OdearDan

Thoughts on Apologetics 2: Defending Christian Ethics.

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:00:17 +0100

This is a post in defence of Christain ethics. Lets face it, when we are challenged on our beliefs, it is often an attack on Christan ethics. And so, the attacks on our faith are often rarely that rational or reasoned. They are often emotional and raw.

As an apologist, this is a tough task. We must be able to answer the accusations drawn up against us with a reasoned argument, being kind and loving but importantly without cutting corners on our reason.

So when faced with an assault on Christain ethics, draw it away from the emotion and on to the reason. Do what ever you can to calm the debate. You could even say something along the lines of: “look, if we are going to have this debate, we are going to do it properly. Lets be reasoned”. When it comes to some areas of Christian ethics, especially questions involving abortion and Christian sexual ethics, we will be faced with very passionate, very emotive arguments about rights. However, often these arguments are not fully developed or reasoned from a theoretical basis. Thier power is in the force to which they are believed (an accusation so often focussed towards Christians).

And from this point, we must go to the root of the beliefs of those we debate. We must show that from the base that underlies their ideas, their ethical views are just unsustainable. And the tough bit is that we must do this with compassion and grace. Which will be difficult, because the other side don’t have to, and therefore often don’t. The Dawkins of this world will never contemplate the basic polemical rule of presenting the opinions of the opposition in terms which they would agree with. And this makes it very hard for those who are desperately trying to follow this rule and to be fair.

The key to all of this is in remembering that this will not be a debate in which we approach the topic from the same starting point. And as such, I doubt that the Christian position will ever be convincing, as the basic presuppositionn will be rejected. The key, therefore, is to be consistent.This must be a consistency both to the teachings of Scripture - which must be our rule, our anchor, and our root - and also consistency in our arguments as a whole. What the world wants to do is show us that our thinking is all muddled. Our task, therefore, is that if the God in whom we trust is real, then the ethical provisions that Christians hold to are justified, and more, demanded by that God.

And finally, our arguments must, carefully and with compassion, demonstrate that there is an inconsistancy in all other ethical systems, and more importantly, how they are put into practice. Lets face it, most people who hold to an ethical system do not follow it. And of course this is an accusation that can be aimed at Christians, and we must be careful to be honest on this point and actually show our consistency - we are sinners, and fail to live up to our ideals, but at least we know we do. Don’t be afraid of showing people the logical consequences of their beliefs, and how they simply don’t add up.

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:08:25 +0000

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” John 13:1 (ESV)

I felt the need to write today, and as it is Maundy Thursday there is no better time than to look at this verse. For me, there are fewer more potent and beautiful chapters in the Bible than those addressing the Upper Room Discourse. There are few passages which drip so sweetly in expressing the wonders of the Gospel. Here is where Jesus most wonderfully and personally expresses his love for his own. Here we receive from Christ the most wonderful assurance and love.

And it is this one verse that I want to look at, out of all of the wonders of Jesus’ discourse, to capture this. Before the footwashing, the promise of the Spirit, the declaration “I have overcome the world” comes this jewel of a verse. It is this most beautiful sentiment which sets up all that follows, all the way to Calvary.

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end”

This one verse frames the whole of the Upper Room Discourse. Moreover, it frames the whole of the book of John. John is 21 chapters long. The first 12 and a half chapters are Jesus making his way towards Jerusalem. Jesus’ ministry in Jerusalem occupies merely half a chapter (38 verses). Jesus’ death and resurrection, 4 chapters. One evening of Jesus’ life and ministry equal that, taking up a third of the book.

If this one evening demands such space, this one verse encapsulates the whole of Jesus’ mission.

The verse is directional. John does not just point us to the Passover to tell us when the events occurred. John is situating this evening, these words of Christ, with an event. In an almost sacramental way, John is attaching the sign with the thing signified. Ahead lies the slaughter of the unblemished Lamb to turn aside the wrath of God, the reality behind the shadow which was the Passover. The message is clear: Jesus’ moment when he would depart from the world is the Passover, he is the Lamb to be slain.

And why is he doing this? Love.

Not an airy, mystic, disassociated love. No, this is a particular love, a devoted love. As Thomas Goodwin points out in his book The Heart of Christ, when this verse talks of those who were “his own” it does not talk of his own as goods but “a piece of himself… his own by a nearer propriety, that is, his own children, his own member, his own wife, his own flesh” (The Heart of Christ, Banner of Truth, p7). Christians, we should never lose sight of who this love is for. Jesus makes it clear later on in the book that those who are his are those given to him by the Father. None were lost in Christ’s lifetime on earth, and none will be lost whilst he lives in heaven interceding for us. So when we feel week, weary, hopeless and helpless, we must know with surety and certainty that Jesus loves us.

“having loved his own who were in the world”

Everything that Jesus has done thus far in his life was in love of those whom he had called. In a world which rejected him, which discarded his message and hated him, he loved those whom he had called out to be his. Every act if his was an act of devotion to them, of love for his bride. He had loved them even whilst they lived in a sinful world, themselves sinful men. He loved them whilst he was with them.

And yet the beauty is in those last words:

“he loved them to the end”

Again this is looking forward. The scene is set. The knives are drawn, and upon the dawn the Lamb will be sacrificed, the blood spilt, the wrath turned aside, the people redeemed, purchased and drawn out of slavery.

All because of love. The love which had first manifested itself in the life of Christ with that first breath of the infant Jesus, which was manifested in every act of Christ in his ministry, this love was lived out until the end. The love that Jesus showed in all his dealings in live were lived out right up until his death. Not just to his death, no, but beyond that. Jesus was going to be with his Father. He was ascending to Glory. But again, as Goodwin points out:

“What was Christ’s heart most upon, in the midst of all these elevated meditations? Not upon his own glory so much, though it is told us that he considered that, thereby the more to set out his love unto us, but upon these thoughts his heart ran out in love towards, and was set upon, ‘his own’” (The Heart of Christ, Banner of Truth, p7)

Jesus’ great moment of glory, his going victorious to his Father having overcome the world, all this was out of love. His sacrifice on the Cross, his defeat of sin and death, his substitutionary sacrifice, all of this was because he loves his Church. As the rescue of the Israelites from Egypt was for love of his undeserving people, so the redemption of those given to Christ, you and I, Christians, was a pouring out of God’s love.

This puts John 3:16 into beautiful context.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (ESV)

Now, the word “so” is more accurately read (and the original English meaning of the word “so” meant also) “In this way”. This captures the same emphasis as John 13:1.

Here is how God showed his love to the world. This was the manner in which his love is manifested: that the Son, who shared the divine essence with the Father and Spirit, eternally co-existent, humbled himself, gave himself as a sacrifice, that all who believe in him will not die but will share in his life. The cross is God’s proclamation: “I love you. And this is how I show it”. How great is this love which wins us life. From this flows all other blessings - our dwelling in Christ, our life, our being sanctified by the word, being dwelt by the Spirit. (all of these things discussed and expounded in the Upper Room Discourse in John).

Having loved those who were his in the world, he loved them to the end. He loved us to, in, through, by, and past the Cross. I hope this sets up Good Friday well.

God bless.

ps. I heartily recommend reading The Heart of Christ by Thomas Goodwin! Here is a link to the book. It’s only a littleun! http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Heart-Christ-Puritan-Paperbacks/dp/1848711468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364515529&sr=8-1

Thoughts on Apologetics: Offensive Apologetics

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:00:49 +0000

And I don’t mean nasty apologetics, or apologetics that upsets people.

I mean it in this way: that the best form of defence is a good offence.

In most of my previous apologetics conversations with non-believers, I have seen a trend emerging. What generally seems to go down is that I mention that I am a Christain, and then spend the rest of the conversation defending my worldview.

I think it is time for a change of footing here. I am good at defending my worldview. But I have realised that I am not the only one obligated to offer a coherent understanding of the world. The person I am in conversation with has that duty too.

There is a basic assumption in the world that secular emperical scepticism is the default position, and any variations from this must be held to account against this sceptical worldview. But this presupposes a whole load of philosophical truths that themselves must be tested, and I believe are found to be utterly wanting.

So I now make this endeavour: when I am next in a defence of the Christian faith, I will question the basic beliefs of my conversation partner. Why does that person believe what they believe about the world? A materialistic atheist who says they believe that man is essentially good, or that right and wrong even exist, just because they “feel” that it is true (see Bertrand Russell for this one) must be maded to prove this hypothesis, and be forced to accept this “feeling” is inconsistent to the empiricism that they affirm and use to dismiss Christianity.

Because, if we are Christains, we should believe that the other alternatives are inconsistent. And we should be able to show that this is the case. Too often today, Christians tend to back down into a position of “I don’t know. I guess thats why it is called faith”. There is some merit to this position on a personal level: not even the best of us are right all the time! But if we truly believe that God has revealed himself to us in Christ and in his word, we should be positive. God has given us the tools to prove the world wrong! Of course, the wisdom of God is folly to the world. But this does not mean we should show the folly of the world by proclaiming the wisdom of God, secure in the knowledge that it is true.

The great gift of scripture is that we CAN have an answer, for we DO know God. And because we have communion with God in Christ by the Spirit, we should be assured. The skeptic ain’t got nothing. Take his questions seriously, and deal with them seriously, knowing that dealing with them properly may even be effective as we proclaim Christ.

Essentially what I am getting to here is that we shouldn’t be afraid of putting ourselves forward confidently, picking holes rather than watching for holes in ourselves. The gospel is true, and alternatives are not. I guess that what I am saying is this: be confident!

The Heidelberg Catechism 1: What is your only comfort in life and death

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:49:01 +0000

“What is your only comfort in life and death?”

That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my Father in heaven not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, that all things must work together for my salvation. Wherefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live unto him

What a beautiful answer to a simple question. This answer from the first question of the Heidleberg Catechism rather delightfully sums up the Christian hope in one neat, short paragraph. It is the answer to this question so succintly explained that the rest of the Catechism goes on to unpack and develop. But here, in one short answer, the whole Christian message as relates to Christians is explained.

And that means that this is true for me. And if you are a Christian it is true for you too.

Lets look into this and see what is going on.

Firstly, the question. What is your comfort? Comfort, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means “consolation for grief or anxiety”. For something to give one comfort, one must be in need of comforting. There must be something that causes one grief and anxiety if one is to be releaved from it.

And not only that, the question makes the proposition that we only have one comfort, one hope, one method of relief. In our every day lives, faced with all the toils and strife of the everyday, there is only one cure. For our eternal state - whether we exist after the grave, and if we do what happens to us - there is only one hope. There is no other hope than that contained in the answer to the catechism’s first question.

And what is this hope? It is a hope that all of you, your whole being, are Christ’s. In the proofs for this, the writers point to Romans 14:7-9. This passage concerns the preservation of unity in the Apostolic church, with an encouragement to do all things in honour of the Lord, whether one eats or abstains (v6). Paul writes:

“For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lords” (ESV)

Paul reminds his readers that if we are in Christ, we are no longer living for ourselves, our own glory, according to our own will, but that we live to the glory of Christ, that we exist to honour and serve him, to live lives obedient to his will. And Paul continues:

“For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and the living” (v9 ESV)

The purpose of Christ’s death was to ensure that we who were distant, living only for ourselves, are now brought near by Christ’s death and ressurrection, to live lives of devotion to him. Christ died and rose again to become Lord over all, the living and the dead. And thus, all that we do, whether eating or abstaining (i.e. those who knew the bounds of Christian liberty and thus could eat, and those who were unsure and thus took a more conservative approach), we do not to please ourselves but to please God.

And more than that: we belong to Christ, for we have been purchased for a price, “ransomed from our futile ways” that we once knew by the blood of Christ (1 Peter 18-19), that we should live holy live to him. He have been redeemed away from the sinful lives we once led to lives of obedience to God. Christ gave himself to “redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own posession who are zealous for good works”(Titus 2:14).

So here explains what we have been saved for, what we can be comforted in and of. And how did Christ do this for us? The writers of the catechism point to 1 John 1:7 and 2:2:

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son clenses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7 ESV)

“He [that is Christ] is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2 ESV)

Christ died to guide us into the light that John had been talking about in the beginning of his letter. God is pure and holy above all things (1:5), and so demands holiness from us also in light of this spotless nature, in which there is no darkness. We are redeemed to walk in holiness, and if we do not walk in holiness, we cannot say that we are living to God (1:6). And this holiness is achieved only in the factb that the Son of God, Jesus the Messiah, clenses us from our sins, allowing us to know that if we confess our sins then God is faithful to forgive (1:9). This blood is a propitiation, a satisfaction of the wrath of God and his demands for justice.

Furthermore, we are set free from the power of sin by Christ, no longer slaves, obediently following it’s passions, but freed to obey the will of God (John 8:34-36). The Cross destroys the power of the devil, as is illustrated in Hebrews 2:14-15.

Thus, this simple answer briefly covers the mission of Christ - to rescue sinful men, to redeem them from sin for life as a holy people of God; his means - the Cross and the blood of Christ as a satisfaction for the wrath of God that is kindled against us; and how this is applied - in our being washed clean, that before God we are viewed as spotless, justified in the eyes of God’s demands for justice; and set free from the rule of sin and the devil in our sanctification.

But the writers of the catechism go on. What does this assurance lead on to? It leads on to the knowledge that we now have a Father in heaven, sovereign over all things, over every bit of our lives. And thus we live or die to God, all for his glory and in all things for that end.

The writers of the catechism state that Christ “so preserves me”, because we know from the Lord himself that:

“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of the Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:37-40 ESV)

Christ has not come to merely point the way to God, for men to weekly attempt to follow by their own will power, but to claim those who have been given him to be his own. He has come to purchase by his blood all those who God has given to him, that all who look upon Christ shall recieve everlasting live in him. What assurance this is for the Christian! Not only have we been purchased by the blood but we are non-returnable! There is no cosmic refund for the blood that has been paid for us, and nor should there need be: God has given us to Christ, and by the will of the Father Christ will not ever lose any one of us.

We are Christ’s flock: we know his voice and we follow him. Christ has given himself for his flock, and so “no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:27-30). It is the Lord who is faithful, who guards us against the devil, and it is he who sets us up as his son’s (2 Thess 3:3). So whatever happens, God will hold onto us. Those he has given to Christ he will not lose (John 10:27-28).

And how does he bring this about in our lives as we live here and now? By giving us the Holy Spirit, our paraclete, the advocate helper who applies all that is Christ’s to our lives, who unites us to him who has the power to save.

We often lose sight of the wonder of the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gospel is God’s giving of himself in full Trinitarian glory: The Son gave himself, humbling himself to live a life and die a death on our behalf, and now by the Spirit God gives himself to his people, to dwell amongst and within those who are his, to give them life, and Paul labous the point to illustrate the glory of this (see Romans 8:9). If we are a Christian, we are a temple for God (1 Corinthians 6:19). And from that same passage, we are reminded that we are bought for a price, and that we sould srive to honour God with our bodies and lives (1 Corinthians 6:20). It is the Spirit who accords us our adoption as children of God (Romans 8:15-17), and it is he who reminds us that we are his.

And so the first question of the chatechism concludes with that reminder: that the indwelling Spirit of God in us encourages and enables us to live godly lives in the here and now, assuring us of the efficacy of the work of Christ to save us, and driving us to live holy lives as we seek to be like our Father in heaven, and our elder brother Christ, who by his work gives us life, and life to the full.

This is our comfort.

A presbyterian's look at the recent synod vote.

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 09:58:00 +0000

Yesterday, the 20th November 2012, the General Synod of the Church of England voted overwhelmingly in support of the ordination of women bishops, but failed to receive the requisite 2/3rds Majority in the House of Laity needed to pass the measure.

I start with that observation, because it is important to realise what happened. The Bishops and Clergy were astonishingly in favour of the measure, and as were a majority of the laity. But the Church of England failed to convince a principled minority that the legislation would offer them enough protection for their views.

Now, why am I, a devotedly complementarian presbo, commenting on a decision of the Church of England? I don’t even believe that the episcopacy is a biblical form of church government, so why do I even care who is in it? I am a non-conformist, so why do I care about the established church? I believe in male headship, so why am I concerned about a denomination who to the larger part rejected this doctrine a long time ago?

Well, it may be because, at heart, I believe in the “establishment principle”, even if I do not believe that I can be part of the current church that holds that position of privilege. Maybe I am just interested in politics generally, and church politics then gets included. Maybe. But in general, this issue bothers me due to the reactions towards it, which show a rather sad side of this country’s national church. So here is what I see as the issue, which may involve a little projection of I would think and react in the same situation.

Firstly, I believe that it was right that this measure was rejected. There a a good number of parishes in this country who are Reformed, conservative and evangelical, and who,for reasons of conscience could not countenance the idea of women bishops sitting over them. When the individual parish is on its own, the issue of women in leadership is not a pressing one: where a parish holds a complementarian position, it has the freedom to only have male ministers. But when you then place an overseer over them all, the issue of headship once again becomes pressing. And if a congregation cannot accept the idea of a woman as having authority over them, what happens to that congregation?

The job of the pro lobby was to convince the anti lobby that provisions were in place to protect their freedom of conscience. They overwhelmingly failed in this task. Rather than make any real efforts to be conciliatory, the pro lobby harked on about how the majority were in support of women bishops, and the rest should, essentially, bend to their will. It was an attitude of “this is all you are getting. Lump it”, that the minority should play ball and accept that they have lost on this issue. Thus, the provision for those who could not sit under a woman bishop for reasons of consceince was woefully inadequate. If you have an under bishop who is of liberal stripe, the consevative evangelicals would still not be represented. Thus, the measure presented before the synod yesterday was woefully inadequate.

Secondly, the tone of disappointment is worrying. It sounds llike a school teacher telling off a class of pupils, being ordered to stay behind after school because “some of your peers who won’t behave. The behavior of a minority have let you all down”. It must be remembered that the reason why the measure was voted against was because there were some very principled people who just couldn’t vote for the measure. Yet, that minority are treated as if they are a cruel and evil gang of ne’er-do-wells. And the number of people saying “well, next time we need to ensure that the lay house are more representative of the majority” is just unacceptable. What you are essentially saying is this: lets silence any dissenting opinion, because they are essentially unwanted.

And that is what the issue is. The conservative evangelicals are not wanted in the denomination. A yes vote would have been an overwhelming statement of this. The no vote leaves nobody happy either, as those who opposed the measure are now villainized.

What is even more worrying is the reason for disappointment. Twitter is full of people saying “look at how the CofE is now an irrelevance”, “the CofE is stuck in the past, needs to get with the times”, and “what will the World think of us”. I’m sorry, but when has it been ok of the church of Christ to worry about matching the World’s standards. The World hates us! It is not our job to submit to the morality of the world, but to be faithful to the teachings of Christ. Even if you think that the bible teaches that women may be in positions of leadership, which I do not, then that must be the reason for your disappointment, NOT the general opinion of society. We will be hated because of our ethics on life issues, sex, money. We will be hated because we believe all are sinners under the wrath of God, that the only way to salvation is through the man who is God who died on a cross and rose from the dead. The World is unregenerate, with clouded minds as to the will of God. The World will never understand the hope that Christians have, but for the work of the Holy Spirit who reveals and proclaims Christ. It is his work that saves, through the preaching of the Word, not our relevance by looking just like everyone else.

For what its worth, the CofE will eventually appoint women to the episcopacy. Whether there will be any conservative evangelicals left when this happens is a moot point. Many have a deep attachment to the CofE. The CofE has advantages that we non-cons can only dream of: money, resources, access to every area of the country. But the way the women bishops debate was carried out, not so much in the synod where it was full of grace but in the wider church, shows that those who hold to a more Reformed, traditional evangelical hermerneutic and theology will be viewed increasingly as ,at best, an irritating irrellevance, and and worst an obstruction needing to be removed. Many will stay, out of loyalty, and will simply ignore the fact that they are episcopalian, rather holding a strange congregational govvernment, as if the state of the wider CofE does not affect them.

Further, I should add that there are many evangelicals, including the future Archbishop of Canterbury, who support women bishops. My comment here is not a comment on their evangelical credentials or their passion for the gospel of Christ. Nor am I commenting on their love for the Church. My issue is with they way that the disappointment is aimed at those who voted against, rather than seeing that the failure was a failure to convinve a sizeable minority that they are still appreciated, and that provisions would be made for their dissention on this issue.

One final point. On the radio last night I heard an interview with a lady who voted against the measure, and a man from WATCH (Women and the Church). The saddest moment was when the gentleman from WATCH said “[The lady] comes from a church who are very good at talking to people on the same page. I come from a liberal church in a market town, where the majority of the people we meet do not come to church”. The lady the replied, “well, actually, I am also from a small market town, and our church does reach out and many of our congregation are unchurched”. This little conversation just illustrates a point. The view from the pro lobby is that the anti lobby are a group of insular, self interested, ignorant people, holding back the intelligent, missional, forward thinking majority. This is such a sad, sad statement. And the lady picked up on this: actually, she comes from a small market town too, and their church is missionally focussed. Deeper rifts lay under the snow…

The Atheist Prayer Experiment - some thoughts

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:05:00 +0100

Premier Radio is currently undertaking an experiment. It is calling on Atheists to pray for 2 to 3 minutes each day that God reveal himself to them, clearly in the hope that God will reveal himself and that the Atheists will then become Christians. Here is the link to the page: http://www.premier.org.uk/atheistprayerexperiment

Now, I must first of all say that I understand Premier Radio’s hope. They, like me, believe in a God who saves, and who wants sinners to turn from their sin and be saved. It is good and godly to desire people to be saved, and to call sinners to repent. I also believe in a God who powerfully calls those who are far from him to have communion with him, sometimes in extraordinary ways.

And I have no question that their heart is in exactly the right place. They want people to be saved! That’s wonderful!

However, this methodology is seriously flawed and lacks some serious understanding of the nature of God and in the call of the gospel.

Firstly, we must see the fact that God is in no way obliged to respond to the prayers of “seeking” atheists requesting God to “reveal” himself, as God has already fully and sufficiently revealed himself in Jesus. Not only does nature testify to the existence of God (Romans 1:20) but Jesus, in whom the fullness of God has chosen to dwell (Colossians 1:19), has come calling sinners to repent and believe. The truth is that God has already given all humans the full evidence not only of his existence but of his promise of redemption in Christ, and wherever the gospel is faithfully preached, God calls sinners to repent and trust in Christ. It is through God’s preached word that the men are effectually called to come to Christ and through this calling are regenerated, given a new heart of flesh to serve the Lord.

And so it is utter arrogance for man to demand an extra sign or signal, that little bit of proof that shows us that God is real. The Bible is clear: we know full well that God is there, that he is righteous and just, but we suppress that fact, pushing it down so we don’t have to confront our sin (Romans 1:18, 21-22, 32). This prayer experiment plays up to the atheist agenda which states that there simply is not enough evidence to believe in God, an assertion which is simply false. Further, it enforces the party line that faith is based on personal experience and opinion rather than objective fact.

I am not saying that man has the ability to reason himself into faith in God from his revelation in the world. The Westminster Confession puts it well:

“Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church”

Further, I still believe that man needs the operation of the Holy Spirit to regenerate him that he may call upon God. Again the Confession states “We acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word”. But It is important to recognise that there is a difference between calling on God in response to the proclamation of the Gospel, and merely praying to an unnamed god separated from the promises that come in Christ. There is a difference between an atheist calling out to God for redemption, that God would save them from sin, and an atheist calling on God to show himself to them, as if God needed the atheists approval in order to exist.

Secondly, the Bible is clear that prayer is the privilege of those who in the people of God: those united to Christ by faith, the Church. An atheist has no right to call on God to do anything, especially to reveal himself.

When a Christian prays, they pray by the indwelling Spirit, who carries their prayers with inexpressible groans to the Father (Romans 8:26), and through Christ the mediator, who forever brings our petitions before the the throne of God. Prayer is a wonderful expression of the fullness of the Trinity, and a privilege of us who have been called into communion with Christ. Christ is the great high priest of the new Israel, the Church, who by his atonement presents us as holy before the Father. As such, we are adopted as children of God: no longer children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3), we can call “Abba! Father!” to the Father in heaven and know that we have a God who wants to shower blessings upon us (Romans 8:15, the Lord’s prayer in the Gospels - Matthew (9:9-14, Luke 11:1-13).

This is an exclusive privilege. The passages make it clear that to call God Father, and to receive gifts as such, is the unique advantage of believers. More than that, the Bible is littered with examples of God refusing to listen to the prayers of the unrighteous due to their rebellion, even the unrighteousness of the his own people. Jeremiah 14:11-12 is a stark example. The Lord declares:

“Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Though they fast, I will not hear their cry, and though they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them”.

God is here concerned for true worship from Judah, for an end to their sin and their backsliding. Earlier, God says through Jeremiah

“They have loved to wander thus; they have not restrained their feet; therefore the Lord does not accept them; now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.”

This is stark, yet it is only one example of God’s judgement. If God will refuse to accept the prayers of those who are outwardly his people (though inwardly not such) what are his thought towards those who reject him outright?

I can hear some objections coming, so let me answer them.

The main objection will probably be something like this: doesn’t Jesus open up the ability to prayer to all people. And my response is yes. And no. Christ opened up the gates to all nations, so that all gentiles could be ingrafted into the true Israel by faith. But that is the key phrase: by faith. Every healing, every answer to prayer in scripture was the result of faith already held. How many times in the Gospels does Jesus say “Be on your way: your faith has made you well” or words to that effect? It was because the individuals already had faith that they could pray. And it is only by faith that we can say “Our Father”, for only by faith is he “Our Father”.

And this is the same for every prayer for coming to faith. A real prayer for faith is actually an act of faith already held.

I must state that I do not deny that God can use extraordinary measures to bring people to faith. There are some cases of amazing providence in binging almost clueless sinners into the Kingdom of God. But this is different from Atheists asking abstractly for God’s revelation of himself apart from the proclamation of the gospel.

Because (and we have lost this in the modern world) the gospel is a proclamation and a call. Salvation is a call. It is not something sought by man: it is a summons from the almighty God to rise and follow him. Thus, it us utterly absurd for us to think that atheists can try and summon God like some kind of genie, giving the golden lamp a couple of rubs to eek him out. He is not some abstract force that surrounds us, that will just flow into us if we ask nicely. No: it is God who calls people to himself, not the other way round.

So, if you are an atheist reading this (its a long shot) then hear this: In this way, God loved the world, that those that believe in him shall not perish but will receive eternal life (John 3:16). Its not about proving the existence of God. The Hebrews had God appear to them as a pillar of fire by night, a pillar of dust by day, showering them with food from heaven and water from rocks, covering a mountain with fire before them, and they still built a golden calf to worship instead. The evidence isn’t the issue. There is a Father who calls you into communion with him, giving up his one dear son to a tortuous death on a cross so that this could occur. Believe. Its not a leap of faith: it is trusting in someone who has already proved his worth.

Christianity IS about following rules.

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 09:45:00 +0100

Ok, so I have used a provocative title in order to get attention, so bear with we.

It is often said that Christianity isn’t about obeying rules, but about a relationship with Jesus. And this is kind of true. But on its own, this statement means virtually nothing. The statement relies on a set of propositional truths for it to have meaning.

Would I say that Christianity isn’t about obeying rules? Yes. And very much no. As a Reformed Christian, I believe that my salvation is not dependant on my good works and my obedience to God’s law, but on the obedience of Christ in his death on the cross and his perfect life, which by faith is counted as my own before the judgement throne of God. But the result of my salvation is that I am compelled by a new nature and the Indwelling Spirit to obey God. So, being a Christian is about obeying God’s law, willfully and happily.

And what about the relationship with Jesus? What does that even mean without some propositions behind it? Who is Jesus? What does this relationship entail? Actually, my relationship entails my obedience to him. To have a relationship with God is to obey God’s commandments, so much so that you really have to ask yourself whether you have a relationship with him if you refuse to obey his commands.

I am certainly not saying you are saved on account of your obedience, nor do you maintain your salvation by obedience. In fact, your salvation purchased by the work of Christ alone is the background necessity to any obedience of yourself. You are saved on account of Christ’s obedience - in his life and in his death. But because you as a Christian are united to Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit who leads you in righteousness, you cannot but be changed from disobedience to obedience due to the cross work of Christ and the applicatory work of the Holy Spirit. If you are a Christian you have died to sin with Christ, and have been raised to newness of life with him, you will do as he does. In short, you will be obedient (at least in part - we all continue to sin, but we are no longer by nature sinners). We were called to a freedom from the curse of the law, a freedom that gives us an opportunity to obey the law by loving God and neighbours (Galatians 5: 13-14).

And this is all by grace. It is the same grace that justifies that sanctifies, that rids us from sins guilt and from its power. It is grace that teaches us to resist temptation (Titus 2:11-14), and it is in Christ, in his death and resurrection, that we have died to sin and risen to newness of life (Romans 6, Colossians 3:1-4). It is God’s grace in dwelling in us by the Holy Spirit and uniting us to Christ through which the process of sanctification occurs. It is the wonderful gift of the gospel - that Christ died to remove the just punishment that your sin deserved, and rose again in vindication, that you too may die to sin with him and rise renewed to love and serve the Lord. You did not merit salvation, and nor do you do anything to “stay in the club” as it were: “by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not your doing, but a gift from God” (Ephesians 2:8). And the joy of this gracious salvation in the life we live now? That we have been saved for good works prepared for us in eternity - Ephesians 2:10.

So be careful when saying that being a Christian is not about obedience but relationship. This gives a false impression. God cares about what you do, and that you obey him. Christ says himself that if we love him we will obey him (John 14:15). Because the Christ with whom you are united is Lord as well as saviour, and so to have a relationship with him is to have a relationship with him in his capacity as King, as well as his capacity as brother. And because we are united to Christ, we obey the Father, because now he is a loving Father who wants whats best for us, and we want to honour him in obeying him.

Yes, being a Christian is about relationship. But as with human relationships, the relationship entails different requirements based on the title of the person you have a relationship with. And if you love your daddy, you will love to do his will.

When did we lose the ability to reason?

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:00:20 +0100

This relates to something that happenned a while ago

This blog post is about my generations ability to reason. Because, put simply, we have lost that ability.

This comes from watching a series of lectures given by Doug Wilson at the University of Indiana. Here is the link to it: http://www.canonwired.com/bloomington/ . For those of you who don’t know, Doug Wilson is trying to present a consistent biblical view on sexuality.

Now, I don’t really care whether you agree with him or not in this instance. He takes a number of cheap shots that I disagree with. Some of his lines of argument I may think are incorrect, or he missed little nuances which are important reflections of the questioners presuppositions.

No, the reason why I blog is this: throughout his whole lecture, Doug Wilson was continuously heckled, interrupted, and his talk disturbed by protests. And none of this interruptions had any real intellectual value. They failed to interact with his actual argument, though some of the questions in the Q & A were actually quite intelligent.

But whooping when someone asks a question is not rational debate. You have to wait for the answer first. A killer question is only killer if the guy can’t give an answer at all.

Neither is slandering or making ad hominum attacks a legitimate method of making an argument.

In order to make an argument, you must be able to actually engage with the opponent. You must be able to present their arguments in such a way that the opponent would agree with. You cannot misrepresent the view of your opponent to create a straw man augument for you to blow down.

But this is exactly what the audience did. They showed little interest in what Wilson had to say, and as such showed themselves completley unable to rationally debate in an academic context.

And this attitude is endemic. We live in a culture where real debate is suppressed because people refuse to really debate things. It happens in politics as well as in wider cultural and moral issues. People get uppety without really putting in the simple effort and courtesy to engage with a counteracting viewpoint. This is not just an unwillingness to reason but a blunt refusal to reason, whilst at the same time believing that they are being reasoned.

A Rejoinder

Sun, 16 Sep 2012 17:05:03 +0100

Here is my response to the comment made by Tom on my previous post on theological opinion. As it was quite a long and comment (which is welcomed, as it shows I need to sharpen things up a bit), I have decided to do a full length rejoinder to it. And by full length, I mean long… 3500 words or there abouts.

Firstly, I must address the issue of straw men, which I must admit I was somewhat guilty of building in my previous post. Straw men do nothing to aid and assist a debate, providing false results to many questions. Reading Tom’s comment, I was really challenged about how I had presented my previous argument through the use of blunt and sweeping assertions. I realise now that I had created a “liberal” without actually describing what one was. In fact I only used the term once in the blog, and right at the end. The term “liberal” has little use today, as those who are described as such hold to a broad spectrum of opinions, many of which are strictly neo-orthodox and which have an emphasis on post-modernism rather than the modernism of the traditional liberals. As such, I did hit out at somewhat of an imaginary character with no set characteristics, which was wrong.

However, whilst characterising an invisible man in a certain way is uncharitable, I must deal with those doctrines (or denial of crucial doctrines) that an individual may hold to. I am not in fear of some “liberal bogeyman”, a figment off my imagination who, a spectre who is attacking the church. Rather I fear a set of doctrinal affirmations and rejections that are truly held by some who, for want of a better label, I call “liberal”, even if some of their understandings are actually closer to neo-orthodoxy (for example their doctrine of scripture). These are real doctrinal issues which I believe are dangerous.

This is a long blog post. And it is not even a complete rebuttal of any point. The aim of it is to illustrate, without sweeping statements, how the gospel to which I hold cannot co-exist with rival gospels, for to do so would create a rival God.

Why does your theology matter?

The simple reason your theology matters is this is because your whole theology determines the answer to one simple question: what is the gospel? What propositional truths you hold defines what you think the gospel is, and what the gospel is defines what a Christian is. Change the gospel, change the God.

The New Testament writers states very clearly that not all those who call themselves Christians will be so, and the reason for this will be their tampering of the gospel. Galatians 1:6-9 is clear on this: there is one gospel, the gospel as proclaimed by Paul, and any who distort the gospel by preaching another gospel which contrasts to Paul’s have simply abandoned the faith. Those of the “circumcision party” would call themselves Christians, believe that Jesus was the Christ, and that he died for sins, yet by adding the need to keep the Law of Moses to the gospel they renounced Christ, so much so that Paul states that if righteousness comes through the law, “Christ died for no purpose”.

Paul makes the simple case that we can demark who is and who isn’t a “true” Christian through the content of their beliefs. Jude also writes:

“I was very eager to write to you about out common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord” (Jude 1:3-4)

Jude here is imploring his readers to hold to the true gospel, which clearly has a deal of propositional content, as there are those who have entered the church and who by perversion of the gospel deny the Lord. It is clear: there is only one gospel and one Lord, and to fiddle with what each of these is, or what stands behind each, is to abandon the God who is the author of our salvation. Peter warns that there would be false prophets who “secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Peter 2:1). There is no room in the Apostles understanding of God for any deviation from the gospel which they proclaimed.

So how we define the gospel is vital if we are to be in the household of faith. To believe in Christ is to trust in him for the accomplishment of our salvation, which intrinsically involves understanding how he accomplished it, and what salvation is. Again Paul makes this clear in his letter to the Galatians: the Christ he portrayed was the Christ who was crucified (Galatians 3:1). To Paul Christ’s death has specific salvific effect which relates to justification by faith alone, the argument of Galatians, and so that what we believe about the work of Christ on the cross is vital to what the gospel is. Paul goes on to develop the importance of the cross, illustrating that on the cross Christ was made to be accursed, and through this process redeemed us from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13). Christ himself talks about his work on the cross as being a “ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Paul talks of how God has made us “alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of the debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:13-15).

And this affects how an evangelical understands the gospel. For an evangelical, the gospel is that Christ died on the cross to satisfy the just demands of the law, to save us from the curse of death for disobedience inaugurated in the Garden of Eden. It is not the story of an innocent son being pummelled by an abusive Father. Neither is it merely an act of human injustice illustrating the nature of God. It is said that God did not kill Jesus, man did, but this is only a half truth: Jesus who is God laid down his own life willingly and obediently to the Father’s will, it was not taken from him (John 10:18). This ensures a truly Trinitarian soteriology: it is the determination of the entire Trinity in one united purpose to rescue man from sin, so that man may be adopted as sons of God. The Father ordains, the Son achieves, and the Spirit applies. The Father desired children, the Son a bride, and the Spirit that God receive the glory. Through the most unjust act to ever have occurred, God’s merciful justice was fulfilled: it was by man’s sin that Christ hung on the cross to destroy the full demands for that heinous act and to release men from its power.

So, how does this apply in the interaction between “liberals” and “evangelicals”?

Firstly, it must be understood that orthodoxy is orthopraxy. Holding to sound doctrine and rightly dividing “the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15) is a requirement for Christians. It is a form of orthopraxic obedience. To hold to erroneous doctrine is roundly condemned by Paul and the Apostles. We are warned to be wary of false teachers who tamper with the gospel, who promote licentiousness, who are worldly and who deny those basic doctrines. Examples are found in Galatians 1:6-10, 1 Timothy 1:3-7, 2 Peter 2, 1 John 2:18-26, amongst others. In 1 John 2:21, John clearly states that we can know “the truth”, not merely a perspective on that truth.

Secondly, the characterisation of evangelicals as possessing “dead orthodoxy”, individuals who have all the right doctrine but do not live in a “Christian” manner, is as much a straw man as any depictions of liberals that go the other way. Furthermore, it seriously lacks theological understanding. Yes, there are some who have supposedly flawless doctrine, but who have never truly had faith in Christ, instead trusting in their own righteousness, or, more often, falling into serious moral sin indicative of lack of repentance and faith. However, the truth of the gospel is that those who have died to sin with Christ and are now a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) cannot continue to live as they did previously. This is not a “cannot” in terms of an order but is rather a “cannot” insofar as it is an impossibility. There is a real change wrought through the work of Christ and the application of the Holy Spirit of his sanctifying work – for we are sanctified in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:2) – which means that a Christian is given a new disposition enabled to follow God in obedience to his laws and statutes. In Ezekiel, part of the change which is wrought by regeneration, the granting of a new heart and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, is that believers will be caused to “walk in [God’s] statutes and be careful to obey [God’s] rules” (Ezekiel 36:25-27). The sentiment is also stated in Jeremiah 31:33, and requited in Hebrews 8. The result of this new covenant relationship is sanctification by the Spirit, which implants new laws in man’s heart, that they may walk in righteousness. Yes we still sin, but if you are a Christian you will bear fruit, and that will be known by it (also see John 15:8, 16, and Matthew 7:16). It is the outworking of the salvation from sin, not a contribution to it (i.e. your fruit comes from being saved, it does not save you).

In terms of the Gospel, the question comes down to which side holds to that Gospel “once delivered to the saints”. You see, to an evangelical, the entire gospel rests on the fact that, on the cross, Christ was a propitiation for man’s sins, that he satisfied the wrath of God that was owed to man so that those who were predestined in him could be called righteous before God, the merits of Christ counted as their own, and that they could die to sin and rise to newness of life. All the benefits of salvation rely on what Christ did to achieve this salvation in the first place, and to deny this is to completely change what the subsequent salvation entails.

Yes, there is a restorative aspect of the atonement: that we that are united with Christ by faith have with him died to sin and are raised to newness of life (Romans 6:6-8). But this issue was what the whole Reformation was about: that our just standing before God was not on account of the work that he achieves through us by grace, but on account of the work Christ does for us in a judicial sense, becoming “sin on our behalf, that we may become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). If the exegesis of the scripture is in this way correct, and I truly believe it is (this isn’t the place for a full exposition of the atonement), then to deny the propitiatory nature of the atonement of Christ is to tamper with the gospel, and to tamper with the gospel is simply to deny God.

To make the work of Christ on the cross only that of Christus Victor (or moral influence), without the propitiatory and legal aspects of it, is to change what salvation is. If the work of the atonement is merely that of the defeat of powers and principalities, justification is not forensic (legal) but transformative, that it is our works that ultimately justify us. And many on the progressive wing of Christianity see salvation as an ethical change in an individual, that Christ came to make “the now” better. To remove the penal penalty of sin creates a God who does not care about the just demands of sin, only its presence, and such a view fails to recognise that only through the vindication of the law can sin be removed. If Christ did not bear sins on the cross, only suffered being sinned against, nothing really changes, except potentially man, who must change himself by reacting the right way (a serious slide to semi-Pelagianism, condemned for the last 1600 years or so). And if the Cross merely illustrates that God isn’t angry with mankind any more, what does that mean universalism? It must do, unless the idea of salvation is seen in purely ethical terms, which is what has generally happened. Love wins and all that…

Further, It must be remembered that Satan means “the accuser”, and that illustrates exactly what his role is in the rebellion against God. His aim is to accuse, to point out that we are unworthy of salvation, that our sins must be punished. The victory of Christ on the cross cannot be separated from the fact that in propitiation Christ pulled the carpet from beneath the Devil’s feet: his accusations count for nothing against those united to Christ in his death. Further, the justifying work of Christ – imputing a declaration of righteousness to sinful man – allows the Spirit to dwell in man as a Holy Temple, which itself produces a sanctifying change in man, that they turn from sin.

The view that views Christ’s incarnation purely in terms of Christ’s identification with man simply changes what the gospel is. No longer is salvation the redemption, nor is Christ’s work redemptive. As BB Warfield explains in his fantastic essay “Redeemer and Redemption”, redemption must be seen exegetically as the ransom of man, for to think otherwise is to rid redemption of anything resembling redeeming.

If Christ came to show the way to man, to identify with man only to show them that there was a better way to live, then the cross achieves nothing. It may signify something, but it actually changes nothing except the thoughts man, if man lets it. It ushers in no change of status before God. The High Priestly work of Christ is sucked of its redemptive and mediatorial work: if our status before God was not an issue, God merely pretending that we never sinned, then we have no need for a mediator. However, in reality Christ stands before the father saying: “I have purchased this bride for a price Father, for my own name’s sake. I was tempted like she was but did not sin. I love her and gave my life in her place” (see Hebrews 4:14-15 for eg). Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9:22) and it is clear that this shedding of blood was a price through which man was purchased (1 Corinthians 6:20), the price of their sin paid for, and that this blood is the route through which peace with God was achieved, removing our alienation from him and allowing us to be presented blameless before God: we were not blameless before, but the blood has made us blameless not by changing us but changing our status(Colossians 1:20-22). Christ bear’s the sins of many (Hebrews 9:27) not only in becoming an outcast, suffering an unjust death by men, but in paying the price for justice for many. God was no “fellow sufferer” who needed to hang on the Cross to realise himself, but a God perfect in himself, who ordained to rescue sinful man in a united Trinitarian action.

This isn’t even a full argument. I could go on, but I already fear my few readers would have already stopped some 1000 words ago. The aim of this is to show that what you believe is vital, for the gospel is only the gospel if certain propositions are true. Change the propositions, change the nature of the God and the gospel. If I am wrong, I have been worshipping a different God: I cannot be said to have had faith, as I had faith in something else.

Let us turn to the second example given, that of the issue of conservative Christian sexual ethics. This, like the atonement, is a gospel issue. For if in Christ we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Paul makes it clear that the sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God, and includes in this list fornicators, adulterers and homosexuals (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). But the real crux is in the following verse: “For such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6:11). Paul indicates that there has been a change in the believer in the deliverance from sin, so that they are no longer defined by that sin. Furthermore, the law of God, i.e. God’s moral commandments which are a guide to life, are in no way called to cease. These laws, set out in the Decalogue, are still binding to Christians as they represent God’s perfect character. Christian sexual ethics all fall under the command not to commit adultery. The root of this command is summarised by Jesus himself (Mark 10:6-9): for God created them “man and woman”. Christ was not merely pandering to a backward society around him, as some on the left of the faith suggest. He was calling attention to the eternal plan for the ordering of the world, the plan of the bringing together of man and women to become one flesh, as an illustration of the love between Christ and the Church. If to love Christ is to obey him (John 14:15), then we must face the truth that, on this issue, one of the sides is not loving Christ because one side is not obeying him. Sin remains sin, and appealing to a vague idea of “love” disconnected with God’s law is folly.

I have not fully developed the exposition of why I believe what I believe, and many of the critiques of opposing views have, I admit been in equally broad strokes as the presentation of my own book. That was not the purpose - if you want fuller arguments, there are books. I also have not critiqued the predominant doctrine of scripture held by the progressive wing, that of Barthian neo-orthodoxy, the mistake in conflating God’s revelation and God’s essence and therefore the need to reduce scripture to a mere record of revelation rather than revelation itself. Neither have I addressed the problem of post-modernism, the rejection of the author in favour of the text alone and the addition of subjectivity into scriptural interpretation. Nor have I addressed the pantheism and panentheism, or the “becoming” of God as held by some of a progressive persuasion. But again, that is by and bye – it was not the purpose of this response. The purpose of this post was to illustrate this point:

In being truly consistent in my reading of scripture, and bearing in mind the scriptural commands to watch for false teachers and to contend for the gospel as delivered to the saints, I cannot but reject as heresy those deviations from what scripture has revealed to be true.

In this I am not being small minded. It is simply the case that the gospel is built on certain propositions. The Early Church recognised this. This is why we have the ecumenical creeds. This is why Modalism and Arianism and Nestorianism and Apollonairanism and Manichaeism and Pelagianism were all condemned by the Church as heresy. These heresies tampering with the doctrine of God and the doctrine of Christ were rightly understood to be a complete rejection of the Biblical God, God who has revealed himself by prophets and, in time, in fullness in Christ. I cannot but hold to the same principles as these early fathers also held. I cannot say that these ideas are merely “perspectives” in a subjective world where there is just the text, and we all get it a little bit wrong so we must have freedom to all contribute to the shared journey of faith. The Fathers realised that to get much right but to tamper with one key issue is to abandon orthodoxy in the totality of your system.

Let me finish off with this illustration. Imagine that in front of you are three lists of the doctrines held by three un-named religions. You read down the list, and conclude that all three are equally as different from all the others as each other itself. There are three different doctrines of God, three different descriptions of Christ, three different explanations of his purpose, three different descriptions of his cross work, three different accounts of salvation. You would, looking down these lists conclude that they are three separate religions. Now, if I was to reveal that one list was the Reformed faith, one was the “liberal” faith (though now adays liberalism and neo-orthodoxy have rather subsumed each other), and the other was a description of the beliefs held by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, what would you think. The truth is that the number of differences between an evangelical and a “liberal” is to the same extent as the number of differences between the evangelical and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which is clearly a different religion. Thus, if the differences are as great in these two situations, I cannot describe one faith so polar opposite to my own in the beliefs held, either the JW’s or the liberals, to be the same faith as that which I hold.

Psalm Singing.

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 09:56:00 +0100

Now, I’m not an exclusive psalmodist.

But I am getting closer to it.

The truth is, we massively neglect the psalms in Churches here in England. We sometimes sing worship songs based on psalms or on scriptural songs. We sometimes sing songs which have some vague references to the psalms. But we rarely sing proper psalms in our Churches.

And this is tragic. In Scripture, God has provided his own infallible songbook. He has in the psalms provided us with his own words of how he wishes to be worshipped. These songs contain the full range of human emotions, from desperate pleading to God for mercy to ectatic praise, both the highs and the lows. They are beautiful expressions of worship to God, and further they are God’s word and so speaks back to us. Every time we sing the psalms, God word is proclaimed back to us. He speaks to us when we are worshipping him.

And more than that, we are exhorted to sing “hymns, psalms and spiritual songs”, not just man made hymns. And why wouldn’t we? Think about it: when we sing God’s word back to him, it is always going to be more pure, more brilliant than any words that we can write.

Now, I do believe that there is a place for hymns not in the Scriptures. I think that is what is referred to when Paul exhorts us to sing “hymns, psalms and spiritual songs”. I think that non-inscriptured hymns fill a gap in the collection of psalms, that being that there are no recorded scriptural hymns after the resurrection of Christ (at least, not in the form of a full hymn - there are references in the epistles). Thus, to express the full glory of God’s work of redemption in Christ through a song, we are required to write hymns reflecting the teachings of scripture. This is very much like preaching: a hymn is an exposition of God’s word, merely in the form of a piece of music.

But I would love to sing hymns, simple and straight, with no alteration other than translating into metrical form. It is something we don’t do enough, and really should do more.

Not all opinions are created equal

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 22:14:00 +0100

IMHO

It is strange that in our current arena of debate we need such a prefix. Often in ordinary conversation you will hear someone say “In my opinion” when someone is trying to make a point on an issue. But if you think about it, it is an entirely pointless thing to say. If you make a statement you are expressing an opinion, a view, an interpretation of the world, or an interpretative structure through which the world is viewed. All statements on an issue is an opinion. There is no need to prefix a statement will the presentation of such a fact.

But the fact that people do use it as a prefix (and I must admit I am guilty of doing this) says a lot about how we view both debates and truth. When we express our opinion, and prefix it with “well, in my opinion”, what we are saying is this:

“This is my opinion. As I hold to it, and do so strongly, it is automatically valid as an interpretation on the issue”.

But as the title of this post suggests, not all opinions are of equal value. Just because you hold to one perspective on an issue, it doesn’t mean that you are correct.

Now, I think most people will be thinking “Of course! What are you on about. Nobody thinks that”.

So, lets focus this in on issues relating to the Christian faith.

There are a lot of debates about the doctrines of the faith and what the message of the Bible is. And often when people sit round to discuss these issues, we sit, chat, disagree, and it finishes with an acceptance of “lets agree to disagree”. But lets really think though what we are really saying, accept this, and move on with how we discuss issues.

Because when we have a difference of opinions on an issue, we believe that the other person is wrong. Incorrect. Holding an opinion which is invalid.

Take issues around baptism. I am a paedobaptist. I believe that the Bible teaches that infants of believing Christians should be baptised into the Church. Thus, I believe that postponing baptism until a profession of faith is an incorrect view relating to baptism. I am not going to go into the arguments here. The point I am making is that, whilst I am friendly with people who disagree, I believe that people who hold a different opinion are very, very wrong.

Is this arrogant? No, it is not. Whether we understand this or not, simply by holding an opinion, we believe that we are correct at the expense of other opinions. Of course, one can hold to the possibility of being wrong. But by holding an opinion you do not think that this is the case.

Now, when it comes to paedobaptism, we can cope with this strong difference of opinion. It may alter our definition of the Church, but the gracious nature of the God whom we worship remains the same. So we can have unity even where there is a significance difference of opinion.

Where this really comes to the fore is over the issues of what is the message of the Bible, and what does it teach relating to salvation.Over this issue, the stakes are raised. Because this is the truth:

Both cannot be right. On these issues, the different readings of the Bible are mutually exclusive. And this can be eternally fatal.

Which brings me round to how we come to have opinions on this issue. The oft presented criticism is that there are multiple interpretations of the Bible, how can you judge one to be correct at the expense of the other?

The answer to this question is exegesis. Simply put, this is the study of the text of the Bible, the words used, the grammar etc in order to determine what the writer was trying to say. It is the study of the Word. It is scientific, using grammatical methodology to determine the correct interpretation. And like in science, the study of the evidence produces an interpretation which is either correct or incorrect. In the same way as a scientist would think it preposterous to state that multiple readings of the same evidence is equally valid, so it is with theology. The facts are there to be interpreted, and either they are interpreted correctly or incorrectly.

When it comes down to it, there are various discriptions of what it is to be a Christian. But often, these descriptions are mutually exclusive. A liberal and a conservative evangelical description are so vastly different that they cannot both be right.

Which leaves us with the final question: if one is wrong, can it still legitimately be called Christian? And if not, which one is which. I’ll just leave that hanging.

Thoughts on Apologetics: "Do you think I am going to hell?"

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:21:00 +0100

I stumbled across this video which was posted on twitter of an apologist answering the question “Do you think I am going to hell”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dJFig3n1N9s

All in all, I think that the guy’s answer was ok, but a little too combative maybe. But I thought: how would I answer this question. And this is what I came up with… please note, I wrote this in one go as if actually answering the question, so it ain’t perfect.

You say in your question that you are a person who tries to do good, and to live a good life. Your presumption, therefore, is that because you try to live a moral and upright life, you deserve to go to heaven.

Let us take this as being true for a second: if you live a good life you go to heaven, if you live a bad life you go to hell. Let us for a moment assume that this is based on a system of balances: good things outweigh bad things and vice versa. If you live a good life, and mess up every once in a while, things are fine. But what happens if you don’t live a good life? What do you mean by “not live a good life”?

You say in your question that you try to do good, so you are obviously comparing this to some kind of idea of what is bad. Who falls into this category? Paedophiles? Rapists? Murderers? Exploiters, wife beaters, people who are just plain nasty? Do these people fall outside the camp?

Because you are left with a choice here? Either these people are classed as “bad people” and so must be punished, or they are classed as ok people, that the bad things they have done doesn’t matter, they are free to enter. Do you feel uncomfortable with the latter option: if this is the case, there is no ultimate justice - bad things are left unpunished.

Which brings us to the nub of the matter. If the first option is the one we go for, we have actually made a statement. We have decreed that some actions are good and some actions are bad. How have we done this? Well, simply by comparing this to our own personal (and yes society generally’s) view of what constitutes an immoral or a moral action. Some things we let off - maybe being snarky, unkind, cruel even - because we all make mistakes. But we essentially judge good and bad against our standards and our abilities to resist bad and do good.

So now lets bring God into this. Now, God is the one who gets to chose what is good and what is bad. And like in our scenario above, he judges against his own character. But unlike us, his character is perfect. The Bible tells us that God is light and in him there is no darkness: there is nothing evil at all. And so all our small things, those things that we excuse because “we’re only human”, those things aren’t small things to God, because he is so perfect, to compare any transgression against his perfect character is a big deal.

Furthermore, the scenario as set out above isn’t what happens anyway. Our criminal justice system sure doesn’t work so that we live our lives and then the courts judge whether we have lived well or poorly. No, if you have committed a crime, justice demands to be vindicated - a crime committed has a relevant punishment.

In order to avoid punishment we must avoid crime. But as we can see, we have all committed crimes against God because we have all fallen short of his standards. Because God is perfect God demands perfection from those who are like him (remember man is mad in God’s image: we are a reflection of him). God’s justice, like ours, demands that if a crime is committed then punishment follows. So at this point, it seems we are all going to hell: we have all broken the law, and so must face the punishment.

But God, in his holiness and love, looked upon men who were each to the man disobeying him, hating him and hating fellow humans made in his image, living lives that are selfish and self-centred, and he chose to save them. The story of the Bible of how God achieved this goal. The Father sent the Son, Jesus Christ, to come down from heaven, humble himself, and to live a perfect life of obedience. This life of obedience led him to the Cross, where he paid the price for sins, so that if you believe in him, if you trust in him, you are united with him in his death - it counts as the satisfaction for your sins. God’s justice is vindicated, the punishment is paid for, you are counted as innocent - the law has no more claims on you. And more than that, Christ was raised from the dead, as a vindication of his perfect life of obedience. And if we trust in Christ we share in this vindication, and all the promises and benefits of communion with God that are Christs, that Christ has known since the beginning of time, the love of the Father to the Son, all this is applied to us and we share in it.

So the answer to the original question: am I going to hell? Yes. If you continue living separated from God, living in rebellion against him, hating him, then no matter how many good things you do, you can never get rid of the bad. Seperated from Christ, we all deserve to go to hell, every one of us, for the reasons hopefully shown above. Only in Christ who purchases salvation for us can we be freed from sin, not only from its eternal consequences, but in its control over our lives now.

Thoughts on Apologetics: Winning the man, not the argument... Sort of

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 14:03:37 +0000

It is often said in the world of apologetics “Win the man, not the argument”. This is a good truism. The purpose of apologetics is connected with the mission of the Church: to preach the word, making disciples of all nations. We are in the business of seeking to win souls to Christ. To be an apologist is to be “prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15 ESV). The aim of this is to tell people why we are Christians, so that ultimately they may also be saved.

But apologetics is more than that. It is a reasoned defence of the Christian faith. Calvin once said “A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent”. Sometimes, we must defend the faith purely to defend what is truth. If we are Christians, we cannot follow post-modernity and say that there is no absolute truth, that nothing is objectively knowable, and that all beliefs are merely an interpretation of experience by the individual. We believe that truth is truth: that there is such thing as objective truth, and God has revealed this truth in Christ.

And so sometimes we must defend the truth that God has revealed to us, simply because we are defending truth. We must do that with gentleness, that is true. But in the words of John MacArthur, gentleness is “power under control” (Strength for Today, volume 1, January 17th.). Being truly gentle means that we possess power, but we use it judiciously and soberly. Again, John MacArthur explains:

“Gentle people, on the other hand, control their energies and strengths, but they do have a tough side. They don’t back away from sin or cease to condemn evil. Since the gentle person submits to God, he becomes angry over things that offend God, not himself” (Strength for Today, volume 1, 18th January)

As MacArthur illustrates, to give a defence of the faith with all gentleness is knowing how to control themselves in presenting the Gospel, and when to show a strong front.

So often the phrase “winning the man, not the argument” is an excuse for i) intellectual laziness, and ii) cowardice. Its an excuse for pulling punches and not presenting the Gospel in its fullness. If we are to give a reason for the hope that we have, we must ourselves know that reason. And if we know that reason, we are Bibically exhorted to present that reason, in truth and humility.

The problem with the phrase “winning the man, not the argument” is that we do neither: we fail to win the argument,the non believer leaves the conversation/debate smugly enjoying their intellectual victory and assured in their opinions, and their soul is not won to Chirst.

So we must learn to win the argument. Interestingly, in my experience, the individuals who are most likely to go in all guns blazing, insulting and hurting their intellectual opponants, are those who don’t have their arguments sorted. They go in, lose the argument and lose the man. Generally, those apologists who can win the argument are the ones who know how to present their arguments well as to not insult their opponants, or know when, having bruised the pride of their intellectual opponant, be loving and conciliatory.

But we must learn to win the arguments. We must remember the world that we live in. Romans 1 tells us of the nature of man: man is unrighteous, suppressing the truth that they know Romans 1:18), his thoughts darkened (Romans 1:21-22). Natural man is a fool who thinks that they are wise. One of the first task of both the apologist and the evangelist is to prove to their listeners and readers that they are in desperate need of a saviour, because they are so desperately lost, their minds darkened.

We must remember that fallen man is puffed up with pride. This goes both ways. We are often as Christians warned against becoming proud and self righteous, and this is a good and true warning. But we must also realise that our intellectual opponents, however nice and kind they may be, are fallen individuals themselves puffed up with pride, that same pride of the flesh that infects your mind. The difference is that as a Christian, you have the means by which to put it to death, the Holy Spirit, and you must do so.

But in truth, we as apologists must understand something. The Gospel is offensive. The Bible makes claims as to the nature of man that offends mans most basic beliefs which are caused by the fall: that they themselves are God, the centre of the universe. As apologists, we must understand that in telling others about the reasonableness of Christianity, we are telling people that God thinks that they are people unable to correctly think about anything in their own strength. And this will upset people.

The task of the apologist is to know the truth that is contained in scripture, and to proclaim that. Luther’s famous mantra (which he may not have actually said) “here I stand: I can do no other” is a good mantra for the apologist. Our task is to take apart the arguments of our opponents, and in this we humble the proud. But we must not take apart the man.

The Liberal Church and Pharaseeism

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:30:06 +0000

The recent debates in the Church of England concerning, essentially, how we read the Word of God has encouraged me to write this post.

The fundamental question before us is not whether the Church is to be relevant or loving. It isn’t really about thinking “what would Jesus do” in acting out of love and tolerance for one issue, and “in keeping with what we know now” with another. The real question is whether we believe the Bible to be the Word of God, the infallable revelation of the will of God, the supreme judge and rule for all issues of faith and conduct, or whether we believe that we can supplant the teachings of scripture by our reason and “inner light”, reading the word of God through specticles of our own making.

Let me draw your attention to Mark 7:1-13. Please take some time to read the passage before you read the rest of the post.

In this passage, the Pharasees question our Lord as to why the disciples did not obey the “tradition of the elders”.

Now, if the Pharasees were about today, I honestly think we would say: “They meant well”. Why? Because they believed that they were trying hard to obey the Law of God. They believed that the reason for Israel’s predicament was that the nation was no longer keeping the Law. And so they became anal about keeping the Law. They saw what they though the Law said and they decided that, in order to keep it as perfectly as possible, they added extra rules to the Law, so that they stopped themselves before they broke the Law and sinned.

What Jesus points out is that, in trying to keep the Law as they saw it, they ended up breaking the Laws of God. The traditions of the elders which they sought to keep actually prevented the Pharasees from obeying the true Law of God, as set down in the 10 Commandments.

Christ puts it in harsh terms: they obey their traditions “thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down” (Mark 7:13).

Making void the word of God. They used pious excuses, for example the giving away money “to God” in order that you can discharge your duties towards your parents, and in doing so are disobedient to what God says.

I want to argue that this is what the Liberal Church is doing. Behind the cries of “its more important that we just love each other” is simple disobedience.

Can you see the analogy. Liberal Christianity uses the second limb of Great Commandment to ignore the first. The command to “love your neighbour as yourself” is used as a get out clause for ignoring the great corpus of God’s law. You cannot use the love that we are meant to show our neighbours as a get out clause for obediently following other devine commands. We simply cannot. Respect and care for others, of course. But to permit that which God has revealed to us not to be permitted is simply to disobey God, overtly, arrogantly.

There are many other flaws in the movements in Liberal Christianity. An false eschatology, whereby the future hope is not something that will be ushered in with the return of Christ, but something which will only be seen in “the gradual evolution of the kingdom of love” (Horton,The Christian Faith, p929); the denial of God’s judgement and justice which produces ade factouniversalism; a pantheistic view of God, whereby God is everywhere in all things, with multiple ways to commune with him, and man’s life being merely growing in one’s God consciousness; a denial of the full devinity of Christ; a Palagian doctrine of salvation. All these things are prevelant in the tradition of Liberal Christianity since it first began to rear its head in the late 18th Century.

The “gospel” propounded by the Liberal Church is so far removed from the traditional gospel as to almost beggar belief. The cross means nothing other than an illustration of how much God loves people, severed from the satisfaction of the wrath of God (which is now downright denied by others). Repentance is virtually non existant: man merely has to accept Jesus and be nice. Moralism is the word of the day, and the morality propounded is a man made morality based on what man decrees by his reason. People aren’t saved from hell, but are saved from a lack of personal fulfillment. The Bible isn’t the Word of God, through which he speaks to man, but man’s own “inner light” is one’s guide to truth. Salvation is Palagian: men are essentially good and essentially spiritual, they just need a little help to be more fulfilled good people (except for the bad people, those being all those who aren’t Liberals).

But Jesus sees differently. He sees that it is from mans heart that evil proceeds (Mark 7:21). It is from inside man, his own desires and mores, from which man sins. Only a new heart will bring about moral renewal. Even human reason is corrupt and not to be trusted. The Word is to bind man’s conscience, not what one person believes to be right and wrong. “Well, we know better now” has no place in Scriptural interpretation. Man is sinful and corrupt, deserving of damnation. And thence we would be heading but by the grace of God. But we must rid the Church of the idea that all people are essentially good. Yes, we are all made in the image of God, carrying with us the inherent dignity given to us by God in our image bearing capacity, and thus deserving of love and compassion. But Jesus reminds us, if we are not included in the covenant of grace by faith and adopted as God’s children, we are the children of the devil (John 8:44). And this we must bear in mind when dealing with the culture around us, even when we are being radically loving.

How does apply to the situation in the Church in Britian today? It means we must submit to God’s word, stop trying to rationalise away that which we don’t like, and stand up to the prevailing culture which demands that we give way. And we must do all this in love. But we cannot affirm that which God explicitly condemns in his Word. We cannot read the Bible and say “this section doesn’t count because we know better now adays”.

Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:11:14 +0000

A number of reasons have encouraged me to write this post. And in all likeliness it will be exceedingly long, so may have to evolve into a 2 part piece.

But it is an important theological and pastoral issue, so I shall address it.

This post shall be concerned with what is the role of men and women in the Church. Later posts will probably be more specifically looking at Biblical manhood, but they may blur into one at stages.

John Piper has recently stated that “God has given Christianity a masculine feel” (http://bit.ly/zZVaRG). This has promptly been replied to by Viky Beeching (http://bit.ly/zsaXvp), a entrenched egalitarian who has previously stated that complementarianism is oppressive (http://bit.ly/o6D2ZS)

So, I, with my non existent readership, shall “wade” into this debate with my two pieces.

1) I don’t entirely agree with John Piper.

That is to say, I affirm everything he says, except that he refers to Christianity as masculine. I affirm that the Church should be led lovingly by male pastors. You have to jump through impossible hoops to say otherwise (more on that later). I believe that in marriage, the Bible teaches that the man is to lead and the wife is to lovingly submit to his headship.

My issue is that I object to the labelling of personality traits as “masculine” or “feminine”.

Reading through scripture, the distinction between men and women is not so much to do with characteristics but to do with roles. The Bible does not say that women are more empathetic and emotional than men, or that men are more decisive and certain. It certainly does not say that men have an inbuilt need to storm towers and rescue princesses from dragons, whilst women just want to feel like princesses. This idea that there are certain characteristics that define manhood and womanhood are simply not present in scripture.

Two things are present.

i) The universal call to holiness. The fruit of the Spirit are not gendered. Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness and Self-Control are neither male nor female attributes. They are fruit expected and demanded of from all Christians. We are all called to be obedient to Christ, to be compassionate, to stand firm in the faith, to fight the good fight, to mortify sin.

To refer to any of these Biblical attributes as manly and womanly is simply incorrect. They are Godly characteristics. And whilst God is a he, defining himself in male terms, his image bearing is carried by both men and women (as we see in Genesis 1:27). So when we are called to emulate Christ, all Christians, men and women, are called to do so.

ii) Strict and Undeniable Gender Roles. Which brings me neatly (?) onto point 2 of my two pieces.

2) Viki Beeching is very wrong.

She is wrong on a number of levels.

Firstly, there is the need to distinguish between Chapter 1 of Genesis and Chapter 2. Chapter 1 recounts God’s grand plan in creation, his ex nihilo creative power and his purposes for mankind: that we would be his image bearers, acting as creative beings (“Be fruitful and multiply” Genesis 1:28) and as rulers (“and subdue it and have dominion” Genesis 1:28).

Chapter 2, however, focuses in on a specific historical event. It recounts the creation of the first man in particular detail, and it goes into depth in explaining the story. Why? Because this is the beginning of God’s plan to redeem humanity. Sounds weird doesn’t it. But what I mean is this: God is explaining exactly how we came to be in the situation we are in, and in order to do that we need to explain where we came from. So we learn about God’s creation of man out of dust, unique amongst all things.

Why is this important to this debate? Because we cannot muddle the two stories up. Genesis 1 shows the general understanding of mankind as a whole, as rulers and creators. It shows that all men are image bearers of God, of equal value and dignity. Genesis 2 looks specifically at the relationship between man and woman. There is a reason it explains that man was created first, then woman. There is a reason the woman is called “helper” rather than any other word.

Now, Viky Beeching is correct in saying that the word “ezer” is used in a strong manner, used to describe a helper who aids in times of trouble, one who helps another who cannot operate effectively alone. She is correct in saying that it is used when describing how God helps and cares for Israel. But no complementarian thinker misses this, nor denies its importance. It is a well acknowledged point that woman is of equal dignity to man.

The relationship between man and wife should be one of huge importance. A wife’s help is truly indispensable to a husband, and to portray it as anything otherwise is patently false. When a marriage occurs, two people become one flesh, one unit operating in the world. It is a Trinitarian reflection.

But here is where Beeching makes a very important mistake. She says that Piper’s theology is anti-Trinitarian, because she says that

I also see Piper’s arguments lacking in trinitarian theology; in creating us male and female in the imago dei, only when both men and women are represented equally in Christianity can the Godhead fully be reflected

However, she fundamentally misses an important point about the Trinity, and to express this, I shall write in the style of Beeching (i.e. with bold highlighting to make a point). In the Trinity, the different persons in the Godhead have different roles. This is vital. The Father is the author of mans redemption: he plans it, ordains it, and accepts the work of Christ. The Son is the person of the Godhead through which redemption is achieved: he was obedient and submissive to the Father in order to bring about the salvation of man. In the same way as we are called to obey out Father and Mother, Christ obeyed his Father perfectly, all the way to the cross and out the other side.

Thus, the persons of the Trinity have equal value and equal status as being God. But Christ was submissive unto death.

If women object to the idea of being submissive in the marriage relationship, under the pretense that submission is oppressive, then they should look up and see that Christ was submissive to his Father: he forfeited his right and he humbled himself in becoming a man (Philippians 2:5-8).

So the failure in Trinitarian theology comes not through Piper, but through Beeching.

Beeching’s second big mistake is in saying that gender hierarchy is based on the fall. And this is a far more serious mistake, because the implications of such a doctrine actually effect how we see scripture.

Beeching states:

And the result is a hierarchy resulting from that sinful choice. In the true understanding of the Hebrew term ‘azer’ there was no gender hierarchy before the Fall, only afterwards

However, there are a number of reasons why this is not the case. Firstly, I want to look at what Paul writes in 1 Timothy 2:13.

People feel very uncomfortably when 1 Timothy 2:12 is brought up, and people try and explain it away using cultural examples (which I shall attempt to demonstrate as being dangerous shortly). However, when people try and explain away Paul’s teaching on the organisation of the Church, they always fail to exegete the following verses.

But what 1 Timothy 2:13 says is this:

For Adam was formed first, then Eve

So before moving to the fall and the curse on the woman that man would domineer over her (Genesis 3:16), and which is done away with by the cross, Paul speaks about the intention of Creation. For Adam was formed first, and this is the reason why woman should not teach or hold authority over man. Man was created to be the ruler and worker, woman to be man’s helper, of equal value but with a different role.

Thus, it can be seen that there is a reason why God referred to woman as a “helper” not “fellow ruler”. The role of the helper is indispensable: man cannot operate without it. But that does not mean that when God said helper in this case he did not mean helper. If Beeching was consistent in her understanding of the word helper, then because God is the helper of Israel, and God is obviously superior to Israel, than woman as the helper is actually the force behind the good work. But helper means one who aids another. When God is our help in times of trouble, he is the one that helps us operate and to live for his glory. But we are the ones acting, we are the ones who have to walk, though we can only do so because we do so in the strength of God.

But this isn’t the intention: the word used for helper conveys dignity to the role, but does not denote an equality of role, even though it is clear that there is a equality of status.

When we move to 1 Timothy 2:14, we see that it is only in the subversion of the relationship between man and woman - “And it was not Adam who sinned first but Eve” - that we see a direct contrast between the order of creation (v13) and the state of affairs that brought about the fall (v14).

However, the more worrying aspect is just around the corner. The issue is that when people see passages such as those in 1 Timothy, they instantly jump to the cultural argument. And they will run with it even in the face of verses such as 1 Timothy 2:13-14.They say that Paul is writing shaped by his cultural milieu.

But what that really means is that Paul, in this situation, either isn’t writing on behalf of God, and therefore calling into question the inerrancy of scripture, or a new revelation from God has replaced that which Paul has written. Both are heterodoxical beliefs. All Scripture is God breathed, and we must be obedient to its statements.

Beeching even states that the only reason Christ came as a man was to fit into the culture he entered into. But in truth, Christ is still reigning in heaven as a man: he ascended into heaven as a glorified man, but a man none the less. To asexualise Christ in such a way is a worrying understanding of the Godhead.

If Paul writes entirely in his cultural context, we deny that God is the author. The Liberals already say this: the Bible is just a collection of flawed human experiences of their God consciousness. If Paul’s writings was shaped by his context in such a way as he can write in a way as to be wrong, as egalitarians must acknowledge if they are to be consistent - that Paul’s statement that man should not hold authority over a woman is against the will of God that man be equal - then we lose the whole of Scripture as the word of God.

And this is why complementarians believe that gender roles is important, why it is used as a test of orthodoxy. It explains how we understand Scripture.

So how should we understand men/women relationships in the running of the Church?

In truth, we must accept with humility what God decrees in his word: that elders and deacons are to be men and that it is not right for a woman to hold authority or to teach men. We must understand that this does not confer extra dignity on man. It is not because man is better, or because he possesses the fruit of godliness in greater abundance than women. No, it is merely because this is what God, in his ultimate wisdom, decrees. Why? Because he is drawing a picture and setting up the order of creation to illustrate a point. And it is up to him to decide how that plays out.

The challenge for us as men is to love our sisters in Christ with Christ like love and gentleness when we lead, not to patronise but to know of the inherent dignity that comes in being an image bearer of Christ. And women have to love their brothers in a Christlike manner with gentleness. But God has, whilst making man and women equal, given specific roles to each in relation to the Church. You do not have a right to be ordained an elder or a pastor teacher.

Beeching ends with one final remark: that if Piper gets his way, the Church will empty itself of women, who will leave feeling restrained and unwanted by the Church. This is nonsense. The Church is currently watching men leave at such a rate as beggars belief, and men are leaving far more than women. If the Church operates according to Scripture, I believe this will be reversed. If men lead lovingly and with Christlike humility, being submissive to God’s will as set down in Scripture, and living a holy life of obedience, then the Church has nothing to worry about. The macho “me manly man” is simply unhelpful in the Church. We all are called to be strong, pioneering Christians, both men and women. But the Bible is clear, whether we like it or not: the leadership of the Church is to be men, and this was set down in both Creation, and throughout the covenant of Grace, from Abraham to Christ.

A totally unsubstantiated theory concerning Men and Modern Worship Songs

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:49:29 +0000

I have a wee theory that I want to test out. It relates to men and the “chickified” modern worship music. It is totally untested, maybe untestable, and quite possibly very wrong. But its worth a shot.

Now I am a little biased. I am a little old fashioned. I like hymns. I like organs. Granted, I wish I could combine those with a little hand raising (1 Timothy 2:8, Psalm 134:2 etc). But generally, I feel far more comfortable - and maybe far more worshipful - in the more, well, traditional situations.

Having said that, here is the theory:

I think that the issue that some men have with modern worship music isn’t particularly concerning lyrics. I think it primarily concerns music genre.

Here’s my explanation: modern worship music tends to be of the pop music/incredibly soft rock variety. It tends to be in the major key, contain the chord G (or the shape of the G chord with a capo). Looking back on my youth (oh those heady days) I recall that generally, boys are the first to put aside the pop music CDs and move onto other genre’s of music. I moved from pop to emo and thenceforth to metal in a rather quick and seamless process. In contrast, I think that my female friends generally tended to hold onto pop music a little longer.

Think about it: who is the largest demographic for pop music and boy bands? It generally tends to be teenage girls. Yes, of course this is massively stereotypical, but I think there might be something in it. Girls like pop music. Boys generally leave it behind at a much younger age. Girls generally tend to stick with the singer songwriters. Guys still like singer songwriters, but also like heavy metal and prog (to use me as an example, because I’m just that normal).

Pop songs seem to be suited for girls much more than boys. Generally, girls get the hang of singing in a complex manner better than boys: puberty generally tends to spoil us poor lad’s aspirations of singer songwriter success. And this transfers into modern worship music. There are lots of complex warbles. And lots of high notes. And alas, us men who do not have the talent that some men do for being able to sing beautifully, struggling along.

Why, then, I hear you cry, are so many worship leaders and worship music writers men? Why do they write the pop songs? If I have started with an unsubstantiated theory, I may as well finish with one. I think that it is due to this one simple factor: they sell music. In our demographically slanted Church, it is likely that the music that pleases the ladies will tend to dominate. It is the same with pop stars as it is with worship music writers: what sells well wins.

What do I think the answer is?

Hymns. Proper old fashioned hymns. Ones you could belt out. I think people should write like the old days.

Maybe my experience at school was different, but here is what I remember. My mates in my tutor group didn’t mind singing hymns at the end of assembly. In fact, they generally relished it. Why? Because we all could stand up, and with an organ and choir behind us, power out the hymns with a reasonably degree of accuracy. There were some points that we were singing so loud that the rest of the school started to give us funny looks. But it was enjoyable to sing loud and proud. And slips and mistakes were OK. It was never about your own individual “worship moment”, as so much modern worship tends to be. It was communal. Now, I know that many of the singers belting out the hymns had no faith. But the point still stands. Guys like the belters. Its amazing: we even managed to belt out “Be still in the presence of the Lord” (yes, its not exactly an old hymn, but it still works!).

And the fantastic thing about these old hymns? They are gender neutral. They don’t mirror the trends in modern pop music. They are all inclusive. Both men and women can enjoy them because, unlike pop music, older hymn styles aren’t as gender devisive. Everybody can sing them. And they draw everyone together. It isn’t about that “worship experience”. Its about community. Maybe this is just me, but some modern worship songs leave me feeling uncomfortable. They are happy clappy and energetic, but often in ways that I couldn’t feel involved in. If you are feeling down, I find some modern hymns difficult to relate with, whereas a resounding “Tell out my soul! The greatness of his name!” I could always find a way in.

So, thats my theory. It is either right, completly wrong, or has been said before a million times. But its worth a mention. :-)

Gratitude isn't enough to make you change

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:41:53 +0000

Here is the first of a number of posts I am going to write on the issue of sanctification. This one is going to look at something I often hear, and have probably said before, especially in an evangelistic context. And I am no longer sure that is is entirely right.

When we tell people about the gospel, we often do our very best to play down the need for works in the Christian life. We want to show the people we are talking to that Christianity isn’t religion - you aren’t saved by doing things, undertaking ceremonies, praying in a certain way or at a certain time - but it is salvation, rescue from sins. Our emphases often weighs on the side of justification: in Christ’s death, our sins are payed for, and God decrees that we are just and righteous in his eyes, even though that is not, in fact, the case. The righteousness of Christ is imputed to us: it is counted as our own even though we do not in and of ourselves possess it.

And this is all good. It is a wonderful and fundamental gospel truth. But it is what normally comes after this that I find a little off the mark.

Because after we have said this we are often left with the question: why be good? If God has already paid the price for our sins, then does it matter how we live? And faced with this challenge, we often say something like this:

“Well, because Jesus paid the price for our sins, we are totally forgiven. Our relationship with God is fully restored, and we know he loves us [so far so good]. And so, knowing this, we are so grateful for what he has done that we try and obey him, and live lives according to his will”

It is that last bit which I don’t think sits quite right. Because, as the title has already stated, gratitude isn’t really enough. Gratitude is to week a motivation for any change, it cannot muster enough change in one’s life to make a serious difference.

Then what is the alternative? What do we turn to to motivate us to seek God’s will: that we be holy as he is holy?

I would argue that it isn’t in itself gratitude that does this, though gratitude is part of it. I would argue that it is only in our being in Christ, being unified with him and adopted into his promises that we can change.

Now, nothing I have said here is theologically revolutionary in any way, shape and form. Its pretty obvious. Having said that, we so often lose sight of it, or at the very least lose sight of the grandeur of its scope and impact.

Because becoming a Christian does not mean that we merely become grateful for our undeserved forgiveness. It means that we are utterly transformed, our priorities dramatically changed, our whole approach to the world altered. When we look to the Father, we do not look merely out of gratitude to what he has done in sending Christ to die for our sins. We look to the Father as his children, heirs to his full inheritance. Because we know God as Father, our will is to be like him.

Which means desiring to be holy, as he is holy. This latter message is, however, sadly lacking in the modern church. All Christians accept that, once we trust in Christ, we become children of God. However, the trend in the church today can often be to leave it at that. Not enough take the next logical step and vital: that the Christian faith is one of seeking to be like our father, holy in all ways.

This is of vital importance. How can we say that we are children of the living God if we fail to seek to be like him? The biblical command to honour your father and mother takes on an interesting direction when we see it in light of our adoption as children of God. If we take our adoption seriously, our fundamental desire must be to honour God, not merely out of gratitude to being forgiven, but as part of our new natures in Christ.

The book of Romans deals with this issue well. Paul asks his readers:

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” - Romans 6:1 (ESV)

And his answer:

“By no means! How can we who dies to sin still liven in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” - Romans 6:2-4 (ESV)

and he continues…

“For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” - Romans 6:5-6

The point is this: it is not merely gratitude that compels us to change, but it is our utter transformation as people - our old selves, our old natures - nailed to the cross with Christ, and our new selves risen in Christ to a new life and a new nature. As Christians, we are not the same people that we were before we were Christians. Too often when telling our testimonies we try and present that we are still the same people that we were before Christ, so that people still think we are cool. But this isn’t true. We aren’t the same people that we were before Christ. We may have the same vague interests, but our fundamental priorities in life are completely different. We are totally new people.

How does this apply to the question of gratitude? Well, of course we are grateful for what Christ has done, and that is a motivating factor for our new life. But it isn’t the fundamental source of change in how we live. The change is that we are utterly transformed as people, and so we must live in accordance to this change. It is our changed lives that evidences the more fundamental change in who we are. Therefore, we aren’t merely grateful and therefore feel obligated to change our lives. Our whole existence until Christ comes again should be to seek to be more and more like God.

Turning to Romans again, Paul writes:

“For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father’” - Romans 8:13-15 (ESV)

Paul connects our adoption as sons with our putting to death sin in our lives. If we are of the Spirit and are sons of God, we will put to death our sin. It isn’t good enough to stop at our justification, saying that our sin doesn’t matter, that we are saved and that we merely should seek to be like God out of gratitude for this. No. If we are of the Spirit, our whole being must hate sin and put it to death. Paul later goes on to declare that we are

“fellow heirs with Christ, provided that we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” - Romans 8:17

The Christian life is one of self-denial: denying the remnant power of the flesh, of the vanquished old man which still seeks to draw you back into a life of sin. We must therefore be prepared to carry our crosses and follow Jesus to the cross, constantly putting our old selves to death.

To conclude, to see our response to God’s salvation plan as merely holiness through gratitude is to be a little glib. Our internal transformation into a more and more Christ-like state is at the core of the Christian life, and it comes from a much deeper source than our own decision to react in thanks for what God has done for us. It comes from knowing who we now are in Christ. We need to hear the words of Paul in Romans: we are made anew, no longer the same person that we were before Christ, and that our lives must reflect this. If we are to honour and love our father in heaven, we must take seriously his commands.

The greatest news and our safe and sturdy hope is this: that if we are a Christian, we are a new person in Christ. He has won our justification in the father’s sight, and by the same grace he has won our sanctification, crucifying our old selves on the cross in his act of substitutionary sacrifice. That we want to be like Jesus, holy and pure, is a sign that we are that new person. So know who you are in Christ, know that you are now a son, that yes, you have a duty to honour your Father in heaven, but that your strength to do so is in knowing that you are a new creation in Christ.

“Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” - Hebrews 12:1-2.

Some brief thoughts on Cessationism, as a Cessationist

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:56:00 +0000

Adrian Warnock recently posted a questionair on his blog asking “How Charismatic are you?” Here is the link to it:

http://adrianwarnock.com/2011/12/how-charismatic-are-you-a-spectrum-of-belief-and-practice/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AdrianWarnocksUkEvangelicalBlog+%28adrianwarnock.com%29

Now, I am not a charismatic, and I found a number of his questions, and the assumptions behind them, odd. Essentially, the assumption expressed is one I hear a lot from charismatics: if you don’t believe in the gifts, your life as a Christian is stale. And behind that is an unintentional but implicit assumption that the Spirit’s ministry is mostly about the gifts, and only through them can we have a personal relationship with God. So here is a little response.

Firstly, let us understand who the Holy Spirit is and what he does. The Holy Spirit is God, like the Father and the Son, but a separate person. He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and what he says is what the Father and the Son tells him (John 16:13). He is the Helper, the Paraclete, who lives in the heart of the believer and causes him to walk in holiness to love and serve the Lord (Ezekiel 36:27), leading us and guiding us in righteousness and holiness (Romans 8:14), causing us to put to death our sin (Romans 8:13). He unites us with Christ, so that all that is Christ’s is declared as ours (John 15:14-15). Through the Spirit’s uniting us in Christ in his death and resurrection, we have access to the Father (Ephesians 2:18). We are adopted in Christ, united to him by the Holy Spirit, so that we may say “Abba, Father!” (Galatians 4:6-7, Romans 8:15-17). He seals our soul, declaring us to be Christ’s, and guarenteeing our inheritance in him (Ephesians 1:13-14). The Spirit leads us and sanctifies us by making us one with Christ. He equips us to live as Christians, both as individuals and as the Church, the body of Christ, who are united and are one in Christ in the Spirit. In this, as JI Packer states:

“The Spirit’s message to us is never “Look at me; listen to me; come to me; get to know me,” but always “look at him [Christ], and see his glory; listen to him, and hear his word; go to him, and have life; get to know him, and taste his gifts of joy and peace. The Spirit, we might say, is the matchmaker, the celestial marriage broker, whose role it is to bring us and Christ together and ensure we stay together” (Keep in Step with the Spirit, IVP:Leicester, 1984, p66)

I could go on forever at this wonderful truth of the Trinity: the Spirit declares to our soul JESUS IS LORD! The reason why this is important in relation to the cessationism/continuationism debate is this: we all, if we are in Christ, agree on these truths. Therefore, no Christian can be a Christian without a deep personal relationship with God, simply because the Spirit testifies to our soul who we are in Christ, and works on our Spirit to sanctify us and mould us into followers of Christ. As JI Packer puts it:

“the Spirit is here to glorify Christ and that his main and constant task is to mediate Jesus’ presence to us, making us aware of all that Jesus is, so that we will trust him to be all that to us” (Keep in Step with the Spirit, p67)

Thus, to be a Christian entails an unavoidable relationship with Jesus through the Spirit. The whole Christian life, therefore, is somewhat experiential, as we love Jesus and seek to be like him.

Turning to the continuation of the sign gifts, I hope that it can be seen that one’s Christian walk is not devoid of intimacy with Christ because one does not believe that they continue. The issue of the continuation of sign gifts is one which relates not to the Spirit’s work as stated above - that aspect in which the Spirit communicates all the blessings of God which are found in Christ to us - but it is fundamentally about the question of what is the Word of God.

I would encourage you to read Richard B Gaffin’s Perspectives on Pentecost, as it is this book which best illustrates the cessationist viewpoint through exegesis and through the placing of Pentecost and the Apostolic ministry in its historical-redemptive context. I am not going to use this post to write a theological treatise on cessationism, so I would recommend that you read this book to get an idea about where I’m coming from.

My basic problem with the concept of continuing revelation is one of the Canonicity and the Sufficiency of Scripture. In very basic terms (noting what I have said above), the problem with continuing Apostles and the sign gifts which attested to their ministry (Acts of the Apostles 2:43 connects the gifts with the Apostles), is that should they continue, we cannot have a closed canon. The canon did not, as is often stated, come out of a council in which they decided on what books were God breathed and which weren’t, but that the canon developed organically, with the books retained being those which the early Church could attach to the Apostles.

The early Church saw the importance of the Apostolic ministry: that the Apostles were witnesses to the risen Lord, specifically called to be his witnesses to the world (don’t forget that the Great Commission is actually a specific call and ordination before it is a general call), and what they taught had authority as God’s word because of their position (notice how the epistles are often prefixed with “… and apostle of Christ” or similar, denoting a specific office with a specific duty). Hebrews begins “Long Ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son”. The ministry of the Apostles is the testimony of this full revelation of God, the climax of the historical-redemptive history. In their words, Christ, in whom all that attains to life and godliness can be found, in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, is communicated to us, and through their words the Spirit attests to our soul who Jesus is.

Furthermore, the Word of God is the Word of God. It is nothing else. Read 2 Peter 1:19-21 to fully understand this. The prophetic word is the very word of God, a lamp unto our feet, and thus becomes just like Paul’s description of Scripture as mentioned in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, equipping man for every good work. If prophecy continues, then the Bible is still being written: we should be noting down all the prophecies and writing them down akin to the Histories in recognising God’s work in the world, or simply recording them as prophesies like the books of prophecies in Scripture. We should be exegeting these as the very words of God akin to Scripture. If God speaks, he speaks: the words prophesied are his very words, and should be taken as such, and are binding on all people as moral commands, setting examples for future conduct. For me, the only words which are his very words which we have access to today are contained in Scripture, and these words speak to us today.

Thus, God’s Word is the means by which God speaks to us. The Word is living and active (Hebrews 4:12), not a dead letter. It is not merely a record of revelation in times past, but in and of itself, in its very words, God’s own words of revelation, through which God speaks. The Sword of the Spirit is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17). Furthermore, it can dwell amongst us as a people of God, encouraging and convicting us (Colossians 3:16). Thus, there is warrant for what the Second Helvetic Confession says concerning the Word Preached (the Word Sacramental): “The Preaching of the Word of God is the word of God”. Wherever God’s Word is faithfully proclaimed, God speaks through those words in the words he inspired (i.e. Scripture). Thus, I find some agreement with JI Packer when he says:

“Prophesy has been and remains a reality whenever and wherever Bible truth is genuinely preached – that is spelled out and applied, whether from the pulpit or more informally” (Keep in Step wth the Spirit, p217)

Hopefully, this has thus far illustrated that a belief in the cessation of continuing revelation does not lead to a stale Christian life. God speaks in his Word! Christians since the beginning of time have known and believed this, and up until the 20th Century, all orthodox Christians believed that God has finished with new revelations, having completely revealed himself in Christ, whom we have the Apostolic testimony of. I love the fact that when I read Scripture, God speaks to me: me personally, through the illumination of the Spirit, and when I hear his Word preached, that inspired Word speaks through the preacher’s words, giving me life. And I know that all Christians who are Christians, charismatic or cessationists, know and believe this. The Spirit stirs our affections towards Christ, enabling us to love and honour the Lord who gives us life.

So worship is emotional for me, because it proclaims the God who I know as a Father, through the God-man of Jesus who made it all possible, and who I am united with by the Spirit. I often feel like raising my hands, but sadly because it has been nicked by the charismatic movement I have, alas, reservations in doing so because it may be divisive. I yearn for a deeper relationship with God, and I know that every time I read his word, my Dad (Abba, Father!) in heaven speaks to me, whether that is telling me of the things he has done for my brothers and sisters in times gone past, or in advice as to how to live my life in his service, or in explaining simply who his is. What a wonderful God we have.

:-)

Why does religion keep telling us we are bad

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 23:14:58 +0000

Yet again, that bastion of the liberal secular humanistic press, the Guardian, has given me something to write about.

This week, it relates to the morality of man, and why, despite humanity’s moral superiority over the whole of the natural world, the religious keep telling us we are bad.

The article can be found here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/nov/22/religion-bad-evolution-religious-admonitions?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

Here are a few thoughts on the subject.

It is interesting to pit an Naturalistic-Darwinian worldview against a Reformed Christian one. I think that this paragraph is the most insightful on the subject:

“From an evolutionary perspective, considering other social species on this earth, it is remarkable that a bunch of unrelated adult males can sit on a plane together for seven hours in the presence of fertile females, with everyone arriving alive and unharmed at the end of it. We could be a lot worse than we are, according to our common notions of right and wrong. We have certainly come a long way towards becoming a co-operative, sympathetic, even loving species.”

It is interesting because the two viewpoints are moving in the opposite directions (kind of…). The Darwinian sees humanity moving in an upward tragectory: man started as a primative creature with no morality, and through the progress of evolution, in which selfishness and altruism worked in tension for the goal of selfpreservation, morality develops to make society worth living in. This is a basic Humeian model for morality in society. Thus, the writer notes that for an evolutionist, you notice how far we have come as a species, as evidenced in the above quote.

As a Reformed Christian, however, I agree wholeheartedly with his Calvinist dad. And here is why: man has not improved morally on what he once was, but instead has fallen from what he was meant to be. The story of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2 and most importantly 3) tells of how man was made in the image and likeness of God, moral and righteous, only to fall into a life of sin. The morality that exists today, and by that I mean the true morality - our displeasure at murder, theft, adultery (though that displeasure is quicklly disappearing), injustice e.t.c. - are not shining bastions of how far we have progressed, but shards of the people we were made to be: perfect image bearers of the almighty God.

Turning to his airplane example, it is wonderful that the situation exists as such, that we can sit on a plane without acting like animals. But it is the grace of God alone that holds us in that state. Look around at the world and tell me: is this a universal situation? Murder still happens. Rape still happens. Even in situations analogous to the airplane example above. That dark center of man’s soul may be momentrarily restrained by social circumstances, but remove those constructs which would punish a man, and the darkness will explode into the world. Tell a man that he can get away with something, and that thing he has wished to do for a long time will become a reality.

The writer makes an interesting observation about the role of religion in morality. He points out that verses such as the words of Isaiah proclaiming that man’s best efforts are but filthy rags do a good job at pointing out our deficiencies as moral beings (see the last paragraph).

This is interesting because it does actually point to the law that God gives. The law is, of course, the high expectations God has for our moral behavior. But it also points out to us our deficiencies, and as a secular man, Lahti recognises this quite well. His response to this is that we see our flaws and are pushed on to be better people, as individuals and as a society.

I think most Christians will agree with this. The problem is that trying harder, seeing all the areas we fall short does not in itself drive us to be better.

Ravi Zacherias has often pointed out, in the Garden of Eden, there was only one law, by Sinai there were 10, and beyond that there were 600: the breaking of one law necessitates the creation of thousands to restrain our lust for evil. And even the most moral of us mere humans cannot keep all of the laws, if any.

Lahti’s argument is that the nature of man is neither essentially good or bad, but that society and morality is develping to make us increasingly better, and religion is good and effective only at trying to push us forward to be better. I quote:

Furthermore, we can extend our moral consideration far beyond what was beneficial to our ancestors – to humanity as a whole, even to the natural world… We can do this on our own, but it requires that familiar battle between what we feel like doing and what we know we ought to do.

His point is that we can push forward to live up to our own expectations for morality: that as the human race has developed, we have been able to extend our altruism beyond the basic necessities of evolutionary survival into genuine benevolance, and that in this truth we can become better people by just working harder to latch onto our ambitions of morality.

But, as a secular man, he misses the utter importance of the Christian Gospel, and why it is needed. It doesn’t matter how much you may have progressed in morality in your own personal life, you are not at any point morally neutral. We cannot become better people by merely aiming high in terms of morality. And I would argue that most people don’t aim nearly as high as they think they do. So they may feel empathetic to the pain of a friend, yet they insult those they don’t like behind their back. They may be all for women’s rights, yet they will still think impure thoughts in the darkness of their own minds. Often we pass over our deficiencies, being more inclined as humans to see our successes above seeing our failures.

The law doesn’t merely show us our shortcomings in order to push us to be better. It drives us to Christ. The laws of true religion are not merely there to ensure guilt and get us to be better, they are to point us to Christ who fulfilled every one of them. All those laws that God set because we couldn’t keep one in Eden, Christ kept in his life on earth. The only hope we have at seeing moral growth in our lives is not aspiring to a set of rules, the achievement of which is our goal, but instead clinging to Christ. It is our union with him that enables us to grow and that declares that there is no condemnation of us for our sins. We are justified and sanctified in Christ. Many Christians see our moral improvement in terms of gratitude to God for our justification in Christ, but even this isn’t enough, for we can never be grateful enough. It is only by being unified in Christ, declared righteous and being freed from the slavery of sin that we can grow. It is only in looking at the person of Christ, and not looking at our own satisfaction of the law, that we can begin to be obedient to the laws. More than that: it is only when we are united with Christ that we even want to.

Elihu (part 1)

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 17:31:00 +0000

I am going to write a series of posts on, in my opinion, one of the most interesting characters in the Bible. Job is, sadly, rarely preached on. People think that it is one of those deep, dark, and gloomy books of scripture, with little edifying to the average reader, only good for reminding people that God is sovereign over all things, even his pain.

I have never heard anyone else reference Elihu to me before. For most people, he is just another of Job’s friends providing him with useless and even harmful advice.

Yet, in the entire book of Job, Elihu is the only man who God doesn’t rebuke, or require to make sacrifices to atone for his sin.

Now, some have said that this does not necessarily mean that God agrees with Elihu. The ESV study bible notes suggest that this is the case, that Elihu, whilst changing the tone of the argument, does not add anything that is much better than that which has already been said. However, I think that this is a little harsh on Elihu. I don’t think that Elihu is putting forward a case that is perfectly akin to God’s own case. I think that Elihu’s comes from the perspective of a sinful man, like you and me, councilling a friend in their suffering. His response, whilst maybe finding different applications and conclusions to the Lord’s own reply, and coming from a position of little revealed knoweldge other than his God given wisdom, is an expression of exhortation to trust in God, for he will redeem.

This blog will look at a couple of preliminary issues in Job surrounding Elihu.

Firstly, the advice of Elihu is radically different from that of Job’s friends. The advice of Job’s friends is very similar to much of the advice we hear today. When people suffer, many people look at it as discipline from God. And when we say dicipline, we often mean punishment. Now, discipline is an important aspect of the Christian walk. It is the process by which, through hardship, trials and testing, God shapes us and grows in us spiritual fruit and perseverance in our lives. But we often misunderstand what this actually means. We see God’s discipline in our lives as punishment, and the effect of this is that our advice tends to be like that of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. When we see people suffer, or even when we simply give others advice, we tell them that their suffering or their situation is the result of our sins, that the discipline of God is punishment for a particular sin. It is a subtle distinction between God’s use of our situation to mould us into more Christlike characters, and punishment for our sins in our lives. But it is a subtlety we often miss.

Often the use the language of idolatry to do this. Now, I greatly appreciate the way that the idea of idolatry has been applied to our individual lives, pointing out that everything that acts as a functional saviour, that whatever we use to define ourselves by, is an idol. However, it has become, in my experience, the cover-all reason for one’s predicament in life. Your struggling in a situation is due to your idolising marriage/job/ministry/children/etc. And whilst we mean well, we push the same lines as Job’s friends: your suffering is God’s disciplining your particular sins, and not your sinful nature in general, a specific sin in your life. We slip in works righteousness in by the back door. “Work harder, be better, live more purely” and God will bless your life and efforts. God will only bless your life if you have sufficiently attained certain standards.

And the result is always the same: man, like Job, attempts to justify themselves. And Job does it fairly well: he proves that, to a greater extent, that he has not broken God’s laws (Chapter 31). But the line that Job pushes is almost as harmful as that of his friends.

So, in v2-3, Elihu burns with anger for two reasons. Why?

“He burned with anger at Job because he justified himself rather than God” - Job 32:2

In all of his responses, Job declared his innocence, lamented his situation, and sought an end to his existence. I relate to this position, ad I think we all do to an extent. When pain comes in life, we ask “what have I done to deserve this?” and basically feel a little sorry for ourselves. Elihu’s response, as we shall see, blows this position out of the water.

Now, Job’s righteousness is an interesting issue. Even God proclaims that Job is

“a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil” - Job 1:8

This does not mean that God thinks he is sinless. We, as Christians, are blameless in God’s sight because we are hid in Christ. This does, therefore, raise an important question. Why did God pick on Job? Why is he more blameless than any other sinner who’s iniquity is removed from them?

The answer is that Job is, when matched up with the law, a very righteous man.

“I have not departed from the commandment of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food” - Job 23:12

And at no point does God deny this.

Yet, Job’s main cry is that he demands a hearing from God, that he has an opportunity to plead his case. And in this, Job believes that if God hears his case, he will be proved righteous.

“How then can I answer him, choosing my words with him? Though I am in the right; I must appeal for mercy to my accuser” - Job 9:14-15

“I will say to God, Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me” - Job 10:2

“But I would speak to the Almighty. and I desire to argue my case with God” - Job 13:3

“I would lay my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would know what he would say to me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; he would pay attention to me. There an upright man could argue with him, and I would be acquitted forever by my judge” - Job 23:5-7

Job’s words throughout the book are a strange mix of Stoical self-pity and proclamation as to the greatness of God, something that all Christians will be able to relate to in their own life experience to some extent. Reading Job’s speeches remind us of the inner legalist which lives in the heart of every Christian; the voice that tries to argue that we have been living rather a good life, and that we don”t deserve this suffering. The essential argument of Job is that, despite God’s greatness and wonderful nature, God has abandoned Job to suffer, almost as if for a sovereign whim. He sees God’s plan as worked out in our lives as an arbitrary exercise of power. Like every legalist in history, and every legalist inside each and every one of us, he attempts to justify himself. He demands that God hears his case.

Thus, Elihu burns with anger at this self-righteous attempt of Job to argue his own righteousness rather than single-mindedly proclaim God’s. It is not that Job is lying about being righteous: Job hasn’t committed adultery (Job 31:1,9) or been unjust in his treatment of others (Job 31:13,16-17) or placed his identity in gold (Job 31:24). But whilst he may not have broken these laws, he still has the ultimate human problem: his sinful nature, and his lack of trust in the God who loves us.

Thus, Elihu’s response to Job comes from a position of faith: faith that God knows what he is doing. He doesn’t try and explain why what has happened to Job has happened. He doesn’t claim that Job’s suffering is because Job is deserving of it; that it is clear that God is punishing Job; that it must be because of Job’s lack of righteousness that he is suffering. In fact, all Elihu does is make statements about the nature of God, stating that God is the source of righteousness (36:6), that there is a mediator who provides a ransom for man (33:23-24), and that God ultimately ensures that his people turn from their sins. He seeks to justify Job in his rightousness (33:32), yet rebuke him in his lack of trust in God. It is Elihu who does not respond to Job’s predicament in what Job has done to deserve it, but instead responds to Job’s reaction in trying to ultimately justify himself.

And this sets the scene for the entrance of God in chapter 38