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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:33:48 GMT -5
Your Christian Attitude: A Most Important Ingredient
CURTIS C. THOMAS
Your Christian Attitude: A Most Important Ingredient
“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them” (Acts 16:25).
It has been said that the way a person looks at a rose bush determines whether he is an optimist or a pessimist. A pessimist is sad that rose bushes have thorns. An optimist is delighted that thorn bushes have roses. Our attitudes, or perspectives, are extremely important and often will determine how effectively we can witness.
The context surrounding the verse quoted above from Acts 16 contains Paul’s and Silas’ witness in Philippi. After Paul and Silas had cast out an evil spirit from a slave girl, the owners of the girl dragged Paul and Silas before the authorities with trumped-up charges. The crowds joined in the attack against these two godly men, after which the authorities had them stripped, beaten and severely flogged. Then, without any medical attention to their severe wounds, and though they were Roman citizens, they were thrown into the jail where they were placed in the inner cell. Their feet were placed in the stocks—a device that caused severe pain.
Our attitudes, or perspectives, are extremely important and often will determine how effectively we can witness.
Even though they were publicly humiliated and were in intense pain, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns. The other prisoners were listening. No doubt they were wide-eyed as Paul and Silas, rather than complaining and threatening to retaliate against their accusers or the authorities, were praising God through their prayers and hymn-singing. Suddenly, God miraculously delivered them by an earthquake. In the process the jailer, his family and possibly even some of the fellow prisoners were saved through the gospel testimony of Paul and Silas.
Paul’s and Silas’ attitudes (or perspectives) were an important ingredient in their testimony. Had they been grumbling, complaining, even cursing their situation, nobody would have listened to them. But instead, they were doing what Peter urged his readers to do when he wrote: “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have suffered grief in all kinds of trials” (1 Peter 1:6). Peter’s readers had been dispersed because of persecution and had lost all things—their homes, their jobs, their worldly possessions and, in many cases, their families. Like them, we are also called to rejoice even when we are suffering.
Our attitudes (or perspectives) are very important ingredients in our Christian walk. They not only affect our own outlook but also those of our families, our co-workers, our friends and neighbors, our fellow church members and the lost whom we hope to evangelize. If our outlook is pessimistic or dismal, people simply do not want to be around us, much less listen to us. If we exhibit a genuine optimism and a joyful spirit, people will be attracted to our testimony.
A number of years ago I learned a phrase from a young man who was an energetic witness of the gospel. When people nonchalantly asked him, “How are you?” he would always answer, “Much better than I deserve,” meaning that he was living joyfully under God’s grace. I now answer people who ask me that question the same way. It has led to a number of brief discussions about the Lord’s wonderful grace and mercy. When one answers that question with, “OK, considering the circumstances,” or “I could be better,” or “Alright, I guess,” an opportunity is missed. An answer with a genuine, Christ-honoring statement of some sort can generate both a rich testimony and a setting in which to discuss God’s wonderful gift of grace.
However, it is not just the response to a greeting with which we are concerned—it is our overall attitude. If we are truly children of God, we have so much about which to be thankful and to rejoice. Our sins have been eternally forgiven. Our home is heaven. Someday we will share God’s glory. Our trials and difficulties in this life will soon end. Sin will be totally eradicated when we get to heaven. God is our loving Father. His grace will sustain us. His arms of protection are surrounding us. He has given us loving brothers and sisters in the Lord. Even our sufferings are here to develop character and, subsequently, hope—and we know that in the end we will win with Christ.
If we are truly children of God, we have so much about which to be thankful and to rejoice.
There is no end to God’s graciousness toward us. How can we help but rejoice? Paul reminds us of this throughout the letter to the Philippians. He summarizes his thoughts by a command in chapter 4, verse 4, where he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!”
How can we make this joy apparent in our lives and, especially, in our local church bodies? Here are some practical suggestions:
• Make a habit of verbally expressing your gratitude to the Lord for His choosing you to be one of His children.
• Express your optimism that God has all things in control and that He is working all things together for the spiritual good of His children.
• Be willing to optimistically accept your responsibilities in your local church. If you are needed on the construction crew, volunteer willingly. If you are needed on the clean-up crew, or needed in the nursery, or needed as a teacher, express your joy at being able to serve Christ in that way.
• If problems occur in your church body, rather than complaining, seek to help in a God-honoring way to bring about a solution or resolution.
• Never complain about others. Use your tongue to build up others, rather than tearing them down.
• Pass along to others your gratitude and joy when good things are happening. Good attitudes are helped along by positive enthusiasm. (Remember that bad attitudes are also passed along to others.)
• Let people know that you are praying for them. The church staff especially needs this. Often they receive more criticism than verbal support. A word or note of positive encouragement can mean much to them.
• As you are around the lost, be especially mindful of the ways you express your attitudes. Many of them live in a dismal, dog-eat-dog world where there is little hope or joy. Brighten their days with a genuine, helpful, positive outlook. That may help attract them to your Lord. Paul instructs us to make the doctrines of our Lord attractive (Titus 2:10).
Our perspectives matter. In our church for many years we held an annual Christmas banquet during which we had a fun time, usually including some Christian entertainment. It was an occasion when the congregation expressed gratitude to the staff and a time of joyful fellowship. At one year’s banquet, a church member had invited a lost friend. After the banquet, that lost friend went back to his home where, unable to sleep, he pondered and mulled over what he had witnessed. Finally, at 2:00 AM, he awakened his Christian friend with a phone call, in which he said “I don’t know what you folks have, but whatever it is, I want it.” Our member explained to him that it came through a personal commitment and relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. As the member witnessed to him, the Holy Spirit opened the man’s heart and he was gloriously saved.
This wonderful story began with the members of our church collectively expressing joy as they fellowshipped together. This man knew that his life was empty and joyless and he finally saw something much better.
We, Christians, have the best of the best—the good news of a gospel that works! Let’s express it everywhere and always—by our words and by our perspectives.
This article is an excerpt from Curtis Thomas’ book – Life in the Body of Christ: Privileges and Responsibilities in the Local Church. A new hardcover edition is now available for pre-order for $19.98 at press.founders.org
CHRISTIAN LIFE, CHURCH, EVANGELISM
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:36:41 GMT -5
Beware of Your Fictional Church
JEFF ROBINSON
Beware of Your Fictional Church
His words rang in my ears for days and triggered a few nights of nocturnal unrest. “What were you expecting in the pastorate? You’re not in seminary any more and this church isn’t filled with your seminary buddies. You’re in the real world now, son.”
I had been on the job exactly seven days when a man who’d been in ministry for several decades hit my beautiful, peaceful, fictional church with the force of an F-5 twister. I’m not certain what my expectations for ministry were as a rookie pastor, but it didn’t take me long to realize that prior to arriving on the battlefield that is the local church, I had unwittingly built a fictional church in my mind that was nothing like the congregation that now called me “pastor Jeff.” I suspect that I’m not alone.
Ministry Megalomania
I had built a ministerial Shire that didn’t exist anywhere in this fallen world. It was long on success as some who analyze churches reckon success, and it was decidedly slim on tribulation, anxiety, and pain. It was a church that loved everything I “brought to the table.” It was populated by a people who delighted in my preaching, my family, even my personality. I simply showed up, preached, and instantly it grew both spiritually and numerically. My “honeymoon period” would endure indefinitely. But, it was pure fiction, ministerial Disneyland, and being a church historian and a preacher/teacher who is fairly well aware of Genesis 3, I should have known better.
And if you’re not careful, you may construct a variation of this church while in seminary or even fantasize about it being your “next” congregation while you are serving in a difficult place of ministry.
After a few years in the pastorate—and in the wake of far too many foolish pastoral missteps on my part—I realize how my fictional ministry life plagued the early days of my non-fictional pastorate and grew into sinful (but thankfully, temporary) disillusionment from which God, in his excellent mercy, helped me to learn many valuable lessons about both the glories of ministry and the poison ivy of self-centered expectations that had grown along the walls of my heart.
Six Reasons Why This Is Dangerous
Why does a fictional church have such deadly potential? Six reasons:
Your fictional church might make it difficult to adjust to your real church. If you enter with false expectations of your congregation, staff members, and yourself, failure is inevitable. And it won’t take long. Ministry is difficult. If you’re prepared to be at ease in Zion, the first appearance of the Philistine Goliath on the hill will send you running for cover.
Your fictional church might leave you disappointed with your real church. You may be trying to reach an artificial—perhaps even unbiblical—standard that neither you nor the people in your care are able (or should be striving) to meet. You will be frustrated with them and they will be frustrated with you. You are called to love the congregation God has given you, not the church you desire. It’s easier to be orthodox than loving (see 1 Corinthians 13), but God has called you to shepherd these flawed sheep, not the you-centered sycophants who populated that fictional church. Remember, you are a deeply flawed man too.
Your fictional church might unleash your inner Pharisee on your real church. As the next step down the path from danger number 2, you may be tempted to hold them in contempt due to the bareness of their cupboard of theological knowledge, their lack of interest in your ministry heroes, their disinterest in talking about the things of God. Your inner Pharisee will tempt you to be proud that you’re not like them, that you possess deep theological knowledge, that it’s far more spiritual to talk about the decrees of God than college football. But you are called to be a shepherd and it’s your privilege to lead them—slowly, patiently, and humbly—to the green pastures of delighting in the things of God. There was surely a time when you did not know the Bible and its theology very well, that you were not well-versed in the things of God. You must never forget this. Besides, learning about the things that interest them, like college football, will greatly improve your ability to relate to the congregation.
Your fictional church may have equipped you with a mental encyclopedia of cut-and-dried answers to questions that are not cut-and-dried in your real church. Real life ministry requires wise nuance in the application of Bible and theology. It requires others-focused relational savvy. In a former venue of service for me, the church was constitutionally elder-led, but had no elders in place when I arrived. In my fictional church, we would have elected elders in the first month. After all, plural leadership is the New Testament pattern, and we want to be biblical in all things. However, I had to take time to see whether there were qualified men in the church and needed to get to know them well before this right and good step could be considered. Sadly, years later I’m convinced I wasn’t patient enough. You will face many challenges for which there are no cut-and-dried answers, challenges that require careful, patient, wise, nuanced application of God’s Word. Some of them will call for seeking wisdom from pastors who are more seasoned than you. Bathe yourself in the wisdom of Proverbs 15:22.
Your fictional church may have subtly contorted your theology of suffering. You may even begin to wish—in some dark corner of your fallen mind—that a theologically respectable version of the prosperity gospel was but true. You always knew ministers suffered. You’ve read about Charles Simeon, Jim Elliott, various Puritans, and the Reformers, but if you’ve live too long in a ministry fantasy camp, you’ll be shocked, perhaps even a little peeved at God that it’s happening to you. It wasn’t supposed to be this way . . . or was it? But listen closely to Peter: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Pet. 4:12-13). You will suffer in ministry. It’s axiomatic, and it’s glorious (2 Cor. 4:17-18). Paul used an entire letter, 2 Corinthians, to trace out out a pastor’s job description. It tells us that, at times, it’s not going to be pretty and that local church ministry is not for the squeamish. And know this sobering reality: the cauldron of real-life ministry might either confirm your calling or cause it to evaporate like a mist in late summer. You must cling to the one who suffered in your place and learn to find your contentment in him (Phil. 4:12).
You are the under-shepherd of Christ’s church. He is the hero, not you. Christ builds his church—see Matthew 16:18. Whether your real ministry efforts seem to bear fruit that is puny or healthy—and the difference between the two is often difficult to discern from our limited vantage point—God is strong and you are weak. Ministry has nothing to do with your glory and everything to do with his. As Paul makes clear in 2 Corinthians 12, God demonstrates his power through human weakness, builds his church through the spiritual atomic bomb that is the gospel, and does so by means of weak clay pots. That’s you. That’s me. Your ambitions must be God’s ambitions, the glory all his.
Set A Watchman
Just as the Lord calls his people to perpetual self-examination (2 Cor. 13:5), so pastors—both present and future—must always be weighing the motives of their hearts. We must keep a sharp eye trained on the landscape of our hearts lest we build upon it unreasonable—fictional—expectations for ourselves or for those whom God has granted us, or may grant us, the choice privilege of shepherding.
CHURCH, CHURCH MEMBERSHIP, PASTORAL MINSTRY, REGENERATE CHURCH MEMBERSHIP
Jeff is a senior editor for The Gospel Coalition. A native of Blairsville, Ga., Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from The University of Georgia, a Master of Divinity in biblical and theological studies and a Ph.D. in historical theology with an emphasis on Baptist history from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. He is pastor of New City Church in Louisville, KY. Jeff and his wife Lisa have been married for 19 years and have four children.
AUTHOR ARCHIVE
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:37:25 GMT -5
The Use of God’s Law in Daily Christian Life
FRED MALONE
The Use of God's Law in Daily Christian Life
Founders Journal 115
CONTENTS
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Paragraphs 6 and 7
Chapter XIX
Second London Confession
The first five paragraphs of Chapter 19 confess our forefathers’ understanding of Scripture concerning the moral law of God, identified by them as the Ten Commandments. The moral nature of God, reflected in Adam’s nature, was written on Adam’s heart at his creation (Romans 2:14–15). This is identified as the same law as the Ten Commandments of God, given to the Jews at Sinai (2:20–23). It is this moral law which is still written in remnant form on the heart of all men, their conscience bearing them witness. Thus, God’s standard of righteousness and the basis for His judgment of all men is the Ten Commandments (3:19–20). This was clarified and reiterated by our Lord Himself in Matthew 5:17–22. These commandments fill up the meaning of the two great commandments of love to God and man (Matthew 22:36–40; Romans 13:8–10).
Therefore, paragraphs 2LBC 19:6–7 explain how the Christian is to follow the law of God in his daily life. Having been freed from the condemnation of the law broken by Adam and by each of their own committed sins, having a perfect Savior who kept and fulfilled the Covenant of Works given to Adam, having one’s sins against the law atoned for by the efficacious atonement of our impeccable Savior, now the believer lives no longer under law but under grace all the time (Romans 5:1–2).
And yet, freed from the condemnation of the law covenant in Adam, the believer still lives under the definition of righteousness and of sin identified in the Ten Commandments of God (1 Cor. 9:21–22). Under grace, the redeemed and forgiven believer delights after the law of God in the inner man, and seeks to keep it with a living faith in Christ (Rom. 7:22; versus 8:7). This is, biblically, the pursuit of holiness and Christlikeness often eluding the preaching and teaching in today’s evangelical-reformed churches (see Chapter XIII:3). If a believer would pursue Christlikeness, he/she must love God and man as defined in the Ten Commandments which Jesus perfectly embodied:
2LBC Chapter 19:6–7
19.6. Although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified or condemned,13 yet it is of great use to them as well as to others, in that as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly; discovering also the sinful pollutions of their natures, hearts, and lives, so as examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of, humiliation for, and hatred against, sin;14 together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ and the perfection of his obedience: it is likewise of use to the regenerate to restrain their corruptions, in that it forbids sin; and the threatenings of it serve to shew what even their sins deserve, and what afflictions in this life they may expect for them, although freed from the curse and unallayed rigour thereof. These promises of it likewise shew them God’s approbation of obedience, and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof, though not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works; so as man’s doing good and refraining from evil, because the law encourageth to the one and deterreth from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law and not under grace.15
13 Romans 6:14; Galatians 2:16; Romans 8:1; 10:4. 14 Romans 3:20; 8:7, etc.
15 Romans 6:12–14; 1 Peter 3:8–13.
19.7. Neither are the aforementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the Gospel, but do sweetly comply with it,16 the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully which the will of God, revealed in the law, requireth to be done.17
16 Galatians 3:21. 17 Ezekiel 26:27.
Paragraph 6: The Uses and Blessings of the Law of God for Believers
It is of great interest that Paragraph 6 is the lengthiest paragraph in this chapter on the law of God. The purpose of this paragraph is to identify biblically and to explain practically the relationship of the born-again Christian to the moral law of God. In so doing, great effort is given to clarify that the believer no longer is “under law” in its condemning power but now lives continually “under grace” in Christ. This continual clarification removes any accusation of legalism in justification or sanctification. Legalism is defined by seeking to gain God’s blessings by one’s own obedience alone. Evangelical obedience is from being justified, not to be justified.
1. First, the paragraph states that though the law no longer condemns the true believer before God, yet it still has great use as a rule of life. Then it lists three ways that it is of use to the Christian:
a. It informs the believer and others of the will of God and their duty which binds them to walk accordingly. Here the confession is dealing with the truth that all men are responsible to God to obey His law (defined as the Decalogue) as the standard for obedience and judgment. This application of the law to the Christian has received opposition in the past and in the present day. It is objected that the mention of duty or binding to obedience is a return to legalism and works-righteousness. However, it is clear that the confession simply states that all men are bound by God’s law as a rule of life, whether non-Christian or Christian.
And what is duty? Those who object to this word assume that it always means “to pay a debt.” However, it is a command of God for Christians to give to all what is due them, whether they are indebted to them or not (Romans 13:7). It is God’s will for us to give what is due others, whether tax, custom, fear, or honor. For the Christian to fear God as their Father under grace (Acts 9:31; 1Peter 1:17–18; Revelation 15:4) and to honor the law of God as His standard for righteousness and Christlikeness (Romans 7:12) is a duty not based upon paying back a debt which can never be repaid, but in giving respect to those to whom it is due, including God and His law (Romans 13:7; 7:12, 8:4). We must not let semantics and debates about words confuse us against the plain statements of Scripture: “If you love Me, you will keep (guard, watch) My commandments” (John 14:15; Matthew 28:19–20). Objections to the duty of honoring God and His law betray either confusion or a tendency toward historic antinomianism. To obey God’s law is a privilege, not a burden, to those who love the nail-pierced One who commands them (Matthew 28:19–20).
b. Further, the law of God discovers and unveils sin in our hearts and lives to convict us of our guilt for breaking God’s law and to produce a hatred of sin in us. The existence of remaining sin in the Christian’s heart and life is a grievous reality. To have God’s law as a continuing standard to expose remaining sins in our minds and lives is a great help and blessing of God to expose sin, renew repentance, and flee to Christ by faith alone for fresh cleansing for sin (see Matthew 5:21–22; 1 John 1:9).
c. In addition, the conviction of the law by the Spirit also points us to a clearer understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ in His personal perfections and His sufficiency as a perfect Savior for their need. He kept each commandment perfectly in thought, word, and deed as substitute. Thus, the law functions as the standard to reveal our spiritual poverty in the light of a Holy God who justly condemns all men by nature. When the Holy Spirit convicts the mind and heart of sin, righteousness, and judgment, then the non-Christian is enlightened to their terrible sinfulness and need of Christ (John 16:8–11). But the Christian also is convicted of their remaining sins by the same standard of God’s law and refreshes their need to flee to Christ, confessing their sins to Him (1 John 1:9). Therefore, the law as a rule of life is of great use to both to examine their thoughts, words, and deeds as approved by God or not. Sin is the transgression of the law both for believers and unbelievers (1 John 3:4; Romans 3:20).
2. Second, the law is “likewise” of use to the regenerate for blessings. By the use of “likewise” it is clear that the previous point had main reference to the unbeliever but included the believer as responsible for obeying the same law. Now, “likewise,” the confession addresses the born-again believer directly.
a. The law restrains the remaining corruptions in the Christian in that it forbids sin. This places the standard of God’s righteousness before the Christian every day. It reminds them that all their sins—past, present, and future—have been atoned for in the Lord Jesus Christ; yet it also keeps before them their remaining sinfulness which may yield to temptation at any time. Remembering the law of God, that our Lord kept it perfectly, that He had to suffer for all our sins, places a guard in the Christian’s mind to restrain being tempted by sin. To sin against our perfect and loving Savior and His commandments is abhorrent to the true believer. By reminding us of what is sin against God, the law restrains us from dishonoring our Lord.
b. Even the threatenings of the law to the unconverted, though the Christian is no longer subject to such threatenings under grace, assist the converted to understand what even their “Christian” sins still deserve but for the grace of God. This humbles them, warns them, and prevents them from taking advantage of the grace of God to “sin that grace might abound.” God hates the sinner and his sin before regeneration, but after regenerating those whom He loves, He still hates the evil of their remaining sins. Each Christian’s sin committed still requires the remembrance of judgment escaped and of redemption accomplished by the bloody death of Christ. Therefore, the threatenings of the law to the unconverted still help the converted to “watch and pray that you might not enter into temptation.” Further warnings to confessing Christians who are becoming dull of hearing exhort them to persevere to the end (Hebrews 5:11–6:9).
c. Though freed from the curse and condemnation of the law by faith alone in Christ alone, though freed from its “unallayed rigour” (absolute perfection) to please God, the law still reveals one’s sins by which God may send afflictions in this life. Sometimes afflictions and trials are not sent because of specific sins committed but for the purpose of purifying one’s faith in Christ (1 Peter 1:6–7). At other times they are so sent (1 Corinthians 11:29–32).
However, it is the 2LBC 19.6 which adds the words “unallayed rigour” to the Westminster and Savoy identical paragraphs. Baptists wished to emphasize that, “under grace,” the rigor of the law demanding perfection before acceptance is now gone for the walking Christian. Samuel Bolton explains:
Observe that the believer is freed from the rigour of the obedience required in the law. He is not freed from the requirement of exact obedience, but from that rigour of obedience which the law required as a condition of salvation.1
The rigour of the law … required universal and actual, as well as personal, obedience, yea, and with such a degree of rigour that if a man failed in one tittle he was lost for ever… The Gospel admits of repentance, but the law will not own it. The law looks for exact obedience in every jot and tittle. From this rigid obedience has God freed the believer. Instead of universal actual obedience, God is pleased to accept of universal habitual obedience, as we find it written: “Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments” (Ps. 119:6). Though there may be failing in action, yet where there is truth of affection, God can own it. In the Gospel God accepts affections for actions, endeavours for performance, desire for ability. A Christian is made up of desires, of mournings, thirstings, and bewailings: O that my ways were directed! O miserable man that I am! Here is Gospel perfection.2
Under grace, the Christian walks by saving faith in Christ, seeking to keep His law and commandments, knowing that God accepts his/her attempts to obey though imperfect in themselves. No longer under the condemnation of the law, the law becomes the friendly guide to Christlike righteousness which is pleasing to his Father in heaven. Such great truths persuade the believer to pursue sanctification, without which no one shall see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). For true saving faith, under grace, always seeks to love Christ and to keep His commandments (John 14:15; Romans 6:14).
d. The promises of the law also show God’s approval of obedience and the just reward a believer may expect upon keeping (guarding, watching) God’s commandments (John 14:21). Yet, these rewards are not on the basis of the Covenant of Works to gain God’s blessings, but they are rewards for an imperfect obedience performed while under grace (1 Corinthians 3:10–15). And even then, this obedience is due to God’s work of grace within their hearts and minds (Philippians 2:12–13). Therefore, God’s blessings (rewards) for faithful obedience is no evidence of the Christian’s being “under law” and not “under grace” (Romans 6:14).
Again, the objection to the Christian having a legalistic “eye to rewards” in their obedience to God’s law is a false charge leaning toward some historical antinomian views. Our forefathers understood that faith’s pursuit of obedience to God’s law while “under grace” is not legalism for justification. Rather, the exercise of faith in Christ by obedience to His commands results in Christlike sanctification to the glory of God.
Paragraph 7: The Mutual Support of the Law and the Gospel for Christian Obedience
19.7. Neither are the aforementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the Gospel, but do sweetly comply with it,16 the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully which the will of God, revealed in the law, requireth to be done.17
16 Galatians 3:21. 17 Ezekiel 26:27.
Here the confession affirms that the use of the law for obedience in the Christian life in no way contradicts living “under grace” in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Although there is an obvious difference between the law-covenant (works-righteousness) and the gospel covenant (faith-righteousness), yet there is also a great harmony and mutual support between them. Later than the 2LBC, the New Hampshire Baptist Confession (1833) captured this unity in a short paragraph:
XII. THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL
We believe the Scriptures teach that the Law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of his moral government; that it is holy, just, and good; and that the inability which the Scriptures ascribe to fallen men to fulfil its precepts, arises entirely from their love of sin; to deliver them from which, and to restore them through a Mediator to unfeigned obedience by the holy Law, is one great end of the Gospel, and of the Means of Grace connected with the establishment of the visible church.
The 2LBC (the Philadelphia and Charleston Baptist Confessions) and the NHBC were the working confessions of American Baptists up to the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message (SBC). So, one can see that the moral law of God was taught to Christians to live by under the grace of the gospel.
Further, the emphasis of Paragraph 7 upon the Spirit of Christ working in man shows the connection between the Spirit’s work and the Law of God in the Christian life. Here the confession explains that the Holy Spirit of Christ subdues and enables the will of man to do God’s will cheerfully and freely (Ezekiel 36:26–27). And that will is revealed in the Law of God which He requires us to obey. This is why biblical sanctification is defined in the 2LBC 13.3 as:
13.3 In which war, although the remaining corruption for a time may much prevail,10 yet, through the continual supply of strength from the sanctifying Spirit of Christ, the regenerate part doth overcome;11 and so the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God, pressing after an heavenly life, in evangelical obedience to all the commands which Christ as Head and King, in his Word hath prescribed to them.12 (emphasis added)
10 Romans 8:23. 11 Romans 6:14. 12 Ephesians 4:15,16; 2 Corinthians 3:18; 7:1.
The above quotation explains that the Holy Spirit of Christ (through regeneration and indwelling) enables the will of man to do willingly the law of God. Using the language of the 1LBC (1644/46), which is excluded from the WCF and the Savoy paragraph, the 2LBC affirms “pressing after an heavenly life, in evangelical obedience to all the commands which Christ as Head and King, in his Word hath prescribed to them.” These statements by our forefathers make clear that any teaching on sanctification that does not enjoin obedience to God’s law under grace, empowered by the Holy Spirit’s work within, is defective and leading the Christian into an erroneous understanding of what is Christian growth and holiness.
The remedy to today’s lack of Christlike holiness by professing Christians is not neglect of the law while fostering grace and the Holy Spirit’s fullness. Rather, it is to teach that the believer under grace, no longer condemned by the law, whose obedience is no longer accepted by the former rigor of the law, is still commanded by God to keep, guard, watch, and live by His law. This is not legalism as charged by some but simply living by a justifying faith in Christ according to His commandments. This is sanctification. This is how Jesus Himself lived in obedience to all of God’s commands, thus defining what it means to love God with all your heart, your neighbor as yourself, and loving Christians as Christ first loved us. As John exhorted Christians:
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked (1 John 2:1–6). (emphasis added)
It is so very clear in the above quotations that to walk as Christ walked (i.e., holiness, Christlikeness) involves depending upon Christ by faith as one’s Propitiation and Advocate while studying and seeking to keep His commandments in the same manner as He did; i. e., thoughts, words, and deeds. Christian holiness requires believing in Christ alone for one’s justification all the time. But Christian holiness also calls the believing one actively to guard and keep the law as He did. This is a Lordship salvation that perseveres to the end (Philippians 2:12–13).
The word “keep” (guard, watch, protect) does not mean that the justified believer must “keep” the law perfectly for one’s obedience to be accepted by God. Rather, it means to watch after the law and commandments continually as you walk by faith and seek to obey them. There is no such thing as perfectionism in behavior until heaven where “the spirits of righteous men made perfect” live (Hebrews 12:23). Yet, believers are commanded by God to guard their thoughts, words, and deeds by the law of God. The believing Paul said: “So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:12). The contextual meaning of “Law” is the Decalogue (Romans 7:7).
In sum, the goal of our instruction is love (1 Timothy 1:5). And love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13:8–10) in loving submission to our Lord Jesus Christ “under grace” (Romans 6:14).
NOTES:
1 Samuel Bolton. The True Bounds of Christian Freedom (London: The Banner of Truth Trust), 40. This work is highly recommended for a thorough study of the Law and the Gospel in the believer’s life. It shows that the once-for-all justified believer lives by faith under grace while seeking to obey God’s unchanging Law. Though written in 1643, he answers the same questions being explored today by Baptists.
2 Ibid., 42.
1689 CONFESSION, BIBLICAL LAW, GOD'S LAW, LAW AND GOSPEL
Fred has served as pastor of First Baptist Church, Clinton, Louisiana, since 1993, having previously served eleven years as founding pastor of Heritage Baptist Church, Mansfield, Texas. He holds an M. Div. degree from Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi (1974), and a Ph. D. degree in New Testament from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas (1989). He is the blessed husband of Deborah, and the happy father of three grown children and six grandchildren. Pastor Malone was a founding Board Member of Founders Ministries and has served as a Trustee for The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:38:17 GMT -5
Participating in Gathered Worship: Worship in Spirit and in Truth
KEN PULS
Participating in Gathered Worship: Worship in Spirit and in Truth
What would you consider essential to worship? What is truly necessary if true worship is to occur? Is it a certain style of preaching? Is it a certain type of music? Is it a sense of reverence and awe? Is it a sense of excitement and praise? Of course it is important to be intentional and thoughtful about our preaching and singing in worship. And it is important that we respond in appropriate ways as we worship. But Jesus points us to something deeper at the heart of worship.
In John 4, in the midst of a conversation at the well with a woman from Samaria, Jesus revealed the essence of true worship. He said in verses 23–24:
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24).
In these verses Jesus teaches us two essential truths about worship. Those who worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth. These are not two different or distinct ways of worshipping God, but two essential parts of the same worship.
If we are to participate rightly in worship, we must worship in spirit.
Our worship must be heart-felt and alive in the power of Holy Spirit. In order for us to worship in spirit, we need the Spirit of God to seek us out and make us alive. God must first come and draw us to Himself, awaken us, quicken us, and enable us to come. As the Holy Spirit indwells us and enlivens our spirit, we see Christ as precious—we see our great need to be in Him, clothed in His righteousness alone—and we are able to worship God in spirit.
If we are to participate rightly in worship, we must worship in truth.
Our worship must be saturated with God’s Word and offered in submission to God’s Word. In order for us to worship in truth, we must pursue God and know God as He has revealed Himself to us in His Word. John begins His gospel pointing us to the Word.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:1-5).
If we are to worship in truth, we must have Christ. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus said of Himself:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).
God gives us Christ, who is truth, and His Word. His Word is truth (John 17:17). It is through the Word of God that we know Christ and know the gospel, as the Spirit of God illumines the Word in our hearts and gives us understanding of truth.
God would have us worship Him in spirit and in truth. This is the essence of true worship. God is seeking those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. We see this in both the Old and New Testaments.
In Isaiah 66 the prophet delivered the truth that Jesus was teaching in John 4: God cannot be confined to one place. He cannot be contained in a temple of stone.
Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD (Isaiah 66:1-2a).
But notice where God’s presence does abide:
But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word (Isaiah 66:2b).
God looks upon those who are humble and contrite in spirit (worship in spirit) and who tremble at His Word (worship in truth).
Worship in spirit and in truth described the worship of the early church:
And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness (Acts 4:31).
They were filled with the Holy Spirit (worship in spirit) and they spoke God’s Word with boldness (worship in truth).
Worship in spirit and truth framed Paul’s instruction for music in the church in the parallel passages in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 that speak of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs:
Worship in Spirit:
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart (Ephesians 5:18-19).
Worship in Truth:
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God (Colossians 3:16).
“God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” This has significant implications for us as we worship God today. As we plan worship, and lead worship, and participate in worship, there are two things we must do that are most essential:
We must saturate our services with the Word of God. We must read it and preach it and pray it and sing it. We must obey it and follow its instructions as we order our services of worship.
And we must pray for the presence and power of the Spirit. We need God’s Spirit to enliven our spirits and illumine His Word if we are to hear and understand and respond rightly to His Word.
May God grant us hearts that are sensitive to the presence of His Spirt and submissive to His truth as it is proclaimed whenever we gather in His name to worship.
We confess, without Your grace,
Vain our efforts in this place.
You must come and warm and stir,
For true worship to occur.
For Your Word, O Lord, we yearn;
Empty, let it not return.
Come, accomplish all Your will—
Draw, convict, give life and fill.
(from “Lord, We Come to Hear Your Word” – Ken Puls)
(Scripture quotations are from the Holy BIble, English Standard Version (ESV) ©2001 by Crossway)
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:39:01 GMT -5
God’s Faithfulness Our Hope
Tom Ascol
TOM ASCOL
God’s Faithfulness Our Hope
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
— Lamentations 3:22-23
There is a vital relationship between your memory and your anticipation. Memory provides the foundation for expectation. What you remember powerfully influences what you expect. What you know and can recall inevitably fuels what you anticipate.
My favorite restaurant is a local place called The Blue Dog. I have always enjoyed wonderful meals served by friendly staff there. My past dining experiences make me anticipate another excellent meal the next time I eat there.
The same thing is true of gathered worship. The sweet memories of meeting with and hearing from God that believers share together on the Lord’s Day cause them to look forward with great anticipation to the next opportunity to meet.
But it works the other way, too. If you remember bad experiences in a restaurant then it will be difficult to have high expectations when you are invited there for another meal.
What you remember necessarily influences what you anticipate. Because this is true your memory can either work FOR you or AGAINST you when it comes to your spiritual life.
Are you ever haunted by memories? David was: “My sin is ever before me” (Psalm 51:3). The sons of Korah also were plagued by difficult memories: “All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face” (Psalm 44:15).
Remembering your past failures and sins can keep you locked in the dungeon of despair.
John Bunyan graphically portrays this in Pilgrim’s Progress. Giant Despair captures Christian and Hopeful and locks them in Doubting Castle, where they are beaten and tormented for four days. What kept them in that sad condition? It was their memory of their past failures! They had left the right road—despite having been warned of that danger. They also took their ease in by-path meadow and fell asleep when they should have been watching. It was the memory of their many sins that kept them in despair.
Has that ever happened to you? One of my favorite hymns expresses it well:
When I look all around me
And all I can see
Are my mountains of failure and sin
When I’m standing accused
And I’m guilty as charged
And I’ve nothing that I can defend
Those times when you are facing hardships, and you know that they are the result of your own sin and foolish choices. Or the times you look back on opportunities squandered and your mind begins to play the “what if” game.
• What if I had not married so hastily?
• What if I had not committed adultery?
• What if I had stayed in school?
• What if I had not cheated on the job?
• What if I had never smoked that first joint?
Memory can supply the club in Giant Despair’s hand to bludgeon you until you are almost spiritually senseless.
But memory can also be the chauffeur of peace, hope, and comfort to your soul, when, in addition to remembering your sins, it brings back to your mind the mercy and grace of God in Jesus Christ.
What finally delivered Christian and Hopeful from Doubting Castle? It was the memory that they had in their possession a key called promise! When that thought occurred to him, Christian said, “What a fool am I to lie in a stinking dungeon, when I may as well walk in liberty! I have a key in my bosom, called Promise; that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle.”
He was correct. The memory of God’s grace & of His mercy-filled promises in Christ set them free. “For all the promises of God find their Yes in [Christ]. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Corinthians 1:20).
The steadfast love of the Lord cannot ever cease because it has been given to us in Christ. By His life, death, and resurrection, He has sealed and secured it forever for all who trust in Him.
So, what do Christians do when all they can see is their sin? What do we do when we are justly accused with no defense to make for ourselves? We return to the One who has proven faithful throughout all of our life.
I will hope in the One
Crucified in my place
Jesus Christ the Redeemer of men
I will trust in the righteousness
Given to me
By Jesus my Savior and Friend
Trust and hope in our crucified, risen, reigning Savior. Remember Him. Remember His faithfulness in the past. He never forsakes His people. He never has let one of His promises fail. So, regardless of where you are or what you are going through, trust Him now. Trust Him for your future.
Remember His goodness, wisdom and power. And say with Jeremiah, “Great is Your faithfulness.”
Follow Tom Ascol:
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Tom Ascol
Tom Ascol has served as a Pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Cape Coral, FL since 1986. Prior to moving to Florida he served as pastor and associate pastor of churches in Texas. He has a BS degree in sociology from Texas A&M University (1979) and has also earned the MDiv and PhD degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas. He has served as an adjunct professor of theology for various colleges and seminaries, including Reformed Theological Seminary, the Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary, African Christian University, Copperbelt Ministerial College, and Reformed Baptist Seminary. He has also served as Visiting Professor at the Nicole Institute for Baptist Studies at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. Tom serves as the President of Founders Ministries and The Institute of Public Theology. He has edited the Founders Journal, a quarterly theological publication of Founders Ministries, and has written hundreds of articles for various journals and magazines. He has been a regular contributor to TableTalk, the monthly magazine of Ligonier Ministries. He has also edited and contributed to several books, including Dear Timothy: Letters on Pastoral Ministry, The Truth and Grace Memory Books for children and Recovering the Gospel and Reformation of Churches. He is also the author of From the Protestant Reformation to the Southern Baptist Convention, Traditional Theology and the SBC and Strong and Courageous. Tom regularly preaches and lectures at various conferences throughout the United States and other countries. In addition he regularly contributes articles to the Founders website and hosts a weekly podcast called The Sword & The Trowel. He and his wife Donna have six children along with four sons-in-law and a daughter-in-law. They have sixteen grandchildren.
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:39:41 GMT -5
Does God Love Everyone The Same?
JEFF ROBINSON
Does God Love Everyone The Same?
One of the most common theological questions I’ve been asked as a pastor and professor goes something like this: Does God love everybody in the same way? In other words, did he love Nero to the same degree he loves Billy Graham? Does he love those who reject him the same he loves his redeemed children? Does God hate the sin, but love the sinner?
Too often I’ve heard simplistic answers to this complex question. Historically, one theological camp has answered with an unqualified yes, while some in another offer an unqualified no. Yet truth often lies in the details. What is the meaning of “world”? Is John 3:16 the lens through which every other verse must be read?
The most careful, nuanced, and robustly biblical answer I’ve seen appears in Don Carson’s book The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God (Crossway, 2000). Carson identifies five different ways Scripture speaks of God’s love.
1. God’s intra-Trinitarian love between the Father and the Son
God’s intra-Trinitarian love not only marks off Christian monotheism from all other monotheisms, but is bound up in surprising ways with revelation and redemption. John’s Gospel is especially rich in this theme (e.g., John 3:35; 5:20). This intra-Trinitarian love is expressed in a relationship of perfection between the Father and the Son, untarnished by sin on either side. However much this intra-Trinitarian love serves as a model of love to be exchanged between Jesus and his followers, there is no sense in which the love of the Father redeems the Son, or the Son’s love is expressed in a relationship of forgiveness granted and received.
As precious as this expression of God’s love is, an exclusive focus here takes too little account of how God manifests himself toward his rebellious image-bearers in wrath, in love, and on the cross.
2. God’s providential love over his creation
Though the Bible largely refrains from using the word “love” in this connection, the theme is not hard to find. God creates everything, and before there’s a whiff of sin he pronounces all he’s made “good” (Gen. 1). This is the product of a loving Creator. Jesus depicts a world in which God clothes the grass of the field with the glory of wildflowers seen by no human, perhaps, but seen by God.
The lion roars and hunts down prey, but God feeds it. The birds of the air find food, and not a sparrow falls apart from the sanction of the Almighty (Matt. 6). If this were not a benevolent providence, a loving providence, then the moral lesson Jesus drives home—that this God can be trusted to provide for his people—would be incoherent.
3. God’s redeeming stance toward his fallen world
God so loved the world that he gave his Son (John 3:16). Some try to take kosmos (“world”) here to refer to the elect, but that really will not do. All the evidence of the word’s usage in John’s Gospel works against the suggestion. “World” in John refers more to badness than to bigness. It’s primarily the moral order in willful and culpable rebellion against God. In John 3:16, God’s sending love is to be admired not because it’s extended to so big a thing as the world, but to so bad a thing; not to so many people, but to such wicked people.
Nevertheless, John can elsewhere speak of the “whole world” (1 John 2:2), bringing bigness and badness together. More importantly, the disciples themselves once belonged to the world but were drawn out of it (e.g., John 15:19). God’s love for the world cannot be collapsed into his love for the elect.
4. God’s particular, effective, selecting love toward his elect people
The elect may be the entire nation of Israel or the church as a body or individuals. In each case, God sets his affection on his chosen ones in a way he doesn’t set his affection on others.
The striking thing about passages like Deuteronomy 7:7–8 is when Israel is contrasted with other nations, the distinguishing feature includes nothing of personal or national merit; it’s nothing other than the love of God. God’s love is directed toward Israel in a way it’s not directed toward other nations.
The fourth way of speaking of God’s love is unlike the previous three. And this discriminating feature of God’s love surfaces frequently. “I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated,” God declares (Mal. 1:2–3). Allow all the room you like for the Semitic nature of this contrast, observing the absolute form can be a way of articulating absolute preference, and yet God’s love in such passages is peculiarly directed toward the elect.
Similarly, in the New Testament we read Christ “loved the church” (Eph. 5:25). Repeatedly the New Testament tells us that God’s love is directed toward those who constitute the church.
5. God’s love for his people—conditioned on obedience
Obedience is part of the relational structure of knowing God; it doesn’t have to do with how we come to know him, but with our relationship with him once we know him. Jude exhorts his readers, “Keep yourselves in God’s love” (Jude 21), leaving the unmistakable impression that someone might not keep himself in God’s love.
The Lord Jesus commands his disciples to remain in his love (John 15:9), adding: “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love” (John 15:10).
“To draw a feeble analogy,” Carson writes, “there is a sense in which my love for my children is immutable, regardless of what they do. There is another sense in which they know well enough that they must remain in my love. If my teenagers break curfew for no good reason, the least they will experience is a bawling out, and they may come under some restrictive sanctions. There is no use reminding them that I am doing this because I love them. That is true, but the manifestation of my love for them when I ground them and when I take them out for a meal or attend one of their concerts or take my son fishing or my daughter on an excursion of some sort is rather different in the two senses. The latter will feel much more like remaining in my love than falling under my wrath.”
Three Vital Warnings
Carson offers three pastoral warnings about how we approach the love of God:
1. We must avoid absolutizing one biblical expression of God’s love. Placing exclusive emphasis on God’s electing love could lead to a cold hyper-Calvinism. If God’s providential love for his creation received sole emphasis, pantheism or another form of monism would result.
2. We must not compartmentalize these ways of articulating God’s love. God must not be viewed as mechanically toggling between the various aspects of his love. He is always loving toward his elect and toward his creation.
3. We must weigh well-worn evangelical clichés on the scales of Scripture. Scripture’s full teaching on God’s love sheds needed light on aphorisms such as “God loves everyone the same way,” or “God loves us unconditionally.” In many places Scripture depicts God’s love as conditioned by obedience, Carson points out. On the other hand, God’s love for his people is unconditional—thanks to the work of Christ.
“We need all of what Scripture says on this subject,” Carson writes, “or the doctrinal and pastoral ramifications will prove disastrous.”
Cause for Joy
God’s love for sinners should always astound and humble us. It must never be reduced to a merely academic matter. Rightly did the psalmist wonder, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps. 8:4).
God loves his people, his creation, and this fallen cosmos, and that unfathomable truth should lead us to worship him fervently, crying out with the great apostle, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).
GOD'S LOVE, JOY, LOVE, SCRIPTURE, THEOLOGY
Jeff is a senior editor for The Gospel Coalition. A native of Blairsville, Ga., Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from The University of Georgia, a Master of Divinity in biblical and theological studies and a Ph.D. in historical theology with an emphasis on Baptist history from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. He is pastor of New City Church in Louisville, KY. Jeff and his wife Lisa have been married for 19 years and have four children.
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:40:36 GMT -5
The Horror of Hell
Tom Ascol
TOM ASCOL
The Horror of Hell
“There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell.” So wrote the agnostic British philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1967. The idea of eternal punishment for sin, he further notes, is “a doctrine that put cruelty in the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture.”
His views are at least more consistent than religious philosopher John Hick, who refers to hell as a “grim fantasy” that is not only “morally revolting” but also “a serious perversion of the Christian Gospel.” Worse yet is theologian Clark Pinnock who, despite still regarding himself as an evangelical, dismisses hell with a rhetorical question: “How can one imagine for a moment that the God who gave His Son to die for sinners because of His great love for them would install a torture chamber somewhere in the new creation in order to subject those who reject Him to everlasting pain?”
So, what should we think of hell? Is the idea of it really responsible for all the cruelty and torture in the world? Is the doctrine of hell incompatible with the way of Jesus Christ? Hardly. In fact, the most prolific teacher of hell in the Bible is Jesus, and He spoke more about it than He did about heaven. In Matthew 25:41–46 He teaches us four truths about hell that should cause us to grieve over the prospect of anyone experiencing its horrors.
To be separated from God is to be separated from anything and everything good.
First, hell is a state of separation from God. On the day of judgment, Jesus will say to all unbelievers, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire” (v. 41). This is the same sort of language that Jesus uses elsewhere to describe the final judgment of unbelievers (see 7:23).
To be separated from God is to be separated from anything and everything good. That is hard to conceive because even the most miserable person enjoys some of God’s blessings. We breathe His air, are nourished by food that He supplies, and experience many other aspects of His common grace.
On earth even atheists enjoy the benefits of God’s goodness. But in hell, these blessings will be nonexistent. Those consigned there will remember God’s goodness, and will even have some awareness of the unending pleasures of heaven, but they will have no access to them.
This does not mean that God will be completely absent from hell. He is and will remain omnipresent (Ps. 139:7–8). To be separated from the Lord and cast into hell does not mean that a person will finally be free of God. That person will remain eternally accountable to Him. He will remain Lord over the person’s existence. But in hell, a person will be forever separated from God in His kindness, mercy, grace, and goodness. He will be consigned to deal with Him in His holy wrath.
Secondly, hell is a state of association. Jesus says that the eternal fire of hell was “prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41). People were made for God. Hell was made for the Devil. Yet people who die in their sin, without Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, will spend eternity in hell with the one being who is most unlike God. It is a tragic irony that many who do not believe in the Devil in this life will wind up spending eternity being tormented with him in hell.
The third truth is that it is a state of punishment. Jesus describes it as “fire” (v. 41) and a place of “punishment” (v. 46). Hell is a place of retribution where justice is served through the payment for crimes.
The punishment must fit the crime. The misery and torment of hell point to the wickedness and seriousness of sin. Those who protest the biblical doctrine of hell as being excessive betray their inadequate comprehension of the sinfulness of sin. For sinners to be consigned to anything less than the horrors of eternal punishment would be a miscarriage of justice.
The dreadfulness of hell deepens our grateful praise for the salvation we have in Jesus Christ.
And that brings us to the fourth truth — hell is an everlasting state. Though some would like to shorten the duration of this state, Jesus’ words are very clear. He uses the same adjective to describe both punishment and life in verse 46. If hell is not eternal, neither is the new heaven and earth.
How can God exact infinite punishment for a finite sin? First, because the person against whom all sin is committed is infinite. Crimes against the infinitely holy, infinitely kind, infinitely good, and infinitely supreme Ruler of the world deserve unending punishment. In addition to that, those condemned to hell will go on sinning for eternity. There is no repentance in hell. So the punishment will continue as long as the sinning does.
The dreadfulness of hell deepens our grateful praise for the salvation we have in Jesus Christ. Hell is what we deserve. And hell is what He experienced on the cross in our place.
Believing the truth about hell also motivates us to persuade people to be reconciled to God. By God’s grace those of us who are trusting Christ have been rescued from this horrible destiny. How can we love people and refuse to speak plainly to them about the realities of eternal damnation and God’s gracious provision of salvation?
Clearer visions of hell will give us greater love for both God and people.
This article originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of TableTalk Magazine.
Follow Tom Ascol:
Twitter | @tomascol
Facebook | @tomascol
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:41:13 GMT -5
Pre-Puritan Sabbatarians? Martin Bucer’s De Regno Christi
JON ENGLISH LEE
*This post is the latest in a series looking at the Sabbath. Previous posts include:Pre-Puritan Sabbatarians (Part 3), Pre-Puritan Sabbatarins? (Part 2), Pre-Puritan Sabbatarians? Henry Bullinger on the Sabbath (Part 1), Where is the Sabbath in the Early Church (Part 3), Where is the Sabbath in the Early Church? (Part 2), Where is the Sabbath in the Early Church? (Part 1), Ecclesiological Implications of the Sabbath (Part 2), Ecclesiological Implications of the Sabbath (part 1), Sabbath Typology and Eschatological Rest, Paul and the Sabbath, Jesus and the Sabbath, The Sabbath and the Decalogue in the OT, a look at God’s Rest as Prescriptive, an examination of the Sabbath as a Creation Ordinance.
In this post I will continue to look at the evidence for sabbatarian theology in the thought of pre-Puritan theologians. Martin Bucer, like Henry Bullinger, had a strong view of the Christian Sabbath. Specifically, in this post Bucer’s De Regno Christi will be examined.
De Regno Christi
Bucer’s De Regno Christi, or The Kingdom of Christ, is a “detailed charter to guide the King in implementing Bucer’s vision of a republica Christiana in England.”[1] Bucer’s chapter titled “Setting Aside Certain Times For The Worship Of God” makes very clear his connection between the Old Testament Sabbath and the New Testament Lord’s Day. He writes that the “Lord’s Day was consecrated for such things by the apostles themselves (1 Cor. 16:2; Acts 20:7; Rev. 1:10).”[2] If the Lord, by his apostles, has established Sunday as the new Sabbath day, then “Violation of the Sabbath is the highest contempt for God.”[3] Indeed, Bucer warns, “On no days is God offended so gravely as on those days which are particularly set aside for the worship of God.”[4] Clearly for Bucer, like Bullinger, the Christian Sabbath has retained the moral character that it had under the Mosaic Law.
Furthermore, like Bullinger, Bucer argued that the Christian magistrate had particular responsibility to enforce Sabbath observance. Just like the Mosaic Law mandated death for violating the Sabbath commands, so too is the death penalty an option for Christian leaders to exercise. In the case of its contemporary violations:
This matter [death penalty for Sabbath profanation] has need of much serious restoration…Since now our God in his singular charity toward us sanctified only one of seven days for the grounding of our faith and hence our eternal life, and blessed that day that religious services held on it might effectively work toward our salvation, whoever would not be eager to sanctify that day…would surely show himself a lost despiser of so admirable a blessing of God on us and entirely unworthy of living among the people of God.[5]
Bucer, as did Bullinger, makes the sanctification of the Sabbath day a serious matter, indeed a life or death matter.
The Sabbath, however, was not a burden to be yoked upon the people of God. Instead, God appointed the Sabbath and other holy days “that the people of Christ be better grounded in religion and more fully inflamed toward every devotion.” Therefore, writes the pastor, the Sabbath “has to be diligently guarded against that no occasion be given to men for doing their own will on the Sabbaths of the Lord.” Indeed, Sabbath observance is at the heart of Christian spirituality and renewal: “It must be a matter of special concern for those who wish the Kingdom of Christ to be restored among them that Sunday religious observance be renewed and established.”[6] For Bucer, faithful Sabbath observance fans the flame of Christian spirituality.
Thus Bucer’s sabbatarian thoughts, as seen in his Commonplaces and his De Regno Christ, demonstrate many parallels to the sabbatarian thought of Bullinger. Both argue for the change of day to Sunday that is binding because of apostolic example. Both argue that there is both a moral and a ceremonial component to the fourth commandment. Both argue that there is an ongoing binding nature to Sabbath observance, as well as an ongoing need for Christian magistrates to enforce Sabbath sanctification, up to and including the death penalty. Bullinger and Bucer both argued for many of the sabbatarian premises that the early English Puritans used in their treatises on the Sabbath.
In the coming posts I will examine the thought of Nicholas Bownd. He was one of the first Puritans to write on the Sabbath, and his sabbatarian thought had deep roots in the thought of Bullinger, Bucer, and other continental reformers.
[1]Martin Bucer, Common Places of Martin Bucer, trans. David F Wright (Abingdon, England: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1972), 25.
[2]Wilhelm Pauck, Melanchthon and Bucer (London: SCM Press, 1969), 251.
[3]Martin Bucer, Martini Buceri Opera Latina, ed. François Wendel (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1955), 81. Author’s translation.
[4]Martin Bucer, De Regno Christi, book 1, Chapter 11, translated in Wilhelm Pauck, Melanchthon and Bucer (London: SCM Press, 1969), 252.
[5]Ibid., 251.
[6]Ibid., 252.
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:42:14 GMT -5
A Sermon to Preachers
B. H. CARROLL
Founders Journal 88
CONTENTS
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Delivered before the Baptist General Convention of Texas, at Belton, October 7, 1892, and reproduced here by the courtesy of the American Baptist Publication Society.
This sermon is from a collection of sermons on Jesus the Christ compiled by J. W. Crowder, edited by J. B. Cranfill, published in 1937 by Baird-Ward Press, Nashville, TN.
Text: I magnify mine office (Romans 11:13).
However far, and by whatever license a minister may depart from the primary meaning of a text in its immediate connection, it is always obligatory that he should first give the primary and contextual import and then explain how the general principle contained in it may be safely applied to all his deductions from it. In the present case the connection is this: The Apostle seems to anticipate an objection in the minds of the Gentiles whom he addresses, that, he, their apostle, should manifest such concern for the salvation of the Jews. He justifies his solitude for the redemption of his Jewish brethren, though he is an apostle to the Gentiles, and even magnifies his office as their apostle that by their glorious success in the gospel the Jews may be excited to emulation and thereby some of them be saved. He argues that, if the Gentiles derived benefit from the fall of the Jews, they would derive yet more by their recovery. Nor does he content himself with the salvation of only “some of them.” He looks to the salvation of the whole Jewish nation and to this end he speaks in the text and its connections: “But I speak to you that are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of the Gentiles, I glorify my ministry; if by any means I may provoke to emulation them that are my flesh.”
But while this is the primary meaning of the text, in its connections it embodies a great principle of wider application. It is this great principle which burns in my heart and which I feel impelled to discuss before this Convention. The fairness and safety of this wider application may be gathered from the first Scripture read–Ephesians 4:11-16–in which it is alleged that God gave apostles, pastors, teachers, and evangelists for the same glorious purpose. Therefore, if the office of one is to be magnified, so the office of the others to the same end. Hence the theme: The office of a minister must be magnified–glorified always, everywhere, and by all incumbents.
I. The Office
First impress on your minds the fact that the work of the ministry is official. It is an office in the true and common acceptation of that term. Let us define: Webster’s International Dictionary says: “Office–a special duty, trust, charge or position, conferred by authority for a public purpose; a position of trust or authority; as an executive or judicial office; a municipal office. A charge or trust of sacred nature, conferred by God Himself; as, the office of a priest under the old dispensation, and that of the apostles in the new,” quoting our text as an example. Mark the essential elements of an office. The duty, trust or charge is special. It is conferred by authority. It is for a public purpose. In the case of a religious office, the trust is sacred and God himself confers it. While in civil affairs it is the duty of every citizen to do all in his power toward the enforcement of law and the preservation of order, certain functions devolve exclusively on officers appointed for the purpose. A private citizen cannot perform the official duties of the sheriff, judge, governor or president. So in the church and kingdom of Christ. While it is the privilege of every Christian to tell the story of the cross and to otherwise aid in the dissemination of the gospel, yet in magnifying individual duties and privileges let it never be forgotten that God has called out a special class of men and set them apart officially and committed to them certain official duties. “This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.” The truth of the proposition just set forth is more recognized than realized. Let us impress ourselves with it by carefully reconsidering some things well known to all of us.
1. The terms by which God designates His ministers not only indicate office but suggest the nature of the office and its duties. In many places the minister is called a shepherd. A shepherd performs special duties committed to him alone. He must watch over the flock, feed them when hungry, heal them when sick, guard them in peril, keep them from worries and alarms, and shelter them in the fold. He is called a bishop, which means an overseer. The overseer has special duty and authority. He directs the labor of those he oversees. He is called a steward, one who holds in trust the goods or business of another and who acts for his principal, as an agent in the matter committed to him. He is called an ambassador, a term which implies official functions. The ambassador acts by special appointment, under definite instructions, and carries credentials authenticating his mission. There are other terms of similar purport.
2. The form or ceremony by which the minister is set apart to his work indicates an office. He is separated to this work by prayer and laying on of the hands of the presbytery (Acts 13:2,3; 1 Timothy 4:14).
3. The special provision made for this support indicates an office (1 Corinthians 9:1-14). As there is a salary for the governor of a state, or the sheriff of a county, or a soldier in the army, so the Lord hath ordained that they who preach the gospel should live of the gospel. Now it is evident that all Christians cannot live of the gospel–cannot be put on a salary out of the common fund. The fact, therefore, that special provision is made for the financial and material support of a certain class who devote their time and labor to a solemn trust for the public benefit is a demonstration that such class are in office. There is no escape from this alternative: Either the preacher is an object of charity in receiving pecuniary aid from his congregation, or he receives it in compensation for official duties.
4. Ministerial responsibility is proof of office. I mean to say that there is a responsibility laid on every preacher that does not rest on any private member of the church, and that in the great day of account he must answer to God for the manner in which he has discharged his official duties.
Now, by these four facts–the terms employed to designate his work, the form by which he is set apart to that work, the provision made for his support while engaged in it, and his responsibility for its performance, it is demonstrable that the fills an office in the ordinary sense of the word and the duties of such office are in contradistinction to the duties of private members of the church. These private members are not called shepherds, bishops, ambassadors, nor even stewards, in the sense that he is a steward. They are not ordained. They rely upon their secular business for a support. They have not his responsibility.
II. Why The Office Should Be Magnified
1. Because of Him who appoints. The dignity of every office is measured largely by the dignity of the appointing power. The servant is not above his master. When one holds an official position under the commission of a king, that royal signature ennobles every official action performed under its authority and confers on it the royal sanction, however paltry it may seem in itself. But what earthly potentate can be compared in majesty with the King of kings and Lord of lords, who as the eternal God, Himself specially calls every man, appoints every man, and sends forth under His supreme authority every man who lawfully enters the ministry? How does such a commission, handed down from the Supreme Court of Heaven, infinitely transcend in majesty and dignity any commission issued by any lower court, so finite in time and power!
The divine Lord of the harvest sends forth His laborers into the harvest. He separates them from the masses of Christian people. He kindles on the altar of their hearts an unquenchable desire to preach His gospel. He counts it as rendered to Himself the treatment they receive. An audience given to them is given to Him. Their message scorned is His message scorned. Therefore, every minister should magnify his office.
2. This office should be magnified because of the work involved in it. What is the minister to do? For what service is he commissioned? Even those in high authority sometimes necessarily commission their servants to perform trifling and unimportant services. But is such your work, my brethren? Let us re-read our commission tonight. The Scriptures* which introduced this service tell their own story. They were earnestly and solemnly read–were they reverently heard? By them our work is divided into two distinct parts–reconciliation and edification. The reconciliation of sinners to God–the upbuilding of the reconciled in their most holy faith. How awful the responsibility, how solemn the obligation, how important the service of carrying to the lost the word and hope of eternal life! Salvation! Salvation! How much it means! Life! Eternal Life! What is thy purport? Hear what was said to one of the early preachers:
“I send thee to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them that are sanctified by faith that is in me” (Acts 26:17,18). What privation of the lost is here disclosed! What subjection! What guilt! What bankruptcy! What homelessness! They are blind. Night overshadows them. Satan has bound them hand and foot. His cloven foot presses their quivering hearts. They are without God and hope in the world. They are condemned and the sword of execution hangs over them suspended by one brittle thread. They are heirs to an inheritance of despair.
And what service does the minister render to them! He brings sight for blindness; light for darkness; forgiveness for guilt; hope for despair; a heavenly inheritance for spiritual bankruptcy; fatherhood for orphanage; and thrusts back the triumphant devil from off the prostrate victim and stands him up unshackled before God, “redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled.”
Hear that same early preacher tell of this part of his work: “And hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:18-20). Oh, the enmity of man against God! Oh, the sweetness of reconciliation! And “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things.”
Beautiful feet! Though bare, and bruised, and bleeding, and swollen, and dust-covered. Beautiful feet! When thy Saviour has girded Himself and washed them shall they evermore walk on a less holy mission? My brother in the ministry, is this trifling work?
And how like it, in importance, is the other part? “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). “
Feed my lambs
. Feed my sheep” (John 21:15, 16). “And he gave some, apostles; pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love (Ephesians 4:11-16).
Ministers of God, have you studied these Scriptures? Have you gauged these responsibilities? Have you measured these duties? My brethren, let our bare hearts be the targets of the fiery arrows of interrogation: Are any sheep of our flock hungry? Is any lamb astray? Are wolves howling around the fold committed to our care? Are any laborers idle under our oversight? Are the “babes in Christ” in our charge growing? Have you heard any of them crying for the “sincere milk of the word,” while you crammed them with solid food they were unable to digest? Are our people unified in the faith? Are any of the young converts tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine? Are they at the mercy of every theological tramp, who, for revenue, seeks to sidetrack them from their straight road of service? Are they a prey to religious cranks, who poison them with patent nostrums and quack medicines? Is the body over which you preside fitly joined together? Does every joint supply compactness? Does every part work effectually? Does the body increase? Is it edified? O watchman, have you blown the trumpet at the coming of the sword?
My brethren in the ministry, was this Scripture written for our sakes: “Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them. And they were scattered, because there is no shepherd: and they became meat to all the beasts of the field, when they were scattered” ( Ezekiel 34:2-5).
And under our mismanagement has it become necessary for God to “judge between cattle and cattle”? Have we allowed some of the flock to “eat up the good pasture and tread the residue under their feet–to drink the water and foul the residue with their feet”?
Have we stood cowardly silent while some “have thrust with side and shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with their horns, till they are scattered abroad”? Oh, “when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, shall we receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away”? Brethren, I press this question: Are not reconciliation and edification work enough? And should we not magnify our office because of the work?
3. This office is to be magnified because of the extraordinary means appointed for the accomplishing of the work of reconciliation and edification. I waste no words on the Koran nor the Book of Mormon. I mention no vagaries of human speculation, nor hallucinations of earthy philosophy. I hold up no glow-worm light of science. I speak not of the Constitution of the United States nor of any statues evolved from it. But I do speak of the inspired Word of God as the instrument appointed for reconciliation and edification. When we consider this inspired volume as the means of glorifying his office placed in the preacher’s hands, we would not dare mention in comparison the office of the Supreme Court of the United States, which expounds only the principles of earthly jurisprudence. Let them quote Blackstone and Kent. Let them painfully and laboriously gather up the doubtful opinions of dead men–that is their business. But the man of God takes a Word inviolable and infallible–which has breathed on those who wrote it; this must he expound and illustrate. It is the Word which God at sundry times and in diverse manner, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets and in these last days by His Son. This Word is “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” This “Word of the Lord endureth forever.” It is brighter and more potent than the light of all the heavenly bodies (Psalm 19). It is more credible than a visitor from the dead (Luke 16:28-31). It is surer than the evidences of the senses (2 Peter 1:13-19). Therefore, the preacher is “charged “; that is, put on his oath, “before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom, to preach the word” (2 Timothy 4:1). Such extraordinary and potential means would not have been provided for an office that men could refuse to magnify.
4. The office should be magnified because of Him who accompanies the official and gives efficacy to his words. I speak of the Holy Spirit, whose presence and power constitute the only guarantee of ministerial success. Paul may plant and Apollos water, but God alone gives the increase. To what earthly office, however great, are such presence and power attached? The minister is a “laborer together with God.” No reverent mind can think of this presence and power, and depreciate the office which they sanctify and energize.
5. The office is to be magnified on account of the extraordinary qualifications required of the officer–qualifications mental, moral and spiritual. I maintain that there is no other office among men that calls for the kind and degree of qualifications which God’s Word requires for the ministerial office. He must have gifts, graces, and character such as no human law requires for any earthly office. While the measure of his knowledge and scholarly education is not prescribed, he must be apt to teach. Without this aptness he never can be a preacher.
He must wrap himself in a mantle of personal purity whiter than the ermine of a judge. The mantle no minister can smirch with impunity. He must be unspotted before the world and must preserve a good report of them that are without. He may as well resign when the world seriously questions his sincerity or his morals. In an age of mammon, while the world bows before its golden calf, he must not be covetous. “Not for filthy lucre” must he take charge of any flock. While other men hate and fight, he must be no “striker or brawler.” His spiritual qualifications are yet higher. He must be full of the Holy Spirit. He is the instrument of the Spirit. He must ever yield to the monition of the Spirit.
Therefore, because of his extraordinary appointment, because of his extraordinary work, because of the extraordinary means furnished him, because of the extraordinary presence, and because of the extraordinary qualifications required, it is demonstrable that this office should be magnified above every other office. We now come to the main question:
III. How Shall The Office Be Magnified?
Brethren,–I feel pressed in spirit tonight when I look out over this audience–among whom are so many ministers, so many older than myself, so many of longer service in the ministry. And I speak with great diffidence, but I do desire to express very earnestly and without the slightest reservation my own deep and abiding convictions concerning the truth of God as I understand it, in answering the question how all ministers may magnify their office.
1. By a profound realization of its importance. Pardon a personal reference, for men only theorize when they go beyond their personal experience. In delivering addresses on other subjects, I have been singularly free from embarrassment, but I never stand up to preach without trembling. It is not stagefright, for perhaps I esteem too slightly the judgment of men and women, whether expressed in praise or censure. But there is something about preaching which affects me even more than the approach of death. I never refuse to preach on any proper occasion when invited–I love to preach. I was not driven into the ministry. I never fled from God’s message, like Jonah. I never hide behind modest apologies, but I never in my life stood up to preach except once–which exception I profoundly regret–without first isolating myself from all human company, even the dearest, and prostrating myself in spirit before the dread and awful God, imploring Him, in deepest humility, to bless me that one time.
Perhaps I am wrong. I would not judge harshly, but I cannot rid myself of the conviction that a man who can lightly, who can arrogantly, who can with seeming effrontery of manner, get up in the pulpit, get up unstaggered with the weight of responsibility resting on him, get up as an ambassador for God, as if God was his ambassador, is disqualified for the holy office.
Just think of it seriously. Eternal interests hinge on every sermon. Every sentence may be freighted with eternal weal or woe. Every word may be the savor of life unto life or of death unto death. Would any one of deep moral sense deliver idly or lightly even a political oration if every word uttered might be a death sentence? What must be his moral character, what the turpitude of his nature, if he was more concerned to display his wit or logic or eloquence than to measure the effect of his speech on human suffering or joy!
But can such trifling, however selfish, compare with his, who, standing up for God in matters which cost the life of Christ and engaged the attention of the three worlds–men, angels and devils–who stands up as Heaven’s agent to dispense terms of life and conditions of pardon, or to denounce eternal judgments, and there poses as a wit or attitudinizes as a rhetorician, or plays the actor, as if the whole service were a theatrical display and heaven and hell were but scenic paintings to accentuate his dramatic talent!
Therefore, the impression never leaves me that no irreverent man should ever dare preach. I do not care how much he knows, nor how well he can declaim, nor how many his admirers. I shudder–cold chills of apprehension creep over me when I hear him.
Is it the office of a mountebank? Is it the vocation of a circus clown? Is it the lifework of a privileged jester? Oh, the agony of Paul’s question: “Who is sufficient for these things?”! Oh, the richness of this experience: “I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power”! If one of you were commissioned to give directions of safety to a crowd of men, women and children standing on a quivering sandbank–encircled by an ever-rising flood, which moment by moment encroached on the narrow space where they stood, and your word meant life or death to every strong man, to every loving woman, to every clinging child, would you, could you–how could you, standing on a safe shore, speak those words in the carefully practiced declamation of a rhetorician?
Did you ever in your life hear of a preacher noted for habitually reaching souls, for leading thousands to Christ, who stood before a mirror and studied the postures and gesticulations with which to ornament his sermons? I submit to you, if your own interest has not slackened, if your spiritual nature has not been shocked, every time you detected art in the preacher’s declamation?
I would not depreciate proper culture of voice or manner, but I do believe that if you realize the importance of your work, and forget yourself in it–if the great deep of your own soul is moved upon by the Spirit of God–your manner and gesticulation will take care of themselves.
2. Profound and abiding gratitude to God for putting you in the ministry will help you to magnify your office. Your heart must gratefully appreciate that you, a worm as other men–that you, not on account of your own merit–you, from among thousands naturally as good–and perhaps better by grace–you were selected by the Divine Master for this distinguished honor; as much higher above the crowns of earth as the stars in heaven are above their reflection in a well.
How can I ever forget the impression made on my heart, or get beyond its influences on my life, when I heard Doctor Broadus at Jefferson, Texas, in the Southern Baptist Convention, preach from the text: “I thank Christ Jesus, my Lord, for that he hath enabled me, putting me into the ministry”?
Let thy call to preach unseal a ceaselessly flowing fountain of gratitude. Rejoice in the honor conferred on you. You who desire to magnify your office, let me pass the question around and press its point on every heart: Are you glad you are a preacher? Are you? Are you grateful? Do you thank Him? Do you appreciate it as a priceless treasure?
3. You can magnify your office by studying; that is, being diligent, “To show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the work of truth.”
This diligence applies to every department of ministerial work, and therefore includes a profound acquaintance with all the revealed will of God in its proper order and relation. This knowledge, and the use made of it, must be “unto the approval of God,” and not of man. But how can a man magnify his office who is too lazy to study that Word which it is his business to preach–who lives year after year in ignorance of the very rudiments of Bible-teaching–who has not studied that sacred library, book by book, and chapter by chapter? I refer not so much to mere mental study as to heart study. I mean such study as places the heart against every Bible doctrine, and prays: “Lord God, filtrate into my heart the very essence of this doctrine–let me receive into my soul experimentally just what is the mind of the Spirit; let me so assimilate it as food that it will be a part of my being; let me not only know it but be nourished by it.”
I knew a young preacher who bade fair, in his youth to eclipse all competitors. Endowed with a wonderful fluency of speech, captivating address, a vast amount of magnetism, as a boy preacher he so captured his admiring crowd that he began to imagine he “had the world in a sling.” Much concerned about the permanency of his usefulness, I paid him a special visit and said: “My boy, you have no books. I never see you studying the Bible. You are ignorant of the great body of its teachings. You seem not to understand it as a system of truth, fitly correlated in all its parts. You preach without investigation, on such striking passages here and there as in the English version impress you by their sound. What are you going to do after a while? You will soon use up this emotional power on which you rely. You go around as an evangelist, preaching over and over the same old sermons, using the same old illustrations, because your audiences are different. But have you considered this: That these sermons and illustrations by frequent use will become tame to you? Their lack of freshness will kill your own interest in them. They will lose the good taste, even in your own mouth. Then they will have no power over the people. You are fast approaching shipwreck as a useful preacher. Your doom is to join the crowd of soreheads and growlers who complain that they are not appreciated, unless you study, study, study! If you like, I will make out for you a list of books, with some suggestions as to their use, and if you are not able to buy them I will see that you get them.”
Perhaps you are curious to know the result. Well, he did not appreciate my proffered counsel or help. He seemed to think that I was jealous of his power and wanted to handicap him. If he ever studied, I never heard of it. He did join the growlers. He never stays longer than two years with any church, because in that time he tells all he knows and some things he doesn’t know. The rose color and glamour of a new field of labor, where he can use the old material, entices him away. He criticizes the management of Boards and denominational enterprises, and talks much of “rings and bosses and favorites,” and complains that the old-fashioned gospel is superseded by new-fangled notions.
My brother, if you would magnify your office, make the Word of God your life-study. Let down your buckets into the wells of salvation; lengthen your cords and let them down deep, and draw up the water fresh and sparkling every day. and give it out freely to your thirsty congregations. Burn all your written sermons that you carry around in your valise. Don’t you know that when you keep gnawing the same sermons they become like what a wolf leaves of a once juicy antelope–dry bones?
An unchanged sermon never suits two congregations. Conditions vary. Be fresh. Be flexible. Learn proper adjustments. Study the needs of the people before you, and preach from a full heart that within that very hour has sought the Spirit’s guidance as to the theme and the Spirit’s power as to utterance.
4. You can magnify your office by giving yourself wholly to it. No man should give himself wholly to a work that is too scant in character and too small in volume to call out and employ all his reserve force, and to develop to their full capacity every faculty of his being. But in the ministry God has committed to a man an office as high as heaven, as deep as hell, as broad as space. There is a broad margin for all his powers. There is room enough for all possible development in all directions.
Let me again refer to myself. When I was converted I was making two thousand five hundred dollars a year–more than I have ever received since. I was ambitious of distinction and promotion. I had luxurious tastes and wonderful appreciation of conveniences. Now, to abandon all this pride, ambition and prospect of luxury, to come down to a few hundreds a year, grudgingly given, was very grinding to my sensitiveness. But the crisis was one for solution. I determined never to be burdened with its solution but once. Without a dollar in my pocket or in sight; with a wife, baby and feather bed as the sum total of earthly possessions, I settled that question once and for all.
I made a solemn covenant with God, that while I lived I would never have any other business or profession or calling than to preach the gospel–to give myself wholly to that, “sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish,” to turn back to any other, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, FOREVER. I learned to see that it was a small matter if I did die. I remembered the Master’s words: “He that loseth his life for my sake, and the Gospel’s, shall find it; and he that findeth his life shall lose it.”
Indeed, it might be the best for me to die. It might be the best that I should starve to death. I didn’t know. Who can tell? But I was certain that whether I starved or fattened it was my duty to preach the gospel.
My brother, take home to thyself the charge of Paul to Timothy: “Give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of hands of the presbytery. Meditate on these things; give thyself wholly to them.”
How is it you can undertake so many lifeworks? I call upon you to interpret this Scripture: “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of life.” Is it addressed to a preacher? You cannot deny it. Is it not directly in connection with the charge to Timothy to “commit to faithful men, who shall be able to instruct others also” the things which he had heard and learned? You cannot deny it. Does it not fairly apply to preachers of today? You cannot deny it: Then will you answer candidly to your own heart and to God: Are you so entangled? Does the entanglement help you as a preacher? Are you content to remain so?
Not long ago I said to a beautiful and brilliant wife that her husband had descended when he left the pulpit to be just a governor. Magnify this office above every other office. If it is an anti-climax to stoop from Mont Blanc to a molehill, how much more for a preacher to vacate an office higher than that of a field-marshal, president or king, to seek a subordinate position in politics or commerce.
The lustre of all the diamonds in the diadems of kingly crowns pales before God’s promised reward to the minister: “They that be wise shall shine as the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever.”
You can magnify this office by regarding God’s interests, solemnly committed to you, as transcendently above place and congregation and world. This is a hard saying. I know it by experience. How seductive the temptation to a preacher to yield to selfish considerations as to where he shall preach and what he shall preach! The preacher is included in the “mankind” so graphically pictured by Robert Burns:
Ouch! Mankind is unco’ weak,
And little to be trusted,
If self the wavering balance touch,
‘Tis rarely right adjusted.
And how most shameful of all the weakness when he gets in front of the Cross and hides it from the people to show off himself!
Some years ago I invited a minister to preach for me the following Sunday. He came with a valise full of written sermons on various sensational topics. He read over to me about a dozen of them–who can doubt my patience in view of it?–and asked me, the pastor of the flock, which one would make the most favorable impression for him on my congregation. I turned on him in scorn and said: “That matter is one of supreme indifference to my people. I wanted you to so preach from an humble, full and loving heart of our Divine Redeemer as to make a favorable impression for Him, but as no man can preach Jesus when self fills his vision, I withdraw my invitation for you to occupy my pulpit.” He did not preach for me then, nor has he since. And I am glad he is out of Texas and out of the Baptist denomination.
At another time I heard one of our greatest Texas ministers preach a sermon of marked simplicity, of the sweetest humility, and of tremendous power. And as it was on a topic peculiarly suited to the needs of my own congregation, I urged him to come and preach it for us. We needed it just then. I knew it would do us good. Well, he came, but when he looked out over the upturned faces, when he saw among many prominent men a host of university students, he concluded that the sermon I asked him to preach was much too homely for the occasion, and without consulting me, delivered instead one of his early sophomore sermons. Oh, it was full of stardust and diamond-lustre and rhetorical sheen, excusable, perhaps, in an inexperienced boy, but simply ridiculous from him on that grand occasion. It was the most mortifying failure of his life. The people were sorely disgusted and disappointed. They insisted that I didn’t know who could preach, and suggested to me to leave such matters to the deacons. The hungry who came for bread had to content themselves with a bouquet of artificial flowers. The sad-hearted who came for consolation were treated to a display of literary fireworks, and the lost who were seeking a Saviour’s face found only a work-painter. But more than all others was he hurt by it. It seemed to crush him to the earth and grind him to powder. Being a good man, his penitence was swift and profound. He spent the afternoon in tears and prayer. At night he preached a sermon that it seemed would melt a stone, but alas! the audience of the morning was not there to hear him. Nor was he ever afterward able to get out much of a congregation in that place.
The temptation sometimes comes in another form, wafted on the seductive breath of flattery. People “with itching ears,” who cannot endure sound doctrine and holy living, will come with honeyed words about his “broadness” and “liberality”. “He is no moss-back,” no “straight-jacket”. “He belongs to higher culture and criticism”.
Ah, me! if the preacher drinks once of this intoxicating champagne, you may count the days till he hearts the gospel as a squirrel hearts an acorn, leaving only a shattered shell, without even a germ of life.
It sometimes comes in the growls of his congregation. “He presses some things too much.” “He urges too many collections.” “He has too much zeal.” Woe to him and to his people if he heed the growling!
It sometimes comes in the clamor for short, soothing and soporific sermons, about fifteen minutes long.
Let me tell you of a case: In a city once, I went to hear a sermon. Preachers get hungry to hear others preach. I was oppressed in spirit and gravely solicitous about a great matter. I wanted my faith strengthened. Quietly taking my seat, I listened. The rendition of the music, confined exclusively to the choir, was very artistic, I suppose. I held myself in reserve for the sermon. That, I took it for granted, would have body to it. The preacher rose, at last, with his sermon in his hand. I looked at it. It was a neat essay, on note-paper, gilt-edged, and perfumed, I verily believe. I know it was tied with a delicately shaded ribbon, and he gracefully read the dainty document through in just fifteen minutes; and that seemed to me too much for it. My sensations were never paralleled except once when, on a moonlight night, I stepped confidently upon what I supposed was a plank, and found it a sluice of muddy water fully knee-deep.
Some one asked me what I thought about the sermon. Perhaps my disappointment made me say: “Well, I’ve figured it out, and if there is no mistake in my calculation, it would take eight hundred and seventy nine thousand, three hundred and sixteen years for five hundred seventy-eight thousand, three hundred and fourteen such sermons to reach one soul, and then they would make no more impression on it than a cloud of thistle-down blown by human breath against the granite face of Mont Blanc. I think it might safely pass through Texas from Sabine Pass to El Paso, and no Baptist, if all the General Convention were out hunting for a sermon, would fire a shot at it.”
But usually the preacher fails most in loyalty to God’s interest, both local and general, when fears about the payment of his own salary, and cowardly deference to local pressure induce him to isolate his church from co-operation with sister churches in general denominational enterprises, when he shuts off from his people that information of general affairs and those appeals which are necessary to education and intelligent co-operation. The church thus isolated becomes narrow and selfish in policy and prosperity. God’s cause is one, whether in town or in country, at home or abroad. The city churches should never fail to be represented in the district Associations. They should bind the country churches to them with indissoluble bonds of fraternity and reciprocity. It is weakness to yield to the selfish cry: “Too many collections, too many agents.” It is easy to be silent when he should cry aloud and spare not. But his tower of strength is honeycombed in its foundation when he allows a perverted sensitiveness in the church or the world to put a padlock on his lips.
Let me emphasize a sentence: In the general denominational enterprises, everything depends on the preachers. They are the bishops who direct and oversee the labors of the churches. If they are silent, the churches will be silent. If you ever make a canvass for a general denominational interest, as I have done, you will know that as is the preacher, so is the church. You will find, whether you canvass for home, foreign or Sunday school missions, or education or orphanage, that your greatest obstacle is preachers, and your greatest help preachers. How can a stranger, who respects the sanctity of the pastoral office, do anything to advantage in a sovereign Baptist church if the pastor is even apathetic, much less adverse?
I say now to you all, every one of you, charged with a general work by the State Convention, that where the local preacher loves your work and honors you in your devotion to it, where he prayerfully, lovingly, tenderly, and with all his might, supports you, there you will succeed. Not elsewhere to any great extent. If he leaves out the interest you represent, the church will let him leave it out. There is a spiritual sensitiveness that has keener and swifter perception than intuition, which informs every agent of a general work whether the preacher is for him or against him.
I repeat, everything depends on the preachers, even quarrels and divisions. When was there ever a division of a church or Association or Convention, and a preacher not in it? Who knows of even one? Oh, if God’s interests be not esteemed by the preacher above his own selfishness or cowardice, above the flattery or growling of the church, above the praise or censure of the world, how can the man magnify his office?
How vividly do I recall the crisis of my own pastoral life on this very point , when called to the responsible charge of Waco Church, twenty-two years ago! I greatly distrusted my fitness for the important position. I was young and inexperienced. The church had great and wise men in it. But fortunately I remembered that God was greater and wiser than all; that my responsibility to Him supreme. I made up my mind fully, once for all. I told the brethren that perhaps they had made a mistake. Time would show; that I had nothing to say about my own salary then or afterward. They must care for that. That my duty was to preach and teach the necessity of coming up to a high mark on every local and every denominational work. That I would do this at all hazards. That the cord which bound us as pastor and people should be a rope of sand when they wanted it broken, but a cable as long as they desired it to hold. That the hazard of loosing my pastorate should not be regarded as even fine dust in the balance. There is no other safe or righteous course for any pastor.
Finally, you may magnify your office by continually renewing your consecration. When you enter this office, and so long as you are in it, over how much of you do you consent that God should write His name and put the obligation of exclusive service? Do you say: “Lord Jesus, Thou hast put me into Thy ministry. I am but a little child. I know not how to go out or to come in. I am unworthy of so great honor. I shall surely fail if Thou art not with me. What I am to do, how I am to do it, and where I go, do Thou choose for me; only be Thou with me. It seems, Good Master, that every part of me has been washed whiter than snow in Thy cleansing blood, every part of me subject of divine grace, every part of me redeemed by Thy power and love and dying groans. But Lord Jesus, if Thou canst find any part of me that the blood has not touched, then write not Thy name on that lost part. But over every part the blood has touched, there write Thy name, whether brain, or eye, or ear, or hand, or heart, or mouth, or foot, over ALL, ALL OVER ALL, write Thy name of authority and ownership forever. Let me be Thy faithful servant in time, and thy welcome servant in eternity.”
To illustrate this consecration: At the examination of a candidate for ordination I once heard a deacon ask this question: “In going into this work, have you burned the bridges behind you or only taken up the planks with a view to re-laying them in case you should want to cross back to secular affairs?” I thought it a wonderfully pertinent question that went to the heart of the matter. It is better for the preacher never to even look backward toward the place where the bridge once stood. And never let him seek to please himself as to where he shall preach. Let the Lord of the harvest determine the where as well as the what and how.
Turn not a longing eye to big churches and fat salaries.
Let the Master say where, whether under burning skies in Africa’s malarial jungles, or where “wolves are howling on lone Onalaska’s shore.” This consecration involves that you fully trust Him for material support and spiritual power.
Be not faithless. The Master points you to the lilies and sparrows. You are more valuable than they. He tells you that “verily you shall be clothed and you shall be fed.” Not a hair of your head shall perish. He will care for your wife and children if you trustingly serve Him.
I do not say trust the brethren. That is a broken reed. But to deny that Jesus will keep His promise to you is to deny the veracity of God. Trust Him for your power.
Even today I had a talk with a young brother staggering under the responsibility of presenting a great work tomorrow. His eyes were full of tears, as he said: “I have no strength at all for this great service.” I laid my hand on him and said: “Let Jesus be your power. Lash yourself with God’s promises to the throne of His omnipotence, and your weakness will become strength.” I have promised to spend much of the night with him praying that the power of God and not of man may rest upon him.
Brethren, there is no censoriousness in anything that I have said. Apply as much of it to me as you will, and then I am ready to confess other faults and weaknesses that you know not of. But is it not appalling, that revelation of the statistical secretary: There are nine hundred and eighty-nine preachers in Texas who are not pastors, nor missionaries, nor evangelists, nor teachers, nor denominational agents, nor editors?
Indeed, “we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” Oh, how earthen! When I first read of the quarrel between Paul and Barnabas, I said: “Earthen vessels.” And when preachers now quarrel, the bleeding church cries out: “Earthen! Earthen!” I could get down on my knees before God in your presence to make one yearning plea–that you make this Convention one of peace, power, and brotherly love. Put relentless hands down into your hearts, and tear out by the roots everything that will not advance the interests of the Redeemer’s kingdom here in this meeting. Tear it out. It depends on you. Let every watchman blow his trumpet at the coming of the sword. Let every sentinel cry out on his post: “To arms! They come! The foe–the foe!” Let every leader leap to the front of his battalion and stay to the front in every good work and work, lest there be a retreat while the mournful bugles sound a recall and the dirge of defeat be the music to which we march.
I magnify my office, oh, my God, as I get nearer home. I can say more truthfully every year, “I thank God that He put me in this office”; I thank Him that He would not let me have any other, that He shut me up to this glorious work; and when I get home among the blessed on the bank of everlasting deliverance and look back toward time and all of its clouds, and sorrows, and pains, and privations, I expect to stand up and shout for joy that down there in the fog and mists, down there in the dust and in the struggle, God let me be a preacher. I magnify my office in life; I magnify it in death; I magnify it in heaven; I magnify it, whether poor or rich, whether sick or well, whether strong or weak, anywhere, everywhere, among all people, in any crowd. Lord God, I am glad that I am a preacher, that I am a preacher of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.
PASTORAL MINISTRY, PREACHING, PREACHING AND PREACHERS
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:43:27 GMT -5
Small Town, Great Commission: Heralding Christ in Rural America
ALLEN S NELSON IV
Small Town, Great Commission: Heralding Christ in Rural America
One of the joys of the reformed faith is its evangelistic pedigree. From Calvin’s Geneva to Judson’s love for Burma, those who embrace the doctrines of grace have a long history of commitment to sharing Christ with the nations.
When it comes to rural America, evangelism has its challenges. Today’s post focuses on 4 commitments we must have for biblical evangelism in small towns.
Presupposition
We begin with a non-negotiable presupposition: Christ is worthy to be preached in every place. From popular urban centers to remote villages, our Lord Jesus is worthy to be heralded to all creation.
It is statistically less likely for your church to see large numbers of persons converted in rural settings. For example, in a city with 100,000 people, if 1% responded positively to the gospel, you’d see 1,000 converts. If the math held true for a town with 1,000 people, you’d see 10 converts.
God is sovereign. He will save whom He will for His own glory. But this presupposition, the worthiness of Christ to be proclaimed in all places, will help you from any discouragement associated with lack of “success” in evangelism in small towns. When we preach Christ rightly, there is no lack of success! Christ is being proclaimed, and He is worthy.
Prayer
Secondly, evangelism should not be separated from prayer. Paul asks the Colossian church to “pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ…” (Col. 4:3).
Churches in small towns must be committed to praying for opportunities for evangelism. They must also be committed to pray specifically for lost souls in their community. Periodically, the church ought to gather to intentionally pray for the banner of Christ to be lifted high within the town that you are located.
God has placed your church in your rural community for a reason. And one of those reasons is that you would be concerned for the lost there and seek the Lord’s mercy on their behalf confident that God has “many in this city who are[His] people” (Acts 18:10).
Proclamation
We must remember that evangelism is not ultimately an event or program, but proclamation of the gospel, which includes telling sinners what they must do to be saved, namely, repent and believe the gospel (cf. Mark 1:15).
I’ve seen churches go wrong here in hosting well intentioned events that ultimately left out the gospel. Passing out water bottles with bible verses on them is certainly not a bad thing, but don’t confuse that with evangelism. In order to evangelize, we must communicate the gospel and a call to sinners to repent and trust it.
There are three primary ways our church has sought to do this. First, we have committed to going door to door once a month for the purpose of sharing the gospel. This can be uncomfortable and there is certainly prudence that must be exercised here in terms of time of day, number of people going to the home, safety, etc. However, it is our belief that the church must seek to get the gospel out rather than merely expecting lost persons to walk in our doors.
Is it not a shame that the heretical Jehovah Witnesses are the ones known for going door to door while too many of us with the true gospel of Christ stay at home? However this may look in your community, consider regularly and intentionally taking the gospel to the homes of your area.
Secondly, we try to preach at our local grocery store once a month. This too can seem uncomfortable, but I encourage churches to consider their own local community and see whether or not something like this would be feasible. For years I had convinced myself that street preaching was just for the big cities. But this goes back to our presupposition: Christ is worthy to be proclaimed even if the crowd is not the size of George Whitefield’s! Find a store, or gas station, or street corner, and proclaim the gospel. You may be surprised by what God does. One thing we’ve noticed is that other churches have reached out to us encouraged by our evangelism. What if your faithfulness inspires other churches to be more serious about evangelism too?
Finally, we like to flood our community with tracts. Tracts are not the be all end all of evangelism. They are really a low bar. You simply hand a tract to a cashier, or friend at the ball game, or man in line at the local donut shop. We make our own tracts and put our church website on them in hopes that some will check out more about the gospel and our local church.
Persistence
The final encouragement I have for evangelism in small towns is don’t give up. Ecclesiastes 11:1 says, “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.” I once heard a pastor friend preach from that text exhorting us to sow many seeds when it comes to evangelism and to remember this important truth: “sow nothing, reap nothing.”
You can convince yourself that your evangelistic efforts are weak and pathetic and will never return any fruit. But can I encourage you that weak evangelistic efforts are always better than no evangelistic efforts? So, don’t give up!
You may hand out a tract, or preach on the corner, or knock on a door and no one come to Christ. Yet, I can assure you that it is 100% guaranteed that no one will come to Christ if we do not proclaim the gospel (cf. Rom. 10:14-17). So, do not be discouraged. Continue to sow seeds and trust God with the return.
Continue to look for opportunities that are unique to your area. For us, we’ve preached in our local Christmas and Fair Parades. We’ve preached at local festivals our town has hosted. We’ve gone to local events to pass out gospel tracts and talk with people. We’ve done some Christmas Caroling, which is not the same as evangelism, but we did use the opportunity to pass out gospel tracts. Last Christmas we also did “evangelistic letter writing” where we gathered one Sunday evening at our church, I shared the gospel, and then we wrote letters to lost persons in our community (and beyond) imploring them to understand what Christmas is about and to repent and believe the gospel.
Each rural area is going to look a little different. But this truth remains: Your community is in desperate need of the gospel. Will your church commit to having the presupposition, prayer, proclamation, and persistence necessary to make Christ known in your specific area?
CHURCH, EVANGELISM, EVANGELIZE, GOSPEL
Allen S. Nelson IV is the pastor of Perryville Second Baptist Church in Perryville, AR, where he resides with his wife Stephanie, and their 5 children. Allen is the author of From Death to Life: How Salvation Works and Before the Throne: Reflections on God’s Holiness . His other titles include blogger, rookie podcaster, and occasional conference speaker. Most importantly, he is a recipient of the undeserved grace of God.
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2023 9:44:02 GMT -5
Uses of the Law in Psalm 119
JON ENGLISH LEE
Uses of the Law in Psalm 119
As New Covenant believers, we are no longer under the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13). Christ’s atoning work on the cross saves us from the burden of keeping the law perfectly (Philippians 3:12-16). However, does that mean we no longer need it? What good is the law for us today?
Below are a few answers to that question from Psalm 119. This by no means is an exhaustive list; the depths of Psalm 119 could not be plumbed in an entire lifetime. Rather, think of this as a starting point for considering the uses and purposes of God’s law.
God’s Law Exposes Our Sin
God uses the law as a benchmark for holiness. When people wander from His commands, God’s punishment will eventually follow (vs. 21). Those who do live according to the law are contrasted with the insolent (vs. 85), wicked (vs. 95, 110), evildoers (vs. 115), foes (vs. 138-139), and persecutors with an evil purpose (150). God’s law is the standard by which man is currently, and will be ultimately, judged.
God’s Law Points Us to Christ
God’s word points us to Christ by making us long for coming salvation (vs. 81). Because the weight of our own inability to keep God’s law is ever before us, we are driven to our knees. We plead for our holy God to bring the promised redeemer who will show us salvation (vs. 81-82, 123, 174). Unlike the wicked ones who know not His statues, we desire to have salvation brought near (vs. 155).
God’s Law Guides Us in Holiness
As strangers and sojourners in this barren land, we are not left without instructions. Just as the Old Testament Jews had Moses as their guide to the promise land, we too have been given instructions for life as we wait to enter our eternal promise land (vs. 54). God’s law shows us the path we should follow, and illumines our way through the darkness (vs. 101, 105). The law shows us how to become blessed in the Lord (vs. 1). The testimonies of the Lord serve as a guard to keep us from unnecessary afflictions (vs. 67), and they keep us from being put to shame (vs. 6, 46).
God’s Law Fuels Worship
When we begin to see what Christ has done for us, how he has perfectly kept all the law of God on our behalf, then we will be driven to praise Him for His righteousness (vs. 62). God’s steadfast love (vs. 64, 159), His great mercy (vs. 156), His perfect righteousness (vs. 142), and His justice (vs. 149), are all reasons listed for praising Him. God’s holy Law helps our souls live and praise Him (vs. 175). Once we have learned His righteous rules, we will begin to praise Him with an upright heart (vs. 7).
God’s Law Is a Delight to His Children
When believers mature and learn that God has given His law as a blessing to us and not a burden, then His testimonies become a delight to us (vs. 24, 35, 111, 143, 174). We can praise our gracious Father because He loves us enough to keep us from harm. Eventually, just as the psalmist proclaims, we come to love the law of God (vs. 47, 48, 129, 159, 167). We cherish the law more than gold or silver (vs. 72, 127). One who observes the law will know a peace that can only come from above (vs. 165), and will taste a sweetness that can only be known through obedience (vs. 103).
As we have seen, the law of the Lord remains vitally important in the life of believers. As you reflect upon God’s law and it’s role in your life, may you be ever pressed toward Christ, molded into His image, and driven toward increasingly sweet worship of our Triune God.
LAW AND GOSPEL, PRACTICAL THEOLOGY, TEN COMMANDMENTS
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Post by Admin on Aug 23, 2023 0:17:58 GMT -5
The 1925 Baptist Faith and Message: Finding a Rock in a Storm
TOM NETTLES
The 1925 Baptist Faith and Message: Finding a Rock in a Storm
The 1925 Baptist Faith and Message was conceived, written and adopted in the midst of a confessional firestorm in Baptist life in America. When Southern Baptists issued a “Fraternal Address” to Baptists worldwide in 1919, E. Y. Mullins was surprised to find that Baptists in the North were “abnormally sensitive.” Southern Baptists had presented to Baptists world-wide a statement of faith that they might have a means by which to “identify their oneness” with Southern Baptists. Those who agreed with the articles and wanted fellowship with like-minded Baptists were invited to correspond with the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. E. B. Pollard, a Northern Baptist, thought this appeal to unity “on the basis of a creed” was a “wedge to divide Northern Baptists” and an attempt to draw conservative Northern Baptists “into cooperative relations with the Southern Baptist Convention.” Mullins defended the doctrinal statement on the basis of much broader needs and asserted, “I think there are times when such statements are justifiable and may be of great value.” He viewed the “present one of those occasions.”
In an effort to smooth over this misunderstanding and establish firmer unity between the Baptists of the North and those of the South, the two groups contemplated a jointly issued confession. Leaders from both conventions attended an informal conference including Mullins and the president of the Northern Baptist Convention, Helen Barrett Montgomery. This informal gathering of leaders discussed the value of a confession and statement of principles. With a consensus of approximate agreement on this, they decided to present a proposal to the respective conventions to cooperate on the adoption of a “statement of Baptist doctrine and polity, setting forth briefly the fundamentals of our faith and the peculiar beliefs and observances which characterize and distinguish us.”
With confidence in the good faith of their northern counterparts, the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in 1922 adopted a resolution proposing that a committee of twenty, including the presidents as ex officio members, be charged to produce a potentially viable document of doctrine and polity. A strong confessional commitment existed among Baptists in the South and their alarm at the encroachment of modernism into denominational life, north and south, made many see the adoption of a confession as a good idea.
The churches of the North were not quite as compliant. Less than two months later the goal of a jointly issued confession aborted abruptly. The Minnesota pastor W. B. Riley, resisting the movement of the agencies of Northern Baptists toward liberalism, moved that the Convention adopt the New Hampshire Confession and recommend it to the local churches. Immediately subsequent to this recommendation, Cornelius Woelfkin offered a substitute motion. Woelfkin served as pastor of the famous Park Avenue Baptist church from 1912 to 1926 and prepared the way for his successor, Harry Emerson Fosdick. Fosdick moved the church out of the Baptist fold and made it a stronghold of liberal ministry. Woelfkin had taught homiletics from 1906-1912 at Rochester Divinity School pressing it forward in its weary journey into liberalism. His motion said simply, “The Northern Baptist Convention affirms that the New Testament is the all-sufficient ground of our faith and practise [sic], and we need no other statement.” The substitute motion passed and effectively removed the Northern Baptist Convention from the joint-confession project.
Mullins attended that meeting and was asked to close it in prayer. Knowing the strong confessional, anti-modernist, anti-evolution views of many Southern Baptist Conservatives, Mullins put himself in the driver’s seat for the confession. He successfully resisted some of the more polarizing views of conservatives, but at the same time offended the advancing progressives in the convention by having fallen into the “snare of creed making.” John E. White, president of Anderson College in South Carolina and W. O. Carver, professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary were strongly opposed to the confession. They believed that it violated a long-held Baptist principle of resisting the imposition of a creed on free individuals. White sought to rally opposition in the denomination for this attempt to run roughshod over the “Baptist aversion to all creeds but the Bible.” Carver was more discreet but did not hide from Mullins his displeasure at this move toward Presbyterianism. For Carver, theology did not come in the form of authoritative dogma but in “vitalizing experience.”
The 1925 Baptist Faith and Message arose, therefore, with theological tensions left, center, and right in the Southern Baptist Convention and an aggressive liberal anti-confessionalism in the convention to the north. Even though no group got all they wanted in the confessional movement, and though many tended to ignore its implications, the overall impact had a conserving effect on the doctrinal state of the Convention.
The trajectory from J. P. Boyce in his defense of creeds, B. H. Carroll’s equally strong affirmation of the protective and edifying strength of confessions and creeds, and J. B. Gambrell’s defense of the necessary discipline of confessional subscription gave Southern Baptists the historical, biblical, practical, and doctrinal wherewithal to endorse a confessional standard for convention work. We should be profoundly grateful for this, for it has been an important factor in making the difference between a gospel-denying progressivism and a Bible-affirming, Christ-exalting, gospel-preaching commitment throughout the Convention.
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Post by Admin on Sept 10, 2023 8:02:39 GMT -5
Forgiveness Is Divine
JEFF JOHNSON
Forgiveness Is Divine
CONTENTS
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Forgiveness is divine. That is to say that it takes divine and supernatural grace to forgive. It could be argued that only those who have been forgiven by divine grace are empowered by divine grace to (properly) forgive. There are serval reasons why divine grace is needed for forgiveness:
Forgiveness may seem easy until we have been deeply wounded and offended by a close friend. The closer the friend and the greater the offense, the more difficult it is to forgive. It is one thing to overlook a stranger accidentally stepping on our toes, and it is another thing to forgive a spouse who has been having a year-long secret affair. Nothing within our fallen nature would motivate us to forgive such an evil act. In such situations, we learn that we need outside help from God to forgive.
Forgiveness may seem easy until we learn what it demands from us. Forgiveness is not “letting it go” and moving on with life. Forgiveness is not living with an unfaithful spouse as if nothing is wrong for the sake of the children or finical stability. Forgiveness is not ignoring the offense. Forgiveness is hard because it requires something positive from us. Forgiveness is not a passive response but an active responsibility. We have to give to those who have taken from us. We have to love those who hate us. We have to pay the debt of those who have stolen from us. How is this possible without divine grace?
Forgiveness may seem easy until we learn all that it requires of us. First, forgiveness is an act of love because it requires us to pursue after those who are actively running away from us. The Lord didn’t wait for us to repent before He pursued us with the gospel of forgiveness. Even while we were sinners, He died for us (Rom. 5:8). And while the crowds were saying, “Crucify him,” the Lord was saying, “Father forgive them” (Luke 23:34). What kind of grace do we need to display this type of love towards our enemies? To desire reconciliation and show acts of kindness to those who are not even shown signs of repentance is extremely hard, if not impossible without divine grace. Second, forgiveness is a sacrificial payment. It is the opposite of revenge. It is the opposite of retribution. This is why it is so hard. Why should the perpetrator get out of jail free while the victim is called by God to endure the imprisonment? What is the imprisonment? It is the pain and hurt one feels when he or she is transgressed against. To forgive is to commit to absorb the pain without reflecting any of it back on the guilty person. It is gracious to pay for someone’s meal, but it is doubly gracious to pay for someone’s meal after they have stolen from you. But this is forgiveness—and this is why it is so hard.
Forgiveness may seem easy until we have to find the strength to forgive. To have the desire and power to do good to those who have done us evil is not a work of the flesh but a fruit of the Spirit. Jesus said, “apart from me, you can do nothing.” If we need the power of Christ to do the least charitable deed, how much more do we need the power of Christ to forgive those who have transgressed against us.
Where does this grace and power come from? How can we even begin to have the love and compassion to forgive others? The answer comes from God. We can forgive because we have been forgiven. God will take care of justice but thank God that He has paid for our sins and has cancelled out our debt. Because of the cross, not only is God able to forgive us, but we too are able to forgive all those who sinned against us. This is the power of the gospel, and o’ how we need it.
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Post by Admin on Sept 19, 2023 0:13:52 GMT -5
‘I disagree with Spurgeon!’ I blurted out in a voice that started out confidently, yet my brief assertion diminished with hesitancy and reservation. Who in their right mind would have the audacity to publicly admit disagreement with the Prince of Preachers—Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892), in a Ph.D. seminar at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary of all places? Well, I did. The quote that the professor used was, ‘Either every Christian is a missionary or an imposter.’
[1] As liberally as we quote Spurgeon in evangelical circles, it is probably safe to assume that we frequently quote him out of context, which was indeed the case in this situation.
[2] But the quote from Spurgeon reflected a popular sentiment today that claims every Christian is indeed a missionary. Such a statement demonstrates a naive view of the missionary calling.
Calling every Christian a missionary makes almost as much sense as calling every Christian a pastor or a preacher. Pastors who sense an inexplicable compulsion to proclaim the Word month after month, year after year, would likely argue that in addition to Christ-like character and Scriptural competence, any pastor who wishes to endure to the end in ministry must carry some internal, weighty burden of a God-wrought calling to preach the Word. The same is true for those whom God truly calls to be missionaries.
We may assume too much when the sense of calling that a would-be missionary describes is mainly an interest in some foreign culture/country. A bleeding heart and a world map are not enough. There are differing philosophies about what exactly the missionary call is supposed to be. We should equally consider and examine these various beliefs about the missionary call. And, the Scriptures must have the final say.
Calling every Christian a missionary makes almost as much sense as calling every Christian a pastor or a preacher.
First, we should admit that God does not call all Christians to be missionaries. Every Christian cannot be a missionary, nor should be. Christians can dismiss the urgency and global vision of the Great Commission by saying we are all missionaries in our neighborhood and to be such is the extent of their part in the church’s missionary mandate. Indeed, being a witness in one’s neighborhood is part of being evangelistic, but it does not fill up the missionary mandate. So, what is an acceptable definition of a missionary? Missiologist J. Herbert Kane has suggested a helpful definition:
In the traditional sense the term missionary has been reserved for those who have been called by God to full-time ministry of the Word and prayer (Acts 6:4), and who have crossed geographical and/or cultural boundaries (Acts 22:21) to preach the gospel in those areas of the world where Jesus Christ is largely, if not entirely, unknown (Rom. 15:20).[3]
According to Kane, missionaries go to different cultures or cross geographical boundaries in order to preach the gospel. Similarly, some contemporary missionary-theologians have helpfully defined a missionary as:
Someone who intentionally crosses boundaries for the purpose of communicating the gospel to win people to Christ, discipling new believers, planting churches, training biblically qualified leaders, and ministering to the whole body of Christ in holistic ways. The boundaries that must be crossed may be linguistic, religious worldview, geopolitical frontiers, socioeconomic, and so on. Most of the time we mean that this individual must go from one culture to another.[4]
These scholars also, for the sake of clarity of terms, differentiate between mission and missions:
Mission (singular) is meant to be broader in its scope to refer to the intentional and overall purpose and goal of the church. Thus, discussions or debates about the mission of the church concern that which Christ has charged his church to do in the world. Missions (plural) refers to all the many ways that churches see to carry out their mission in the world in actual missions efforts to reach and teach the peoples of the world for Christ’s sake.[5]
A missionary, then, is clearly not a person who just reaches out to his neighbor in his homogenous neighborhood. Such a person is obediently witnessing to their immediate surroundings for Christ, which should be part of the evangelistic ministry of any local church. But being a witness and being a missionary are two different categories—the former being the general responsibility of all Christians, and the latter being the special charge of a ‘sent one’.
[1] Charles H. Spurgeon, ‘A Sermon and a Reminiscence’, Sword and the Trowel (March 1873), as cited on www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/srmn1873.htm.
[2] The full context of Spurgeon’s quote indicates that if Spurgeon would have spoken in contemporary terms, he would have likely maintained that every Christian is an evangelist or an imposter. Consider the immediate context: ‘Every Christian here is either a missionary or an impostor. Recollect that. You either try to spread abroad the kingdom of Christ, or else you do not love Him at all. It cannot be that there is a high appreciation of Jesus and a totally silent tongue about Him. Of course I do not mean by that, that those who use the pen are silent: they are not. And those who help others to use the tongue, or spread that which others have written, are doing their part well: but that man who says, ‘I believe in Jesus,’ but does not think enough of Jesus ever to tell another about Him, by mouth, or pen, or tract, is an impostor.’ Spurgeon, ‘A Sermon and a Reminiscence.’
[3] J. Herbert Kane, Understanding Christian Missions (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1974), 28.
[4] Zane Pratt, et al., Introduction to Global Missions (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2014), 3-4.
[5] Pratt, et al., Introduction to Global Missions, 3.
CHARLES SPURGEON, CHRISTIAN LIFE, GOSPEL, J. HERBERT KANE, MISSIONARY, MISSIONS, SCRIPTURE, THE GREAT COMMISSION
E.D. Burns, PhD, has been a missionary in the Middle East, East Asia, Alaska, and currently Southeast Asia, where he develops theological resources and trains indigenous pastors and missionaries. From his international location, he also directs the MA in Global Leadership at Western Seminary. He is author of the new book The Missionary-Theologian.
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Post by Admin on Oct 11, 2023 21:23:26 GMT -5
Under the Law
Tom Hicks
TOM HICKS
Under the Law
There seems to be a fair amount of confusion today about what it means to be “under the law.” Some suggest that all of the members of the Old Covenant were “under the law.” Others say that for a believer to accept any commands or directives from God is to be “under the law.” Still others say that to accept any of the Ten Commandments as normative for the believer is to be “under the law.” But the phrase “under the law” is technical terminology in the Pauline epistles for something very specific.
1. Consider the meaning of the phrase “under the law” in Pauline literature.
Perhaps the best way to understand the phrase is to study the Galatian heresy. Paul used the phrase “under the law” five times in his letter to the Galatians (3:23; 4:4; 4:5; 4:21; 5:18), more than any of his other letters. But how were the false teachers in Galatia attempting to bring God’s people back “under the law?”
First, to be “under the law” is to attempt to secure God’s verdict of justification by the law. Paul says in Galatians 2:21, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.” The false teachers were teaching Christians that they had to keep the whole law of God for their justification, not only the Ten Commandments, but circumcision and the Jewish food laws and festivals. This was a false gospel (Gal 1:6-7).
Second, to be “under the law” is to attempt to obtain the Spirit through obedience to the law. Paul says in Galatians 3:2, “Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” Thus, to seek not only the objective blessing of justification by the law, but also the subjective blessing of the Spirit by the law is to be “under the law.” The Judaizers were teaching that to obtain the Spirit of Christ, one must obey the law of God. That is a “bewitching” heresy.
Third, to be “under the law” is to “rely on the works of the law.” Paul says in Galatians 3:10, “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law and do them.’” Thus, all who rely on the law, meaning those who trust their own works of obedience to avoid God’s curse are under actually under the curse of the law. That’s because the only way to be free from the curse of the law is to obey the whole law of God perfectly. No one can do that; therefore, no one should try to obey God’s law to free himself from the curse.
Fourth, to be “under the law” is to seek eternal life by obedience to the law. Paul says in Galatians 3:21, “If a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.” Anyone who relies on his own obedience to the law in order to obtain eternal life is “under the law.” Jesus alone is “the way, the truth, and the life.” Anyone who trusts his own good works as his righteousness for eternal life has rejected Christ and is under the law.
Now it’s important to note that in Galatians, Paul does not teach that faithful Christian obedience to God’s law is the equivalent of being “under the law.” In fact, in a number of places, Paul teaches the necessity of obedience to the law of God. In Galatians 6:2, Paul says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he gives us an idea of what he means by “the law of Christ.” He teaches that those in Christ, under grace, are to keep the Ten Commandments as an expression of their faith. True believers are to “put away falsehood,” the 9th commandment (Eph 4:25), “be angry and do not sin,” the 6th commandment (Eph 4:26), “no longer steal,” the 8th commandment (Eph 4:28), abstain from “sexual immorality,” the 7th commandment (Eph 5:3), refrain from “covetousness,” the 10th commandment (Eph 5:3). A true believer is not to be an “idolater,” which refers to the 1st through 3rd commandments (Eph 5:5). A believer is to “honor your father and mother,” the 5th commandment (Eph 6:2).
Paul may even reference the Lord’s Day, or Christian Sabbath, in Ephesians 5:16-19, when he says, “Making the best use of the time because the days are evil . . . addressing one another in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.” He speaks of “days” in a section of his letter where he is already expounding the Ten Commandments for the believer. Apparently, there is a day on which Christians are to gather to sing and worship the Lord together. Some say that the New Testament repeats 9 of the 10 Commandments, but that it is silent on the Sabbath commandment. Of course, this is false. The New Testament does repeat the Sabbath commandment. Jesus positively declares, “The sabbath was made for man” (Mk 2:27), and Hebrews says, “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb 4:9).
Many times, in the New Testament, the moral law of God, the Ten Commandments, are viewed as normative for the believer (Rom 2:21-22, 26, 29; 13:9; 7:25; 8:4; Jas 1:25; 2:8-13). This clearly shows that to be “under the law” is not equivalent to keeping the Ten Commandments under grace in faith, which is “the law of Christ.”
2. Both unbelieving Jews and unbelieving Gentiles are “under the law.”
This is an important point to grasp because some think that only Jews were “under the law.” That is, they think that being “under the Old Covenant” is the same as being “under the law.” But Paul explains that even the pagan unbelieving Gentiles, who are not “under the Old Covenant,” are in fact “under the law.”
Galatians 4:3-5 says, “In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
A key phrase here is “elementary principles of the world” (Gal 4:3). Those words could also be translated, “elemental spirits of the world.” It’s a reference to pagan worship. Pagans believed in salvation, justification, and this-worldly blessing through works of obedience to their false gods. It makes sense Paul would speak this way to the Galatians, since they were formerly Gentile pagans. They worshipped the “elemental spirits,” false gods, of earth, air, fire, and water, trying to avoid disasters from these elements and trying to gain blessings. They believed that if they offered sacrifices and obeyed their gods, they could obtain salvation from the wrath of their gods, and they could obtain blessing in this world on the basis of their works. Paganism is a work-for-salvation religion.
Galatians 4:9 elaborates on pagan slavery to works-salvation, and how God mercifully rescued the Galatians from it. It says, “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles [or elemental spirits] of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?” Paul is speaking ironically. To put yourself “under the law” with the Galatian Judaizers, trying to earn salvation through the Old Covenant, is no different from your former pagan religion.
Now, it’s significant that the words of Galatians 4:3 with 4:4-5 occur together. Galatians 4:3 says, “In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.” And Galatians 4:4-5 says, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law.”
Who did Jesus come to redeem from under the law? He came to redeem not just Jewish members of the Old Covenant, but pagans who were enslaved, under the law, to the elemental spirits of the world. To be under paganism is to be “under the law,” under condemnation in Adam (Rom 3:19-20; 5:19). The unbelieving Judaizers, who seek salvation through the Old Covenant, are indeed “under the law.” But unbelieving pagan Gentiles are also “under the law.” That is why Paul says that Christ came “to redeem those who were under the law,” not just Jews, but also Gentiles.
3. Believers under the Old Covenant were certainly not “under the law.”
This final point is also very important to grasp. Not all those who were in the Old Covenant were “under the law.” Remember that to be “under the law” is to rely on your good works for salvation, justification, the Holy Spirit, and eternal life. Did believers in the Old Testament rely on their good works for salvation? Did David do that? Did Abraham rely on his good works for salvation? Certainly not! In fact Galatians 3:6 says, “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.” And yet, Abraham was in the Old Covenant, the covenant of circumcision (Acts 7:8). No Old Testament saints, who were members of the Old Covenant, were “under the law.” For example, Hebrews 11:7 says, “By faith, Noah . . . became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.” And Hebrews 11:24-26 says, “By faith Moses . . . considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt.”
Thus, we must conclude that one could be “under the Old Covenant,” and yet not “under the law.” Old Testament saints were indeed members of the Old Covenant, and yet they were certainly not “under the law,” because they were not trying to obey the Old Covenant for their salvation.
The Bible teaches that David, a member of the Old Covenant, was a believer, a man after God’s own heart. David trusted in God for the forgiveness of his sins. He wrote, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin” (Ps 51:1-2). Clearly David was not relying on his good works for salvation. Rather, he was trusting God for grace, forgiveness and salvation. He understood that his sacrifices of obedience under the Old Covenant could not save him. “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering” (Ps 51:16). Romans 4:6-8 shows us that David was trusting in the gospel for his salvation: “David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: ‘Blessed are those who lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.’”
So, David was not “under the law,” since to be “under the law” is to be condemned and under God’s wrath. The Bible teaches us that David was under grace by faith because he trusted God to save him from his sins.
And yet, traditionally, David is understood to have written Psalm 119, which is about the goodness of the law of God. Spurgeon said, Psalm 119 “is Davidic in tone and expression, and it tallies with David’s experience in many interesting points. In our youth our teacher called it ‘David’s pocket book.'” David sings, “Blessed are those whose way is blameless who walk in the law of the Lord!” (Ps 119:1). “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me” (Ps 119:97-98). “I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold” (Ps 119:127). The Hebrew term “the law” in Psalm 119 is torah, which includes the sweet promises of the gospel, the positive laws of the Old Covenant as well as the moral law of the Ten Commandments.
David delighted in the law of God and sought to obey it from faithful love to God and joy in Him. But in no way did David “rely” on his obedience to the law for his salvation. He did not seek justification before God through the law. He didn’t rely on the law for his sanctification either. Rather, he obeyed the law as a believer from a heart of love, joy and gratitude to God because of so great a salvation.
David’s attitude toward the law is no different at all from that of the apostle Paul’s in the New Covenant. Paul said, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and righteous, and good” (Rom 7:12). “I delight in the law of God in my inner being” (Rom 7:22). “I serve the law of God with my mind” (Rom 7:25). Paul teaches that Christ died for our sins “in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:4). Jesus “gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14).
Conclusion
To be “under the law” is to “rely” on the law for justification, life and salvation. To be “under the law” is to be condemned in Adam, rather than justified in Christ. All unbelievers, both Jews and Gentiles, are “under the law,” but all believers in both Testaments are in Christ, who came to “redeem those who were under the law” (Gal 4:5).
True believers keep the good law of God in faith, under grace, as an expression of love to God because of so great a salvation. They don’t rely on the law to save them, but neither do they reject its authority or goodness. Though they can never keep the law perfectly, they do seek to follow the law as an expression of faith in God and love to Him.
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