limitations and catch a glimpse of the true glory of the triune God.

I reject the all-or-nothing, darkness-or-light dualism that Luther at times embraced. But I also reject the modern relativist position that truth is like a hill and there are many ways around it. Yes, truth is like a hill, but the truth that stands atop that hill is Christ and him crucified. To arrive at the truth of Christ, the people of the world have pursued many, many different routes. Some have only scaled the bottom rim of the hill; others have made it halfway. But many have reached the top and experienced the unspeakable joy that comes only when the truth they have sought all their lives is revealed to them. …

If we are to accept these verses [Romans 2:14-15] in a manner that is in any way literal, we must confess that unregenerate pagans have an inborn capacity for grasping light and truth that was not totally depraved by the Fall. Indeed, though the pagan poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome did not have all the answers (they couldn’t, as they lacked the special revelation found only in Jesus), they knew how to ask the right questions—questions that build within the readers of their works a desire to know the higher truths about themselves and their Creator.”

—Louis Markos, From Achilles to Christ: Why Christians Should Read the Pagan Classics (IVP Academic 2007), pp. 13-14

How do you think your mild-mannered correspondent reacted?

Well – go and see.  Here’s a selection of my many comments!

I enjoy the blog. I hate this quote.

Christ and Him crucified does not sit atop a hill as though waiting for natural man to ascend! The Truth steps down to meet us in ignorance, just as the Life steps down to meet us in death. And besides, which natural mind has ever drawn near to the crucified God? Such truth has only ever appeared as folly to the world, yet this *is* the power and wisdom of God.

This quote is epistemological Pelagianism. Salvation and knowledge go together. We must oppose synergism in the one as strongly as we oppose it in the other. No wonder Luther shows the way. We’d do well to heed his cautions…

It is incontestably and trivially true that pagans can write meaningful novels, develop life-saving medicine, pursue world-enlightening science, make correct philosophical and moral observations. And it’s equally true that pagans can work for peace, give blood and generally be very, very nice people. No-one’s saying unbelievers can’t say true stuff, just as no-one’s saying unbelievers can’t do good stuff. The trouble comes when someone tries to co-ordinate nature and grace in either knowledge or salvation. Whenever the natural is seen as a stepping stone into grace alarm bells must go off. Whenever co-ordination, stepping-stones, bridges, spectrums, pilgrimmages, ascents up hills are discussed flags have to go up…

Truth is relative – relative to Christ, the Truth (good name for a blog I reckon). His subjectivity is the one objectivity. There are therefore whole worlds of understanding that make some kind of sense within their own terms of reference and which make some kind of sense of the world but are falsely related to the true Logos. Therefore in toto and at root they are utterly false. And there can be no bridge between these worlds and the world in which Christ crucified is central. There can only be redemption from these worlds. Such a redemption will require wholesale rethinking (metanoia – change of mind)…  2 Cor 10:5!…

I’m happy to call any number of pagan statements ‘true’ – just as I’m happy to call any number of pagan actions ‘good’. (For me this parallel between knowledge and salvation is key.)

It allows me to say:

1) such ‘truth’ or ‘goodness’ is of great benefit to the world.

2) such ‘truth’ or ‘goodness’ can be truly seen by the regenerate as evidences of common grace.

but,

3) such ‘truth’ or ‘goodness’, viewed from the pagan themselves, does not lead towards but away from Christ and Him crucified.

A pagan’s goodness leads them away from the grace of Christ, a pagan’s wisdom leads them away from the revelation of Christ…

I could tell you all sorts of propositions that surrounded my saving faith in Christ, but I’d be reflecting back on a miracle. I wouldn’t be telling you the natural steps that secured salvation any more than the servants at Cana would be telling you how *they* drew wine out of those stone jars.

Just as there are no discrete human deeds that add up to divine righteousness, so there are no discrete human understandings that add up to divine knowledge. All must be of grace, all must be of revelation.

 

So there.  I also discuss Acts 17 and Romans 2 a bit.  And there’s even some good points made by other bloggers!  Common grace really is astounding  ;-)

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It’s what’s on the outside that counts

 

Don’t believe Satan’s lie.  It’s not what’s on the inside that counts.  At the end of the Day what really matters is what’s on the outside.

Take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door-frames… when I see the blood, I will pass over you.  (Ex 12:7,12)

Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed (1 Corinthians 5:7)

Your salvation lies entirely outside yourself.

Last night’s Passover sermon

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Time for a Spring Clean

… in the southern hemisphere anyway.

But as the weather turns decidedly Fall-en here, I’m still thinking about Spring cleaning.  The reason being – I’ve just preached on Exodus 12 tonight.  In preparation I was thinking about the Feast of Unleavened Bread (I speak about it some more in my 1 Corinthians 5 sermon).

Basically the Feast of Unleavened Bread begins with Passover and then continues with the purging of yeast from Israelite households. (see e.g. Exodus 12:15) What’s wrong with yeast you might ask?  Yeast kept a person in slavery.  If, when the other Israelites were eating and fleeing in haste, you’re waiting for your bread to rise, it’s clear where your heart is.  (Ex 12:33-34)  You’re not really committed to the LORD’s deliverance.  You’d rather live it up in Egypt.

So then every year after Passover, the Israelites were to purge their households of any sign of this compromise.  It was a cleansing symbolic of a spiritual spring clean (see how Paul applies it in 1 Cor 5:7-8).  Cupboard examination pointed to self-examination.  Am I really on board with the LORD’s redemption, or is my heart still in Egypt?

What’s interesting to me is that we have a Christian festival of self-examination.  It’s called Lent.  But when does it come?  Not after Passover (Easter) – but before.   Unfortunately in our calendar we have a spiritual spring clean before Jesus dies for us.  In the Hebrew calendar – Passover was the very first thing (Ex 12:2).  

In the bible, we are redeemed as helpless, enslaved sinners.  In fact nothing can happen before the LORD’s salvation.  Later we consider compromise in our lives. 

So much of our church experience teaches the Lent then Easter pattern.  We clean ourselves up and then God helps those who help themselves.

Reminds me of the worst sermon I ever heard.

But maybe that’s for another post…

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Flavia Cacace is Astroboy

Few people will know both Astroboy and Strictly Come Dancing.  But for those who do… the comparison cannot be denied.

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A couple of thoughts on Dawkins

I think, actually, [Richard Dawkins is] a pre-Christian atheist, because he never understood what Christianity is about in the first place! That would be rather like Madonna calling herself post-Marxist. You’d have to read him first to be post-him. As I’ve said before, I think that Dawkins in particular makes such crass mistakes about the kind of claims that Christianity is making. A lot of the time, he’s either banging at an open door or he’s shooting at a straw target.

Terry Eagleton (via Halden)

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But before we feel smug.  Let’s allow him (and others) to critique a knee-jerk theism that too often passes for Christian apologetics:

[Conservative Evangelicals] despise Richard Dawkins while actually believing in the kind of God he rightly rejects, as if the existence of God were, in principle, demonstrable, as if the proposition “God exists” were a hypothesis to be affirmed or denied, as if God were simply the hugest of individuals. 

Kim Fabricius (I object to his other points, but this one has a lot of truth to it).

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Dawkins himself says that all he does is stretch his disbelief one God further than the Christians. 

Which is absolutely right.  Both Dawkins and the Christian reject Thor and Vishnu and the Flying Spaghetti Monster and any other super-being you care to imagine.  The task of the Christian apologist is not to establish a deity but to proclaim the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As Mike Reeves recommends - the question for the atheist is ‘Which God don’t you believe in?’

And once they’ve described it, the response to have ready is ‘I don’t believe in that either, let me tell you about the cross.’

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Happy Friday

Codepoke is worried about our ever-expanding information/entertainment culture and its effects on face to face relations.  Here is yet more evidence of this worrying trend.

Open Air Preaching with Wesley and Whitefield

I’m loving Lex Loizides’s blog.  At the moment he’s taking us through the history of open air preaching from Howell Harris to George Whitefield to John Wesley.

Here’s Wesley’s journal entry the first day he tried open air preaching:

At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation.

Whoever desires to become more vile desires a noble task!

 

And here’s Whitefield describing one occasion of preaching to thousands:

‘The open firmament above me, the prospect of the adjacent fields, with the sight of thousands and thousands, some in coaches, some on horseback, and some in the trees, and at times all affected and drenched in tears together, to which sometimes was added the solemnity of the approaching evening, was almost too much for, and quite overcame me.’

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Preaching a felt Christ

In a sermon I’ve just listened to, Martin Lloyd Jones said this:

No man should preach unless he preaches a felt Christ

I take it he means that preachers must really know Jesus and preach to the end that their hearers know Jesus and hunger after Him – indeed taste and see Him.  I can’t think of a more crucial need in preaching.

Unless of course I’ve got the wrong end of the stick and he means this:

This kind of felt Christ is also important.  And would also improve countless pulpits the world over.

Which did the Doctor really intend?  I guess we’ll never know. 

 

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Thawed out Thursday – The God who is…

Here’s the first thing I ever published on the internet.  It’s the heart of my website began about 5 years ago.  It’s a decent summary of where I’m coming from theologically. This is the introduction to 5 Doctrine of God papers.

 

The God who is…

Revealed in Jesus

We meet the Living God only in Jesus. He is the sole point of contact between God and the creation. Theology cannot begin without Him nor continue outside of Him. We must be radically and self-consciously Christ-obsessed. This is the mark of Christian theology, distinguishing it from all human philosophy and theistic supposition. Taking every thought captive to Christ is the means by which we will defend true knowledge of God against the countless philosophical accretions which threaten the Church. click here for more

 

Three Persons United  

Our Christian life begins when we meet the Father in the Son and by the Spirit. The Christian life is, from first to last, a life lived in and by the Three. The Trinity is not special information for the advanced believer. The God we know is the Three Persons united in love. There is no ‘more basic’ truth to God than the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is no real God beneath or beyond the Persons. All talk of the Living God must therefore be about the Persons. Understanding them and deepening our fellowship with them in their relations and roles will be the very stuff of our Christian lives. click here for more

 

Bigger than you think 

Since God is the Three Persons united, we must not imagine some fourth ’substance’ that is somehow more foundational than the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We must not enquire into impersonal ‘attributes’ or ‘essences’ as though they are the bedrock realities upon which the Persons are founded. We understand God’s attributes only when we understand His Triune ways and works as revealed in Jesus. We must not come to the Word of God with our philosophical notions of God’s attributes and then fit the Persons into these idolatrous moulds. As the Father reveals His character in the Son and by the Spirit then we can see the power, love, wisdom etc of the Living God. Allowing our doctrine of God to be shaped in this way will open our eyes to a God who is bigger than we could ever conceive. click here for more

 

Love

The Living God is Persons in loving, committed relationship. His will for our life is to be swept up into this eternal love affair and to be agents of His love for the creation. If our doctrine of God is fundamentally impersonal, our Christian lives will consist of duty-bound Pharisaism. If we understand the Passionate God then our lives will begin to conform to the total love of heart, soul, mind and strength which Jesus models and commands. click here for more

 

Proclaimed by Moses

The Scriptures do not introduce us to God and then to the LORD and then to Christ and the Trinity. Revelation does not progress towards Christ – it begins with Him. Moses and the Prophets proclaim the same Triune God as Jesus and the Apostles. From Genesis 1, the Trinitarian Gospel of the LORD-Messiah is front-and-centre as the focus of all Biblical revelation. In this paper we will briefly run through Genesis and Exodus to see how Christ is proclaimed as the One and Only revelation of the Unseen LORD. click here for more

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Good news for the poor

Social engagement or evangelism-only? 

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What is the mission of the church?

 

Here are three factors that unnecessarily polarize the debate:

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1) We think in terms of church programmes.  We frame the whole debate in terms of how many of our 15 scheduled hours of church-run activity must be devoted to helping the needy each week. 

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2) We look for justification in the wrong theological doctrine.  One crowd stresses the doctrine of creation, the other the doctrine of salvation – and then we proceed as though these are separate agendas, separately addressed by the Lord.  We need to begin with a doctrine of God from which flows a single creation-salvation programme in the Gospel of the Son.  Here’s a paper where I attempt to do this. 

From this approach I think it becomes obvious that evangelism simply is the mission of the church.  But it also means that social engagement does get worked out on the basis of and from within that proclaimed gospel.

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3) Even though I’m a believer that ”the mission of the church is evangelism” I submit that our side is probably most to blame for unnecessary polarization.  The sad fact is that many of the evangelism-only crowd are also middle-class-only.  We don’t really believe that the Good News is for the poor.  (Which is not really a methodological problem – it’s a spiritual and theological problem).

But the debate is not about who we should minister to!  We should all agree that we must minister to the poor.  And we can hardly deny that Jesus had a decided bias to the outsider!  The debate is about what form that ministry takes and what makes it Christian.  Well then let’s have this debate while we all move onto the housing estates and with the love of Christ compelling us, let us all minister to the poor. You can knock on doors and lead off by addressing practical needs.  I’ll knock on doors and lead off with Jesus.  I still think my way’s much more faithful and I’ll try to persuade you.  But I also reckon that you will end up gospelling some of your contacts.  And there’s no doubt that I’ll end up debt counselling many of mine. 

But let’s at least make sure we’ve got the same mission field in mind.  Let’s first be clear that we must reach the poor.  Then let’s discuss how.

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Some newish sermons and a question about computer animation

I don’t think I’ve updated ‘My Sermons’ since March.

Here’s some sermons I’ve preached since then:

1 Corinthians 7 (for grown ups)

1 Corinthians 8 

1 Corinthians 9

1 Corinthians 10

1 Corinthians 11

1 Corinthians 12

1 Corinthians 13

1 Corinthians 14

2 Samuel 14

2 Samuel 15

2 Samuel 21 (All age with slides)

2 Samuel 22 (All age song and slides)

Mark 12:18-44

Mark 13

Mark 14:1-26

Mark 14:53-15:15

Mark 15:40-16:8

Deut 8 (The Church in the Wilderness 1)

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I’ve also got a question.

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I’d love to be able to turn Powerpoint presentations into Youtube videos. Windows Movie Maker doesn’t let me keep the animations from Powerpoint (only the images). Do any of you know a cheap way of making basic videos? I’d like to be able to use Powerpoint, but if converters from Powerpoint prove expensive perhaps someone could recommend an affordable video-making / animation program?

I just think little videos might be a great teaching tool. If any of you have any ideas, let me know.

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Come as you are

From Spurgeon’s book: All of Grace

Do not attempt to touch yourself up and make yourself something other than you really are, but come as you are to Him who justifies the ungodly. …The Gospel will receive you into its halls if you come as a sinner, not otherwise. Wait not for reformation, but come at once for salvation. God justifieth the ungodly, and that takes you up where you now are; it meets you in your worst estate. Come in your disorder. I mean, come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. Come to Jesus just as you are: filthy, naked, neither fit to live nor fit to die. Come, you that are the very sweepings of creation; come, though you hardly dare to hope for anything but death. Come, though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon your bosom like a horrible nightmare. Come and ask the Lord to justify another ungodly one.

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And here’s a paper I wrote on how to preach evangelistically to sinners without demanding repentance first.

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Free Tim Keller Prodigal God talk

Here under Audio Downloads

I think I’ve listened to every free Keller talk out there – but there was some new stuff here for me.

They’ve also created some new small groups material based around Luke 15 here.

Looks good.

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Trinity rant #47

A camel is a horse designed by committee?

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No

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A horse is a horse designed by committee.

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In other words…

Always given to verbosity, here’s what I meant in my previous post:

‘I have been crucified with Christ’ is profoundly ethical

‘Take up your cross’ is profoundly mystical

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Dying with Jesus

How do you think of judgement and salvation?

If you ask me – you shouldn’t think like this:

 

Instead think like this:

 

Or to be a bit more nuanced – like this.

Now I could take this observation in many directions.

Perhaps we could explore its significance for an infra versus supra-lapsarian debate.

Perhaps we could discuss the strong link that some make between penal substitutionary atonement and limited atonement.

We could think about how to preach warnings of judgement (for instance warnings of exile in the OT) given that judgement is a-coming.

But I’m going to take the observation in this direction…

I’m becoming convinced that when Jesus says ‘Take up your cross and follow me’ (Mark 8:34) He’s saying the same thing as Paul when he says ‘I was crucified with Christ and I no longer live’  (Gal 2:20).

Think of some of Jesus’ words:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.  (Matt 10:34-39)

So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.  (Luke 14:33)

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ²⁵ Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶ If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.  (John 12:24-26)

In the context of Jesus’ own judgement and salvation He tells His followers what it means to come after Him.  It means being caught up in that same path – the only path of life.  Seeds must die to live - so it is with The Seed so it is with the many offspring His death produced.  Judgement then salvation.  To be saved is to die with Jesus – to join Him for an early judgement day and pass through to find true life.

Compare this with some words from Paul:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  (Gal 2:20)

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his, etc, etc  (Rom 6:3-5 and following)

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.  (Gal 6:14)

Here Paul describes his history as utterly determined by the cross and resurrection of Jesus.  Judgement and salvation have happened for Paul because he has died and risen with Jesus to new life on the other side of wrath, death, sin, law, old creation.  And (apart from his Adamic flesh that still clings to him) he is utterly dead to the world around him and utterly brought into ‘newness of life’.

Now.  Think of a sermon you’ve heard on the Jesus verses.  And think of a sermon you’ve heard on the Paul verses.  I imagine the tone of those two sermons was quite different.  I imagine that the Jesus sermons spent a lot of time presenting His words as moralistic exhortations and ‘if-then’ conditions before (perhaps) the preacher retracted the force of them and told you not to forget that you’re ’saved by grace’ (‘grace’ understood along the lines of diagram 1 not diagram 2).   And I imagine the Paul sermon comforted you with the whole ‘union with Christ’, ‘newness of life’ stuff and encouraged you that ‘hey, you really are saved by grace.’ (again, probably ‘grace’ as understood according to diagram 1) 

I wonder if the Jesus sermons should sound more like the best of the Paul sermons.  And the Paul sermons should sound like the best of the Jesus sermons.  In other words, Jesus, the Seed, dies and rises on your behalf.  If you are His rejoice that you are created, shaped and defined by this death and resurrection in which you are crucified to the the whole world, and the whole world is crucified to you.  This is your salvation because there simply is no other way to resurrection than through the cross.  ‘Come and die’ is not a fearful condition of life – maybe you’re up to it, maybe not.  It’s the description of how that life comes, wrapped up in the announcement that Jesus really has crucified the world to raise it up new – come on in.

If you are not dead to the world, this might well be a sign that you are not His.  Or that you have wandered far from Him.  So go to Him and take that easy yoke onto your shoulders (Matt 11:28-30).  Be constrained by the death and resurrection of Jesus, for this is salvation.  Or else be wearied and burdened by your own, much heavier yokes which cannot lead you through the judgement to come.

But for those who are yoked to Christ, know that you have begun, even now, to live that newness of life.  Even today as we walk together with Jesus, dying to sin and self and the praises and worries of this world, resurrection life is unleashed.  This mystical union with Christ (the best of the Paul sermons) is earthed in the daily discipleship of living for Jesus (the best of the Jesus sermons).  Let’s have both. 

I wonder if that’s why Peter finishes his first letter (which is all about this judgement then salvation dynamic) by saying ‘This is the true grace of God.’ 1 Peter 5:12.

 

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God’s Eye View

Some say Google have gone too far – publishing all our books, taking all our pictures, messing with the space-time continuum…  But I’m grateful for these images.

The Cross

 

Crossing the Red Sea

 

 

Noah’s Ark

 

The Garden of Eden.

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Isn’t the cross picture amazing?

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All created by these people.

Who also produced this

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Some thoughts on your ‘personal problems’

This is a long one but I won’t be posting for a while so read at your leisure…

 

1) This is the occasion for change not the reason for change.

It’s great if you’ve come to some sort of crisis moment.  It’s good that you want to change.  But you ought to know that this is the struggle of your life. 

I don’t mean: This is the struggle of your life.  I mean: This is the struggle of your life.  Welcome.

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2) If you’re not struggling, you’re losing.  Or worse, you’re not even a Christian.

Christians struggle.  We are the product of two births.  Our flesh is from Adam, our Spirit from Christ.  If you’re not struggling then you’re simply gratifying the cravings of your flesh (however respectable you may look).  And perhaps you don’t even have the Spirit.  Let the comfortable be disturbed.  And let the strugglers be comforted – your battle is a sign of the Spirit’s work. 

 

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 3) If you are struggling, you have a Power within you to live new creation life.

If Christ is in you, you have the power that called forth the universe and He is determined to bring supernatural change.  Mark 4 comes to mind – the power of Christ’s word can and will produce 30, 60, 100-fold growth but of course it will be as gradual and organic as the growth of a seed.  Nonetheless this is what you are aiming for – not simply the correction of some annoying habits but the transformation of your character through Christ’s word.  Be encouraged by your struggle – it means that an other-worldly Power is at work and will transform you in ways you can only begin to imagine.

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  4) Your righteousness is entirely outside and above you.

These problems do not define you.  Your success at handling these problems does not define you.  Christ defines you. We don’t say ‘My name’s Glen and I’m an alcoholic’ (or insert your problem of choice).  We say ‘My name’s Glen and I’m a saint clothed in Christ… I also happen to struggle with…’  We don’t struggle for but struggle from freedom.

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5) You must deal with this struggle in community

All the real action happens outside of you.  You need the word of life to come from outside.  As Bonhoeffer says ‘The Christ in the word of a brother is stronger than the Christ in my heart.’  At the same time you need to put words to your darkness and, again, bring it outside.  Sin thrives in the dark, you must bring it into the light.  1 John 1:5-10. James 5:16.  Find someone.

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6) The person you reveal yourself to be in the midst of these sins is the person you’ve always been. 

We tend to think that we’re generally righteous and these problems have been a blip.  David knew better.  When he committed adultery and murder he realised that this was the person he’d been ‘from birth – sinful from the time my mother conceived me.’  (Ps 51:5)  These problems are just you with the hand-brake off.  Ugly huh?

But know also…

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7) The person you reveal yourself to be in the midst of these sins is the person Jesus loves and has forgiven.

Jesus did not die for ‘me-on-my-best-behaviour’.  ‘While we were still sinners Christ died for us’ (Rom 5:8).  ‘God justifies the wicked’ (Rom 4:5).  Which ‘me’ does Jesus love?  The cleaned up me?  No.  Jesus loves the me I showed myself to be in my worst moments.  When we grasp that Jesus is committed to us even and especially as we stink of sin it’s a hundred times worse but a thousand times better.  We must grasp the depths of this love for me the sinner – this is fundamental to real change.

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8) With 4-7 in place – you can learn to hate and hope appropriately.

Focussed in on ourselves we tend either to lose hatred or hope.  Either we don’t really hate our sin because we’re too attached to the ‘me’ who committed it.  Or we don’t really hope for transformation because we can’t imagine such a ‘me’ changing.  The problem is that we’re too attached to ‘me’.  Number 4) is the truth that releases us from that attachment and number 5) is the practice of it.  We then learn how to address this ‘me’ the way we’d address a brother or sister in sin.  As another addresses you in your sin with appropriate hatred and hope, learn to see things from this much healthier perspective. 

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9) Your problems are really your ’solutions’.

You’ll be tempted to think…

“I have a recurring personal problem with X.”

Don’t be so sure.  Probably the truth is something much closer to…

“X is my solution to its insufferable alternative – Y”

X is a chosen strategy to avoid what you consistently reckon to be an even worse state of affairs.  You need to be thinking about what is Y, and why Y is so unbearable that you’d choose X.  Your deep fears (of Y) may be completely irrational and out of control.  But your chosen strategy, X, is not.

Therefore…

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10)  Even the most seemingly compulsive and irrational ‘personal problems’ (non-organically caused) are, on deeper examination, chosen and intended strategies.

It might take some digging (Prov 20:5), but you will find volition at play.  This ought to reinforce the hope and hatred mix.  Hope because you’re not bound to sin like this.  Hatred because you’ve consistently and deliberately chosen these sins in defiance of Jesus and His way.

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11) Until you’ve diagnosed your problem as one for which Christ is necessary, you haven’t defined your real problem.

Your problem is not low self esteem or negative thoughts or panic attacks or over-eating or self-harm etc etc.  None of those require the blood of God.  Until you do the hard work on 4-7 and get to the heart issues – your angry defiance of your Father, your petrified mistrust of Christ, your obdurate resistance of the Spirit – you’re treating your wound lightly. 

Jesus had to die.  Divine wisdom and heavenly encouragement have never been enough to address the human problem.  You don’t just need a bible study and a pep talk.  You need bloody, wrath-bearing atonement on your behalf, while all you can do is watch aghast.  Until you see your problems in that light you won’t be appropriately humbled and all your efforts at change will be a re-arranging of the flesh.

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12) Until you’ve set your hopes on a change for which Christ is necessary, you’re not aiming for Christian growth. 

It’s tempting to aim for a re-arranging of the flesh.  For instance, you may struggle with pornography and therefore make your resolution to be porn free from now on.  Well, ok.  But Ephesians 3 tells you that resurrection power is available to effect in you far above all you can ask or imagine (Eph 1:19-20; 3:20).  To aim for a clean internet history is not really to aim for Christian growth.  To aim for a pure heart that knows God and a burning zeal for Christ that takes you out of yourself and into the world – that’s your prayer.  And it’s impossible.  You can’t do it.  Only resurrection Power can.  But that’s where you aim if you want Christian growth.  And kicking pornography is just a little part of that. 

 

Putting 11) and 12) together you get this:

Christ’s cross tells you to dig deeper,

Christ’s resurrection tells you to reach higher.

Therefore

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13) Pray

The cross drives us down so that we call out in desperation, the resurrection lifts us up so that we ask for that which is humanly impossible.  There is therefore a gospel shape as well as a gospel power to our prayers.  Perhaps use the Lord’s Prayer as your guide.  Every line of the prayer calls us to change.  Don’t move on in the prayer until you’ve prayed through the issues that each line is raising.  Here is the really hard work of change, but only because it’s so powerful.

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14) In your desire to change there will be both flesh and Spirit at work.

Your flesh wants you to change to gain control, look better, escape guilt feelings, avoid the need for dependence, achieve a righteousness of your own, etc, etc.  Bring these false motives before the Lord and repent of your repentance strategies.  True repentance comes from a brokenness that realizes even our tears of regret need washing in Christ’s blood.

At the same time be aware that there is a true yearning from your new nature – a deeper desire to know Christ and be conformed to His image.  Get in touch with the Spirit’s stirrings here through prayer and conversation with others.  Figuring out why you want to change and having this answer come from the right place is priceless.

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14) Address your entitlement spirit?

The flesh is ever desiring to establish its own righteousness.  How, specifically, are you seeking to make a name for yourself?  According to your flesh – what are you trying to earn?  What do you feel you are owed?  What do you have to do to earn this?  What has blocked your goals?  Having thought about this, try to articulate the shape of your entitlement spirit.  How does the gospel address your entitlement spirit in general?  Specifically, how does the gospel address the specifics of your entitlement spirit?  Real change is happening when the Gospel demolishes your flesh-strategies.

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15) You already have the solution

Not within you!  In Christ. 

⁴Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

 ⁵“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. ⁸This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

 ⁹“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.  (John 15:4-9)

Allow these words to live in you and allow yourself to live in Christ.

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16) Some or all of these things are true of you:

You have little joy, take yourself too seriously, don’t have the friendships you need and are not sleeping/eating/exercising as you should.

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Exhortation to eat communion – God’s Soup Kitchen

This table is God’s soup kitchen. This table is where God feeds the hungry, the outcast, the disabled, the orphaned, the abused, the neglected, the lonely, and the lost. And this means at least two things: First, this table is not for people who are fine thank you very much. This food is not for the well-fed, those who get along pretty well on their own, the fit, or the popular. This table is not for people are basically good but screw up every once in a while. This table is for the messed up. It’s for people who are failures. It’s for parents who have failed their children. It’s for children who have failed their parents. It’s for spouses who have failed one another. This table is for the needy, the broken, and the weak. It is for those who are starving for God’s grace and mercy, and they will die if they do not have it. If you know your need, if you know that you are weak, that you are lonely, that you are failure on your own, and that you need your faithful Father’s love and care, then come. This meal is for you. This is grace and mercy for you…

The whole thing is great.  Read here.

Thanks to Tim.

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Ok, bibles under desks, no peeking…

Without looking at James 2 see if you can remember which way around his body/spirit illustration goes.

Is it:

Body / Spirit = Works / Faith

or is it:

Body / Spirit = Faith / Works

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In other words, does faith enliven our works or do our works enliven our faith?

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Got the difference?  Made your choice?

Ok, now you can check.

Surprised?

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The Gospel and Social Action – Paul Blackham

This video is very well worth the ten minutes plus.

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Becoming flesh to rise as Spirit

From Peter Leithart

The Word became flesh.  He assumed everything that flesh is heir to – all our weakness, all our sorrow, all our sickness and shatteredness, all our godforsakenness, He took to Himself.

But not merely to identify or sympathize.  He took it to Himself to overcome it.  He goes to the cross as flesh, and rises Spirit. He assumed flesh in order to fill it with the power of the Spirit.

But – what is absolutely crucial – we still live life in flesh – still broken, sorrowful, weak, shattered.  Jesus died and rose not so we can instantly slough off fleshliness, but so that our fleshliness can be transformed from within by the Spirit.  So that weakness can be the form of power, brokenness the form of wholiness, forsakenness the form of intimacy.

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How to change – Mark 4

Some found my bible study on Ephesians 4 helpful.  Here’s another on Mark 4:1-20:

Verses 10-12: Jesus promises that those who are outsiders to Him will never understand His word, only be hardened.

Do you come to Jesus in dependence to understand His word?  Do you read it with Him at the centre?

Meditate on this: Diligent bible students are not changed but hardened when they don’t read to receive Christ. (cf John 5:39-47).

Verses 4 & 15:  Satan is active in snatching away the word that lies on the surface.

Do you realise the height and depth of this spiritual battle?  Do you pray accordingly: ‘Deliver us from the evil one’ (probably the best translation of Matt 6:13)?

Are there ways you could receive the word more deeply?  Communion?  Community?  Meditation on Scripture?

Verses 5-6&16-17: There is a shallow reception of the word that fails when trouble comes.

Are you ready for the ‘when’ of v17, or do you only look for quick joy?

How do you respond to trouble and persecution?  Does your entitlement spirit get enflamed?  What sorts of things do you start to tell yourself?  How can you counter such thinking?

What does it mean to have a ‘root’? (v6). 

Verses 7&18-19: Where the word is received along with other competing allegiances there will be no fruitfulness.

Name your worries.  Write them down.

How is wealth tempting you?  How is it deceiving you?  Write it down.

What are the ‘other things’ that you are desiring?  Articulate how they’ve captured your heart.  Write it down.

Think through how all these are choking you.

Now consider what is promised you in Christ’s word.  Write it down / draw it / sing it / speak it out to others.

Imagine what fruitfulness is possible if you do the necessary weeding.  Talk to Jesus about it.

Verses 8&20:  Supernatural fruitfulness is promised to those who ’hear the word and welcome it’ (literally).

What would it mean to ‘welcome’ Christ’s word in your life? (Look up other uses of the word: Prov 3:12; Acts 15:4; 1 Tim 5:19).

Daydream about what 30,60,100 fold growth would look like in your Christian life.  Think about 5 years from now.  Think about 20 years from now.  As you imagine this remember to think gradual but to think big.  Seeds grow slowly, but exponentially.  You’ll probably overestimate the change you might see in a year but underestimate what’s possible in 5. 

Meditate on Col 3:16-17 and think about ways you can have the word of Christ dwelling in you richly.

Now trust Jesus’ words about Jesus words.  Though weak looking, though slow growing, they really are that powerful!

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 Here’s a sermon of mine on Mark 4

Here’s a kids song on it.

 

Happy Friday

You’ve probably seen this before?  Even so, it’s great fun…

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If we have food and clothing we will be content with that…

A 2007 print media campaign for Cordaid: ‘People in Need’. 

 

Go here for full images.  H/T Mark Meynell

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Corrupted by deceitful desires

Some questions to ask of Ephesians 4:22-24 (and context) - preferably with a friend, preferably with some personal struggles in mind:

²²You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; ²³to be made new in the attitude of your minds; ²⁴and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

 

What are the desires of your old self?  List them in as much detail as possible.

How are they deceiving?  What do they promise?  Why is that attractive?  How is it a lie?

How are they corrupting?  How are they affecting you?  Describe their ugliness to the Lord and others.

Spend some time feeling the power of these desires, lies and corruptions.  Realize that you cannot redeem yourself.

Now consider – what has happened to this old self?  (cf Rom 6:6)

Meditate on this: Christ loves and redeems not your new self but your old self – in all its lusts, lies and ugliness.

Meditate too on the oldness of this former self – crucified with Christ.

Describe the new self.

Are you the one to ‘create’ this new self?  Where does it come from?

How is the Lord making you new in the attitude of your minds?

How is this new thinking different to your old thinking (v17-19)

In what ways can you meditate on this new ‘truth in Jesus’ (v21)?

Come up with opposing statements to counter the desires and promises of the old self.

 

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Articles on TF Torrance

This looks great.  A free download of Participatio: The Journal of the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship.

Essays: ‘The Practical Theology of TFT’ by Ray Anderson,

‘TFT and the search for a viable natural theology’ by Alister McGrath,

‘The centrality of the Trinity  in the theology of TFT’ by Paul Molnar.

And more…

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Cardboard testimonies

Really, really moving.

And a cool way to teach Luke 16 too.

From Paul Blackham

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