Concern over Distinctives

Lately a question that has been hovering around me like an annoying insect is, “Are our Reformed distinctives acting as an impediment to the flourishing of the Gospel?”

When I first realized that I had to be a Calvinist if I was to be a faithful witness of the Biblical revelation and therefore a faithful disciple of Christ, I was proud to be a part of the Reformed tradition with all its distinct beliefs and practices. I tended to look down on other Christians who were not so blessed, thinking them to be poorer cousins. I didn’t even think twice about the poor Catholics who were so far removed from the Truth.

And while I still believe that to be a Calvinist is to be a faithful, biblical Christian, and to be a faithful biblical Christian is to be a Calvinist, I’m no longer quite so proud of being distinct from other Christians and even less proud of being distinct from non-believers. After all, it was for the sake of poor wretched sinners that Christ came into the world. He did not come to save Calvinists, He came to save sinners!

So when I’m confronted by people who belong to denominations that flout the differences that separate them from others, it saddens me and even makes me a little angry. I came across a small Reformed Presbyterian denomination website the other day that seemed to be proud of the fact that they would not fellowship with anyone from another denomination who did not believe and practice what they did. The tone of their statement of beliefs was arrogant and hostile, not patient and kind. This is an old story, especially (it seems) among the Reformed and Presbyterian denominations. I’m not pointing out anything that has not been known for a very long time; it just saddens me when I see it, for we are meant to be one in the body of Christ, living in the bonds of peace, forbearing with one another, thinking more highly of others than we think of ourselves. Are these the hallmarks of your congregation or your denomination? They should be.

Usually, it is in the interests of purity or holiness that our distinctives become divisive. Too often, we allow ourselves to be misled by our under-shepherds into thinking that Old Testament Jewish ritual cleanliness is the same as New Testament Christian purity. But it isn’t. In the former, holiness and purity are attained through an emphasis on separation from the world or from other, less pure and holy—and therefore less worthy—brothers and sisters. Regrettably, many Christians still think like this. But the emphasis in the New Testament is not so much on separation from as on devotion to. As Christians—disciples of Christ—we are called to a oneness with and devotion to Christ, by Whom we are saved and through Whom the Law has been fulfilled. Yes of course the NT calls us to a degree of separation from the world, but this as an act of thankful obedience for what has been accomplished for us, never in the belief that the separation can save us (or add something to our salvation) or that it, unaided, can fulfil the demands of a righteous and holy God. We are obedient to the demands of God because this is well-pleasing to Him as well as being the chief means by which the Spirit works out our sanctification.

No, we do not become holy by separation from others; as Christians, we become holy by joining ourselves to Christ first and our covenant brothers and sisters next. This is what constitutes real, authentic Christian holiness or purity. Anything less is to deny the finished work of Christ and to repudiate the Church, who is Christ’s bride.

This is not to say we should have a laissez-faire attitude concerning the beliefs of other Christians. That would make us the same as the Post-Modern Secular Humanists who believe in everything and therefore in nothing. Our distinctives must be found first and foremost in the Bible. Those lacking a clear Biblical warrant for their distinctive beliefs should be met with a patient, forgiving and gentle attitude because through ignorance and poor teaching, they have come to maintain beliefs that are not to be found in or cannot be supported by Scripture. This is largely to the shame of their teachers, who will certainly answer for it one day.

Rather, we must recognize our unity in the Spirit and seek to work, worship and fellowship together wherever and whenever we are able. This does not mean to concede our firm convictions and to become apostates with those we know to be in error. We are not required to make concessions to our Biblical inheritance. We need only recognize the differences between one and another and to take our stand on common ground; that place where we can live in peace with the other, knowing that such a humble spirit is well-pleasing to God.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Marks of a True Church

It has been commonly accepted since the Reformation and by virtually all Reformed denominations that there are three fundamental and necessary qualities or characteristics of a true or doctrinally pure church. These are: 1.) Biblical, expository preaching and gospel proclamation, 2.) Proper administration of the sacraments and 3.) Church discipline. Some have proposed others in addition to these three. For instance, JM Boice argues that there are six marks of a true church.

My own feeling, as I hinted at in my October 22 post, is that there should be, in addition to the three already mentioned, a fourth: love.

Now, before going any further, I’d like to say that I’m using this word love just because of its vagueness and lack of precision. It can stand well in the place of many other words which, in the Greek, have more particular meanings. In an earlier post, I argued for the use of the word “charity” rather than love because it was more precise and in the particular context was the better word as I was comparing it to what in the Greek is the word agapao or agape. Agape is a fairly precise word as it is used in Scripture. For instance, it is defined very well by Paul in 1 Cor 13 in its general sense. It is the word most often used by Christ. The English word love, on the other hand can mean very many things, depending on context. It is more fluid and free than other words. This is what makes it the very best of all words in the right context, but the very worst of words in the wrong context. The various Greek words—such as agape, phileo, eros and the like—have particular shades of meaning that a single English word does not capture. But this is exactly why I like the word love. It is because it is imprecise that it can be used to translate these other Greek words in a variety of circumstances and contexts without doing harm. Now with all these words, it might seem to be the case that there are as many different kinds of love. And in a sense, there are. There are, legitimately, at least two, possibly three, kinds of Christian love, depending on the setting or circumstances in which the love is expressed or described. One kind of Christian love is between the Christian and God; a second, between one Christian and another; a third, between a Christian and the non-Christian. Nevertheless, all three forms of love are nothing more than particular expressions of one underlying reality.

The foregoing is only just by way of introduction to my main point, which is that the quality of love (in its three forms of expression) must be considered as a fundamental and necessary mark of a true Christian church and if it is lacking or absent in even one of its expressions, the purity and truthfulness of the church must be called into question. Having said that, I acknowledge that the expression of love toward God is rarely lacking in the true church; if it is, we are not dealing with a church at all but rather some other kind of institution. Rather, it has been my experience that while love for God is typically evident, love in its other expressions is not always so. My belief is that love in all three of its expressions must be in evidence if a church is to be considered true or pure, “anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10); “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:8); “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).

There is no want of verses to validate my point, especially as it pertains to love for the brethren. One particular verse that I use as a proof-text is Rom 12:10, “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another” (KJV).

In this verse, spoken to and about members of the Church, Paul uses two phrases to describe what he has in mind by the attitudes we should express toward one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. The first is “kindly affectioned” (devoted, NASB, NIV) and the second, “brotherly love” (in all translations).

The English “kindly affectioned” and “devoted” are used to translate the Greek word philostorgos and which essentially describes the love parents have toward their children. What kind of love is that? It is tender, protective, and affectionate. The other phrase “brotherly love” is the translation of the word “philadelphia” and which means the love brothers and sisters have for one another. But how should brothers and sisters love one another? Should their love not also be tender, protective and affectionate? This verse makes it evident that it should, for we express our kindly affection through our brotherly love. So we have here an admonition to be tender, affectionate and protective to one another. And are these not emotional qualities? Of course they are! Therefore, Christians in both their practice as well as their doctrine should not be afraid to be emotionally affectionate to their brothers and sisters in the faith. It has nothing whatever to do with one’s ethnic or cultural upbringing or milieu. It has nothing whatever to do with one’s heredity or whether you were abused as an impressionable child. It has simply to do with the quality of being a faithful and true Christian. Being kindly affectioned toward one another is fundamentally Christian.

As I mentioned there is no want of other verses which clearly justify my view. For instance, Peter says “fervently love one another from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22); “love the brotherhood”
(1 Peter 2:17); “keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8); “Greet one another with a kiss of love” (1 Peter 5:14). John says: “For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another”
(1 John 3:11); “…we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death (1 John 3:14); “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). The best example from Paul is of course from the “love” chapter
(1 Cor 13:1-8, 13). These references all point to the necessity of loving our brothers and sisters as a condition of being truly Christian.

But of course our love cannot be limited to merely loving our brothers and sisters, for Christ has said to each and every one of us, “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” (Matt 5:46). No, our love must extend beyond ourselves and the brethren; it must go out into the entire world beginning with our neighbour, “And He said to him, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (Matt 22:37-40). And of course we know that by the term “neighbour” Christ did not mean our covenant brothers and sisters alone, but everyone in need whom we are in a position to help (Luke 10:25-37). Nor is even this enough; we are to love even those we find unlovable. We are to love even our enemies, those who would seek to do us harm, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:44-45, emphasis added). Finally, Christ expects us to complete or fulfill our love for others, to leave nothing undone in this regard, for immediately after saying we are to love our enemies, He goes on to say that we “are to be perfect (or complete) even as our heavenly Father is perfect”
(Matt 5:48). But perfect or complete in what? Why, our love of course!

And if we are to be complete in our love, how can we then withhold it from one another. We must be courageous in our love (1 John 4:18) if we are to be complete or perfect in it. If we have not love, we cannot take any comfort in our salvation. Nor can we fall back on a dependency on the Law, for love is the fulfillment of the Law. Let us therefore love one another. Let our love be warm, affectionate tender and sincere, “Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good” (Rom 12:9). Let our love be fervent for one another.

Given all this, it only stands to reason that love must be one of the marks of a true church and without love not only is our faith empty but we show by this that we are not God's children. So whatever power to love is bestowed on us by the Holy Spirit, let us treasure it and nurture it and let us do whatever we may to express it fearlessly and without shame so that others, seeing our love may say, “Truly, this one is a child of God.”

Soli Deo Gloria.

From the Department of Egregious Irony

In a the second of a two-part post in September, I wrote about the horrible reality of combining human and animal embryos and declared that the secular humanist scientists responsible for the outrage were creating an abomination. I should have known the Church would get there first! The World has nothing on us, and that's for sure!



I don't know what Bible these people are reading, but it surely can't be the same as the one in which I read: “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them…” (Gen 1:26-28a, emphasis added).

“And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name” (Rev 14:11).

Soli Deo Gloria?

When To Leave a Church?

You can probably deduce from the post’s title that the topic of leaving a church is on my mind of late. When do one’s circumstances indicate that one should leave a church? This is obviously a very important question; one that, thankfully, most Christians never have to face or consider. But for a few, it can become an all-consuming concern.

For some, the reason for contemplating such a course of action lies in themselves. That is to say, they bring to a church their own unrealistic, perhaps overly idealistic, expectations of what the church actually is or can be. They are dysfunctional in themselves and so their expectations and their relationships with others in the congregation—especially the ruling body of elders—is also characterized by dysfunctional behaviour.

But this is not necessarily always the case. In spite of the fact many authorities maintain that the problem is almost always in the unhappy members, it has been my experience that just the reverse is as often the case. It is often the congregation that is dysfunctional and more specifically, the ruling body of the congregation (as the elders go, so goes the congregation). Now I don’t mean dysfunctional in an organizational sense. Usually, it is a kind of spiritual dysfunctionality that is the problem. We see examples of this in the first chapters of Revelation in the churches of Sardis, Ephesus and Laodicea. These churches were filled with born-again believers. Yet (in some respects) the congregations were nevertheless displeasing to Christ. There is nothing to indicate any organizational problems. They were criticised by Christ for their lack of commitment to Him and His Word and for their own sense of complacent self-righteousness (Rev. 2:4-5; 3:1-4, 15-18).

Some, when they think a church should be doing one thing or another, will get self-righteously angry that the congregation is not doing whatever it is he or she thinks it should be doing. They come to church with resentment or anger in their hearts. Coming to church this way is biblically unjustifiable and is actually down-right sinful. The problem for these people is that their understanding of both the form as well as the purpose or function of the church is incorrect or immature. They do not understand that every church and congregation has an inherent culture and is made up of people who are more or less in agreement with that culture. They fail to realize that the culture of the church or congregation is indifferent as long as it does not contravene Scripture or otherwise impede the progress of the Gospel.

For some, the culture within a congregation is intolerable. But that has nothing necessarily to do with the culture of that congregation and the congregation as a whole should feel no compunction to change, although it is free to do so. It is rather, given the admonishments in Scripture, the obligation of the unhappy individual to maintain the peace within the congregation and to learn to love and respect the congregation—and particularly those who are seen as the root of the problem—for the sake of Christ and to the extent he or she is able. Doing so is actually a form of sacrificial service to God and His good purposes. If they are unable to do this on their own, it is incumbent upon them to seek spiritual guidance from their pastor and elders. (But in point of fact, if a problem has become this serious for even one member of the congregation, it is a strong indicator that the ruling body of the church—comprised of the minister and his elders—is not performing its role in a manner intended by Scripture.)

But whether to stay or go gets more tricky at this point. According to the Biblical model, the unhappy individual should take his case to the offending party or parties, then, failing resolution, to the rulers of the congregation. But what if the rulers of the congregation are the offending party? One option available within the Presbyterian form of church government is to take the problem to a “higher court” usually the governing Presbytery. Even though most problems can and should be dealt with long before they get to Presbytery, occasionally the issue is too important or may have broader implications than can be fairly dealt with at the level of the local congregation. The problem here of course is that taking an issue this far is often perceived as inherently divisive by the church authorities if not by anyone else. Pressing the case this far up the chain of responsibility and accountability is considered to be “bad form” and to be breaking (or at least severely bending) the unity of the church. Partly because of this social pressure and—importantly—because we, as Christians, are taught to obey authority, this usually is a very unpleasant situation to be in. Consequently, all kinds of injustices, unbiblical behaviour and impediments to the progress of the Gospel are tolerated in the name of unity and obedience when they should not be.

When a high degree of dissatisfaction is being experienced by many congregants, and when there is a high degree of consistency or similarity in those dissatisfactions, it is a strong indicator that something serious has gone amiss in the congregation. It is traditionally one of the main functions of an elder to employ appropriate levels of discipline within his congregation, particularly with those for whom he has especial oversight. He is to maintain the integrity and purity of doctrine and to curtail evident sin in a sensitive but firm manner, much as a responsible father will discipline his errant children: always with love and with increasing severity as required. But in a healthy, biblical, Christ-centered church, this kind of discipline will (or should) almost never be necessary. Why? Because in such a case the ruling body will be caring for its flock in a loving Christian way. It will be engaged with its flock. It will express love for the people over whom it has a charge. The ruling body, acting as individuals, will be servants first and overseers second.

(It is a firm conviction by most biblical Christians that there are three marks of a true church: biblical preaching and gospel proclamation, proper administration of the sacraments and church discipline. I have no problems with these, except I think they are incomplete. There must surely be a fourth mark of a true, biblical, Christian church: love for the brethren. Surely if we love Christ, we will love our brothers and sisters and—what is perhaps even more important—we will be free and courageous enough to express our love openly and without shame. As I was reminded recently by a member of our bible study group, Paul makes it very plain for us: “If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2, emphasis added). Given this, who can deny the importance of love in the Christian congregation?)

So we see from this that it is often a difficult thing to decide when or if one should leave a congregation. In my mind, if one person has decided to leave a congregation this may not necessarily mean there is anything wrong with the congregation itself, its leaders or its culture. It could simply be a case of a bad “fit.” This is usually the case. However, when several households are experiencing difficulties within the congregation and when the people of these households do not appear to be in a state of rebellion or unrepentant sin and who exhibit no interest in embracing heretical beliefs, then the ruling body cannot assume that there is no cause for concern. In fact, they should be very concerned.

In such a situation, what should the congregants do who are experiencing the difficulty; in other words, should they leave or stay?

I believe the affected individual congregants should first make their concerns known to the ruling body in a respectful but honest way. It could involve emails and phone calls but should also include a face-to-face exploration of the problems. Failing resolution, it is in the best interests of all the affected parties to act in unison. Members of a single household or family going before the ruling body will often be seen as nothing more than malcontents, but when several households are represented the matter becomes far more real (as well as serious). Several members acting in concert might also necessitate calling formal meetings or even convening a judicial church court.

If the affected congregants are convinced by the ruling body that they are being disobedient, that should bring the matter to a close. However, if the affected congregants are convinced, after meeting and discussing the issues with the ruling body, that there is a problem within the church that conflicts with their understanding of the church and her purposes and responsibilities as determined by Scripture—with possible support from the denomination’s Book of Church Order, Constitution or other subordinate standards such as the Westminster Confession of Faith—then they are required to defend their position. To do so is not to be disobedient but rather obedient—to Christ and His Word. It is important to remember that the ruling body only has authority derived from Scripture. All its actions, attitudes and decisions must be the result of engaging with, and conforming to, God's Word.

There may come a time in the life of a congregation when a significant number of people can no longer remain in the congregation. But their leaving should not occur over frivolous matters. There must be some serious flouting of Scripture by the ruling body either in doctrine or practice before one should leave the church. Remember, we are not in church to please the elders but to please Christ. We are there not because it is expected of us but because we, as God’s people, are called to worship Him in spirit and truth. If you cannot do that according to your understanding of Scripture and cannot be convinced of the error of your ways, but rather are more firmly convicted of the rightness of your position, then and only then, should you consider leaving the church. But by then you must leave in order to remain faithful to Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Thoughts While Waiting in the ER

I spent the entire evening last night—from 6:00 PM to 1:30 AM this morning—in the ER of my local hospital. I went there as a result of believing I might be having—or was in immanent danger of having—a heart attack.

This post isn’t about the horrible state of the health care system in BC. It’s not about using our medical resources better than we do; it’s not about the dedication and commitment of individual workers in the system. All these are worthy topics mind you. But right now I need to talk about something else.

Let me contextualize my own experience by the experience of another family. As I sat, waiting for my name to be called, I couldn’t help but notice a mother and (I suppose) daughter. They were going in and out of the entrance to the ER itself. Both were pale, their faces drawn. The eyes of the daughter were bleary and red-rimmed. Someone they loved was in big trouble this night. Soon other members of the family began to arrive; children, teenagers and middle-aged adults. They would disappear into the ER for a while and then emerge more distraught than when they went in. This continued for about thirty minutes and finally, walking right by me, they all went through the double doors of the waiting room and stood outside in the cold. I could just make them out through the frosted glass as they huddled together, holding on to each other, the young ones clinging desperately to the grown ups the grown ups embracing the children as if both to comfort and protect. The high-pitched weeping of the children intermingled with the groans and wails of the adults in a heart-tearing melody of grief and pain. Here, I thought, here is where we all come to. Here is where it will end for us; maybe not in a hospital, but definitely in grief, pain and misery.

And of course this forced me to think of myself and my own predicament. For all I knew, in a few hours or less, that could be my family on the other side of the ER door. It could be my body they would be wheeling down the hallway on a gurney, bound for the morgue.

A sobering thought. Yet here I was, with only my body to tell me it was in trouble of some kind, perhaps the worst kind. Everyone else was too busy to tend to me. That’s OK. I’ll wait my turn.

And as I waited, I prayed. I prayed to God, to Christ, that should it really be my time, that I was not placing any hope anywhere but in Him alone. I pled the shed blood of Christ, taking refuge in it and Him alone. “Oh Heavenly Father” I prayed, “Into your hands I commend my life and my spirit. To you and you alone do I look. Let your will be done in this as in all things; let my passing be as and when you determine. This only I ask; care for my wife and son and give them the comfort and the strength they will need.”

I prayed several times during the night. But at no time was I ever afraid. Perhaps I didn’t believe this could really be happening to me; perhaps I knew this was just some passing fit of anxiety or some other anomaly. But I believe there really was more to it than that. I believe that we as Christians really do have nothing to fear. That we have a friend and Saviour who is ever by our side and who is ever in waiting to receive us at our journey’s end. I do not count myself special in this. This is a blessing that comes as part of God’s covenant with His people. It is something He has promised to all of us and to each one of us.

I thought of that family and of how they were experiencing the death of a loved one. Were they Christians? I don’t know. Was the one being grieved over a Christian? I don’t know. But I do know that if they were Christians, their grief should have been mitigated by the simple fact of their faith. To be a Christian is to walk by faith, not by sight. It is to know the presence and compassion of a loving, sovereign God who works everything according to the good pleasure of His perfect will. He is with us even when we forget Him. He promised to prepare a place in heaven for each of us. These are comforting thoughts, but do us no good if we don’t really believe them. If we are Christians the end will be the same for all of us—a glorious end. But if we aren’t aware of these truths, if we don’t embrace them in the here and now, our lives will miss the peace we have been promised. The promise of peace is not just for the hereafter. It is for now. It is ours, but only if we appropriate it through faith.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Baptism and Protestant Bathing Phobia

Sorry that I've been lax in my posting of late. I've been quite busy with one or two other concerns, the least important of which is Second Life (which I won't attempt to explain here). However, I found the following little snippet in my archives and thought it might be amusing to post. Here it is. Enjoy.

Let me say something you’re probably not expecting and which I hope doesn’t sound too ludicrous. I’ve done some research on the Reformation and the history of the Church and am confident that there is a close connection between those subjects and the beliefs and customs that surround bathing and personal hygiene as they were practiced in Elizabethan and Jacobean Britain. I think that it is possible that the reason there is so little recognition of baptism as immersion in the WCF and other Reformation documents is partly because the Jacobean Reformers had both a cultural and theological aversion to bathing.

For instance, during the Middle Ages the Church discouraged bathing in Roman style public baths, fearing the spread of syphilis and the plague. During the Reformation baths were associated with entertainment and immorality. Philip II of Spain is said to have authorized the destruction of the public baths built by the Moors on the grounds that washing the body was a heathen custom dangerous to Christians. It was believed that hot water especially dilated the pores and allowed harmful organisms to enter the body through the skin. Even newborn babies were not washed, and until the eighteenth century they were swaddled in bands of cloth that were changed twice a day at most. After 1760 baths and bathrooms began to spread very slowly, and as late as 1835 a young man asked through an American reform journal whether he should continue his habit of taking a warm bath every three weeks.

And Will Durant, in his The Story of Civilization, says “Cleanliness, in the Middle Ages, was not next to godliness. Early Christianity had denounced the Roman baths as wells of perversion and promiscuity, and its general disapproval of the body had put no premium on hygiene.” And again, describing the age of Reformation, Durant says, “Social and individual hygiene hardly kept pace with the advance of medicine. Personal cleanliness was not a fetish; even the King of England bathed only once a week and sometimes skipped.” The same historian, after describing the dress­ing manners, writes, "How clean were the bodies behind the frills? A sixteenth-century Introduction pour les jeunes dames spoke of women ‘who had no care to keep themselves clean except in those parts that may be seen, remaining filthy...under their’ and a cynical proverb held that courtesans were the only women who washed more than their face and hands. Perhaps cleanliness increased with immorality, for as women offered more of themsel­ves to view to many, cleanliness enlarged its area.”

I don’t know if anyone else has made this connection. I don’t know but that it is a completely outlandish idea, devoid of merit, yet I find it more than coincidental. It would certainly not surprise me if the Reformers, many of whom were Puritans, found the whole idea of immersing ones body in water to be repugnant for two main reasons: firstly it probably was seen as a way of increasing, not decreasing the likelihood of disease and secondly (and perhaps more importantly) it was probably associated with the public baths of bygone eras, especially of pagan and then Catholic Rome, and which public baths had a reputation as centers of worldliness and immorality. Certainly, for whatever reasons, Jacobean and Reformed England was largely unwashed and unsanitary. Given this argument, it does not seem unreasonable for the Protestant Divines of the Reformation to have repudiated the immersive mode of baptism due to their own cultural bias and not simply on the biblical evidence.

Sinful Occasions (Revised)

Last week (Sept. 6/07) I wrote about the latest (and what I consider perhaps the greatest) act of perversion and rebellion of our generation: the (potential) creation of hybrid embryos from human beings and animals for the purpose of medical research.

In this post, I will focus on two aspects I think are central to this issue and consider the inevitable out flowing of consequences engendered by this new and disturbing situation.

An affront to God
First, what the scientists are proposing is an affront to God, perhaps, as I mentioned in my previous post, the greatest affront to God. Of course these scientists are secular humanists and (I’m guessing) atheists. But how could it be otherwise? So for them there is no dilemma. They are not breaking God’s moral law because (so they believe in their foolish hearts) there is no God and therefore no divine moral law to be broken or obeyed.

Of course in their foolish pride, they have not been able to understand the ultimate and final outcome of such a world-view. God, in the inscrutableness of His sovereign will, has hidden it from their eyes. The true significance of the atheistic, humanistic world-view—that anything is attainable and permissible if we only imagine it—is summed up well by Shakespeare in his play Macbeth. When Macbeth was confronted with the failure of his mad and greedy hope for greater power and prestige than what had been providentially given to him, the illusory aspect of his schemes, indeed his very world-view, came into sharp focus:

“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

Macbeth V, v, 19

Is this not the echo of the same reality, the same conclusion reached by David the Psalmist: “Behold, thou hast made my days as an handbreadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity” (Ps 39:5) or of his son Solomon, the great King of Israel: “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun” (Ec 2:11).

This is indeed the end of all humanist endeavours, the reality of this tragically mistaken world-view: chaos and meaninglessness. Without limits set by an all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful God, everything becomes relative and in that relativism, devoid of meaning and intrinsic value. When everything is the same, when one choice is as good as any other choice, when an animal and a man are inter-changeable, what is left but randomness, which is just another word for chaos?

But do we think it will stop with embryos alone? And what difference would that make if it did? The damage would already have been done. It will have been to deprive what was intended by God to be a creature after Himself from his rightful inheritance, his portion. God decided in eternity past to create those after His likeness, in His image. (Some may argue that for all we know each human embryo that will eventually be combined with an animal embryo is reprobate and therefore ordained for damnation anyway. But this is presumptuous. It is to attempt to see into the hidden, sovereign will of God, where even angels fear to tread!) The sovereign Creator was careful to separate the animals from man and made man to rule over them, as their master. Man was endowed with qualities shared by no other creatures. God was ever careful to determine the relationship that was to exist between animals and man. He placed a boundary beyond which He did not (and does not) want us to go (Gen 1:20-24; 2:18-20; 9:2; Ex 22:19). But we as a people in our arrogance and self-centered rebellion have flung this restriction in His face even as Satan did in Milton’s classic, Paradise Lost:

“O thou that with surpassing Glory crownd,
Look'st from thy sole Dominion like the God
Of this new World; at whose sight all the Starrs
Hide thir diminisht heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice, and add thy name
O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy Spheare;
Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down
Warring in Heav'n against Heav'ns matchless King.”

Book Four, lines 32-41

But now the immortal soul given by God to man alone upon his birth, and which was to be, in the Sovereign intentions of God, the Imago Dei, is to be intermingled with animals. Oh how Satan must be relishing our disobedience to God and our willing obedience to him, which was the ultimate end of all his schemes after all:

“Though Heav'n be shut,
And Heav'ns high Arbitrator sit secure
In his own strength, this place may lye expos'd
The utmost border of his Kingdom, left
To their defence who hold it: here perhaps
Som advantagious act may be achiev'd
By sudden onset, either with Hell fire
To waste his whole Creation, or possess
All as our own, and drive as we were driven,
The punie habitants, or if not drive,
Seduce them to our Party, that thir God
May prove thir foe, and with repenting hand
Abolish his own works.”

Book 2, lines 358-370

The downward moral decay of human kind
The Paslamist described the unique place of man in God's great work of creation,

"What is man that You take thought of him,
And the son of man that You care for him?
Yet You have made him a little lower than God,
And You crown him with glory and majesty!
You make him to rule over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
All sheep and oxen,
And also the beasts of the field,
The birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea,
Whatever passes through the paths of the seas."

Psalm 8:5-8 (emphasis added)

Paul was blunt and to the point when he described, not only the actual condition of lost humanity, but also the increasingly degrading effects of self-chosen sin. He observes that pretended ignorance of God’s existence and His intentions cannot be used as an excuse for our condition (Rom 1:18-25).

In his four volume commentary on Romans, JM Boice describes man’s predicament this way: “Although man is a mediating being, created to be somewhere between the angels and the animals, in Psalm 8 he is nevertheless described as being somewhat lower than the angels rather than as being somewhat higher than the beasts, which means he is destined to look, not downward to the beasts, but upward, toward the angels and beyond them to God and so to become increasingly like him. But if we will not look up, if we reject God as secularism does, then we will inevitably look downward and so become increasingly like the lower creatures and behave like them. We will become beastlike, which is exactly what is happening in our society. People are acting like animals, and even worse.” I'm sure the horrrible irony of these words, written before his death, would have made Boice shake his head in tragic dismay.

Now this downward moral decay works in generations. This means that when Moses recorded that God looked down on the human race and saw the depravity and wickedness (Gen 6:5) it is the same today; it is the same depravity. The truth of Jeremiah’s statement that the heart is desperately wicked (Jer 17:9) is as true today as it was in his time, but not more true. The important point being that the human race is not more wicked now than it ever was. A dead person can not be deader. No, what has changed is not our capacity for sin; that has remained constant. However, what has changed is our opportunity to sin. Our opportunity to sin has increased by several orders of magnitude as a result of Science and Technology. These have combined to enable mankind to sin in ways that Paul could never have dreamed of in his wildest nightmares. It is still the same depraved heart, but now it has so much more opportunity! This is exactly the case with the creation of hybrid human embryos. It was never possible in the entire history of mankind to do such a thing; not because there was not sufficient wickedness to do it, but merely the lack of opportunity.

This train of thought leads me to reflect on the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. It was the same evil pride and arrogance of Frankenstein to attempt to create animate life from lifeless corpses —given opportunity by science and technology—that even now drives these new Frankensteins on in their dark labours, “One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.”

But Doctor Frankenstein was brought to a sudden and unhappy repentance of what he had done. Too late, he realized the horrible error of his pride and arrogance, “The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.”

In the novel, Doctor Frankenstein is made to pay for all his self-centered, essentially humanistic pride. In his own personal loss he was brought to recognize the hand of an almighty and sovereign Will and Power that no one in our own day seems able (or should I say willing) to acknowledge. In the end the realization of his sinful folly come upon Frankenstein—who is less a fictional character than he is a type of humanity—with devastating force and permanence: “All my speculations and hopes are as nothing: and, like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell…. I trod heaven in my thoughts [Oh what foolish pride!] now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects…. Despondency rarely visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me on until I fell, never, never again to rise.”

Like Frankenstein, we will suffer, and do suffer, from our own creations. In our desperate rebellion against the limits of life imposed by God, we reap, and will continue to reap, a bumper crop of death. Unless we are able, because of the sovereign will of God, to come to realize the futility and vanity of all our own self-generated creations and refuse to accept the fact of a sovereign God who is all-loving and all-wise in His eternal and infinite Fatherhood, we will perish, never, never again to rise. God have mercy!

Soli Deo Gloria.

Creation Threshold Broken

In an article on OneNewsNow, first aired by the BBC on Tuesday, it was reported what had to happen sooner or later: we are about to cross a very significant threshold, beyond which nothing will ever be the same. I’m speaking of the creation of embryos which are part human and part animal!

Of course, since it is all being done in the sacrosanct name of Science, we should not be alarmed. Feel better now?

“For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen” (Rom 1:21-25, emphasis added).

When Paul penned these words through the Holy Spirit, who could have foreknown but God how tragic and perverse was the reality about which they spoke. Oh, how great is our Fall!

What can be said about this perversion? It staggers my mind. First, that this is exactly what God had intended all along: “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them” (Rom 1:28-32, emphasis added).

While Anthony Ozimic, political secretary for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, makes a few good points as reported in the article, I think he is missing the essential problem and the most distressing aspect to this new development. Who can believe for a single moment that there could be anything but condemnation and judgment left for the bulk of humanity? If approval is given by the authorities for what the British scientists are proposing, then we have effectively and unequivocally flung the ultimate insult into God’s face and will have taken our rebellion into the very heart of the Kingdom “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them…” (Gen 1:26-28a, emphasis added).

No, this cannot stand. God will have His vengeance. Perhaps I’ll have more to say when I’m not so upset and when I can do more research. In the meantime I think God Himself should have the last word: “Then another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name’”(Rev 14:9-11).

Soli Deo Gloria.

What does it mean to be Born Again?

And [he] brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:30-31).

As I mentioned in my previous post (August 23) it had recently come upon me that the words of John 3:3 are probably the most important words in the Bible, and that everything else is either God’s preamble to them or commentary on them. (That is an over-simplification I admit; nonetheless it still contains an essential core of truth.) But I left the post dangling with several unanswered questions, “What does it mean to be born again; or how can I know for certain I am born again; or what are the qualities of this second birth?”

This installment is an attempt to answer those questions. But first let me say that millions and millions (probably billions and billions!) of words have been written already on answering these questions, beginning with the apostles Paul, John and Peter, progressing through the apostolic and patristic church to the Reformation where these questions and their answers were reformulated and then on into our own time right up to where you and I are right now: this little insignificant online journal. Here I wrestle with these questions and others like them not to make myself out to be an expert. Far from it; this journal is my way of grappling (I love that word!) with these ideas; engaging with God through His Word, coming to some sort of personal understanding and then recording what I have found so that it might be of some small value to someone else. I make no pretense (as I have said elsewhere) to authority. I’m just a weary foot-soldier trying to understand what it means to experience the unmerited favour of God.

So now that is out of the way, we can proceed.

What does it mean to be born again?
The words quoted from the verses at the head of this post are from the incident that occurred when Paul and Silas were in prison together. When an earthquake struck and the jail fell apart, the jailor, in absolute terror for his life, asked the two prisoners, now free, how he might be saved (presumably because Paul and Silas were now free and unharmed). I don’t think the jailor was asking them how he might attain to eternal salvation; that was almost certainly the last thing on his mind at the moment. He was probably just frightened of the authorities who would undoubtedly punish him with torture and death for losing his prisoners. So the answer he got from Paul was more than he could ever have expected.

In any event, the important thing (in the context of this article) is the statement by Paul that to be saved eternally, the jailer must place all his trust and hope in Christ. This is what it means to be born again. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? And in a way it is easy, nothing could be easier: no struggle, no effort, no rules to obey or tasks to accomplish; nothing that is but a total and absolute willingness to give yourself away to this person Jesus. But we have this dilemma: according to Scripture, we are dead in our sin; dead not sick, dead not impaired. There’s the rub, you see. How does a dead person do anything, even make a choice to surrender himself to someone he cannot see, hear or touch? Obviously he can’t. Lazarus could not bring himself back to life. Jairus’ daughter could not, nor could the widow’s son. But Jesus could and did. He brought them all back from the dead by His power, and He resurrected Himself after three days and three nights in the grave, proving that death had no ultimate power over Him but also that it has no power over those who have given themselves into His keeping.

So it is essential to give yourself to Christ without reservation. But by this I don’t mean intellectually. Many people think that because they agree with the main doctrines found in the NT and that they live basically good, moral lives in keeping with such ordinances as the Decalogue, and that they give generously to the Church (they may even tithe) and that they read their Bibles regularly, and that they volunteer in the sandwich ministry or do visitations, that they are Christians. No, they are Christians if, and only if, they have been born again, born not of the flesh but of the Spirit (of Christ). The new birth belongs to the Spirit; it is His handiwork alone. The new birth is unnatural and has nothing to do with life in the here-and-now and no amount of rule-keeping can make one a Christian.

We know from Scripture that two prerequisites to the new birth must be met: repentance and belief or faith. But both of these must come from outside us. They are alien to our very being and cannot be self-generated (in spite of what our Arminian brothers like to believe). So, we come back to Jesus’ words in John 1:13, “…who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” God and only God is responsible for our rejection of sin and our believing embrace of Christ as the single and sufficient Saviour. This mysteriously profound repentance and faith are characteristic of the new birth.

Having said all that, don’t make the mistake of assuming that I’m an antinomian and that I don’t believe in a life of obedience to Christ and his law. I do; just not as a result of any merit or righteousness in myself. I can’t earn my way into Heaven. Rather, the perfect and finished work of Christ enables me, while the indwelling of His Holy Spirit urges, encourages and empowers me, to accomplish acts of obedience and law-keeping. But even then, if I am not compelled to keep the—often inconvenient—law, why do it? Because I love Jesus, that’s why. I’m grateful for what He has done for me and a thankful heart is a glory to God. God saved me so that I would be thankful to Him. And this is the whole purpose of the new birth. It’s not for us. We don’t deserve it. Christ didn’t come to earth to save sinners as much as to be obedient to God’s will. And what is God’s will? It was, is and ever shall remain, that He should be glorified and in that glory, enjoyed.

How can I know for certain I am born again?
In many Reformed circles, this question is a bit of a hot-potato. On the one hand, we have those who say, and with some justification, that to think we are saved and to take pride in it as something to boast about, is presumptuous at best and very sinful at worst (because it may or may not be true). There are several warnings against this kind of presumption in the NT such as, (Psalm 5:5; Isaiah 13:11; Romans 2:4 ). Over against this is the Holy Spirit’s testimony in our hearts and minds that God has promised that those He saves, He saves eternally. This is the Doctrine of Assurance (also called the Perseverance of the Saints as it is expressed in the traditional Five Points of Calvinism—I prefer the term Preservation of the Saints, as it is more God-centered. That is, we are eternally saved because of God’s preservation of us in that condition and not because of our own perseverance in it.)

Many people have written about assurance, but for my money, no one can beat JC Ryle. On the subject of assurance of salvation, Ryle had this to say (in small part):

“I lay it down fully and broadly, as God’s truth, that a true Christian…may reach such a comfortable degree of faith in Christ, that in general he shall feel entirely confident as to the pardon and safety of his soul—shall seldom be troubled with doubts—seldom be distracted with fears—seldom be distressed by anxious questionings—and, in short, though vexed by many an inward conflict with sin, shall look forward to death without trembling, and to judgment without dismay. This, I say, is the doctrine of the Bible….my answer, furthermore, to all who dislike the doctrine of assurance, as bordering on presumption, is this: it can hardly be presumption to tread in the steps of Peter and Paul, of Job and of John [referring to scriptural passages Ryle had just been discussing]. They were all eminently humble and lowly-minded men, if ever any were; and yet they all speak of their own state with an assured hope. Surely this should teach us that deep humility and strong assurance are perfectly compatible, and that there is not any necessary connection between spiritual confidence and pride.”

What are the qualities of this second birth?
The qualities of the second birth must perforce be qualities we have in common (to a limited degree) with Christ and given or bestowed on us by His Holy Spirit through our continuing sanctification. The best known summary of these qualities is from the letter to the Galatians and is known as the “Fruit of the Spirit.” There are many other such lists. One, from the Letter to the Romans which I have recently been studying, is “for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17).

It is important to note that these qualities are all moral qualities. It is in this sense that we are imitators of Christ after the new birth. It is God’s moral will that we should emulate and be obedient to, with thankful hearts as well as minds; and this because He has enabled us to do so.

Let me just clarify that these qualities are not something to be bought and sold. They are not commodities to be traded and exchanged. They are not adopted as life-style choices. They are not anything we can generate from our own effort. Rather, they are the evidence—the fruit as it were—of a life radically changed from the inside out by God and Him alone.

So pray—if you are one who cares—pray with all your heart, mind, soul and strength for this repentance unto faith, this new birth from above, this incomparable gift from almighty God, for He is able to save even the worst of sinners. And if you think that describes you, Dear Reader, if you know yourself to be the worst of sinners, then you are very close to the Kingdom of God “Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near” (Isa 55:6).

Soli Deo Gloria.

Postscript
This post and the one before it are dedicated to the memory of a man by the name of Murdo Mackenzie. He, more than anyone else, was my spiritual tutor and mentor when I was young and wandering in the wasteland, before I knew anything of God’s saving grace. Murdo and his wife took a liking to me when I was still young. They would give me milk and cookies and would have me in their home as often as I wanted. They had no children of their own and perhaps that was the reason they seemed to like me. Murdo was a great Christian and evangelist and every time I went to his house I knew I was in for some gospel preaching. Sometimes we would argue. Sometimes I just sat and listened. His favorite passage was John chapter three and his favourite verse was the third verse. Perhaps that is why it is among my favourites as well. I know that Murdo and his wife are both with the Lord and it is going to bring us all great joy to meet again with one another in our Father’s house. I’m sure they’ll have the heavenly equivalent of some milk and cookies waiting for me on the kitchen table. I can hardly wait!

The Importance of John 3:3

Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

It has come upon me just yesterday afternoon that these are probably the most important words in the Bible, and that everything else is either God’s preamble to them or commentary on them.

Do I offend with my boldness? I don’t mean to. It’s just that I believe these words are describing the one necessary thing for salvation. Paul and the other apostles and contributors to the Scriptures are merely unpacking this single verse with all its freight of meaning and significance. For instance, what is Romans but an extended commentary on John 3:3; or rather should I say the working out of its significance and consequences in great detail. What are the great themes of the NT—grace, regeneration, justification and sanctification—if they are not the unfolding of the essential truth found in this verse?

It is often said that John 3:16 is the most beloved and well known verse in the Bible. So it may be, but when it comes to importance and urgency, John 3:3 says everything needed to be said. Verse 16 tells us that God loved (and loves) the world by sending us His only Son. It tells us that this was an internal act of His love (He gave His only Son) as well as an external demonstration or expression of that love to the world (that whoever believes). But it does not tell us that the mere coming of Christ is insufficient for one’s salvation (this is the essential reason why I don't celebrate Christmas). While it tells us that salvation is made available to those who would believe on Christ, it does not tell us how that is to happen. Yet John had already told his readers that the one only needful thing is to be born again, earlier in the chapter by recording Jesus’ speech with Nicodemus. He then offers commentary on His own words in verse eight when He says, “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit" (that is, “this is what happens to everyone who is born of the Spirit"). This indicates to me that the new birth is of an alien origin as well as character; it is “from above” and totally beyond our apprehension and control. Paul and the other apostles as well as the prophets of the OT explain this by recourse to God’s “election.”

The point being that this new birth is not and cannot be accomplished by us. John makes this painfully clear when he says, “…who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). What words could be simpler and yet what words could be more hateful to the world and its need for pre-eminence and wickedness. The wicked don’t like to hear the truth of Scripture that the dead in sin cannot give themselves new life. So the new birth is despised by the world, and so are those who in fact are reborn as children of God. Each one of them is like salt in a wound to those worldly and once-born children of wrath.

But let me be even bolder. I would say that if you do not understand John 3:3 or John 1:13; if you do not know what they are saying viscerally as well as intellectually; if you do not have an emotional response to these verses; if you are not convinced of the assurance they provide, you are probably not one who has in fact been born again and therefore not a Christian.

This is harsh I know. It is meant to be. I don’t write these words to find favour; I write as one who cries Fire! Fire! to those who are asleep in a temple and who know nothing of their impending doom.

I write them as an appeal to non-believers yes, but also as a warning to the modern Pharisees who think themselves saved because they follow the rules and do all the right things rather than experiencing Christ; who see holiness as a separation from the world rather than as a dedication to God; who think that being saved is the result of acquiescing to biblical ordinances and prescriptions and traditions rather than of experiencing and living in a mystical union with Christ, Who, in that union, carries us along with Him in His holiness and righteousness before God.

People who think they are responsible for carrying out or even attempting to fulfill the demands of the law are those who fail to understand they are still trying to earn their reward. They fail to understand the truth that Christ has already fulfilled the law, so they are necessarily resorting to a subtle form of works-righteousness, instead of throwing themselves on the mercy as well as the finished and perfect work of Christ.

We will never be found righteous before God by attempting to keep the commandments (even though called to do so). Rather we are found righteous in Christ because He has already met all the requirements of the law Himself and has graced us with His protective and sustaining love in spite of all our weakness, foolishness and sinfulness.

This is something that ministers of God’s Word have been saying all along of course. This message is not mine, nor is it new. It is foundational to our faith. There will never be a time (until Christ’s second coming) when it will not be needed to be shouted from the very housetops, in the alleys and byways and streets of our villages, towns and cities!

What say you: have you been truly and incontrovertibly saved? Are you truly born-again?

Because if you are not born again of the Spirit of God then you are as one of the foolish virgins to whom it was said by Christ the Bridegroom, “Truly I say to you, I do not know you” (Matt 25:12).

But this begs the question, “What does it mean to be born again; or how can I know for certain I am born again; or what are the qualities of this second birth? I’ll try answering those questions from my limited knowledge as well as my personal experience next time. But let me end with this: Those who truly are born-again don’t need an answer from me. They know the answer already, for it lives in their hearts as well as their minds.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Recapturing Holiness

I take up my pen (actually my keyboard, but I’m somewhat quaint in these matters) to continue my reflections begun earlier (August 6 and August 9) on the essential otherworldliness of Christianity and the fact that so many Christians (let alone non-Christians) don’t seem to really understand and believe this, at least not here in North America and even less (so I understand from the reading I do) in Europe and Britain. North American Christians seem to have an attitude that effectively denies the elemental other-worldliness found in the fundamental teachings of the NT.

In the previous posts I’ve been trying to say that the essential message of the NT (and especially the words of Christ taken as a whole) is one of other-worldliness. When you strip away the cultural and psychological accretions with which we ourselves have encumbered the Gospel, you will find an otherworldly quality, a disdain even, toward this life here and now that borders on what secularists consider truly bizarre and even somewhat suicidal. And if I were a secularist, I would consider it so (I was and I did!). We find over and over again in the NT what could easily be argued as contempt for this world: “And Jesus said to him, ‘The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.’ And He said to another, ‘Follow Me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.’ But He said to him, ‘Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God.’ Another also said, ‘I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say good-bye to those at home.’ But Jesus said to him, ‘No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God’” (Luke 9:58-62).

When we, as Christians, read words like, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm” (John 18:36) do we take the time to work out and understand the implications of this and many similar statements in the NT? What have words like these to do with us? Well, for one, we are told, in no uncertain terms, to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt 6:33, emphasis added). This means we are to spend our time looking and working for a kingdom which cannot ever fully be found or attained in this life. It means that the things which are necessary for us while we sojourn here will be provided for us. And what are those “necessary” things? Those things that are necessary are those things which sustain life and enable us to do the work of God, “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal” (John 6:27). Everything else is superfluous and leads to worldliness.

Over and over again, Jesus warns us against our own satisfaction with the superfluous. His curative prescription for the disease of worldliness is radical surgery: “If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matt 5:29-30). Hard words indeed! And while we are not to take them at their literal face value, they nevertheless underscore the absolute imperative facing us in our Christian walk. I don’t think this can be stressed too much. It is this sense of the urgent as well as radical that the modern Church has by-and-large lost. The modern churchgoer no longer experiences this radical other-worldliness. If we did, the world would be a truly different place because we would be truly different people. But instead, we are all like the rich young ruler, who could not give up that which enslaved him and held him back from the Kingdom. He was so close; by his own admission he did all that was required by the Law of Moses. And yet he had the besetting sin of love for the wealth of the world that he couldn’t completely give up or cast away. Are we not like that rich young ruler? We lack the courage—motivated by sure, firm, unshakeable conviction in the truth of the Bible and the working of the Holy Spirit on our consciences—that Christ requires of His followers.

Why don’t we have this sense of urgent, radical other-worldliness that characterized the early church? We are too complacent and consequently we have lost our sense of that essential, all-encompassing attribute of God that includes all His other attributes: that of holiness. We are no longer holy because we have, in our complacency and desire for creature-comforts and what I call easy-believism (the broad way and the wide gate), forsaken God’s holiness and therefore our own holiness, of which the radical other-worldliness of the NT is an expression. The other-worldliness of Christ and His teaching is nothing other than God’s holiness bursting (or perhaps seeping is a better word to use) into the world. What else could be the case? Over and over again, God’s people are called to be holy. Leviticus 20:26 is a representative verse from the OT: “Thus you are to be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy; and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine.” And there are several representative texts in the NT that could be used to illustrate this essential teaching. One is Eph 5:27: “that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.” Another is the well-known verse from Hebrews: “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb 12:14, KJV). Many other verses could be used to support the idea that holiness is of paramount importance to the Christian’s walk. But let us not make the mistake of understanding such holiness to be complete and finished, for that will never be in this life. Rather, we must be partakers of God’s holiness each and every day. It must be characteristic of our lives as Christians. This experience of God’s holiness will help us to understand why Peter, for instance, addresses the recipients of his first letter as “strangers.” They were indeed strangers or aliens in the lands in which they sojourned but more to the point they were also (as are we) strangers, aliens and sojourners on this earth, and whose real home was heavenly, not earthly (“In my Father’s house are many mansions….”). Peter goes on to say: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5, emphasis added). In these three verses Peter is teaching us that God’s remnant (among them the strangers to whom the letter is addressed as well as ourselves) have an imperishable inheritance reserved in heaven. In heaven, not on earth! He also tells us this inheritance will be (fully) revealed in the last time, the Day of Judgment. It is not for us now; it is not for us on earth. It is for us (in its fulfillment) in a later time and a new place. Peter also tells us that this inheritance is ours by God’s power and His will. It is not ours to determine.

However, we should not mistake this disdain for the worldly as being the same as indifference to it. The Scriptures are very clear that there is a reason for being here. It’s just not to be chasing after worldly pleasures and the like. The Westminster Shorter Catechism asserts that the chief end of man is to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." That is why we are here; not to amass wealth, gain power, or make friends. But we can neither glorify nor enjoy God at all without holiness. “A highway will be there, a roadway, And it will be called the Highway of Holiness. The unclean will not travel on it, But it will be for him who walks that way, And fools will not wander on it” “For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness” “Blessed and holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with Him for a thousand years”(Isa 35:8; Heb 12:10; Rev 20:6).

It is this other-worldliness, this sense of holiness, which we must recapture if we are to give to God the glory that is His due. It is the spirit of sacrifice we must embrace if we are to be true followers of Christ. Can this shift occur within the mainstream church? I believe that this is not possible without a revival on a scale equal to that of the Reformation. The modern, mainstream church is essentially unbiblical. She is a bride with a questionable character and unsavory habits. The church at large has not yet become an abomination but she certainly is headed in that direction. She is not a slut or a harlot, who has gone whoring after strange gods and the things of this world. But she is syncretistic and has embraced false gospels to one degree or another. There are only a few congregations left who understand God’s holiness and which preach the true Biblical Gospel. (For all its failings, I count my own congregation to be such a one.) Yet even these, God’s true remnant, are in reactive mode, refusing or unable to balance the costly demands of the Scriptures with the legitimate needs and concerns of people here and now. We are no longer the salt and light Christ called us to be.

During the writing of this installment I happened to be studying Volume 3 of JM Boice’s Expositional Commentary on Romans. In the chapter I was reading while writing the balance of this post, I happened upon a quote from AW Tozer, from his book, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life (New York, Evanston and London: Harper & Row, 1961). So to add a degree of legitimacy to some of the things I’ve been trying to articulate, I’d like to reproduce the quote from Tozer that Boice included in his own book:

“The church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, [on this particular point I have to disagree with Tozer] but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.

This low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians [I can verify this statement from personal experience] is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.

With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, ‘Be still and know that I am God,’ mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper in this middle period of the twentieth century.”

These words were written forty-six years ago, and as I think you must agree, things have not improved! Yet through all this I’m confident God will care for and protect His people, not because of anything meritorious in them but because of His own faithfulness and the covenant He has made and because He has promised that when the trials and tribulations of this life are over, there shall be a reward: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away…. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away’ And He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (Rev 21:1-5a).

Soli Deo Gloria.

The Christian and "Global Warming"

In the huge debate over what is popularly known as “climate change” or “global warming” what should be the Christian’s position?

Why should this issue even be a dilemma for the Christian? Well, because it seems to call into question some biblical truths as well as non-biblical assumptions. The real problem for Christians is that it is difficult for all of us to separate our assumptions about truth from truth itself. Let me offer an example from some comments left by a reader of an article on global warming found on the Christian news service, (OneNewsNow). The reader says in part,”…the Great Creator is in control of all things, including His beloved earth, and His Beloved Creation, the Church [italics added].” The writer assumes that God’s earth is beloved, perhaps because at one point in its history God did love the earth; according to Genesis 1:31 He considered it very good. What the reader fails to understand though, is that God cursed the earth after the fall of Adam, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee” (Gen. 3:17-18a, emphasis added). The earth is no longer beloved by God, at least not in the way this person assumes. The reader has not really separated Biblical truth from his own assumption about that truth. But he does point out one thing that was and still is true, when He says, “…the Great Creator is in control of all things.” This much is true. We know that primarily from the Bible (for instance, in Neh 9:6) and secondarily from history and lastly (but with obvious limitations) from our own personal experience.

So the first apparent obstacle presented to the Christian by climate change or global warming is the seeming threat to God’s control—His sovereignty—over His own creation and all His creatures. At no place in Scripture are we led to conclude that God is not in control of all existence, including His earthly creation. Hence, many Christians infer that we cannot—or should not—worry about or try to fix problems like global warming because it denies God’s sovereign will as well as His sovereign ability. But this is not real truth, it is half-truth at best. We are told in Genesis that God put the man He had formed from the ground into the Garden of Eden, “to dress it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15, KJV). As well, when, after the fall, God drives Adam out of the garden, it is still to cultivate the land, just not in the Garden, “Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken” (Gen. 3:23, emphasis added). What we deduce (by good and necessary consequence) from these verses is that God expects a certain kind of caring for or stewardship of the land. That was always Adam’s responsibility, both before and after the fall. And since Adam was our federal head as well as our progenitor, it is our responsibility as well. This means that we still have a God-ordained responsibility to care for the earth and to make it productive and fruitful. God nowhere relieves us of that duty of obedience. In this God has not relinquished His sovereignty, He has rather demonstrated it by commanding us to do His will.

We have a God-given responsibility to care for the earth, even in her fallen, corrupted nature after the manner of the gardener who cares for his garden. But if the science of global warming is true, it is not true in a vacuum. If global warming is causing pain or suffering, we must approach the problem on that basis. The earth is cursed. People are suffering because the earth is cursed; “in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life” (Gen. 3:17b). The cause of the curse is sin. These things are true and irrefutable. This being the case, it should not matter to the Christian if global warming is a man-created problem. We have never taken care of the earth as we ought to have done, our sin has seen to that. Global warming (if it really exists) can only be understood as another consequence of sin. Nor does it deny God’s sovereignty. God is in sovereign control but we cannot use that proposition to deny the reality of sin, however much we may wish to. God in His sovereign omnipotence and omniscience allowed the fall and therefore sin to happen. If we are so concerned about God’s sovereignty, why do we continue to disobey that sovereignty through our rebellious sin?

The globe appears to be undergoing dramatic climatic shifts, the like of which humans have not experienced (or at least recorded) before. I can’t imagine a person denying that. This could be part of the naturally recurring climatic patterns over geologic time or it could be a result of increasing green-house gas emissions caused by humans. It really doesn’t matter for Christians because we have our marching orders and our obligatory duty: subdue the earth, but care for her in doing so.

The second big problem for the Christian is that global warming is the result of burning “fossil” fuels. The existence of fossils seems to lend credence to the notion of evolution along with the refutation of the six days of creation. But here again, we are not separating out the truth from our assumption of the truth. The problem is that Christians deny global warming because they assume that to accept this proposition is to accept evolution and therefore deny creation. But really, this issue is much simpler than that. Oil, natural gas, coal and such like are in the ground. That is fact. In the context of the environment, it simply doesn’t matter how the fossil fuels got into the ground. This is not a theological issue. These fuels can be burned to release energy and so make it available for other uses (such as running our cars and trucks, as well as making the roads we run them along). That too is unavoidable fact. Dramatic climatic change because of CO2 emissions from burning such fossil fuels as oil or coal could very well be fact. (On the science of this I admit a large degree of ignorance.)

A third reason why Christians (in North America anyway) have not become involved in the issue of global warming, except largely to dismiss it, is the fact that the argument for global warming has been delineated as a political issue, specifically, it is a cause which has received greatest support from left-leaning non-Christians. This has acted as a dis-incentive for more conservative Christians, influencing them to either stay uninvolved or to take an opposing position from the perceived ungodly secularists on the left. But this is merely to bow the knee to those very same secularists. The problem is that Christian leaders have dropped the ball. They have let the secularists define the rules of the game and to frame the argument. As a consequence, Christians have been forced to be reactive rather than proactive (on this, but also on other issues such as homosexuality, abortion and the like).

On the other hand, ultra-conservative Christians have—in some ways—actually taken a more honest, biblical position in their refusal to become involved in this debate. They see themselves as sojurners and strangers on this earth, waiting for the fulfillment of their redemption, first in Heaven, then on the re-created new earth after the final judgment. The problem with this position is that it ignores the simple fact that we are all on this earth now and are called to be in the world though not of it. Moreover, the pietistic position is simply irrelevant to the greater, more vocal debate being carried on. These ultra-conservative, biblical Christians should rather be acting as a counter-point to the secularists, preventing them from high-jacking the issue as they obviously have. The mainstream church is completely ineffective in this as in all things. (I believe the future of the true Church is in the hands of these modern day Puritans and radical Biblicists. The mainstream church has simply caved in to the worldly agenda. It is no longer a church in the pure sense of the word.)

Given our God-ordained obligation not only to rule the earth but also to care for her, I’d say that the avoidance of Christians to take a clear position on stewardship of the earth because of political or possible theological implications is nothing more than grossly irresponsible. There are no theological implications other than those which are the result of the Fall of Man. Nor should Christians be averse to getting involved in political issues, especially those which pose a threat to our God-given mandate, in this case the stewardship of the earth, from which we came. There is a problem. We have a responsibility to mitigate the problem. Let’s get on with it! We as Christians must be concerned with mitigating the obvious physical symptoms of this problem. To do otherwise is simply to excuse our own sinfulness.

The Happy Man

The Happy Man was born in the city of Regeneration in the parish of Repentance unto life. He was educated at the school of Obedience. He has a large estate in the country of Christian Contentment, and many times does the jobs of Self-Denial, wears a garment of Humility, and has another suit to put on when he goes to Court called the Robe of Christ’s Righteousness. He often walks in the valley of Self Abasement, and sometimes climbs the mountains of Heavenly Mindedness. He has breakfast every morning on Spiritual Prayer, and Sups every morning on the same. He has meat to eat that the world knows not of, and his drink is the sincere milk of the Word of God. Thus happy he lives and happy he dies. Happy is he who has Gospel Submission in his will, due order in his afflictions, sound peace in his conscience, real Divinity in his breast, the Redeemer’s yoke on his neck, a vain world under his feet, and a crown of glory over his head. Happy is the life of that man who believes firmly, prays fervently, walks patiently, works abundantly, lives holy, dies daily, watches his heart, guides his senses, redeems his time, loves Christ, and longs for glory. He is necessitated to take the world on his way to heaven, but he walks through it as fast as he can, and all his business by the way is to make himself and others happy. Take him all in all, in two words; he is a Man and a Christian.

REV. LACHLAN MACKENZIE of Lochcarron, Scotland

Values Reversal in the Gospel Message

In a previous post (August 6, 2007), I reflected on the idea that the true Gospel is in complete opposition to many values people almost universally consider correct and normal (even Christian people). By the standards of the world, they (that is the teachings of the NT and their resultant values) must actually be considered insane. (The word usually used by the politically correct is eccentric.) The apostle Paul gave voice to this attitude by saying, “but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness” (1 Cor 1:23). In the forgoing post I said, “The New Testament…proclaims a complete surrender to the will of God. It proclaims the way, not of plenty, comfort and complacency, but of poverty, sacrifice, and struggle.”

I am constantly amazed that most contemporary Christians don’t seem to get this simple fact. They glibly assume that their faith is about “being nice”, “getting along”, “feeling good” or “love” without for instance examining what true, Christian love really is, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, emphasis added). Love, real love, is sacrificial, it is not about being nice, getting along or feeling good.

This train of thought was started by a comparison of the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:3-11) with those from the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:20-23). I have always been struck by the tone of this portion of the Lukan sermon. Apart from its shortness, it is stronger than that from Matthew, more to the point. And as I observed in the previous post, it has a clear eschatological profile somewhat obscured in the Matthean sermon. Luke captures this sense of strength by his recording of the word “now”, thereby building a frightening comparison between what happens now and what will happen then (upon the Day of Judgment).

In this sermon from Luke, Christ makes it very plain that the Kingdom of God (“Heaven” in Matthew’s Gospel) is as different from the world of men as it could possibly be. Everything we take for granted as normal and desirable, even as Christians, Christ says is not worth the struggle to get or to keep, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matt 6:19-21).

Being a true follower of Christ (“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”, John 14:15) is costly. It requires sacrifice and total commitment in ways that we simply refuse to acknowledge seriously, including a willingness to suffer and die for Christ’s sake if that is what we are called or required to do (Rev 12:11). Jesus says, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it” (Matt 10:34-39 emphasis added). When we read words such as these, our first response is to trivialize them, to remove their sting, to explain them away as mere hyperbole. Do you think Christ was hyperbolizing? Do you think, in light of what He knew would later happen to Him at Calvary and what He told His disciples would also happen to them (John 15:18-21), that he was exaggerating? How can we explain these words and so many others just like them? What are we to do with them?

These ideas of suffering and death for the sake of Christ, do they not border on the insane? Can you imagine such a thing in today’s complacent, easy-going, post-Christian, materialist society as someone being persecuted and actually dying for Christ, perhaps horribly? But it is happening in other parts of the world. Even as I sit at my desk and write these words Christians somewhere are being threatened, beaten up, thrown in jail and killed. But we have grown fat in our wealth, materialism and spiritual complacency just as Moses describes in Deuteronomy and have shielded ourselves against the costly truth of Christ’s words.

Whenever I go through the exercise of reading the words of Christ from all four gospels, I am always struck by the essential other-worldliness of the statements. Modern Christianity has marginalized these passages, partly through the doctrine of the “carnal Christian” verses the disciple. We have fooled ourselves into believing there are two kinds of Christian: the ordinary, garden-variety who does not believe he is required to sacrifice his own worldly comfort and materialism for the sake of Christ, and the “super-Christian” who is able and willing to do so. This comfortable fallacy is not biblical and has nothing to do with being a Christian. Paul testifies of his own hardship as well as the danger of death in 2 Cor 11:23-27. And we also have the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John, as further evidence of the power normally resident in the early Church.

In the modern era, the best known martyr is probably Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who resolutely condemned the whole idea of Christians who were not willing to sacrifice for the sake of Christ by describing the complacent attitude as “cheap grace”, that is grace without cost, without sacrifice. To quote Bonhoeffer from his best known work, The Cost of Discipleship: “The price we are having to pay today in the shape of the collapse of the organized church is only the inevitable consequence of our policy of making grace available to all at too low a cost. We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation without condition. Our humanitarian sentiment made us give that which was holy to the scornful and unbelieving [Matt 7:6]... But the call to follow Jesus in the narrow way was hardly ever heard.”

I’ve been talking about sacrifice and commitment as well as other-worldliness and the reversal of values and have probably confused you no end, Dear Reader, by not making clear what I believe to be the relationship between them. The point I’ve been trying to make, perhaps poorly, is that biblical Christianity is not, nor could ever be a compromise with the world. It is other-worldly in its very essence. Its values are not those that we naturally hold dear. They are strange and foreign. They are meant to be enjoyed in the fullest sense after we die, not before. It is this element, this idea that there will be no real return on our investment—other than as it were in small measure—until after our death, that is so difficult for us, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor 2:14).

Please don’t understand though. I’m not suggesting that it is the duty of Christians to turn themselves into cannon-fodder or to become like the fanatical fundamentalists of Islam who gladly die (and kill) for Allah. Nor am I saying that the command given by Christ to the rich young ruler is necessarily binding on every one of us. I’m not saying wealth is bad, nor am I saying death is good. What I am trying to say is, first, we must not mistake the worldly blessings bestowed on us by God as having the same value and worth as the spiritual blessings we most often come to through struggle and sacrifice. Further, that we must not seek our reward here, in this life. Or more to the point, we must not look for the fulfillment of our reward here and now. While being a Christian will give us a foretaste of our reward in heaven, the fulfillment—the consummation of our marriage to our Bridegroom Christ—must wait, even for the Day of Judgment and the resurrection of the dead. Nevertheless, we have this first fruit made available to us through the atoning blood of Christ’s sacrifice and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, if we do not quench or grieve Him. But if our love for Christ is not sacrificial in its essential nature—if our love is not servant love—we will indeed quench the Spirit. Rather, our love, our commitment must be characterized by a willingness to go where we are called and to do what we are commanded, regardless of the personal cost. How many of us can say we demonstrate that kind of love? I can’t, at least not to the degree that I know—by the testimony of Scripture and inner conviction—is required of me. You see, I am the weakest of the weak. I often feel as did Paul, that I am the chief of sinners. Yet is that not how we all should consider ourselves? For it is not by our own power or will that we have the strength to make these sacrifices, but by the grace of God and the indwelling power of His spirit working in us.

I will probably have more to reflect on later, as I consider some of the real-life implications of this train of thought. Until next time.

Soli Deo Gloria.