Palm Sunday ranks as one of Christianity's holiest days, second only to Christmas and Easter. Palm Sunday falls on the last Sunday of Lent (the Sunday before Easter) and marks the beginning of Holy Week.
The History of Palm Sunday
First known as the Pascha (Passover), the meaning of Palm Sunday can be understood by looking at the history of the Christian church. Palm Sunday originated in the Jerusalem Church, around the late fourth century. The ceremony consisted of prayers, hymns, and sermons recited by the clergy while the people moved among various holy sites throughout the city. At the last site, where Christ ascended into heaven, the clergy would read from the gospels concerning the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. In the early evening they would return to the city reciting: "Blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord." The children would carry palm and olive branches as the people returned through the city to the church, where they would hold evening services.
By the fifth century, the Palm Sunday celebration had spread as far as Constantinople. Changes made in the sixth and seventh centuries resulted in two new Palm Sunday traditions - the ritual blessing of the palms, and a morning procession instead of an evening one. Adopted by the Western Church in the eighth century, the celebration received the name "Dominica in Palmis," or "Palm Sunday".
The Meaning of Palm Sunday Palm Sunday commemorates the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. The gospels record the arrival of Jesus riding into the city on a donkey, while the crowds spread their cloaks and palm branches on the street and shouted "Hosanna to the Son of David" and "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord" to honor him as their long-awaited Messiah and King.
The significance of Jesus riding a donkey and having his way paved with palm branches is a fulfillment of a prophecy spoken by the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 9:9). In biblical times, the regional custom called for kings and nobles arriving in procession to ride on the back of a donkey. The donkey (or domesticated ass) was a symbol of peace; those who rode upon them proclaimed peaceful intentions. The laying of palm branches indicated that the king or dignitary was arriving in victory or triumph.
Palm Sunday in Modern Times
Today, Palm Sunday traditions are much the same as they have been since the tenth century. The ceremony begins with the blessing of the palms. The procession follows, then Mass is celebrated, wherein the Passion and the Benediction are sung. Afterwards, many people take the palms home and place them in houses, barns, and fields.
In some countries, palms are placed on the graves of the departed. In colder northern climates, where palm trees are not found, branches of yew, willow, and sallow trees are used. The palms blessed in the ceremony are burned at the end of the day. The ashes are then preserved for next year's Ash Wednesday celebration.
Above are the facts, and for some they are the facts of religion not a personal relationship with our Lord Jesus.
In the simplest of terms, Palm Sunday is an occasion for reflecting on the final week of Jesus' life. It is a time for Christians to prepare their hearts for the agony of His Passion and the joy of His Resurrection.
What does Palm Sunday mean to you deep inside your heart? Is it just another day, filled with things you just do because everyone else is doing them.
Or does the meanning of this day seem to bring back a time in your life when you know you were set free from your sins.
I pray for those that do not know our Lord, and those who only know Him through religion and feelings, that during this time of remembering the week of His passion, that God the Father draw you unto His Son Jesus Christ for the forgivness of your sins.
MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON OUR SOUL
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Where (or How) Is Authenticity to be Found? By Carl Trueman
Carl Trueman is departmental chair of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He has an MA in Classics from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Church History from the University of Aberdeen. He is editor of the IFES journal, Themelios, and has taught on the faculties of theology at both the University of Nottingham and the University of Aberdeen. He has authored a number of books, including The Claims of Truth: John Owen’s Trinitarian Theology and The Wages of Spin: Critical Writings on Historic and Contemporary Evangelicalism. He lives in Oreland, a suburb of Philadelphia, with his wife, Catriona, and his two sons, John and Peter.Some years ago I wrote a short editorial for the journal Themelios entitled `What do miserable Christians sing?’ It took me about thirty minutes to write, edit and email to head office; yet of all the things I have ever written, I have received more – and more positive – correspondence on that short piece than on anything else I have ever done. What was my basic thesis? That the typical Christian church offered the broken-hearted nothing whatsoever to sing in praise to God on a Sunday; and in so doing, the church was failing in her duty to care for the hurting, the downtrodden, the depressed. The answer I proposed was a recovery of psalm singing, not on the grounds that psalm singing is the only pure form of worship but because it offers a truly deep and authentic idiom for expressing the full range of human emotion and experience to God in the very act of praising him. No hymn book or collection of choruses of which I am aware even comes close to offering what the psalms offer in this regard; and for this reason alone I would personally be quite happy to sing nothing but the psalms.
Now, one of the calls I hear most frequently from those sections of the church which have identified themselves broadly as `emerging’ is for authenticity. Of course, calls for authenticity are a bit like calls for an end to poverty or child abuse or wife-beating. None but the criminally insane would disagree with such pike-staffishly desirable things, though it is true that there may be little consensus on how to achieve such ends. Nevertheless, whatever my reservations about emerging church theology, I am grateful for the sincere and well-intentioned reminder that Christianity needs always to seek to be authentic; and I am convinced that the psalms should be a basic to such, not simply because of what they say but also because of the way they say it.
My assumption in all this is that human life as we know it is, considered in itself, ultimately a tragedy. Yes, many of us enjoy good times, have loving families, experience delight and joy, but even the wealthiest, happiest life ends in tragedy. Death is the boundary that shatters all humanity; it is a wicked and chaotic invasion of creation; and it condemns all of our lives to ultimate, unavoidable tragedy. I believe that this reality of evil and death gives life its tragic architecture; and that it should therefore inform all that we do. In my earlier editorial I argued that the Psalms should be central in public praise because they give divinely sanctioned expression of all human emotion which can then be used in the worship of God; in this article I want to expand on that theme a little and to argue that the tragic vision which the Psalms so beautifully express also demands that we broaden and enrich the ways in which orthodox theology is taught in the home, in church, in seminary.
The tragic truth of life in a fallen world can be expressed in a variety of ways. We are all probably familiar with the neat summaries of such which appear on bumper stickers, variations on a statement like `Life sucks; then you die.’ Not particularly profound, for all of the truth it may contain. It is, of course, essentially the same thought which underlies the following famous passage from Shakespeare’s great play, Macbeth. In the play’s fifth act, Macbeth, the man who has gained the crown of Scotland through murder and treachery, hears of the death of his wife, he utters one of the great speeches in English drama:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.
The meaning of the two, the bumper sticker and the Shakespearean soliloquy, is basically the same: life is nasty, meaningless, and short. Yet there is a sense in which the latter enriches the reader’s understanding in a way that the former does not. The language, the sounds of the words, the images, the alliteration, the metrical structure – all provide an elaborate and complex expression that draws the audience into a deeper, more frightening, more striking encounter with the absurdity of existence. Shakespeare not only provides us with a poetic manner of talking about an aspect of life which we knew already; in so doing, I would argue that he actually changes and deepens our knowledge of the same in subtle yet appreciable ways. Both the bumper sticker and Shakespeare tells us that life is short and apparently pointless; but only the latter actually confronts us with the full complexity of the truth and thereby transforms us in relation to it. The more we wrestle with the form of expression, the subtlety of the images, and the sheer beauty of the words, the deeper we are forced to probe into the nature of what is actually being claimed about existence in general and our own existence in particular. What is being taught is inseparable from how it is being expressed.
This is a point which I did not develop in my earlier call for more psalm singing in churches but which is, I think, critical to the importance of the Psalms in Christian life and experience, both individual and corporate. They not only teach us what to expect from life, and allow us to express our deepest emotions in praise to God; they also provide us with an idiom, a way of doing these things which allows us to understand ourselves better both in relation to God and to the world we experience around us. And, crucially, this is communicated as much through the poetic structure and language of the psalms as it is through the realities beyond the text which the psalmist has in view. As Macbeth’s painful reflections on the futility of life cannot be separated from the way in which he expresses it, so the psalms teaching cannot be separated from the forms of words which they use; and as the images used by Shakespeare continue to haunt and to shape our thoughts long after the curtain falls at the end of the play, so the Psalms continue alternately to agitate, to provoke and to soothe those souls which have soaked themselves in the psalter’s rich and poetic world.
This literary complexity is critical because of the complexity which evil and death cause for life. Death gives all human lives an unavoidable dimension of mysterious tragedy. To stand at the graveside of a child or of an octagenarian really makes no theological difference. Nobody should have to stand at a graveside for the simple reason that nobody have to die. Mortality is an unnatural and unwanted trespasser in our lives, and it wreaks nothing but havoc both on the one taken and on the loved ones left behind. It is the most obvious manifestation of evil in the world, and as such the most problematic aspect of human existence. I would suggest, therefore, that it is impossible to grasp the full dimensions of the tragedy of evil, suffering and death by simple statements of fact. To do so is to fall into the trap of reducing the truth about life and death to something approximating bumper sticker wisdom: such slogans may be true, but they scarcely offer an adequate account of the subject in hand. This is where the Psalter comes into its own: it offers a full account not just of the range of human emotions but, specifically, of the range of human emotions within the humanly incomprehensible framework of a fallen world which cries out for salvation, knows that salvation is coming, but endures agonies and contradictions during the time of waiting for that salvation to arrive. The Psalms are brutally honest about the fact that, in this fallen world, against all that God purposed, evil yet has a reality which creates unimaginable conflict for human beings with creation, with each other, and, most mysteriously of all, even with their very selves. Human language strains to do justice to this reality; and this is where literary form and not just theological content become so critical. The poetry of the Psalms is thus vital to grasping the tragic realities of a world invaded by death and those countless lesser evils which point towards it. Bumper sticker statements simply do not sound authentic in such circumstances. The confusion and tragedy of death and evil defy such literary reductions; authenticity in the face of these things requires the genius of literary expression we find in the Psalter.
The nature of the Psalter indicates that authentic Christian teaching, teaching which connects divine truths to real life, must therefore take into account not only the content, baldly conceived, of Christian theology but also the forms in which this theology is expressed. The preacher can teach about evil, both cosmic and personal; but evil and suffering are inscrutable, and the complexity of the subject demands a literary form to reflect this. The poetry of the psalter offers us a pattern of how this can be done as it draws us into its world, resonates with us, expresses and explains our deepest feelings and thoughts, and draw us into understanding ourselves and the world as it really is.
What is the practical implication of what I am trying to say here? I think it is threefold. First, and most obvious: the psalms should have a central place in Christian worship, both privately and corporately. Martin Luther was once asked by his barber (or, as my kids would say, male hairdresser) how to improve his prayer life. Luther rushed home and wrote a wonderful little treatise on prayer (imagine that: the most significant and busy Reformer in Europe was yet so concerned for his people that he was eager to write a treatise for a barber struggling with prayer!). His primary advice in this work? Read the psalms privately, and if that does not help, go to church and listen to the psalms being sung in public worship. The psalms meet us where we are; and they take us from where we are to where we should be. That is authenticity for you.
Second, we should not settle for praise songs and prayers which are less honest and thus less authentic than the psalms. The psalms give us a benchmark of authenticity which flies in the face of so much Christian piety throughout the ages. Too often Christians try to conform to what they think Christianity should look like rather than what it is like. For Dylan fans out there: which is more authentic, the sentimentalized material on Slow Train Coming, a product of Dylan’s Christian phase, or the complex emotional bitterness of, say, `Like a Rolling Stone’ or `Positively 4th Street’? Tragic that Dylan’s Christian phase seems less authentic in its depiction of human experience than his earlier material.
Third, and perhaps most controversial, I want to suggest that the very existence of the Psalms require that those of us in the confessional, evangelical tradition think long and hard about the very way we teach theology. We are often criticized for our referential views of language and our propositional views of truth. I would fight to the end to maintain the important place which both of these must play in our theology. But as I hinted above, I think that the propositional truth content of Christian theology can be dramatically enriched by taking seriously the literary form of the way the Bible teaches us. Again, I am not arguing for exchanging Bavinck and Berkhof for some fuzzy touchyfeely nonsense. But I wonder if, say, discussions of total depravity might not be dramatically enriched by engaging with the poetry of the psalms; more than that, perhaps they might be enriched not simply by seeing how our great systematicians formulate the doctrine, but also how great writers wrestle with the issue in poetry and prose. Perhaps studying the character of Pinkie in Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock or Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello or Claggart in Melville’s Billy Budd might offer Christian students of human nature some insights. Or what about the struggle between good and evil that all Christians feel within themselves? Again, we can and should teach this in a straightforward manner. But consider these verses from the poem, `The Welsh Marches’ by A E Housman. Building on the image of medieval English and Welsh armies clashing on the border of the two lands, he moves to identifying these with the division he feels within himself:
In my heart is has not died,The war that sleeps on Severn side;They cease not fighting, east and west,On the marches of my breast.Here the truceless armies yetTrample, rolled in blood and sweat;They kill and kill and never die;And I think that each is I.
This may not be the greatest example of English poetry, but the movement of the poem’s image, and the rhyming of the couplets both serve to bring home the inner conflict with memorable emotional force. Again, the poetic richness of the psalms, combined with the brutal honesty of the psalmist’s own self-expression, is crucial to enriching our knowledge of ourselves, the fallen world, and the God who acts to save within that world. Indeed, the savage anger about the prosperity of the wicked, the seething resentment of God that bursts forth in particular psalms, the imprecations and cries of rage – all of these things strike a chord with all who have ever wrestled with the unfairness of life in all of its contradictions and absurdities. Such psalms have a ring of authenticity because they are mirrors of the deepest, most tormented parts of our own souls. That the Lord legitimates such expression in songs of praise is surely an act of supreme grace and condescension; as is the fact that by the very poetic movement within these psalms, he gently leads those who take these psalms as their own to the realization of his gracious sovereignty. But there is more. Surely there is a lesson here about Christian pedagogy: the dramatic expression of these struggles in a poetic, literary form is significant and should profoundly influence how we teach theology in the classroom.
The Bible writers clearly appreciated the need for complex literary forms to give full expression to complex theological ideas and to the complexity of life in covenant with God in a fallen world. Theological curricula, at home, at seminary, and at church, should surely take the forms of the Bible’s teaching with similar seriousness to that with which they take the basic content (to the extent that it is even possible to separate them). Only then can we avoid the reduction of biblical wisdom to bumper sticker slogans; only then will our theology find authentic expression.
Now, one of the calls I hear most frequently from those sections of the church which have identified themselves broadly as `emerging’ is for authenticity. Of course, calls for authenticity are a bit like calls for an end to poverty or child abuse or wife-beating. None but the criminally insane would disagree with such pike-staffishly desirable things, though it is true that there may be little consensus on how to achieve such ends. Nevertheless, whatever my reservations about emerging church theology, I am grateful for the sincere and well-intentioned reminder that Christianity needs always to seek to be authentic; and I am convinced that the psalms should be a basic to such, not simply because of what they say but also because of the way they say it.
My assumption in all this is that human life as we know it is, considered in itself, ultimately a tragedy. Yes, many of us enjoy good times, have loving families, experience delight and joy, but even the wealthiest, happiest life ends in tragedy. Death is the boundary that shatters all humanity; it is a wicked and chaotic invasion of creation; and it condemns all of our lives to ultimate, unavoidable tragedy. I believe that this reality of evil and death gives life its tragic architecture; and that it should therefore inform all that we do. In my earlier editorial I argued that the Psalms should be central in public praise because they give divinely sanctioned expression of all human emotion which can then be used in the worship of God; in this article I want to expand on that theme a little and to argue that the tragic vision which the Psalms so beautifully express also demands that we broaden and enrich the ways in which orthodox theology is taught in the home, in church, in seminary.
The tragic truth of life in a fallen world can be expressed in a variety of ways. We are all probably familiar with the neat summaries of such which appear on bumper stickers, variations on a statement like `Life sucks; then you die.’ Not particularly profound, for all of the truth it may contain. It is, of course, essentially the same thought which underlies the following famous passage from Shakespeare’s great play, Macbeth. In the play’s fifth act, Macbeth, the man who has gained the crown of Scotland through murder and treachery, hears of the death of his wife, he utters one of the great speeches in English drama:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.
The meaning of the two, the bumper sticker and the Shakespearean soliloquy, is basically the same: life is nasty, meaningless, and short. Yet there is a sense in which the latter enriches the reader’s understanding in a way that the former does not. The language, the sounds of the words, the images, the alliteration, the metrical structure – all provide an elaborate and complex expression that draws the audience into a deeper, more frightening, more striking encounter with the absurdity of existence. Shakespeare not only provides us with a poetic manner of talking about an aspect of life which we knew already; in so doing, I would argue that he actually changes and deepens our knowledge of the same in subtle yet appreciable ways. Both the bumper sticker and Shakespeare tells us that life is short and apparently pointless; but only the latter actually confronts us with the full complexity of the truth and thereby transforms us in relation to it. The more we wrestle with the form of expression, the subtlety of the images, and the sheer beauty of the words, the deeper we are forced to probe into the nature of what is actually being claimed about existence in general and our own existence in particular. What is being taught is inseparable from how it is being expressed.
This is a point which I did not develop in my earlier call for more psalm singing in churches but which is, I think, critical to the importance of the Psalms in Christian life and experience, both individual and corporate. They not only teach us what to expect from life, and allow us to express our deepest emotions in praise to God; they also provide us with an idiom, a way of doing these things which allows us to understand ourselves better both in relation to God and to the world we experience around us. And, crucially, this is communicated as much through the poetic structure and language of the psalms as it is through the realities beyond the text which the psalmist has in view. As Macbeth’s painful reflections on the futility of life cannot be separated from the way in which he expresses it, so the psalms teaching cannot be separated from the forms of words which they use; and as the images used by Shakespeare continue to haunt and to shape our thoughts long after the curtain falls at the end of the play, so the Psalms continue alternately to agitate, to provoke and to soothe those souls which have soaked themselves in the psalter’s rich and poetic world.
This literary complexity is critical because of the complexity which evil and death cause for life. Death gives all human lives an unavoidable dimension of mysterious tragedy. To stand at the graveside of a child or of an octagenarian really makes no theological difference. Nobody should have to stand at a graveside for the simple reason that nobody have to die. Mortality is an unnatural and unwanted trespasser in our lives, and it wreaks nothing but havoc both on the one taken and on the loved ones left behind. It is the most obvious manifestation of evil in the world, and as such the most problematic aspect of human existence. I would suggest, therefore, that it is impossible to grasp the full dimensions of the tragedy of evil, suffering and death by simple statements of fact. To do so is to fall into the trap of reducing the truth about life and death to something approximating bumper sticker wisdom: such slogans may be true, but they scarcely offer an adequate account of the subject in hand. This is where the Psalter comes into its own: it offers a full account not just of the range of human emotions but, specifically, of the range of human emotions within the humanly incomprehensible framework of a fallen world which cries out for salvation, knows that salvation is coming, but endures agonies and contradictions during the time of waiting for that salvation to arrive. The Psalms are brutally honest about the fact that, in this fallen world, against all that God purposed, evil yet has a reality which creates unimaginable conflict for human beings with creation, with each other, and, most mysteriously of all, even with their very selves. Human language strains to do justice to this reality; and this is where literary form and not just theological content become so critical. The poetry of the Psalms is thus vital to grasping the tragic realities of a world invaded by death and those countless lesser evils which point towards it. Bumper sticker statements simply do not sound authentic in such circumstances. The confusion and tragedy of death and evil defy such literary reductions; authenticity in the face of these things requires the genius of literary expression we find in the Psalter.
The nature of the Psalter indicates that authentic Christian teaching, teaching which connects divine truths to real life, must therefore take into account not only the content, baldly conceived, of Christian theology but also the forms in which this theology is expressed. The preacher can teach about evil, both cosmic and personal; but evil and suffering are inscrutable, and the complexity of the subject demands a literary form to reflect this. The poetry of the psalter offers us a pattern of how this can be done as it draws us into its world, resonates with us, expresses and explains our deepest feelings and thoughts, and draw us into understanding ourselves and the world as it really is.
What is the practical implication of what I am trying to say here? I think it is threefold. First, and most obvious: the psalms should have a central place in Christian worship, both privately and corporately. Martin Luther was once asked by his barber (or, as my kids would say, male hairdresser) how to improve his prayer life. Luther rushed home and wrote a wonderful little treatise on prayer (imagine that: the most significant and busy Reformer in Europe was yet so concerned for his people that he was eager to write a treatise for a barber struggling with prayer!). His primary advice in this work? Read the psalms privately, and if that does not help, go to church and listen to the psalms being sung in public worship. The psalms meet us where we are; and they take us from where we are to where we should be. That is authenticity for you.
Second, we should not settle for praise songs and prayers which are less honest and thus less authentic than the psalms. The psalms give us a benchmark of authenticity which flies in the face of so much Christian piety throughout the ages. Too often Christians try to conform to what they think Christianity should look like rather than what it is like. For Dylan fans out there: which is more authentic, the sentimentalized material on Slow Train Coming, a product of Dylan’s Christian phase, or the complex emotional bitterness of, say, `Like a Rolling Stone’ or `Positively 4th Street’? Tragic that Dylan’s Christian phase seems less authentic in its depiction of human experience than his earlier material.
Third, and perhaps most controversial, I want to suggest that the very existence of the Psalms require that those of us in the confessional, evangelical tradition think long and hard about the very way we teach theology. We are often criticized for our referential views of language and our propositional views of truth. I would fight to the end to maintain the important place which both of these must play in our theology. But as I hinted above, I think that the propositional truth content of Christian theology can be dramatically enriched by taking seriously the literary form of the way the Bible teaches us. Again, I am not arguing for exchanging Bavinck and Berkhof for some fuzzy touchyfeely nonsense. But I wonder if, say, discussions of total depravity might not be dramatically enriched by engaging with the poetry of the psalms; more than that, perhaps they might be enriched not simply by seeing how our great systematicians formulate the doctrine, but also how great writers wrestle with the issue in poetry and prose. Perhaps studying the character of Pinkie in Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock or Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello or Claggart in Melville’s Billy Budd might offer Christian students of human nature some insights. Or what about the struggle between good and evil that all Christians feel within themselves? Again, we can and should teach this in a straightforward manner. But consider these verses from the poem, `The Welsh Marches’ by A E Housman. Building on the image of medieval English and Welsh armies clashing on the border of the two lands, he moves to identifying these with the division he feels within himself:
In my heart is has not died,The war that sleeps on Severn side;They cease not fighting, east and west,On the marches of my breast.Here the truceless armies yetTrample, rolled in blood and sweat;They kill and kill and never die;And I think that each is I.
This may not be the greatest example of English poetry, but the movement of the poem’s image, and the rhyming of the couplets both serve to bring home the inner conflict with memorable emotional force. Again, the poetic richness of the psalms, combined with the brutal honesty of the psalmist’s own self-expression, is crucial to enriching our knowledge of ourselves, the fallen world, and the God who acts to save within that world. Indeed, the savage anger about the prosperity of the wicked, the seething resentment of God that bursts forth in particular psalms, the imprecations and cries of rage – all of these things strike a chord with all who have ever wrestled with the unfairness of life in all of its contradictions and absurdities. Such psalms have a ring of authenticity because they are mirrors of the deepest, most tormented parts of our own souls. That the Lord legitimates such expression in songs of praise is surely an act of supreme grace and condescension; as is the fact that by the very poetic movement within these psalms, he gently leads those who take these psalms as their own to the realization of his gracious sovereignty. But there is more. Surely there is a lesson here about Christian pedagogy: the dramatic expression of these struggles in a poetic, literary form is significant and should profoundly influence how we teach theology in the classroom.
The Bible writers clearly appreciated the need for complex literary forms to give full expression to complex theological ideas and to the complexity of life in covenant with God in a fallen world. Theological curricula, at home, at seminary, and at church, should surely take the forms of the Bible’s teaching with similar seriousness to that with which they take the basic content (to the extent that it is even possible to separate them). Only then can we avoid the reduction of biblical wisdom to bumper sticker slogans; only then will our theology find authentic expression.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Sin Sickness
Isaiah 53:5"...and with his stripes we are healed."
What is taking place on the cross? Jesus is making atonement for our sins.
Sin has separated us from God. We are sick with sin; it has corrupted every bit of us and has made us repulsive to God who is holy and righteous.
We might nod our heads in agreement as we think about ourselves, or we might wag our heads in protest thinking that we are not really so bad.
How we feel about our condition, however, is as relevant as the feelings of a cancer patient. He might feel sick or very well, but unless something is done he will die.
Satan loves our sin-sickness. He loves it especially because he hates God so much; he loves the idea of men and women made in the image of God perverting that image.
He loves the fact that people made to glorify God and glory in that work instead rebel against him and treat him as their enemy.
We are all sick with sin however we might seem to ourselves or others. We are all the servants of Satan, however in control of ourselves we might seem, or in the service of God. The best that a “loving” person or a “moral” person might do without Christ is to show that Jesus’ work on the cross isn’t necessary. The “good” person who sets Jesus aside makes as much a mockery of Jesus as his persecutors.
We are sick with sin. We are in bondage to sin. We are slaves to sin, prisoners of the law of sin. Our condition is hopeless. Meditation won’t free us; channeling won’t free us; doing good works won’t help; disciplining ourselves to be moral won’t do it; becoming a church person won’t help. Nothing can free us from our bondage,
nothing but a champion to take up our cause, and that champion is Jesus.
What is taking place on the cross? Jesus is making atonement for our sins.
Sin has separated us from God. We are sick with sin; it has corrupted every bit of us and has made us repulsive to God who is holy and righteous.
We might nod our heads in agreement as we think about ourselves, or we might wag our heads in protest thinking that we are not really so bad.
How we feel about our condition, however, is as relevant as the feelings of a cancer patient. He might feel sick or very well, but unless something is done he will die.
Satan loves our sin-sickness. He loves it especially because he hates God so much; he loves the idea of men and women made in the image of God perverting that image.
He loves the fact that people made to glorify God and glory in that work instead rebel against him and treat him as their enemy.
We are all sick with sin however we might seem to ourselves or others. We are all the servants of Satan, however in control of ourselves we might seem, or in the service of God. The best that a “loving” person or a “moral” person might do without Christ is to show that Jesus’ work on the cross isn’t necessary. The “good” person who sets Jesus aside makes as much a mockery of Jesus as his persecutors.
We are sick with sin. We are in bondage to sin. We are slaves to sin, prisoners of the law of sin. Our condition is hopeless. Meditation won’t free us; channeling won’t free us; doing good works won’t help; disciplining ourselves to be moral won’t do it; becoming a church person won’t help. Nothing can free us from our bondage,
nothing but a champion to take up our cause, and that champion is Jesus.
Q&A WITH DR. RC. SPROUL
What did Jesus mean when he said we would do greater work than he did?
First of all, he said that to his disciples and only to us indirectly, if at all. He is speaking to the first-century church, and he makes the statement that the works they do will be greater than the works that he performed. Let me tell you what I don’t think it means. There are many today who believe that there are people running around this world right now who are performing greater miracles, performing miracles in greater abundance, and actually doing more incredible acts of divine healing than Jesus himself did. I can’t think of any more serious delusion than that, that somebody would actually think they have exceeded Jesus in terms of the works he has done. There’s nobody who comes close to the work that Jesus did. Some say that perhaps we can’t do greater works than Jesus individually but that corporately we are able to exceed in power the things that Jesus did. We see amazing things happening in the first-century church through the power that Christ gave to his apostles. We see people raised from the dead through Peter and Paul. But at the same time I would challenge people by telling them to add up all of the miracles that, according to New Testament records, were wrought through the hands of Paul, Peter, and the rest of the disciples corporately, put them all together, and see if they measure a greater degree than those which our Lord performed. If Jesus meant that people would do greater miracles than he performed in the sense of displaying more power and more astonishing things than he did, then obviously one of the works that Jesus failed to perform was sound prophecy, because that just didn’t happen. Nobody exceeded Jesus’ works. That’s what leads me to believe that’s not what he meant. I think he’s using the term “greater” in a different way. I heard a church historian say that he was convinced that when Jesus made the statement “Greater works than these will you do,” he was referring to the whole scope of the impact of Christ’s people and his church on the world throughout history. I know a lot of people look at the history of Western civilization and say that the bulk of the church’s influence has been negative—the black eye of the Crusades, the Galileo episode, and holy wars, etc. If you look at the record, you will see that it was the Christian church that spearheaded the abolition of slavery, the end of the Roman arena, the whole concept of education, the concept of charitable hospitals and orphanages, and a host of other humanitarian activities. I think, personally, that that’s what Jesus meant when he talked about greater works.
The Return of King Tut by Philip Ryken
King Tut has returned—this time to Philadelphia. Having first been rediscovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, and having toured the world in the most popular exhibition ever in the 1970’s, the treasures of King Tutankhamun are on display at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute. The boy-king will not pass this way again any time soon. By special permission of the Egyptian government, more than one hundred objects from his tomb and elsewhere are here through the end of September.
If you are thinking of going to see “Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” there are a few things you should know. Tickets are expensive, at more than $30 apiece for regular adult admission. Lines can be long; more than 600,000 people have seen the show in its first two months.
And know this: you will not see the king’s mummy or his famous death mask, which may be the world’s most well-known artifact. The huge pictures that you see on buses and billboards everywhere are close-ups of a small figurine with a head that looks the king’s death mask, but is much smaller. The figurine, which is less than two feet tall, is really only the coffinette that was designed to hold the king’s royal liver. It is little wonder that some visitors feel like they have been suckered in by the show’s hype. As someone from the Philadelphia Inquirer exclaimed in a recent editorial, “I paid $32 to see a royal liver box?”
Still, the objects that are on display are exquisite in their opulent beauty. The tickets may be thirty dollars, but the show is priceless. As Howard Carter exclaimed when he first opened Tut’s tomb, there is “everywhere the glint of gold.” The figurines, statues, chairs, caskets, coffins, diadems, and other burial items are golden treasures from a golden age.
One of the reasons why these Egyptian artifacts are so captivating is because many of them portray the human face. The images of various members of the royal family are so life-like that when we look at them face to face, we know that we are seeing real people as they really looked. And they are presented to us with such royal dignity that we sense we are looking at the only creature in all creation that is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27).
Yet hovering over everything is the specter of death—the mortality of our humanity. Perhaps it is inevitable that objects from a tomb will seem death-like. We are confronted everywhere with the reality of Tut’s own unexpected and (some would say) untimely demise. The king took Egypt’s throne when he was only 9, and he died of disputed causes at age 19.
Like most of the ancient pharaohs, King Tut was obsessed with death and the life to come. It is for this reason, in fact, that all of his precious artifacts have been preserved. Tutankhamun was striving desperately for immortality. He was asking the question of all questions: Is there life after death? And if there is, how can I guarantee my acceptance in the afterlife? But did King Tut come up with the right answer?
Egyptian preparations for burial were elaborate. After Tutankamun died, his body went through 72 days of mummification. As servants prepared his body with various spices and resins, they also performed magical spells to protect him in the afterlife. A sacred ritual called “The Opening of the Mouth” was intended to rejuvenate the king, giving him life after death. Other rituals were meant to protect him from evil spirits, or to bring movement to the king’s limbs—a notable problem for any corpse!
Many of the objects that were buried with King Tut supposedly helped him in some way in the afterlife. There were amulets and other charms to ward off danger. There were models of sailing boats so the king could go hunting on the river. There were games to play; there was food to eat; there were ointments for the pharaoh’s royal skin. The Egyptians were trying to find some way of preserving the pleasures of the present life. Now their longing for immortality is on public display. In almost every gallery we sense Tut’s desperate desire for eternal pleasure.
Yet the ancient Egyptians failed to achieve their objective. King Tut did not secure eternal life because he did not believe in the one true God. Instead, he believed in worshiping many gods. In fact, the exhibit documents the move that Tut’s father Akhenaten made from worshiping many gods to worshiping only the god of the sun. King Tut overturned this commitment to religious monotheism and reinstated the worship of multiple gods. Undoubtedly this included many of the gods on display at the Franklin Institute—Ptah the falcon, Sekhmet the lion, and many of the other gods that were later defeated in Israel’s exodus from Egypt (see Exod. 12:12).
King Tut was one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the history of the world. His people regarded him as a deity—the son of God. The treasures of his kingdom have lasted more than three millennia. To this day, they are a wonder to all who see them. Yet because he did not believe in the true and living God, Tutankhamun was powerless in the face of death. For all its extravagant beauty, the exhibition of his royal treasures merely ends up showing us the dead burying their dead (see Luke 9:60).
Even after all his elaborate preparations for the afterlife, Tutankhamun could not be certain of a favorable verdict from Osiris, the god of the dead. Thus he became like the man described in the book of Ecclesiastes—“a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil” (Eccles. 6:2).
If King Tut could not gain eternal life, then who can?
We should not consider King Tut without remembering the true Son of God. He also died and was buried, but that is where the similarities end. His body did not receive any elaborate preparations, but was hurriedly buried in a new stone tomb. Yet three days later the Son rose from the grave, and in his life we find the hope of our own resurrection. In ancient Egyptian mythology, only the king had any hope of living forever. But everyone who believes in Jesus as the risen Christ receives eternal life as a free gift. By faith we belong to a royal family in which every son is a prince and every daughter has a golden inheritance “that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Pet. 1:4).
If you are thinking of going to see “Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” there are a few things you should know. Tickets are expensive, at more than $30 apiece for regular adult admission. Lines can be long; more than 600,000 people have seen the show in its first two months.
And know this: you will not see the king’s mummy or his famous death mask, which may be the world’s most well-known artifact. The huge pictures that you see on buses and billboards everywhere are close-ups of a small figurine with a head that looks the king’s death mask, but is much smaller. The figurine, which is less than two feet tall, is really only the coffinette that was designed to hold the king’s royal liver. It is little wonder that some visitors feel like they have been suckered in by the show’s hype. As someone from the Philadelphia Inquirer exclaimed in a recent editorial, “I paid $32 to see a royal liver box?”
Still, the objects that are on display are exquisite in their opulent beauty. The tickets may be thirty dollars, but the show is priceless. As Howard Carter exclaimed when he first opened Tut’s tomb, there is “everywhere the glint of gold.” The figurines, statues, chairs, caskets, coffins, diadems, and other burial items are golden treasures from a golden age.
One of the reasons why these Egyptian artifacts are so captivating is because many of them portray the human face. The images of various members of the royal family are so life-like that when we look at them face to face, we know that we are seeing real people as they really looked. And they are presented to us with such royal dignity that we sense we are looking at the only creature in all creation that is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27).
Yet hovering over everything is the specter of death—the mortality of our humanity. Perhaps it is inevitable that objects from a tomb will seem death-like. We are confronted everywhere with the reality of Tut’s own unexpected and (some would say) untimely demise. The king took Egypt’s throne when he was only 9, and he died of disputed causes at age 19.
Like most of the ancient pharaohs, King Tut was obsessed with death and the life to come. It is for this reason, in fact, that all of his precious artifacts have been preserved. Tutankhamun was striving desperately for immortality. He was asking the question of all questions: Is there life after death? And if there is, how can I guarantee my acceptance in the afterlife? But did King Tut come up with the right answer?
Egyptian preparations for burial were elaborate. After Tutankamun died, his body went through 72 days of mummification. As servants prepared his body with various spices and resins, they also performed magical spells to protect him in the afterlife. A sacred ritual called “The Opening of the Mouth” was intended to rejuvenate the king, giving him life after death. Other rituals were meant to protect him from evil spirits, or to bring movement to the king’s limbs—a notable problem for any corpse!
Many of the objects that were buried with King Tut supposedly helped him in some way in the afterlife. There were amulets and other charms to ward off danger. There were models of sailing boats so the king could go hunting on the river. There were games to play; there was food to eat; there were ointments for the pharaoh’s royal skin. The Egyptians were trying to find some way of preserving the pleasures of the present life. Now their longing for immortality is on public display. In almost every gallery we sense Tut’s desperate desire for eternal pleasure.
Yet the ancient Egyptians failed to achieve their objective. King Tut did not secure eternal life because he did not believe in the one true God. Instead, he believed in worshiping many gods. In fact, the exhibit documents the move that Tut’s father Akhenaten made from worshiping many gods to worshiping only the god of the sun. King Tut overturned this commitment to religious monotheism and reinstated the worship of multiple gods. Undoubtedly this included many of the gods on display at the Franklin Institute—Ptah the falcon, Sekhmet the lion, and many of the other gods that were later defeated in Israel’s exodus from Egypt (see Exod. 12:12).
King Tut was one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the history of the world. His people regarded him as a deity—the son of God. The treasures of his kingdom have lasted more than three millennia. To this day, they are a wonder to all who see them. Yet because he did not believe in the true and living God, Tutankhamun was powerless in the face of death. For all its extravagant beauty, the exhibition of his royal treasures merely ends up showing us the dead burying their dead (see Luke 9:60).
Even after all his elaborate preparations for the afterlife, Tutankhamun could not be certain of a favorable verdict from Osiris, the god of the dead. Thus he became like the man described in the book of Ecclesiastes—“a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them, but a stranger enjoys them. This is vanity; it is a grievous evil” (Eccles. 6:2).
If King Tut could not gain eternal life, then who can?
We should not consider King Tut without remembering the true Son of God. He also died and was buried, but that is where the similarities end. His body did not receive any elaborate preparations, but was hurriedly buried in a new stone tomb. Yet three days later the Son rose from the grave, and in his life we find the hope of our own resurrection. In ancient Egyptian mythology, only the king had any hope of living forever. But everyone who believes in Jesus as the risen Christ receives eternal life as a free gift. By faith we belong to a royal family in which every son is a prince and every daughter has a golden inheritance “that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” (1 Pet. 1:4).
Thursday, March 29, 2007
A WABBIT + CALVARY ...... JUST DONT ADD UP
Look for my post on Monday April 2nd, I will be talking about the history of the Easter Bunny, and how he shows up not just at malls during this time of year but of all places at churches. It is a shame to think that this is what calvary has become to some.
Yes that's right, their are churches that are inviting children to come and have their picture taken with the Wabbit himself. Don't miss Monday's post, but until then let me leave you with this thought. WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE ARE WE SENDING TO THE WORLD........
Yes that's right, their are churches that are inviting children to come and have their picture taken with the Wabbit himself. Don't miss Monday's post, but until then let me leave you with this thought. WHAT KIND OF MESSAGE ARE WE SENDING TO THE WORLD........
KING JESUS
Matthew 27:37And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews."
Jesus is King and never does he deserve the title King more than at that moment of being crucified, for this is the battle for which he has come.
This is the battle for the liberation of his people. No greater battle has ever taken place and no greater warrior has ever fought.Remember this. Jesus is not the captured prisoner of the Jews. It is not against them or their leaders that he has contended.
He is not the victim handed over into the power of the Romans. Neither Pilate nor the soldiers are the enemies that he engages. No one has “got Jesus now.” Jesus stands on the field of battle in the exact spot to his advantage. He has, through his years of perfect obedience to his Father, prepared himself for this occasion to bring the redemption that he alone is able to accomplish.
The joke is on the Great Enemy, Satan, and all the fools that he has deceived into believing that Jesus is a failure. The atonement for the sins of all God’s elect – the past, the present, and the future; the Jew and the Gentile – the atonement for their sins is at this moment being accomplished and there is nothing the enemy can do about it. Satan tried.
Throughout Jesus’ ministry, Satan tried to tempt him – sometimes by offering fame and glory; sometimes through his friends such as Peter offering a way out of suffering; sometimes through abandonment of friends discouraging him. One sin – that was all Satan needed. One little sin – one moment of doubt or resentment, one indiscretion, one blemish that would disqualify his sacrifice.
The constant slander and criticisms of the religious leaders should have brought out one ill-advised remark or thought. The foolish behavior and remarks of the disciples ought to have elicited some hasty unwise reaction. Maybe even now with the physical barbarity Jesus will give in. But no, every attack of the enemy is thwarted, and now the Great King hangs on the cross for the deliverance of his people. What a magnificent king!
Jesus is King and never does he deserve the title King more than at that moment of being crucified, for this is the battle for which he has come.
This is the battle for the liberation of his people. No greater battle has ever taken place and no greater warrior has ever fought.Remember this. Jesus is not the captured prisoner of the Jews. It is not against them or their leaders that he has contended.
He is not the victim handed over into the power of the Romans. Neither Pilate nor the soldiers are the enemies that he engages. No one has “got Jesus now.” Jesus stands on the field of battle in the exact spot to his advantage. He has, through his years of perfect obedience to his Father, prepared himself for this occasion to bring the redemption that he alone is able to accomplish.
The joke is on the Great Enemy, Satan, and all the fools that he has deceived into believing that Jesus is a failure. The atonement for the sins of all God’s elect – the past, the present, and the future; the Jew and the Gentile – the atonement for their sins is at this moment being accomplished and there is nothing the enemy can do about it. Satan tried.
Throughout Jesus’ ministry, Satan tried to tempt him – sometimes by offering fame and glory; sometimes through his friends such as Peter offering a way out of suffering; sometimes through abandonment of friends discouraging him. One sin – that was all Satan needed. One little sin – one moment of doubt or resentment, one indiscretion, one blemish that would disqualify his sacrifice.
The constant slander and criticisms of the religious leaders should have brought out one ill-advised remark or thought. The foolish behavior and remarks of the disciples ought to have elicited some hasty unwise reaction. Maybe even now with the physical barbarity Jesus will give in. But no, every attack of the enemy is thwarted, and now the Great King hangs on the cross for the deliverance of his people. What a magnificent king!
WHY I AM A CALVINIST..summary and conclusion......by Phil Johnson
Part VIII: To sum up. . .
We’ve been taking note of five important truths implied in the eight words of 1 John 4:19 (“We love Him because He first loved us”). I alliterated the five implications of that text I highlighted for you, but if you simply give them slightly different names, they spell TULIP:
* The perverseness of our fallen state—that’s the doctrine of Total Depravity.
* The priority of God’s electing choice—that is the doctrine of Unconditional Election
* The particularity of His saving work—that, as we saw, entails the doctrine that is often called Limited Atonement.
* The power of His loving deliverance—that, once more, is the doctrine of Irresistible Grace.
* The perfection of His redemptive plan—that is nothing other than the doctrine of Perseverance.
You might be one of those people who doesn’t want to be referred to as a Calvinist or an Arminian. But the fact is, if you are a Christian at all, you do already affirm the fundamental principle in every one of those truths. You already know in your heart of hearts that you weren’t born again because you were morally superior to your unbelieving neighbors. You were worthy of God’s wrath just like them (Eph. 2:1 3). According to Ephesians 2:4-6, it was God who quickened you and showed you a special mercy—and that is why you are a believer. You already know that in your heart. You don’t really believe you summoned faith and came to Christ in your own power and by your own unaided free will. You don’t actually believe you are morally superior to people who don’t believe. You therefore must see, somewhere in your soul, that God has given you special grace that He has not necessarily shown everyone.
You also believe God is absolutely sovereign over all things. I know you do, because you lean on the promise of Romans 8:28. And that promise would mean nothing if God were not in control of every detail of everything that happens. If He is not in control of all things, how could He work all things together for good?
Furthermore, you pray for the lost, which means in your heart, you believe God is sovereign over their salvation. If you didn’t really believe He was sovereign in saving sinners, you’d quit praying for the lost and start doing everything you could to buttonhole people into the kingdom by hook or by crook, instead. But you know that would be folly. And you pray about other things, too, don’t you? You pray that God will change this person’s heart, or alter the circumstances of that problem. That’s pure Calvinism. When we go to God in prayer, we’re expressing faith in His sovereignty over the circumstances of our lives.
You even believe God operates sovereignly in the administration of all His providence. You say things like, “If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that” (James 4:15)—because in your heart you believe that God works all things after the counsel of His own will (Eph. 1:11), and nothing happens apart from His will.
Nothing is more biblical than these doctrines that are commonly labeled Calvinism. In a way, it is a shame they have been given an extrabiblical name, because these truths are the very essence of what Scripture teaches. The very gist of Calvinism is nowhere more clearly stated than in the simple words of our verse: “We love Him, because He first loved us.”
* The perverseness of our fallen state—that’s the doctrine of Total Depravity.
* The priority of God’s electing choice—that is the doctrine of Unconditional Election
* The particularity of His saving work—that, as we saw, entails the doctrine that is often called Limited Atonement.
* The power of His loving deliverance—that, once more, is the doctrine of Irresistible Grace.
* The perfection of His redemptive plan—that is nothing other than the doctrine of Perseverance.
You might be one of those people who doesn’t want to be referred to as a Calvinist or an Arminian. But the fact is, if you are a Christian at all, you do already affirm the fundamental principle in every one of those truths. You already know in your heart of hearts that you weren’t born again because you were morally superior to your unbelieving neighbors. You were worthy of God’s wrath just like them (Eph. 2:1 3). According to Ephesians 2:4-6, it was God who quickened you and showed you a special mercy—and that is why you are a believer. You already know that in your heart. You don’t really believe you summoned faith and came to Christ in your own power and by your own unaided free will. You don’t actually believe you are morally superior to people who don’t believe. You therefore must see, somewhere in your soul, that God has given you special grace that He has not necessarily shown everyone.
You also believe God is absolutely sovereign over all things. I know you do, because you lean on the promise of Romans 8:28. And that promise would mean nothing if God were not in control of every detail of everything that happens. If He is not in control of all things, how could He work all things together for good?
Furthermore, you pray for the lost, which means in your heart, you believe God is sovereign over their salvation. If you didn’t really believe He was sovereign in saving sinners, you’d quit praying for the lost and start doing everything you could to buttonhole people into the kingdom by hook or by crook, instead. But you know that would be folly. And you pray about other things, too, don’t you? You pray that God will change this person’s heart, or alter the circumstances of that problem. That’s pure Calvinism. When we go to God in prayer, we’re expressing faith in His sovereignty over the circumstances of our lives.
You even believe God operates sovereignly in the administration of all His providence. You say things like, “If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that” (James 4:15)—because in your heart you believe that God works all things after the counsel of His own will (Eph. 1:11), and nothing happens apart from His will.
Nothing is more biblical than these doctrines that are commonly labeled Calvinism. In a way, it is a shame they have been given an extrabiblical name, because these truths are the very essence of what Scripture teaches. The very gist of Calvinism is nowhere more clearly stated than in the simple words of our verse: “We love Him, because He first loved us.”
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Passed On
Mark 15:15So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.Pilate handed Jesus over to his soldiers to be crucified.
Jesus keeps passing through hands. Judas handed him over to the arrest party, who handed him over to the Sanhedrin, who then handed him over to Pilate. One more pass to make. You might say that Pilate tried to hand Jesus over to the crowd, but they refused him. Jesus seems nothing more than a tainted object that everyone is trying to dispose of. They just want him off their hands. But do you recall Jesus’ last words on the cross? Luke records them (23:26): “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”Remember that. The passion of Jesus, as terrible as it was, is not like one of Shakespeare’s tragedies in which the main character is plunged into ruin because of some character defect or forces beyond his control. The passion of Jesus is happening precisely because Jesus is perfect and in perfect control. All this handing over is going according to script: 33 “We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law (check). They will condemn him to death (check) and will hand him over to the Gentiles (check), 34 who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.Jesus told his disciples of what was to come to restore their faith. Let this same knowledge store up your faith. Keep his words always before you when you read of his passion. Keep before you that he is going through this parody of justice to make you just before God; that he has consented to be handed over to evil men that you might be committed into the hands of God. Keep before you that he gladly descends into this valley of humiliation that he might be raised to glory and bring you to be with him.
Jesus keeps passing through hands. Judas handed him over to the arrest party, who handed him over to the Sanhedrin, who then handed him over to Pilate. One more pass to make. You might say that Pilate tried to hand Jesus over to the crowd, but they refused him. Jesus seems nothing more than a tainted object that everyone is trying to dispose of. They just want him off their hands. But do you recall Jesus’ last words on the cross? Luke records them (23:26): “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”Remember that. The passion of Jesus, as terrible as it was, is not like one of Shakespeare’s tragedies in which the main character is plunged into ruin because of some character defect or forces beyond his control. The passion of Jesus is happening precisely because Jesus is perfect and in perfect control. All this handing over is going according to script: 33 “We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of the law (check). They will condemn him to death (check) and will hand him over to the Gentiles (check), 34 who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.Jesus told his disciples of what was to come to restore their faith. Let this same knowledge store up your faith. Keep his words always before you when you read of his passion. Keep before you that he is going through this parody of justice to make you just before God; that he has consented to be handed over to evil men that you might be committed into the hands of God. Keep before you that he gladly descends into this valley of humiliation that he might be raised to glory and bring you to be with him.
WHY I AM A CALVINIST..PART 7.......by Phil Johnson
Part VII: A second look at one of the shortest verses in the Bible
We’re looking at five doctrinal implications of a very short verse, 1 John 4:19: “We love Him because He first loved us.”
We’ve reached point three. This verse not only highlights the perverseness of our fallen state; and teaches us about the priority of God’s electing choice; but, third, it shows us—
We’re looking at five doctrinal implications of a very short verse, 1 John 4:19: “We love Him because He first loved us.”
We’ve reached point three. This verse not only highlights the perverseness of our fallen state; and teaches us about the priority of God’s electing choice; but, third, it shows us—
3. THE PARTICULARITY OF HIS SAVING WORK
What do I mean by that? Look at the verse again: “We love Him, because He first loved us.” Those words express John’s conviction that God has done something special for us. “We love Him . . . ” but not everyone loves Him. God has done something on our behalf and in our hearts that He does not do for everyone. He has demonstrated a particular love for us.
The apostle John was always keenly aware of this fact. He gloried in the knowledge that Jesus’ love for him was a special love. That is the implication of his favorite self description: “that disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:7). John used that phrase again and again because he delighted in the knowledge that Christ loved him in particular. God had redeemed him in particular. He was not merely the beneficiary of a general goodwill that God has for all creation; he was convinced that Christ’s love for him was personal and special. Jesus loved him in particular.
You know what? Every born-again Arminian will say that, too: He loves me in particular. He loves me with a special love. I’m not merely a dog, licking up the crumbs of God’s general love for all mankind. I am one of the children He has seated at His table. He has a special love for me. Every believing Arminian could refer to himself, as the apostle John did, as “That guy whom Jesus loves.”
By the way, I do believe with all my heart that God has a general love of God for everyone in the human race. “His tender mercies are over all His works” (Psalm 145:9). Acts 17:25: “He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things”—and those are tokens of a genuine goodwill and lovingkindness that extends to everyone who was ever born. God even loves His enemies (Matthew 5:45) so “He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Yet God’s love for the elect is a particular love. He loves them with the love of a Father for His own children. He loves them each uniquely. He loves them in a special way. His love for them is the highest and most sacred kind of love known to man. No greater love can possibly be extended to any creature. And that great love is manifest in a particular way. It is a sacrificial kind of love that will stop at nothing to preserve its object. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Christ’s love moved Him to give His life for His friends.
Look back a few verses at verses 9-10: “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” The proof of His electing love—and the thing that lovingly guarantees the salvation of His people—is the atoning work of Christ.
God gave Christ to die for them in order to be a propitiation for their sins. That simply means He satisfied justice on their behalf. He satisfied the wrath of God on their behalf. He bore their guilt. He died in their place and in their stead, so that they wouldn’t have to suffer the penalty for their own sins. He bore the wrath of God on their behalf. He paid in full the penalty of their sins. He was their substitute. He died for them in particular.
So let’s talk about “limited atonement.” Some of you are thinking, There’s a doctrine no Arminian presupposes. Actually, I think anyone who believes the atonement was substitutionary presupposes a Calvinistic doctrine of the atonement. And historic, evangelical Arminians do believe in substitutionary atonement. Christ suffered in my place and in my stead. He wasn’t such a substitute for Judas’s punishment, because if what Jesus said about Judas is true, Judas is in hell this very moment, bearing the wrath of God for himself.
I don’t like the expression “limited atonement,” because it suggests that the atonement is limited in its sufficiency.
Let me clear this up for you: No true Calvinist believes that. If you had the idea that Calvinism places some limit on the value or sufficiency of the atonement, forget that idea. Any Calvinist who denies that Christ’s death was sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world is a bad Calvinist. Christ’s sacrifice was infinite in its sufficiency, “abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.” (In fact, that phrase, “abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world,” is quoted directly from the canons of the Synod of Dordt, which is the original manifesto of Calvinism.) The death of Christ is infinitely sufficient and that one sacrifice could have atoned for the sins of the whole world, if that had been God’s design.
But was that God’s design? Or was the central and supreme object of His death the salvation of those whom God had loved with a special love from before the foundation of the world? I believe those questions are definitively settled forever by 1 Timothy 4:10: “We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.” In the design of God, the atoning work of Christ has a special significance for the elect, because it was the means by which He secured and guaranteed their salvation forever. “The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). And even Arminians affirm the basic gist of that truth—Christ’s atonement is efficacious only for those who actually believe.
Notice: when John writes, “We love Him, because He first loved us,” he is addressing those who were the particular objects of Christ’s redemptive work. Look once again at verse 9: “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.” This was the object of God in the death of His Son: “that we might live through Him.” He undertook this saving work for us in particular, because we are special objects of His eternal love.
There’s more. Here’s a fourth doctrine we find taught in this verse:
4. THE POWER OF HIS LOVING DELIVERANCE
Look at our verse again: “We love Him because He first loved us.” John is saying that God’s love for us is the cause—the effectual cause—of our love for Him. Once again, he is not saying merely that God’s love is a motive or an incentive for our love. Rather, John’s point is that God’s love is the actual productive cause of our love.
Remember that it is impossible for an unregenerate person to love God. The heart of fallen flesh is by definition an enemy of God. It has no power to change itself, any more than a leopard can change its spots. It is the nature of a sinner to love sin, and nothing is more contrary to a sinful heart than love for God. So it is morally impossible for the sinner to love God.
“Who then can be saved?” Do you remember Jesus’ answer to that question? “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). He does the impossible. His own love for us is such that He purchases us and pursues us and persuades us lovingly to love Him. And in order to make that love possible, He even graciously gives us new hearts that are capable of loving. That’s the promise He makes to His people in Ezekiel 36:
25 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.
26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them.
That speaks of God’s regenerating work, whereby He resurrects us to a state of vibrant spiritual life, enlightens our minds to understand His truth, and makes the glories of His love so attractive to us that we find them absolutely irresistible.
In fact, that is exactly the expression we sometimes use to speak of this truth: irresistible grace.
Some people misunderstand that term and imagine that there is some type of violent force or coercion involved in God’s drawing us to Christ. But irresistible grace isn’t something that pushes us against our wills toward Christ; it is something that draws us willingly to Him.
It is similar to my love for my wife. I find her irresistible. But she doesn’t force my love for her. She doesn’t employ any constraint other than the sheer attractiveness of her charms to draw me to her. But she is irresistible to me.
God’s saving grace is irresistible to the elect in the very same sense. We speak of it as “effectual grace,” because it always secures its object. God always procures a reciprocal love from those upon whom He has set His redemptive love. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:14, “the love of Christ constraineth us.” He died for us, so we cannot henceforth live unto ourselves.
Think about what this means: We cannot take personal credit for loving God. Our love for God is a fruit of the Spirit, according to Galatians 5:22. It is the work of God in us. “We love Him, because He first loved us”—our love for Him is the natural fruit of His great love for us. So you see the power of His loving deliverance.
Here’s a fifth doctrinal lesson from this simple verse: It also reminds us of—
5. THE PERFECTION OF HIS REDEMPTIVE PLAN
Just consider the first two words of our verse: “We love.” Again, that speaks of a totally transformed heart. At first, we didn’t love. “But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” That’s Titus 3:4 5. It speaks once again of that regenerating work that turns our cold, unloving hearts of stone into hearts that are capable of true love for God.
And inherent in the same lovingkindness that obtained our salvation is a guarantee that we will persevere in that love to the very end. We love Him. We’re completely free from that sinful enmity that once kept us hostile to Him. And He loves us. He will not permit anything or anyone to snatch us out of His hand.
Notice verses 17-18:
17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as He is, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
That love is a fruit of God’s own Spirit, and therefore it is a permanent love. It casts out fear; it gives us boldness even in the day of judgment. It will not fade or diminish. Why? “Because as He is, so are we in this world.” This love conforms us to His image, and keeps conforming us to His image, until that goal is perfectly achieved. In other words, the same love that guaranteed our salvation from sin in the first place guarantees our perseverance in the faith.
(To be concluded tomorrow)
What do I mean by that? Look at the verse again: “We love Him, because He first loved us.” Those words express John’s conviction that God has done something special for us. “We love Him . . . ” but not everyone loves Him. God has done something on our behalf and in our hearts that He does not do for everyone. He has demonstrated a particular love for us.
The apostle John was always keenly aware of this fact. He gloried in the knowledge that Jesus’ love for him was a special love. That is the implication of his favorite self description: “that disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:7). John used that phrase again and again because he delighted in the knowledge that Christ loved him in particular. God had redeemed him in particular. He was not merely the beneficiary of a general goodwill that God has for all creation; he was convinced that Christ’s love for him was personal and special. Jesus loved him in particular.
You know what? Every born-again Arminian will say that, too: He loves me in particular. He loves me with a special love. I’m not merely a dog, licking up the crumbs of God’s general love for all mankind. I am one of the children He has seated at His table. He has a special love for me. Every believing Arminian could refer to himself, as the apostle John did, as “That guy whom Jesus loves.”
By the way, I do believe with all my heart that God has a general love of God for everyone in the human race. “His tender mercies are over all His works” (Psalm 145:9). Acts 17:25: “He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things”—and those are tokens of a genuine goodwill and lovingkindness that extends to everyone who was ever born. God even loves His enemies (Matthew 5:45) so “He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”
Yet God’s love for the elect is a particular love. He loves them with the love of a Father for His own children. He loves them each uniquely. He loves them in a special way. His love for them is the highest and most sacred kind of love known to man. No greater love can possibly be extended to any creature. And that great love is manifest in a particular way. It is a sacrificial kind of love that will stop at nothing to preserve its object. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Christ’s love moved Him to give His life for His friends.
Look back a few verses at verses 9-10: “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” The proof of His electing love—and the thing that lovingly guarantees the salvation of His people—is the atoning work of Christ.
God gave Christ to die for them in order to be a propitiation for their sins. That simply means He satisfied justice on their behalf. He satisfied the wrath of God on their behalf. He bore their guilt. He died in their place and in their stead, so that they wouldn’t have to suffer the penalty for their own sins. He bore the wrath of God on their behalf. He paid in full the penalty of their sins. He was their substitute. He died for them in particular.
So let’s talk about “limited atonement.” Some of you are thinking, There’s a doctrine no Arminian presupposes. Actually, I think anyone who believes the atonement was substitutionary presupposes a Calvinistic doctrine of the atonement. And historic, evangelical Arminians do believe in substitutionary atonement. Christ suffered in my place and in my stead. He wasn’t such a substitute for Judas’s punishment, because if what Jesus said about Judas is true, Judas is in hell this very moment, bearing the wrath of God for himself.
I don’t like the expression “limited atonement,” because it suggests that the atonement is limited in its sufficiency.
Let me clear this up for you: No true Calvinist believes that. If you had the idea that Calvinism places some limit on the value or sufficiency of the atonement, forget that idea. Any Calvinist who denies that Christ’s death was sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world is a bad Calvinist. Christ’s sacrifice was infinite in its sufficiency, “abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.” (In fact, that phrase, “abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world,” is quoted directly from the canons of the Synod of Dordt, which is the original manifesto of Calvinism.) The death of Christ is infinitely sufficient and that one sacrifice could have atoned for the sins of the whole world, if that had been God’s design.
But was that God’s design? Or was the central and supreme object of His death the salvation of those whom God had loved with a special love from before the foundation of the world? I believe those questions are definitively settled forever by 1 Timothy 4:10: “We trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.” In the design of God, the atoning work of Christ has a special significance for the elect, because it was the means by which He secured and guaranteed their salvation forever. “The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). And even Arminians affirm the basic gist of that truth—Christ’s atonement is efficacious only for those who actually believe.
Notice: when John writes, “We love Him, because He first loved us,” he is addressing those who were the particular objects of Christ’s redemptive work. Look once again at verse 9: “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.” This was the object of God in the death of His Son: “that we might live through Him.” He undertook this saving work for us in particular, because we are special objects of His eternal love.
There’s more. Here’s a fourth doctrine we find taught in this verse:
4. THE POWER OF HIS LOVING DELIVERANCE
Look at our verse again: “We love Him because He first loved us.” John is saying that God’s love for us is the cause—the effectual cause—of our love for Him. Once again, he is not saying merely that God’s love is a motive or an incentive for our love. Rather, John’s point is that God’s love is the actual productive cause of our love.
Remember that it is impossible for an unregenerate person to love God. The heart of fallen flesh is by definition an enemy of God. It has no power to change itself, any more than a leopard can change its spots. It is the nature of a sinner to love sin, and nothing is more contrary to a sinful heart than love for God. So it is morally impossible for the sinner to love God.
“Who then can be saved?” Do you remember Jesus’ answer to that question? “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). He does the impossible. His own love for us is such that He purchases us and pursues us and persuades us lovingly to love Him. And in order to make that love possible, He even graciously gives us new hearts that are capable of loving. That’s the promise He makes to His people in Ezekiel 36:
25 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.
26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them.
That speaks of God’s regenerating work, whereby He resurrects us to a state of vibrant spiritual life, enlightens our minds to understand His truth, and makes the glories of His love so attractive to us that we find them absolutely irresistible.
In fact, that is exactly the expression we sometimes use to speak of this truth: irresistible grace.
Some people misunderstand that term and imagine that there is some type of violent force or coercion involved in God’s drawing us to Christ. But irresistible grace isn’t something that pushes us against our wills toward Christ; it is something that draws us willingly to Him.
It is similar to my love for my wife. I find her irresistible. But she doesn’t force my love for her. She doesn’t employ any constraint other than the sheer attractiveness of her charms to draw me to her. But she is irresistible to me.
God’s saving grace is irresistible to the elect in the very same sense. We speak of it as “effectual grace,” because it always secures its object. God always procures a reciprocal love from those upon whom He has set His redemptive love. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:14, “the love of Christ constraineth us.” He died for us, so we cannot henceforth live unto ourselves.
Think about what this means: We cannot take personal credit for loving God. Our love for God is a fruit of the Spirit, according to Galatians 5:22. It is the work of God in us. “We love Him, because He first loved us”—our love for Him is the natural fruit of His great love for us. So you see the power of His loving deliverance.
Here’s a fifth doctrinal lesson from this simple verse: It also reminds us of—
5. THE PERFECTION OF HIS REDEMPTIVE PLAN
Just consider the first two words of our verse: “We love.” Again, that speaks of a totally transformed heart. At first, we didn’t love. “But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” That’s Titus 3:4 5. It speaks once again of that regenerating work that turns our cold, unloving hearts of stone into hearts that are capable of true love for God.
And inherent in the same lovingkindness that obtained our salvation is a guarantee that we will persevere in that love to the very end. We love Him. We’re completely free from that sinful enmity that once kept us hostile to Him. And He loves us. He will not permit anything or anyone to snatch us out of His hand.
Notice verses 17-18:
17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as He is, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
That love is a fruit of God’s own Spirit, and therefore it is a permanent love. It casts out fear; it gives us boldness even in the day of judgment. It will not fade or diminish. Why? “Because as He is, so are we in this world.” This love conforms us to His image, and keeps conforming us to His image, until that goal is perfectly achieved. In other words, the same love that guaranteed our salvation from sin in the first place guarantees our perseverance in the faith.
(To be concluded tomorrow)
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Second Commandment Christians Dr Phil Ryken
Arkansas Governor and presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee is quoted in this week's TIME magazine as saying, "I'm a 'grace' Christian, not a 'law' Christian. The Second Commandment--do unto others--is the basic tenet of my faith."I expect Huckabee's formulation quickly to become a media reference point for politicians who identify themselves as Bible-believing Christians but want to distance themselves from the Christian Right.
But I am less interested in the politics of Huckabee's statement than in its theology.
The dichotomy Huckabee makes between law and grace is a false one. There is a distinction between law and grace, of course, but they are coordinated in the plan of God. Even under grace, the law continues to have its right uses, both privately and publically, in both the church and the state.The dichotomy Huckabee makes between the two great commandments is also false. Jesus said that the Second Commandment is like the first; that is to say, these commandments go together. Still, if used as a distinction rather than a dichotomy, Huckabee's statement may help to explain why Christians are less persuasive in the public square than we ought to be.
People are hearing the First Commandment more than they are seeing the Second Commandment in action.
But I am less interested in the politics of Huckabee's statement than in its theology.
The dichotomy Huckabee makes between law and grace is a false one. There is a distinction between law and grace, of course, but they are coordinated in the plan of God. Even under grace, the law continues to have its right uses, both privately and publically, in both the church and the state.The dichotomy Huckabee makes between the two great commandments is also false. Jesus said that the Second Commandment is like the first; that is to say, these commandments go together. Still, if used as a distinction rather than a dichotomy, Huckabee's statement may help to explain why Christians are less persuasive in the public square than we ought to be.
People are hearing the First Commandment more than they are seeing the Second Commandment in action.
WHY I AM A CALVINIST..PART 6.......by Phil Johnson
Part VI: We love Him because He first loved us
Notice: this profound text is a clear statement about the sovereign power of God’s love. It is a lesson about the sovereignty of God’s saving purpose. It is a celebration of the glory of sovereign love.
The verse, despite its brevity, also turns out to be incredibly rich with meaning. Look at it closely and you’ll see at least five great doctrinal lessons this verse teaches us. Today, we’ll consider two of them; then we’ll look at the other three in tomorrow’s post.
First, the text teaches us about:
Notice: this profound text is a clear statement about the sovereign power of God’s love. It is a lesson about the sovereignty of God’s saving purpose. It is a celebration of the glory of sovereign love.
The verse, despite its brevity, also turns out to be incredibly rich with meaning. Look at it closely and you’ll see at least five great doctrinal lessons this verse teaches us. Today, we’ll consider two of them; then we’ll look at the other three in tomorrow’s post.
First, the text teaches us about:
1. THE PERVERSENESS OF OUR FALLEN STATE
In other words, it underscores for us how bad our sin is, and how deeply infected we are with sinful tendencies.
Think with me for a moment about the implications of that phrase at the end: “He first loved us.” In other words, there was a time when we didn’t love Him. That is the very essence of depravity, isn’t it?—a failure to love God as we ought. Nothing is more utterly and totally depraved than a heart devoid of love for God. Romans 8:7 says, “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”
That describes a hopeless state of utter inability to love God, to obey His commands, or to please Him. That is the state of all whose hearts have not been renewed by Christ.
This is a particularly poignant expression coming from the apostle John—who in his gospel refers to himself repeatedly as “that disciple whom Jesus loved.” Notice: in John’s own mind, Jesus’ love for him completely defined who he was.
Why was this such a prominent feature in John’s thinking? I think he gives us a clue right here in our verse. The reason he was so preoccupied with the love of Christ for him is that he knew that love was utterly undeserved. He was keenly aware of his own sinfulness. As amazed as John was with the love of Christ for him, he must have been equally amazed at the thought that his own heart had once been devoid of any love for One who was so lovely. How can the human heart be so cold to One who is so worthy of our love? Anyone who truly appreciates the glory of Christ’s love, as John did, will be appalled and horrified at the realization that our own hearts do not love Him as we ought to. The knowledge of how perfectly He loves us produces such a sense of utter unworthiness, doesn’t it?
You can see this vividly, even at the end of John’s life, when he sees a vision of the risen Christ in Revelation 1, and he writes in Revelation 1:17, “And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead.” He was literally frightened into a coma, because this vision of the glorified Christ smote him with such an overpowering sense of his own sinfulness. And in an almost involuntary response, he collapsed on his face in a dead swoon out of fear. And there he lay until Jesus “laid His right hand upon [him,] saying . . . Fear not.”
That same overpowering consciousness of sin and shame is implied in the words of our verse, “We love Him, because He first loved us.” We are so utterly and totally depraved that if God Himself did not love us with a redeeming love, we would never have loved Him at all. If that does not fill you with a consciousness of your own sin—if it doesn’t shock you with a stark realization of the impenetrable hardness of the fallen human heart—then you need to meditate on it a little longer.
I hope you can see how this verse clearly and forcefully underscores the very essence of human depravity. There is nothing more desperately wicked than a heart that fails to love God. There is nothing more blind and irrational and sinful than not loving Someone so worthy of our love. We should need no motive to love Him other than the sheer glory His perfect being. And yet, we would not love Him at all if He had not first loved us!
Remember, this is the first and great commandment (Matthew 22:37): “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” The whole of God’s law is summarized and epitomized in that one simple rule. To break that commandment is to fail in every single point of the law. There is nothing more completely and totally wicked.
And yet, our verse reminds us that we are so hopelessly and thoroughly wicked that not one of us could ever truly love God unless God Himself enabled us to do so. That is the doctrine of total depravity in a nutshell. It means that we are totally unable to save ourselves. We have a debilitating moral inability that makes our love for Him an utter impossibility until He intervenes to give us the ability to love Him.
We cannot by sheer force of will set our hearts to love Him, because as fallen creatures we are so in love with our own sin and rebellion that our desires are twisted. Our affections are warped and hopelessly corrupted. And we are powerless to change ourselves. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil” (Jeremiah 13:23). “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint” (Isaiah 1:5). “The [unregenerate] heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked”—who can possibly understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9).
Our hearts are poisoned by sin, and that is why we do not and cannot love God on our own. That is precisely what we mean when we talk about total depravity. It’s not that we are as evil as we could possibly be, but that evil has infected us totally—in every part of our soul—so that we are incapable of righteous desires and holy motives and loving affections toward God. Some theologians prefer the expression total inability, rather than total depravity. But the truth is the same—and I hope you can see how it is implied in this text. Arminians, if they are true Arminians, and not full-blown Pelagians, actually affirm that truth.
So that is the first doctrine taught by this verse: The perverseness of our fallen state. Here’s a second one:
2. THE PRIORITY OF GOD’S ELECTING CHOICE
He loved us first. That is exactly what this verse says. It is also the whole gist of what the doctrine of election teaches. God’s love for us precedes any movement toward God on our part. Even Arminians affirm that much of the doctrine of Election. God loved us first.
The apostle John is actually echoing something Jesus once said to him. That last night prior to the crucifixion, when the disciples were alone together with Jesus, after they ate the Passover meal together in the Upper Room, Jesus said to them (John 15:16), “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.”
Now, John and the other apostles might have protested, “But that’s not true, Lord; we did choose You.” After all, they had left all to follow Him. Peter said so explicitly in Mark 10:28: “Lo, we have left all, and have followed Thee.” They had made a conscious, deliberate choice to abandon their former lives, their loved ones, their livelihoods, and all they had—in order to follow Christ. They had indeed chosen to devote their lives to following Him. And in the case of John and his brother James, giving up their livelihood meant giving up the family fishing business, which by all appearances was a lucrative business for them.
John himself had met Jesus while John was under the discipleship of John the Baptist. As soon as he and Andrew understood that John the Baptist was pointing to Jesus as the promised Messiah, they left John the Baptist in order to follow Jesus. In a very real sense, they did choose Jesus. So what did Jesus mean when He said, “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you”?
He meant simply that whether they realized it or not, He had chosen them first. His choice was the decisive one. They would never have chosen Him at all had He not first chosen them. They loved Him because He first loved them.
Even if you are a devoted Arminian, you implicitly affirm this truth. You acknowledge it every time you thank Him for saving you. You know in your heart that you cannot take personal credit for your love toward God. You did not love Him first; We love him, because He first loved us. You and I are no better than the unbelieving people who still hate and reject Him. The only reason we love Him while they remain at enmity with God is that God’s loving grace has worked a miracle in our hearts to enable us to return His love.
First Corinthians 4:7 asks, “Who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” Do not think for a moment that you can take credit for your love toward Christ. If you love Him at all, it is only because He first loved you. That is the very essence of the doctrine of election.
“We love Him, because He first loved us.” In other words, God took the initiative in salvation. One of the points Roger Olson makes in that book I referred to is that historic, knowledgeable Arminians do affirm that truth. God is both the Author and the Finisher of our faith. He started the process. His love for us not only came before any love we have for Him; but His love is what secured our love for Him. That’s exactly what this text says.
In other words, it underscores for us how bad our sin is, and how deeply infected we are with sinful tendencies.
Think with me for a moment about the implications of that phrase at the end: “He first loved us.” In other words, there was a time when we didn’t love Him. That is the very essence of depravity, isn’t it?—a failure to love God as we ought. Nothing is more utterly and totally depraved than a heart devoid of love for God. Romans 8:7 says, “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”
That describes a hopeless state of utter inability to love God, to obey His commands, or to please Him. That is the state of all whose hearts have not been renewed by Christ.
This is a particularly poignant expression coming from the apostle John—who in his gospel refers to himself repeatedly as “that disciple whom Jesus loved.” Notice: in John’s own mind, Jesus’ love for him completely defined who he was.
Why was this such a prominent feature in John’s thinking? I think he gives us a clue right here in our verse. The reason he was so preoccupied with the love of Christ for him is that he knew that love was utterly undeserved. He was keenly aware of his own sinfulness. As amazed as John was with the love of Christ for him, he must have been equally amazed at the thought that his own heart had once been devoid of any love for One who was so lovely. How can the human heart be so cold to One who is so worthy of our love? Anyone who truly appreciates the glory of Christ’s love, as John did, will be appalled and horrified at the realization that our own hearts do not love Him as we ought to. The knowledge of how perfectly He loves us produces such a sense of utter unworthiness, doesn’t it?
You can see this vividly, even at the end of John’s life, when he sees a vision of the risen Christ in Revelation 1, and he writes in Revelation 1:17, “And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead.” He was literally frightened into a coma, because this vision of the glorified Christ smote him with such an overpowering sense of his own sinfulness. And in an almost involuntary response, he collapsed on his face in a dead swoon out of fear. And there he lay until Jesus “laid His right hand upon [him,] saying . . . Fear not.”
That same overpowering consciousness of sin and shame is implied in the words of our verse, “We love Him, because He first loved us.” We are so utterly and totally depraved that if God Himself did not love us with a redeeming love, we would never have loved Him at all. If that does not fill you with a consciousness of your own sin—if it doesn’t shock you with a stark realization of the impenetrable hardness of the fallen human heart—then you need to meditate on it a little longer.
I hope you can see how this verse clearly and forcefully underscores the very essence of human depravity. There is nothing more desperately wicked than a heart that fails to love God. There is nothing more blind and irrational and sinful than not loving Someone so worthy of our love. We should need no motive to love Him other than the sheer glory His perfect being. And yet, we would not love Him at all if He had not first loved us!
Remember, this is the first and great commandment (Matthew 22:37): “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” The whole of God’s law is summarized and epitomized in that one simple rule. To break that commandment is to fail in every single point of the law. There is nothing more completely and totally wicked.
And yet, our verse reminds us that we are so hopelessly and thoroughly wicked that not one of us could ever truly love God unless God Himself enabled us to do so. That is the doctrine of total depravity in a nutshell. It means that we are totally unable to save ourselves. We have a debilitating moral inability that makes our love for Him an utter impossibility until He intervenes to give us the ability to love Him.
We cannot by sheer force of will set our hearts to love Him, because as fallen creatures we are so in love with our own sin and rebellion that our desires are twisted. Our affections are warped and hopelessly corrupted. And we are powerless to change ourselves. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil” (Jeremiah 13:23). “The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint” (Isaiah 1:5). “The [unregenerate] heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked”—who can possibly understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9).
Our hearts are poisoned by sin, and that is why we do not and cannot love God on our own. That is precisely what we mean when we talk about total depravity. It’s not that we are as evil as we could possibly be, but that evil has infected us totally—in every part of our soul—so that we are incapable of righteous desires and holy motives and loving affections toward God. Some theologians prefer the expression total inability, rather than total depravity. But the truth is the same—and I hope you can see how it is implied in this text. Arminians, if they are true Arminians, and not full-blown Pelagians, actually affirm that truth.
So that is the first doctrine taught by this verse: The perverseness of our fallen state. Here’s a second one:
2. THE PRIORITY OF GOD’S ELECTING CHOICE
He loved us first. That is exactly what this verse says. It is also the whole gist of what the doctrine of election teaches. God’s love for us precedes any movement toward God on our part. Even Arminians affirm that much of the doctrine of Election. God loved us first.
The apostle John is actually echoing something Jesus once said to him. That last night prior to the crucifixion, when the disciples were alone together with Jesus, after they ate the Passover meal together in the Upper Room, Jesus said to them (John 15:16), “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.”
Now, John and the other apostles might have protested, “But that’s not true, Lord; we did choose You.” After all, they had left all to follow Him. Peter said so explicitly in Mark 10:28: “Lo, we have left all, and have followed Thee.” They had made a conscious, deliberate choice to abandon their former lives, their loved ones, their livelihoods, and all they had—in order to follow Christ. They had indeed chosen to devote their lives to following Him. And in the case of John and his brother James, giving up their livelihood meant giving up the family fishing business, which by all appearances was a lucrative business for them.
John himself had met Jesus while John was under the discipleship of John the Baptist. As soon as he and Andrew understood that John the Baptist was pointing to Jesus as the promised Messiah, they left John the Baptist in order to follow Jesus. In a very real sense, they did choose Jesus. So what did Jesus mean when He said, “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you”?
He meant simply that whether they realized it or not, He had chosen them first. His choice was the decisive one. They would never have chosen Him at all had He not first chosen them. They loved Him because He first loved them.
Even if you are a devoted Arminian, you implicitly affirm this truth. You acknowledge it every time you thank Him for saving you. You know in your heart that you cannot take personal credit for your love toward God. You did not love Him first; We love him, because He first loved us. You and I are no better than the unbelieving people who still hate and reject Him. The only reason we love Him while they remain at enmity with God is that God’s loving grace has worked a miracle in our hearts to enable us to return His love.
First Corinthians 4:7 asks, “Who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” Do not think for a moment that you can take credit for your love toward Christ. If you love Him at all, it is only because He first loved you. That is the very essence of the doctrine of election.
“We love Him, because He first loved us.” In other words, God took the initiative in salvation. One of the points Roger Olson makes in that book I referred to is that historic, knowledgeable Arminians do affirm that truth. God is both the Author and the Finisher of our faith. He started the process. His love for us not only came before any love we have for Him; but His love is what secured our love for Him. That’s exactly what this text says.
Monday, March 26, 2007
PRAY FOR JOE.........
Please keep Joe Morrison in your prayers he has been very sick with a bad cold for the last two days.
YOU CAN LET HIM KNOW YOU ARE PRAYING FOR HIM BY EMAIL AT j.morrison@phillycommunitychurch.org
YOU CAN LET HIM KNOW YOU ARE PRAYING FOR HIM BY EMAIL AT j.morrison@phillycommunitychurch.org
Lloyd Jones on the two commandments
Phil Ryken
A reformation21 reader has written with a helpful comment on First Commandment and Second Commandment Christians, so called:
"Years ago Dr. D Martin Lloyd-Jones warned about the subtle danger of reversing the order of the two commandments (somewhere in his Romans commentary). Seeing our love for God through the lens of loving our neighbor vs. seeing our love for our neighbor through the lens of loving God. Not only are the commandments important, but also their order!"
A reformation21 reader has written with a helpful comment on First Commandment and Second Commandment Christians, so called:
"Years ago Dr. D Martin Lloyd-Jones warned about the subtle danger of reversing the order of the two commandments (somewhere in his Romans commentary). Seeing our love for God through the lens of loving our neighbor vs. seeing our love for our neighbor through the lens of loving God. Not only are the commandments important, but also their order!"
THE HOPE OF PETER
Romans 3:19-25
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human beingwill be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
God is angry at you because of your sin. God will judge you for the full guilt. You may laugh it off or you may be filled with guilt feelings; it does not matter; God holds you guilty.
The gospel is not that God is so loving that in the end he will forgive everybody their sins. If that is the case, Jesus is not needed.
Nor does the gospel message teach that his death covered the sins of everybody regardless of their attitude towards him.
The Scriptures teach that it is by faith in Jesus that his salvation comes.
Will you turn to him? Without him, you have no hope and the smallest of sins condemns you. With him, you have a hope that is made sure through whatever pitfalls await you.
Peter learned the hard way that no promises of his to be good could be fulfilled.
As sincere as he may be, and as hard as he may try to be good, he could not escape the fact that at heart he was a denier of the man he loved the most.
But Peter also learned whose effort to count on, whose promises could be trusted.
Listen to what he had to say years later after denying his Lord:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5).
Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human beingwill be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.
God is angry at you because of your sin. God will judge you for the full guilt. You may laugh it off or you may be filled with guilt feelings; it does not matter; God holds you guilty.
The gospel is not that God is so loving that in the end he will forgive everybody their sins. If that is the case, Jesus is not needed.
Nor does the gospel message teach that his death covered the sins of everybody regardless of their attitude towards him.
The Scriptures teach that it is by faith in Jesus that his salvation comes.
Will you turn to him? Without him, you have no hope and the smallest of sins condemns you. With him, you have a hope that is made sure through whatever pitfalls await you.
Peter learned the hard way that no promises of his to be good could be fulfilled.
As sincere as he may be, and as hard as he may try to be good, he could not escape the fact that at heart he was a denier of the man he loved the most.
But Peter also learned whose effort to count on, whose promises could be trusted.
Listen to what he had to say years later after denying his Lord:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Peter 1:3-5).
WHY I AM A CALVINIST..PART 5.......by Phil Johnson
Part V: Why this issue is really a lot simpler than most people think
At the end of the previous post, I described how even in my Arminian days, I affirmed an awful lot of truth about the sovereignty of God: I would have affirmed with no reservation whatsoever that God is God; that He does all His good pleasure; that no one can make Him do otherwise; that He is in control and in charge no matter how much noise evildoers try to make; and not only is He in charge, He is working all things out for my good and His glory. As a matter of fact, my confidence in the promise of Romans 8:28 was what motivated my prayer life.
That’s Calvinism. If you believe those things, you have affirmed the heart of Calvinism, even if you call yourself an Arminian. Those are the basic truths of Calvinism, and if you already believe those things, you are functioning with Calvinist presuppositions.
In fact, the truths of Calvinism so much permeate the heart of the gospel message, that even if you think you are a committed and consistent Arminianism, if you truly affirm the gospel you have already conceded the principle points of Calvinism anyway.
I want to turn to the Scriptures and illustrate for you from a typical passage of Scripture why I think that’s true. For the remainder of this series, we’ll focus on one very short text of Scripture that illustrates perfectly the point I am making.
Let’s home in on a truth Arminians hold in especially high regard, and rightfully so: the love of God. I’ve chosen a short verse, and a familiar one, to make this as simple as possible—1 John 4:19. This is one of those memory verses AWANA kids love because it’s easy to get credit for memorizing a whole verse, and it’s just eight words in English: 1 John 4:19: “We love Him because He first loved us.”
I remember very well the first time I noticed this verse. I was a fairly new Christian at the time, and I was surprised to find this truth in the Bible.
I was appallingly ignorant of the Bible when I was a brand new Christian. I grew up going to liberal churches where the Bible was hardly mentioned unless the Sunday School teacher wanted to disagree with something the Bible said.
So I remember taking a Bible literacy exam when I entered Moody Bible Institute, still as a fairly new believer. I hate to think what kind of score I made on that exam. I’m sure it was appallingly low. The amount I knew about the Bible was embarrassingly meager. I knew, of course, that Moses got the Ten Amendments on Mount Cyanide, but the only one I could name was “Thou shalt not admit adultery.”
But we still sang some of the old hymns, and one of the ones that was familiar to me was, “Oh, How I love Jesus!” And I was always intrigued by the closing line of that song: “Oh, how I love Jesus, because He first loved me.” So I was familiar with the words, but I was really surprised to find that this is what the Bible says: “We love Him, because He first loved us.”
For some reason, from my earliest childhood, hearing the chorus of that song, that had always struck me as a pretty lousy reason for loving Jesus. Of course, in my unregenerate state, I had almost no understanding whatsoever of the love of Christ for me. I knew that He loved me and I was supposed to love Him, because we sang about it and all. But loving Him just because He loved me first didn’t seem like a particularly noble or admirable reason for loving Him. In fact it always sounded a little bit childish, because it was the very same reason I always gave my mother when she asked me why I hit my brother: Because he hit me first!
I understood that reciprocity is not a good motive for determining how we act toward other people. “You love me, and I’ll love you in return” is as morally bankrupt as saying, “You hit me, and I’ll hit you back.” Love is supposed to be unconditional, isn’t it? So “because He first loved me” never sounded like quite an adequate motive for loving Jesus.
So I was really surprised after I became a Christian and started reading the Bible, when I found that these words are taken directly from Scripture: “We love Him, because He first loved us.”
But what I didn’t understand then, but I understand now, is that this verse isn’t speaking merely about the motive for our love. It is a profound statement about the grace of God that sovereignly secures our love and transforms us from God-hating enemies into adopted sons and daughters whose hearts naturally overflow with the purest kind of love—not only love for God, but also love for one another.
Incidentally, there’s a minor textual issue in this verse that I ought to mention. In the King James and New King James Versions, this verse is translated just the way I have read it: “We love Him, because He first loved us.” That’s because the Greek texts from which the King James Version was translated include the object Him.
It doesn’t ultimately matter which reading you prefer, because both things are actually true, and our capacity for loving God is dependent on our ability to have true love. If we couldn’t love at all, we certainly couldn’t love God. So either way, the meaning of this verse includes the truth that “We love Him, because He first loved us.”
(To be continued tomorrow)
That’s Calvinism. If you believe those things, you have affirmed the heart of Calvinism, even if you call yourself an Arminian. Those are the basic truths of Calvinism, and if you already believe those things, you are functioning with Calvinist presuppositions.
In fact, the truths of Calvinism so much permeate the heart of the gospel message, that even if you think you are a committed and consistent Arminianism, if you truly affirm the gospel you have already conceded the principle points of Calvinism anyway.
I want to turn to the Scriptures and illustrate for you from a typical passage of Scripture why I think that’s true. For the remainder of this series, we’ll focus on one very short text of Scripture that illustrates perfectly the point I am making.
Let’s home in on a truth Arminians hold in especially high regard, and rightfully so: the love of God. I’ve chosen a short verse, and a familiar one, to make this as simple as possible—1 John 4:19. This is one of those memory verses AWANA kids love because it’s easy to get credit for memorizing a whole verse, and it’s just eight words in English: 1 John 4:19: “We love Him because He first loved us.”
I remember very well the first time I noticed this verse. I was a fairly new Christian at the time, and I was surprised to find this truth in the Bible.
I was appallingly ignorant of the Bible when I was a brand new Christian. I grew up going to liberal churches where the Bible was hardly mentioned unless the Sunday School teacher wanted to disagree with something the Bible said.
So I remember taking a Bible literacy exam when I entered Moody Bible Institute, still as a fairly new believer. I hate to think what kind of score I made on that exam. I’m sure it was appallingly low. The amount I knew about the Bible was embarrassingly meager. I knew, of course, that Moses got the Ten Amendments on Mount Cyanide, but the only one I could name was “Thou shalt not admit adultery.”
But we still sang some of the old hymns, and one of the ones that was familiar to me was, “Oh, How I love Jesus!” And I was always intrigued by the closing line of that song: “Oh, how I love Jesus, because He first loved me.” So I was familiar with the words, but I was really surprised to find that this is what the Bible says: “We love Him, because He first loved us.”
For some reason, from my earliest childhood, hearing the chorus of that song, that had always struck me as a pretty lousy reason for loving Jesus. Of course, in my unregenerate state, I had almost no understanding whatsoever of the love of Christ for me. I knew that He loved me and I was supposed to love Him, because we sang about it and all. But loving Him just because He loved me first didn’t seem like a particularly noble or admirable reason for loving Him. In fact it always sounded a little bit childish, because it was the very same reason I always gave my mother when she asked me why I hit my brother: Because he hit me first!
I understood that reciprocity is not a good motive for determining how we act toward other people. “You love me, and I’ll love you in return” is as morally bankrupt as saying, “You hit me, and I’ll hit you back.” Love is supposed to be unconditional, isn’t it? So “because He first loved me” never sounded like quite an adequate motive for loving Jesus.
So I was really surprised after I became a Christian and started reading the Bible, when I found that these words are taken directly from Scripture: “We love Him, because He first loved us.”
But what I didn’t understand then, but I understand now, is that this verse isn’t speaking merely about the motive for our love. It is a profound statement about the grace of God that sovereignly secures our love and transforms us from God-hating enemies into adopted sons and daughters whose hearts naturally overflow with the purest kind of love—not only love for God, but also love for one another.
Incidentally, there’s a minor textual issue in this verse that I ought to mention. In the King James and New King James Versions, this verse is translated just the way I have read it: “We love Him, because He first loved us.” That’s because the Greek texts from which the King James Version was translated include the object Him.
It doesn’t ultimately matter which reading you prefer, because both things are actually true, and our capacity for loving God is dependent on our ability to have true love. If we couldn’t love at all, we certainly couldn’t love God. So either way, the meaning of this verse includes the truth that “We love Him, because He first loved us.”
(To be continued tomorrow)
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Sin Forgiven
Mark 14:27-30
And Jesus said to them, "You will all fall away, for it is written, 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' 28But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." 29Peter said to him, "Even though they all fall away, I will not." 30And Jesus said to him, "Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times."
Jesus is on trial. Why? Because his enemies got the upper hand and the disciples would not defend him? No! Because Jesus was fulfilling his mission to bring redemption from sin, i.e. to provide forgiveness for sin. Whose sin? All for whom God has chosen. What kind of sin? Every kind of sin. Every kind? Surely there are some sins too bad to be forgiven. No. How do you know? Because of Peter.Peter was among the twelve closest companions of Jesus. More than that he belonged to the inner ring of three – Peter, James and John. More than that he was for all intent the leader of the Twelve. And he failed to keep watch over Jesus in his most troubled time; he then abandoned him; and finally even denied knowing the person he loved and confessed as the Messiah. And he was forgiven. Peter was not only forgiven, he was raised back to his position of leader and given the privilege to be the primary preacher of the early church.That’s the gospel. The gospel is what this episode is meant to display. While Peter is falling in sin, his Savior is resolutely procuring his redemption. While Peter is demonstrating that no one can get close enough to God or be good enough for God, Jesus is perfectly performing God’s will to atone for the sins that beset everyone.
And Jesus said to them, "You will all fall away, for it is written, 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' 28But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." 29Peter said to him, "Even though they all fall away, I will not." 30And Jesus said to him, "Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times."
Jesus is on trial. Why? Because his enemies got the upper hand and the disciples would not defend him? No! Because Jesus was fulfilling his mission to bring redemption from sin, i.e. to provide forgiveness for sin. Whose sin? All for whom God has chosen. What kind of sin? Every kind of sin. Every kind? Surely there are some sins too bad to be forgiven. No. How do you know? Because of Peter.Peter was among the twelve closest companions of Jesus. More than that he belonged to the inner ring of three – Peter, James and John. More than that he was for all intent the leader of the Twelve. And he failed to keep watch over Jesus in his most troubled time; he then abandoned him; and finally even denied knowing the person he loved and confessed as the Messiah. And he was forgiven. Peter was not only forgiven, he was raised back to his position of leader and given the privilege to be the primary preacher of the early church.That’s the gospel. The gospel is what this episode is meant to display. While Peter is falling in sin, his Savior is resolutely procuring his redemption. While Peter is demonstrating that no one can get close enough to God or be good enough for God, Jesus is perfectly performing God’s will to atone for the sins that beset everyone.
WHY I AM A CALVINIST..PART 4.......by Phil Johnson
Part IV: One more recommendation, and an explanation of why this issue is important to me
Here’s a recommendation for your iPod: If you are someone who is resistant to Calvinism, or you don’t feel you full understand enough about it, and you want a single, simple overview of the substance and the history of Calvinism, I gave a message to our college students almost two years ago titled “The Story of Calvinism,” where I did my best to cover all that ground in one shot. It’s on the internet with the rest of my sermons, and you can download it for free. The web address is swordandtrowel.org, and look for the title “The Story of Calvinism.”
In that message, I explained that I have not always been a Calvinist. I grew up in a family that had been Wesleyan Methodists for generations — and even after I became a Christian, it was several years before I finally came to the point where I could affirm the biblical doctrine of election without trying to explain it away.
One of the things that first got me thinking seriously about the sovereignty of God was an incident in a college Sunday School class, in a Southern Baptist Church, in Durant, OK, where I had a Sunday school teacher who hated Calvinism with a passion and wasted no opportunity to make an argument against the sovereignty of God. And his continual emphasis on the subject got me thinking about it a lot.
Then one Sunday, while this guy was taking prayer requests, a girl in the class raised her hand and asked, “Should we really be praying for our lost relatives? It seems like it’s a wasted effort to pray to God for their salvation if He can’t do any more than He has already done to save them.”
I vividly remember the look on the face of this Sunday School teacher. This was clearly a question that had never occurred to him. So he thought about it for a moment, and you could see the wheels in his head turning while he tried to think of a good reason to pray for the salvation of the lost. And finally, he said, “Well, yeah, I guess you’re right.” From that Sunday on, he never accepted any more prayer requests for people’s lost loved-ones.
That just didn’t seem quite right to me. I had just done a Bible study in Romans 10:1, where Paul says, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.” Not only that, I began to wonder why we should pray about anything in the realm of human relationships if God never intrudes on the sanctity of human free will. You know: Why should I pray for God to move my English teacher to look favorably on my work when she graded my paper if she is ultimately sovereign over her own heart? Those were questions I couldn’t answer, and I really struggled with questions like that.
But the more I studied the Bible, the more it seemed to challenge my ideas about free will and the sovereignty of God. One by one over a period of more than 10 years, the doctrines of election, and God’s sovereignty, and the total depravity of sinners became more and more clear to me from Scripture.
Every time one of my arguments against Calvinist doctrines would fall, and I would embrace some doctrine that I was desperately trying to argue against, it never felt like I was undergoing any major paradigm shift. It was more like I was resolving a nagging conflict in my mind. Because I kept discovering that the major ideas underlying the doctrines of grace were truths that I had always affirmed: God is sovereign, Christ died for me, God loved me before I loved Him, He sought me and drew me and initiated my reconciliation while I was still His enemy. Those were truths I believed even when I was a rank Arminian. Embracing Calvinism was natural — and inevitable — because all I was doing was ridding my mind of wrong ideas and faulty assumptions about human free will and other notions like that, which are not even taught in the Bible — so that I could wholeheartedly affirm what I really believed anyway: That God is God, and He does all His good pleasure, and no one can make Him do otherwise, and He is in control and in charge no matter how much noise evildoers try to make. And not only is He in charge, He is working all things out for my good and His glory.
In that message, I explained that I have not always been a Calvinist. I grew up in a family that had been Wesleyan Methodists for generations — and even after I became a Christian, it was several years before I finally came to the point where I could affirm the biblical doctrine of election without trying to explain it away.
One of the things that first got me thinking seriously about the sovereignty of God was an incident in a college Sunday School class, in a Southern Baptist Church, in Durant, OK, where I had a Sunday school teacher who hated Calvinism with a passion and wasted no opportunity to make an argument against the sovereignty of God. And his continual emphasis on the subject got me thinking about it a lot.
Then one Sunday, while this guy was taking prayer requests, a girl in the class raised her hand and asked, “Should we really be praying for our lost relatives? It seems like it’s a wasted effort to pray to God for their salvation if He can’t do any more than He has already done to save them.”
I vividly remember the look on the face of this Sunday School teacher. This was clearly a question that had never occurred to him. So he thought about it for a moment, and you could see the wheels in his head turning while he tried to think of a good reason to pray for the salvation of the lost. And finally, he said, “Well, yeah, I guess you’re right.” From that Sunday on, he never accepted any more prayer requests for people’s lost loved-ones.
That just didn’t seem quite right to me. I had just done a Bible study in Romans 10:1, where Paul says, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.” Not only that, I began to wonder why we should pray about anything in the realm of human relationships if God never intrudes on the sanctity of human free will. You know: Why should I pray for God to move my English teacher to look favorably on my work when she graded my paper if she is ultimately sovereign over her own heart? Those were questions I couldn’t answer, and I really struggled with questions like that.
But the more I studied the Bible, the more it seemed to challenge my ideas about free will and the sovereignty of God. One by one over a period of more than 10 years, the doctrines of election, and God’s sovereignty, and the total depravity of sinners became more and more clear to me from Scripture.
Every time one of my arguments against Calvinist doctrines would fall, and I would embrace some doctrine that I was desperately trying to argue against, it never felt like I was undergoing any major paradigm shift. It was more like I was resolving a nagging conflict in my mind. Because I kept discovering that the major ideas underlying the doctrines of grace were truths that I had always affirmed: God is sovereign, Christ died for me, God loved me before I loved Him, He sought me and drew me and initiated my reconciliation while I was still His enemy. Those were truths I believed even when I was a rank Arminian. Embracing Calvinism was natural — and inevitable — because all I was doing was ridding my mind of wrong ideas and faulty assumptions about human free will and other notions like that, which are not even taught in the Bible — so that I could wholeheartedly affirm what I really believed anyway: That God is God, and He does all His good pleasure, and no one can make Him do otherwise, and He is in control and in charge no matter how much noise evildoers try to make. And not only is He in charge, He is working all things out for my good and His glory.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS.....PART 2 By Nathan Williams
In the comments to my article on Religious Affections last week, Jonathan Moorhead pointed out how important it is to read and understand the preface and the introductory remarks to the book. Many times when reading a book, the urge is to skip over the introduction and get right to the “meat” of what has been written. You cannot do this with Edwards. His entire argument is built from the definitions he gives at the beginning of the book. In a class I took recently on the writings of Edwards, the professor noted that if you agree with the definitions Edwards gives, you will have to agree with his arguments in the rest of the book. Based on the definitions he gives, his reasoning is airtight.
Knowing the importance of Part I of Religious Affections, I’ve decided to discuss some of the momentous thoughts given in this first section of the book. I think they will be quite helpful to you as you think about the nature of true religion and how it manifests itself in daily life.
Beginning with 1 Peter 1:8 Edwards articulates the doctrine that “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.” Peter says in this text that in the midst of trials, these believers found the purest expression of their religion in the affections of love and joy. Edwards goes on to define affections as “the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.” The will and the affections essentially work together. The will never acts on something unless it has been affected. It can be affected in one of two directions, either to approve or disapprove. This definition of “affections” is important to grasp because Edwards then goes on to explain how true religion consists in the affections. “That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference.” Scripture is full of evidence that our religion is to be done fervently and not apathetically. Time and space would fail to list all the places where the Bible links the affections and religion.
Once we understand the nature of affections, we then see that our affections truly do generate our actions. Humans are naturally inactive and they do nothing unless their will has been moved to action by some affection such as fear, love, hatred, or joy. Affections are the fuel which causes the engine of our actions to run. Once we understand this to be true, Edwards then moves us logically to the next step which is that true religion has not taken hold of our hearts unless it has affected us. You do not possess true religion unless your heart has been inclined toward God with the proper affections and this has caused a change in your behavior. After this conclusion has been reached, Edwards spends the next several pages giving proofs for the primary place of affections in the Christian religion. These proofs include: Scripture places religion in the affections, true religion is summed up in love, the religion of the most notable saints in Scripture consisted in the affections, the religion of heaven consists in the affections, and the Lord Jesus was a tender and affectionate person.
In one interesting section, Edwards explains the purpose of several of the common Christian duties in light of the fact that much of true religion consists in the affections. This is what he said of prayer:
To instance in the duty of prayer: it is manifest, we are not appointed, in this duty, to declare God’s perfections, his majesty, holiness, goodness, and all sufficiency; our own meanness, emptiness, dependence, and unworthiness, our wants and desires, in order to inform God of these things, or to incline his heart, and prevail with him to be willing to show us mercy; but rather suitably to affect our own hearts with the things we express, and so to prepare us to receive the blessings we ask.
Singing praises to God…
No other reason can be assigned, why we should express ourselves to God in verse, rather than in prose, and do it with music, but only, that such is our nature and frame, that these things have a tendency to move our affections.
Preaching…
God hath appointed a particular and lively application of his word, in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of religion, their own misery, the necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; to stir up the pure minds of the saints, quicken their affections by often bringing the great things of religion to the remembrance, and setting them in their proper colors, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them already, 2 Peter 1:12,13.
Obviously, even the introductory remarks in Religious Affections need to be chewed on for quite some time before they can be digested. However, in light of this brief summary of Edwards basic arguments and definitions, here are a few questions for us to ponder concerning our religion and our affections.
- What Christian duties am I currently practicing with little to no affection?
- What sins am I indulging in to cause my heart to harden to proper affections? (Hebrews 3:13)
- Am I praying in a way that increases my affection for God?
- Is my singing characterized by a dull heart, or a heart overflowing with affection for God?
- Does my preaching incite passion for God in those who listen?
- How am I doing in loving others? (I Cor. 13)
- Do I possess a tender and humble heart? (2 Kings 22:18,19)
- What can I read or listen to today that will increase my affection for God?
- Are my affections raised higher when I pursue worldly things than when I pursue Christ?
Edwards makes a compelling case for the place of the affections in the Christian life. The basis for the rest of the book is found in this argument. Having already looked at signs that Edwards says do not necessarily indicate true religious affections, next Saturday I’ll briefly look at some signs Edwards believes do indicate true religious affections.
Knowing the importance of Part I of Religious Affections, I’ve decided to discuss some of the momentous thoughts given in this first section of the book. I think they will be quite helpful to you as you think about the nature of true religion and how it manifests itself in daily life.
Beginning with 1 Peter 1:8 Edwards articulates the doctrine that “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.” Peter says in this text that in the midst of trials, these believers found the purest expression of their religion in the affections of love and joy. Edwards goes on to define affections as “the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.” The will and the affections essentially work together. The will never acts on something unless it has been affected. It can be affected in one of two directions, either to approve or disapprove. This definition of “affections” is important to grasp because Edwards then goes on to explain how true religion consists in the affections. “That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference.” Scripture is full of evidence that our religion is to be done fervently and not apathetically. Time and space would fail to list all the places where the Bible links the affections and religion.
Once we understand the nature of affections, we then see that our affections truly do generate our actions. Humans are naturally inactive and they do nothing unless their will has been moved to action by some affection such as fear, love, hatred, or joy. Affections are the fuel which causes the engine of our actions to run. Once we understand this to be true, Edwards then moves us logically to the next step which is that true religion has not taken hold of our hearts unless it has affected us. You do not possess true religion unless your heart has been inclined toward God with the proper affections and this has caused a change in your behavior. After this conclusion has been reached, Edwards spends the next several pages giving proofs for the primary place of affections in the Christian religion. These proofs include: Scripture places religion in the affections, true religion is summed up in love, the religion of the most notable saints in Scripture consisted in the affections, the religion of heaven consists in the affections, and the Lord Jesus was a tender and affectionate person.
In one interesting section, Edwards explains the purpose of several of the common Christian duties in light of the fact that much of true religion consists in the affections. This is what he said of prayer:
To instance in the duty of prayer: it is manifest, we are not appointed, in this duty, to declare God’s perfections, his majesty, holiness, goodness, and all sufficiency; our own meanness, emptiness, dependence, and unworthiness, our wants and desires, in order to inform God of these things, or to incline his heart, and prevail with him to be willing to show us mercy; but rather suitably to affect our own hearts with the things we express, and so to prepare us to receive the blessings we ask.
Singing praises to God…
No other reason can be assigned, why we should express ourselves to God in verse, rather than in prose, and do it with music, but only, that such is our nature and frame, that these things have a tendency to move our affections.
Preaching…
God hath appointed a particular and lively application of his word, in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners with the importance of religion, their own misery, the necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; to stir up the pure minds of the saints, quicken their affections by often bringing the great things of religion to the remembrance, and setting them in their proper colors, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them already, 2 Peter 1:12,13.
Obviously, even the introductory remarks in Religious Affections need to be chewed on for quite some time before they can be digested. However, in light of this brief summary of Edwards basic arguments and definitions, here are a few questions for us to ponder concerning our religion and our affections.
- What Christian duties am I currently practicing with little to no affection?
- What sins am I indulging in to cause my heart to harden to proper affections? (Hebrews 3:13)
- Am I praying in a way that increases my affection for God?
- Is my singing characterized by a dull heart, or a heart overflowing with affection for God?
- Does my preaching incite passion for God in those who listen?
- How am I doing in loving others? (I Cor. 13)
- Do I possess a tender and humble heart? (2 Kings 22:18,19)
- What can I read or listen to today that will increase my affection for God?
- Are my affections raised higher when I pursue worldly things than when I pursue Christ?
Edwards makes a compelling case for the place of the affections in the Christian life. The basis for the rest of the book is found in this argument. Having already looked at signs that Edwards says do not necessarily indicate true religious affections, next Saturday I’ll briefly look at some signs Edwards believes do indicate true religious affections.
WHY I AM A CALVINIST..PART 3.......by Phil Johnson
Part III: Some book recommendations
Before we go further in this series, let me recommend a handful of books. The first book I want to recommend is a new book by Roger Olson, who is himself an Arminian, and he has written a defense of Arminianism titled Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities. You might be surprised to hear me recommend this book because I published a review of it on my weblog a few months ago, and the review wasn’t altogether positive. The review was written by my friend Gary Johnson, who is pastor of The Church Of The Redeemer in Mesa, Arizona. Gary’s mentor, by the way, was S. Lewis Johnson. And even though we are all three named Johnson, none of us are related. (Though I would be very happy to be related to either S. Lewis Johnson or Gary Johnson.) Anyway, Gary’s review was in several parts, and he titled it “Calvinists in the Hands of an Angry Arminian.” So it wasn’t a completely positive review, and I agree with practically all of Gary’s complaints about the book.
But I have to say that Olson’s book is the best book in defense of Arminianism I’ve ever read. Some readers might be aware that I didn’t have a very high opinion of Dave Hunt’s anti-Calvinistic screed. When I reviewed Hunt’s book in a Shepherds’ Conference seminar a few years ago, someone told me the only reason I hated the book was because I’m a Calvinist and Hunt stepped on my toes.
And I said, “No, it’s just a really bad book, written by a guy who has no clue what he is talking about.”
My friend challenged that: “Name one well-written book, written after 1950, either defending Arminianism or attacking Calvinism, written by someone who does know what he is talking about.”
I admit it; I was stumped. But now Roger Olson has bailed me out. If anyone ever asks me that question again, I can point to Olson’s book. It’s a good defense of Arminianism, and although I disagree with virtually all his conclusions, he pretty much knows what he is talking about, and he explains the differences between Arminianism, Pelagianism, and semi-pelagianism pretty well.
If you read that book, you’ll need to read at least three or four good Calvinist books to get the taste out of your mouth. So I’ll recommend three. Two are standard works that I routinely recommend every year. The first is a massive syllabus, written by Curt Daniel, called The History and Theology of Calvinism. These are notes Dr. Daniel wrote when he taught this material, and the tapes of his teaching are downloadable for free from the internet. Dr. Daniel is currently working on developing that material in book form, to be published by P&R. My guess is you’ll have to wait 2-3 years for that, so buy the syllabus; download the sound files; and if you are too cheap to buy a bound copy of the syllabus, my friend Bob Hill at Moody Press recently put the entire work online (in Microsoft Word format) for free download.
The other standard work you must have is the book by David Steele, Curtis Thomas, Lance Quinn, titled The Five Points of Calvinism (also by P&R). It is an encyclopedic collection of key Scripture references and some wonderful essays explaining and defending Calvinism from the Bible.
And then one of my favorite books — hard to find for a long time but recently published in a quality edition by Audobon Press, The Great Invitation, by Erroll Hulse, subtitled “Examining the use of the altar call in evangelism.” The book deals with the question of altar calls, as the subtitle suggests, but it’s greatest value, I think, is that this is a classic example of the kind of warm-hearted, evangelistic, classic Calvinism that I appreciate, and it’s a great antidote to the ugly Calvinism I spoke about that you find in Internet forums. Erroll Hulse is a greatly respected British Reformed Baptist leader, and this is one of my all-time favorite books.
Before we go further in this series, let me recommend a handful of books. The first book I want to recommend is a new book by Roger Olson, who is himself an Arminian, and he has written a defense of Arminianism titled Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities. You might be surprised to hear me recommend this book because I published a review of it on my weblog a few months ago, and the review wasn’t altogether positive. The review was written by my friend Gary Johnson, who is pastor of The Church Of The Redeemer in Mesa, Arizona. Gary’s mentor, by the way, was S. Lewis Johnson. And even though we are all three named Johnson, none of us are related. (Though I would be very happy to be related to either S. Lewis Johnson or Gary Johnson.) Anyway, Gary’s review was in several parts, and he titled it “Calvinists in the Hands of an Angry Arminian.” So it wasn’t a completely positive review, and I agree with practically all of Gary’s complaints about the book.
But I have to say that Olson’s book is the best book in defense of Arminianism I’ve ever read. Some readers might be aware that I didn’t have a very high opinion of Dave Hunt’s anti-Calvinistic screed. When I reviewed Hunt’s book in a Shepherds’ Conference seminar a few years ago, someone told me the only reason I hated the book was because I’m a Calvinist and Hunt stepped on my toes.
And I said, “No, it’s just a really bad book, written by a guy who has no clue what he is talking about.”
My friend challenged that: “Name one well-written book, written after 1950, either defending Arminianism or attacking Calvinism, written by someone who does know what he is talking about.”
I admit it; I was stumped. But now Roger Olson has bailed me out. If anyone ever asks me that question again, I can point to Olson’s book. It’s a good defense of Arminianism, and although I disagree with virtually all his conclusions, he pretty much knows what he is talking about, and he explains the differences between Arminianism, Pelagianism, and semi-pelagianism pretty well.
If you read that book, you’ll need to read at least three or four good Calvinist books to get the taste out of your mouth. So I’ll recommend three. Two are standard works that I routinely recommend every year. The first is a massive syllabus, written by Curt Daniel, called The History and Theology of Calvinism. These are notes Dr. Daniel wrote when he taught this material, and the tapes of his teaching are downloadable for free from the internet. Dr. Daniel is currently working on developing that material in book form, to be published by P&R. My guess is you’ll have to wait 2-3 years for that, so buy the syllabus; download the sound files; and if you are too cheap to buy a bound copy of the syllabus, my friend Bob Hill at Moody Press recently put the entire work online (in Microsoft Word format) for free download.
The other standard work you must have is the book by David Steele, Curtis Thomas, Lance Quinn, titled The Five Points of Calvinism (also by P&R). It is an encyclopedic collection of key Scripture references and some wonderful essays explaining and defending Calvinism from the Bible.
And then one of my favorite books — hard to find for a long time but recently published in a quality edition by Audobon Press, The Great Invitation, by Erroll Hulse, subtitled “Examining the use of the altar call in evangelism.” The book deals with the question of altar calls, as the subtitle suggests, but it’s greatest value, I think, is that this is a classic example of the kind of warm-hearted, evangelistic, classic Calvinism that I appreciate, and it’s a great antidote to the ugly Calvinism I spoke about that you find in Internet forums. Erroll Hulse is a greatly respected British Reformed Baptist leader, and this is one of my all-time favorite books.
Friday, March 23, 2007
What do we need to know about a church before we attend? RC Sproul
What do we need to know about a church before we attend, and what do we need to know before we become a member?
Before we attend a church, we should know that it is a legitimate church. Now, obviously, if the sign on the front of the church reads “Church of Satan,” we know it isn’t a legitimate body of Christian believers. But what about churches that are not legitimate for less obvious reasons? Some religious bodies claim to be Christian that, in my judgment and in the judgment of many Christians, are not Christian churches or are apostate bodies. Even attending their services may be a sin. We can’t expect a church to be perfect. But does it hold to the essentials of the faith? Does it practice a basic, sound belief in the deity of Christ and aspects of Christ that we find outlined in the New Testament? Now, we may be worshiping every day with people who profess to be Christians but aren’t; this we can’t avoid because God hasn’t given us the ability to look at another person’s heart and say exactly where he or she is spiritually. But we can inquire into the basic beliefs of a church body, and we want to unite ourselves in worship only with a group of people who are attempting to do what is proper in the sight of God. Obviously that bare minimum applies before you attend the church. Before you join a church I would think you’d look more closely. You would ask questions such as, Is this a church where the gospel is being preached, where there is fidelity to the Scriptures? Is this a fellowship to which I am prepared to commit myself, my time, my money, my devotion, where I’m going to be instructed in spiritual growth, along with my family? I think those are the kinds of questions you need to look at very carefully before you make the commitment to join. In our country we often join churches in the same spirit that we join any other organization, forgetting that when we join the church, we take a sacred vow before God to do certain things—to be present in worship, to make diligent use of the means of grace, to be an active participant in that church. Before you take a vow to do something like that, you need to know what it is you’re joining and then, having made that vow, be prepared to keep it.
IT WAS NO ACT.................
Luke 22:44
And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Gethsemane makes clear that Jesus’ death was not playacting.
He was truly troubled in the garden. He and the Father were not winking at one another.
There was a brief running TV quiz show with a twist. The contestant entered a “chamber of torture.” He or she might be exposed to flames and high heat or to rain and freezing temperatures while answering questions.
The more questions answered correctly, the worse the conditions got. But it was a game.
The chamber would shut down before conditions could get too unbearable or the contestants called it quits.
The crucifixion was not a game show.
Jesus would, and did, face fully the physical and spiritual punishment due the guilty world.
The events beginning in Gethsemane and leading up to the cross do not form a story made up by theologians to illustrate Jesus’ love for us.
His suffering is not a myth intended to enact the suffering that mankind goes through for redemption or fulfillment. The Son of God took on flesh and died, really died, for us.
And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
Gethsemane makes clear that Jesus’ death was not playacting.
He was truly troubled in the garden. He and the Father were not winking at one another.
There was a brief running TV quiz show with a twist. The contestant entered a “chamber of torture.” He or she might be exposed to flames and high heat or to rain and freezing temperatures while answering questions.
The more questions answered correctly, the worse the conditions got. But it was a game.
The chamber would shut down before conditions could get too unbearable or the contestants called it quits.
The crucifixion was not a game show.
Jesus would, and did, face fully the physical and spiritual punishment due the guilty world.
The events beginning in Gethsemane and leading up to the cross do not form a story made up by theologians to illustrate Jesus’ love for us.
His suffering is not a myth intended to enact the suffering that mankind goes through for redemption or fulfillment. The Son of God took on flesh and died, really died, for us.
TEENAGERS: DISTRACT OR DEVELOP ? By Eric Bancroft
* Eric serves as High School Pastor at Grace Community Church.
Youth are the future. From the marketing strategies of businesses to government-funded programs around the world, this truism is understood and widely embraced. Consider the fact that last year alone more than 31 million teenagers in America spent $153 billion. Is it any wonder that marketing agencies target this age group the most? They realize that the future of their products’ use and consumption is in the hands of teenagers, who happen to have the largest discretionary income of any age group.
These sought-after consumers are developing in every facet of their lives. From sociological and physical growth to emotional and spiritual development, our children are growing up more quickly than ever. Everything from advances in technology, educational expectations, discretionary spending, and earlier physiological growth explains why. Kids used to be content playing with toys and riding their bikes, but now they are looking for the keys to their parents’ cars with cell phones in hand while they make their own plans for the weekend.
These sought-after consumers are developing in every facet of their lives. From sociological and physical growth to emotional and spiritual development, our children are growing up more quickly than ever. Everything from advances in technology, educational expectations, discretionary spending, and earlier physiological growth explains why. Kids used to be content playing with toys and riding their bikes, but now they are looking for the keys to their parents’ cars with cell phones in hand while they make their own plans for the weekend.
The question is rightly asked, “What are we doing about it?” Are they stuck in some sort of developmental purgatory or does God intend more for them and for us? As parents, we must renew our commitment to Ephesians 6:4 and our desire to raise them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. As pastors, we must put away the silliness and bring the seriousness of the Scriptures to bear on their lives with all that God expects from them . . . now. As churchmen, we must be careful not to adapt the culture’s mindset of dismissing or disrespecting them but instead invest into their lives with the intention of developing godliness.
What is sad for many of the youth of today is that they come to church without a godly family to learn from or a legacy to build on. Perhaps a friend from school or a neighbor down the street, as a demonstration of Christian kindness, has invited them to join them on the Lord’s Day at a local church. Our churches must make sure that we are receiving these spiritual orphans and caring for them in whatever way we can.
Many of these students find our churches their homes; their small-group leader becomes a surrogate parent, and their friends in the ministry become their siblings. They lack the protection of a Christian upbringing; they come to church for asylum. As we seek to also reach their parents with the Gospel we must not neglect the teenagers as they come, or patronize them with some “half-time show.”
Whether our churches are based in the center of Los Angeles or on the outskirts of Wichita, the components of any God-honoring Student Ministry should include the following:
(1) Targeted expository teaching that opens their eyes to the wonders of the God of the Bible and the Gospel that He provides
(2) Personal discipleship that seeks to be more than friendly but godly and wise in all of its influence
(3) Leadership development that seeks to prepare these young men and women for what the Lord has for them in the future including their roles in the local church
(4) Outlets for godly peer relationships to be introduced and developed as they begin to move from mere friendship to fellowship
(5) A philosophy that intends to complement not compete with the parents who bear the full-time responsibility of raising these teenagers
When our churches provide this kind of Student Ministry the benefit reaches far beyond the students. It helps build godly families, provides for a strong church, and prepares now for the placement of our local church’s—and communities—future leaders. These young people will be serving the Lord as fathers and mothers, as businessmen and politicians, as missionaries and church leaders. The youth are the future.
My prayer is that we would be faithful to provide an environment where teenagers can learn and grow in Christlikeness, to our joy and God’s glory.
What is sad for many of the youth of today is that they come to church without a godly family to learn from or a legacy to build on. Perhaps a friend from school or a neighbor down the street, as a demonstration of Christian kindness, has invited them to join them on the Lord’s Day at a local church. Our churches must make sure that we are receiving these spiritual orphans and caring for them in whatever way we can.
Many of these students find our churches their homes; their small-group leader becomes a surrogate parent, and their friends in the ministry become their siblings. They lack the protection of a Christian upbringing; they come to church for asylum. As we seek to also reach their parents with the Gospel we must not neglect the teenagers as they come, or patronize them with some “half-time show.”
Whether our churches are based in the center of Los Angeles or on the outskirts of Wichita, the components of any God-honoring Student Ministry should include the following:
(1) Targeted expository teaching that opens their eyes to the wonders of the God of the Bible and the Gospel that He provides
(2) Personal discipleship that seeks to be more than friendly but godly and wise in all of its influence
(3) Leadership development that seeks to prepare these young men and women for what the Lord has for them in the future including their roles in the local church
(4) Outlets for godly peer relationships to be introduced and developed as they begin to move from mere friendship to fellowship
(5) A philosophy that intends to complement not compete with the parents who bear the full-time responsibility of raising these teenagers
When our churches provide this kind of Student Ministry the benefit reaches far beyond the students. It helps build godly families, provides for a strong church, and prepares now for the placement of our local church’s—and communities—future leaders. These young people will be serving the Lord as fathers and mothers, as businessmen and politicians, as missionaries and church leaders. The youth are the future.
My prayer is that we would be faithful to provide an environment where teenagers can learn and grow in Christlikeness, to our joy and God’s glory.
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