Tag: Paul

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Church Fathers Clint Gospel Puritans Theology

Robert Haldane on the Sonship of the Son

In his commentary on Romans, the Scottish theologian Robert Haldane (1764-1842), attempted to unpack what the sonship of the Son entailed. Commenting on the third verse of the first chapter, Haldane wrote:

The gospel of God concerns his Son. The whole of it is comprised in the knowledge of Jesus Christ; so that whoever departs one step from him departs from the gospel. For as Jesus Christ is the Divine image of the Father, he is set before us as the real object of our faith.

Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, 19.

So the sonship of the Son relates to his image-bearing of the invisible God (Col 1:15). His sonship is unique in this way, even if it has been revealed to us in the relational language of Father and Son.

Intelligible, but Unique

The qualities of paternity and filiation, are technical descriptions of the Father and the Son, respectively. As high as these unique descriptions are, they still tell us something intelligible. The persons of the Trinity are not called God 1, 2 and 3, but Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Son’s uniqueness doesn’t mean his sonship is unintelligible. But in our limited comprehension, we must be humble and accept that he is a Son like no other.

On the basis of the uniqueness of the Son in all respects, Haldane argues that he has the same nature as the Father, and differentiates the Son from all other types of sons. He wrote:

“He is the Son of God, his own Son, the only begotten of the Father; which proves, that he is truly and exclusively his Son, of the same nature, and equal with the Father, and not figuratively, or in a secondary sense, as angels or men, as Israel or believers”

Ibid, 20.

Haldane believed that the Son shared the same essence as the Father because he is the only begotten of the Father. So an unpartitioned divine nature was the Son’s. He is equal with Father, which his Sonship proves.

Chalcedonian logic

Rather than viewing the description of “Son” as a lesser title than Father, Haldane noted what the orthodox have always known, that the Sonship of the Son, speaks to his shared, co-equal, divine essence. The Son, is “consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead”, according to the creed of Chalcedon. Yet with this divine nature is added his human nature. As the Chalcedonian creed summarized the relationship:

one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ

Fourth Ecumenical Council, Chalcedon, 451AD.

This Chalcedonian way of speaking was certainly what Haldane confessed. And following Paul, Haldane understood the significance of the title, “Son of God”:

That the Lord Jesus Christ, in his eternal equality with the Father and not merely as God manifested in the flesh, is called the Son of God, flows directly from the fact, that wherever the first person of the adorable Trinity is personally distinguished in Scripture, it is under the title, the co-relative title of the Father.

Ibid, 20.

In the early nineteenth century, it was necessary for Haldane to make these points. He needed to affirm that the Sonship of the Son vindicated his deity.

Haldane’s Caution

Following a century of rationalism, Haldane constantly re-affirmed a high and historic view of the divine Trinity. He cautioned against the temptation to speculate when discussing the doctrine of God. The easiest temptation which Christian’s face is to suppose that the Sonship of the Son is somehow a lesser ‘derivation’. Haldane dealt with this objection saying:

And what is the objection to this doctrine of our Lord’s eternal Sonship? It is simply, that it differs from all our ordinary notions of the filial relation to represent the Son as co-eternal with the Father; or that begotten must necessarily mean “derived,” and that to grant derivation is to surrender Deity.

Exposition, 20.

Haldane wanted to hedge against the temptation to restrain the Sonship of the Son to our human ideas of sonship alone. This ‘derived personality’ was a way for the rationalists to deny the deity of the Son but affirming the language of sonship.

Haldane expressed the objections to sound doctrine and the wrong thinking from which it came from:

To demand that the distinction of persons in the undivided essence of the Godhead, and the mode of their eternal substance shall be made plain to us; or to repugn against the doctrine of the eternal filiation of the Son of God, because it overpasses the boundaries of our notions of Sonship, what is this but the very summit of unthinking arrogance?

Ibid, 20.

As we consider the Sonship of the Son, we need to be careful about our tendencies to be elevated to a “summit of unthinking arrogance”. At the same time, like Haldane, we need to look at Scripture and explore the significance of the ways that God has described himself, all of the predicates and titles.

unsplash-logoPriscilla Du Preez

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Church Ministry Personal Growth Spiritual Growth

Friends are Precious

Of all the things Paul could have said to Timothy in his last days, in this last letter, he says, “Do your best to come to me soon” (2 Tim 4:9). Paul wanted Timothy close. This is what friends do. Friends impose on each other when they are needy, because they value each other so highly. 

A Precious Friend

Timothy was precious to Paul. Paul called him his ‘son’. Paul had given a pattern of life to Timothy. And of all of the teammates which Paul had, Timothy was different. Paul could describe Timothy to the Philippian church saying, “I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare” (Phil 2:20). So it’s Timothy that he asks for. 

Persevering Friendship

Do you have those kinds of deep friendships? Few of us do. It’s hard to develop a friendship that perseveres through difficulties and distances. Paul and Timothy had that. 

Paul wasn’t entirely alone. Luke was with him. In some ways, Luke was a friend to Paul like Lord Beaverbrook was a friend to Winston Churchill. Churchill said of Beaverbrook— “He’s a foul-weather friend” (That’s the paraphrase).

Luke was not a fair-weather friend who flies off when things aren’t sunny. He was a foul-weather friend. He’d stick with you through storms. Luke was that kind of friend to Paul. The result is that we have the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles as the fruit of Luke’s ministry, and Paul’s influential friendship.

Strained Friendship

And the other person to note is Mark. Paul says, “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry” (2 Tim 4:11).

You will recall that Mark was one of the early companions on Paul’s mission team. He went with Paul when they set out from their base in Antioch and went to Cyprus (Acts 13). But when they went to the coast of Turkey, Mark quit (13:13). He quit the mission and quit Paul. And he returned to Jerusalem. 

How to view Mark became a major disagreement between Paul and another friend Barnabas (Acts 15:39). Barnabas wanted to bring Mark on a new mission trip and Paul didn’t. So there was a break in the friendship between Paul and Barnabas over Mark. And another friend, Luke recorded it in Acts 15. 

Repaired Friendship

The point to see here is that friendships can be strained, but they can also be repaired. Mark had been a flashpoint for all kinds of relational stress— not just with Paul but with others. 

Yet unlike the wisdom of today, Paul wasn’t proclaiming Mark to be ‘a toxic friendship’ that he forever needed out of his life. 

Instead, he made his choice about Mark, but he could still have hope in God that Mark could grow and change and ultimately become, as Paul said, “useful to me for ministry” (2 Tim 4:11). 

Friendships are precious and we must have hope that in the long term, even when they are strained, friendships are worth working for, or as Tim Lane called them, “ a mess worth making”.

This article is taken from my sermon, The Legacy of Friends, Enemies and Frenemies here.

photo credit

unsplash-logoPriscilla Du Preez

Categories
Canada Clint Spiritual Growth

An Overlooked Virtue You Should Pursue

The simple things in Scripture can be the most profound. But because they are simple, they can easily be overlooked. For example, the virtues which Christians are to cultivate can seem so obvious that they stay uncultivated. Our virtues can lay dormant like a productive farm field that has the hope of fruitfulness, but nobody bothered to sow anything.

When Paul wrote to the church in the Greco-Roman city of Ephesus he urged a series of virtues in the fourth chapter of his letter. These virtues were supposed to express how the Ephesians’ manner of living matched up to the worth of their calling (4:1). The top of the list was humility.

Humility

The context which Paul sets this virtue in his list is the fact that he was “a prisoner of the Lord” (4:1). So if he was bound and constrained by his Lord, he ought to be humble. Humility, therefore, is the normal expression of someone who is called to this worthy calling. The believer is ‘not their own, but bought with a price’ (1 Cor 6:19-20).

Confusion About Humility

Pursuing humility is quite confusing for us today since being humbled or shamed in some way can be a strange source of pride. Our culture has even platformed certain types of victimhood (while leaving countless true victims ignored). The other confusion we can run into when we seek to be humble is the so-called “humble-brag”. It’s easy to use visible evidence of humility to draw attention to ourselves. I found a quote by Lord Shaftesbury who said, “They have made virtue so mercenary a thing, and have talked so much of its rewards, that one can hardly tell what there is in it, after all, which is worth rewarding”. It is strange to think, but humility has become quite mercenary.

Practical Humility

Thankfully there is a guide for our pursuit of virtue. It is in Jesus Christ that humility is embodied, and vindicated. Paul used the second chapter of his letter to the Philippians to present the incarnation, death, resurrection and reign of Jesus Christ as the supreme object lesson of humility.

Paul was practical. He stated what humility was not, neither selfish ambition or conceit (4:3). And he gave applied instruction regarding how to be humble, namely to “count others more significant than yourselves” and “look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others” (v.3-4).

The Paradigm of Humility

But the practical instructions would have the wheels fall off if there wasn’t some way to address the heart of the human problem, which Churchill said, was the problem of the human heart. Sin in the heart requires atonement (2 Cor 5:21) and reconciliation (2 Cor 5:19). As the Son humbled himself by taking on the addition of a human nature, he could accomplish this atonement and reconcile God and sinners.

This mission of the incarnate Son dignified humility and showed it to be real. Only through faith in Christ can there be forgiveness of our sins in true humility. Only then can we be forgiven for our mercenary humblebrags and false humility.

Categories
Clint Ministry

What Can You Give Up?

A few years ago I presented a paper at the Evangelical Theological Society titled, The Apostle of Calloused Hands: Paul’s Vocational Spirituality Reconsidered. Here is a summary of what I found:

Paul’s tentmaking activity was not merely a footnote in his pioneer church planting efforts. Rather his decision to ‘work with his hands’ in self-support became a key component in his overall testimony to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul’s piety was reflected not only in his obedience to the Lord’s commissioning (Acts 9.15) but in the creative gospel-centredness of how he did it. By abdicating his clear entitlement to remuneration he was able to display in his daily life an object lesson which heralded the freeness of grace. The result was that Paul’s proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ had readily available a living portrait of a grace-transformed life in Paul’s own tentmaking practice. Seen in this light, his vocational spirituality played a cohesive role in the advance of the gospel among the nations. Paul’s calloused hands preached when his lips could not. His calloused hands served the gospel when Paul was given an opportunity to herald it. In all, Paul’s vocational spirituality established a consistency of witness which distinguished him as the apostle of calloused hands

Here are some questions to consider:

  1. List your entitlements. By your role, status, achievements or any other criteria, evaluate things that you might think you are entitled to.
  2. Evaluate what would happen if you abdicated your entitlement in each of these areas. This doesn’t mean that you abdicate your responsibilities, or that your role, status, title or entitlement isn’t good or true. The point is to think about what a voluntary abdication of entitlement looks like.
  3. Pray to God to give you wisdom to consider what humbling yourself in these voluntary, uncoerced ways might look like.

You can download the paper at my Academia profile, here.