If We Lived Like We Sang...

H. Richard Niebuhr described liberal Christianity thus: 'A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.' For some time, I've wondered if the heart of liberal theology is the belief that man is actually not all that sinful, but is fundamentally fairly good. It is the message of Hollywood, of self-help writers, of humanism. It's the kind of position that tells us "Believe in yourself! You can do it!", "Do something for you", "It's ok if it feels good", "You might be a bit naughty but you're nowhere near as bad as your friend who...".

It's not a new lie that we are fundamentally ok. Around AD 383-410, there was a teacher in Rome by the name of Pelagius who taught against the doctrine of original sin, but suggested that sin only occurred in individual acts. He upheld that God does not hold men responsible for sins that they have no control over. He said that man's nature is still capable of choosing good and God without the help of God. He was clutching at straws.

Is Pelagian-style error creeping into our church music today? I think it may be. It's close to what is called semi-Pelagianism; following Pelagius to some degree- a position that says that humans can independently make the first move towards God, and that God completes the salvation process.

If it is, it comes subtly in the kind of songs that teach us we can relate to God casually, that encourage irreverence, that play-down sin, that make us people into something far more than we are. Songs that assume we inherrently have within ourselves the capacity to appraoch God without the need for his grace first. How many songs do you know that teach you that you're able to come to God of your own accord (i.e. without encouraging you to think about the gospel)? How many times have you sung lines like "I surrender all to You", "You're the only one that I could live for", "I'm desperate for you", "You are my one desire", "I will never stop loving You" and known for sure that you have meant it with all your heart?

A difficult question. I have sung "I surrender all to You" plenty of times, but I know full well that to this day, that still isn't entirely true of me. I pray that I can increasingly surrender my will, possessions and heart to God, but can I sing that I do until I actually do? By singing these things, am I not taking very lightly my relationship with God? The Bible is clear on all of these variations on the same theme that God draws us to Himself (John 6:44)- we do not choose Him. We have nothing of ourselves to boast in, and our songs ought to aid us in fearing and reverencing God, not relating to him as our "mate" or our "girlfriend". How we need less of "Hey Lord, O Lord, You know what we need" and "You took the fall and thought of me"; but so much more of "Indescribable, uncontainable, You set the stars in the sky and You know them by name" and "You give and take away, my heart will choose to say "Lord, blessed be Your Name".

God Glorified in Man's Dependence

"God is more glorified in the person of His son then He would have been in an unfallen world." - Charles Spurgeon

"God is glorified in the work of redemption in this, that there appears in it so absolute and universal a dependence of the redeemed on him." - Jonathan Edwards

"We are dependent on God's power through every step of our redemption. We are dependent on the power of God to convert us, and give faith in Jesus Christ, and the new nature." - Jonathan Edwards

"It is a more glorious work of power to rescue a soul out of the hands of the devil, and from the powers of darkness, and to bring it into a state of salvation, than to confer holiness where there was no prepossession or opposition...So it is a more glorious work of power to uphold a soul in a state of grace and holiness, and to carry it on till it is brought to glory, when there is so much sin remaining in the heart resisting, and Satan with all his might opposing, than it would have been to have kept man from falling at first, when Satan had nothing in man." - Jonathan Edwards

Worship by the Book

This one is for you, Brian.

I've been reading a really great and interesting book by D.A. Carson called "Worship by the Book." Here are a few excerpts from the first chapter:

Worship serves the indispensable function of uniting us with "all the saints," living and dead. In fact one of the most important things that worship accomplishes is to remind us that we worship not merely as a congregation or a church, but as part of the church, the people of God. -- p. 23

...we cannot imagine that the church gathers for worship on Sunday morning if by this we mean that we then engage in something that we have not been engaging in the rest of the week. New covenant worship terminology prescribes constant worship. [This is] why the New Testament church gathers...[for] mutual edification, not worship. -- p. 24
(What is meant by this is that the distinctive element of their corporate meetings is not worship, but edification.)

We are to worship the Lord in the splendor of all that makes God God. -- p.28

We should not being by asking whether or not we enjoy "worship," but by asking, "What is it that God expects of us?" -- p. 29

Love the Sinner. Hate the Sinner.

Is our theology sufficiently biblical to understand statements where God not only hates the sin, but also is said to hate the sinner (see, for example, Ps. 11:5-6)?

Check out Between Two Worlds for a response.

cc: Between Two Worlds

The Weightiness of Hell

Excerpts from Tim Challies post Hell:

I find the subject almost unbearably weighty. Just thinking seriously about it presses on my soul and presses upon my heart. I would far rather think about heaven and about the reward that awaits there for those who know and love the Lord. But it is good and healthy to think about hell. It would not be healthy to think about it too much or to have a long and deep-seating fascination with it, but because God has revealed to us that there is such a place and because He has seen fit to give us a glimpse of it, it does us good to pay attention...

...I hate hell. I hate that it exists and hate that it needs to exist. I’m amazed to realize that, when we are [in] heaven, we will praise God for [hell] and that we will glorify Him for creating such a place and for sending the unjust there. But for now I am too filled with pride, too filled with sin to even begin to justly and rightly rejoice in the existence of such a place of torment. I cannot rejoice in such a place and do not gloat that even the wickedest of men with perish there. It is just too awful, too weighty. And I know that I deserve to be there.

This comes from the pen of Jonathan Edwards. To me this is probably the weightiest of all the horrors of hell—considering that it will never end, never ease, never cease. It will continue for all eternity with no hope for reprieve.

Consider what it is to suffer extreme torment forever and ever: to suffer it day and night from one year to another, from one age to another, and from one thousand ages to another (and so adding age to age, and thousands to thousands), in pain, in wailing and lamenting, groaning and shrieking, and gnashing your teeth - with your souls full of dreadful grief and amazement, [and] with your bodies and every member full of racking torture; without any possibility of getting ease; without any possibility of moving God to pity by your cries; without any possibility of hiding yourselves from him; without any possibility of diverting your thoughts from your pain; without any possibility of obtaining any manner of mitigation, or help, or change for the better.

Consider how dreadful despair will be in such torment. How dismal will it be, when you are under these racking torments, to know assuredly that you never, never shall be delivered from them. To have no hope: when you shall wish that you might be turned into nothing, but shall have no hope of it; when you shall wish that you might be turned into a toad or a serpent, but shall have no hope of it; when you would rejoice if you might but have any relief; after you shall have endured these torments millions of ages, but shall have no hope of it. After you shall have worn out the age of the sun, moon, and stars, in your dolorous groans and lamentations, without rest day and night, or one minute’s ease, yet you shall have no hope of ever being delivered. After you shall have worn a thousand more such ages, you shall have no hope, but shall know that you are not one whit nearer to the end of your torments. But that still there are the same groans, the same shrieks, the same doleful cries, incessantly to be made by you, and that the smoke of your torment shall still ascend up forever and ever.

The more the damned in hell think of the eternity of their torments, the more amazing will it appear to them. And alas, they will not be able to keep it out of their minds! Their tortures will not divert them from it, but will fix their attention to it. O how dreadful will eternity appear to them after they shall have been thinking on it for ages together, and shall have so long an experience of their torments! The damned in hell will have two infinites perpetually to amaze them, and swallow them up: one is an infinite God, whose wrath they will bear, and in whom they will behold their perfect and irreconcilable enemy. The other is the infinite duration of their torment.

I can't help but beg the question:
When was the last time you heard a Priest or Preacher deliver a message with this kind of sincerity on the truth and horrors of hell?

Derek Webb and the Good News

After reading the 9marks blog I was inspired to post an excerpt from an entry entitled, "Derek Webb on the Gospel." Caedmons Call, of which Webb has played an intregal role has always been a great example of both good music and doctrinal meat.

I'll let 9marks take it from here:

"But signs of late, at least with Derek Webb, have not been as encouraging. In a podcast interview Derek recently did, the interview host asks him to succinctly define the gospel. Here's Derek's answer:

What a great question. I guess I’d probably…my instinct is to say that
it's Jesus coming, living, dying, and being resurrected and his inaugurating the
already and the not yet of all things being restored to himself…and that
happening by way of himself…the being made right of all things…that process both
beginning and being a reality in the lives and hearts of believers and yet a day
coming when it will be more fully realized. But the good news, the gospel,
the speaking of the good news, I would say is the news of hiHs kingdom coming the
inaugurating of his kingdom coming…that’s my instinct.

In response to this the host simply replied, "Good."

Hmm...Webb is usually pretty solid in his description and explanation of the Gospel. It seems odd (and sad) to me that in "succinctly" summarizing the Gospel that he could leave out such essentials as 1) Creation of man to live under God's loving rule; 2) Sin as rebellion against God's rule; 3) Judgment; 4) Penal Substitution; 5) Resurrection & Enthronement of Christ; 6) Response of Repentance & Faith.

He Gives. He Takes. Blessed be.

Jessica and I were riding bikes through a cemetery the other day and it made me consider the Scriptures. As Christians, we both believe that the Lord gives and takes away. Anything and anyone that we may have at the present time is from the Lord. Likewise, anything and anyone that may have been taken from us, was taken by the good and pleasing and perfect will of God. Thinking about these things reminded me of a quote by Charles Spurgeon:

Suppose you are a gardener employed by another. It is not your garden, but you are called upon to tend it. You come one morning into the garden, and you find that the best rose has been taken away. You are angry. You go to your fellow servants and charge them with having taken the rose. They declare that they had nothing to do with it, and one says, "I saw the master walking here this morning; I think he took it." Is the gardener angry then? No, at once he says, "I am happy that my rose should have been so fair as to attract the attention of the master. It is his own. He has taken it, let him do what seems good."

It is even so with your friends. They wither not by chance. The grave is not filled by accident. Men die according to God's will. Your child is gone, but the Master took it. Your husband is gone, your wife is buried—the Master took them. Thank him that he let you have the pleasure of caring for them and tending them while they were here. And thank him that as he gave, he himself has taken away.

Our Father and Mother, Who Art In Heaven?

One of the most important issues facing the church today, as it has for centuries past, centers around the matter of changing language when speaking of God. Language is always changing. Dictionaries and grammars are frequently revised to include new words and phrases which become more commonplace with the march of time. Some radical feminists and revisionists are saying that the Scriptures are written in male terms and that the Bible should be corrected or adapted to fit today’s post-post-postmodern culture (I may have left out a few “posts”). They maintain that we must eliminate the male bias which supposedly runs throughout the Bible, and this includes references to the human family (such as "mankind"), and allusions to a male God (such as "the Father"), and the use of male pronouns (such as "he"). They argue that Bible descriptions are authoritarian and gender distinctive and in our day such terms are no longer useful; Biblical language must accommodate itself to the insights of the modern age.

For some time it has been quite evident that there are those working diligently to perform a major sex-change operation on the Bible's language. This is a high-priority agenda item for some people. And although I believe the trend toward inclusive language is not all bad, I believe it has gone too far. And the "too far" for us has to do primarily with the attempt to eliminate all male references to the God of Scripture.

Some Inclusivist Examples:

In our day, the feminist critics are calling for a number of word changes that would make our language more inclusive of men and women. It is true that there have been some biases built into the words and phrases that are commonly used in church circles. It is not always helpful, for example, to refer to a congregation as "men" or "brethren." In sensitivity to other persons, we can make an effort to be inclusive. We do not object to using the phrase "men and women" (instead of "men") when referring to people, nor is it offensive to speak of "chairpersons" instead of chairmen," or to say "mail carrier" instead of mailman."

It is okay with most people to say that "utility men" are "utility persons" and that "manholes" are "person holes." It doesn't bother most of us if inspectors want to work in "sewer holes" instead of "manholes." And certainly all of us should intentionally avoid use of stereotypes such as 11 woman driver" or "scatterbrained female." However, the present-day discussion in church circles is not primarily concerned with typical references to people. The more serious concern centers around language which is used in reference to God.

There are groups within our churches that call for widening the terms used for God so that the language includes female images of God. They want all exclusive male references to God removed from the Bible. The language and wordpictures used in the Bible, they say, must be changed. The National Council of Churches, for example, has prepared inclusive translations of Scripture passages for use in its Lectionaries. In the NCC-sponsored Inclusive Language Lectionary, language for people is changed to include women as well as men. For example, it can be helpful to translate "Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly" (Psalm 1:1) as "Blessed are those who walk not in the counsel of the ungodly" -and to render "Let your light shine before men" (Matthew 5:16), as "Let your light shine before others"--and to say, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men and women," instead of the translation formerly used. But to change language about God (to speak of God as Father "and Mother," and Christ as "Child" of God) is unacceptable and can lead to some serious consequences, some of which I will briefly mention:

(a) God as Mother

The Scripture translations for the Inclusive Language add the words "and Mother" whenever there are references to God the Father. It is true that in several Old Testament texts, God is pictured as a woman giving birth, as a mother tending a small child, as a nursing mother, as a woman putting food and water on the table, etc. Christians down through the years have often referred to the motherly tenderness of God. It is true that in some ways God is like a mother-but God is never called "Mother." This is something significant. When we speak of God as "Father," we are including not only His fatherly (but also His motherly) qualities.

The word "Father" is the most distinctive name that Christians use for God. It is interesting to note that Muslims have 99 names for God (Protector, Provider, etc.), but not one of them is "Father." Christians have learned to use the name "Father" by following the example of Jesus; this was the name by which He knew God. Even as a boy, Jesus said, "Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?" (Luke 2:49 NKJV). The last words of Jesus on the Cross were, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46). When Jesus taught the disciples to pray, He said, "Say, Our Father who art in heaven." And it is dangerous for us to tamper with those words. The prayer begins with "Our Father," and goes on to say, "Hallowed be thy name." What name? The name which opens the prayer—" Father." To use the word "Father" when referring to God is simply to follow the example which Jesus set for us.

There is also a trend in hymnwriting that uses feminine imagery for God. British poet Brian Wren is a leader in the trend in hymnwriting. One of Wren's most controversial hymns is entitled "Strong Mother God." The hymn begins by calling God "Mother." Later verses address God as warm, father God; great, living God; old, aching God; and young, growing God." For the feminists, the hymn "God of our Fathers" becomes "God of the Ages." The line of another hymn is changed from "Like a loving father" to "Like a loving parent."

(b) Jesus as Lord

Inclusivists say that to sing songs like "The Church's One Foundation is Jesus Christ Our Lord"-is to use sexist language and is not sensitive to the concerns of women. They say that the Bible (with all its talk about "lords" and “kings") reflects an ancient feudal society which is not acceptable in our day.

The feminist critics find something grievously wrong with the beginning of the Twenty-third Psalm. The sentence "The Lord is my shepherd," they say, has a male-oriented sound, and so it is translated "God is my shepherd." In their view, no one is in a position of "lord" over another. The words of Sarah recorded in I Peter 3 make them cringe: "So once the holy women who hoped in God ... were submissive to their husbands, as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord" (I Peter 3:5-6, RSV). The word "lord" is a four-letter "no-no" in feminist thinking.
Dropping the term "Lord" (in reference to Jesus) is a serious departure from truth. Early Christians repeatedly declared that "Jesus is Lord.” This was in direct contradiction to the loyalties of citizens in the Mediterranean world. Citizens of the Roman Empire were required to declare that "Caesar is lord" (meaning that "Caesar is God")-and precisely because Christians confessed that Jesus is Lord, many early Christians lost their lives. They refused to bow their knee to Caesar. If we drop the word "Lord" (when referring to Jesus), we are in effect denying the totality of who Jesus is, and we are not giving due credit to the special relationship which Jesus has with the Father, who (along with the Holy Spirit) are one God manifest in three Persons.

In the new translations, Jesus is no longer "Son of God" or "Son of man," but He is now "Child of God" or "Human One." And the sentences are re-written so that the pronouns "he" and "him" do not appear. Thus, in the new translations, John 3:16 reads, "For God so loved the world that God gave God's only Child, that whoever believes in that Child should not perish, but have eternal life."

What’s the Result of All This?

What is behind all this call for change in language? Where might it eventually lead us? Since meaning is bound up in language and God has decided to reveal himself to us most directly in the form of words, surely one cannot change the language for God without altering his understanding of who God is.

The result of changing the description of God from "Father" to "Mother/ Father" is to create the picture of a partly male and partly female God. And to make Christ "the Child" instead of "the Son" is to picture Him as immature. To speak of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-as "Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier"- may at first seem like an innocent change. But the terms "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" have a precise theological meaning which is not communicated by any other terms. The words "Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier" are functional names (focusing on God's deeds), whereas "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" are names that focus on God's own essence and the nature of His being. There are a number of results that rise out of attempts to tamper with the names for God.

(a) Questions the Validity of Special Revelation

To believe that God is creator is self-evident; it is something which all religions believe and teach in some form or another. But to believe in God as Father is not self-evident; that belief comes to us especially through what Jesus tells us about God. In Matthew we read, "...no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Matthew 11:27b, NIV).

(b) Takes Lightly the True Authority of Jesus

God is referred to as "Father" in twenty-five of the New Testament Books. Thus the teaching about God as "Father" is not an obscure doctrine.

Was Jesus wrong in telling us to pray to God by saying, "Our Father who art in heaven"? And if Jesus was wrong in teaching us to address God as "Father," He might be wrong about other things as well. To eliminate the word "Father" when referring to God is to deny that Jesus had any valid authority.

God is a deliberate God. He is not random or haphazard in his judgments. He is infinitely wise and sovereign. And if we believe so, we should believe and accept his revelation to us as "Father" as perfect and pleasing and acceptable.

(c) Diminishes God to the Level of the Mundane

To present God as "Mother and Father" is not only clumsy, but also repulsive to concerned Christians. God (when called "Mother and Father") becomes a side-show freak instead of the supreme Person who deserves our highest reverence. If people are allowed to describe God at whim, most any image could appear.

Furthermore, to add "and Mother" when referring to God the Father, has (at some places) an awkward implication. For example, in the NCC translation of John 15:26, Jesus promises "the Spirit of truth who proceeds from [God] the Father [and Mother].- This seems to add a heretical Fourth Person to the Trinity.

Is the controversy surrounding the God-language debate more serious than most people are willing to admit? I think the evidence is mounting that what is happening in the church is not simply a change in language, but a change in faith.

In conclusion then, it is not a serious infraction of good judgment to try and eliminate an overuse of the male pronouns when speaking of people. The pronoun "he" has long been used in our English language to include both men and women. We say, "A school student must study his lessons if he expects to pass the test." The statement refers to boys and girls who are students in school. Such a use of the masculine pronoun "he" is acceptable, but to re-word the sentence so as to limit the use of the masculine pronoun is certainly proper. Instead of saying, "The average American drinks his coffee black," we can say, "The average American drinks black coffee." And in the Bible, minor editorial changes which avoid overusing the male pronoun can be a healthy improvement in translation. Instead of, "If any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in" (Revelation 3:20), it is not offensive to say, "if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in" (as translated in the New International Version).

The real concern, which Christians like myself have, have arises out of the dangers which surface when attempts are made to re-write the language pertaining to God.

Honestly, as well meaning as some of the people in the inclusivist camp may be, I believe the strong endeavor at language change as another in a long list of attempts to undermine the authority and finality of the Word of God. Tinkering with the Bible's words cannot be done without changing the Bible's message. Sometimes I wonder if those who are so unhappy with God as Father are really satisfied with Him as God at all.

More Questions…

Does anybody really feel left outside God's offer of salvation and grace because the words do not always specifically refer to all genders? Must "children" and "boys and girls" always be mentioned along with grownups for them to know that they are not excluded from God's plan? Are there really some women and girls who honestly believe that the use of male terms or masculine pronouns in Holy Scripture has barred them from the promises of God?

The Tyranny of "Felt Needs"

"Need for significance"? It is surely a good thing for the works of your hands to be established forever: gold, silver, and precious stones, not wood, hay, and straw. It is good when what you do with your life truly counts, and when your works follow you into eternity. Vanity, futility, and ultimate insignificance register the curse upon our work life – even midcourse, not just when we retire, or when we die, or on the Day of Judgment. But the real gospel inverts the order of things presupposed by the therapeutic gospel. The craving for impact and significance – one of the typical "youthful lusts" that boil up within us – is merely idolatrous when it acts as Director of Operations in the human heart. God does not meet your need for significance; he meets your need for mercy and deliverance from your obsession with personal significance. When you turn from your enslavement and turn to God, then your works do start to count for good. The gospel of Jesus and the fruit of faith are not tailored to "meet your needs." He frees from the tyranny of felt needs, remakes you to fear God and keep his commandments (Eccl. 12:13). In the divine irony of grace, that alone makes what you do with your life of lasting value." - David Powlison

D.A. Carson & Ray Anderson:On Love

D.A. Carson. The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God

“I do not think that what the Bible says about the love of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of God—to mention only a few nonnegotiable elements of basic Christianity. The result, of course, is that the love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized.” (11)

“Today most people seem to have little difficulty believing in the love of God; they have far more difficulty believing in the justice of God, the wrath of God, and the non-contradictory truthfulness of an omniscient God. But is the biblical teaching on the love of God maintaining its shape when the meaning of “God” dissolves in mist?” (12)

“The transcendent, majestic, awesome God of Luther and Calvin…has undergone a softening of demeanor through the American experience of Protestantism, with only minor exceptions…Many of the sermons depict a God whose behavior is regular, patterned, and predictable; he is portrayed in terms of the consistency of his behavior, of the conformity of his actions to the single rule of ‘love.’” (13)

“…one of the most dangerous results of the impact of contemporary sentimentalized versions of love on the church is our widespread inability to think through the fundamental questions that alone enable us to maintain a doctrine of God in biblical proportion and balance.” (15)

“If the love of God is exclusively portrayed as an inviting, yearning, sinner-seeking, rather lovesick passion, we may strengthen the hands of…those more interested in God’s inner emotional life than in his justice and glory, but the cost will be massive.” (22)

“We too quickly think of our salvation almost exclusively with respect to its bearing on us. Certainly there is endless ground for wonder in the Father’s love for us, in Jesus’ love for us. But undergirding them, most basic than they are, is the Father’s love for the Son.” (35)

“There has always been an other-orientation to the love of God. All the manifestations of the love of God emerge out of this deeper, more fundamental reality: love is bound up in the very nature of God. God is love.” (39)

“Strange to tell, not once is Jesus or God ever described in the Bible as our friend. Abraham is God’s friend; the reverse is never stated.” (41)

“The Westminster Confession of Faith asserts that God is ‘without…passions.’ …at its best impassibility is trying to avoid a picture of a God who is changeable, give over to mood swings, dependent upon his creatures. Our passions shape our direction and frequently control our will. What shall we say of God?” (48-49)

“If we picture the crucifixion of Jesus Christ solely in terms of the conspiracy of the local political authorities at the time, and not in terms of God’s plan…then the entailment is that the cross was an accident of history. Perhaps it was an accident cleverly manipulated by God in his own interests, but it was not part of the divine plan. In that case, the entire pattern of antecedent predictive revelation is destroyed: Yom Kippur, the Passover Lamb, the sacrificial system, and so forth. Rip Hebrews out of your Bible, for a start.” (53)

Rightly conceived, God’s immutability is enormously important. It engenders stability and elicits worship…He is unchanging in his being, purposes, and perfections. But this does not mean he cannot interact with his image-bearers in their time…Even the most superficial reading of Scripture discloses God to be a personal Being who interacts with us. None of this is meant to be ruled out by immutability.” (54-55)

“If God is utterly sovereign, anD if he is utterly all-knowing, what space is left for emotions as we think of them? The diving oracles that picture God in pain or joy or love surely seem a little out of place, do they not, when this God knows the end from the beginning, cannot be surprised, and remains in charge of the whole thing anyway? From such a perspective, is it not obvious that the doctrine of the love of God is difficult?” (58)

“The impassibility of God…is trying to ward off the kind of sentimentalizing views of the love of God an of other emotions (“passions”) in God that ultimately make him a souped-up human being but no more.” (59-60)

“God’s emotions, including his love in all its aspects, cannot be divorced from God’s knowledge, God’s power, God’s will. If God loves us, it is because he chooses to love; if he suffers, it is because he chooses to suffer. God is impassible in the sense that he sustains no “passion,” no emotion, that makes him vulnerable from the outside, over which he has no control, or which he has not forseen.” (60)

“Our passions change our direction and priorities, domesticating our will, controlling our misery and our happiness, surprising and destroying or establishing our commitments. But God’s “passions,” like everything else in God, are displayed in conjuction with the fullness of all his other perfections. In that framework, God’s love is not so much a function of his will, as something that displays itself in perfect harmony with his will—and with his holiness, his purposes in redemption, his infinitely wise plans, and so forth…This approach to these matters accounts well for certain biblical truths of immense practical importance. God does not ‘fall in love’ with the elect; he does not ‘fall in love’ with us; he sets his affection on us. He does not predestine us out of some stern whimsy; rather, in love he predestines us to be adopted as his sons (Eph. 1:4-5). The texts themselves tie the love of God to other perfections in God.” (60-61)

Ray S. Anderson. The Soul of God

“We can say that God is love, but the reverse cannot be said: love, by human standards, is not God. The reductionism of divine love to human love leads to a confusion of tongues.” (76)

“We should not shrink from expressing God’s love in terms that reflect the passion of God by which he enters into the human situation so fully that it requires him to enter the depths of human estrangement.” (79)

“If divine love is troubled, it is not by anxiety or unrest within love itself. What arouses passion in the love of God is not an unfulfilled need, but a longing to embrace the diving image in another. This longing is the fulfillment of love which may yet suffer the contingencies of time and chance in this temporal life.” (80)

“[D]ivine impassibility—the theory that God does not experience emotion and feelings such as humans do. This view of God’s being held that for God to experience emotion would introduce change in God’s being, which would conflict with another theory that God was unchangeable and immutable…Professor Torrance was somewhat resistant to my suggesting that God surely must experience emotion and have deep passion as Jesus did.” (80)

“And when the Father did not spare his own Son but freely delivered him up for us all in atoning sacrifice, the Cross became a window into the innermost heart of God and the nature of his love. It tells us that God loves us more than he loves himself.” (81)

“To suffer is to hope for something with such passion that we are bound to be disappointed.” (83)

“They finally accept the tragic as due to sin, but not as a reality of love. Thus, the love of God is preserved (in their minds) as an ideal form of love, and their sense of God’s presence and favor as fragile as their faith.” (84)

Are All Sins Equal?

Question: Are all sins weighed equally, or is one more important than another? —Linda Linton, Celina, Ohio

J.I. Packer responds:

This question leads into what for many evangelicals has become uncharted territory. We think of conversion as the moment when the guilt of all our sins—past, present, and future—is washed away by the atoning blood of Christ. As sinners justified by faith and heirs of promised glory, we rejoice in salvation and think no more about our continued shortcomings and how God might "weigh" them.

If asked, we explain our attitude as true evangelical assurance. But is it?

The Puritans of history were evangelicals too, but on this point they differed from us considerably. They remembered that Christ taught us to pray daily for forgiveness. One of their spiritual disciplines (not yet one of ours, generally) was self-examination each evening to discern what actions in particular, done or left undone, they needed to ask pardon for.

In the forefront of their minds was the holiness of God, the awfulness of his anger, and his amazing patience in nurturing and correcting his irresponsible, recalcitrant children. These were the realities framing their certainty that the precious blood of Christ cleanses faithful repenters from all sin. Most later evangelicals were with them until the 20th century. We are the ones out of step.

Scripture shows that in God's estimate some sins are worse and bring greater guilt than others, and that some sins do us more damage. Moses rates the golden calf debacle a great sin (Ex. 32:30). Ezekiel in his horrific allegory says that after Oholah (Samaria) had ruined herself by unfaithfulness to God, Oholibah (Jerusalem) "became more corrupt … in her lust and in her whoring, which was worse than that of her sister" (Ezek. 23:11, ESV). John distinguishes sins that do and do not inevitably lead to death ...

cc: ChristianityToday

I'm [feeling] not good: True Emotions

Inspired by a post I read the other day from Broken Thoughts of a Christian Nomad, here are some thoughts on the doctrine of Total Depravity.

Have you ever considered what a worthy Christian response should be in light of our utter depravity and helplessness before God? Paul often speaks of our depraved human nature, but he doesn’t make it out to be something that is undefeatable . . . this is, in fact, where the Gospel message finds all of its recipients. Accordingly, when this doctrine sinks honestly and deeply into our core, our natural responses will be overwhelmed by God-driven, worthy responses in humility before God, assurance from God, gratefulness to God, and a sweeping sense of mission for the glory of God.

Humility before God

When we see the fullness of man’s depravity, we will be humiliated to see our own poverty without Jesus. In the wake of this realization, our accomplishments are shattered in our minds and prior comforts are stripped from hearts[1] . . . we see them as they are—unworthy and valueless—and we cling to the overwhelming power of God’s grace.

With our pride in the matter put aside, we can get rid of this idea that “God needs us” in order to be complete or to accomplish His purpose. When God called Isaiah to service, Isaiah was not filled with pride for his worthiness of the task. Instead, we see the prophet struck with the depth of his own fall: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!" (6:5).
At this point, God’s awesome glory in salvation is revealed (and now our theology begins to match our prayers). When we pray to God for friends or family to come out on top of a tough situation, with God’s help, we can rightly trust that He is the author and perfector of true faith,[2] and that our friends’ and our family’s and our own success does not depend on the strength of our flesh, but the strength of God’s will.

Seeing the bent of our flesh, we will rightly begin to hold a holy watchfulness and a wholesome distrust for ourselves.[3] Do I really believe that, by nature, I am so undone that God must initiate the work? More to the point, do I believe that if God’s strengthening of my hand were taken from me, even for a moment, the remains of corruption in me would lead me back to wickedness and idolatry?

Assurance from God

Oftentimes, men look to improve their personal state when talking about it . . . refusing to see how desperately in need of Christ they are.[4] We are seeking to magnify the significance of the cross and its Bearer to their true size. We are great sinners, and Christ is a great Savior. If we do not know the first one, we will not know the second.

Throughout the whole of the Biblical narrative, we find God commands men to do what they will not do (repent, be reconciled, seek the Lord; come to Christ); most fortunately, God sent His Son to do what we could not do for ourselves . . . to fulfill the Law.[5] We live in light of the most glorious event of all time: the coming of Immanuel, whose very presence showed us: where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.[6]

We must cling to Christ, our only hope.[7] For the same God who commanded light to shine out of darkness,[8] has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to sinful man.[9] If you have eyes to see, you can rest assured that God has given them to you.

Gratefulness to God

Sometimes, a man can feel as though he is the only one who knows the depth of his own depravity . . . however, we can praise our Lord all the more when we see the muck and mire from which He has saved. When our dear brothers and sisters bear witness to the work of Christ in their lives, we are compelled to rejoice with them, hearing their joy in this new life.

Knowing the depth of our depravity will lead us to wonder: “Have I been the subject of God’s workmanship?” The question is not about the sincerity of my decision, or my determination, or my whatever-I-want-to-call-it. The focus of my search is now on God’s action: “Has God done something in me?” In this way, we are bankrupt if not grateful that our God, who took pleasure in beginning the good work in us, will see it through to completion, despite my sincerity, determination, etc.[10]

If a dead man has been raised to life, or a blind man given sight, there is no boasting in determination; there is, however, cause for much rejoicing. And when all human pride is removed, what remains? Nothing of ours. But there is an infinite ocean of grace. Our earnest hope and prayer is that more and more Christians will set out on that ocean, until there is no land in sight.

Mission for the Glory of God

In Chapter 4 of John’s Gospel, we find Jesus at the Samaritan well . . . He is met there by a woman who has little earthly good to testify about, though she’s confident in the coming of God’s Messiah. After a discussion of ethnicity and the thirst-quenching nature of water, Jesus catch’s the woman off guard. He reminds her of some of the murkier parts of her past and present and, also, shares some of the more glorious parts about His present and future.

To sidebar for a moment, as you read this chapter from John, pay close attention to the incredible patience Jesus exercises with this sinful woman. He doesn’t get defensive about His identity when she questions Him or aggravated when she asks redundant questions. What she found out, and one thing we can learn from this story, is that Jesus sees us exactly where we are and pursues us knowing our capabilities. This should be cause for great assurance, and this sort of assurance will surely bolster patience. We are called to serve everyone in longsuffering, keeping with the Spirit’s fruit.[11]

As for the fruit in the Samaritan woman’s life, how does she respond to Jesus’ patience and bold confrontation of her state? She runs all over town bearing witness about this man who “told me all that I ever did” (29). Because of this woman’s testimony, many believed in Jesus and sought to see Him for themselves.[12] For that Samaritan woman, being confronted with her depravity, and meeting Jesus in it, filled her with a desire to share from the well.

This is the worthy response of those liberated from the dank and shadowy realm of natural man . . . To those who have received the light, a great invitation has been extended: to share in the joy of liberating others through the upward truth. We have been welcomed into God’s heritage as guides to the blind, lights to those who are in darkness, instructors to the foolish and teachers of children.[13] O, what a glorious calling—both, personal and relevant. Because we were once in the pit, we can relate to the pitfallen in a deeper, truer, God-ordained way.

And here is where we will make camp in battle with the Church today. True worshippers must have a broken heart for reaching those who have not yet received the truth by grace. In many congregations, it is as though the culture is the problem and the only safe approach is no approach at all . . . as with the lepers of ancient times, Christians should not take light into the darkness. This could be the grossest, most negligent sin of Christ’s body in our day: failing to act as Jesus’ outstretched hand.

[1] Gal. 6:14-15; Phil. 1:21, 3:3-11
[2] Heb. 12:2
[3] Rom. 7:14-25
[4] Mt. 9:36-38; Jn. 9:39-41; Rom. 3:9-18
[5] Is. 55:1-7; Mt. 11:28, 29; Acts 2:38; 2 Cor. 5:20-21
[6] Rom. 5-6
[7] Rom. 3:19-26, 5:6-10; 1 Tim. 4:10
[8] Gen. 1:3-4
[9] 2 Cor. 4:6
[10] Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 2:7, 8:3; Eph. 1:4-5, 11, 2:10; 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 2:14 ; 1 Pet. 1:2,20
[11] Rom. 14:1-4; Gal. 5:22-25; 1 Thess. 5:14
[12] Jn. 4:39-42
[13] Rom. 2:19-20

Rob Bell and Hell

I just watched Rob Bell's Nooma video, "Bullhorn." In the video Rob is speaking out against Christians who stand on the street corner and use a bullhorn to tell people that they need to repent or they are going to burn in hell. Rob seems very concerned because people like this are misrepresenting God. He says Jesus never talked that way and that he would never do that. Rob talks about the centrality of love in Christianity. Loving those who are different than us and who don't believe the same thing as us. He says that when we do so, we are actually loving God. Agreed.

It seems to me that Rob is largely reacting to bad Christianity by presenting a half gospel. He's right about the centrality of love. He's right about the fact that some people on street corners don't seem to be loving. But it seems that Jesus really did believe in hell.

Jesus did warn people about hell. In Matthew 5:29-30, he said, "If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell."

I don't think our whole message should be hell-centered, or that we should use the bullhorn in an unloving way. But if hell is real, it seems like its incredibly important that we help people avoid it, in a loving way. I wish that we got to pick the doctrines of the Bible that were the most attractive to us and then those would be the ones that were true for us. Unfortunately, we didn't create the universe, we don't make the rules, and we can't be more loving than Jesus.

I came across this video response to Rob Bell's Bullhorn video. It was created by The Way of The Master Radio. I guess Kirk Cameron and friends have a different understanding of the gospel than Rob Bell and friends.

cc: post-methodist

Does Luck Exist?

“Do you believe in luck?”

No, there is only the sovereign providence of the living and personal God.

How often do you here people attribute the source of averted accidents, healing, blessing, or other prosperous occurrences to luck? On the flip side how often do you hear “bad things” attributed to being unlucky? Perhaps even as a professing Christian you may say things like, “Man, he is lucky” or “It is not my lucky day”.

Is this thinking biblical?

The Bible presents a God who is absolutely sovereign over all of the affairs of the world (Ps. 115.3). He is in complete control and he has ordained all things to come to pass. There is absolutely nothing that escapes his notice. He is not only sovereign over your salvation (Eph. 1) but he also is sovereign bird feeder (Matt. 6.26). He is sovereign over the weather, whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (Matt. 5.45; Job 38). For we even learn in Scripture that God is sovereign over the outcome of a role of the dice (Prov. 16.33). There is nothing that comes to pass by chance, but rather all things come to pass through the sovereign providence of God.

I am not trying to be nit-picky here. But I do want to challenge you if you talk like a pagan and deny God of his glory through providence. Think about it. How ugly is it for you receive the blessed artwork of divine providence, which God works together for his glory, and then you turn around and smudge out God’s name from the authorship only to inscribe the nebulous, impersonal and fictional name “luck” at the bottom right corner of the artwork? Since God does all things for his glory and causes all things to work together for good for those who love him (Rom. 8.28) how dare we insult God through our careless speech?!

Let’s use this as an exhortation to recognize and ascribe the personal hand of God to our understanding of the universe and all things in it. Let’s delete the words fate, luck, happenstance, and the like from our vocabulary and use words that reflect truth such as providence, sovereignty and God. In this understanding and application of the doctrine of divine providence we will no doubt become keenly attuned to the work of God in and around our lives and more inclined to give him praise for his good providence.

cc: IrishCalvinist

Does Paul deny the physicality of the resurrection?

After discussing this question in class and thinking about this question for the past few weeks, I stumbled across this question of the day on the DesiringGod website. You can find it here.

Written by the DG staff:

Speaking of the resurrection from the dead, in 1 Corinthians 15:44 Paul writes: "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body" (1 Cor. 15:44). Does this mean that believers will not experience a physical resurrection?

Virtually all commentators agree that "spiritual" does not mean "made out of spirit," but "directed by the Spirit." It is just like when we say someone is a "spiritual" person. Paul uses the word in this way in 1 Cor. 2:15: "The spiritual man judges all things..." Clearly Paul does not mean "nonphysical and invisible man" here but "man filled with and directed by the Spirit." Notice also 10:3-4, where Paul says that in the wilderness Israel ate "spiritual food" and drank "spiritual drink" from a "spiritual rock." Does Paul mean to say that these things were not physical? Surely not. The fact that they ate this food and drank this water indicates that it had to be physical. The phrase "spiritual rock" further solidifies this, for Paul clearly does not mean to say "nonphysical rock." He means that these things were sent from above and were under God's direction. And that's what He means when he says we will have "spiritual bodies." Thus, "spiritual body" is not referring to a change from physical to nonphysical, but a change from our lowly state to our glorified state where the Spirit will fully fill and direct our bodies.

What about 1 Corinthians 15:50, where we read: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." In Future Grace, John Piper responds to this question:

'Flesh and blood' simply mean 'human nature as we know it'--mortal, perishable,
sin-stained, decaying. Something so fragile and temporary as the body we now
have will not be the stuff of the eternal, durable, unshakable, indestructible
kingdom of God. But that doesn't mean there won't be bodies. It means that our
bodies will be greater. They will be our bodies, but they will be different and
more wonderful." (Future Grace, 372).

In fact, if Paul had wanted to deny that the resurrection would be physical, he would have used the phrase "flesh and bone," which carried the meaning of physicality (cf. Luke 24:39). Instead, the phrase that Paul does use ("flesh and blood") carries with it no denial of physicality but is actually a Jewish idiom for our bodies in their present, sinful and corruptible state. So this phrase in no way implies that we will not have physical resurrected bodies. Paul is saying that our bodies in their present mode of existence--sinful and subject to decay--must first be changed into a form that is not subject to decay and sin before they can enter the kingdom of God. Is this not the meaning of his very next phrase: "...nor does corruption inherit incorruption"?

Therapeutic Theology: Part 3

What Should We Do: Teach Sound Doctrine (continued)

The Doctrine of Sin (Includes the Doctrine of Man)

"Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors, heresies and false doctrines of the present day... I believe that one of the chief wants of the church in the nineteenth century has been, and is, a clearer, fuller, teaching about sin." - J.C. Ryle, Holiness

"Christianity doesn't make sense without sin. If we are not sinners, turned away from God, then there was no reason for God to become a man, and no reason for Him to die. Our slavery to sin is the thing that Christ came to free us from. That is the most fundamental Christian belief. If follows that if you have no consciousness of
sin, you simply won't be able to see the point of Christianity... Now it is possible to create a climate in which people have very little sense of sin and therefore, little chance of comprehending what Christianity is all about. We know it is possible because that is the climate that exists today." - William Kirk Kilpatrick, Psychological Seduction: The Failure of Modern Psychology

"The subject of sin is vital knowledge. To say that our first need in life is to learn about sin may sound strange, but in the sense intended it is profoundly true. If you have not learned about sin, you cannot understand yourself, or your fellow-men, or the world you live in, or the Christian faith. And you will not be able to make head or tail of the Bible. For the Bible is an exposition of God's answer to the problem of human sin, and unless you have that problem clearly before you, you will keep missing the point of what it says. Apart from the first two chapters of Genesis, which set the stage, the real subject of every chapter of the Bible is what God does about our sins. Lose sight of this theme, and you will lose your way in the Bible at once. With that, the love of God, the meaning of salvation, and the message of the gospel, will all become closed books to you; you may still talk of these things, but you will no longer know what you are talking about. It is clear, therefore, that we need to fix in our minds what our ancestors would have called 'clear views of sin.'" - J.I. Packer, God's Words
a. A clear view of sin is necessary and critical for understanding and appreciating justification.
"The plain truth is that a right knowledge of sin lies at the root of all saving Christianity. Without it such doctrines as justification, conversion, sanctification, are `words and names' which convey no meaning to the mind." - J.C. Ryle, Holiness

[The greatest need we all have isn't one we naturally are aware of or normally feel.]

"In today's world there is little emphasis on the biblical doctrine of sin... But a person with a shallow sense of sin and of the wrath of God against our sin will neither feel the need for nor understand the biblical doctrine of
justification." - Hoekema, Saved by Grace

"It must even be said that our evangelical emphasis on the atonement is dangerous if we come to it too quickly. We learn to appreciate the access to God which Christ has won for us only after we have first seen God's inaccessibility to sinners. We can cry `Hallelujah' with authenticity only after we have first cried, `Woe is me, for I am lost.'" - John R.W. Stott, The Cross of Christ

"It is partly because sin does not provoke our own wrath that we do not believe that sin provokes the wrath of God." - John R.W. Stott, The Cross of Christ

[It is only when we are aware of wrath that we appreciate grace. To appreciate grace one must understand the seriousness of sin and be convinced he is worthy of wrath and incapable of altering this condition apart form faith in the person and finished work of Jesus Christ.Ignorance of this is why so many are insecure and unsure of God's love. And the fact that our teaching about self-esteem has replaced the doctrine of sin today.
(1) The proponents of self-esteem often have a very superficial view of sin.
(2) The result is that one is misled into thinking that Christ's death is primarily a manifestation of our value to and before God.
(3) We were worthy, but only of His wrath.]

"The cross reveals the depth of our sin, not the height of our worth before God." - Michael Scott Horton, Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church?

"I have often heard it said, `If I had been the only person on the earth, Jesus would still have died for me.' Although our Lord could have given His life for just one person, it most certainly would not have been because that person was so valuable, but because God was so gracious. Such an occurrence should hardly, therefore, be regarded as a source of pride or self-esteem. For me to argue that Jesus would have died for me if I were the only person on the earth simply indicates that my sins alone, without the rest of you contributing your share, were sufficient to demand the severe punishment Jesus Christ vicariously assumed in my place. When faced with that reality, we ought to weep for the selfless sacrifice of our Lord instead of finding in it one more opportunity for feeling good about ourselves." - Michael Scott Horton, Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church?

Therapeutic Theology: Part 2

What Should We Do: Teach Sound Doctrine.

The Doctrine of God

[The biblical writers begin with God. So must we. Popular literature and teaching today begins with man and then proceeds to make God in our image according to our preference.]

"Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God's face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself." - John Calvin, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion

[Apart from an accurate understanding of God's nature and character, idolatry and error are inevitable.]

In his book, A Call To Spiritual Reformation, D.A. Carson begins by asking the following question, " What is the most urgent need in the church of the Western world today?"

"People are starving for the greatness of God. But most of them would not give this diagnosis of their troubled lives. The majesty of God is an unknown cure. There are far more popular prescriptions on the market, but the benefit of any other remedy is brief and shallow... It does not matter if surveys turn up a list of perceived needs that does not include the supreme greatness of the sovereign God of grace. That is the deepest need. Our people are starving for God." - John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching

Jer. 2:13 says, "My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken Me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water."
Jer. 6:16 says, "Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls."

"The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic. The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking." - A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life

[The greatest needs that exist today are for an accurate knowledge of God and for an experiential encounter with His greatness and goodness.]

"What comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us." - A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in theChristian Life

Therapeutic Theology: Part 1

It may seem strange to us that Paul would devote several chapters to demonstrating the sinfulness of all people. We might think that he should get to the good news and camp there and help people see the good news as really good. That would feel more positive than lingering as long as he does over the sinfulness of man.

But there are probably some very profound reasons for this lingering over our sinfulness. I think of two at least. One is that the gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone simply does not land on us as overwhelmingly good news until we have some deeper sense of our sinfulness and hopelessness before God. The other reason Paul may draw out his demonstration of our sinfulness is that we are so resistant to seeing it and feeling it.

This is what I would call Therapeutic Theology and it is a pervasive problem in almost every evangelical institution in America today. Below are some quotes and assessments of the Therapeutic Theology issue. [My comments will be in brackets.]

"The recovery movement has taken not only America but evangelicalism by storm. In the form of Christian (and not so Christian) books, programs, small groups, and counseling centers, it represents the highest floodwater mark of the therapeutic on the church so far. Twelve-step this and that have been given the authority of the apostolic twelve themselves, and the result has been hailed as renewal.... The triumph of the therapeutic has finally transformed psychology from a mere discipline to a worldview and a way of life. Triumphing as a social revolution, the therapeutic has gained a self-evident status and a taken-for-granted cultural authority that is rarely questioned. "Diagnosis" and “therapy" are as obvious to twentieth-century Americans as "demons" and "witches" were to seventeenth-century Americans. In law they replaced crime and punishment. In religion they have replaced sin and redemption." - Os Guinness, No God But God: Breaking with the Idols of Our Age

"Evangelicalism is infatuated with psychotherapy." - John MacArthur, Jr., Our Sufficiency in Christ

It’s Popular. It’s Defective. It’s Erroneous.

"The overall story of pastoral care in the United States has been summed up as the shift from salvation to self-realization, made up of smaller shifts from self-denial to self-love to self-mastery, and finally to self-realization. The victory of the therapeutic over theology is therefore nothing less than the secularization and replacement of salvation." - Os Guinness, No God But God: Breaking with the Idols of Our Age

"Like medicine, biology, astronomy, and physics, psychology can collect observable data, but it cannot offer any insight into the ultimate questions. Those answers are found only in the kingdom of grace, only in the gospel, which itself is found only in the text of Holy Scripture." - Michael Scott Horton, Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church?

Why Has The Therapeutic Movement Become So Widely Accepted?
1. A theological deficiency among pastors.
2. The lack of respect for the competence of pastors and the unquestioned reverence for and deference to psychologists and psychiatrists.
3. The biblical illiteracy that characterizes the average Christian.
4. The attractiveness of the content.
5. The failure to build churches that are relationally strong.

"The triumph of the therapeutic is therefore partly a spur to the church and partly a judgment--a further example of the "unpaid bills of the church." - Os Guinness, No God But God: Breaking with the Idols of Our Age

What's The Problem: The Integration of Psychotherapy With Biblical Theology

"Whatever reconciliation I managed to effect between psychology and Christianity, however, was always at the expense of Christianity... True Christianity does not mix well with psychology. When you try to mix them, you often end up with a watered-down Christianity instead of a Christianized psychology. But the process is subtle and is rarely noticed. I wasn't aware that I was confusing two different things. And others in the church who might have been expected to put me right were under the same enchantment as I... These attempts to make common cause with psychology are examples of `Christianity And.' It's a strong temptation to those who fear that Christianity by itself isn't enough. The trouble is that `Christianity And' edges real Christianity aside or prevents it from taking hold." - William Kirk Kilpatrick, Psychological Seduction: The Failure of Modern Psychology

"But what we see today in so much of the literature and preaching of Christian pop psychology is not integration of biblical-theological and natural-scientific knowledge, but a replacement of biblical views of humans, God, and salvation with purely secular notions, baptized with non-contextual verses from the Bible." - Michael Scott Horton, ed., Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church?

Spiritual Birth: Event or Process?

Here is an excerpt from an interview of author Stephen Smallman conducted by Justin Taylor concerning Smallman's book Spiritual Birthline: Understanding How We Experience the New Birth. You can find the rest of the interview here.

Is spiritual birth an event or a process? What difference does the answer make to our understanding of conversion?

Spiritual birth is essentially a process, during which there may be an event or many events when the Lord becomes real to us. I think the insight that coming to Christ is really a process gives people new appreciation of the work of God in their lives over a lot longer period of time than they may have considered before. It also serves to give people much more patience as they work with others who they see being drawn to Christ.

Embracing the Love of God: Part 2

[This paper was written concerning an issue facing the Church in today's postmodern world. 2006.]

For the Love of God: A Semi-Theological Rant from a Runt On the Doctrine of the Love of God

For decades our culture has been preaching “what the world needs now is love sweet love. It's the only thing that there's just too little of." However, this sort of ideology is remarkably vague. Love for whom? Motivated by what? It fails to acknowledge anything that can truly satisfy the longings of existence; namely God, let alone holiness, joy in the Lord, obedient hearts, and the personhood of Jesus Christ. The song has just enough truth that we can feel good about ourselves as we give advice to the Almighty, but not enough to reflect on what God teaches about love.

At first thought, understanding the doctrine of the love of God seems simple compared to trying to fathom other doctrines like that of the Trinity or predestination, especially since the overwhelming majority of those who believe in God view Him as a loving being. Then again, that is precisely what makes the task of the Christian witness so daunting. Why? Because this widely circulated belief in the love of God is set within a cultural milieu other than biblical theology. The trouble here should be obvious, everyone assumes right away that he knows what love is, so all he has to do at this point is to let his knowledge of it suggest to him something of what God is; nothing could be further from the truth.[1] Nowhere among the prophets and the apostles is God like that. Nowhere in human history is he that cozy and sentimental. If he were, he’d be essentially useless in an unfriendly world, and less than praiseworthy in today’s secular milieu.

Within this milieu is a postmodern culture, and to a certain extent an emergent church, where many other and complementary truths about God are widely disbelieved. The only aspect of God’s character the this culture still believes in is His love. His holiness, His sovereignty, His wrath are often rejected as being incompatible with a “loving” God. Pop culture has so distorted and secularized God’s love, even many Christians have lost a biblical understanding of it and, in turn, have lost a vital means to knowing who God is. “The result, of course, is that the love of God in our culture has been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized.”[2] If the emergent church is to remain faithful to the Christ who redeemed her, she will “worry less about who is or who is not emergent and rather more about learning simultaneously to be faithful to the Bible and effective in evangelizing the rising number of alienated biblical illiterates in our culture.”[3] Preserving the truth of gospel in today’s world will require an emergent theology coupled with a knowledge of its culture. As Ray Anderson has eloquently put it, “[T]he church that is emerging today needs to remember that without a strong biblical basis and emergent theology, it will be like a sailing ship without a rudder, drifting aimlessly or even carelessly over the open waters of contemporary religiosity.”[4]

One of the most dangerous results of the impact of contemporary sentimentalized versions of love on the church is our widespread inability to reflect upon and think through the fundamental questions that alone enable us to maintain a doctrine of God in biblical proportion and balance.[5] But precisely how do we integrate what the Bible says about the love of God with what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty, extending as it does even over the domain of evil? How is God’s love tied to God’s justice and providential care for his creation? These are difficult questions that require careful attention, and as followers of Christ, faithfulness entails our responsibility to grow in our grasp of what it means to confess that God is love. As an emerging church, our language is that of the people, our message is communicated through the culture, and our presence in the world is a means to get within arms length to embrace others with extraordinary love.[6] To this end, I will attempt to weave a critical thread through today’s emerging church, deep into the soul of God.

“God is love.”[7] It is one of the shortest sentences you will find anywhere in the Bible, and certainly one of the most familiar. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most frequently misunderstood. This is why biblical theology of love, grounded in the truth of a Trinitarian-Incarnational God, is so crucial. The biblical writers knew this and treat the love of God as a wondrous thing, wholly admirable and worthy of praise, especially surprising when the objects of his love are rebellious human beings. But what does the proclamation “God is love” actually mean? And how do we conceive of a love not restricted to our own finite understanding, but rather defined by God Himself? Understanding that there are so many passages and themes and concepts to be covered, such a brief treatment of the love of God can scarcely scratch the surface. But a scratched surface is at least a start. And knowing full well that the love of God is infinite, boundless, and far greater than “tongue or pen could ever tell,”[8] we must attempt to grasp the biblical framework in which the love of God lives and the Spirit of God moves.

Brian McLaren said it well when he said that what we need is “not a new Spirit, but a new kind of spirituality.”[9] I share in his sentiment, however, I also agree with Ray Anderson when he writes, “[W]e must take care that emerging churches do not become just another form of spirituality but a movement of God’s Spirit on the creative edge of the kingdom of God breaking into the various cultures of our present age, often in conflict with existing forms of spirituality.”[10] It is true that the glory of the Lord Jesus comes to us by way of the Spirit, who is the Lord.[11] The love of God is creative.[12] And the Spirit of God is love, joining together with the human spirit “in order to produce a Godly spirituality,”[13] one that is not so much a formula, but a test. A relationship. Spirituality not centered upon competency, but on intimacy; not about perfection, it is about connection.[14]

This framework is the truly historical, ever-present Jesus. He is the expression of God’s love for this world.[15] This is no watered-down, white bread, quiet and tamed Jesus; this is the very Spirit of God who comes to us clothed in the humanity of Christ. “Every feeling and every sensation that Jesus experienced as a complete human being became an expression of the divine being, revealing the truth of God through the humanity of God.”[16] He is “literally the exegesis of the soul of God. The character of God’s being as well as the contours of God’s love are disclosed to us through the humanity of Jesus.”[17] No amount of words could ever describe the depth of grace and truth and love that came through the person of Jesus Christ. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “Every idea of Him we form, He must in mercy shatter.”[18] This is why he came. This is why he is. He is the way, the truth, the life, and love. There is no other theology than Jesus Christ. The life and love of the emerging church “depends on a personal knowledge of Christ. . .Everything depends on Christ being present to his church as a person in space and time.”[19]And dealing with theology, we must be “more than merely making the Word of God relevant to modern culture,” we must see our theology as “servant to the Word of God,” who is Jesus Christ.[20]

There are many ways the Bible speaks of the love of God, five of which I will attempt to establish here. The first being, the atypical love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father.[21] This intra-Trinitarian love of God not only separates Christianity from the rest of the monotheistic religions of the world, but is bound up in surprising ways with God’s revelation and redemption. It displays God’s work as being one with who he truly is, “and so to praise his work is to praise him. To acknowledge the Spirit of Christ is to acknowledge Christ, and to acknowledge Christ is to acknowledge the Father, one God in all his works.”[22] It is this divine self-love, manifested in the relation of the Son to the Father, that is the basis for God’s love for the world.[23] As Thomas F. Torrance writes,

“What the Father is and does, Jesus is and does. And what Jesus is and does, the Father is and does. There is in fact no God behind the back of Jesus, no act of God other than the act of Jesus, no God but the God we see and meet in him. . . Jesus Christ is the open heart of God, the very love and life of God.”[24]

Yet, if we begin with the intra-Trinitarian love of God and use that as a model for all of God’s loving relationships, we will fail to observe the distinctions that need to be maintained. As awesome and precious as the intra-Trinitarian love of God is, an exclusive focus in this direction takes too little account of how God manifests himself toward his rebellious image-bearers in wrath, in love, and in the cross.

Another way the Bible speaks of God’s love can be seen in His providential love for all that He has made. The Bible does not typically use the word love in making the connection between God and His creation, but the principle is not hard to find. Before the Fall of Man or a whiff of the stench of sin could be sensed, God pronounced all that he had made to be “good.”[25] We are the products of a loving Creator. “The Lord Jesus depicts a world in which God clothes the grass of the field with the glory of wildflowers seen by no human being, perhaps, but seen by God. The lion roars and hauls down its prey, but it is God who feeds the animal.”[26] The birds of the air find food, but that is a result of the providence of God, and not a sparrow falls apart from the sanction of the Almighty.[27]

On the contrary, if God’s love seen as nothing more than a providential ordering of everything, it is not far from the “force” seen in George Lucas’ silver-screen masterpiece, Star Wars.[28] Removed from the Jesus Christ revealed to us in the Incarnation, all manmade philosophies and crack-pot theologies crumble under the weight of a disturbingly man-centered world.

As great as Star Wars is, this world is still fallen and corrupted, stained with sin, but God’s love is still seen, shining through in His salvific stance toward his fallen world. For God so loved the world that he gave his son.[29] “The humanity of God as expressed through Jesus Christ makes God an ally of those who are bereft of love, who are betrayed and who are stricken and oppressed.”[30] This is an amazing act of a loving God that should never be downplayed or forgotten! However, it should be noted here that usual connotation given to this passage is seen as exemplifying the vastness of the earth and the bigness of God’s love; while inadvertently deemphasizing the badness of man, and the grace that flows from forthwith from God’s right hand. “God’s love in sending the Lord Jesus is to be admired not because it is extended to so big a thing as the world, but to so bad a thing; not to so many people, as to such wicked people.”[31]

The tendency we face today is to push into a theology of insecurity: a sort of “God needs me” mentality. If the love of God is exclusively portrayed as an inviting, yearning, sinner-seeking, rather lovesick passion, we may please those more interested in God’s inner emotional life than in his justice and glory, but the cost will be massive.[32]

God’s love is free. Whether in the entire nation of Israel, the church as a body, or as individuals, God manifests his love in a particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect. In the fortunate case of the elect, God sets his affection on his chosen ones in a way in which he does not set his affection on others.[33] However, this is not a license for hubris and boasting, but rather one of humiliation and gratitude. When Israel is contrasted with the universe or other nations, the distinguishing feature has nothing of personal or national merit; it is nothing other than the God’s amazing love. As Swiss theologian Karl Barth has stated,

“[S]o sovereign is He in His electing love that He loves this hostile man who is
unworthy of His love. He loves him notwithstanding his own unworthiness and hostility. He loves him just because of it. He loves him in his pride and fall. He loves him in his sloth and misery. He loves him as He takes pity on him as the sinful man.”[34]

Granted, this facet of the love of God is different than those previously mentioned, it is still precious and must be kept if we are to maintain the shape and contour of a biblical understand of the love of God.

Likewise, in the New Testament, Christ “loved the church and gave himself up for her”.[35] Over and over again we read of God’s love for his church, the Bride of Christ. In stating this, it is easy to drift toward a simple and absolute division: God loves the elect and hates the reprobate. Rightly proportioned, there is truth in this assertion; stripped of contours of complementary biblical truths, that same assertion has engendered hyper-Calvinism.

Finally, God’s love is sometimes said to be directed toward his own people in a provisional or conditional way—conditioned, that is, on obedience. This has nothing to do with the new birth into God’s family, but rather a part of the relational structure once we do come to know Him. The covenant relationship God has established with his people is a covenant of love and stipulation, blessing and curses. Nevertheless, divorced from complementary biblical utterances about the love of God, texts outlining the conditional love of God will drive us backward toward merit theology, and endless fretting about whether or not we have been good enough to enjoy the love of God.

These five specific illustrations of love are interwoven and awesomely grounded in God and the gospel—God is the gospel. They are given principles, found in Scripture, and so interwoven that pulling one will destroy the whole. Bound up with the truth that God is love, they are grounded in God's intra-Trinitarian love. We must be careful in not viewing these ways of talking about the love of God as independent, compartmentalized, loves of God. “Attempts to formulate abstract concepts of God’s being and nature apart from what can be known of God through his actions lead us astray and even into error.”[36] If we are to think of the love of Christ aright and convey the gospel to this postmodern world, we must hold these truths together and learn to integrate them in biblical proportion and balance.

Today—as in every generation—it is stunning to watch the shift away from God as the all-satisfying gift of God’s love. It is stunning how seldom God himself is proclaimed as the greatest gift of the gospel.[37] But the Bible teaches that the best and final gift of God’s love is the enjoyment of God’s beauty.[38] The best and final gift of the Gospel is that we gain Christ.[39] This is the all-encompassing gift of God’s love through the gospel—to see and savor the glory of Christ forever.

In place of this, we have turned the love of God and the gospel of Christ into a divine endorsement of our delight in many lesser things, especially the delight in being made much of. The litmus test of biblical God-centeredness—and faithfulness to the gospel—can be summed up in this: Do you feel more loved because God makes much of you, or because, at the cost of his Son, he enables you to enjoy making much of him forever? Does your happiness hang on seeing Christ as a witness to your worth or as a way to enjoy God’s worth forever? Is God’s glory in Christ the foundation of your gladness? These are questions the bride of Christ must ask herself if she is to be faithful to her groom.

The sad thing is that a radically man-centered view of love permeates our postmodern culture and churches. From the time they can toddle we teach our children that feeling loved means feeling made much of. We have built whole educational philosophies around this view of love—curricula, parenting skills, motivational strategies, therapeutic models, and selling techniques. Most modern people can scarcely imagine an alternative understanding of feeling loved other than feeling made much of. If you don’t make much of me, you do not love me.

But when we apply this definition of love to God, it weakens His worth, undermines His goodness, and robs us of our ultimate satisfaction. If the enjoyment of God himself is not the final and best gift of love, then God is not the greatest treasure, his self-giving is not the highest mercy, the gospel is not the good news that sinners may enjoy their Maker, Christ did not suffer to bring us to God, and our souls must look beyond him for satisfaction.

This distortion of divine love into an endorsement of self-admiration is subtle. It creeps into our most religious of acts. We claim to be praising God because of his great love for us, but if his love for us is at bottom his making much of us, who is really being praised? We are willing to be God-centered, it seems, as long as God is man-centered.[40] We are willing to boast in the cross as long as the cross is a witness to our worth. We must ask, “Who then is our pride and joy?” Are we preaching and teaching and leading in such a way that people are prepared to hear that question and answer with a resounding No? How do we understand the gospel and the love of God? Have we shifted with the world from God’s love as the gift of himself to God’s love as the gift of a mirror in which we like what we see? Have we presented the Gospel in such a way that the gift of the glory of God in the face of Christ is marginal rather than central and ultimate? Can we really say that our neighbors are being prepared for heaven where Christ himself, not his gifts, will be the supreme pleasure? When we celebrate the Gospel of Christ and the love of God, and when we lift up the gift of salvation, let us do it in such a way that people will see through it to God himself. Not mainly, “Salvation is great,” but “God is great!”[41]

[1] Paul Ehrman Scherer, “Love That God Defines,” Theology Today 21, (1964): 159-160.
[2] D.A. Carson. The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, (Illinois: Crossway Books, 2000) 11.
[3] D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church: Understanding a Movement and Its Implications, (Michigan: Zondervan, 2005) 234.
[4] Ray S. Anderson, An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches, (Illinois: IVP Books, 2006) 71.
[5] Ibid. 23-24.
[6] An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches, 17.
[7] John 4:8, 16 (English Standard Version)
[8] Frederick M. Lehman, The Love of God, 1917.
[9] Brian McLaren, Reinventing Your Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), p.13.
[10] Emerging Theology for Emerging Churches, 64.
[11] 2 Corinthians 3:18
[12] G.W. Bromiley & T.F. Torrence, eds., Church Dogmatics, Volume IV, Part 2, by Karl Barth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd., 1958, 1985) 776.
[13] Emerging Theology for Emerging Churches, 67.
[14] Mike Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality: God’s Annoying Love for Imperfect People, (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2002) 13.
[15] John Vikstrom, “God’s love for this world,” International Review of Mission, (1983): 519-520.
[16] Ray S. Anderson, The Soul of God: A Theological Memoir, (Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2004) 94.
[17] The Soul of God: A Theological Memoir, 23.
[18] Ibid. 61.
[19] Emerging Theology for Emerging Churches, 43, 46.
[20] The Soul of God: A Theological Memoir, 58.
[21] John 3:35; 5:20; 14:31
[22] Emerging Theology for Emerging Churches, 47.
[23] The Soul of God: A Theological Memoir, 71. (John 17:26)
[24] Thomas F. Torrance, A Passion for Christ: The Vision that Ignites Ministry, (Edinburgh: The Handsel Press, 1999) 8.
[25] Genesis 1
[26] The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, 17.
[27] Mattew 6
[28] I’m not trying to be relevant. I genuinely enjoy Star Wars.
[29] John 3:16. I know that some try to take kosmos (“world”) here to refer to the elect. This is not what I am trying to accomplish, nor is this my personal position. God’s love for the world cannot be collapsed into his love for the elect.
[30] An Emerging Theology for Emerging Churches, 94.
[31] The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, 17.
[32] Ibid. 22
[33] Deuteronomy 4:37; 7:7-8; 10:14-15
[34] Church Dogmatics, 767.
[35] Ephesians 5:25
[36] Soul of God: A Theological Memoir, 59.
[37] John Piper. God is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself, (Illinois: Crossway Books, 2005) 11.
[38] Psalms 27:4
[39] Philippians 3:8
[40] God is the Gospel: Meditations on God’s Love as the Gift of Himself, 12.
[41] Psalms 70:4