Living it Out

For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed— God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. - I Thess. 2:3-6

Many times, I have heard Christians talk about the need to "live the Gospel", as opposed to just preaching it. Sometimes I think that's a hollow cliche, but I think this passage shows us what it means to "live the Gospel", or "preach the Gospel without actions".

The summary: make sure your ministry is free from a desire for glory and riches. Make the approval of God your prize, not the approval of man or their money. That's how to preach the Gospel with your life.

Faith

Have you ever heard someone point out that faith is not just a religious idea, but that all living requires faith? Like how it takes faith to get on an airplane, faith to believe that what you're eating isn't poison, etc. John Calvin pointed something very interesting out in his Institutes about this that I want to share with you.

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In Book II, Section 1.4, he pointed out that Adam's sin in the garden was an act of faith. When the devil came to Adam and told him that God was lying, and that he would not surely die if he ate, Adam had faith in the devil and believed him. He ate out of faith in the devil's word. God had told him something different, but Adam chose to believe the devil.

If your faith is not in Jesus, you are still acting out of faith. Jesus has said that His burden is light, that His commandments are good, and that He will forgive you and give you eternal life if you come to Him. If you have not done that, what sorts of things are you believing about Him? Who are you believing about him?

The Curtain Torn

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, "Truly this was the Son of God!" - Matthew 27:50-54

In the Old Testament Temple, there was a veil that kept everyone out of the Holy of Holies, the most secret and holy place of God. When the Lord Jesus died, that veil was broken. It would not be long before the whole Temple would be destroyed, but Matthew is making an important point, for now all the people could go into the most Holy place and worship the Living God through Jesus. The Roman centurion could not have seen or known God in old times, but now He can know Jesus.

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There something about what the centurion said that is very interesting. Now that the veil is torn I think Christians can see something clearly that used to be blurry. It is the mysterious understanding of God Christians call the Trinity. For even though Jesus was dead (at that point), the centurion could see that He was the Son of God.

The Trinity is very mysterious, so I will not say anything to explain it, except to say that it means that there is One God who made heaven and earth, and only One. And He exists forever in Three Persons who love and serve One Another. They are all of the same essence, which means that they are all fully God. And They are also distinct from One another.

That is something that Jesus' death on the cross reveals to us, and which we can look at and ponder about for thousands of years.

The Search

Are you searching for Truth? Maybe you are not a member of a particular religion, but are looking for answers to life's questions. I want to point out something about this search that many people are doing.

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I think it is good to search, but one problem for many modern searchers is that they really are not searching. They are just imagining things that might be true. They are asking themselves "If this thing I just thought of were True, would I like it?". They are not looking any farther than what's already in their heads. That's not searching.

Think about the problems with imagining. Could you imagine something you wished for twenty years ago, but would hate for it to be True now? If you imagined Truth in your own head, you would be limiting any future growth in your life! Can you think of something you wished would be true, but another part of you knows that wouldn't be good? How can you trust yourself to pick what's really True out of all the options?

So if you're looking for Truth, you have to get out and search. When you find the Truth about Life, it's got to come completely from outside of you. Someone has to say "This is the Truth about Life", and you'll need to accept as it is. In some ways you will resist it, because it will decide some of your conflicts in a way you wish it wouldn't. In some ways it will perplex you, because it will describe parts of the world that you haven't grown into yet. And in some ways you will love it because it is the Truth about Life that you have been looking for.

Furthermore, when you find someone who has the Truth, they will need to point out where they got it. They will be human too, with all the same limitations as you. They will have to point out how they arrived at the Truth. Maybe you can trace it back to the Truth itself.

And last, don't settle for a counterfeit. The first thing you will discover is that there are competing Truths. But one minute of logical thinking will let you realize that if the Truth comes from outside of us, then one of the Truths is really Truth, and the others are fake. They will come into conflict with each other, and you will need to sift through the impostors. There are many red-herrings out there. This search you have undertaken is not an easy thing!

So if you're searching, get out and search! Read every book in the library. Ask everybody you know, and really listen. Dig through lost tombs like Indiana Jones. Weigh the results and turn away from traps. But don't just imagine. The Truth is out there!

And if you're really searching, honestly, the answers may be very near to you. In fact, they are as close as this. God bless.

They Like Jesus

These are a list of chapter titles from Dan Kimball's book They Like Jesus But Not the Church, which I heard mentioned in a worship service recently. His book is about impressions that non-Christians have regarding American Christians, and is written to help us to correct problems so that we can have a better image in the world.

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1. The church is an organized religion with a political agenda.

2. The church is judgmental and negative.

3. The church is dominated by males and oppresses females.

4. The church is homophobic.

5. The church arrogantly claims all other religions are wrong.

6. The church is full of fundamentalists who take the whole Bible literally.

Please pay attention to these six statements. Each one of them is a lie that the world tells about Christians in order to produce false guilt, with the goal of getting us to compromise our witness and be unfaithful to God. Every one of them. The goal is to get us to back off from a stand that we have taken in righteousness, witnessing to God's will for His creation, so that the world can go more quickly towards sin, death and destruction.

Can you recognize that these slanders all have to do with the primary fronts-of-attack by the world on the church and God in this age? The world hates the image of God and kills it in the womb at the rate of 40+ million times per year. America is one of the few places on earth where the church is involved politically to carry out a real mercy ministry in attempt to stop it. The world hates the image of Christ and His Church as shown in complementarian heterosexual marriages, and some parts of the American Church are still faithful to testify to God's character in this. The world hates Jesus and does not want to acknowledge that He reaches out to the lost clearly through His Scriptures that there is no other way of salvation.

Christian, do you see that these lies are designed to get you to stop being faithful to Him? Can you see that the world wants the clear teaching of God in His Bible to be silenced? And can you understand that their most potent weapon is to make you feel shame and false guilt before men? To manipulate the deep desire we all have to be liked, applauded, approved?

My question to you then is this- are you willing to wear these lies faithfully with him? Are you willing to be slandered and hated by men as our Lord Jesus was? Just how much do you love the approval and applause of men? Are you willing to rejoice when men speak evil of you, for so they persecuted the prophets that were before you?

It may be that you or your church needs to do better, and that there is a real falling short in one of these areas. In fact it may even be likely. Please wait until God reveals that to you from His Word, and take the course of correction that He reveals to you. But you have to know that in our modern age, His course of correction will still require you being willing to be hated and despised by men for His name's sake. And He will require faithful Christians to fight and die on these fronts.

May God give us ears to hear and hearts of strength.

Hope

What hope is there?

Many people lament the removal of God from our public life. We've all heard about battles over the Ten Commandments, graduation invocations, and creches. Perhaps there's even been a battle in your town, when someone was offended by some mention of God in a public place and took to litigation. Older folks among us feel that their way of life is under assault, that we are in danger of losing our awareness that God is among and watching us. And it's even worse than that- we've declared open war on God.

The easiest place to see this, of course, is in the squabbles over public prayer and the mottoes on coins. But the battle is joined on many more fronts, fronts with much higher stakes. The war is not just over the name of God, but His image as well.

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The Bible says that God made men and women at the beginning, and that He put His image in us when He did. And modern men and women want nothing to do with that image. We can see this in how we disfigure ourselves with tattoos and piercings- some people want to look nothing like anything that God would make. Pornographers hate the way God made women's bodies, and so we force our sisters and daughters to starve in the name of beauty. And it's come to actual slaughter where the image of God is perhaps clearest- in our children. We dismember them in the womb, and neglect and abandon those who are lucky enough to escape.

We hate the image of God in us so much that we would kill ourselves to get rid of it. If abortion doesn't make us extinct, low birth rates and inner-city crime might finish the job. We hate the image of a pregnant woman, and have taken our fruitlessness to the utter extreme in gay marriages. Truly the Bible says that those who hate wisdom (and God) love death, and we can't get enough of it. Slow, drug-induced, dark death. It fascinates us.

And I believe there's a reason for our love of death: we hate the image of God because we want to kill Him. We get rid of His name because we hate Him, and we kill ourselves and our children because it's the closest to killing God we can come. If we could, we would kill Him. "Leave me alone", we cry. "I hate you", we tell our Father.

I hope I've made it sound as bleak as possible. Of course it's not all bleak and bad- God's Spirit is still at work in the world. But I've been dire for one reason- because the Light is all that much brighter when it's dark. The good news is so much sweeter when the bad is overwhelming. It is very dark, but there is great light:

We already killed God.

The Bible says that He came once. His name was Jesus. He put on human arms and legs, skin and bones. He walked among us, showing us Himself through mighty works. He cast out demons, healed the sick, read people's minds, and even raised the dead. He taught with power, revealing the depths of people's hearts with shrewd insight while offering mercy and forgiveness to the lowest of the low.

And we responded in the same way that modern men would have us: we put Him to death. We convicted Him in a kangaroo court in which we couldn't even get two liars to agree on false charges. We beat Him publicly, mocking His grace, mercy and authority. We gambled for His clothes and pulled out His beard. We hung Him up naked on a tree to suffocate, nails in each of His hands and feet. And we left Him there until He died, after six hours of agony.

And it was the moment of victory for every secularist, atheist, and scoffing post-modernist that ever lived. Every crooked politician in the history of the world mocked Him- "This is the King of the Jews". Every abortionist took delight in snuffing out that perfect, innocent life-- the One that our infants remind us so much of. Every pornographer stared in glee at His naked body. Every wicked man, every sinner ever among us, had a hand at the hammer, driving the nails in to kill Him forever, finally to be left to ourselves.

Saint Paul described all this in a remarkable way. Hear 1st Corinthians: "If they had known what they were doing, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory." Indeed.

Because it wasn't just man's wrath and hatred that Jesus bore on the Cross. It was God's, as well. All of God's anger towards our pettiness, our thieveries, our murders, our hatreds and lusts, all of it. God heard our blasphemies and answered them there. He saw the murders we committed in the dark, and He paid them back there. The cries of our slaughtered babies reached Him, and He punished them there, on His Son. The war between God and man reached the pivotal point there on Golgotha, outside of the city. Man took God in His hands to kill Him, and God gave Him over.

I'm laughing as I write this, because it's so good. Do you see? The plot twist is so perfect, so masterfully conceived. Both sides spent all their wrath on Jesus. Wicked men killed Him. God killed Him. The message was snuffed out. His friends and followers were scattered, each to their own home alone. It was so bad that the sun went dark for hours.

And it didn't work. He got up.

I think it's deeply ironic that the first people to see the Resurrection were public servants, paid by the corrupt officials to make sure that Jesus' followers couldn't steal the body and make any claims. Can you imagine? You've got the God you didn't believe in (and hated) killed and laid in the tomb, and now angels are rolling the stone away. And He's coming out in glory. On the third day. There would be no spinning this, no scientific explanations. They did the only thing they could, which is run away and take a bribe to be quiet about it. Those officials knew right away what was happening, and took the last measure available to them- "Make sure no one knows!" Somethings never change, it seems.

But they do change, and they changed that Sunday morning. Everything, and forever. How could wicked men ever get rid of God, if killing Him didn't work? How could corrupt governments use death and torture to enslave- who would be afraid anymore? How could we ever get rid of the image of God, if killing it only purified and brought it back with power? What if God took all our hatred and murder, and used it to save the world? What could the evil do? This is hopelessness- hopelessness for the mission of wicked men. God is here to stay.

And God used it to save the world. For He did not send His son to condemn the world (we tried that ourselves), but to save the world. And He did, and is busy in finishing it. Jesus died with all the world's misery and darkness, and came bursting out of the tomb again. He took it all and laid there, stone dead in the tomb, and still shook it off and came out. The grave couldn't hold Him, and nothing else could either. He was seen by hundreds who spread the news all over the world. And He was taken up to God's hand and given a Kingdom with no end- all the nations of men.

So there's hope. There is no end of hope for those who love God. They can't get rid of God's name, because it comes back. They can't erase His image, because it gets clearer the more they try. And they can't kill Him anymore, because He's already died, and come back again.

There's so much hope.

A New Law

I was reading the Law in Exodus today, in chapters 21-23ish. This is my take on what God might have said if Mount Sinai was actually in the middle of Clearfield County in 2008:

If you install a pool at your house, or a lake on your summer property, then you need to build a railing around or it at least watch it so that the neighborhood kids don't fall in and drown.

If you borrow your neighbor's helicopter or yacht and it is stolen, then you must go before the judge and show that you did not steal it. Otherwise you need to pay your neighbor its value plus the time he lost in using it.

When you cash in stock options or any other investment, round down to the nearest ten-thousand so that the poor can have something as well.

Make sure to put a little aside each year for six years, so that you and your family can take the seventh year off from work.

Dry Bones

Again he said unto me, prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus saith the Lord GOD unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live [Ez. 37:4-5]

I believe that this passage provides for us a vivid description of the distinction between the Old Testament and New. I have been hunting for an illustration to describe how I see the difference, and I think this is the best.

The OT, and in particular its religious and liturgical forms, sacraments and laws, can be best be described as a pile of dusty bones. Without a Spirit of life, these bones do nothing but rot. The NT provides that Spirit, so that the bones are able to join together, stand up and come alive. The living being is is as different from (and better than) the pile of dry bones as can be.

What I like about this image though is that the relationship between the two is as much a continuity as it is a contrast. The Spirit does not come so that the bones of the OT are no longer necessary. In fact, the bones are as crucial to the living being as the Spirit of life is.

The great sin of the New Testament is to desire to go back to a time when all we had was dusty bones. This obviously will not do. The corresponding danger is to hate the bones and want to get rid of them. This will not do either.

Now That's a Good Question

The doctrine of accommodation (which is rife in the tradition, as basic to Thomas as to Calvin) says: When God speaks in His natural voice, He speaks like a philosopher. He speaks like a poet in Scripture because He's dumbing it down for humans imprisoned in a sensible world.

Scripture, however, indicates that God's natural voice is that of a poet.

If Scripture speaks in poetry rather than philosophy, how could anyone have ever discovered that God's natural voice is philosophical?

Dr. Peter Leithart, Philosopher or Poet

All Roads Lead Where?

To those who say that Christianity is as good as any other religion, because "all roads lead to God", I do not contradict this statement because God has said otherwise. That would be a right answer, because God is the creator of heaven and earth, and His word trumps all vain and foolish philosophical reasonings. I do not argue against this in this way because your argument is so unsound that it does not even need answering.

It is manifestly obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the world that all roads do not lead to the same place. Any rudimentary study of the cultures of the world will show you this. Hinduism does not lead to God: it leads to the untouchables class and starvation and darkness. Native American animism does not lead to God: it leads to savagery and tribalism and alcoholism. Islam does not lead to God, but rather to misogyny, terrorism and poverty. Can anyone show me a modern flourishing culture anywhere in the world that is not the product of centuries of Christianity?

But I will grant you your conviction in your argument. You believe that all religious roads lead to the same place: that is to no place. Perhaps they lead us to look inwards and find feelings of comfort and spirituality, but the only road that leads anywhere for a culture is that of secular humanism. It's only by passing laws and spending money on government programs that our culture will progress. It's only by experiments in the laboratory that we can know truth, and only by medicine and education that we can find salvation. This, it seems, is so obvious as to be questioned by no one.

So let's look at the evidence of that claim a little further. Where exactly has that road taken us? Does this road lead to the same place as biblical Christianity?

Bitterness

Here's a book on bitterness written by a man named Jim Wilson. It was very helpful to me-- perhaps it will be for you as well.

Creeds

Doug Wilson has me thinking again. Imagine that. On his blog (at www.dougwils.com, he has some quotes from one of his books about how creeds are inescapable. That got me thinking, so I decided to post a few phrases from my own personal creed for further rumination.

I believe that God is at heart a storyteller, and that He loves suspense, plot twists and happy endings. I believe that He likes the way He has made us including our romance and habits and recreation and work. I believe that He is making the world better. I believe that He loves the material as well as the spiritual, or probably that He doesn't even notice the difference. I believe that He loves His people together as well as individually, thinking of their children as His own. I believe that He hasn't changed. Ever. I believe that He has known what He is doing from the beginning. I believe that He knows what He's doing even now.

And I believe that many other Christians do not believe some of these things, or else we wouldn't disagree about so much.

Evolution

Evolution is quite a funny theory, when you think about it. It points out the best in modern secular unbelief. Consider:

A modern evolutionist does not believe in a Creator because he says it is too far-fetched and mystical. Yet he believes in amoebas turning into dogs turning into men.

A modern evolutionist does not believe in a Creator because he cannot find evidence of such a thing in the laboratory. Yet who has ever seen any of the transformations mentioned above occur? We have more statistical and testimonial evidence of ghosts and extraterrestrial beings than of dogs turning into men.

A modern evolutionist does not believe in a Creator because he claims to work from data rather than from faith. Again, where is the data for such astonishing transfigurations? A man may as well believe in chariots turning into pumpkins, or frogs into princes. At least some folks remember such things happening, if only in their oral traditions.

It seems that we Christians may have something to learn from our modern evolutionist friends, for they have much greater faith than many of us.

Loyalties

To an extent, sin can be thought of as the disorder of loyalties. We sin when we act contrary to a vow or obligation that a loyalty places on us. For instance, when we sin against God, we choose to break loyalty with Him by ignoring His commands in order to satisfy another person, to whom the bond of loyalty should not be as strong. That person may either be ourselves or another. We can sin against people in the same way, too. For example, if a man joins his friends in publicly scorning his wife, he has chosen their approval over his loyalty to her as wife. Looking at it from the other angle then, sanctification is learning how to honor our loyalties.

This is helpful to think through when dealing with enemies. The Lord commands us to love our enemies, and pray for those who curse us. That means that we have a loyalty to our enemies that should be stronger than our own loyalty to ourselves. We must be careful though, that our loyalty to our enemies is not stronger than our loyalty to our disciples, family, friends, and God. That is why it is appropriate for Christ to keep quiet when falsely accused, and to pray for the forgiveness of his enemies, yet to call names and throw insults with the best of them in other circumstances.

Virtues and Vices

One of the things that is interesting to note with regards to the homosexual marriage agenda is the justifications that proponents make in their minds. Homosexuality is considered to be genetic, something that one cannot control. Given the presuppositions then that most Americans hold, there is no reason that the cannot take part in family and society in the same way that heterosexuals can. In fact, to discriminate against a homosexual because of their biological urges goes against the American virtues of equality (or bland sameness) and individualism (or freedom from societal responsibilities).

To many Americans, these arguments are persuasive. That's why so much of the battle is fought over whether homosexuality is genetic (to which I respond "Who cares?"). If homosexuality is in fact genetic, then our virtues dictate that we accept it in the public square. After all, they're not hurting anyone, right?

And therein lies the problem, and the point of this post. Our problem as a people, and especially in the Church, is that our virtues need repented of. And this is great difficulty we have, and that men have always had apart from the grace of God. We cling to our sins not because we hate ourselves or want to openly defy God, but because we think they're our virtues. The Pharisees thought they were serving God when they crucified Christ. They made long prayers for a pretense, and their condemnation was all the greater. So it goes with us. We keep certain sins around that we know to be vices, and we fight against them to assuage our consciences. But our wicked virtues are the sins that bring the judgment of God upon us, because we refuse to repent of them.

We must let this knowledge guide us as we seek reformation in our lives and churches. We must pray that God would show us where we have sinned and how we cling to our stubborn sins, and then be willing to repent of them when we see them. And we should start by looking to our virtues first.

The Way Things Work

The reformed doctrine of the sovereignty of God teaches us that he does all things. That means that when something happens, God has done it. But He does not just ordain the end, but the means as well. And He has designed the world so that He does things best through certain ways.

Here's an example. When God wants to make bread, how does He do it? Countless of millions of times, He has done it by ordaining a farmer to plant seed in the ground, blessing that seed to sprout and grow, having that farmer harvest it, and causing a baker to mix the proper ingredients and bake it. Several times in history He has eliminated some of these steps and done it by what we might call a "miracle". Jesus with the four and five thousands come to mind.

But as we pray to God for our daily bread, we would do best to look for Him to answer through the established channels- by going to the supermarket, for example. Finding our bread there does not mean that we have provided it and God has not, or that the mundaneness of the answer to our prayers makes it any less miraculous. Gratitude and belief should never be conditioned on the "supernatural" quality of God's work. All of His work is both natural and supernatural at once.

Furthermore, we should seek to understand the means God has ordained for the end we want to pursue. Attempting to work to an end contrary to God's means is foolishness, and asking God to bless it is arrogance. Implications? Youth ministry and education should be done primarily by parents. Evangelism should be through worldview advancement. Cultural reformation should be accomplished through repentance and reformation in the Church.

The Need for Theology

Take a look at this passage- Galatians 5:19-23:

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

What I find interesting about this passage is that it comes toward the end of Paul's argument against why the first-century Judaizers are incorrect. In a nutshell, the Judaizers wanted fresh Christian converts from the Gentiles to be circumcized and to take up the vestiges of the Mosaic Law, primarily to avoid persecution. Paul writes to rebuke this train of thought and to encourage the Gentiles to avoid trusting in circumcision (or uncircumcision), and to remain in the Spirit by faith.

And then Paul hits us with this list of sins, the "fruit of the flesh" if you will, and the contrasting "fruit of the Spirit". In context, the argument is this: if you buy into what the Judaizers are telling you and get circumcized, this is what your fruit will look like - immorality, sensuality, etc. If you hold to correct doctrine in faith, Paul says, your fruit will look like love, joy and all the rest.

The point is this: doctrine and correct theology matters. We must not separate matters of Christianity in "head and heart", as if you could live correctly while believing lies. Theology always works itself out, given enough time. A man always reaps what he sows.