Dispensationalism and the Gospel

 One of the major teachings of the New Testament is that Christ’s death on the cross was a complete and fully sufficient sacrifice to save men from their sins. What the Old Testament sacrifices could not do, Jesus did in His suffering and death. The New Testament then tells us that if a person now tries to turn back to the Jewish sacrificial system, in doing so they reject the work of Christ, the Gospel, and God Himself. For Dispensationalism then to teach that the Jewish sacrificial system will be reestablished with God’s blessing during the Tribulation is for it to contradict the Gospel. Scripture goes to great lengths in saying the exact opposite of what Dispensationalism teaches.

Alcohol

The Bible encourages drinking alcohol. See Deut. 14:22-26 and the wedding at Cana. It also condemns overdoing it. The distinction is clear in Scripture. And so on that basis, you cannot forbid drinking. Scripture stands against temperance.

Another angle on this is the fact that Scripture condemns the use of things that are in and of themselves evil. Adultery and other sexual sins, theft, murder, etc. It also makes very clear that alcohol is not one of those things. The abuse of a thing does not make the proper use of a thing evil. The fault there lies in the user, not in the thing used.

And what is the proper use of alcohol? To drink it with gratitude before the Lord for this gift that He has given you to enjoy. There’s no support in Scripture for needing to find some merely practical use for a thing in order to justify it. Pragmatism isn’t Biblical either; God gives us lots of things just to make us happy.

The Natural Order

 It was from Adam that God took the substance that He meant to fashion into woman, indicating that as man was formed first and as woman sprang from man, so man is to be her head. He from the dust, she from him. He directly from the Former’s hand, she indirectly and through him. “Adam,” says the apostle, “was first formed, then Eve” (1Ti 2:13). Therefore, says he, she is “not to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” Thus, again, he states the gradation: (1) the head of the woman is the man, (2) the head of the man is Christ, (3) the head of Christ is God (1Co 11:3). Further, he adds that “the woman is the glory (or ornament) of the man”; for, says he, “the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man” (1Co 11:8-9). Such is God’s order of things; such His assignment of place and rank to the creatures that He has made. We may be sure that there is a reason for this gradation, not merely a typical [typological], but a natural one, whether we fully understand it or not. We cannot alter this law and be blameless. We cannot reverse it and not suffer loss. The construction of our world’s fabric is far too delicate and complex for man to attempt the slightest change without dislocating the whole. One star displaced, one planet thrown off its orbit, will confound the harmonies of space and strew the firmament with the wrecks of the universe. [Likewise,] one law lost sight of or set at naught will mar the happy order of God’s living world below.

In one age or nation, man treads down woman as a slave; in another, he idolizes her and sings of her as of a goddess. Both cases inflict a social wrong upon the race, in the latter case as truly as in the former. And who can say how deep an injury—both spiritual and social—has been wrought and how fatal an influence has been sent forth, by that fond sentimentalism that, impregnating our poetry and coursing like fever through the veins of youth, not only “costs the fresh blood dear,” but saps the whole social system, nay, propagates a principle of subtle ungodliness and creature-worship in its praise of woman’s beauty and idolatry of woman’s love.

- Horatius Bonar

The Good Samaritan

 Luke 10. Jesus’s parables often have multiple applications. While it’s clear that the parable of the good Samaritan has in focus what it is to love one’s neighbor, it was of particular application to the Jewish leaders of that time. While the priest and the Levite refused to help the troubled man, keeping the law to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, the Samaritan did keep it. A non-Jewish man keeping the law of Israel’s God, the God with whom they alone were in covenant, would have been shocking and offensive to them.

Jesus’ point in the parable was to highlight Israel’s failure to keep covenant with God through obeying His law, to show the possibility of a Gentile keeping it, and to illustrate God’s turning away from Israel to the Gentiles.

“(F)or when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel” (Rom. 2:14-16).

The point of Romans is God’s salvation of the whole world, not just the Jews, and that their shame in the Gentiles being saved instead of them might draw the Jews back to God.

But the Jews consciously rejected Jesus, as they had His Father repeatedly throughout the Old Covenant. Likewise, they rejected His apostles, who came to them as a last-ditch effort to save them from the coming wrath that they deserved. In the end the apostles turned from the Jews to the Gentiles, fulfilling the prophecy that all the nations would come to worship Israel’s God.

“So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. Now when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.

On the next Sabbath almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy; and contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed the things spoken by Paul. Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, ‘It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.  For so the Lord has commanded us:

“I have set you as a light to the Gentiles,

That you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.”’

Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:42-48).

Jesus Himself had turned away from walking among the Jews openly when they had determined in their hearts to kill Him (John 11:54). In doing so, He imitated Yahweh’s repeated turning away from Israel throughout the Old Covenant, whenever they turned back from following Him, choosing their fallen state in Adam, their state before Abram left Ur, their state before Yahweh delivered them from Egypt, and the state of the pagan nations surrounding them. They repeatedly chose to live in wickedness, worshiping the false gods like the nations, as if they were not in covenant with Yahweh. As a result, Yahweh repeatedly turned His back on them, leaving them to the consequences of their sinful desires and actions, and bringing judgment upon them for it. And yet every time they repented and turned back to Him, He returned to them and gave them another chance.

Jesus came as Yahweh’s final prophet to His beloved people Israel. Israel would reject Him and crucify Him, as their ancestors had rejected His Father. And yet the plan all along was that the whole world through Israel might come to Yahweh, and the Jewish people themselves turn to God in Christ. Today God’s people, the Church, are comprised of Jews and Gentiles who have put their faith alone in Jesus Christ for salvation. All are joined together in the one Olive tree (Romans 11), for there is no other means by which any man might be saved than the work of Christ.

Colossians 2

A couple of short thoughts on Colossians 2:

1. Paul is speaking to the Colossians specifically as a group of Gentiles, i.e. uncircumcised.

2. Jesus’s circumcision of which Paul speaks here was His death on the cross.

3. Merely removing the foreskin was not enough to purify mankind. The whole body was/is corrupt and had to/has to die.

4. In the act of water baptism, a person is united with the death and resurrection of Christ. The benefits of Christ’s work become ours through the rite of baptism.

5. Baptism and faith are not at odds here. Both are present. Jesus trusted in God, and so must we.

6. Being raised with Christ, all our transgressions of God’s Law have been forgiven. Not only have we been forgiven, the Old Testament legal requirements that kept Gentiles away from God have been done away with entirely through Christ’s death and resurrection.

7. By His work, Christ has usurped the principalities and powers (the rulers and authorities), subjugating them to His own rule and dominion. Consequently, they no longer are able to command or make any legal claim against those of us who are in union with Christ. All the courtroom arguments against us they may try to make are thrown out of court.

No doubt there is enough there to rub different folks the wrong way, at different points. But Paul isn’t simply throwing out a variety of vague, disconnected references to salvation. He is making a coherent statement about the work of Christ, specifically as it relates to the Gentiles.

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“So you’re saying baptism somehow saves us, whatever you mean by that. Aren’t you then saying that we’re saved by our good works, our work of getting baptized?” It’s a common response.

But nobody actually baptizes himself, does he? Usually a minister applies water to the person’s head and says “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Or he dips the person in a pool of water and says the same. The minister baptizes you. It isn’t something you do; it’s something done to you. God is working through the minister as his tool to save you, just like he sanctifies you when the minister preaches God’s Word to you. The fact that you are listening in no way means you earn sanctification. You wouldn’t even be listening if God hadn’t first inclined your heart toward Him and made you want to listen. All the credit goes to God.

Things Scripture Doesn’t Say, Pt. 2 - Getting Saved

 Scripture nowhere says that a person needs to know the exact moment at which he got saved. Are you right now trusting in God to save you? That is the only thing you need to know. At what point in the past that began to be true is not a question you need to answer.

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There isn’t a single verse of Scripture that speaks of becoming a Christian as “asking Jesus into your heart”. And that cheesy, sentimental, romantic way of talking about salvation has probably turned far more men off to the Gospel and the Church than we might think.

Things Scripture Doesn’t Say, Pt. 1 - Only Christian Music Is Allowed

 Scripture nowhere says that it is a sin to listen to “secular” music, music that doesn’t aim to be specifically Christian, or music that doesn’t mention God or the Bible. It’s true that if a person is saved they should at least sometimes want to listen to music that speaks accurately and positively about God. Scripture commands us to sing praises to God, and to “sing to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs”. But it doesn’t say that is the only kind of singing you’re allowed to do. There are types of music that a Christian shouldn’t want to listen to - if you find yourself wanting to listen to songs like “WAP”, then something spiritually is wrong with you, and you need to repent and correct course on some things. But if there isn’t anything particularly contrary to God’s word about a piece of music, then God has given you the freedom to listen to it. All good things ultimately come from Him, and He puts those things in the world for you to enjoy.

Most Christian music over the past hundred years or so has been terrible. If you don’t like it, then it probably means you have good taste. “For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another” (Gal. 5:13). You don’t have to abandon Christianity to enjoy good art - so don’t use it as a excuse to do so.

It Isn’t About You

 In Reformed circles we often like to tell people “it isn’t about you” (“it” being the Gospel, or the worship of the Church, or anything related to Scripture). In our narcissistic age, this certainly has its need. But while God is clearly concerned about His own glory, and often puts wicked men in their place, I think we tend to push this further than Scripture gives us the right to. Salvation is about us, in that it’s us He’s saving. Scripture is filled with statements about the love, the kindness, the mercy, and the goodness of God directed toward us. Scripture tells us that He sent His Son not just to satisfy His own righteous demands, nor simply to bring Himself glory, but out of His love for mankind. His loving acts in this world are not just self-focused, nor focused at those impersonal parts of His creation, but focused on us. “What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that You should care for him?” (Ps. 8). And this is clear in Calvin as well. Using one quote to illustrate:

“For in administering human society he so tempers his providence that, although kindly and beneficent toward all in numberless ways, he still by open and daily indications declares his clemency to the godly and his severity to the wicked and criminal. For there are no doubts about what sort of vengeance he takes on wicked deeds. Thus he clearly shows himself the protector and vindicator of innocence, while he prospers the life of good men with his blessing, relieves their need, soothes and mitigates their pain, and alleviates their calamities; and in all these things he provides for their salvation.”

God’s point often in His rebukes in Scripture is to show His glory, to show His place as God exalted above man and all creation in all His being, and to show that His care for all things is His free choice. But He has chosen. He everyday cares for mankind freely, willingly, gladly, lovingly. And when sin came into the world, the thing that might prevent the giving of His love, He gave even more, that no impediment might stand in the way. In our arrogance we might need a reminder sometimes that we aren’t the center of the universe - that we are not God. But the true God has set His love upon us in such a way that He can call us His children, His friends, and the inheritors of the universe He has created and upheld.

“He will not always strive with us,

Nor will He keep His anger forever.

He has not dealt with us according to our sins,

Nor punished us according to our iniquities.

For as the heavens are high above the earth,

So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;

As far as the east is from the west,

So far has He removed our transgressions from us.

As a father pities his children,

So the Lord pities those who fear Him.

For He knows our frame;

He remembers that we are dust.

As for man, his days are like grass;

As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.

For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

And its place remembers it no more.

But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting

On those who fear Him,

And His righteousness to children’s children,

To such as keep His covenant,

And to those who remember His commandments to do them.” (Ps. 103).

I wonder if as Calvinists we don’t sometimes strive with men more than God Himself. Inasmuch as we do, it is a thing of which we must repent. If we have truly been recipients of His grace, how can we do otherwise? 

Does this really arise from a zeal for the glory of God and a love for our neighbor? Or is it merely a lust for power and authority that isn’t rightly ours, with a sadistic need to tear others down? If it is the latter, and sometimes I think it is, then our own salvation must be in question. We are not reflecting the character of the God we claim to be in union with, but rather something of the devil. True godliness speaks not only truth, but in love and humility. 

Thanos and the Scarlet Witch: To Covet Godhood

 At the end of Avengers: Infinity War, we see that Thanos has gone to live in a mountainous region far from civilization in a cabin alone. And at the end of WandaVision, we see that Wanda has done the same. In both cases the camera seems to pan down toward the cabin(s) from a distance, and the fact that the last scene in WandaVision mimics that of Infinity War suggests we are to see a parallel between the two figures. There is a contrast in the two, though. Whereas Thanos comes out of his cabin from the inside and sits down on the steps, having completed the work he intended, Wanda begins sitting down on the front steps, arises, and goes inside her cabin, where we find she is still busy at work constructing her desired reality. The two figures are mirror images of each other. 

But the similarities don’t stop with their visual presentations.

We see in both characters the sort of willful individualism and isolation which is always the tendency of a person failing to deal with their pain and disappointment correctly. Both individuals sought to use their power to construct reality according to their own liking. The power they sought exceeded what they had any right to, and both showed themselves to lack the wisdom and goodness necessary to wield that power properly. No one person can ever have the qualities necessary to rightly conduct another person’s life, let alone multiple other lives. And the desire to do so always reveals a hateful narcissistic evil that can only lead to death. “You will never be a god,” Loki tells Thanos. And this is the heart of all of the occult: it is an arrogant hatred of the one true God, and a desire to kill Him and take His place.

The point of the end of WandaVision, then, is that Wanda has become her abuser, her persecutor, and the very thing she hates. “You took everything from me,” Wanda tells Thanos in Avengers: Endgame. Wanda does the same to the citizens of Westview in WandaVision, and the last scene of the show suggests she hasn’t yet learned to deal with her losses.

As Holy to the Lord

 The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Socialist, and did not originally have the phrase ”Under God” in it. The Pledge is about religious devotion to the State, such that no Christian should say it, nor should it be recited in church in a worship services. Flags in church buildings are equally an abomination.

While I’m on the subject, I would also voice my disagreement with good Reformed men on the subject of sacred space, including Peter Leithart. It is true that space does not become ”magical”, and we should be careful to make that clear. But certain spaces can and should be set apart as holy for the worship of God. To set up such spaces is a mark of civilization resulting from the work of the Holy Spirit and the triumph of the Gospel. It is when you start declaring everything as equally sacred, in a pagan sense of being magical or even literally “god”, that you can know that the glory of God has departed from you.

Worship Music and the Language of Romance

 The Bible nowhere describes the relationship between the individual Christian believer and Christ using romantic terminology. It does describe the Church as a collective body that way - “husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church”. But nowhere does it tell the individual person to think of his salvation in those terms. And yet that language has tended to permeate contemporary worship music since its beginning. And this is one of contemporary worship music’s biggest problems. The fact is that when you use an unbiblical terminology to refer to something as central to the Bible as salvation, wrong theology and a wrong spiritual life can’t help but be the result.

One question that is brought up in this, though, is whether or not The Song of Solomon should be taken as a metaphor for the individual believer’s relationship with God or Christ.

The Song of Solomon serves at least two purposes. The first one was, and is, to teach the people of God what a godly, natural, romantic relationship is supposed to look like. Its second purpose, in its Old Testament context, was and is to illustrate Yahweh’s love for Israel collectively. That then carries over to Christ’s love for the Church in the New Testament. The Church is the New Israel.

As a picture of Yahweh’s love for Israel, this then sets the stage for the writings of the OT prophets later, as Yahweh brings charges of adultery against Israel, and as He threatens her with divorce for her harlotry with the nations, which divorce is finalized in the Book of Revelation, manifested in real history through the Roman assault on Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.

It is also with this divorce motif in mind that Revelation 2-3 also has to be read, alongside of the apostasy passages of the New Testament, namely John 15, Romans 9-11, and the entire Book of Hebrews. Yahweh has divorced Israel, because He requires faithfulness, as any spouse should. Individual churches then also should be diligent in their faithfulness, lest He remove their lampstands, which is just another metaphor intended to illustrate the same ending of relationship with God.

But there isn’t a verse in Scripture, in either the Old or New Testaments, that suggests we should take the Song of Solomon as an illustration of the individual believer’s relationship with God. There have been commentators over the past two thousand years who have tried that, but Scripture simply doesn’t support it. There’s nothing inside or outside of the book that says we should read it and apply it that way.

I Am Of Calvin, I Am Of Wesley

 No matter what your denomination or church tradition may be, honesty requires recognizing that God has worked throughout history in denominations and church traditions other than your own. And humility should lead all of us to listen to what the Bible teachers and theologians of other church traditions have to say. No single denomination or church tradition has ever gotten every last thing right.

The Terror of the Lord

 The presence or absence of quiet meditation in the sanctuary before a worship service goes a long way in telling you what you need to know about a church.

All the robes and candles and incense in the world won’t make up for a lack of holy fear when entering into the presence of the God of all things.

Original Sin

 There have been different views on Original Sin throughout Church history - how Adam’s sin has affected all of mankind down through the ages. Often, though, the assumption has been that infants cannot sin - that it takes some level of consciousness of themselves, of God, of right and wrong, and of the world around them, to sin, a consciousness infants do not and cannot have. But can anybody actually prove that? On the contrary, children prove from a very young age that they are sinners. They often do wrong, and that intentionally, knowing they are doing wrong. The only thing stopping infants from at least some sins often is a lack of mobility. 

John the Baptist leapt in Elizabeth’s womb when Mary, carrying Jesus in her womb, approached them. We can’t understand it, but that was already an acknowledgement on his part of who Jesus was. While this was a special case, it demonstrates that infants are capable of a greater level of consciousness than we tend to expect.

There is no verse of Scripture that says that infants are innocent, in some overarching way. Rather, while infants may not yet be guilty of most specific sins, Scripture teaches us that they are born corrupted by sin.

The majority position in my own Reformed tradition has been that Adam’s sin in the Garden has been imputed to all his progeny, and will continue to be so for all those yet to be born. We are all guilty, in some sense, of Adam’s sin. The remedy, then, is the righteousness of Christ imputed to all those who place their trust in Him. But even if one won’t go that far, one has to affirm that infants are born corrupted by Adam’s sin. When David says “In sin my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51), he clearly wasn’t saying she was in sin when or by conceiving him. It was his own sin in view, whether in terms of corruption, or guilt, or both. And where the corruption of sin is, is there any reason to assert that acts of sin are not possible? Maybe there is, if we don’t understand what sin is. But if hate is a sin - or greed, or selfishness, or even simply failing to love one’s neighbor - then infants can sin, and they probably do far more than we might expect.

Right Worship

 If all right theology, and in fact all right living, begins with the wonder of God, then the answer when a person sins isn’t the endless lamenting of one’s sin or inability, but a returning to the wonder of God.

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One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend. -- Stanley Hauerwas

Disposable Men

 A patriotic Christian brother who served in north Africa in the 80s said to me recently, “I don’t know that anything we did there was any good at all.”

Patriotism can be a good thing. Unthinking, uncritical, undiscerning patriotism is not. Many a person who has served in good faith has died needlessly in the service of this country. Those who served in good faith deserve honor. Those politicians and profiteers who in their greed sent men like so much cattle to be slaughtered in pointless wars will receive their just reward.

The God Who Acts

 The Psalms, making up the hymn book of the Old Testament, were written with certain assumptions in view which we tend to be missing in our singing today. 

1.) God acts in time and space according to the worship, the faith, the prayers, and the obedient faithfulness, of His people.

2.) He blesses His people when they obey Him, and disciplines them when they don’t. He also comes to their aid when they cry out for Him in humble dependence, showing Himself at work in their lives according to their needs.

3.) His acts are generally verifiable, though exceptions exist, because God is eternally uncircumscribable. Sometimes God and His acts are known only to Him, as He chooses to keep Himself hidden. And yet He often makes Himself known even to unbelievers through His acts, such that He receives glory through them knowing He is the one living and true God. When God acts, both believers and unbelievers can identify it.

4.) Victory and blessing are things that should be expected among God’s people. This does not mean sinless perfection, but a general trend in that direction. Nor does it mean that sickness, suffering, and death will never exist, or only exist as the result of some specific sin. The absence of victory and blessing among God’s people, however, often indicates unbelief and disobedience.

5.) Reflecting on God’s acts in history through corporate song should be a part of worship. The Israelites could and would sing about how they saw God acting in their own time.

Our singing, in contrast, quite often has a Gnostic tilt to it - detached from our own lives, and as if God stopped operating in the world in the first century. Or, it is individualistic, focusing strictly on the salvation of individuals. At its best it focuses on the Work of Christ. But somehow we sing as if Christ’s work has no ongoing effects beyond the salvation of individuals, pulling them out of a world that is not under His kingly authority and supervision. 

These thoughts are a work in process, and for now I offer them up as they are.

Errant Hearts

 In Reformed theology we regularly talk about the failure of much of the Church in having bad theology, or just weak or absent theology altogether. This is without a doubt a common and ongoing problem. And it always has negative effects. But the Reformed church has proven itself to be ineffectual all on its own, and that for many decades. And sometimes that has shown to be connected to outright sin. I find myself beginning to wonder more and more if the problem in the Church isn’t so much bad or weak theology, but rather a failure to love and trust God.

Now the Reformed mind will immediately start talking about how this is a false dichotomy, noting that bad doctrine hinders a person’s understanding of, his trust in, and his love for, God. And, how unbelief and a lack of love will prevent our understanding of Scripture. But let’s knock off the theological debates and our desire to rush back to intellectual categories for a second.

Are people really loving, and trusting, God? I think that is the question. And it should be addressed all on its own.

God has proven Himself quite resilient throughout the ages in being able to work around and alongside of His people’s imperfect knowledge. But Jesus Himself found at times he was unable to do miracles due to people’s unbelief. Faith and love, these are the indispensable things.

It seems to me we’ve been getting this all wrong.

Hypocritical Unbelievers

“The Church is full of hypocrites.”

You will never meet a person, Christian or otherwise, who lives fully consistent with what they say they believe. Everybody is in some part of his life a hypocrite. If you believe that isn’t the case about a person you know, either you aren’t thinking deeply enough about the matter, or he’s got you fooled.

But there are Christians who largely live consistent with what Scripture teaches, while they occasionally sin. Unbelief might want to believe otherwise, but unbelief begins from a position of falsehood, and wants to see what it wants to see, no matter the truth. A wicked person naturally wants to drag everybody else into sin and misery with him, because otherwise he has to face up to God and his sin on his own.

Beyond this, there can never be such a thing as a “consistent unbeliever”. By virtue of living in a universe created by the one true God, any position of sin and unbelief creates contradiction and conflict, which can only be reconciled by faith.

Should We Expect Christians To Doubt God?

Two quotes side by side, not merely to be controversial, but as an exercise in thinking the matter through publicly.

“Surely, while we teach that faith ought to be certain and assured, we cannot imagine any certainty that is not tinged with doubt, or any assurance that is not assailed by some anxiety.” - John Calvin

"Doubts should never be cherished, nor fears harbored. Let none cherish the delusion that he is a martyr to fear and doubt. It is no credit to any man's mental capacity to cherish doubt of God, and no comfort can possibly derive from such a thought. Our eyes should be taken off 'self', removed from our own weakness and allowed to rest implicitly upon God's strength. 'Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.' A simple, confiding faith, living day by day, and casting its burden on the Lord, each hour of the day, will dissipate fear, drive away misgiving and deliver from doubt: 'Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by supplication and prayer, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.'" - E. M. Bounds

Contemporary “Christian” Musicians

 Here’s the thing about Contemporary Christian Music, and along with it the Contemporary Worship scene. The safe assumption to start out with is that their theological knowledge is severely lacking. You should expect to find errors, sometimes serious, and sometimes just silly. You can also expect that at some point later in their lives some of them will admit either that they were never Christians to begin with, or that they have apostatized from the faith. If you want good theology, which you should, and if you want Biblical direction for your life, the place to start is with a solid Bible-believing church that isn’t afraid to use the word “theology”. The worship should not be dry and dull, nor should it be chaotic, but rather reverent, sincere, and passionate. And then you should start reading theological books, by good theologians, the kinds of teachers most people have never heard of, but who are solidly grounded in the historic doctrine of the Christian faith. Look to godly people in your life for recommendations, and don’t be afraid to read outside of your own church tradition.

1 Corinthians

 The big context of 1 Corinthians is that the Corinthians were dividing among themselves according to different teachers. Each one was claiming that their teacher was the best, and they were using this as a source of identity and pride. In other words, they were each replacing Christ with their chosen teacher. Paul was pointing out that this was a fleshly and worldly way of thinking - immature, and the way of thinking that existed among the Jews and the Greeks. And in this, like the Jews and the Greeks, the Corinthian Christians were seeking worldly power and worldly wisdom. But the way of Christ was different, being the way of the cross.

It’s worth noting in this that Paul was making the Jews and Greeks parallel to each other, as ways that were different from the way of Christ. In other words, Judaism was not an option, but rather on the same level in relation to God as paganism. What Paul held to be true was completely the opposite of what Dispensationalism proposes today.

The sort of fleshliness and worldliness that existed among the Corinthians in their sectarianism is always accompanied by other forms of sin. And Paul was also seeking to address that in the book. Rather than taking the approach of humility, love, and sacrifice for one another, their overall approach was one of pride, power, contention, division, and self-exaltation. This is why chapter 13 reads the way it does. It may get read at weddings, but much of what Paul says in the chapter, and the way it fits in the larger context of the book, is skated over in doing so.

Loving Correction

 1 Cor. 4:21 

Τί θέλετε; ἐν ῥάβδῳ ἔλθω πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἢ ἐν ἀγάπῃ πνεύματί τε πραΰτητος;

“What do you want? Should I come to you with a rod [literally, “in a rod” or “in a scepter”, i.e. “in my official position exercising authority over you”] or in love and a sprit of gentleness?”

The rod here is not something used to discipline a person per se, but rather a scepter symbolizing a person’s authority.

For some reason the ESV simply ignores the τε there. But if you’re going to drop a word entirely, you should have a good reason, and there isn’t one here. The τε is a conjunction connecting ἀγάπῃ and πνεύματί, both of which are functioning as objects of the preposition ἐν. 

One of the clear things about Paul in the New Testament is that he does not like exercising his authority in discipline. He will take off the belt and use it if he has to. But he would much rather ask questions and appeal affectionately as a friend and a father to the churches in order that they might correct their behavior, so that harsh discipline is unnecessary.

An Anxious Nation

 I have been thinking for sometime now...I wonder what percentage of Americans are prescribed and take anxiety medication regularly. I would expect that official statistics are unreliable, and that the number is actually much higher than what they report. And then you consider the number of people who are taking illegal drugs and/or other prescription medication to deal with their emotional and mental issues. Altogether, the number of people who are taking some sort of medication to deal with such problems has to be sky high. Now think for a moment of the widespread problems that can result from playing with one’s body chemistry like that.

So what are the causes of mental and emotional problems?

1. Not being born again
2. Being born again, but refusing to repent of or deal with some sin in our lives
3. Not being reconciled or at peace with a person in our life
4. Not understanding Scripture in a key area, i.e. bad theology
5. Being subject to abuse, either in the present or the past
6. There can be environmental causes as well, which mess with one’s body chemistry
7. An unhealthy diet

I’m sure there’s something I’ve missed. But in each of these cases, prescription medication is simply a patch job. It does nothing to solve the actual problem, and in the long run can do more harm than good.

That Nation We Call Israel

 In the Old Testament, whenever Israel supported the wickedness of the nations, God brought them into a time of severe discipline. The nation that today calls itself Israel also supports all manner of wickedness, the kinds of things that Christians would generally recognize as being evil. On top of that, according to Dispensationalism God has not yet brought Israel together as a nation, as that is something that cannot happen until the Church is raptured from the earth. Why then do Dispensationalists so thoughtlessly support this nation that calls itself Israel, in spite of its wickedness, and purportedly on Biblical grounds?

What is needed of the Church in America today, among other things, is for Christians to know basic theology. And with the events this week, we’re seeing how much that is lacking.

The Peace of the Lord

 “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.7)

Trying to push the requirements for salvation beyond what Scripture says is a mark of spiritual immaturity, or as Paul puts it, being carnal or fleshly. It is the partisan spirit he talks about in 1 Corinthians. Arminians can be saved, and so can Calvinists. Or, for that matter, a person may call himself either one and not be regenerate.

The number of things a person has to know and believe in order to be saved is really quite small. And that leaves a world of things both in and out of Scripture to seek out with joy - in fact, to find enjoyment in. When we are always seeking to turn those things into grounds on which to battle or exclude fellow believers we surrender the peace and joy Christ purchased for us by His work. And that is the point at which we, following Paul, may reasonably begin questioning our salvation. The fruit of the Spirit, he tells us, is peace.

Captain Marxism

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ended up being nothing more than Marxist, racist tripe. It was fairly obvious at the outset that that was the direction it was going. But it was a question of just how bad it would be. The answer turned out to be “pretty bad”. When you’re making your Antifa analogs the real heroes and handling them with a Christ-like reverence, then you’ve basically sold the boat when it comes to any amount of logic or truth. And it looks like we can largely expect the same from Disney in the future. 

No country, no people, no culture, can bear the weight of this false narrative, this dishonest mythology, for long. But we have already been bending under it for some time now. It will take a miracle at this point to prevent the seemingly inevitable collapse.

Find the Sin

 Isn’t the constant game of “find the sin”, which happens on social media, and which is prevalent among the Reformed brethren, exhausting? And it doesn’t seem at all to follow the pattern we see in Scripture, with regard to the presentation of truth and our interactions with each other. The writers of the Bible themselves, as spokespersons of God, were far more poetic and seductive than we tend to be, as was our Lord himself. Beyond that, God thankfully is far more patient with us than we tend to be with each other. He gives us a lifetime in which to become sanctified, while we tend to expect it of each other instantly in any given moment. We are all partly unbelievers until we die, Calvin said, and this should result in large amounts of patience, compassion, and understanding.

Gratitude, quiet kindness, and the pursuit of beauty should probably characterize our lives more than they actually do. And if they did, it would probably bring more health to the church, and more real change in the world around us. 

At what point are we giving godly, loving counsel and rebukes, and at what point are we simply laying upon each other burdens too heavy to bear?

Relativism is a Wanderer

 If you insist on being a relativist in one area of life, that denial of absolute transcendent truth will inevitably show up in other areas of your life and thinking. Are you trying to pretend that sexuality is a fluid and unfixed thing? Then don’t be surprised if one day you find yourself defending racism. There’s a reason why American Leftists who cry out against American racism but support an individualistically determined notion of sexuality will then turn around and say that the treatment of women or minorities in Muslim countries is just “their culture”, or will turn a blind eye toward China’s treatment of Christians and the Uighurs. Once you’ve thrown out the Law of God and His perfect character as the standard, you no longer have a way of defining right and wrong, or, for that matter, anything.

Slaves No More

For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:14)

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6:17-18)

Those who are not saved are enslaved to their sins. They cannot help but sin. But Paul here is saying that those who are born again are no longer enslaved to sin. Though the choice to sin is in one sense always there, sin will not characterize the Christian’s life.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. (Romans 6:22)

Where there is no holiness of life, salvation does not exist. The person who is not pursuing holiness is not saved. Sanctification is absolutely necessary in order for a person to receive eternal life. There are no “Carnal Christians”.

We then have to apply this back to Romans 2:6-11, “He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.”

A Slow Death

 The Market isn’t the primary standard for how well a society is doing. The Law of God, and the degree to which a society is conforming to His Law, is the standard by which to know a society’s well-being. That will be reflected in the Market, but only over time. And how long did it take Rome to collapse? Centuries. So I find it unconvincing to, as some do, look around at the present state of the economy and, seeing the Market rolling along somewhat as usual, on the basis of the economy determine that the “doomsayers” have simply been off their rockers about how Western Civilization is doing. Civilizations that depart from the Law of God decline and eventually die. They simply take their time in doing so, because God is patient and longsuffering, delaying His harshest of judgments as long as possible, giving a people much time to repent.

God gives an unrepentant people wicked rulers. What is the Biden administration’s stance on sexuality and abortion? The answer to that question tells you everything you need to know about where we are.

Chosen Exiles

 Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to the chosen sojourners of the dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: May grace and peace be multiplied to you. (1 Peter 1:1-2, my translation)

Many translations, including the King James and the New King James, take the word “chosen” (or “elect”) and move it down to vs. 2, right before the word “according”. But it doesn’t appear there in the Greek, and there is no justifiable reason for doing this. The notion of “chosen exiles” (or “sojourners”), seemingly inherently contradictory, is meant by Peter to highlight the counterintuitive nature of God’s salvation and the place of His chosen people in this world and age. These are people who have been alienated from their own earthly homeplaces - which would include being alienated from one’s family, one’s land, one’s culture, one’s history, and one’s inheritance (see vs. 4). Their faith in Christ had made them foreigners in relation to their pagan fellow countrymen. And yet, counterintuitively, they are chosen and set apart to God, chosen to better versions of all these things, however it might seem to outsiders, or even to them in the moment, to the contrary. These people are the New Israel, wandering in the desert of this life as God carries them on the road to salvation, moving toward the land He will give them in eternity. 

We are then met in vs. 2 with a series of three prepositional phrases, delineating the Trinitarian salvation God has accomplished for these chosen exiles.  

While the desire to place the word “elect” before this first prepositional phrase is understandable, the complete phrase “chosen sojourners” (or “elect exiles”) is what all three of these prepositional phrases refer back to. Beyond that, the word for “foreknowledge” actually conveys the idea of an unchangeable salvation all on its own, and needs no supplementation. The Greek word “prognosin” carries the idea that the thing foreknown is also determined and fixed. Just as Christ, with His work yet to be accomplished, was foreknown by God in a definitive way before the world was established (vs. 20), so was the salvation of these exiles. God was going to save them, and nothing could change that fact.

The flow of thought here is: foreknowledge->sanctification->obedience and sprinkling of blood. In vs. 3, we find this is meant by Peter to lead to the fact of the resurrection of Christ. And so rather than Peter here speaking of progressive sanctification, he is referring to definitive sanctification, the act of God setting a person apart to Himself at the initial moment of that man’s salvation, when He is regenerated, and justified, and first accepted by the blood of Christ. But it isn’t just the individual’s salvation that is in view here, but also the flow of Jesus’s life in accomplishing salvation, which is then applied to the individual. Our salvation follows the path of Jesus’s ministry. He was foreknown, He was set apart in His baptism when the Spirit descended upon Him, He was perfect in His obedience to His Father, and He shed His blood on our behalf. This then explains why obedience appears before the sprinkling of blood as it does.

The Greek word “eis”, which I have translated as “unto” here, carries a notion of causality - the Spirit’s act of sanctifying us or ceremonially consecrating us to God then inevitably leads to and brings about our obedience and the application of Christ’s blood to us. Though some translations place the phrase “of (or “to”) Jesus Christ” after the word “obedience”, it actually appears in the Greek following the word “blood”. And as with the word “chosen” above, there is no reason to move it. It is the blood of Christ, sprinkled as in the Old Testament offerings, that Peter is speaking of. But is it our obedience or Christ’s obedience that is in view here? Given that you can’t have one without the other, trying to limit it to either seems unnecessary. Peter left it indefinite, and there is no reason why we should feel the need to do otherwise. God’s work of salvation is an indivisible, unified whole. A person cannot be set apart in salvation without obedience to God being an unavoidable result. We walk in the same obedience as that of Jesus Himself. He obeyed the Father, and, like Him and in Him, so do we.

Peter ends his opening with an apostolic granting of grace and peace to the recipients of his letter. That this directly follows a reference to the blood of Christ is deliberate on his part, as it is the blood of Christ that makes these things possible. And while talking about the work of Christ on the Cross always brings with it a reference to the Jewish sacrificial system, the mention of peace makes one wonder if it wasn’t specifically the Peace Offering he had in mind (Lev. 3). These sojourners were chosen for a specific purpose - to be an acceptable offering to God, to bring glory to Him, and to conduct themselves in peace before the watching world, that the world might come to know that the salvation that was spoken of in ages past had finally been brought to bear upon the world in Jesus Christ.

Saved Through Water

 “(I)n which a few - that is, eight souls - were saved through water: this same baptism, thus pictured before, now saves you as well - not as a removal of dirt from your flesh, but as the appeal of a good conscience unto God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. 1 Peter 3

1 Peter 3:8-4:6 has to be taken together as a single thought. Here Peter is making a legal and covenantal argument. The Christian is to live in obedience to God so that when accusations are brought against him by others God the Righteous Judge will be able to declare on the man’s behalf in His court and come to his defense, acting sometimes both as judge and executioner. This presupposes a number of things. Maybe the most prominent and often neglected is the fact of God’s actively being involved in history as a regular and constant reality. Not only does He do this in keeping the planets in orbit, or in making food grow up from the ground, or any other aspect of nature, but He is also actively, constantly, judging and responding in the affairs of men. He raises up some rulers and puts others down. And he acts on behalf of His children when they cry out to Him to do so - and even occasionally when they don’t. He acts for His own glory but also as He is bound in covenant with those He has set apart for Himself. Sometimes He acts by delivering His children immediately when they are suffering unjustly. But as Peter talks about, sometimes He allows the persecution to persist for a long time. Just as Jesus suffered unjustly in His sojourn here, so must we, as we walk the path of salvation He has laid out for us. Either way, the time will come when eventually we will be delivered, either in our death or when Christ returns to rid the world of evil for good and to make all things new.

The point of Peter’s thought with regard to Noah is that justice had to be carried out because the world had grown wicked enough for God to do so. It was through water that God saved Noah’s family. And God also saves us through the water of Baptism. There is no hint here that this water is somehow not water, that this is merely symbolic language for an action carried out by the Holy Spirit apart from real physical water. Just as the Spirit used real water in saving Noah, so He uses real water in saving us. It’s worth saying as well that in neither case is the word “saving” meant in some metaphorical way, in Noah’s or our case either one. Deliverance from the persecution of evil people during our earthly sojourn is not merely symbolic of God’s salvation of our souls when we die. It is the manifestation in this present life of the salvation procured by Jesus’s death and resurrection. God rescued Noah from a wicked world when He brought him through and destroyed evil mankind by the flood. And the point of the passage here is that God will do that for all His children when they look to Him to make a righteous judgment on their behalf. God’s heavenly court is always in session.

This is why I have rendered the phrase “the appeal of a good conscience toward God” the way I have. Some major translations, like the ESV, seem not only not to know how to handle the Greek phrase all by itself, but also don’t understand the larger context in which the verse sits. Peter is echoing an earlier statement from vs. 16, a part of the same flow of thought. The ESV also flubs the translation of the word “sarx”. Somehow they chose to translate the same word as “flesh” in vs. 18 while translating it as “body” here. But that obscures Peter’s deliberate parallel. The idea of Jesus “being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” is meant to parallel “not as a removal of dirt from your flesh, but as the appeal of a good conscience unto God”. Baptism is the application of Christ’s resurrection to the believer, thus resulting in a good conscience. This is why Peter quickly follows the latter phrase with “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. The importance of baptism isn’t that it washes physical dirt off of a person - it isn’t that kind of bath. Rather, it is a legal, covenantally binding ceremony between God and that individual. The person who has been baptized can then go into God’s law court at any time and say to Him, “I am your covenant child. We are legally bound to each other. Please act in space and time on my behalf.” The person who has been baptized has partaken of the work of Christ, and therefore has been, and will be, saved - that is, delivered not only from his own sin, but from the sins of those around him. Peter ends vs. 22 the way He does for that reason. None of the forces of the spiritual realm are above His control. He has authority over all. And when His children call on Him, He acts (Ps. 18).

“My Truth”

 There is no such thing as “your truth” or “my truth”. There is only THE truth. This language of “my truth” is a cutesy way of attempting an end run around absolute reality, making truth a sentimentalistic, individualistic thing. It is the idolatry of one’s self. It tries to reject God as the one who defines truth, instead putting one’s self in the place of God and creating its own reality. This way the person can reject the absolute moral standards that exist outside of him and which are binding upon him. But then the person with this approach invariably turns back to other people and hypocritically tries to bind them to his own self-invented moral standards, as if they aren’t allowed to do what that person just did by creating their own reality.

Individualism is death. No man can take the place of the Creator and Sustainer of all things.

No Doctrine At Odds With Another

 No one doctrine of Scripture is separate from any other doctrine of Scripture, any more than one attribute of God is disconnected from another. As God is unified, so are His works in the created order. And so if we find ourselves holding to an eschatology that is at odds with our soteriology, then the disconnection comes from a fault in our understanding of one or both. Eschatology is the working out of God’s soteriology in the cosmos, no more and no less.

The Real “Parenthesis”

 Dispensationalism has always taught that the Church is a “parenthesis“ in God’s plan. But Romans and Galatians make it clear that if anything can be regarded as a parenthesis, it’s OT Israel. The Law, as in Israel’s Law, and the nation of Israel, were a temporary arrangement designed to prepare the way for Jesus. This is evident in Paul going back before Israel to Abraham to illustrate justification by faith (Rom. 4). The Law was a guardian to keep mankind until the work of Christ was accomplished and justification by faith was brought to bear upon Jew and Gentile alike (Gal. 3:23-29). God does not have, and has never had, two parallel systems working, but rather one overarching plan. Israel was always meant to be temporary, while the salvation of all mankind apart from Israel was God’s end goal. Dispensationalism somehow manages to get Scripture exactly backwards in this.

Curious Angels

 “It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look” (1 Peter 1:12). The last line, “things into which angels long to look”, isn’t a mysterious aside by Peter. He’s making an allusion to the work of angels as “ministers of salvation” in the Old Covenant (Heb. 1-2). He repeats variations on the word “angel” three times in this verse, something which doesn’t carry over into English. And like with other major doctrines in this chapter, he makes use of these words at one point here and then revisits them later in the chapter (vs. 25, “εὐαγγελισθὲν”). So there is some word play going on in his mentioning of angels. But it isn’t just word play. The whole point is that God gave revelation of the work of Christ yet to come in the Old Testament, but gave no clarity on who this savior would be or when he would arrive. These revelations of the salvation yet to come were themselves acts of salvation by God, as He worked out His redemption of the world. And so this chapter is filled with words of knowing, searching, inquiring, seeking, and looking. Those things that were hidden, which men and angels longed and do long to see, were revealed beginning in the first century and have continued to be revealed in the New Covenant up to this day, with the pulling back of the veil (apokalupsis, apocalypse) so that men and angels might gaze into the Most Holy Place upon the glory of Christ in His person and work. What was once hard to see is now set up before all men to behold, in the proclamation of the Gospel and the good works of believing men. And this is why here and throughout the book Peter exhorts them to lives of holiness, that the fullness of Christ’s work might take hold in their lives, and that others may be saved. Rather than the end of vs. 12 being a confusing aside, or vs. 10-12 as it might seem at first blush, this section is at the core of Peter’s exhortation to them, as its teaching is throughout the New Testament in its message - though it seems to be something we have often failed to make clear in the Church.