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Category: Theology
Robert Haldane observed in his commentary on the twelfth chapter of Romans that Paul had a special way of using his authority.
When it comes to authority, we might have some assumptions about Paul. We would assume that Paul would only have a commanding tone in his speaking because he possessed the right of authority. We would expect that his syntax would be always in the imperative mood.
But Haldane observed that Paul didn’t use his authority that way. Paul said, “I beseech you” or “I appeal to you” (Rom 12:1). Haldane wrote:
Those whose authority was avouched by mighty signs and wonders, whose very word was command, strive frequently to express commands as entreaties.
Commentary, 566.
Haldane’s observation is that the apostles were not insecure about their authority, even though their authority had been clearly demonstrated. Yet the apostles could choose to entreat people and appeal to them by way of persuasion, rather than command. They didn’t need to be defensive. They had the liberty to persuade when they had the right to command.
This observation is helpful for pastors to know. Often, according to the authority of God’s word, there is the need to exercise authority and make commands (as Scripture requires). At the same time, the aim of persuading by entreating ought to be the norm.
This is where the pastoral requirement of gentleness comes to the forefront (Ti 3:2). Gentleness is persuading, entreating and compassionate, even when the right to command exists.
Paul would nevertheless urge Timothy, “Command and teach these things” (1 Timothy 4:11). These leaders had the right to command and exercised that right. But when they had the opportunity, they would “express commands as entreaties”.
Tim Keller on Legalism and Antinomianism
In his foreword to Sinclair Ferguson’s book, The Whole Christ, Tim Keller writes:
I learned …that to think the main problem out there is one particular error is to virtually put one foot into the other error.
The Whole Christ, Foreword, 14
Keller’s lesson learned from Ferguson is useful on many fronts. We can often think that there is only one error when there might be more than one. An example of this is how the desire to avoid one trinitarian error can easily lead a person to fall into a different error. It is not a matter of falling into a ditch on one side or another, the whole doctrine of the trinity is surrounded by a moat. We must pay attention or else we’ll slip and fall in.
The specific issues that Sinclair Ferguson’s book are dealing with are the topics of legalism and antinomianism. Keller goes on to expand on what he learned from Ferguson’s book:
If you fail to see what Sinclair is saying—that both legalism and antinomianism stem from a failure to grasp the goodness and graciousness of God’s character— it will lead you to think that what each mind-set really needs for a remedy is a little dose of the other. In this view, it would mean that the remedy for legalism is just less emphasis on the law and obedience, and the the remedy for antinomianism is more.
Ibid, 14
How often in ministry have we seen or practiced this idea of giving “a little dose of the other”. Discipleship is relaxed. Consciences can be bound tighter. Sin is winked at. Or leadership can tightly control behaviour. In the end, we should be able to see the tendencies and temptations toward applying “a little dose of the other” in our lives and ministry.
Keller warns about this strategy of “a little dose of the other” when he writes:
This is dangerous. If you tell those tending toward legalism that they shouldn’t talk so much about obedience and the law, you are pushing them toward the antinomian spirit that annot see the law as a wonderful gift of God. If you tell those tending toward antinomianism that they should point people more to divine threats and talk more about the dangers of disobedience, you are pushing them toward the legal spirit that sees the law as a covenant of works rather than as a way to honor and give pleasure to the one who saved them by grace.
Ibid, 14.
So there is a great danger in putting your foot into the other error, simply by thinking that there is only one. This is the confusing thing for new Christians, and it can be very limiting to the growth of those who have been believers for many years. It is how a person can start to lose their first love (Rev 2:4).
Keller points to the solution or remedy which Sinclair Ferguson offers in this excellent book. Ferguson says clearly:
The gospel is designed to deliver us from this lie [of the Serpent], for it reveals that behind and manifested in the coming of Christ and his death for us is the love of a Father who gives us everything he has: first his Son to die for us, and then his Spirit to live within us… There is only one genuine cure for legalism. It is the same medicine the gospel prescribes for antinomianism: understanding and tasting union with Jesus Christ himself. This leads to a new love for and obedience to the law of God.
Ibid, 15.
This is such good news! The gospel is what we all need, and it is the remedy to our propensities, trajectories, personalities, and most of all, to our sin. We can sin in legalistic ways and antinomian ways, but the gospel cures all.
And if you are worried that “gospel-centered everything” is an error in itself, simply read Ferguson’s book, The Whole Christ. You’ll regain clarity about the gospel and how it remedies legalism and antinomianism, which places the gospel at the center of everything, not in a superficial way, but a God-glorifying way.
John Bunyan wrote a book called Antichrist and his Ruin. I’m guessing it’s one of his works that are seldom read today. People, at least in the church circles I run in don’t talk much about the Antichrist. They don’t talk about the judgement to come either. Maybe that’s why we don’t share the gospel very often.
Since I’ve been preaching through the book of Daniel, I’ve had to re-engage with the topic of the Antichrist and to consider his ‘ruin’ as Bunyan put it. And although many antichrists have been identified through history (Joe Carter lists over a half dozen), these days fewer people seem to care about the reality of godless, supernatural opposition to Christ and the gospel. We tend to be fixated on politics– good or bad– as the only level of warfare in existence. As American Senator Ben Sasse has observed, “so many of those local tribes of textured meaning [i.e. family, neighbourhood, workplace, local church] are in collapse, and people are looking for substitute tribes in politics. And I don’t think that’s going to work out very well.” So I’ve looked with interest at what a wise guide like Bunyan has to say about the Antichrist, and the spirit of antichrist which is at work “already in the world” (1 John 4:3).
Bunyan’s Introduction to the Identity of the Antichrist
In one of his opening descriptions, Bunyan sets out the way that the Antichrist is the antonym of Christ, yet deceptively so. This sense of being the opposite of Christ, but with a false veneer or duplicitous camouflage, is the character of Antichrist which Bunyan seeks to emphasize. He writes:
Antichrist is the adversary of Christ; an adversary really, a friend pretendedly: So then, Antichrist is one that is against Christ; one that is for Christ, and one that is contrary to him: (And this is that mystery of iniquity (2 Thess 2:7). Against him in deed; for him in word, and contrary to him in practice. Antichrist is so proud as to go before Christ; so humble as to pretend to come after him, and so audacious as to say that himself is he. Antichrist will cry up Christ; Antichrist will cry down Christ: Antichrist will proclaim that himself is one above Christ. Antichrist is the man of sin, the son of perdition; a beast, [that] hath two horns like a lamb, but speaks as a dragon (Rev 13:11).
Works, Volume II, 46.
Consider that according to Bunyan’s reading of Scripture, the Antichrist is obviously against Christ, but less obviously seen to be against Christ. He is against Christ in activity, but presents himself publically as a supporter of Christ (“for him in word”), even “pretending” to come after him in humility, but all with an “audacious” arrogance.
All of this means that Antichrist has a religious connection, engaged with church circles.
Antichrist subverts the church with false support.
Bunyan’s List of Contrasts Between Christ and Antichrist
Another way that Bunyan helps us to understand the Antichrist is by contrasting him with the vast superiority of Jesus Christ. In fact, even Bunyan’s contrasts are inadequate because Jesus Christ the Son of God is in a category by himself, and is utterly incomparable. But for the purposes of giving an introduction, Bunyan suggests the follow antonymic comparisons:
- Christ is the Son of God; Antichrist is the son of Hell.
- Christ is holy, meek, and forbearing: Antichrist is wicked, outrageous, and exacting.
- Christ seeketh the good of the soul: Antichrist seeks his own avarice and revenge.
- Christ is content to rule by his word: Antichrist saith, The word is not sufficient.
- Christ preferreth his Father’s will above heaven and earth: Antichrist preferreth himself and his traditions above all that is written, or that is called God, or worshiped.
- Christ has given us such laws and rules as are helpful and healthful to the soul: Antichrist seeketh to abuse those rules to our hurt and destruction. (Works, Volume II, 46.)
The descriptors which Bunyan uses to describe Jesus Christ are beautiful. Against our cultural moment, Christ is forbearing, seeks the good of the soul, rules by his word, prefers his Father’s will, and gives what is helpful and healthful to the soul. Bunyan saw in the Lord Jesus Christ one who is gratuitous in his help toward his creatures.
By contrast, the Antichrist is the opposite, though he feigns to hide his true intentions.
If we take the Bunyan’s descriptions and lay them up against our cultural moment, the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, then you can see clearly how much the spirit of antichrist is upon us.
Think about how everyone and everything is so exacting these days. If the Antichrist is, according to Bunyan, “wicked, outrageous, and exacting” then the spirit of Antichrist is clearly evident in our social media. If you misspell something on Facebook, or mess up some grammar, someone will correct you in exacting detail. If you tweet something that is out of line with the prevailing cultural orthodoxies, you’re statement will be parsed, critiqued, and judged with an execution of shame. Twitter can be an exacting platform, that is at the same time outrageous, and not so subtly wicked.
We see that growing tendency for people to turn quickly against leaders, public servants, customer service reps, believers, churches, organizations and anyone else when they feel they have been wronged. It’s as if there is a spirit of revenge that is waiting to burst out at the slightest injury. How strikingly different is the impulse of Christ himself, who “seeketh the good of the soul”.
And of course, the church is wrestling with the problem of whether or not they will follow Christ’s rule by his word, or listen to the spirit of Antichrist which says that “the word is not sufficient”
It is a simple binary. Follow Christ or heed the Antichrist. Christ is Lord. He is God, the Son incarnate. He is above all and over all. The Antichrist would presume to set himself above the Creator. Yet the spirit of antichrist prevails even in such unlikely places as critical New Testament scholarship. For example, Robert Yarbrough documents how critical NT scholars, set themselves above Scripture, rather than under it. As reported from Yarbrough’s lectures in 2018:
Elitism, dating back only a few centuries to Germann scholars, he explained, does not necessarily take the Bible at face value and views the Bible from “a superior vantage point,” often dismissing or reinterpreting claims of Scripture. It is the viewpoint of the academy, Yarbrough said, and is marked by a critical study of the Bible that rejects a doctrinal interpretation of it.
Scholarly ‘populism’ provides a way forward in New Testament theology, says Yarbrough at SBTS Gheens Lectures, SBTS News, March 2018
Bunyan would argue that such critical scholarship is an example of the spirit of antichrist, inspiring creatures to set themselves above Christ, to pass judgement on him and his word, and to draw attention to themselves for their cleverness and omniscience.
Of course, this type of spirit is everywhere in society. Yet how different it is to find the humbled, diligent follower of Jesus Christ, who confesses him as her Lord, who enjoys his gratuity with thanksgiving tempered with awe and wonder!
The Illusion of Culture Wars?
If the spirit of antichrist presents the advance claims of “the man of lawlessness”, then we should admit that we might be wrong in our perception of where the battle lines are drawn. We need to admit that we are likely wrong that our primary battlefront is in the culture war. The culture war is the diversion. Rather, the real warfare is against the spirit of antichrist, which aims to deceive the church (Matt 24:4).
As Paul told the Ephesians:
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:12
Therefore, then as now, we need to, “take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.” (Eph 6:13)
Categories
Orthodoxy, Sin and Revival
D.M. Lloyd-Jones wrote about the perils of a useless, defective or “eccentric orthodoxy”. He outlined the problem of possessing correct notions, without holiness of life:
…we can be perfectly orthodox and yet our orthodoxy can be useless if we are failing in our lives, if we are disobedient to God’s holy laws, if we are guilty of sin, and continuing in known sin. If we put our desires before him, well, we have no right to expect revival, however orthodox and correct we may be in all our doctrines and in all our understanding. You will invariably find that when revival comes men and women are profoundly, and deeply, convicted of sin. They feel that even God cannot forgive them. They have been in the Church, yes, but they have been living a life of sin, and they have know it and they have done nothing about it. When revival comes they are put into hell, as it were, and they are horrified and alarmed. They may feel so terrible about it that they stand up and confess it. That may or may not happen, but they are certainly convicted. And so sin in any shape or form is ever one of the major hindrances to a visitation of the Spirit of God.
— Revival, 67
In 1968 Andy Warhol said that in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. Today with Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat, and reality tv it seems that Warhol’s prediction has come true, even if he overshot the fame part by 14 minutes and 30 seconds. In those 30 seconds of modern fame, a person today has the significance of their person, their character, their ability and reputation pressed down into the experience of others. Their fame flees after 15 seconds or so because they don’t have the ability to sustain their momentary glory. So they move from significant to insignificant, influential to irrelevant, and impactful to inconsequential.
The Gravity of Glory
In the Scriptures, the word for this significant, influential, relevant, impactful and consequential emanation is called khavod, or glory. We normally associate this kind of glory with mega-experiences like the first glance of the Rockies, or the seas of the Pacific, Atlantic, or Arctic. These experiences are so massive they feel heavy like we are being overwhelmed with the weight of beauty, expanse, and wonder that is pressing on us. But that is what the biblical notion of that Hebrew word means. Glory is heavy.
The trouble with mountains and oceans and beauty and wonder is that we get tired and even a little bored of feeling the heaviness of their glory. That’s why people go camping and still look at their smartphones. Our fallenness and finiteness make us incapable of sustainable glory gazing.
So when we look at glory, we get bored and self absorbed. And in this way we can quickly take the beauty and glory of creation and turn it into being all about us. Instead of seeing an idyllic lake or rocky cliff pointing us to the greater glory of God, we flip it. As the early Christian leader Paul said, people “worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator” and the result is that we’ve “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images”(Romans 1.25; 1.23).
This means that everyone in this world needs to stop being a gravity-denier. God’s glory, his heaviness has a gravitational pull on all of us. We can say it isn’t so, but we’re denying reality and so denying God.
Getting Glory Crushed
One of the classic examples of an awakened recognition of the gravity of God came to the ancient prophet Isaiah when he had a supernatural vision of the khavod of God. Isaiah saw that God was morally pure– triple deluxe pure so that angelic beings could not view God directly because their creaturely eyeballs would fry if they looked at God’s holy purity. And these angels sang out, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies— the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6.3).
That vision of moral purity was not merely significant, it crushed Isaiah. He was crushed under the weight of God’s holy gravity. He had to confess, “I am undone. For I am a man of unclean lips and I live in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of heaven’s armies” (v.5). What was a glory crushed guy to do?
He needed to have his sin taken away by the God of holy gravity. In the vision it was pictured as a burning briquette from a holy-fire-altar. It was touched to his lips to cleanse his sin-spewing outlet (v.6-7).
Fast forward to Good Friday when the holy gravity of God’s moral purity came crushing down on the sin and guilt of the glory-exchangers. Yet those folks weren’t hanging on the cross. Jesus the Son of God was. He took the gravity of God’s holy glory, and actively received its crushing effect in just wrath by substitution for glory-exchangers that should have been hung there. As Paul said, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5.21).
Jesus didn’t stay dead but rose from the gravel bed. He rose and returned to ‘the glory he had before with the Father’ (John 17.5). So now, the gravity of Jesus’ glory in the gospel presses on all who believe through the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1.8). This motives his disciples to see the nations submit under the weight of his holy gravity (Matt 28.19-20), that he might lift them up (Col 3.1; Eph 2.6; Rom 6.4) and ‘bring many sons and daughters to glory’ (Hebrews 2.10).
That’s a weight of significance that will last much longer than 15 minutes.
This post first appeared at The Gospel Coalition Canada.
Plan to attend the 2020 TGC Canada National Conference, May 27-29 in the Greater Toronto Area.
In our day Christians are being stretched. With every distraction and every demand of our full calendars, we are being stretched in all our capacities.
Who among us is not feeling spread thin by the repetitious news cycle which demands our attention second to second and so creating in us the dreaded “fear of missing out”?
Our desires are being stretched too. Careers that offered fulfilled dreams have been ended with mere severance. Or they continue to demand time and, toil yet our desire is not slaked.
All people in the West possess great convenience epitomized in the power of our fingertips on ready touchscreen apps. Who has not felt tired but wired with all of this instant power, yet less and less instant gratification?
Stretched Thin or Just Crushed?
This stretching we feel is not a capacity that we are growing in, but a sense of being flattened or crushed. Crushed by the desire for relationships. Crushed by the desire for justice. Crushed by the need for meaning.
As Douglas Murray noted in The Strange Death of Europe, “one of the notable characteristics of Western culture is precisely that it permanently fears itself to be in decline”.
This fear acts like a double-drum compactor rolling over the happiness and hope of people like they are so much asphalt. Radical calls for justice in this life show how heavy these fears can be. It is easy to be flattened with frustration that there is no sufficient justice in this world. We can agonize at the question, “why does the way of the wicked prosper?” (Jer 12:1, Psa 73:3, Job 21:7, Ecc 8:14).
At the same time, there is the weight of fear which crushes the comfortable and the privileged. It is the fear that their status and privileges will be lost. The fear of losing power, prestige or influence can turn the comfortable life into a life of panic.
In the culture wars of the West, we fear the loss of power and influence on the right, and we fear unaddressed injustice on the left. Both can be easily captive to the concerns of this-world and think little of the world to come.
Fear and Panic in Renewal Time
Christians can also get paranoid at what they see as they assume the worst. Fear rolls over them. Even as the small reformed renewal enters into its intermediate to mature stage, Christians can see the expansion of churches and the few renewed institutions in Evangelicalism and be rolled over with the fear of its collapse. It is easy to be disillusioned when someone sees the sins of their heroes within the ‘gospel-centred’ movement.
Likewise Christians can be suspicious of the visible success of the reformed renewal, and have the uneasy feeling that they must divert its strength to address the more relevant concerns of society. Then a ‘gospel-centred’ movement is no longer enough. It must also be a movement to mimic the issues in the news cycle.
Fears about losing the big conferences, the public champions, and the mass of Christian publishing can be so crushing that people can be anxious to shut down refining critiques, or overinflate the importance of the movement as if it is too big to fail.
Either way, fear dominates many of us, so that we can’t see the gospel good being done, nor see that the renewal is neither a full-on revival, nor is it heaven.
All of this kind of fearful stretching is bringing a fatigue to churches. It is not the kind of stretching that we need. Instead, today more than ever, we require a renewal of our desires. We need to be stretched heaven-ward.
Of Springs and Soap Bubbles
Our desires have lost their elasticity and vigour, because they have been attached too long and too tightly to the world that is. “This-world” desires have overstretched us and our spring is unsprung.
In the church, it started with good intentions. There was the recapturing of the doctrine of vocation, rendering to God worship through the work of one’s hands. But as Michael Allen writes in his book, Grounded in Heaven:
“Too often a desire to value the ordinary and the everyday, the mundane and the material, has not led to what ought to be common-sense to any Bible-reader: that heaven and the spiritual realm matter most highly.”
Nowadays we are trying to find meaning in our work, but struggling to suffer in it, mistakenly assuming that emphasis on “faith and work” brings more heaven on earth.
On the one hand, there has been an increase in books that revel in the ‘ordinary’. This may have started with Anne Voskamp’s best-seller and her extended meditations on ordinary things like soap bubbles. On the other hand, even the books on heaven have been reduced to “tourism” to gain lessons for what really matters, life in the now. Allen goes on to say:
“Too rarely do we speak of heavenly-mindedness, spiritual-mindedness, self-denial, or any of the terminology that has marked the ascetical tradition (in its patristic or, later, in its Reformed iterations).”
It is not to say that we shouldn’t see the dignity of God’s creation, nor value the mundane work we must do as an opportunity to glorify God according to the priesthood of all believers. But we need to re-calibrate where our strongest passions and deepest desires are directed. Are we conscious of the will of God being done in heaven first and fundamentally? Then we can reset our desires to pray that God’s will be done, “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10).
Augustine’s Grocery Bag
Augustine offers a picture of the ways that we need to be stretched and it offers a compelling alternative to the chase-your-own-tail existence of the modern social media feed. Augustine likens our desires to something like a grocery bag. It is folded and narrow to begin with, but when it is stretched wide, it can receive a large capacity of things to put in it. He says:
“so God, by deferring our hope, stretches our desire; by the desiring, stretches the mind; by stretching, makes it more capacious.”
Our desires are to be stretched heaven-ward, to the beatific vision of being in the presence of God.
As John put it in 1 John 3:2-3, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”
There is a pressing need to be stretched. Christians need to be stretched in our desires for heaven. Such stretching will deliver us from the emptiness of Your Best Life Now, and the exhaustion of the news cycle’s incessant demands.
Our fear of catastrophe can be dispelled by this invincible hope, not in movements or men, but in the Lamb and his eschatological kingdom, which shall have no end.
As Augustine said, “Let us desire therefore, my brethren, for we shall be filled.”
A version of this article was published at The Gospel Coalition Canada on April 8, 2019 under the title, Being Stretched.
image: Vittore Carpacaccio (1502)
There is a growing disdain for the term ‘evangelical’. This is not merely because evangelical is a pejorative term used by non-Christians. Nor is it merely because there are people who used to identify as evangelicals, but now call themselves exangelicals. But the term ‘evangelical’ has become associated with a political lobby group that is viewed as supporting the Trump presidency, which support is seen as unethical.
The problem with the label ‘evangelical’ is that it’s pretty elastic depending on who is doing the stretching. On the one hand, there is the scholarly study of evangelicals which trace them back to the Enlightenment (Bebbington), or beyond (Haykin and Stewart). On the other hand, ‘evangelical’ has come to be defined in modern journalism as anyone who is non- Catholic and non-mainline Protestant. Even this latter elasticity can be stretched further to include evangelical Catholics and evangelical renewal movements in liberal mainline denominations.
So what do we do with this elastic label? Some are ceasing to call themselves evangelical. Others are at least questioning what it means to be self-identified by the label. What is an evangelical to do? Let me offer three ways that over-stretched evangelicals can recover their integrity.
Pick Theology over Sociology
Nobody would care if evangelicals had no social influence. But in the US evangelicals still have a large, if waning voice in society. So it is tempting to adopt a sociological approach to being an evangelical. This may mean that following social practices but doesn’t require you to confess anything definitive regarding theology.
Picking theology over sociology is the better move. ‘Prosperity Gospel’preachers have false understandings of the doctrine of salvation, so their ‘gospel’ is not the same as the historic Christian gospel. Therefore, on a theological basis, prosperity gospel preachers are not “evangelicals”, even if the media mislabels them as such.
Picking theology over sociology works in a different way as well. For those with a distaste for the American (and therefore McDonaldized) evangelical sub-culture, they may be tempted to jettison the evangelical label. Their distaste for middle-America Jesus culture may make them want to be affiliated somewhere else.
But this is where high church Presbyterians, Anglicans, or others are in danger of denying their brothers and sisters who believe the essential bulk of what they confess. As well, they can deny their own history, or at least be selective about it. For example, the catholicity of Scottish Presbyterians like Chalmers, M’Cheyne and the Bonar brothers was matched with the mission-sending efforts of Calvinistic Baptists, William Carey and Andrew Fuller. The history of revived Calvinism saw the advance of evangelicals from Anglican, Presbyterian and Baptist denominations
Pick the Rabble Outside the Camp
The tough part about belonging to a local church or to a denomination or movement is feeling the crushing reality that your crowd is populated with fools, idiots and goofballs. Such associations are not great for winning friends and influencing people. In fact, the wisdom of today says that you should drop anyone who isn’t advancing you and your interests.
But when you start pointing fingers at the folly of others it’s easy to have the fingers pointing back at you. Being associated with true-believing evangelicals means that you are in the company of the foolish, among whom you likely are chief. In fact, God “chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor 1:27).
So we have to be careful lest we disdain the not-yet sanctified fools who we will spend eternity with. Even in this life, we choose to metaphorically leave the inner ring (CS Lewis) and suffer outside the camp (Heb 13:13). It is in this refuse heap (Ex 29:14) that all of the fools for Christ’s sake congregate. Believers are saved by faith alone, yet such a faith that never remains alone. Therefore we can confidently speak of right doctrine and right practice as indicators for who is suffering outside the camp with Jesus.
Choosing to Give Grace to Evangelical Folly
When Christians can cherish biblical truths that have been confessed through the ages, they can have the confidence to discuss and debate with each other about the issues that Christians have always been less clear about. This means we have to do something like a theological triage (Mohler), but it means more. It also means that as evangelicals get caught up in temporary manias (from Napoleon as Antichrist, to pro-Trump/never-Trump), we need to extend each other the grace— the undeserved favour, that will esteem the important confessions of faith which we know others possess, while lovingly critiquing their errors as we see them, and welcoming their watchfulness over our own.
So should we abandon the label ‘evangelical’? I don’t think so. It’s a good term when it is well defined. As we strive for that definition in each generation, we have the opportunity to remember that there are many people going to heaven with whom we disagree. We also know that there are many people who think they are going to heaven, whose gospel is not sufficient to save them. It is for these confused people we must strive to bring true gospel clarity.
photocredit
Churches will be tempted to give in to a survival instinct and do whatever it takes to increase attendance. They’ll work hard to “just get ‘em in the door’. The result is many different methods of attracting religious ‘consumers’ that might seem contradictory to the message being broadcast. The contradiction is justified because of the possibility of souls being saved.
Understood in this way, the end— the greatest end– justifies the means to that end. And that is what is called pragmatism in the church.
Pragmatism since the 1900’s
The two largest and most influential of the pragmatic approaches to ministry are these:
- “Decisionistic Regeneration”, i.e. creating psychological distress or emotional euphoria in order to cause someone to make an instantaneous decision in favour of Christ.
- “Seeker-Sensitive” Ministry, i.e. orienting a church’s ministry toward a demographic subset of the community and addressing all of that group’s ‘felt needs’ or preferences as religious consumers.
Now in both instances of pragmatic ministry, there is a desire to see sinners come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, there is a failure to understand what saving faith really is, as well as a naivete about the danger that giving false assurance to the person who is only temporarily interested in religious things.
Of course, ministry among real human beings will require wisdom about adiaphora, the things indifferent. This comes into play as we see changes across cultures and centuries. However, we can’t let the wisdom of contextualization give way to pragmatism which pursues results at the expense of fundamental misunderstandings about truth.
What is Faith?
In the examples of decisionistic regeneration and seeker-sensitive ministry, both types of pragmatism had thin understandings of saving faith. They thought that saving faith was merely a mental assent to certain facts about Jesus Christ. Even if repentance was mentioned (which it rarely was), it had more of the character of a momentary emotional regret, than a settled turning away from an old life, to new life in Christ.
The seeker-sensitive model of ministry misunderstood faith as well. They thought that through the benefits of proximity to Christians, the appeal of Christian community would provide sufficient enough grounds for a person to give assent to the facts about Christ and identify as a Christian. In terms of the classic threefold understanding of saving faith, they would only be asking for knowledge and assent, without trust (notitia, assensus, without fiducia).
Nominalism
What is interesting to observe is that even leaders in the seeker sensitive movement have acknowledged that there should have been more emphasis on discipleship. The result of this neglect was that some of the largest churches in the world were filled with people who had only marginal understandings of the gospel. It became an embarrassment to the Evangelical movement that some of its largest churches were producing ‘nominal’ Christians, the very charge which Evangelicals had put to liberal mainline Protestants.
As the 21st century enters its second decade, Christians will have to retrieve the lessons of the past, even the recent past of the last century. Pragmatism threatened to ruin the renewal movement of gospel-centred Evangelicals.
Let us be watchful and careful that we don’t let pragmatism ruin the renewal today.
Photo Credit: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. George Bellows, Billy Sunday. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-8e43-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
As I get older I can’t help noticing who is and who isn’t ageing well. Some look like improved versions of their younger selves. Most look like the same people only with more pounds, wrinkles, grey hair and bare scalp. Some age well others don’t.
The other thing that happens as you get older, is you receive clearer evidence that you are a sinner, not resident in heaven and not utterly sanctified. Although the Christian might look back and see the numerous sins before their conversion, they can also see how each day since would add to their sin ledger.
This becomes more important when we get criticized, confronted, and charged by other people. In accounting terms, we can have the data of our sins inputted on an accrual basis. The ledger gets longer as our age gets higher.
For all of the misunderstandings and false accusations, there will also be many exposures of sin which will be accurate and real. Without any way to deal with the accounting of our sin, our debt would continue to multiply. A record of debt stands against us with “its legal demands” (Col 2:14).
As we age, it would be crippling to have the accrual of our sins piled upon us. For those who ignore this accrual, we can see their utter arrogance as they look at themselves in a purely sunny light. But for the sinner without Christ, there is only the growing despair which the sin ledger brings. Our sins don’t age well.
Justification ages well when our sins don’t. There is an evergreen character to justification that never withers or fades. There is no sin in the believer that remains unatoned for at the cross. There is no failure of obligation that is not satisfied by the active obedience of Christ. There is no accusation from earth or heaven which cancels the verdict of God when he declares a sinner just (Ro 3:26).
If you believe in Jesus Christ alone, relying upon his blood and righteousness for the forgiveness of your sins, you have a right standing before God. Then even if you add pounds and wrinkles, you don’t have to worry about ageing badly. You can even have the accrued sins of a long life reckoned as obsolete because God’s verdict never breaks down.
On another Reformation Day, you can know and announce that your justification is ageing quite well thank you.