Luther's Christmas sermon on Isaiah 9:6

to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder

Luther preached a sermon on Christmas day, 1531, on Isaiah 9:6.

It is a good example of two great aspects of Luther's teaching: the proper application of the pronoun, and the free nature of the gift.

1. to us a child is born:

For whom was he conceived and born? For whom did he suffer and die? For us, for us, for us! Always add us! That is why the fathers rightly put the word [in the creed]: “And in Jesus Christ, our Lord.” We should relate this word to every sentence: conceived for us and born for us, suffered for us and raised for us, ascended for us and sitting at the right [hand of God] for us. For [it is no accident that] the words, “I believe in God, [the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth],” [are followed by,] “And in Jesus [Christ his only Son] our Lord.” In the same way, this word “our Lord” must be included with all [the following] sentences so they don’t just stand there naked. They are all about us. Christ didn’t need these works. He would have remained a lord quite well without them. Rather, his conception and birth, his suffering and death, his ascension and sitting at the right hand are all for our benefit. They belong to us. Note that well!

2. to us a Son is given:

it is not enough that he is “born” to us; he is also “given” to us. What does “given” mean? He is a [pure] gift, a present. There is nothing I have to give or pay in return.

He then has some wonderful things to say about the government resting on Christ's shoulders.

even the good authorities are carried on the shoulders of their subjects. But the rule of that Son who was born to us works the other way around: he carries us! We rest on his shoulders; he is our bearer...This is wonderful. Christ’s kingdom is not under his feet...it is on his shoulder...He must pay for us; he must make satisfaction and suffer. He must carry us, not we him. He does not want to be served, but to serve and to carry us. [He says,] “I will give you everything; all your guilt will be on my shoulder.”

Martin Luther on the Word of God

David Lotz, in his brilliant essay "The Proclamation of the Word in Luther’s Thought", makes 13 points about Luther's understanding of the Word of God and its proclamation (all points are quotations and italics are original):

1. For Luther the “Word of God” is first and foremost God himself, since God is Deus loquens, the God who speaks.
2. Holy Scripture shows that God’s Word also takes the form of concrete historical acts of redemption and revelation, since according to the Hebrew idiom a word (dabar) is also a deed.
3. All God’s words and works find their ultimate purpose and meaning in the incarnate Word. Yet even God’s speaking and acting in Christ would remain meaningless and ineffectual without the oral witness to the Word made flesh, namely, the apostolic preaching or publishing of Christ to the world, the gospel or “good news” of Christ as “God for us.”
4. The Word of God as gospel is found throughout the Old Testament, chiefly in the form of promises of the coming Christ, but no less in God’s gracious dealings with his covenant people for the sake of the coming Christ.
5. The Old Testament Scriptures are precious because they are “the swaddling cloths and the manger in which Christ lies” (LW 35.236). Thus the gospel is at once contained and concealed in the Old Testament, and this “manger” remains shrouded in darkness unless illumined by the “star of Bethlehem,” namely, “the new light, preaching and the gospel, oral and public preaching,” whereby the living voice “produce[s] in speech and hearing what prior to this lay hidden in the letter and in secret vision” (LW 52.205).
6. The Holy Scriptures are, for Luther, rightly understood when they are seen as the record of past proclamation, and are rightly used when the preaching there recorded is continuously transposed into the modality of present proclamation.
7. The Holy Scriptures are justly called Word of God, the written Word, because they have God the Holy Spirit as their ultimate author: the prophets and apostles all spoke and wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit. Yet the Scriptures are Word of God in a secondary or derivative sense because they always point beyond themselves to Jesus Christ
8. The preceding considerations clearly show that for Luther the Word of God as gospel, the oral proclamation of Christ and his benefits, is the basic form of the Word.
9. The preached Word as gospel is the basic form of the Word of God and the creator of the church because it is nothing less than the real presence of the exalted Christ. The gospel is “of Christ” not only because true evangelical preaching has Christ as its object, but above all because the risen Christ himself is the acting subject of this proclamation.
10. To say that the gospel is the real presence of the exalted Christ is to say that salvation is a present event of preaching, and is thus a “Word event.”
11. Central to [the "Word event"] is the assertion that faith in the gospel effects a personal union between Christ and the Christian, and that this union is the sole ground of the believer’s acceptance before God.
12. The preached Word that is the occasion of salvation is the Word of law and gospel... the gospel must be preached together with the law.
13. The church is the daughter of the Word and the creation of the gospel.

With Ben and Jerry's and Alcoholics Anonymous in the school of evangelism

In 1978 two friends named Ben and Jerry started selling ice-cream.

In 1935 an alcoholic named Bob met a recovering alcoholic named Bill and gave up alchohol.

We know these facts because both Ben and Jerry's ice cream and Alcoholics Anonymous have some passionate and effective evangelists.

Why?

Circumcision

Circumcision was a sign of the promise, and that promise was made to Abraham and his Seed. More than that it was promise about the Seed that was to come.

Therefore it makes sense to have such a weird sign. Not to be too crass, but the seed would come through reproduction of Abraham and his descendants.

Therefore, the offence to God in continuing to be circumcised after Jesus had come (and faith in him, Gal 3:25) is in denying that Jesus was the promised Seed. It says you are still waiting for the promise to be fulfilled and looking for another descendant of Abraham.

Can a unitarian god answer prayer?

How can we influence through prayer a god who from eternity has already decreed what should happen from the beginning to the end of time?

Andrew Murray believed it could only happen by us entering into the eternal counsel of God, and that is only possible if God is Trinitarian.

If God was only one Person, shut up within Himself, there could be no thought of nearness to Him or influence on Him. But in God there are three Persons. In God we have Father and Son, who have in the Holy Spirit their living bond of unity and fellowship. When eternal Love begat the Son, and the Father gave the Son as the Second Person a place next Himself as His Equal and His Counsellor, there was a way opened for prayer and its influence in the very inmost life of Deity itself. Just as on earth, so in heaven the whole relation between Father and Son is that of giving and taking.

("Harmony with the Being of God" in With Christ in the School of Prayer)

As Fred Sanders comments on Murray:

the fact God eternally exists as Father and Son (in the unity of the Holy Spirit) means that there is an opening, a space prepared, for the structure of asking-and-granting that is prayer

Just as the Sonship of Jesus on earth may not be separated from His Sonship in heaven, even so with His prayer on earth, it is the continuation and the counterpart of His asking in heaven. The prayer of the man Christ Jesus is the link between the eternal asking of the onlybegotten Son in the bosom of the Father and the prayer of men upon earth. Prayer has its rise and its deepest source in the very Being of God. In the bosom of Deity nothing is ever done without prayer—the asking of the Son and the giving of the Father.

Crucial for Murray was to resist the urge to think of some will of God that is antecedent to the Son and the Father, or some decision that was made behind the back of the Tirinity, in the oneness of God that is not already triune. There is no such God, so there is no such divine will. The divine will is Trinitarian and is worked out according to the asking-and-granting structure revealed in the Son:

This may help us somewhat to understand how the prayer of man, coming through the Son, can have effect upon God. The decrees of God are not decisions made by Him without reference to the Son, or His petition, or the petition to be sent up through Him. By no means. The Lord Jesus is the first-begotten, the Head and Heir of all things: all things were created through Him anduntoHim, and all things consist in Him. In the counsels of the Father, the Son, as Eepresentative of all creation, had always a voice ; in the decrees of the eternal purpose there was always room left for the liberty of the Son as Mediator and Intercessor, and so for the petitions of all who draw nigh to the Father in the Son.

(pp. 222-223, Embracing the Trinity)

Incidentally, I once heard James Torrance despair of the lack of books on prayer that were strong on the intercession of Christ. Andrew Murray's book was one of the few he thought was good.

Honour in 1 Timothy

• "Honour widows who are truly widows" - 1 Tim 5:3-16 deals with how you honour widows by providing for them financially.
• "Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honour" - 1 Tim 5:17-24 deals with how you honour elders by financial provision and respect.
• "slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honour" - 1 Tim 6:1-2 deals with how slaves honour their masters by serving them.

All are in the context of the two verses of the letter that end "Amen", 1:17 and 6:16, which make clear that ultimately it is the Lord Jesus Christ who deserves and receives all the honour.

(with thanks to MT)

John Donne sonnets

Holy Sonnet 10

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

(HT Colin Gunton)

Holy Sonnet 14

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

(HT Rosemary Grier)

Colin Gunton on God's omnipotence

It is easy to formulate [God's omnipotence] in terms of an abstract contrast between awareness of our finite power and a supposedly infinitely powerful deity who can, according to a famous definition, will everything except a contradiction. This approach, however, will not do, because if God is simply power magnified to an infinite degree, then God is little distinguishable from a tyrant or the devil. It is better that we remember two things, only apparently in tension with one another. The first is that Paul centres his notion of divine power on the salvation achieved by Christ on the cross and the power of the proclamation of the gospel to reconcile lost sinners to their loving creator. To call Christ 'the power of God and the wisdom of God' (1 Cor. 1.24) privileges a certain way of exercising power. This must not, however, be sentimentalized, as it often is in an era which has become too conscious of excesses committed in the name of divine power. There is much talk of non-coercive love and power, and indeed, the cross is a sign that in one respect God indeed does not coerce. But that is not the whole story, for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is an act of power of another kind and, although in no way to be divorced from the divine action on the cross, is coercive of reality in a strong sense. As John Donne's great sonnet celebrates, death the coercer is coerced. These two central insights together entail that in some way or other we must hold together the power that is made real in the suffering of Jesus and that manifested, on the one hand, in his 'works of power' and, on the other, in his being raised from the dead.

(p. 16, Colin Gunton, The Christian Faith)

I think that massive quotation is massively helpful. Our doctrine of God's omnipotence needs to come out of the exercise of God's power in both Christ's cross and his resurrection.

William Temple on self-centredness

When we open our eyes as babies we see the world stretching out around us; we are in the middle of it; all we see is determined by relation of all objects to ourselves. This will be true as long as we live. I am the center of the world I see; where the horizon is depends on where I stand. The same is true of our mental and spiritual vision. Some things hurt us; we hope they will not happen again; we call them bad. Some things please us; we hope they will happen again; we call them good. Our standard of value is the way things affect ourselves. So each of us takes his place in the center of his own world. But I am not the center of the world, nor do I determine what is good or bad. I am not the center; God is. In other words, from the beginning I have put myself in God's place. This is my original sin.

(pp. 37-38, William Temple, Christianity and Social Order, 1942, HT C. Fitzsimons Alison)

That picture that when I move the horizon moves with me, struck me very powerfully when I heard it today.

It is all too easy to see how such self-centredness leads to conflict with one another, and ultimately with our God who will not be moved into our orbit by the force of our will.

... and yet he did move into our orbit according to his own will!

Christ submitted to the judgment of humanity "who call evil good and good evil" (Isaiah 5:20) and was executed as a sinner. After three days the Father could stand the injustice no longer justified his Son by his Spirit who raised him from the dead (1 Tim 3:16).

For a while God let us rule, and the sun stopped shining and earth became unstable... but then Christ was made Lord and Christ and the world is being put right (Acts 2). But because he took that route, rather than the route of shear power, there is room for us in the world put right.

Transforming love and hope

Commenting on Romans 8 Luther recalls the famous saying of Augustine that "The soul is more where it loves than where it lives".

Steven Paulson explains that if the person you love is on the other side of the country your thoughts, money, time is spent there as much as possible. Inevitably, unless the love ends, the lover and the beloved will move together and the identity of each will be found in the other. As Luther says, "love transforms the lover into the beloved", or as Jesus said "two shall become one flesh".

Paulson, sees Luther then explaining this movement as part of the more significant movement of hope. I'm not sure if that is right, but Luther certainly sees hope as important and performing the same movement.

Luther criticises the philosophers for seeking to understand things by focusing on the present and metaphysics. He sees Paul focusing his attention not on creation itself but on what it is waiting for. Paulson comments:

In the forest a birdwatcher learns to listen for birds more than watch for them. A therapist learns to ignore patient projections and to listen for the true source of pain. A theologian must... learn to hear the creature waiting.

If we want to understand people, and all creation, we need to know what they are hoping for as well as what they love. Because, "hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for".

I've met those people who ask you off the bat "what would love to do on your ideal day?" or "what do you love most about your church?" I've also been in interviews where you are asked "where do you hope to be in 5 years?" Those are questions that probe right to the heart who you are so they are questions worth asking people you want to know.

Soon I will be moving jobs and cities. Already relationship dynamics are changing, money is being spent on things I can only benefit from after the move, thoughts are in the place where I will end up. I am becoming what I hope for.

[Tim Keller has a sermon series on the transforming power of the Christian hope]

The Bible in a sentence

Colin Gunton had a conversation with John Webster "about whether one can say that there is a single leading idea in scripture" and concluded that if there is then "life" has a claim to it (p.x, Colin Gunton, The Christian Faith).

On the flip-side to this, death could also make a claim. In our recent book discussion of Harry Potter we asked whether the real enemy of the series was Voldemort or Death. I thought it was Death! The prominence of life and death in fiction reflects its pervasive presence in reality, which is just what the Bible deals with.

The Bible certainly sees death as the "last enemy to be destroyed" (1 Cor 15:26), and it is there as a threat and then presence from Genesis 2:17 to Revelation 21:8. A novel begins a story in the midst of countless other stories, and ends when that story is over even though the overlapping stories continue. Similarly, other than a bit of scene setting the Bible starts with the appearance of death, and ends when death's story ends. This is despite the eternity of incredible stories on either end. But not only does it frame the narrative of the Bible it stands at the central turning point when the Son of God died our death to bring us life.

Neither death nor life are static realities, but life is creative and death brings things to an end. Both are rich in meaning if understood Biblicaly as deeply relational, in the first instance toward the Trinity (John 6:63; 17:3) but also the whole of Creation.

The Bible has a two-beat rhythm that is initially of life-to-death, but the increasingly dominant rhythm is of death-to-life.

Therefore, if I had to sum up the Bible in a sentence, as one glittering group of people were asked, I would be tempted by JI Packer's "adoption through propitiation" or James Hamilton's "salvation through judgment", but think I'd plump for life through death.

What do you think?

Unity and plurality

Colin Gunton notes that:

"Much recent thought has turned into a contest between exponents of the essential unity of things and those advocating a fundamental, even chaotic, plurality." (. 13, The Christian Faith)

In contrast to this war between the camps that emphasise unity (particularly Modernists) and those that emphasise plurality (particularly Postmodernists), Christianity sees no conflict. Gunton argues that the Bible has a doctrine of creation that emphasises both the "free and sovereign action", but also a pattern of mediation which gives "space" to creation to be itself.

Interestingly he then ties unity particularly to the work of the Son, and plurality to the work of the Spirit, both of whom the Father uses to create both old and new creations:

"while reference to Christ shows how we may hold the world together in unity, the Spiirit is the principle of reality's variety and multiplicity" (p. 14, ibid)

This makes sense to me particularly as I think of Paul and his teaching on the church. He appeals to the unity we as a body in Christ (cf. Col 1:17 which sees union in Christ in creation), but often sees the Spirit gives a diversity of gifts. Christ's saving work is seen supremely in his one action of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension; but the Spirit works in countless individuals in a variety of times and places and ways. Of course each indwell the other, to the glory of the Father in Jesus Christ, so that there is harmony in the Trinity's work.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book discussion questions

On Thursday I am leading a semi-evangelistic book discussion on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I am not a die-hard fan, but I do like the books and believe it provides a deeply real way into discussing the Gospel. I am not intending to draw direct links to Christianity myself (except perhaps at the close), but hope to enlarge imaginations so that the Gospel can be comprehended better once it is heard. The many Christians who will be there will no doubt make the significant links for me and hopefully also see the superiority of the Gospel.

I will probably improve it after some sleep, but here is a link to the questions, plus loads and loads of quotations on the three themes I hope to discuss:

• trust
• death; and
• love

I would like to have done remorse as well but there won't be time. Feedback welcome. I will probably edit this post after the event.

Good News For People With Big Problems

Recently I've really benefited from listening to these MP3s by David Zahl of Mockingbird Ministries. They are unlike anything I've ever listened to and at heart that is because, as he repeatedly says, the motivation behind the series is to look at reality, not just Christian reality.

That works itself out in two striking things about the series:

1. Christian jargon is avoided and it is dominated by clips and stories from 'secular' culture. 10min clips from films, songs, poems, celebrity biography are all brought in, but not as a mere springboard but as something to really look at. David Zahl really believes that the Gospel has something to say to all of life.
2. Five out of the six talks are on the some of the darkest parts of our lives: self-involvement, judgment, depression, addiction, and death. It is a course which focuses on the diagnosis rather than the cure, and in some sense that is a weakness. But the strength is that David Zahl believes that the good news comes through the bad news. Unlike most of society and the church, he believes that it is through facing up to reality that resurrection life can be found.

Have a listen and see what you think.

1. "Starting with the Man in the Mirror: Self-Involvement and Suffering" starring Michael Jackson, Jack Kerouac and Woody Allen.
2. "It’s Not You It’s Me and Other Lies: Judgment, Guilt and Identity" starring George Costanza, Flannery O’Connor and T.S. Eliot
3. "Check Out Any Time You Like (But You can Never Leave), Part 1: Anger, Depression and Christian Hope" starring Whit Stillman, Emily Dickinson and David Foster Wallace
4. "When I Get to the Bottom I Go Back to the Top: Addiction, Anxiety and Recovery” starring Bill Wilson, Nemo’s dad Marlin and Wes Anderson
5. "Getting Out of Jail Free: Death, Despair and Sacrifice" starring Bob Dylan, W.H. Auden, Leo Tolstoy and Clint Eastwood.
6. "What Would Uncle Scrooge Do? Gratitude, Honesty and Astonishment" starring Kermit the Frog, John Lennon and Thornton Wilder

Sorrow in heaven

There once lived a people who had a profound understanding of the divine; this people thought that no man could see the God and live. -- Who grasps this contradiction of sorrow: not to reveal oneself is the death of love, to reveal oneself is the death of the beloved!"

(Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments)

How happy must God have been to tear the curtain of the temple and stop hiding himself from humanity? Yet at the same time he must have been so sorrowful that it was at the cost of hiding himself from his beloved Son dying on the cross.

The tragic lily

"God takes pleasure in arraying the lily in a garb more glorious than that of Solomon; but if there could be any thought of an understanding here, would it not be a sorry delusion of the lily’s, if when it looked upon its fine raiment it thought that it was on account of the raiment that the God loved it? Instead of standing dauntless in the field, sporting with the wind, carefree as the gust that blows, would it not under the influence of such a thought languish and droop, not daring to lift up its head? It was the God’s solicitude to prevent this, for the lily’s shoot is tender and easily broken."

(Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments)

What a tragedy for us to delude ourselves like the lily and think that God loves us because of our loveliness when in reality we are lovely because God loves us.

Sadly though it is a delusion we find everywhere except the Gospel:

"Only in the gospel does love precede loveliness. Everywhere else loveliness precedes love." (Tullian Tchividjian)

A little fairy tale by Kierkegaard

Why doesn’t God make himself clearer?

In Philosophical Fragments Kierkegaard tells a parable which helps to answer the question. He admits it is not valid analogy (and the more I think about it the more I see its flaws), but he hopes that it will enlarge our imaginations so that we can begin to understand.

"Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden" he says. The trouble is that love cannot abide inequality between lovers ("love is exultant when it unites equals, but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequal equal in love").

The king has three options in his pursuit of his beloved:

1. He can bring her up to his level. He can shower her with gifts and give her a title. But he will then be concerned that the love will be spoiled by the inevitable doubt in the maiden’s mind “do I really love him or just love him because of his gifts?” Therefore the king will not do this because he wants his love to be happy.
2. He can keep the inequality in their relationship. He can dazzle her with his glory and beauty while she remains in poverty. She will love him truly and be perfectly happy to be married to such a great king, but the king will not be happy because he wants to express his love and not just receive her love. He wants to glorify her and make her beautiful.
3. He can come down to her level. He can give up all his wealth and power, not just in a charade but truly. She will then be happy in her love for him, and he can express his love to her by giving her all that he has… even if now all he has to give is himself.

It is because of nature of the God that we have and the nature of relationship that he wants with us that he didn’t just pull us out of current situation, or display himself to his poor bride “in all the pomp of his power, causing the sun of his presence to rise over her cottage, shedding a glory over the scene”. If he revealed himself in a ‘clearer’ way, then it would be a different God and seeking a different relationship than the one who came as a servant.

“But the servant-form is no mere outer garment, and therefore the God must suffer all things, endure all things, make experience of all things. He must suffer hunger in the desert, he must thirst in the time of his agony, he must be forsaken in death, absolutely like the humblest -- behold the man His suffering is not that of his death, but this entire life is a story of suffering; and it is love that suffers, the love which gives all is itself in want. What wonderful self-denial!”

I may not have expounded the parable correctly, so you are welcome to read the chapter online yourself. It was hard going, even having heard a lecturer summarise it, but it is worth marvelling over. There are lots of jewels in the details.

Random reflections from a wedding day

I was privileged to be at a wedding today. There was a very good sermon, from someone known by some of my readers, with three main points (if I remember rightly):

1. Marriage will be shaped by the God you worship. Because God is Trinity, God is a God of personal loving relationships, and because we are made in his image, it is other-centredness rather than self-centredness to our lives.
2. Marriage should be shaped by Christ's love for the church. Firstly, we are forgiven all the ways in which we will sin against our spouse. Secondly, Christ is our model as he self-sacrificially laid down his life for his bride.
3. Marriage should be a signpost to Christ. Marriage images Christ's love for the church, a wedding the Bride and Groom would like their friends and family to be present at even more than they like their friends and family being present now.

Frankly, I would struggle to imagine a better outline for a sermon on marriage.

I had an conversation with some of the bride's family members afterwards. They explained that they believed that God was impersonal love, but they didn't see the necessity of all the baggage of Christianity. Drawing on the first point of the sermon I tried explaining that to for God to be love he needed to have multi-personal. They disagreed. I was less coherent from there on.

Later on in the day I read the first few chapters of 1 Corinthians where Paul explains that he preached "the message of the cross", and knew nothing amongst them "except Jesus Christ and him crucified". It reminded me of something Tim Keller often asks: "Did your god die for you?"

Did your career die for you? Did your desire for acceptance die for you? Actually, we all know those gods are pretty poor gods in comparison to Christ crucified. "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many", but every other god comes to serve and take our life away from us.

One thing I wished I had also said to this couple, and perhaps even said first, was "did your God of love, love you so much he died for you?"

It genuinely is true that that is where we see most clearly what love really is (1 John 3:16), and who are God really is (1 Cor).

Accountability v. confession

We are accountable to people so that they can judge us when we sin. We seek judgment because we believe that threats will change us.

We confess to people so that they can forgive us when we sin. We seek forgiveness because we believe that promises will change us.

With thanks to PD.

Better to be sorry than safe

[The] Gospel provides the assurance that actually produces repentance, forging the pathway to the place where we find forgiveness and redemption. We can finally grasp hold of the truth that it is always better to be sorry than to be safe. The pastoral implications for marriage alone are staggering." (David Zahl)

Seeing in 2D

Dave Bish mentioned that Tim Keller says that we need to console as well as confront our culture. It reminds me of David Powlison’s observation in his excellent seminars on Biblical Counseling at Bethlehem Baptist Church that a failing of the early Biblical Counseling movement was an emphasis on counselees as sinners to the exclusion of their experience as sufferers.

It helps me a lot to remember both these two dimensions:

We are:

Actors	AND	acted upon
Sinners	AND	sinned against
Under the penalty of our sin	AND	under the power of Sin
Sinners	AND	sufferers
People with misdirected desires	AND	with unfulfilled good desires

We need:

Confrontation and forgiveness	AND	consolation
Mercy	AND	justice
Penal substitution	AND	Christus Victor

Augustus Toplady knew both dimensions when he wrote:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

Any more terms to add?

Dressed for the occasion

Earlier this year I was involved in the organisation of a close friends wedding. It was a wonderful day celebrating the marriage of two lovely people. Almost everyone in our church was there.

On the morning someone told me that one church member wanted to come but felt he couldn’t because everyone there would be smartly dressed, but he didn’t have a suit. It was too late to find a suit for him, but I knew my friends would like him to have share their day. Amidst a whole lot of other chaos I called him and tried everything I could to persuade him to come.

I explained that it would be a great service which he would be sad to miss. I explained that no-one would judge him for dressing casually, and he could sit in the balcony if he was really that concerned. I pulled out all the stops to try and communicate how the occasion was worth being part of and how he would also be very welcome. Admittedly I also told him to stop being such an overly sensitive fool!

Unfortunately he didn’t come..

The wedding was great and the sermon was one of the best sermons I’ve heard this year. Unusually for a wedding it was on the Parable of the Prodigal Son(s) with a particular emphasis on the celebration and the invitation to it. They went out to “God delights in You” by Sovereign Grace.

Why have I told you this story? I tell you it because my friend didn’t come because he didn’t want to come, or because he didn’t think that they welcomed people, but because he didn’t feel he belonged with the clothes. He would happily have come if someone would have provided a suit so he would look the part.

We often present the Gospel in the same way as I encouraged my friend to come to the wedding. But the Gospel is even better. The wedding we are invited to is great, but like the younger son in the parable we are provided with a robe by our Father so that we genuinely belong.

The structure of sharing the Gospel

This is an attempt to explain some of the convictions I've gained about the structure of our attempts to share the Gospel with people. Because it is mainly about structure it only skims over the actual content which is the exciting part. It also misses the power which is all found in asking God the Father to act through his Word and Spirit. It also misses the context which should be a loving community of sinners with changed lives! It is also quite hastily written, so please forgive the errors, but feel free to pull it apart in a constructive way.

1. Prologomena - death

As we are both actors and those acted upon the law shows us both that we are sinners and sufferers. So we should connect with unfulfilled desires and with painful experiences as well as with guilt.

There are three ways in which this bad 'news' can be part of preaching:

1. Direct communication
• For example you can say, "you are a dirty rotten sinner" or "don't you feel really empty and purposeless without God?" This may be useful sometimes, but generally it is counter-productive. I think too much direct communication is what has given law-Gospel preaching a bad name.
2. Indirect communication
• To get past people's defences tell stories, make cultural references and make people so think that they end up telling themselves the bad news:
• Nathan told David a fable so that he convicted himself (2 Sam 12).
• Bizarrely God gave people a law which said "do this and live" for the purpose of increasing and convicting people of sin! The law may well be "indirect communication" par excellence.
• Tim Keller paints this beautiful picture of what friendship should be and his hearers are broken because as they apply it to their own lives they realise that it is something they have only tasted and barely experienced.
• Kierkegaard in The Point of View for My Work as an Author explains that you cannot communicate directly to one who is suffering under a delusion because "direct communication presupposes that the receiver's ability to receive is undisturbed". Instead you have to "deceive [!] a person into the truth", which means "one does not begin directly with the matter one wants to communicate, but begins by accepting the other man's illusion as good money". To natural legalists the law does just that, but it heightens our illusion to such an extent that is snaps.
3. Present beforehand
• Simeon Zahl comments that "the ‘Law’ is being preached by the Spirit as ‘negative’ experience long before the hearer enters the pew". People carry with them guilt and suffering that weighs them down before they hear anything explicitly Christian.
• GK Chesterton said that "original sin... is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved". It is not essential for the 'bad news' to be declared because it is already known and experienced (Romans 1). As Rob Bell has commented, many people already know an awful lot about hell from their experience

Although I believe in death before life, and bad news before good, I hope this shows that we should not simplistically or insensitively 'lay down the law' at the beginning of any sermon. Instead indirect communication and God's prior alien work can take precedence.

2. The Gospel - The source of Life

The bad news is our point of connection, but in contrast, while there are echoes and similarities of the Gospel in our experience, there is nothing that matches the "love unknown" of the Gospel. Because of this it must be declared and carry the life it promises with it.

The Gospel has three dimensions:

1. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit...
• The identity of God is the Gospel. God gave us not just to eternal life, but eternal life with him, which is good news only because he is so lovely.
2. ...acted in salvation in Jesus Christ who was "born of the Virgin Mary...crucified [but] On the third day he rose again [and] ascended into heaven"...
• The act of salvation is the Gospel. God did not just symphathise with us in our plight, but did something about it.
3. ...for us.
• That God and his acts are all directed in love towards us, and not someone else, is the Gospel.

People often seem to emphasise only one of the three and so risk losing the whole Gospel in the process. It is an useful thought experiment to think through which movements/teachers are strong on which point, and which we are weak on.

3. Our goal in preaching - The living of life

Again, in preaching we can aim for just one of the following and fail to have a holistic view of salvation.

1. New hearts
• Christianity is an affective faith. We love our God and desire to be with him.
2. New heads
• Christianity requires us to think differently about ourselves, our world and our God. We think through what it means that Jesus is Lord over every square inch of this world.
3. New hands
• We go out in words and deed as part of Christ's Gospel mission and in neighbourly love.

Again, it is an useful thought experiment to think through which movements/teachers are strong on which point, and which we are weak on.

The proper application of the pronoun

The gospel is not just a story about Jesus written in a book called “the Bible.” The story needs a proper foundation that Luther called “the proper application of the pronoun” by which Jesus’ story is preached and given “for you.”...Christ’s story must function as law and gospel in your own life. That means that when Luther says “gospel” it includes not only Christ and what he did, but it also includes you as a sinner for whom he did it.

(p.131, Steven Paulson, Luther for Armchair Theologians)

Luther talks about this at length in his Commentary on Galatians 1:4. I apologise for the long quotation in an old translation:

But weigh diligently every word of Paul, and especially mark well this pronoun our; for the effect altogether consisteth in the well applying of the pronouns, which we find very often in the Scriptures, wherein also there is ever some vehemency and power. Thou wilt easily say and believe that Christ the Son of God was given for the sins of Peter, of Paul, and of other saints, whom we account to have been worthy of this grace; but it is a very hard thing, that thou, which judgest thyself unworthy of this grace, shouldest from they heart say and believe, that Christ was given for thine invincible, infinite, and horrible sins. Therefore, generally, and without the pronoun it is an easy matter to magnify and amplify the benefit of Christ, namely, that Christ was given for sins, but for other men’s sins which are worthy. But when it cometh to the putting to of this pronoun our, there our weak nature and reason starteth back, and dare not come nigh to God, nor promises to herself that so great a treasure shall be freely given unto her, and therefore she will not have to do with God, except first she be pure and without sin...

We must use these words of St Paul, in the which he giveth a very good and true definition of Christ in this manner: “Christ is the Son of God, and of the Virgin, delivered, and put to death for our sins.” Here, if the Devil allege any other definition of Christ, say thou, the definition, and the thing defined, are false: therefore I will not receive this definition. I speak not this without cause: for I know what moveth me to be so earnest, that we should learn to define Christ out of the words of Paul. For indeed Christ is no cruel exactor, but a forgiver of the sins of the whole world. Wherefore if thou be a sinner (as indeed we are all) set not Christ down upon the rainbow, as a judge, (for so shalt thou be terrified, and despair of his mercy) but take hold of his true definition, namely, that Christ, the Son of God, and of the Virgin, is a person, not that terrifieth, not that afflicteth, not that condemneth us of sin, not that demandeth an account of us for our life evil passed; but hath given himself for our sins...

Learn this definition diligently, and especially so exercise this pronoun our, that this one syllable being believed, may swallow up all thy sins: that is to say, that thou mayest know assuredly, that Christ hath taken away the sins, not of certain men only, but also of thee, yea, and of the whole world. Then let not thy sins be sins only, but even thy own sins indeed; that is to wit, believe thou that Christ was not only given for other men’s sins, but also for thine.”

(Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians)

Four responses to God's strange works

I recently read Romans 9 with a friend. Even accepting that the passage is more about redemptive history and God's purposes for Israel and the Gentiles than individual predestination it is still hard to swallow the God who freely chooses.

However, Romans 9-11 also shows us how Paul responded to this the difficulty of God's strange works of rejecting some. What he exemplifies for us applies to experiences of suffering as much as it does with the specific issue of predestination.

1. Be humble and recognise who you are. "who are you, O man, to answer back to God?" Paul asks (Romans 9:20). "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" God asks Job (Job 38:2).
2. Be comforted that Christ experienced the worst. It is not in Romans 9-11 but "we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses" (Heb 4:15), we have Christ who suffered physically, emotionally and spiritually on the tree. And he has not left us alone but is present with us by his Spirit.
3. Be hopeful because God has good purposes. In Romans 9 he rejected the Jews "in order to" bring in the Gentiles. He brought Job to the end of himself, but then "blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning" (Job 42:12). He saw his Son crucified to raise him again to the highest place. It may be difficult to see, but he works all things together for good (Rom 8:28).
4. Be prayerful and cry out to him. God doesn't want passive stoicism in the face of his strange ways, but he wants us to wrestle with him, continually holding him to his promises. So Paul says that his "heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved" (Rom 10:1).

The three lights

Martin Luther:

Let us take it that there are three lights – the light of nature, the light of grace, and the light of glory, to use the common and valid distinction. By the light of nature it is an insoluble problem how it can be just that a good man should suffer and a bad man prosper; but this problem is solved by the light of grace. By the light of grace it is an insoluble problem how God can damn one who is unable by any power of his own to do anything but sin and be guilty. Here both the light of nature and the light of grace tell us that it is not the fault of the unhappy man, but of an unjust God; for they cannot judge otherwise of a God who crowns one ungodly man free from merits, yet damns another who may well be less, or at least not more, ungodly. But the light of glory tells us differently, and it will show us hereafter that the God whose judgment here is one of incomprehensible righteousness is a God of most perfect and manifest righteousness. In the meantime, we can only believe this, being admonished and confirmed by the example of the light of grace, which performs a similar miracle in relation to the light of nature.

(pp. 332, The Bondage of the Will, in Ernest Gordon Rupp, Desiderius Erasmus, Philip Saville Watson e.d., Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation)

Gavin Ortlund:

Luther also distinguishes between the light of nature, the light of grace, and the light of glory. I find this distinction very helpful. Just as there are many things that we see in the light of grace that we could not possibly understand by the light of nature, so there will be much that we will see in the light of glory that we cannot possibly understand in the light of grace. Therefore Christian faith has a drama, a mystery, and a tension to it as it waits for the eschatological vindication of its content.

Mockery

Listening to: Arcade Fire: The Suburbs

Peter calls us to give a explain our hope “with gentleness and respect” (1 Pet 3:15). But at first sight that does not seem to fit with the strong language that other biblical authors deploy.

Amos calls people “cows” (Amos 4:1), Jesus and John the Baptist call people a “brood of vipers” and “hypocrites” (Luke 3:7; Matt 12:34, 23:35). Paul wishes false teachers would castrate themselves (Gal 5:12) and Elijah questions whether Baal is not displaying his power because he is asleep (1 Kings 18:27). The examples could be multiplied.

I am not exactly sure how to fit these things together, but I think it may be something like this...

Instances of mockery in the Bible are not within the context of ‘evangelism’ or preaching to a congregation but declarations of judgment upon certain people. They do not seem to be directed against ordinary people but are spoken about teachers or those in some other kind of authority. Jesus and Paul could be remarkably generous and open to people either in deep sin (e.g. Zacchaeus), or held deeply heretical beliefs (e.g. Corinthian church). However, these people tended to be the marginalised, powerless, or poorly taught. To teachers or leaders they tended to be scathing in their language and strikingly condemnatory.

Therefore it appears that when ‘speaking truth to power’ mockery is appropriate and we shouldn't hold back in our language. But when we are the one in a position of ‘power’, e.g. in the pulpit of our own church or leading a Bible study, we should be gentle and respectful. When on-the-level with friends we can ask searching questions and make people feel a little uncomfortable, but only in love and within limits.

Any thoughts?