The Meaning of the Gospel: Depart from Sin

John Calvin, in his commentary on 1 John 2:1:

It is not only the sum and substance of the preceding doctrine, but the meaning of almost the whole gospel, that we are to depart from sin.

Quotes of the Day

"Take a look at America's self-esteem curriculum or just watch "Oprah" once in a while and you'll see that deep down we're not so sure we are OK. At the very least, most of us need some convincing.

"As a minister, I've witnessed the worry and doubt firsthand. A mother of young children wonders if her house is clean enough and if she'll ever measure up. A cancer patient isn't sure if he prays and loves God as much as he should. A young man struggles to feel like a good person again after his affair. At the bottom of all these fears and anxieties, they are asking the same question....

"Most of us are desperate for reassurance, yet today a large and growing number of Americans are looking for answers to their deepest questions outside the church. Churches across the country are struggling to define their purpose in this postmodern and increasingly secular age. Many are de-emphasizing the Gospel and emphasizing social issues. Others are attracting crowds with self-help messages. And some are swimming with the cultural current, embracing doubt itself as a narrative.

"The problem today is that the "good news" is often replaced with good advice and good causes. Churches that should be talking about the work of Christ on the cross and the grace of God for sinners are stuck on recycled pop psychology, moral exhortation, or entertainment. But these fail to speak to the eternal question that haunts all of us: How do I know that I'm OK? We all want to know we are justified."

****

"Indeed, the closer you look at the scandal the more you realize it's all one big outrage. The same journalistic tribalism that allowed Dan Rather to destroy his career over "Memogate" keeps reinforcing itself. Rather picked sources who said what he wanted to hear, then he reported what they said as if it were indisputable. The same thing is happening on climate change. Ideological bias is a major factor in the news media's work as a transmission belt for the climate industry. But part of the problem is also that the journalists do a bad job when the majority of "respected" experts agree on anything complicated. For instance, it was pretty impossible for reporters to independently investigate whether Saddam Hussein had WMDs, and since the most established authorities agreed he had to have them, the news media reported the consensus, which turned out to be wrong."

****

"[I]f you want to hear honest talk about the realities of abortion, go speak with those abortion counselors and providers. Even the most radically pro-choice will tell you that the political discourse they hear about the subject, with its easy dichotomies and bumper-sticker boilerplate, has little correspondence to the messy, intricate stories of her patients. They hear about peace and guilt, relief and sin. And it is they who will acknowledge, whether we like it or not, that the rhetoric and imagery of the pro-life movement can touch on some basic emotional truths. Peg Johnston, who manages Access for Women in upstate New York, remembers the first time her patients unconsciously began to co-opt the language of the protesters outside. 'And it wasn’t that these protesters were brainwashing them,' she says. 'It’s that they were tapping into things we all have some discomfort about.'"

****

"I imagine when she approached the car with a club, he said: No, don't use a wood, use a nine-iron."

Tim Keller/Redeemer in New York Magazine

"New York magazine ran this piece reporting on what is actually a fringe phenomenon in the city. In reality, this phenomenon is no more central to life in present-day NYC than is the pagan revivalist movement to Athens. It’s something freakish to note, but not to be taken too seriously."

That's how one commenter opined on a new profile of Redeemer Church and Tim Keller.

Marriage is Like Christ and the Church

Three reasons from JP:

1. It lifts marriage out of sordid sitcom images and gives it the magnificent meaning God meant it to have.
2. It gives marriage a solid basis in grace, since Christ obtained and sustains his bride by grace alone.
3. It shows that the husband's headship and the wife's submission are crucial and crucified. That is, they are woven into the very meaning of marriage as a display of Christ and the church, but they are both defined by Christ's self-denying work on the cross so that pride and slavishness are cancelled.

10 Things to Remember When Your Child is Disobedient

From GraceLaced:

1. You disobey the Lord…and He is the perfect Father.

2. His kindness leads us to repentance.

3. God disciplines those He loves.

4. Your child’s disobedience does not measure your value any more than his obedience showcases your achievement.

5. Your child’s disobedience teaches you dependence on God.

6. And sometimes it’s more than dependence He’s after, it’s complete desperation for Him.

7. Your child is clearly a sinner, and needs to hear the truth of the Gospel, and see it lived out through you.

8. Times of correction serve to remind, or establish within your child, his own sense of need for a Savior.

9. It’s not good behavior you really desire…you want his heart.

10. Your child is a person, not a project.

Quotes of the Day

“When we started watching his shows, we had intended to apply his advice toward our dogs,” said Amy Twomey, a blogger on parenthood for The Dallas Morning News who is raising three children under 10 with her husband, Matt. “But we realized a lot of ideas can be used on our kids.”

****

"Y'all well know that I really don't like Sarah Palin. In fact, more than one of you has yelled at me about this. And I find the whole schtick about how the media is just a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her really grating.

"That's why I really wish the media wouldn't act like, well, a bunch of elitist hooligans who are out to get her. I've coined a new phrase to cover the situation: Palinoia. It's when you think people are out to get you, and then they do their best to justify your erroneous belief."

****

"Predominantly, Christians will need to consider the implications of having the most powerful woman in the world be a career woman who holds such a job despite having young children. While Christians will be pleased to be able to support a woman who is strongly pro-life, pro-family and pro-constitution, they will also wrestle with the fact that she will want to lead the country even as the mother of several young children. And Christians may wonder what she really believes and how strongly she believes it. She is anxious to win over evangelicals but in the end she offers little of spiritual substance beyond what we might expect from any American politician. After all, no President has yet denied being a Christian."

****

"The New Gospel...usually starts with an apology: 'I’m sorry for my fellow Christians. I understand why you hate Christianity. It’s like that thing Ghandi said, ‘why can’t the Christians be more like their Christ?’ Christians are hypocritical, judgmental, and self-righteous. I know we screwed up with the Crusades, slavery, and the Witch Trials. All I can say is: I apologize. We’ve not [given] you a reason to believe.'”

Hope To Prisoners

Piper recently went to Angola prison in Angola, Louisiana. His whole reflection on the experience is worth your time, but his words to the entire prison (via closed circuit TV) are especially affecting:

For 90% of you the next stop is not home and family, but heaven or hell. O what glorious news we have in that situation. And believe me it is not the prosperity of Gospel. Jesus came and died and rose again not mainly to be useful, but to be precious. And that he can be in Angola as well as Atlanta. Perhaps even more.

Quotes of the Day

"A lot of Christians, especially people who have had dramatic conversion experiences, go sailing out of the harbor with wind in their sails. They are so confident in Christ and what he has done for their salvation, and that gospel wind is in their sails. Yet after two years, they have heard just one imperative after another. They have lots of course plotting, lots of books on how to do this and that. They've read every manual on spiritual disciplines. They have heard their pastor tell them they need to pray more, to read the Bible more, to evangelize more. Now they are dead in the water. There's no wind in the sails."

***

"Not only will we be right back where we started, it will expose the federal trial as nothing more than a show trial. Show trials are conducted by despots and dictators to give only a thin veneer of legality to political detentions and executions. If the state isn’t prepared to abide by the decision of the court, including dismissals and acquittals, then the use of the trial system is worse than useless. It demeans the federal system needed for Americans to seek unbiased justice."

***

"He’s a little on the short side, neither fat nor thin, and he wears jeans and a sports jacket, not a shiny suit and an oily smile. With his goatee and what’s left of his graying hair trimmed close to his head, he looks mostly like what he is—a well-groomed, middle- to upper-middle-class American professional. But when he runs out onstage and starts dispensing financial advice, you realize that he could have been a great preacher."

Marriage is a Mirror

Oh man, this is so good:

On, Do You Presently Trust Christ for Your Salvation?

In a particularly ominous statement on eternal security, Wayne Grudem asks what your response should be when God asks you why you should be let into heaven (in Systematic Theology, p. 803):

If I were to die tonight and stand before God's judgement seat, and if he were to ask me why he should let me into heaven, would I begin to think of my good deeds and depend on them, or would I without hesitation say that I am depending on the merits of Christ and am confident that he is a sufficient savior?

The difference between those two answer is razor thin and, at the same time, world's apart.

Be Acquainted With Repentance

J.C. Ryle:

He that desires to be a true Christian must be experimentally acquainted with repentance and remission of sins. These are the principle things in saving religion. To belong to a pure church, and to hear the gospel, and receive the sacraments are the great privileges: but are we converted? Are we justified? If not, we are dead before God.

Happy is the Christian who keeps these two points continually before his eyes! The brightest saint is the man who has the most heart-searching sense of his own sinfulness, and the liveliest sense of his own complete acceptance in Christ.

The Prosperity Gospel in Africa

Via Out of Ur. Words cannot express how infuriating this is to me.

"Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness." -James 3:1

Count It No Strange Thing to Get Sick

J.C. Ryle:

If we are true Christians, we must not expect everything smooth in our journey to heaven. We must count it no strange thing, if we have to endure sicknesses, losses, bereavements, and disappointments, just like other men. Free pardon and full forgiveness, grace by the way and glory to the end – all this our Savior has promised to give. But He has never promised that we shall have no afflictions. He loves us too well to promise that.

By affliction He teaches us many precious lessons, which without it we should never learn. By affliction He shows us our emptiness and weakness, draws us to the throne of grace, purifies our affections, weans us from the world, makes us long for heaven. In the resurrection morning we shall all say, ‘it is good for me that I was afflicted.’ We shall thank God for every storm.

Strident Critique of Christless Christianity

Inside baseball ahead.

I read a book a few months back called Christless Christianity by Michael Horton. I enjoyed it tremendously and quoted from it extensively on this blog. Perhaps I should have been more careful. John Frame has come out with a capacious critique of Horton, finding most of the work exaggerated, unfounded and, perhaps most brutally, unbiblical. Though he shoots sometimes where he need not (I sense he has little capacity for understanding pendulum swinging polemics), his objections seem true and important, especially insofar as we take stock of America and what she has become. Whereas Horton, the constant caviler, sees theological devastation, Frame, an optimist, sees growth. Frame writes:

For what it is worth, my own perception of American evangelicalism is very different from Horton’s. My observation is anecdotal (just like his, in the final analysis), but based on around 55 years of adult observation in many different kinds of churches including the much maligned mega-churches. In most every evangelical church I have visited or heard about, the “focus” is on God in Christ. There has been something of a shift over the years in what Horton would call a “subjective” direction. But that is best described not as unfaithfulness, but as a shift toward more application of Scripture to people’s external situations and inner life. There is a greater interest in sanctification (not just justification), on Christianity as a world view, on believers’ obligations to one another, on love within the body of Christ, and in the implications of Scripture for social justice.

I don’t see this as wrong, or unbiblical. Indeed, I think this general trend is an improvement over the state of affairs fifty years ago. Scripture is certainly concerned about these matters, and we ought to teach and learn what it has to say. Indeed, a “focus on God” that neglects scrutiny of ourselves does not honor God at all. As Calvin says on the first page of his Institutes, we cannot know ourselves without knowing God, and we can’t know God without knowing ourselves. And Calvin (rather unlike Horton) says that he doesn’t know which comes first. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says as its answer to Question 1, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever.” (Emphasis mine.) So it is possible to have a God-centered view of human experience and subjectivity, a human “focus” that detracts not one bit from a biblical God-centeredness.

The review goes on at great length, most of which I don't have the time to comment on. One section, however, was especially challenging to me. Horton tries to show, in one part of the book, that preachers who preach without Christ at the forefront, without the gospel at the climax, without ultimately preaching Christ and him crucified, are preaching moralistically. That is, to the degree a preacher focuses on the moral implications of a Bible story (say, the call to be more like David who had the faith to slay the giant in his life), he is not representing the the true gospel. Frame quotes Horton:

Regardless of the official theology held on paper, moralistic preaching (the bane of conservatives and liberals alike) assumes that we are not really hopeless sinners who need to be rescues but decent folks who need good examples, exhortations, and instructions...

Frame responds:

This insult is quite undeserved. Horton says that to use a biblical character as an example for Christians today is a denial of the gospel. (Or is he again criticizing an “emphasis?” Hard to say.) That is nonsense. And it shows again that Horton has no ear for the complexity of biblical salvation, for the distinction between justification and sanctification. Obviously we are not justified by following anyone’s example, only by trusting in Christ. But in the process of sanctification we often have need of examples and, for that matter, exhortations and instructions as well. Scripture itself provides these, and we ought to be thankful for them.

I think what has happened here is that Horton has locked on to a certain theory of preaching and has neglected to look at what the Bible actually says. And at this point the theory is so unscriptural that Horton’s condemnations reflect back on himself rather than hitting his targets.

I agree with Horton that preachers sometimes refer to Bible characters without an adequate appreciation of their place in the history of redemption. Certainly it would be wrong to preach on David and Goliath and conclude that all believers have the power to kill literal giants (cf. Horton, 148-49). But that is just to say that Scripture passages must be understood in the context of the whole Bible. It certainly does not forbid all use of Bible characters as examples.

Horton should have thought about this enough to understand that there is an opposite extreme. I once had occasion to sit for some months under the preaching of a couple of Horton’s students. Their sermons typically developed some too-clever way at making their text “point to Christ.” Beyond that, they offered no illustrations, no applications except a general “repent and believe.” I hope Horton doesn’t regard this kind of preaching as ideal. But had he merely recognized that there were two extremes he would not have used rhetoric that condemned only one, but would have tried to do some careful analysis to define a middle position.

The implications of this, if you believe Frame, are quite profound right now in Reformed circles, and especially those who follow Tim Keller. Though Keller would never go to the lengths Horton does to castigate "moralists," he teaches similarly. How does one promote sanctification within his church body? is the question. Can you make clear that you should avoid adultery by pointing, say, to Jospeh fleeing from Potipher's wife, but not by pointing to the cross? Keller and Horton, I would suspect, would say no. Frame, it seems, says yes and no.

If there is common ground between Frame and Horton, I think it is blinded by Horton's language. He sounds almost legalistic in his gospel assertions, but I know he is not. Similar to Keller, I think he knows that sanctification stands upon justification, not vice versa. "Salvation by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone" as Martin Luther would say. And so Horton and Keller would say that the basis for understanding and emulating Joseph, for example, is the cross, is your justification (and I suspect Frame would be in agreement here). Where Horton, at least, disagrees with Frame is in the application of that. In every sermon, Horton would say, you must present Christ (which is quite similar to Luther's method). If you don't, if you make a moral proclamation based on some character in the bible without making clear the cross, you have left out the gospel entirely. Frame seems to be on to something when he says that it "nonsense." The real issue, and Frame makes this clear, is the preacher who understands this not at all. It is the preacher who preaches only sanctification by justification that we should be concerned with. And, in truth, I don't know if even Joel Osteen falls into that camp.

Whatever the case, Frame calls Horton to the carpet. He concludes the review:

I usually don’t review books at this length. But I have noticed that the theology of this book is becoming more influential in evangelical and Reformed circles, and I believe there is danger in that. I say that despite the fact that I agree with the book about many things. Most relevantly, I agree with Horton that the evangelical church needs to put more emphasis on man’s sin and the saving grace of Christ, less emphasis on what Horton regards as other things and what I regard as the lower-priority applications of Christ’s work. But he thinks this wrong emphasis is so bad as to put the church in immediate danger of Christless apostasy. I do not.

Horton’s alarmism is persuasive to many people, and I have been moved to try to show them their persuasion is premature. The problem is that the yardstick Horton uses to measure the American church’s allegiance to Christ is not an accurate yardstick. Or, to drop the metaphor, Horton measures the American church with a defective theology.

He comes on to the reader as a generic Protestant Christian with a passion for the historic doctrines of the atonement and of justification by faith alone. He writes engagingly. Naturally, then, other Protestants tend to resonate to his arguments. But Horton is not just a generic Protestant or even a generic Reformed theologian. He holds certain positions that are not warranted by the Reformed Confessions and which in my mind are not even Scriptural. To review, he advocates the following:

1. Attention to ourselves necessarily detracts from attention to Christ.

2. We should not give attention to the way we communicate the gospel, or to making it relevant to its hearers.

3. God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are a zero-sum game. The idea that man must do something compromises the absolute sovereignty of God.

4. God’s work of salvation is completely objective, external to us, and not at all subjective, internal to us. (Here he backtracks some.)

5. God promises us no earthly blessings, only heavenly ones, and to desire earthly blessings is a “theology of glory,” deserving condemnation.

6. Law and gospel should be utterly separate. There should be no good news in the bad news and no bad news in the good news.

7. Preaching of the gospel must never use biblical characters as moral or spiritual examples. Nor must it address practical ethical issues in the Christian life.

8. A focus on redemption excludes a focus on anything else.

9. In worship and in the general ministry of the church, God gives and does not receive; the congregation receives and does not give.

10. Analysts of the church must compare the Church’s focus on Christ with its focus on other things, rather than considering that many of these other things are in fact applications of Christ’s own person and work.

Horton considers adherence to these principles essential, so that departing from them constitutes Christlessness, and failure to emphasize them sufficiently leads to a false gospel. But not one of these principles is found in any Reformed confession. (#6 is found in the Lutheran confessions, but it is controversial among other Protestants.) And in my view, none of them are Scriptural.

So Christless Christianity is essentially an evaluation of the American church, not from the standpoint of a generic Protestant theology, but from what I must regard as a narrow, factional, even sectarian perspective. Readers need to understand this. If we remove #1-10 as measuring sticks for the American church, the church does not look nearly as bad as Horton presents it.

There is great danger here of further division within the body of Christ, as if there were not already enough. Arguments over redemptive-historical preaching (#7) have already split congregations apart. When one group presents these principles as the only orthodox position, but others (understandably) are not convinced, and the principles themselves are often unclear, we have a recipe for disaster.

And the church would do well, in my judgment, not to add principles 1-10 to its creed. The results could include intentional irrelevance (1-2), especially on social matters (5, 7, 8), Christian passivity (3, 9), intellectualism and impersonalism in our relation to God (4, 9), artificiality in preaching, not drawing on the richness of Scripture (2, 6-8), elimination of lay ministry (9), and poor theological analyses and evaluations of the church (10).

So I must render a negative verdict on this book, though commending the author’s passion for the purity of the church and for the gospel. In doing this, I must disagree with many friends and respected colleagues, who have commended this volume lavishly. They should have known better.

For those of you interested, the whole thing is worth your time, even if you haven't read Christless Christianity.

Without the Gospel, We Have Spiritual Scoliosis

Michael Horton, in The Gospel-Driven Life: Being Good News People in a Bad News World:

Paul and his fellow apostles knew that they were by nature – - like the rest of us – - bent in on themselves. And picking up on a phrase from Augustine, the Protestant Reformers said that as fallen sinners we are all “curved in on ourselves.” Born with a severe case of spiritual scoliosis, our spines are twisted so that all we can see are our own immediate felt needs, desires, wants, and momentary gratifications. But the gospel makes us stand erect, looking up to God in faith and out to the world and our neighbors in love and service. Not every piece of news can do that, but the gospel can...

Like a branch that has been bent out of shape, we fall back naturally to being curved in on ourselves unless we are being pulled back constantly to raise our eyes up to God in faith as he has clothed himself in the gospel of his Son.

HT: CB

RB Tweets the Gospel (Again)

Rob Bell tries to tweet the gospel again:

The gospel is the counterintuitive, joyous, exuberant news that Jesus has brought the unending, limitless, stunning love of God to even us.

...by offering us giant Twinkies. Or, insert anything you'd like.

Bell, for whatever reason, can't actually bring himself to say what the good news is. To him, it is explanation enough to say that it is "love." But could anyone be saved by knowledge of the 'exuberant news' as he describes it? Can you truly understand the gospel without knowledge of the horribly serious way in which Christ came to us in love? Why does his statement feel a million miles away from "[B]ut God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us"?

Knowing that We're Sinners Helps Our Marriage

Dave Harvey's book When Sinner's Say "I Do" is really good. Still, there are some who'd avoid this book simply because the title seems to betray the idea that marriage is negative. Is that true? In a good interview with Westminster Theological Seminary, Harvey answers that question:

WTS: Identifying the members of a marriage as “sinners” might seem a very negative portrayal. Why this emphasis in the title?

DH: There is a simple biblical truth that has helped me that may also help you in understanding the title. To say “I am a sinner” is to stare boldly at a fundamental reality that many people don’t even want to glance at. But when we acknowledge the fact that sin holds considerable sway in our lives, several great things become clear. First, we find ourselves in some pretty good company—the heroes of our faith from Old Testament times to present—who experienced the battle with sin on the front lines. Second, we also acknowledge what everybody around us already knows—particularly our spouse. But, by far the greatest benefit of acknowledging our sinfulness, is that it makes Christ and his work for us precious to us. Like Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5: 31-32). Only sinners need a Savior. So I guess the bad news is that we’re sinners, but the good news is that the power of the gospel gives us hope for a happy, fruitful marriage.

You Must Know That God Loves You

Richard Lovelace, quoted in Tim Keller's The Prodigal God, p. 54:

[People] who are no longer sure that God loves and accepts them in Jesus, apart from their present spiritual achievements, are subconsciously radically insecure persons.... Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce, defensive assertion of their own righteousness, and defensive criticism of others. They come naturally to hate other cultural styles and other races in order to bolster their own security and discharge their suppressed anger.

Parenting in Weakness

I linked to this sermon earlier this week but decided to pull it out into its own post. It is that good. It's by Dave Harvey and is called "Parenting in Weakness." I am also in the middle of his great marriage book When Sinners Say I Do.

Download it here or listen to it below (there are two longish intros to forward through):

It is Our Highest Pleasure, to Love Him Beyond Measure

John Newton (italics mine):

Shall men pretend to pleasure,

Who never knew the Lord,
Can all the worldling's treasure
True peace of mind afford!
They shall obtain this jewel

In what their hearts desire,
When they by adding fuel
Can quench the flame of fire.

Till you can bid the ocean,

When furious tempests roar,'

Forget its wonted motion,
And rage and swell no more;

In vain your expectation
To find content in sin,
Or freedom from vexation,
While passions reign within.

Come turn your thoughts to Jesus,

If you would good possess
Tis he alone that frees us
From guilt and from distress:

When he by faith is present
The sinner's troubles cease;

His ways are truly pleasant,

And all his paths are peace

Our time in sin we wasted,

And fed upon the wind;
Until his love we tasted,
No comfort could we find:
But now we stand to witness

His power and grace to you;
May you perceive its fitness,
And call upon him too!

Our pleasure and our duty,

Though opposite before
Since we have seen his beauty,
Are join'd to part no more:
It is our highest pleasure,

No less than duty's call,
To love him beyond measure,

And serve him with our all.