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Post by Admin on May 31, 2023 14:53:54 GMT -5
Why Do the Nations Rage?
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SCOTT ANIOL
people gathering on street during nighttime
Psalm 1 began by saying that a truly blessed person will not allow his image of the good life to be shaped by the wicked image of blessedness; Psalm 2 shows us what that wicked image is. It shows us the counsel of the ungodly—their image of the good life.
Why do the nations rage,
and the peoples plot in vain? (Ps 2:1)
This is a deliberate development between the two introductory psalms. Notably, the Hebrew word for “plot” in Psalm 2:1 is the exact same term as the word “meditates” in Psalm 1:2, this idea of musing on something, something that forms and shapes your imagination. The KJV translated this phrase, “the people imagine a vain thing.” Helpfully, the Legacy Standard Bible translates both as “meditates”—The righteous person meditates on God’s Law day and night…. “Why do the nations rage and the peoples meditate on a vain thing?” This is a picture of the wicked imagination of the good life. A righteous person’s imagination will reflect the Torah, but an ungodly person’s imagination will reflect a different vain image.
And what is that image? Notice what the ungodly nations say about the rule of the Lord in verses 2–3. A righteous person imagines the rule of God to be that which enables blessedness; how does a wicked person imagine life under the rule of God?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
This is what the wicked imagine God to be like; this is not really about their theology, what they intellectually think in their minds. It’s not that they necessarily deny the power and rule of God. They acknowledge that rule, but they imagine that rule entirely differently than a righteous person does. Wicked people muse on different music. When they consider the rule of God, they conceive of his rule like bonds that must be broken, like cords that must be cast away for there to be true freedom. The ungodly image of the good life is a life of prosperity apart from God, with explicit rejection of his rule, because they imagine that rule to be oppressive.
Psalms 1 and 2 express two different images of life under God—as a flourishing tree, or as an oppressive bondage. Which image forms you will determine your path and your ultimate destiny.
And this is how the wicked have imagined the rule of God throughout history. Think about the serpent’s counsel to Eve: Did God really command that you not eat of the tree? That’s burdensome! He just knows you will become like him. Burst that bond apart and eat the fruit.
Or think about the Tower of Babel. God had commanded Noah and his sons to “be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it” (Gen 9:7). But their descendants migrated together east, and they said, That’s burdensome! Cast away that cord from us. “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth” (Gen 11:4). What God meant as a blessing for them, they imagined as restraining.
Or think about the Israelites. God gave them the law of Moses, and he said, “And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God” (Deut 28:1–2). And the Hebrews said, That’s burdensome! If we want peace in the land, we need to intermarry with the Canaanites, contrary to God’s law. And if we want our crops to grow, we need to worship Baal, the god of the storm. And if we want to have children, we need to worship Ashteroth, the god of fertility. Let us burst those bonds apart and cast away the cords from us. They wanted the good life, but their wrong image of life under the rule of God—their imagining a vain thing—led them to cast off what they saw as restrictive bonds and cords, when actually the commands God gave them were the path toward true flourishing.
I could go on and on—this is the story of human history. In none of these examples did the wicked necessarily have a deficient knowledge of the fact that God is the Creator and Ruler of all—Romans 1 tells us that all people know God’s eternal power and divine nature; their deficiency—what formed their path—is what they imagined God to be like. And this is exactly the point of Psalm 2: these introductory psalms are presenting the structural framework for the entire Psalter that is meant to shape our imagination of reality in this world and lead us to blessedness and praise, even as we are surrounded by wicked people with an entirely different image.
In fact, this is exactly how Jesus’s apostles interpreted Psalm 2. In Acts 4, Peter and John experienced the first persecution by the Jews, and after they were released, they quoted Psalm 2, recognizing this paradigmatic psalm as a fundamental lens through which to interpret all of human history as a conflict in images of the good life, a life under the rule of God vs. a life that throws off the rule of God. And, in fact, they also recognized that their little part in the unfolding of the framework Psalm 2 lays out was nowhere near the most significant example of it. This kind of conflict happened in the garden, it happened at Babel, it happened with the children of Israel, and it was happening to the apostles; but the apostles knew that the ultimate example of Psalm 2 was the crucifixion of the Son of God. And it was no stretch for them to interpret Psalm 2 this way—this is exactly what Psalm 2:2 says:
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed.
The apostles correctly identified the Anointed—this Messiah—as Jesus. In other words, Psalm 2 explains how the fundamental truths of Psalm 1 play out in world history, and as we will explore in the next chapter, the Messiah is at the center of it all. The apostles knew that; they had mused on God’s music—the Psalms had formed their imagination. And so they interpreted the conflict they were experiencing in light of that, which kept them on the right path toward true blessedness.
The Biblical Image of God
Psalm 2 also portrays a biblical image of God and his response to the imagination of the wicked. Again, this is setting up a paradigmatic set of images that are developed in the entirety of the Psalter and that form a God-inspired imagination of reality under God’s rule.
Consider the image Psalm 2:4 paints of God: It says, “He who sits in the heavens.” Now, that word “sits” is a bit misleading. The Hebrew word is actually much more metaphorical than just plain “sits.” Again, the Psalms use poetry to help to form our inner image of reality, and that’s what Psalm 2 is continuing to do. Elsewhere in the Psalms the translators often capture a fuller picture of what this Hebrew term is meant to portray with the English word “enthroned”:
The Lord sits enthroned over the flood,
the Lord sits enthroned as king forever. (Ps 29:10)
That’s the sense of this word. As Ross notes, the term “means that he sits enthroned or reigns.”1 We could translate Psalm 2:4, “He who sits enthroned in the heavens.” That is the image of God Psalm 2 is beginning to paint, and that’s clear when Psalm 2:6 refers to him as King. The Psalms use other images of God to shape our conception of him, but the overwhelmingly dominant image is of God as King. You’ll find him called king throughout the psalms, you’ll find references to his throne in heaven like we see here in 2:4, and you’ll find other images like scepter, kingdom, dominion, reign, and rule. Likewise, in the ancient near east a title like judge connoted the idea of a ruler, like in the Book of Judges, where judges were champion warrior rulers of the people.
From beginning to end of the Psalter, these songs lead us to muse on God as King. These concrete images form within our imaginations, what Alison Searle calls the “eyes of the heart,” an image of the good life under the rule of God.2
God’s Response
And how does this King respond to the rage of the nations? How does he respond to their vain imagination of a good life apart from his rule? How does he respond when the kings of the earth set themselves against him and his Anointed One, and burst what they consider the bonds of his rule and cast away what they imagine to be the cords of his reign?
He laughs.
But his laughter is not at all humorous. It very quickly turns to derision (v 4). He will “speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury” (v 5). You break the “bonds” of my rule? I will break you with a rod of iron and dash you in pieces like a potter’s vessel (v 9). You set yourself against my Anointed One? You reject him and arrest him and accuse him falsely and strip him and beat him and mock his rule with a crown of thorns? You nail my Anointed One to a shameful cross? I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill (v 6).
This certainty of destruction for those who live according to a vain imagination of the good life is communicated throughout the Psalter, and particularly in the progression of the Psalter’s organization. If you trace the appearance of the wicked throughout the Psalms, especially pictures of the wicked flourishing, you’ll notice that there is an intensification of contrast between the wicked and the righteous in the first forty psalms that begins to thin out and give way as the book progresses to the last fifty psalms, which focus on praise. There is a movement in the book from conflict to blessing, from lament to praise. When you get to the last psalm in the book, Psalm 150, there is absolutely no mention of the wicked. They’re gone.
Which is exactly what Psalm 1 predicts. The wicked will be like chaff that the wind drives away (v 4). They’re here in force for forty psalms, and they continue through most of the psalms, but they start to dwindle, and by Psalm 150, they’re gone. The fact of the matter is this: the presence of wicked people is an unavoidable reality, but it is also an unavoidable reality that “the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous” (Ps 1:5). They are here, and they will fight against us, and it will often look like they are prospering instead of us. But at the end, in the day of judgment, they will be blown away like chaff.
This is how we have hope in the midst of a dark world filled increasingly with ungodly paths and wicked imaginations. We don’t have hope by escaping the reality of wickedness around us or by ignoring that reality. Hope is formed in our hearts in the midst of all of this by musing on the Torah of David, by traveling along this path the psalm editors created for us from darkness, through adversity, to blessedness. We sing our way through the Psalms from songs of lament to songs of praise.
Torah’s Counsel
Psalms 1 and 2 portray two conflicting images of the good life that compete throughout world history: an image of a tree that flourishes under the rule of God, and an image of God’s rule as oppressive and tyrannical. The counsel of the ungodly is that the only way to flourish is to burst the bonds of God’s rule and cast off his cords. What is the righteous counsel? Psalm 2:10–12 tell us:
10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
This is the counsel of the Torah. This is an accurate image of what it will be like if you resist the rule of God as King. The last line of Psalm 1 promised, “the way of the wicked will perish,” and so the Torah counsels, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way.” Acknowledge him as King, accept that image, or you will not stand in the judgment.
If your image of the rule of God is that it is a thing to be broken and cast off because he is terrifying, then that’s the image that will actually come to pass. If you resist his rule as something oppressive, then you will experience oppression. You break his bonds? He will break you. Your image of the blessed life and its relationship to the rule of God will determine how you live and will determine your ultimate destiny.
But if you kiss the Son—if you serve him with fear because you know that his commandments are not burdensome; you don’t imagine God as a tyrannical despot, you imagine him as a Shepherd-King, as your Redeemer—if that’s your image, then you will be blessed.
Blessed is the man, Psalm 1 tells us, whose imagination is shaped by delighting in the Torah rather than ungodly counsel. And the final phrase of Psalm 2 is put there intentionally by the editors of the Psalter to form a bookend with Psalm 1:1: “Blessed are all those take refuge in him.” If you imagine God correctly, as formed within you by his inspired songs, then you will fly to him for refuge; you will see him as the source of true blessedness and as the one who will provide safety, comfort, and protection in the midst of a wicked world.
This post is an excerpt from Musing on God’s Music: Forming Hearts of Praise with the Psalms.
References
1 Allen Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2012), 1:205.
2 Alison Searle, The Eyes of Your Heart: Literary and Theological Trajectories of Imagining Biblica
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Post by Admin on Jul 5, 2023 19:23:45 GMT -5
Draw Near
CommunionGospel
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SCOTT ANIOL
low angle photo of chapel
Many of the “worship wars” today are fueled by, I believe, differing views of the nature of worship itself. Clearly differences over what worship is and the function of various worship elements would lead to significant differences over how churches would approach corporate worship, and so I believe that a fundamental step toward resolving these debates is to seek to understand how the Bible itself defines worship.
At its most basic level, worship is drawing near to God in fellowship with him and obedience to him such that he is magnified and glorified.
Created to Worship
This idea of drawing near to God in worship permeates the storyline of Scripture. It is what Adam and Eve enjoyed as they walked with God in the cool the day (Gen 2:8). It is described in Exodus 19:17 when Moses “brought the people out of the camp to meet God” at the foot of Mt. Sinai. He had told Pharaoh to let the people go so that they might worship their God in the wilderness, and this is exactly what they intended to do at Sinai. It is what Psalm 100 commands of the Hebrews in temple worship when it says, “Come into his presence with singing and into his courts with praise.” It is what Isaiah experienced as he entered the heavenly throne room of God and saw him high and lifted up. To draw near to God is to enter his very presence in fellowship and obedience.
Ultimately, this is why God created people. God created the world to put on display the excellencies of his own glory, and he created people therein that they might witness that glory and praise him for it. In Isaiah 43:6–7 God proclaims, “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Likewise, Paul commands in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.”
Worship—magnifying God’s worth and glory—is the reason God made us.
Worship—magnifying God’s worth and glory—is the reason God made us.
Sin Prevents Worship
Adam and Eve’s fall into sin—their disobedience of God’s commandments—was essentially failure to magnify the worthiness of God to be their master and bring him glory, and thus it was a failure to worship him acceptably. This broke the communion they enjoyed with God and propelled them out from the sanctuary of his presence. After they sinned, and they heard God walking in the garden, “the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God” (Gen 3:8)—they recognized their unworthiness to walk with him. Their sin created a separation between them and their Creator, and they were forced to leave the sanctuary (Gen 3:23–24), never again able to draw near to the presence of God.
All sin is essentially failure to bring God glory (Rom 3:23)—it is failure to worship him. This failure creates barriers from drawing near to God in worship, and it brings with it severe punishment: eternal separation from the presence of God in hell. Sin prevents us from drawing near to God in worship; it prevents us from doing what we were created to do.
Sin prevents us from drawing near to God in worship; it prevents us from doing what we were created to do.
Worship Through Christ
However, worship is possible through a sacrifice, the vicarious, substitutionary atonement of the Son of God. Sacrifices in the Mosaic system pictured this kind of atonement, but they were unable to “make perfect those who draw near” (Heb 10:1).
Worship is possible through a sacrifice—the vicarious, substitutionary atonement of the Son of God.
But this sacrifice can perfect those who draw near. Jesus is fully man, and thus he can stand as our substitute, and he is fully God, and thus he can pay an eternal punishment to an eternal, holy God that no normal man could. And because of the perfection and eternality of this sacrifice, it need not be offered day after day after day to atone for sin; it is offered one time and the complete wrath of God is fully appeased.
This is what God pictured when he slew the animal in the garden and covered Adam and Eve’s guilt. This is what was pictured when Moses offered a sacrifice at the foot of Mt. Sinai so that the elders of the people could approach God. This is what was pictured each year in Israel on the Day of Atonement when an animal was sacrificed and the high priest entered the holy place to sprinkle blood on the mercy seat. This is what was pictured when the seraph took a burning coal from the altar and placed it on Isaiah’s lips, saying, “your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
And this is pictured no more beautifully than with what happened at the moment of Christ’s death. The gospel accounts of the crucifixion tell us that Jesus cried out with a loud voice and gave up his spirit, and at that exact moment, the veil of the temple was torn in two, as if that veil was the body of the Son of God himself prohibiting entrance into the presence of a holy God, and that access that had been lost by the fall of man is now restored! There is now a new and living way (Heb 10:20) to draw near to God, and that way is his Son.
Thus those who repent of their sin—their failure to worship—and put their faith and trust in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on their behalf are saved from separation from God and enabled once again to draw near to him in worship.
What should be apparent is that the essence of worship is itself the language of the gospel—a drawing near to God in relationship with him, made impossible because of sin that demands eternal judgment, yet restored through the substitutionary atonement of the God-man for those who place their faith in him.
The gospel of Jesus Christ makes worship possible.
The gospel of Jesus Christ makes worship possible.
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Post by Admin on Jul 12, 2023 8:57:55 GMT -5
Foundations of Biblical Worship
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SCOTT ANIOL
cloudy sky during daytime
“Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”
This ancient hymn captures three eras of worship: as it was in the beginning—the worship of Old Testament Israel, as it is now—the worship of New Testament Christianity, and worship in the world without end—the worship of heaven. In one sense separating worship into these three eras emphasizes their discontinuity; yet, while there are certainly discontinuities between the worship of Israel and the New Testament church, for example, there are also important continuities, and where we find an emphasis on the continuity is in that little phrase, “and ever shall be.”
Yet Christians have long wrestled with the continuities and discontinuities of worship, and confusion in this area has often led to problems with theology and practice of worship. The solution is found in a proper understanding of the foundations of biblical worship.
Understanding properly how worship as it was in the beginning and worship as it is now relate to worship in the world without end helps us to recognize what shall ever be, the center of true worship and, consequently, the purpose of what we do as we gather for worship now.
Scripture presents us with two extended descriptions of the worship of the world without end that provide the foundation for our discussion, notably one set in the context of worship in the Old Testament and the other set in the context of worship in the New Testament. In both cases, these descriptions of heavenly worship were presented during a time of problems with earthly worship, revealing the fact that problems with our worship now are corrected when we bring our worship into proper relationship with the worship of the world without end.
Isaiah 6
This was true for the nation of Israel; during Solomon’s reign and especially following the divided kingdom, God’s people forsook the pure worship of God and began first to fall into syncretistic worship, and eventually full blow idolatry. Even noble kings in the southern kingdom, such as Uzziah, approached worship presumptuously and not according to God’s explicit command by entering into the sanctuary though he had no right to do so.
It is no coincidence that the death of Uzziah is the very context for the prophet Isaiah’s vision of heavenly worship in Isaiah 6:1–13. In a way, this was God reminding Isaiah of the true reality upon which pure earthly worship was supposed to be based. God called Isaiah up into the heavenly temple itself, where he “saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up” (verse 1). Surrounding God were seraphim singing the Trisagion hymn (“thrice holy”),
Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of his glory!
The sight of God in all of his holiness and splendor caused Isaiah to recognize his own sin and unworthiness to draw near to the presence of God in his temple, what Uzziah should have known before entering the earthly temple as he did. Thus, Isaiah confessed his sin before the Lord: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (verse 5)!
Yet God did not simply expel Isaiah from the temple due to his impurity; rather, God provided means of atonement. One of the seraphim took a burning goal from the altar and placed it on Isaiah’s lips, proclaiming, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” Now Isaiah was welcome in the presence of God by the means God himself had provided.
Standing accepted in God’s presence, Isaiah heard the voice of the Lord giving him a message, to which Isaiah willingly offered obedience, and God sent Isaiah forth with that message of both exhortation and promised blessing to the nation of Israel. Later, Isaiah’s message to the people of Israel reveals that if they submit to God’s exhortation and commit themselves to him, then “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all people’s a rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined” (Isaiah 25:6). God displays his acceptance of forgiven sinners through a celebratory feast.
This reality of heavenly worship contained a theological pattern that should have provided a corrective for the syncretistic and idolatrous worship of God’s people:
God reveals himself and calls his people to worship
God’s people acknowledge and confess their need for forgiveness
God provides atonement
God speaks his Word
God’s people respond with commitment
God hosts a celebratory feast
Isaiah’s vision and message from God were supposed to correct the idolatrous worship of his people, but, of course, the hard-hearted people did not listen, and thus they never experienced the full blessings God had promised to them if they repented.
Revelation
In the book of Revelation, God granted the apostle John a similar glimpse into the temple of heaven. As with Isaiah during the reign of King Uzziah, it is no accident that this vision of heavenly worship came at a time when worship on earth was in chaos; even a noble church like the one in Ephesus had lost its first love, and many Christians like those in Laodicea had become lukewarm.
In John’s vision, like Isaiah’s vision, heavenly worship contains a theological pattern that should inform and correct earthly Christian worship. It begins with a Call to Worship: “Come up here” (chapter 4 verse 1), followed by a vision of God himself and angels singing the Trisagion hymn (verse 8) and hymns of praise for creation (verse 11).
Then follows the presentation of the scroll that reveals the unworthiness of all people to open it (chapter 5 verses 1–4) except for the Lamb who was slain, he who provided atonement and ransomed a people for God (verses 5–12). The heavenly worshipers respond with a doxology and a choral “Amen” by the four living creatures (verses 13–14). Most of the rest of the book foretells God’s Word being opened as he enacts his plans for humankind, and the responses of God’s people in the form of praise and service (6:1–19:5).
The book climaxes with the great Marriage Supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:6–21), when a great multitude will sing,
Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure.
This, finally, is the fulfillment of what Isaiah had promised for those who would listen to the Word of the Lord. The heavenly temple will descend, and for the first time God’s ultimate intention for his people will come to full realization: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21 verse 3). The purpose of humankind was communion in the presence of God for his glory, and in that day the purpose will come to pass.
Thus, the theological pattern of worship in Revelation is the same as it has been since the beginning as described in Isaiah’s vision:
God reveals himself and calls his people to worship
God’s people acknowledge and confess their need for forgiveness
God provides atonement
God speaks his Word
God’s people respond with commitment
God hosts a celebratory feast
True Reality
These two visions of worship in the world without end establish some important foundational principles through which we must assess the discontinuities and continuities of earthly worship. First, the similarities of heavenly worship between Isaiah’s vision and John’s vision reveal that this is eternal worship, the reality of heavenly worship as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. The heavenly worship of John’s vision, coming as it does after the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, does elevate the Lamb who was slain in a way absent in Isaiah’s vision, but nevertheless even the atonement provided Isaiah was based upon the sinless Servant who was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. The core and essence of heavenly worship in both cases is the same.
For this reason, second, earthly human worship is not something new for us, unique to us, or initiated by us; worship is perpetually taking place in the world without end. When we worship, we are entering into something eternal.
Third, we enter into this eternal worship, not of our own initiative or merit, but only at the invitation from God and on basis of God’s atoning work. In both eras, God called the sinner into his temple; they did not seek him out or initiate the encounter. And in both eras, acceptance into God’s presence was permitted only after the sinner’s guilt was atoned for by means that God himself provided.
Fourth, the theological pattern of heavenly worship in both visions reflects that initiating call of God and his atoning work that enables sinners to be in his presence. The pattern of Revelation, Adoration, Confession, Propitiation, Instruction, Dedication, and Communion provides a contour to the worship of heaven that magnifies the true reality of eternal worship and the only means by which sinful humans are able to participate.
Consequently, fifth, worship is not us performing for God, but a reenactment of God’s work for us. Everything about the eternal worship into which Isaiah and John enter is initiated by God, provided for by God, and shaped by his covenant relationship with his people. God is the primary actor. All of the actions of the worshipers are in response to God’s work and actually a reenactment of God’s covenantal work.
Everything about the eternal worship into which Isaiah and John enter is initiated by God, provided for by God, and shaped by his covenant relationship with his people. God is the primary actor.
On Earth As It Is in Heaven
What, then, is the relationship between this eternal worship of the world without end and the worship taking place here on earth, both as it was in the beginning (Old Testament worship) and as it is now (New Testament worship)? This is critical for us to understand since throughout church history, many of the errors that have crept into Christian worship resulted from a mistaken understanding of the proper biblical relationship between worship as it was in the beginning, as it is now, and the true worship of the world without end.
The heavenly worship revealed in Isaiah’s vision was supposed to be a corrective for the false worship of Israel because their own worship contained the same theological pattern as true heavenly worship.
The worship patterns that God had established for Israel at Mt. Sinai were not arbitrary. The order of worship God prescribed reflects the eternal heavenly “theo-logic” in which in the assembly, God’s people reenact through the order of what they do God’s atoning work on their behalf. The encounter at Sinai began with God’s initiative: “The Lord called out to [Moses] out of the mountain” (Exodus 19:5)—God himself called Moses, Aaron and his sons, the elders, and all the people to draw near to worship him (chapter 24. Verse 1).
The people had to remain at a distance, however (verse 2), emphasizing the fact that sin cannot come fully into the presence of God. For this very reason, this worship service continued with necessary consecration of the people. Moses presented God’s “rules” to the people as a way to reemphasize their own sinfulness and then offered the necessary sacrifices of atonement so that they would be accepted (verses 3–8). God communicated his approval and acceptance of them based on the atoning sacrifice when the leaders of the people “saw the God of Israel, . . . and he did not lay his hand” against them (verses 9–11).
The ultimate expression of the fact that they were now welcome in his presence for communion with him was that “they beheld God, and ate and drank” (verse 11). Once again, to eat and drink before the presence of God was a powerful statement that the people had gained acceptance with God, not through their own work, but through the means that he had established.
This first service of worship for Israel followed a progression that became standard for the worship of God’s people from that time forward. This same theological pattern characterized the progression of sacrifices within the tabernacle assemblies, moving from the sin offering to the guilt offering to the burnt offering to the grain offering and finally the peace offering. The same structure appears at the dedication of the tabernacle (Leviticus 9) and later Solomon’s temple (second Chronicles 15–17).
In this way, the worship of Israel embodied the same theological pattern of the eternal worship of heaven:
God reveals himself and calls his people to worship
God’s people acknowledge and confess their need for forgiveness
God provides atonement
God speaks his Word
God’s people respond with commitment
God hosts a celebratory feast
Israel’s worship was not, like the pagan worship around them, a performance for God initiated by them; rather, their worship was a God-initiated visible reenactment of their covenant relationship with him. God calls these acts of worship “memorials,” meaning more than simply a passive remembrance of God’s atoning work, but actually a reenactment of what he had done. This principle of memorial applied to every Sabbath and to each of the holy days, festivals, and solemn assemblies of worship in Israel. In each case, the structure of the worship assemblies follows a theological order in which the worshipers reenact the covenant relationship they have with God through the atonement he provided, culminating with a feast that celebrates the fellowship they enjoy with God because of what he has done for them.
The theologic of earthly worship reflected the real worship of heaven so that in participating in the earthly forms, the worshipers would be realigned with true reality—the reality of heavenly worship. What this reveals is the power of corporate worship to form the people’s present reality by participation with the heavenly future reality.
But these reenactments were not merely backward focused; as Isaiah’s vision revealed, they were also upward focused—toward the real worship of heaven, and forward focused—toward the worship of the age to come. In the words of Allen Ross’s memorable title, these worship practices were “recalling the hope of glory.” This theologic of earthly worship reflected the real worship of heaven so that in participating in the earthly forms, the worshipers would be realigned with true reality—the reality of heavenly worship. What this reveals is the power of corporate worship to form the people’s present reality by participation with the heavenly future reality.
So there is a fundamental relationship between the worship of Old Testament Israel and the real worship of heaven, but it is essential that we recognize the external physical forms and rituals of Israel’s worship were but a mere shadow of the true form of heavenly reality. But the time is now here when the shadows have passed away. What remains is the true reality—the formative spiritual theologic of heavenly worship.
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AUTHOR
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Scott Aniol
Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief G3 Ministries
Scott Aniol, PhD, is Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of G3 Ministries. He lectures around the world in churches, conferences, colleges, and seminaries, and he has authored several books and dozens of articles. You can find more, including publications and speaking itinerary, at www.scottaniol.com. Scott and his wife, Becky, have four children: Caleb, Kate, Christopher, and
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Post by Admin on Jul 30, 2023 7:29:21 GMT -5
No, Women Can’t Preach
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SCOTT ANIOL
11beth-moore-1-jumbo
Scripture contains many passages that are difficult to interpret—even Peter said so (2 Pet 3:16). What is “baptism for the dead” in 1 Corinthians 15? Who were the Nephilim of Genesis 6? What did Peter mean when he said that Jesus “went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison” (1 Pet 3:19)? What does the Bible mean when it says that God regrets doing something (1 Sam 15:11)?
Some of those difficult passages concern the matter of women in the context of church gatherings. Does 1 Corinthians 11 require women to wear head coverings in corporate worship? Does 1 Corinthians 14:34 mean that women cannot speak at all in church gatherings? What does Paul mean when he says that women should “remain quiet” (1 Tim 2:12)?
Whenever we encounter difficult passages like these, we ought to follow an important principle: interpret unclear passages of Scripture in light of more clear passages. And a corollary principle is this: we ought never to base a core doctrine off of one or two unclear passages.
When it comes to the issue of whether or not women may preach and/or hold the office of pastor, it has become common to argue in favor of women preachers or women pastors on the basis of unclear texts of Scripture.
However, several texts regarding the nature of pastoral ministry are clear, and it is my goal in this post to briefly summarize these key texts and what they conclude regarding women and pastoral ministry.
The Gift and Office of Pastor Are the Same
It has become increasingly common for some to argue that though a woman may not hold the office of elder within the church, she may have been given the gift of pastor-teacher, and therefore she may exercise that gift within the church, even with men present.
Often Ephesians 4:11 will be quoted to argue that pastor-teacher is a gift given without qualification to both men and women within the church, which is different from the office of elder.
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.
Eph 4:11–12
The key problem with this line of thinking is that this passage does not describe abilities given to individuals but rather offices given to churches. In other words, Paul is not describing certain giftedness that God gives to particular individuals; rather the gifts that God gives are particular offices within the church.
Paul does not say that God gave individuals the ability to be an apostle, the ability to prophesy, the ability to evangelize, or the ability to shepherd and teach. No, Paul says that God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to the church for the purpose of equipping saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. Paul’s argument is that God gave individuals to the church, not abilities to individuals.
Now, of course, God did give these individuals whom he gifted to the church abilities requisite with their offices, but that is not the primary point of the text. Ephesians 4:11–12 describes offices within the church, not giftedness of individuals.
Therefore, “pastor-teacher” is an office gifted to the church.
Ephesians 4:11–12 describes offices within the church, not giftedness of individuals.
In light of this clear understanding of what Paul is saying in Ephesians 4, the next question must therefore be, who qualifies for the office of pastor (poimēn)?
Only Men May Serve as Overseers/Elders
Scripture is clear that only men may serve in the office of overseer, if for no other reason than one of the qualifications for overseer (episkopos) given in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 is that he must be “the husband of one wife.”
Likewise, in Titus 1, Paul gives as a qualification for elder (presbyteros) that he must be “the husband of one wife.”
Once again, it would be impossible to argue from these two key passages regarding qualifications for overseers and elders that these can be held by women.
Pastor, Overseer, and Elder Refer to the Same Office
On the other hand, Ephesians 4 does not say that overseers or elders have been given as gifts to churches, it says that pastors have been given to churches. So some may argue that while women clearly may not serve as overseers or elders, there are no biblical passages that clearly argue that only men may serve as pastors.
However, here is another truth that is unmistakably clear in Scripture: pastor, overseer, and elder refer to the same office.
Let me show you why this is unmistakably clear. First, in Titus 1:5–7, Paul clearly refers to the office of elder and the office of overseer interchangeably:
This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you— 6 if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. 7 For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain.
Paul clearly describes one office using both the term elder (presbyteros) and overseer (episkopos).
Similarly, after Paul lists qualifications for an overseer (episkopos) in 1 Timothy 3, he uses the term “elder” (presbyteros) in the same context in 1 Timothy 5:17. Clearly, Paul considers “overseer” and “elder” to be two terms that describe the same office.
So what about “pastor” (poimēn)? Three additional texts clearly identify this term with the other two.
First, in 1 Peter 5:1–2, Peter admonishes elders to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight.” In addressing elders, Peter uses verb forms of the terms for pastor (“shepherd”; poinaino) and overseer (episkopeo). He is describing one office of the church using three terms: elder, pastor, and overseer.
Second, earlier in 1 Peter 2:25, Peter uses the terms shepherd (poimēn) and overseer (episkopos) interchangeably with reference to Jesus.
Third, in Acts 20:17–38, Paul assembles the “elders” (plural of presbyteros) of the church at Ephesus, refers to them as “overseers” (plural of episkopos), and exhorts them to “shepherd” (verb form of poimēn) their “flock” (poimnion) (v 28).
What is clear from these texts taken together is that the terms overseer (episkopos), elder (presbyteros), and pastor (poimēn) refer to one singular office, a gift that has been given to churches by God for their spiritual benefit.
The terms overseer (episkopos), elder (presbyteros), and pastor (poimēn) refer to one singular office, a gift that has been given to churches by God for their spiritual benefit.
And, consequently, if Scripture is clear that only men may serve in the office of overseer/elder, then it follows also for the interchangeable term “pastor” mentioned in Ephesians 4:11. This is the clear teaching of Scripture against which all other less clear passages must be interpreted.
Women Are Not Permitted to Teach Men
One other matter must be addressed, however. Someone might agree that a woman may not serve in the office of overseer/elder/pastor, but she may be gifted in teaching and preaching and may therefore be permitted to preach in a church context as long as a church’s pastors permit her to do so.
On the contrary, another very clear biblical text prohibits such:
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
1 Tim 2:12
Here again is a very clear text. A plain reading of this verse prohibits a woman from teaching Scripture (i.e., preaching) or in any other way exercising authority over men.
Some may argue that the passage only prohibits “authoritative teaching,” and therefore preaching under the authority of her pastors is permissible. But this argument fails both grammatically and logically. Grammatically, the “or” in this verse indicates that these are two separate activities that are prohibited. And logically, the preaching of God’s Word is always, by definition, authoritative.
Further, this very prohibition leads into chapter 3 where Paul gives the qualifications for an overseer, inextricably connecting the activity of preaching to the office of overseer/elder/pastor.
Scripture is clear: women may not serve in the office of pastor, which embodies both the activities of pastoring and preaching.
Scripture is clear: women may not serve in the office of pastor, which embodies both the activities of pastoring and preaching.
Women Sharing the Gospel or Teaching Women and Children Is Not the Same as Preaching
One final point needs to be addressed. It is common for those who argue that women may either preach or serve in a pastoral function that to deny this is to deny a woman’s ability to share the gospel or teach other women or children. But this is simply not the case.
Scripture is clear, first, that all Christians are called to fulfill the Great Commission, not just pastors. Christian women should indeed share the gospel with others; this is not at all the same as preaching or pastoring.
Further, Scripture is also clear that women may and should teach Scripture to other women and children:
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, 4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children.
Titus 2:3–4
God certainly gifts Christian women with spiritual maturity, wisdom, insight, and teaching abilities so that they can teach other women and children to know and love God.
Praise God for how he gifts his people and his churches, and may we trust in how God has wisely chosen to do so.
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Post by Admin on Sept 13, 2023 9:43:01 GMT -5
I enjoy the articles put forth by the G3 men for the most part, so out of respect for them I post this article that I have several points of disagreement, but we will have Scott Aniol put forth his view as he speaks for several others.
Why Christian Faithfulness?
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SCOTT ANIOL
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Why is it so important to have our motivation right about how we live in society? Why is it important that we don’t try to motivate ourselves and others with grand ambitions of societal transformation?
First, God never promised grand societal transformation, and so if we make that our goal, it can lead to deep discouragement. I know some people who are very active in trying to push for massive social change, and they’re some of the grumpiest and at times angriest people I know. Why? Because they’re not seeing results. They’re discouraged. They may see little advances here or there, but certainly not the kind of massive social change they think God has promised them. And often times, those kinds of people end up burning out. How many big-name Christians have we seen burn out and fall away from the faith in just the past several years? God never commands us to do massive, amazing, earth shattering things in society. He commands us to be holy and faithful.
When societal transformation is our goal, we inevitably lose our mission as the church.
Second, when societal transformation is our goal, we inevitably lose our mission as the church. If our central mission as a church becomes anything other than making disciples—and even as individuals, if our central mission is grand societal transformation, history has shown that we end up losing the gospel. But if our goal as churches is making disciples who are holy and faithful in society, and if our goal as individual Christians is holiness and faithfulness in society, then we just may have at least a small influence.
Third, when societal transformation is our goal, we fail to recognize the value of the “ordinary”—common vocations and ordinary people. We tend to buy into a celebretyism that praises the larger-than-life people and undervalues faithful, ordinary people. We want heroes, when we should deeply value regular, faithful fathers and mothers and grandparents and pastors and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We chase after big movements and causes, failing to recognize the value of normal, everyday faithfulness of rearing godly children, working hard in our vocations, performing our civic duty in the political sphere, and simply doing it all for God’s glory. And even in the church, we tend to chase after spectacle, big programs, and large causes, rather than trusting the week-by-week ordinary means of grace that disciple us into holy, faithful Christians.
When societal transformation is our goal, we fail to recognize the value of the “ordinary”—common vocations and ordinary people.
Fourth, actually having significant influence in society almost always requires compromise. This is the main point of James Davison Hunter’s book, To Change the World. He shows that in order to really change the world on a massive scale, we would need to get in positions of power, and in order to get into positions of power, we have to give into the idea that earthly power is where real change takes place, essentially compromising our trust in the sufficiency of God’s Word and the fact that real transformation happens in the human soul through the gospel.
But we see this happening don’t we? People who want to change the world try to work their way into positions of power, and you can’t do that by boldly proclaiming the gospel and standing for holiness. Instead, you have to get those currently in power to accept you, which means you water down your message. And this is what’s behind when you hear elite evangelicals piously proclaim “the world is watching” as a defense for privatized religion. Don’t be bold in your stand against the murder of the preborn—the world is watching; they’ll think we’re being mean to women. No, we need to be more nuanced in our approach so that the world will accept us, and then we can get into those places of influence. This is why you really don’t see very many truly faithful, set apart Christians who are committed to their local church and holy living getting into high political roles. How many truly faithful Christians have become Senators? Some. Not many. How many truly faithful Christians have become the President of the United States? It is very, very difficult—not impossible, but difficult—to get into positions of power and influence and still remain faithful to what God has called us to be as Christians.
I love how James Davison Hunter summarizes the kind of Christian faithfulness I have advocated as Christians living in society—our lives ought to be characterized by faithful presence. Another way to think of it is that we are to live lives of submission to others and their needs. It is instructive that when Peter describes how we ought to live in various kinds of everyday relationships, submission is part of our responsibility.
1 Peter 2:13—“Be subject to every human institution.”
1 Peter 2:18—“Be subject to your masters.”
1 Peter 3:1—“Wives, be subject to your husbands.”
1 Peter 3:7—“Likewise, husbands live with your wives in an understanding way, showing them honor.”
Our lives in society ought not to be characterized by trying to get ahead, trying to advance our own agenda, or trying to do what’s best for us; our goal in society ought to be to submit ourselves to the needs of others—submit to governing authority, submit to our employer, submit to the needs of others in our families.
Our goal in society is not grand scale societal change or cultural transformation—we cannot be Second Adams
Our goal in society is not grand scale societal change or cultural transformation—we cannot be Second Adams. We ought simply to live holy lives, demonstrate kindness toward all people, and apply what it means to be a Christian in whatever cultural sphere God has called us. And as a church—as a redemptive kingdom community—we ought to make disciples, gathering more redemptive kingdom citizens and teaching them how to obey Christ in their everyday lives.
This philosophy, I believe, is more faithful to Scripture than the dominant evangelical views today. This biblical understanding protects the unique mission of the church to make disciples and avoids triumphalistic “kingdom” motivation so characteristic of evangelical discussions of Christianity and culture. Setting as our goal the transformation of society almost always results in failure to fulfill the mission Christ gave to his church. Most examples of evangelical desire to “transform culture” are little more than trying to be accepted by the culture. As Andy Crouch has astutely observed, “The rise of interest in cultural transformation has been accompanied by a rise in cultural transformation of a different sort—the transformation of the church into the culture’s image.”[1]
In other words, a biblical philosophy of culture does not understand our role in society to be in terms of cultural redemption or “work for the kingdom.” Rather, we should view the church’s exclusive mission as one of evangelization and discipling Christians to live sanctified lives in whatever cultural sphere God has called us. This is the extent of our “responsibility” toward culture, and anything more than this threatens to sideline what Christ has actually commanded us to do.
There’s a sort of frantic restlessness that inherently characterizes the goal of massive societal transformation; but there is a restful contentment that accompanies a life of Christian faithfulness that says, “I am going to submit to the authority of God’s Word; I am going to rest in the ordinary means of grace; and I am going to work hard at rearing godly children, working heartily as unto the Lord, standing up for righteousness in society, and doing it all for God’s glory.” We live faithfully in this present age, fully optimistic that the Second Adam will accomplish God’s plan for human history “when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thess 1:10).
[1] Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 189.
This was an excerpt from Scott Aniol’s book, Citizens & Exiles: Christian Faithfulness in God’s Two Kingdoms.
Citizens & Exiles: Christian Faithfulness in God’s Two Kingdoms | Scott Aniol
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AUTHOR
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Scott Aniol
Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief G3 Ministries
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Post by Admin on Oct 10, 2023 16:40:01 GMT -5
No, Women Can’t Preach
Share
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SCOTT ANIOL
11beth-moore-1-jumbo
Scripture contains many passages that are difficult to interpret—even Peter said so (2 Pet 3:16). What is “baptism for the dead” in 1 Corinthians 15? Who were the Nephilim of Genesis 6? What did Peter mean when he said that Jesus “went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison” (1 Pet 3:19)? What does the Bible mean when it says that God regrets doing something (1 Sam 15:11)?
Some of those difficult passages concern the matter of women in the context of church gatherings. Does 1 Corinthians 11 require women to wear head coverings in corporate worship? Does 1 Corinthians 14:34 mean that women cannot speak at all in church gatherings? What does Paul mean when he says that women should “remain quiet” (1 Tim 2:12)?
Whenever we encounter difficult passages like these, we ought to follow an important principle: interpret unclear passages of Scripture in light of more clear passages. And a corollary principle is this: we ought never to base a core doctrine off of one or two unclear passages.
When it comes to the issue of whether or not women may preach and/or hold the office of pastor, it has become common to argue in favor of women preachers or women pastors on the basis of unclear texts of Scripture.
However, several texts regarding the nature of pastoral ministry are clear, and it is my goal in this post to briefly summarize these key texts and what they conclude regarding women and pastoral ministry.
The Gift and Office of Pastor Are the Same
It has become increasingly common for some to argue that though a woman may not hold the office of elder within the church, she may have been given the gift of pastor-teacher, and therefore she may exercise that gift within the church, even with men present.
Often Ephesians 4:11 will be quoted to argue that pastor-teacher is a gift given without qualification to both men and women within the church, which is different from the office of elder.
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.
Eph 4:11–12
The key problem with this line of thinking is that this passage does not describe abilities given to individuals but rather offices given to churches. In other words, Paul is not describing certain giftedness that God gives to particular individuals; rather the gifts that God gives are particular offices within the church.
Paul does not say that God gave individuals the ability to be an apostle, the ability to prophesy, the ability to evangelize, or the ability to shepherd and teach. No, Paul says that God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to the church for the purpose of equipping saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. Paul’s argument is that God gave individuals to the church, not abilities to individuals.
Now, of course, God did give these individuals whom he gifted to the church abilities requisite with their offices, but that is not the primary point of the text. Ephesians 4:11–12 describes offices within the church, not giftedness of individuals.
Therefore, “pastor-teacher” is an office gifted to the church.
Ephesians 4:11–12 describes offices within the church, not giftedness of individuals.
In light of this clear understanding of what Paul is saying in Ephesians 4, the next question must therefore be, who qualifies for the office of pastor (poimēn)?
Only Men May Serve as Overseers/Elders
Scripture is clear that only men may serve in the office of overseer, if for no other reason than one of the qualifications for overseer (episkopos) given in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 is that he must be “the husband of one wife.”
Likewise, in Titus 1, Paul gives as a qualification for elder (presbyteros) that he must be “the husband of one wife.”
Once again, it would be impossible to argue from these two key passages regarding qualifications for overseers and elders that these can be held by women.
Pastor, Overseer, and Elder Refer to the Same Office
On the other hand, Ephesians 4 does not say that overseers or elders have been given as gifts to churches, it says that pastors have been given to churches. So some may argue that while women clearly may not serve as overseers or elders, there are no biblical passages that clearly argue that only men may serve as pastors.
However, here is another truth that is unmistakably clear in Scripture: pastor, overseer, and elder refer to the same office.
Let me show you why this is unmistakably clear. First, in Titus 1:5–7, Paul clearly refers to the office of elder and the office of overseer interchangeably:
This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you— 6 if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. 7 For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain.
Paul clearly describes one office using both the term elder (presbyteros) and overseer (episkopos).
Similarly, after Paul lists qualifications for an overseer (episkopos) in 1 Timothy 3, he uses the term “elder” (presbyteros) in the same context in 1 Timothy 5:17. Clearly, Paul considers “overseer” and “elder” to be two terms that describe the same office.
So what about “pastor” (poimēn)? Three additional texts clearly identify this term with the other two.
First, in 1 Peter 5:1–2, Peter admonishes elders to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight.” In addressing elders, Peter uses verb forms of the terms for pastor (“shepherd”; poinaino) and overseer (episkopeo). He is describing one office of the church using three terms: elder, pastor, and overseer.
Second, earlier in 1 Peter 2:25, Peter uses the terms shepherd (poimēn) and overseer (episkopos) interchangeably with reference to Jesus.
Third, in Acts 20:17–38, Paul assembles the “elders” (plural of presbyteros) of the church at Ephesus, refers to them as “overseers” (plural of episkopos), and exhorts them to “shepherd” (verb form of poimēn) their “flock” (poimnion) (v 28).
What is clear from these texts taken together is that the terms overseer (episkopos), elder (presbyteros), and pastor (poimēn) refer to one singular office, a gift that has been given to churches by God for their spiritual benefit.
The terms overseer (episkopos), elder (presbyteros), and pastor (poimēn) refer to one singular office, a gift that has been given to churches by God for their spiritual benefit.
And, consequently, if Scripture is clear that only men may serve in the office of overseer/elder, then it follows also for the interchangeable term “pastor” mentioned in Ephesians 4:11. This is the clear teaching of Scripture against which all other less clear passages must be interpreted.
Women Are Not Permitted to Teach Men
One other matter must be addressed, however. Someone might agree that a woman may not serve in the office of overseer/elder/pastor, but she may be gifted in teaching and preaching and may therefore be permitted to preach in a church context as long as a church’s pastors permit her to do so.
On the contrary, another very clear biblical text prohibits such:
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
1 Tim 2:12
Here again is a very clear text. A plain reading of this verse prohibits a woman from teaching Scripture (i.e., preaching) or in any other way exercising authority over men.
Some may argue that the passage only prohibits “authoritative teaching,” and therefore preaching under the authority of her pastors is permissible. But this argument fails both grammatically and logically. Grammatically, the “or” in this verse indicates that these are two separate activities that are prohibited. And logically, the preaching of God’s Word is always, by definition, authoritative.
Further, this very prohibition leads into chapter 3 where Paul gives the qualifications for an overseer, inextricably connecting the activity of preaching to the office of overseer/elder/pastor.
Scripture is clear: women may not serve in the office of pastor, which embodies both the activities of pastoring and preaching.
Scripture is clear: women may not serve in the office of pastor, which embodies both the activities of pastoring and preaching.
Women Sharing the Gospel or Teaching Women and Children Is Not the Same as Preaching
One final point needs to be addressed. It is common for those who argue that women may either preach or serve in a pastoral function that to deny this is to deny a woman’s ability to share the gospel or teach other women or children. But this is simply not the case.
Scripture is clear, first, that all Christians are called to fulfill the Great Commission, not just pastors. Christian women should indeed share the gospel with others; this is not at all the same as preaching or pastoring.
Further, Scripture is also clear that women may and should teach Scripture to other women and children:
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, 4 and so train the young women to love their husbands and children.
Titus 2:3–4
God certainly gifts Christian women with spiritual maturity, wisdom, insight, and teaching abilities so that they can teach other women and children to know and love God.
Praise God for how he gifts his people and his churches, and may we trust in how God has wisely chosen to do so.
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The Proof of the Resurrection
Have you talked with someone who doubted the resurrection of Christ? Many people don't believe that God exists. In spite of all of the knowledge surrounding us in this world, they refuse to believe. We could start with a long list of proofs to validate the existence of God as we…AUTHOR
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Post by Admin on Oct 11, 2023 10:14:09 GMT -5
War Songs of the King of Kings | Scott Aniol
Christians ought to sing all the psalms—including the imprecatory psalms—because the psalms are deeply rooted in confidence that God is the Sovereign King of Kings, and therefore to sing them helps form within us a hope-filled longing for the Return of the King.
We who have already submitted to the sovereign King of Kings are in a unique position. Like Israel in exile, we are citizens of God’s kingdom, but we are currently living in the midst of earthly kingdoms filled with wicked people.
So what are we supposed to do while we wait for the return of the king? Well there are several things Scripture commands us to do. We are to faithfully preach the good news of Jesus Christ, calling sinners to kiss the Son in repentant faith. We are to let our light shine before men so they will see our good works and glorify God on the day when he visits them with judgment. We are to stand firm under persecution, do good until all men, and pray for the salvation of souls.
But God also commands us to faithfully meet together, encouraging one another, and all the more as we see the Day of Judgment drawing near. And when we gather, we worship our King. And what should we sing as we worship our King? We should sing his inspired war songs. The Psalms are the spiritual battle cry of all who currently serve the King of Kings.
These songs express our humble submission to the sovereign King. These songs give us language to praise and thank our King. And these songs are expressions of trust in our Warrior King who will come and defeat all his enemies.
These songs help us to cry out to the only source of help and deliverance we can depend on: the one who is both Yahweh and Man: God’s Anointed, Jesus Christ. When we cry out with the psalms for Yahweh to save us, to deliver us, rescue us, guard us, redeem us, give us victory, and vindicate us, this is war language.
And these songs don’t just give us language to express these sentiments, God’s inspired songs form us to live in this present evil age with courage and hope and confidence that the King will come again and conquer all his enemies. They form us to live like kingdom citizens; the psalms are, as James Mayes so helpfully describes them, the liturgy of the kingdom of God.
These are the songs we sing as we march around the walls of Jericho, not because we are going to take up arms and break through the walls ourselves, but because God himself will conquer the city.
You see, when we see sin and wickedness around us, when we see the nations rage and the peoples meditating on a vain thing, when we see the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his Anointed, what can we do? What we don’t do is take up arms. We are in a war, make no mistake, but Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10 that we are not waging war according to the flesh. The weapons of our warfare, Paul insists, are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds, to destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.
What are those divine spiritual weapons? The weapons of our warfare are what we sometimes call the ordinary means of grace. If you’re concerned by the way godless ideologies are plaguing our society, then gather with the church—that is where the weapons are. Our primary battlefield is not in the political sphere or among the elite culture-makers, our primary battlefield is what we do when we gather as the church—the ordinary means of grace. Preaching, prayer, singing, Scripture reading, baptism, the Lord’s Table—these are the weapons of our warfare. This is our battlefield. Worship is warfare.
And the Psalms are spiritual divine weapons God has given us. When the culture around us raises up arguments and lofty opinions against the knowledge of God, when the fool says in his heart, “There is no God,” we take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and we boldly sing, “The Lord reigns! The gods of the people are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.”
When churches do not sing these war songs, their worship music inevitably devolves into happy-clappy escapist, feel-good ditties that form snowflakes rather than warriors.
We need the psalms, which is why we published Psalms and Hymns to the Living God, which contains settings of all 150 psalms plus hymns that match the character and quality of the God-inspired songs. These are the weapons of our warfare. These are how we battle against arguments and lofty opinions against the knowledge of God.
Without the psalms—the entirety of the psalms, churches are forming men without chests, brains filled with knowledge, but unable to navigate the realities of life in a sin-cursed world; unable to resist the fiery darts of the devil; unable to stand against the onslaught of growing persecution; unable to fight the spiritual battles God has called us to; unable to see with eyes of faith the conquering King of Kings who has promised to return and defeat all his enemies.
But by singing the Psalms—the war songs of the King of Kings, we are arming ourselves with exactly the spiritual divine weapons God has given us in this present evil age as we look for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Musing on God’s Music: Forming Hearts of Praise with the Psalms | Scott Aniol
Citizens & Exiles: Christian Faithfulness in God’s Two Kingdoms | Scott Aniol
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Post by Admin on Oct 13, 2023 21:52:29 GMT -5
Baptists and Biblical Authority in Worship
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SCOTT ANIOL
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Baptists and Biblical Authority in Worship | Scott Aniol
The regulative principle has long been associated with Reformed traditions that trace their heritage to John Calvin and the Swiss Reformation. This principle, which states that for church practice, whatever is not prescribed in Scripture is forbidden, contrasts with the Lutheran and Anglican normative principle, which holds that whatever is not forbidden in Scripture is permitted.
Traditionally, the Reformed regulative principle has differentiated between the substance of worship, which must have clear biblical warrant, and the forms or circumstances of worship, which “must be decided upon in the absence of specific biblical direction,” and thus are much more flexible.
This essay will show that, in contrast to the Reformed understanding of the regulative principle, Baptists have historically and theologically insisted upon New Testament warrant for both the substance and forms of church practice.
The Reformed Regulative Principle
The Reformed regulative principle finds its roots historically in the worship reforms of John Calvin (1509–1564), who interpreted the Second Commandment as God defining “lawful worship, that is, a spiritual worship established by himself. He insisted upon “the rejection of any mode of worship that is not sanctioned by the command of God.” The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) later codified this principle when it asked (Q. 96), “What does God require in the second commandment?” The catechism answered, “That we in no wise make any image of God, nor worship him in any other way than he has commanded.”
The principle spread to England largely through the influence of John Knox (1513–1572) and those with him who spent time with Calvin in Geneva during the reign of Mary I (“Bloody Mary”). Knox reflected Calvin’s thought when he argued, “All worshiping, honoring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without his own express commandment is idolatry.”[5] After Mary died and Elizabeth I came to the English throne in 1558, the regulative principle became characteristic of the Reformed clergy who returned from Geneva and formed the Puritan faction of the Church of England, they who “regarded the Reformation as incomplete and wished to model English church worship and government according to the Word of God.”[6]They later formulated their convictions regarding the principle in the Confession of Faith produced by the Westminster Assembly (1643–1660). Like Calvin and Knox before them, the Westminster divines rooted their regulative principle in their doctrine of Scripture:
The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men. (1:6)
Their bibliology would not allow for any additions to worship beyond what God had prescribed in his Word:
But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation or any other way not prescribed in the holy Scripture. (22:1)
The regulative principle of Calvin, Knox, and the Puritans found its rationale not only in logical extension of the doctrine of sola Scriptura, but also in the conviction that church authority was limited by clear scriptural precepts and had no right to constrain the free consciences of individual Christians. As the Westminster Confession explained,
God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to his Word, or beside it in matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commandments out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also. (20:2)
The Reformed regulative principle has traditionally distinguished between the elements of worship, which require explicit biblical warrant, and the forms or circumstances of worship, “which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed” (1:6). Charles Hodge (1797–1878) later employed this distinction when he noted, “The Scriptures, therefore . . . do not prescribe any form of words to be used in the worship of God.” Thus while a church, according to the Reformed regulative principle, must have clear biblical justification for the elements found in its worship, it has more liberty concerning the forms those elements take.
Baptists and the Regulative Principle
Early English Baptists articulated a regulative principle similar to other Separatist and Puritan groups. This fact of history is most clearly evident in the similarity of language concerning biblical authority between the London Baptist Confession (LBC) of 1689 and the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF). Early English Baptists clearly insisted, like their Presbyterian counterparts, “The acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself” (LBC 22:1 parallel to WCF 21:1).
Furthermore, many of the early English Baptist leaders explicitly articulated a clearly defined regulative principle. For example, John Spilsbury (1593–1668) declared, “The holy Scripture is the only place where any ordinance of God in the case aforesaid is to be found, they being the fountain-head, containing all the instituted Rules of both of Church and ordinances.” John Gill (1697–1771) later proclaimed, “Now for an act of religious worship there must be a command of God. God is a jealous God, and will not suffer anything to be admitted into the worship of him, but what is according to his word and will.” These Baptists were not simply articulating the doctrine of Sola Scriptura or emphasizing the authority of Scripture upon church practice, as any good Protestant would. Rather, they were insisting that the practices of the church be limited to what Scripture—specifically, the New Testament—commanded, and as William Kiffin (1616–1701) noted, “that where a rule and express law is prescribed to men, that very prescription, is an express prohibition of the contrary.” This concern among Baptists continued well into the early nineteenth century, as seen by John Fawcett’s (1739–1817) very direct assertion,
No acts of worship can properly be called holy, but such as the Almighty has enjoined. No man, nor any body of men have any authority to invent rites and ceremonies of worship; to change the ordinances which he has established; or to invent new ones . . . The divine Word is the only safe directory in what relates to his own immediate service. The question is not what we may think becoming, decent or proper, but what our gracious Master has authorized as such. In matters of religion, nothing bears the stamp of holiness but what God has ordained.
Notably, these Baptists believed that their application of the regulative principle was more consistent than that of other groups, a matter that will be explored below. Matthew Ward summarizes well the Baptist position, in contrast to both the normative principle of the Anglicans and what Baptists considered the inconsistent regulative principle of the Presbyterians:
The same Anglicans who had rejected the popish practices of crucifixes, beads, praying to the Saints, icons, and pilgrimages had retained bowing at the name of Jesus, signing the cross in baptism, wearing the surplice in preaching, and kneeling at the Lord’s Supper. The same Presbyterians who had rejected those latter practices had retained the church hierarchy, a directory of worship, infant baptism, and compulsory church attendance and tithes. The Baptists saw inconsistency therein and wanted to practice a consistent application of Scripture in their worship because they desired true reverence for God and true humility before him.
Ecclesiastical Issues Affected by the Regulative Principle
Baptist commitment to the regulative principle is seen not only in the express statements of early Baptists but also particularly in their practice. Several key ecclesiological issues in Baptist practice reveal a strong allegiance to this principle.
Baptism
The central Baptist distinctive of believer’s baptism by immersion perhaps most clearly reveals commitment to the regulative principle. Since their inception, Baptists have been concerned not simply that baptism take place, nor only that baptismal regeneration be rejected, but also that baptism be performed in exactly the way the New Testament prescribes. For example, Cox, Knollys, and Kiffin wrote in 1645 the following in response to Edmond Calamy’s defense of infant baptism: “But your infant baptism is a religious worship, for which there is no command, nor any example, written in the Scripture of truth.” Likewise, Hercules Collins (1646–1702) noted about infant baptism, “We have neither precept nor example for that practice in all the Book of God.” In their 1688 Confession, London Baptists argued against infant baptism on the basis that it was not prescribed in Scripture. Furthermore, these Baptists’ commitment to the mode of immersion sprang from their conviction that this is exactly what the New Testament prescribed. John Norcott (1621–1676), for example, rejected the mode of sprinkling, because “God is a jealous God, and stands upon small things in matters of Worship.”
For the purposes of this essay, what is particularly important to recognize in the baptism debate is that these early Baptists extended the regulative principle not simply to the element of baptism, as even Presbyterian proponents of the principle did; they also applied the principle to the form in which the element was practiced. They believed that regulating even the form of baptism by the New Testament was a more consistent practice of the regulative principle. As Steve Weaver states, “Given their understanding of the meaning of the word baptizo, they sought to apply the regulative principle more thoroughly than had Calvin or Burroughs and the Reformed/Puritan tradition which they represented.” He continues,
For seventeenth-century Baptists, both the mode and the recipients of baptism were vitally important. Their defense of the practice of believer’s baptism by immersion was driven by their commitment to the regulative principle of worship. Infant baptism simply could not be found in Scripture, and therefore must be rejected at any cost. Believer’s baptism by immersion, however, was “the plain testimony of Scripture” and was therefore to be defended at any cost.
Thus, the 1644 London Confession articulated the “way and manner” of baptism and defined it as “dipping or plunging under water,” and the 1689 Confession insisted that “immersion, or dipping of the person in water, is necessary to the due administration of this ordinance.” A consistent application of the regulative principle, Baptists believed, necessarily informed both the mode and subject of baptism and therefore led to a credobaptist conviction. Fred Malone summarizes:
It is the credobaptist position that maintains a consistent regulative principle concerning the subjects of baptism, disciples alone, as compared to the paedobaptist position that permits infant baptism by a misuse of “good and necessary inference.” The sacraments (ordinances) and their subjects are to be positively instituted by precept according to the regulative principle of worship. . . . Only a credobaptist position is consistent with the Reformed regulative principle of worship. The paedobaptist position, based on inference instead of stated institution, is a violation of the regulative principle.
While it is certainly true that believer’s baptism is the distinctive likely most identified with Baptists—it is part of the movement’s name, after all—it is because they held such a high view of Scripture as their sole authority over both the substance and form of the ordinance that Baptists came to their understanding of baptism in the first place.
The Lord’s Supper
Baptists have also applied the regulative principle to the practice of the Lord’s Supper. Baptists, like other Protestants, considered transubstantiation, the idea of the mass as a sacrifice, and other aspects of Roman Catholic Eucharistic theology to be outside what Scripture taught. At very least, Baptists observed the Supper because they believed, as John Ryland (1753–1825) noted, “Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the two positive institutions of the New Testament.”
Yet as with baptism, Baptists did not limit their application of the regulative principle to the substance of the Table alone; they applied it also to the form in which the Table was observed. As Kiffin noted, “to leave (they say) the Practice of Christ and his Apostles in the manner of receiving the Sacrament, and to follow the Practice of Men, in a posture Invented by Men is not safe.” Likewise, Collins suggested that a key difference between himself and a conformist consisted largely in whether observance of the Table followed Christ’s example or not:
Christ and his Apostles sat at Supper, you kneel (and impose it); they did it most probably often, yet seldom they did Communicate in the Evening, you at Noon; they break the Bread, you cut it, you License Men to Administer Sacraments, that have no Gift to preach, instead whereof, read only a Homily, we have no Command nor president for such a Practice.
Along with Collins, other Baptists often concerned themselves with how best to follow the NT example in their celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Sitting rather than kneeling, meeting in the evening rather than noon, and breaking the bread rather than cutting it were only a few of the matters concerning the Table that Baptists considered important. They were not as successful in reaching consensus on many issues related to the Lord’s Table as they had been on the matter of baptism, however.
One particular question about the Lord’s Supper Baptists also debated was whether believer’s baptism by immersion was a prerequisite for participation in the Table, again appealing to clear biblical prescription and example for defense of various answers to the question. This was a significant point of contention, for instance, between Kiffin and John Bunyan (1628–1688), Bunyan insisting that proper baptism was not necessary for church membership and Table observance, and Kiffin defending the claim that true baptism was necessary. It was as part of this debate over an issue of form that Kiffin articulated one of the most direct Baptist statements of the regulative principle:
I have no other design, but the preserving the ordinances of Christ, in their purity and order as they are left unto us in the holy Scriptures of truth; and to warn the Churches to keep close to the rule, least they begin found not to worship the Lord according to his prescribed order he make a breach among them.
This debate continued among various Baptist groups for years to come.
Singing
Baptists’ emphasis upon singing psalms and even non-inspired hymnody in corporate worship, led first by the efforts of Benjamin Keach, may appear to be evidence of a more normative approach to biblical authority. On the contrary, it was exactly on the basis of the regulative principle that Keach and others argued in favor of singing hymns in addition to psalms. Keach considered the lack of congregational singing in Baptist worship a “breach” in church practice that needed to be “repaired.” He believed singing in worship to be “so clear an Ordinance in God’s Word” and declared, “The holy Ghost doth injoin [sic] the Gospel-Churches to sing Psalms, as well as Hymns, and spiritual Songs. Will you take upon you to countermand God’s holy Precept?” In particular, he first introduced the singing of hymns to his congregation at the end of their Lord’s Supper observance because of the biblical example of Christ and his disciples at the end of the Last Supper (Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26). He inquired,
Did not Christ sing an Hymn after the Supper? Would he have left that as a Pattern to us, and annexed it to such a pure Gospel-Ordinance, had it been a Ceremony, and only belonging to the Jewish Worship?
Baptists who opposed congregational singing also based their arguments upon what they claimed to be the rule of biblical prescription, insisting that lack of clear NT command to sing hymns prohibited the practice. This simply reveals that the regulative principle was the accepted governing presupposition for Baptists through which all controversies were required to pass.
Polity
For Baptists, polity derives also from a more strict application of the regulative principle than for other groups, even those who ascribe to some form of the principle. Instructive is the fact that the LBC contains several more articles in its chapter on the church than does the WCF, including this statement on the organization of a church:
A particular church, gathered and completely organized according to the mind of Christ, consists of officers and members; and the officers appointed by Christ to be chosen and set apart by the church (so called and gathered), for the peculiar administration of ordinances, and execution of power or duty, which he entrusts them with, or calls them to, to be continued to the end of the world, are bishops or elders, and deacons. (LBC 26:8)
The WCF contains no such statement on how a church should be organized. The LBC furthermore eliminated the chapter “Of Synods and Councils” (WCF 31) since Baptists did not find NT warrant for such. Church autonomy, congregational government, and the limiting of church offices to elders and deacons each illustrates these Baptists’ concern that their polity be governed by explicit NT prescription.
Substance and Form
Early English Baptists clearly ascribed to the regulative principle, but as the foregoing discussion has shown, Baptists have applied the principle not only to the elements of worship, as did their Puritan counterparts, but they have also applied it to the forms of those elements. Among Baptists, debates concerning baptism, the Lord’s Supper, singing, and polity each occurred within the understood, and often explicitly stated, assumption that every practice of gospel churches must have clear New Testament prescription. Thus the regulative principle was the hub from which the Baptists’ views of baptism, corporate worship practices, and church polity found their source, and Baptists were far more consistent in their application of biblical authority to worship than those of the Reformed tradition who are often more associated with the regulative principle than Baptists.
One of the clearest examples of the difference between the Reformed regulative principle and that of the Baptists is in the comparison between their two confessions. As was shown earlier, the 1689 London Baptist Confession is almost identical to the Westminster Confession in its articulation of the regulative principle. Yet in one very important change, the LBC reveals a stricter application of the principle than that of the WCF. Baptists changed the statement “or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” in WCF 1.6 to “or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture” in LBC 1.6. Puritans demanded that the elements of worship have clear biblical warrant but were willing to be flexible as to the forms those elements took as long as those forms “by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.” Baptist, on the other hand, insisted that all aspects of church practice be “expressly set down or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture.” As Malone notes, “Our Baptist forefathers wanted to make sure that the containment of Scripture (i.e., the analogy of faith) limits what may be called ‘good and necessary consequence.’”
Most will recognize this fact of history with regard to the Baptist understanding of baptism, but few acknowledge that Baptists applied the same logic they used with the form of baptism to forms of other ecclesiological matters as well. This is not to say Baptists were always consistent in their application of the regulative principle. For example, Puritan Henry Jessey (1603–1663) observed such potential inconsistency in Baptists’ insistence upon biblical prescription for the form of baptism while at the same time allowing for “some variation, if not alteration either in the matter or manner of things according to Primitive Practice,” such as “laying on of hands, singing, washing of feet, and anointing with oil.” Neither does this mean that all Baptists came to the same conclusions regarding what the New Testament prescribed; indeed, Baptists have been rarely able to come to agreement on such matters. Matthew Ward even suggests that the commitment of the early Baptists to the regulative principle is what prevented them from unifying in any lasting way:
This is why worship was so disintegrative to the early Baptists. Every practice which they thought had biblical mandate or precedent became a just cause for separation, and those who did not agree with them were accused of harboring ‘poor conceits and Notions, as if the word of God came out from them’ and them only, all the while being open to that same charge potentially on the same practice.
Rather, what this study has shown is that these disagreements and debates over the minutia of church practice themselves reveal a deep commitment to the regulative principle in both substance and form of church practice.
Furthermore, there is little question as to whether Baptists have continued to affirm and apply the regulative principle in this way, especially in America. On the contrary, a comparatively much smaller percentage of Baptists today hold to any form of the regulative principle, let alone apply it as strictly to the forms of church practice as early English Baptists did.
Every Baptist would defend believer’s baptism by immersion on the basis of its explicit New Testament prescription and would argue against other forms of baptism on the basis of lack of biblical warrant. In other words, all Baptists by definition apply the regulative principle very strictly to the matter of baptism. Perhaps Baptists should also apply the principle to other issues of church practice, as did their Baptist forefathers.
Conclusion
Baptists are people of the Book. This is not simply a fact of history—it is at the core of what it means to be Baptist as revealed in the distinctive of believer’s baptism by immersion. English Baptists emerged out of English separatism because of their desire to apply the regulative principle more consistently than their Reformed counterparts, and they insisted that both the substance and form of whatever they do as part of church practice—whether baptism, the Lord’s Supper, singing, and many other matters—must have clear biblical warrant.
The purpose of this essay was not to evaluate the relationship between biblical authority and Baptist practice in more recent times, but contemporary Baptists would do well to consider the example left for them by early Baptists. Baptists today remain committed, of course, to biblical authority over the subject and mode of baptism and over church polity, yet Baptists often fail to consider how the Bible should regulate other aspects of their ecclesiology, most notably their worship practice. If Baptists today rightly hold Scripture as the supreme authority over Christian doctrine and practice, then as with early English Baptists, the regulative principle should continue to govern both substance and form in all matters of Baptist ecclesiology, including corporate worship.
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Post by Admin on Oct 16, 2023 13:36:45 GMT -5
Why Christians Should Support the Nation of Israel
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SCOTT ANIOL
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On Saturday, October 7, Israel suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history. People around the world watched in horror as Hamas launched around 5,000 rockets into Israel, and Palestinian militants broke through checkpoints and border fences into Israel, proceeding to massacre hundreds of men, women, and children and taking others as hostages. As of October 14, around 1,300 Israelis have been killed, most of whom were civilians.
Unfortunately, these atrocities in the Middle East are uncovering a lot of anti-Semitism within some Christian circles. Some professing Christians claim that Palestine has just as much moral high ground as Israel and that the only reason Christians have historically supported Israel is faulty interpretation of Scripture. For example, see this tweet from Andrew Torba, co-founder of Gab and co-author of Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations:
So what should be the Christian response to the attacks against Israel? Should Christians support the nation of Israel, and if so, why should they? Is the only reason Christians support Israel based on faulty biblical interpretation?
Should we expect Israel to experience God’s special blessing?
Of course, Christians have had an intramural debate for many years about whether Israel presently enjoys the status of God’s chosen nation, or whether they forfeited that blessing in their rejection of the Messiah. And it is also true that many Christians have supported Israel because of their belief that Israel’s occupation of the Promised Land in this age is part of biblical prophecy.
Certainly dispensational premillennialists believe that Israel is still God’s chosen nation and that one day all Israel will be saved and will experience of complete fulfillment of God’s promises to them as a geo-political nation state during the millennial reign of Christ on earth. For example, John MacArthur insists that “there is still a future and a kingdom involving the salvation and the restoration and the reign of the nation Israel, historical Jews.”
Yet it is not only dispensational premillennialists who believe in a future for national Israel. Indeed, many historic Premillennialists, Amillennialists, and even some Postmillennialists have affirmed the salvation and restoration of the nation of Israel, including Martin Bucer, Theodore Beza, William Perkins, Isaac Watts, Jonathan Edwards, J. C. Ryle, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Charles Spurgeon (see relevant quotations here). Of course, most Amillennialists, Postmillenialists, and even some historic Premillennialists today deny that national Israel has any distinct future in addition to the church.
With each of the eschatological views that do believe national Israel has a future in God’s plan, the salvation and restoration of Israel will occur after Jesus comes again.
However, and this is the critical point, with each of the eschatological views that do believe national Israel has a future in God’s plan, the salvation and restoration of Israel will occur after Jesus comes again. In other words, even those who believe that Israel will be restored do not believe that restoration comes as a result of any geo-political victories accomplished by men. Rather, these views believe that the restoration of Israel will be preceded by the full salvation of Israel (i.e, they will believe in Jesus the Messiah), and that restoration happens after and because of the return of Messiah to earth.
Further, both Premillennialists and Amillennialists affirm the immanent return of Christ, that is, they believe that Christ could return at any time. He could have returned before the current nation-state of Israel was established in Palestine, and he could return if the nation was ever dispersed again. Christ’s return in both of those eschatological views is not dependent upon whether or not Israel occupies the land in this present age. In both Premill and Amill eschatologies, the next event on the God’s prophetic timetable is the Second Coming of Christ.
This is important for our present discussion for this reason: contrary to what many evangelicals believe, the possibility of a restored nation of Israel as fulfillment of biblical prophecy cannot be the reason Christians support the nation of Israel today. Even Premillennial Dispensationalists should not be “reading eschatology in the news” if they are actually being consistent with their own theological tenets. Even if national Israel has a God-given right to the Holy Land, they have no divine right to the land in this present age, even in dispensational teaching. To quote MacArthur, a dispensationalist, again,
Israel right now is not under divine protection. They are under the promise of God that they will be perpetuated as an ethnic people, but this current group of Jews that live in the world today and in the nation Israel are not now under divine protection. They’re apostate. They’ve rejected their Messiah. They are under divine chastening. But they are still a people and will be to the end.
The fact is that during this present age, no nation enjoys God’s special covenant blessing, even Israel. The only view that might theoretically support Israel for eschatological reasons is a version of Postmillennialism that believes Israel will become a Christian nation before Jesus comes again.
Therefore, Christian support of Israel today should never be based on eschatology.
However, I do believe Christians should support Israel, not because of any eschatological prophecy, but because of God’s intention for all nation-states during this present age.
Christians should support Israel, not because of any eschatological prophecy, but because of God’s intention for all nation-states during this present age.
God intends for nations to protect the life of their citizens.
The idea of nation-states is not man’s idea, it is God’s idea. God created the very concept of families of people organizing themselves into civilized societies for the purpose of protecting life and maintaining some semblance of order in a world cursed by sin. Left to themselves, God knew, sinful mankind would devolve into anarchic chaos. Families would feud, God knew, fighting over land and taking matters of vengeance into their own hands in an unruly manner. And so as an expression of common grace for all people, God ordained that families would be organized into cities and eventually nations.
We see this as early as God’s promise given to Cain that God would not allow disordered vengeance to be taken on him, even for his sin of murder (Gen 4:15). And indeed, Cain built a common grace city where that measure of justice was maintained (Gen 4:17). Later, God formally instituted human government as a common grace means for maintaining a semblance of order in what, left to themselves, would be chaotic societies. In his covenant with Noah after the flood, God established the earthly institution of human government, with its divine responsibility of capital punishment: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Gen 9:6). God gave this responsibility to govern the world and its people to all humankind as a means through which God would sovereignly control man’s sinfulness and preserve the world and its order in this present evil age.
In other words, organized nation-states are good, God-ordained institutions that exist for the purpose of protecting human life. Those nations that fulfill that role, even those whose leaders do not acknowledge God, are nevertheless doing what God intended; they are serving his purposes even if they do not acknowledge him. Romans 13:1 emphasizes this point: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Scripture teaches that God made the nations, “having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Act 17:26).
Organized nation-states are good, God-ordained institutions that exist for the purpose of protecting human life.
Now, it is important to recognize that no human government is perfect; none will be until Jesus comes again and rules with a rod of iron. But imperfect, common grace order is why God created nations, not utopia. Utopia will come when the King comes.
Therefore, Christians should support any nation that promotes and protects life as God intended.
The modern nation of Israel promotes freedom and protects life.
Ironically, it appears that many of the evangelicals who support Israel because of biblical prophecy seem to assume that the modern nation of Israel has a religious system of government similar to what it did in the Old Testament. However, this could not be further from the truth. Israel’s government today resembles that of the United States far more than that of King David.
The modern nation of Israel is not a religious theocracy like Israel of the Old Testament; rather, the government of Israel is a parliamentary democracy. And that’s a good thing. God does not intend for any nation during this age to be a theocracy like Old Testament Israel was. The nation does have citizens who are religious Jews, of course, but the nation protects religious liberty.
God does not intend for any nation during this age to be a theocracy like Old Testament Israel was.
Part of the confusion for evangelicals might be that the term “Jew” can refer to religion or ethnicity. Of course, for Old Testament Israel, these were one and the same, but for the modern nation of Israel, they are not. The nation of Israel identifies itself as the nation of the Jewish people, but in the sense of ethnic heritage, not religious practice. According to a pew research study in 2016, 81% of Israel’s population are Jewish by ethnicity, but only 41% are religiously Jewish.
All this to say that Israel as a nation protects religious freedom for its citizens. This fact is all the more striking when compared with the other nations in middle east. Most of the population surrounding Israel is Islamic, and while forms of government vary, Islam as a religion (unlike biblical Christianity) has strong theocratic tendencies that discourage or even prevent religious freedom.
Hamas promotes violence and death.
This leads to the central cause of the current crisis. The de facto government of Palestine is Hamas, an Islamic resistance movement that defines itself in its charter as “a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” In its charter, Hamas declares, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” It further states, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them.” Violence and death is in the very charter of the Palestinian government.
In other words, when you compare Israel and Hamas, one (imperfectly) seeks to protect life and freedom among its citizens, and the other is a religious theocracy whose very charter resolves to annihilate any who do not adhere to its religion. One is (imperfectly) fulfilling God’s intended purpose for a nation, while the other is actively working against that purpose. One is using military force to do what God designed nations to do, while the other is killing simply out of hatred.
The conclusion for Christian should be clear: We ought to support Israel and not Hamas.
But our support for Israel should not be out of some mistaken belief that biblical prophecy concerning Israel will be fulfilled in this age. Rather, our support for Israel should be that Israel as a nation serves as an (imperfect) example of what God designed nations to be. That is good in itself, and it is also good in helping our nation protect our interests as Israel continues to be the strongest ally of the US in the middle east.
Our support for Israel should not be out of some mistaken belief that biblical prophecy concerning Israel will be fulfilled in this age. Rather, our support for Israel should be that Israel as a nation serves as an (imperfect) example of what God designed nations to be.
Even more important than our support for Israel as a nation, however, ought to be our prayer that citizens of Israel and of Palestine come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Nation-states can protect human life to a certain degree as God intended, but only faith in Christ can grant eternal life. And whether or not you believe that national Israel has a future in God’s eschatological plan, what we can say with certainty is that God wants individual Jews and Muslims alike to repent of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ.
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Post by Admin on Oct 23, 2023 16:29:43 GMT -5
Worship Regulated by Scripture
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SCOTT ANIOL
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Worship Regulated by Scripture | Scott Aniol
What would it mean for our worship to be truly shaped by Scripture? Christians are people of the book. Conservative Evangelical Christians, in particular, demand that their beliefs and lives be governed by Scripture. God’s inspired Word is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16–17). Therefore, for Christ-honoring sanctification to take place, the lives of Christians must be governed and saturated by the living and active Word of God. And for this same reason, corporate worship must also be governed and saturated by the Word; since public worship both reveals belief and forms belief, and thus it must be shaped by Scripture.
Yet, I think it’s safe to say that most modern evangelical Christians have an entirely different conception of corporate worship. Instead of a life-forming drama, corporate worship has become a concert plus a lecture, a time where we sing some songs that give authentic expression to our hearts and listen to a sermon that hopefully will give us some practical advice for the week. Most evangelical Christians would quickly assert that Scripture in general provides for us the necessary theological foundation and content for our corporate worship, but not much more, particularly when you venture into questions of the aesthetics of our worship, the cultural forms our songs employ.
Instead, what I will argue in this essay is that in order for worship to properly form God’s people as God has intended, every aspect of our worship—including our worship aesthetics, must be formed and shaped by the Word of God.
Biblical Worship
This emphasis upon biblical authority over our corporate worship applies in at least four areas; First, the elements of our worship must be regulated by the Word of God. The sufficient Word has given those ordinary means of grace that, through their regular use, will shape believers to live as disciples who observe everything Jesus taught: These elements have been clearly prescribed for the church in the New Testament: First, Paul commands Timothy, in the context of teaching him how to behave in the house of God, “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture (1 Tim 4:13). He repeats similar commands in Colossians 4:16 and 1 Thessalonians 5:27.
Paul also commands Timothy to “devote yourself . . . to exhortation, to teaching” (1 Tim 4:13) and “preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim 4:2).
Third, Paul commands that “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and for all who are in high positions (1 Tim 2:1). He commands the Colossians to “continue steadfastly in prayer (4:2), and to the Ephesians he admonishes, “praying at all time in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication . . . making supplication for all the saints” (6:18).
A fourth biblically-prescribed element might not actually be a separate element at all, but rather a form of Scripture reading or prayer, and that is singing. In both Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16, Paul commands gathered believers to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, thereby “singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” (Eph 5:19) and “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom” (Col 3:16).
Fifth, Christ commanded in his Great Commission to the disciples, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
And finally, Paul told the Corinthian church that he passed on “the Lord’s Supper” to the church, having received it from the Lord himself (1 Cor 11:20, 23). The regular, disciplined use of these means of grace progressively forms believers into the image of Jesus Christ; these Spirit-ordained elements are the means through which Christians “work out [their] own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in [them], both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:12–13).
Second, the content of our worship elements must be regulated by the Word of God. Clearly what we teach and preach, what we pray, and what we sing must contain the Word of God, or at very least express sentiments consistent with the Word of God.
Third, the order of our worship should be regulated by the Word of God. If the primary purpose of corporate worship is the edification of believers—God forming us into mature disciple-worshipers, then even the structure of our services should follow what God has given to us in Scripture. God made clear this purpose when he instituted corporate worship assemblies in the OT, establishing a structural pattern that continues also into the NT. God often calls these assemblies of worship “memorials,” meaning more than just a passive remembrance of something, but actually a reenactment of God’s works in history for his people such that the worshipers are shaped over and over again by what God has done. Beginning at Mt. Sinai (Exod 19–24), God instituted a particular order of what the OT frequently calls the “solemn assemblies” of Israel. This order reflects what I like to call a “theo-logic” in which in the assembly, God’s people reenact through the order of what they do God’s atoning work on their behalf. For sake of time, I will just summarize this structure:
God reveals himself and calls his people to worship
God’s people acknowledge and confess their need for forgiveness
God provides atonement
God speaks his Word
God’s people respond with commitment
God hosts a celebratory feast
This same theo-logic characterized the progression of sacrifices within the tabernacle assemblies and the dedication of Solomon’s temple (2 Chron 15–17). In each case, the structure of the worship assemblies follows a theo-logical order in which the worshipers reenact the covenant relationship they have with God through the atonement he provided, culminating with a feast that celebrates the fellowship they enjoy with God because of what he has done for them.
While the particular rituals present in Hebrew worship pass away for the NT church, the book of Hebrews tells us that these OT rituals were “a copy and shadow of heavenly things” (8:5). Thus while the shadows fade away, the theo-logic of corporate worship remains the same: we are reenacting God’s atoning work on our behalf when we gather for corporate worship. Significantly, Hebrews teaches that when we gather for services of worship, through Christ we are actually joining with the real worship taking place in the heavenly Jerusalem of which those Old Testament rituals were a mere shadow. And so it is important to recognize that the two records we have in Scripture of heavenly worship also follow the same theo-logic modeled in the OT. When Isaiah was given a vision of heavenly worship in Isaiah 6, the order of what happens mirrors the same theo-logic as that given to Israel for its worship. Likewise, when John is given a similar vision of heavenly worship, the order of what happens is the same. From creation to consummation, the corporate worship of God’s people is a memorial—a reenactment—of the “theo-logic” of true worship: God’s call for his people to commune with him through the sacrifice of atonement that he has provided, listening to his Word, responding with praise and obedience, and culminating with a beautiful picture of perfect communion with God in the form of a feast. This reenactment in a corporate worship service of God’s work for us is what will progressively edify us over time to live out our relationship with God through Christ as his mature disciple-worshipers.
This is why historic worship services, intentionally structured on the basis of this biblical theo-logic, have always followed a standard order: Worshipers begin with God’s call for them to worship him, followed by adoration and praise. They then confess their sins to him and receive assurance of pardon in Christ. They thank him for their salvation, they hear his Word preached, and they respond with dedication. And the climax of all historic Christian worship has always been expression of communion with God, either through drawing near to him in prayer, or more often in historic liturgies, through celebrating the Lord’s Table. To eat at Christ’s Table is the most powerful expression that Christians are accepted by him. All of the Scripture readings, prayers, and songs in this order are carefully chosen for their appropriateness in a particular function within the gospel-shaped structure.
Fourth, the forms of our worship should be regulated by the Word of God. We must remember that the Bible is not simply a static collection of theological propositions. Rather, Scripture is a collection of God-inspired literary forms that express his truth, and all of Scripture, including its aesthetic aspects, carry the weight of divine authority. Therefore, as we choose artistic forms of expression in our modern cultural context, we must be sure that the way in which those forms communicate truth correspond to the way in which Scripture itself aesthetically communicates truth.
There has been in recent years somewhat of a recovery of this emphasis on the importance of biblical authority over the elements, content, and structure of corporate worship and an understanding of corporate worship as disciple-forming covenant renewal.
What has not yet been recovered in my opinion is a recognition of the disciple-forming power of Scripture-formed music. However, what kinds of poetic and aesthetic expressions God chose to use in the communication of his truth in Scripture should inform the kinds of contemporary musical expressions Christians produce as they communicate the gospel and disciple believers.
Worship Forms Regulated by Scripture
We may—and should—express God’s truth in new ways, but the aesthetic way we choose to newly express biblical truth, even our musical expressions, should accurately correspond to the aesthetic way God chose to express truth in his Word. Scripture must govern not only what is said from the pulpit or the lyrics of the hymns—Scripture’s forms must govern our worship forms. In other words, if we believe in verbal-plenary inspiration, then the meaning of the aesthetic forms we employ in our contemporary worship must accurately correspond to the meaning Scripture’s aesthetic forms embody.
This idea of Scripture governing even the forms of our worship, including our songs, flows directly from the covenant-renewal, gospel-shaped theology of worship we just discussed. Songs within this covenant-renewal worship serve one of two functions: (1) Often psalms and hymns serve as God’s words to us, either directly quoting from or paraphrasing Scripture itself. (2) Psalms and hymns can also serve as our response to God’s revelation.
With both cases, choice of songs depends upon how the lyrical content fits within the dialogical, gospel-shaped covenant renewal service. Songs are not lumped together into a musical “set,” but rather interspersed with Scripture readings and prayers throughout the dialogical, gospel-shaped service.
The goal of covenant-renewal worship is discipleship—building up the body (1 Cor 14:26). Every aspect of the service is chosen, not for how it will give “authentic expression” to the worshipers or give them an experience of God’s presence (see below), but rather how it will build them up, maturing them by the Word of God.
The music itself is actually not very prominent in this theology of worship. Music is important—as I’ve discussed, it provides an interpretation of the theology of the lyrics and gives expression to that interpretation. But music is secondary. The music is selected and performed to modestly support the truth with sentiments that “accord to sound doctrine,” and an emphasis is given to reverence, self-control, sobriety, and dignity in how the songs are led, accompanied, and performed.
Contrary to caricatures, this kind of worship is deeply emotional, but the music is not intended to stimulate or arouse emotion; rather, deep affections of the soul are stirred by the Holy Spirit through his Word, and music simply gives language to appropriate responses to the Word. Emotion in covenant-renewal worship is not often immediate, visceral, or flashy—rather, it is felt deeply in the soul.3 In fact, particularly because of commands in Scripture (like Titus 2:1) that Christians are to be dignified and self-controlled, care is given to avoid music that would cause a worshiper to lose control. Christians with this theology recognized that although physical feelings are good, they must be controlled lest our “belly” (a Greek metaphor for bodily passions) be our god (Phil 3:19). Rather, since reverence, dignity, and self-control are qualities that accord with sound doctrine, music is chosen that will nurture and cultivate these qualities and the affections of the soul like compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience (Col 3:12) and love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:23). This theology takes note of the fact that qualities like intensity, passion, enthusiasm, exhilaration, or euphoria are never described in Scripture as qualities to pursue or stimulate, and they are never used to define the nature of spiritual maturity or the essence of worship.
Musical choices from this perspective are not about new vs. old or the canonization of one kind of music; rather, it is about choosing musical forms that best accord with a covenant-renewal theology of worship.
Since the earliest days of the church, theologians with a covenant-renewal theology of worship cautioned against using music in worship that was simply designed to stir up feelings. Clement of Alexandria, for example, insisted,
But we must abominate extravagant music, which enervates men’s souls, and leads to changefulness—now mournful, and then licentious and voluptuous, and then frenzied and frantic.
Rather, Clement argued that the church’s hymnody should employ “temperate harmonies.” In A New Song for an Old World, Calvin Stapert notes how uniform this understanding of music was among early pastors and theologians.
This emphasis was renewed during the Reformation. Martin Luther and other German reformers insisted that worship music embody reverence. For example, Johann Konrad Dannhauer required that music be “sacred, glowing with love, humble, dignified, the praise of God sung by the voice of men and instruments with becoming grace and majesty,” contrasted with “profane music, which is unspiritual, frivolous, proud, irreverent.” Likewise, Balthasar Meisner insisted,
Let all levity, and sensualism be absent [in worship music]. On the contrary, let gravity and a pious intent of the mind prevail, which does not contemplate and pursue bare harmony but devoutly fits and joins to it the inmost desires and emotions. For unless a ready spirit is joined to the turns of the voice and a vigilant and fervent heart to the varied words, we weary God and ourselves in vain with that melody. For not our voice but our prayer, not musical chords but the heart, and a heart not clamoring but loving, sings in the ear of God.
Calvin, too, insisted that music used for worship fit its solemn purpose, having “weight” and “majesty” rather than being “light” or “frivolous.”
Christians have affirmed this understanding for centuries. They sometimes disagreed over some aspects of what was acceptable, such as Calvin insisting only on unaccompanied psalms; nevertheless, since they had a similar covenant-renewal theology of worship, they all agreed that worship ought to be characterized by reverence and that some kinds of music embodied messages that simply did not accord with sound doctrine. We can see this evidenced by the fact that although Lutherans and Calvinists disagreed about whether we are permitted to sing hymns, for example, they shared tunes among their groups quite freely. They had the same understanding of what kind of music accords with sound doctrine.
Most evangelicals today view art forms as simply pretty packaging for truth or at best a way to “energize” the truth. Worship music, for example is just a way to make truth interesting and engaging in worship. But imaginative forms are not incidental to truth—they are essential to the truth, expressly because they are fundamental to the way Scripture expresses truth. Therefore, like with Scripture, contemporary art forms help to express the imaginative aspect of truth in ways that propositional statements alone cannot; they communicate not just the what of biblical content, but also how that content is imagined.
Thus, the kinds of imaginative forms God chose to communicate his truth in Scripture should shape our art forms. The Bible’s aesthetics should be the source of our contemporary worship aesthetics. Choices of what art forms we will use to express God’s truth and worship him are not merely about what is pleasing, authentic, or engaging; what forms we choose for our worship must be based on the criterion of whether they are true—whether they correspond to God’s reality as it is imagined in his Word.
The critical point is to extend biblical authority to every aspect of our worship—elements, content, structure, and aesthetics: If we understand the formative role of corporate worship in making disciples, and if we consequently recognize that such disciple-forming corporate worship must be formed by Scripture, then we must be sure that our liturgies and how we express God’s truth aesthetically in corporate worship are similar in meaning to how Scripture expresses God’s truth. Scripture must be the authority of both the content and forms of our worship.
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Post by Admin on Nov 1, 2023 11:47:59 GMT -5
I do not agree with Scott on this
On Earth as It Is in Heaven
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SCOTT ANIOL
pink petaled flowers inside building
On Earth as It Is in Heaven | Scott Aniol
When we witness terrible atrocities on earth, we must interpret them in light of the heavenly reality. Heaven is a palace from which God rules sovereign over all, and heaven is a temple where he is worshiped as he ought. This is the reality.
How, then, do these visions of God in his heavenly palace/temple impact our understanding of what happens here on earth? What is essential to recognize is that when God created the heavens and the earth, he intended for this reality of the palace/temple of heaven to be extended to the earth. As Psalm 104 states, God stretched out the heavens like a tabernacle. God created the heavens to be a tabernacle of his presence. Further, as Isaiah 6:3 states, it is not just the heavenly temple that is filled with the glory of God, the whole earth is full of his glory. God created the earth not only as the kingdom realm of the sovereign King, God created the whole earth to be his holy temple, filled with his glory.
When God created the heavens and the earth, he intended for this reality of the palace/temple of heaven to be extended to the earth.
The Garden Sanctuary
Consequently, a biblical understanding of the nature of heavenly worship and its relationship to God’s plan in history must be situated in God’s intention for mankind as articulated in the creation narrative. On the sixth day of creation, God created man in his image, and God blessed him, saying,
Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
This blessing given to mankind at creation crowned him with rule over the earth, granting man the privilege and responsibility to subdue and have dominion over all things. “Subdue” (kābaš) and “have dominion” (rādāh) are royal terms, the former term later used to describe Israel’s subduing of the land of Canaan (Num 32:22, 29; Josh 18:1), and the latter term used to describe the Messiah’s future reign (Ps 110:2). Made in God’s image, man is given the role of God’s regal representative on earth. As Eugene Merrill notes, “Man is created to reign in a manner that demonstrates his lordship, his domination . . . over all creation.” God is sovereign king over all creation, but he formed man in his image to be his vice-regent on earth. This is what David later describes when he says in Psalm 8:4–8,
What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, 7 all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
The realm of this kingdom over which man was to rule as God’s regal representative was a garden God planted as his earthly palace (Gen 2:8). God placed the man whom he had formed in his palace, adorned it with rich food and gold, and put Adam to work:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Gen 2:15)
Yet here the language shifts from royal language to priestly language, revealing a second role man was to play in the garden realm. The phrase “work it and keep it” signifies much more than the duties of a gardener; rather, as Allen Ross explains,
In places where these two verbs are found together, they often refer to the duties of the Levites (cf. Num. 3:7–8; 8:26; 18:5–6), keeping the laws of God (especially in the sanctuary service) and offering spiritual service in the form of the sacrifices and all the related duties—serving the LORD, safeguarding his commands, and guarding the sanctuary from the intrusion of anything profane or evil.
In other words, the four verbs in Genesis 1–2 that describe man’s purpose in the garden indicate that God created man, not only to be his kingly representative, but also to be his priestly representative. The garden was not only God’s earthly palace, but also his earthly temple. God was present with his people in the sanctuary as he “walked” with them in the cool of the garden (Gen 3:8). Notably, the verb for “walked” (hālǎḵ) in Genesis 3:8 is used later to describe God’s presence in the tabernacle (Lev 26:12; 2 Sam 7:6–7). Man was supposed to “keep” the palace-sanctuary, that is, to guard and protect its purity, preventing those who would attempt to usurp God’s reign and defile his temple.
Man was supposed to “keep” the palace-sanctuary, that is, to guard and protect its purity, preventing those who would attempt to usurp God’s reign and defile his temple.
Thus, what God intended for man in the garden was that he serve as a perfect king/priest within what Meredith Kline describes as a “holy theocracy,” a perfect union between kingdom and cultus, between reigning and worshiping. I am using the term “cultus” here, of course, to refer to the public acts of worship performed by a religious community. Man’s regal work and his priestly work were unified in one kingdom/cultus, an earthly manifestation of the heavenly reality.
However, we know what happened. When the author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 8, which claims that God has put everything under the feet of man, he says in the next verse, “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (Heb 2:8). Adam failed. He disobeyed God’s command to have dominion over creation by allowing a creature, the serpent, to be king. He failed to guard God’s garden sanctuary by allowing Satan to defile it. As the representative of all mankind, Adam failed to be God’s perfect king/priest, and he was exiled from the palace-sanctuary of God’s presence.
Adam’s failure did not end the universal sovereign reign of God over all things, of course, and many of the passages in Scripture that speak of God ruling over all refer to that continual, never-ending cosmic reign of God on his sovereign throne that Isaiah and John witnessed. All aspects of the universe still fall under the sovereign rule of Yahweh. Even Adam’s failure was part of God’s sovereign plan.
Nevertheless, Adam’s failure did end his role as king/priest, and God pronounced a curse upon Adam and Eve and all creation. Yet as part of his curse upon the serpent, God provided a glimmer of hope:
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Gen 3:15)
God promised that one day a seed of the women—a Second Adam—would accomplish what the First Adam failed to do. He would crush the usurper’s head and cleanse the defiled Sanctuary, fulfilling the God-given role of the perfect king/priest.
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Post by Admin on Nov 8, 2023 10:01:55 GMT -5
Here Scott Aniol is off once again on His two kingdoms take on the garden
Kingdom and Cultus | Scott Aniol
God created man to be a king and priest in his garden sanctuary, an extension of the palace/temple of heaven. Adam failed, however, and he was cast out of God’s sanctuary.
In the interim, between the First Adam’s failure and the Second Adam’s success, the curse resulted in a separation between kingdom and cultus (the worshiping community). First, God provided a means of stability and peace for the kingdoms of the earth. In the midst of his common curse upon all, Kline notes that “common grace was introduced to act as a reign to hold in check the curse on mankind, and to make possible an interim historical environment as the theater for a program of redemption.” Even after Cain murdered Abel, God promised preservation of justice to this unrighteous man, implying the establishment of legal systems that would prevent unbridled evil in the world (Gen 4:13–16). And indeed, Cain built a common grace city where that measure of justice was maintained (Gen 4:17).
God further established other common grace institutions through which he works providentially to preserve peace and order in societies filled with depraved people. Before the fall, he had already established the institution of marriage—and by extension, family—as one of the fundamental building blocks of human society and one of the central common grace human institutions he would use to cultivate and preserve order and flourishing in his world (Gen 2:18–24). After the fall, the family continued to be an institution of blessing for all people (Gen 4:17–22). The work that God had established in the garden as a blessing for mankind, though now cursed because of sin, continued for all mankind as a means of prosperity, including the development of husbandry, the arts, and metallurgy (Gen 4:20–22).
Further, God formally instituted human government as another common grace means for maintaining a semblance of order in what left to themselves would be chaotic societies. In Genesis 9:6, God gave the responsibility of capital punishment to all humankind as a common grace means through which he would providentially control man’s sinfulness and preserve the world and its order. This responsibility, which takes shape in formal human governments over the course of history, has been given to humankind collectively as a common grace institution for their temporal good until the Second Adam establishes his earthly rule. Thus even pagan magistrates can enforce God’s moral law involving peaceful relations between citizens since they are still made in God’s image (though marred by sin), “the law is written on their hearts” (Rom 2:15), and by God’s common grace (Matt 5:45), even unbelievers often recognize that society simply works better when certain morality is enforced.
In other words, the regal aspect of Adam’s garden role continues imperfectly for all humankind as non-redemptive, common grace means to imperfectly preserve a degree of order and peace until Christ establishes his perfect theocratic Kingdom on earth.
The regal aspect of Adam’s garden role continues imperfectly for all humankind as non-redemptive, common grace means to imperfectly preserve a degree of order and peace until Christ establishes his perfect theocratic Kingdom on earth.
However, God also called out a subset from among the common kingdoms as a cultic community to worship him. This distinction between two subsets of humanity was declared already in the promise of Genesis 3:15 when God declared that there would be enmity between Satan’s offspring and the woman’s offspring. When it comes to worship, only two options exist: Christ or Antichrist. There is no neutral middle ground—individuals worship either Christ or Satan, and thus there exists a spiritual antithesis between believers and unbelievers for all of human history. This enmity was manifested immediately after the Fall with Cain and Abel. Abel drew near to God in worship through the sacrificial means God prescribed, thus demonstrating righteous fidelity to the woman’s offspring (Heb 11:4). Cain “was of the evil one and murdered his brother . . . because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous” (1 John 3:12).
Unlike within the common grace institutions of the world, where all humans share a measure of commonality, God’s cultic community is set apart from unbelieving humanity. God called out Noah and his family as a redeemed cultic community, saving them from the judgment that fell upon the rest of wicked humanity. In God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen 17:1–8), God called out a redeemed people for his name. As exemplified by Abel, Noah, and Abraham, the requirement for redemption and membership in this cultic community is faith—“By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain”; “by faith Noah . . . constructed an ark for the saving of his household” (Heb 11:7); and Abraham “believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6).
Abraham and his family were a called-out cultic community. And as such, though they were part of the common kingdoms of the world, they were sojourners and pilgrims. Abraham sought “the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb 11:10). God’s redeemed people, though still sharing commonalities with the rest of humanity, are nevertheless “strangers and exiles on the earth,” since “they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb 11:13, 16). Their temporal citizenship is in common grace earthly cities, but their cultic identity is in a heavenly temple by saving grace.
Even Israel’s cultic identity pictured this reality. Though by means of the Mosaic covenant, Israel became a proto-typical theocratic union of kingdom and cultus, Israel’s cultic activity was a shadow of the true form of the real worship of heaven seen by Isaiah and John. The author of Hebrews later explains this when he distinguishes between “the true tentthat the Lord set up” and the one set up by man (8:1–2). This heavenly tent is “greater and more perfect” since it is “not made with hands, that is, not of this creation” (9:11). He calls the earthly places of worship and all that they entail “copies of the heavenly things” (9:23) and “copies of the true things” (9:24). The Mosaic Law in general is “a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities” (10:1). The forms and rituals of Israel’s earthly worship pictured the true worship of the heavenly temple.
Furthermore, even though Israel as a nation was a union of kingdom and cultus, it is important to recognize that the two were still distinct in a significant sense, made clear by the fact that no one leader held authority over both kingdom and cultus. God established political leaders (judges and kings) to rule the kingdom and priests to lead the cultus. Only Moses himself served as a political leader and entered into the presence of God to mediate on behalf of the people.
Later, when Israel is exiled and no longer a holy theocracy, the separation between kingdom and cultus are clearly apparent, emphasizing the antithesis between true and false worship—faithful Hebrews “sat down and wept” as they gathered for worship by the waters of Babylon, amidst captors who mocked them (Ps 137). But on the other hand, in terms of the common grace institutions that God set up for the good of all humanity, the Hebrews shared much commonality with their captors. The prophet Jeremiah commanded the people as they were being taken into Babylonian exile to build houses, plant gardens, take wives, and bear children. He told them to “seek the welfare of the city” and “pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer 29.4–7).
In common grace matters, God’s peculiar people could participate alongside unbelieving people. For example, Daniel and other young Hebrew men learned the literature and language of the Babylonians and served in political leadership (Dan 1:3–4, 2:48–49), and Daniel went on to serve in Persian leadership as well (Dan 6:1–3). In fact, Daniel himself acknowledged the good of Nebuchadnezzar’s rule when he says to the king, “You, O king, [are] the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all,” clearly alluding to Psalm 8 and Genesis 1:26–27 (Dan 2:37–38).
In common grace matters, God’s peculiar people could participate alongside unbelieving people.
This reveals once again the common grace blessing of even pagan governments, which, even though not acknowledging God’s authority, nevertheless serve as his servants for the common good of mankind (Rom 13:4). However, what Israel in exile also clearly demonstrates is the distinction between common grace kingdoms and the set apart worshiping community. Though Daniel willingly submitted to education and served in political leadership, he refused to eat meat that was associated with pagan worship, and he refused to stop worshiping Yahweh as he required (Dan 6:10). Likewise, Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego refused to worship pagan gods, proclaiming, “Be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up” (Dan 3:18).
The point is that although the exiled Israelites could participate in the common grace institutions of the nations in which they lived, their worship was distinct. As portrayed in Psalm 137, when faithful Hebrews gathered by the waters of Babylon to worship, they could not help but recognize the clear antithesis between true worship and false worship. God designed for kingdom and cultus to be united in the garden as an earthly extension of the heavenly reality, and his design was typified in the holy theocracy of Israel in its promised land; but as a result of sin, kingdom and cultus have become separated. Both the patriarchs in their sojourning and Israel in exile typify God’s people living in and participating with the common kingdoms of this world while remaining distinct as a cultic community in the pure worship of God.
Either way, however, the purity of God’s worship is the emphasis. God intended for worship in the garden sanctuary to be pure, following God’s clear revelation. Worship during the sojourning of the patriarchs was to be according to God’s revelation. God gave the nation of Israel clear and explicit instructions regarding how he wanted to be worshiped. And Israel in exile was required to continue this pure worship regulated by the revelation of God. Whether or not kingdom and cultus were united or distinct, pure worship was that which follows the clear revelation of God, and pure worship then impacted how they lived in the common grace kingdom.
Whether or not kingdom and cultus were united or distinct, pure worship was that which follows the clear revelation of God, and pure worship then impacted how they lived in the common grace kingdom.
Yet as God promised in the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15, he intends to unite kingdom and cultus once again, when the Second Adam succeeds where the First Adam failed in fulfilling his duties as the perfect king/priest. Scripture prophesies the reign of a perfect King, when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isa 11:9), when Christ will “have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Ps 72:8). He will “rule in the midst of [his] enemies,” and his people “will offer themselves freely on the day of [his] power in holy garments” (Ps 110:2–3).
But he will not only be the king that Adam failed to be, he will also be “a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110:4). Christ will be both king and priest, Psalm 110 prophesies. David was never a priest like this; his son Solomon was never a priest like this. Only David’s Son whom he would call Lord would be both king and priest, and the New Testament tells us that this is Jesus. Jesus the Anointed One offered himself for all time a single sacrifice for sins, God raised him from the dead, he ascended into heaven, then he sat down at the Father’s right hand, signifying both his right to rule and his finished priestly work. God intended for his sovereign rule to be expressed through humanity in Adam, the king/priest.
Adam failed, and David was never designated as a priest. Yet his Greater Son will be both king and priest, just as God originally intended in the Garden.
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Post by Admin on Nov 30, 2023 21:18:52 GMT -5
SEP 30, 2021
WORSHIP
Draw Near
CommunionGospel
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SCOTT ANIOL
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Many of the “worship wars” today are fueled by, I believe, differing views of the nature of worship itself. Clearly differences over what worship is and the function of various worship elements would lead to significant differences over how churches would approach corporate worship, and so I believe that a fundamental step toward resolving these debates is to seek to understand how the Bible itself defines worship.
At its most basic level, worship is drawing near to God in fellowship with him and obedience to him such that he is magnified and glorified.
Created to Worship
This idea of drawing near to God in worship permeates the storyline of Scripture. It is what Adam and Eve enjoyed as they walked with God in the cool the day (Gen 2:8). It is described in Exodus 19:17 when Moses “brought the people out of the camp to meet God” at the foot of Mt. Sinai. He had told Pharaoh to let the people go so that they might worship their God in the wilderness, and this is exactly what they intended to do at Sinai. It is what Psalm 100 commands of the Hebrews in temple worship when it says, “Come into his presence with singing and into his courts with praise.” It is what Isaiah experienced as he entered the heavenly throne room of God and saw him high and lifted up. To draw near to God is to enter his very presence in fellowship and obedience.
Ultimately, this is why God created people. God created the world to put on display the excellencies of his own glory, and he created people therein that they might witness that glory and praise him for it. In Isaiah 43:6–7 God proclaims, “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Likewise, Paul commands in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “Whether you eat, or drink, or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.”
Worship—magnifying God’s worth and glory—is the reason God made us.
Worship—magnifying God’s worth and glory—is the reason God made us.
Sin Prevents Worship
Adam and Eve’s fall into sin—their disobedience of God’s commandments—was essentially failure to magnify the worthiness of God to be their master and bring him glory, and thus it was a failure to worship him acceptably. This broke the communion they enjoyed with God and propelled them out from the sanctuary of his presence. After they sinned, and they heard God walking in the garden, “the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God” (Gen 3:8)—they recognized their unworthiness to walk with him. Their sin created a separation between them and their Creator, and they were forced to leave the sanctuary (Gen 3:23–24), never again able to draw near to the presence of God.
All sin is essentially failure to bring God glory (Rom 3:23)—it is failure to worship him. This failure creates barriers from drawing near to God in worship, and it brings with it severe punishment: eternal separation from the presence of God in hell. Sin prevents us from drawing near to God in worship; it prevents us from doing what we were created to do.
Sin prevents us from drawing near to God in worship; it prevents us from doing what we were created to do.
Worship Through Christ
However, worship is possible through a sacrifice, the vicarious, substitutionary atonement of the Son of God. Sacrifices in the Mosaic system pictured this kind of atonement, but they were unable to “make perfect those who draw near” (Heb 10:1).
Worship is possible through a sacrifice—the vicarious, substitutionary atonement of the Son of God.
But this sacrifice can perfect those who draw near. Jesus is fully man, and thus he can stand as our substitute, and he is fully God, and thus he can pay an eternal punishment to an eternal, holy God that no normal man could. And because of the perfection and eternality of this sacrifice, it need not be offered day after day after day to atone for sin; it is offered one time and the complete wrath of God is fully appeased.
This is what God pictured when he slew the animal in the garden and covered Adam and Eve’s guilt. This is what was pictured when Moses offered a sacrifice at the foot of Mt. Sinai so that the elders of the people could approach God. This is what was pictured each year in Israel on the Day of Atonement when an animal was sacrificed and the high priest entered the holy place to sprinkle blood on the mercy seat. This is what was pictured when the seraph took a burning coal from the altar and placed it on Isaiah’s lips, saying, “your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”
And this is pictured no more beautifully than with what happened at the moment of Christ’s death. The gospel accounts of the crucifixion tell us that Jesus cried out with a loud voice and gave up his spirit, and at that exact moment, the veil of the temple was torn in two, as if that veil was the body of the Son of God himself prohibiting entrance into the presence of a holy God, and that access that had been lost by the fall of man is now restored! There is now a new and living way (Heb 10:20) to draw near to God, and that way is his Son.
Thus those who repent of their sin—their failure to worship—and put their faith and trust in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on their behalf are saved from separation from God and enabled once again to draw near to him in worship.
What should be apparent is that the essence of worship is itself the language of the gospel—a drawing near to God in relationship with him, made impossible because of sin that demands eternal judgment, yet restored through the substitutionary atonement of the God-man for those who place their faith in him.
The gospel of Jesus Christ makes worship possible.
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Post by Admin on Dec 11, 2023 15:13:35 GMT -5
Beauty: The Pursuit of Knowledge and Wisdom
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SCOTT ANIOL
white book page on black textile
One of the last short stories C. S. Lewis wrote was a revision of one of his first stories. It was a short story he called, “Light.” In the story a man named Robin, who was born blind, has recently had his sight restored through surgery. Robin finds himself quite disappointed with his restored sight, however, because he really wants to see that thing called “light” that he has heard so much about, and yet, while his wife and others insist that light is all around him, he can’t see light. Weeks of being able to see but not being able to see light leads Robin to despair and ultimately death. Of course, Robin’s problem, and even the problem of his wife and others who could not manage to help him, was that light is not something we see; light is something by which we see.
Lewis’s story is ultimately about the nature of human knowing, but it also illustrates well, I think, how we often approach the subject of beauty. In our post-Enlightenment era, beauty is something we look at; it is a subject we talk about; it is, perhaps, something we ought to learn to appreciate and enjoy.
However, as with light in Lewis’s story, beauty is not merely something to think about, to look at, and to simply recognize or even delight in, but rather beauty is what we come to know God and his world through. Or, to put it another way, beauty is not simply a category that stands alongside truth and goodness; rather, beauty is the means through which we come to really know what is true and good.
Transcendent Beauty
One of the most important, foundational principles of a robustly Christian philosophy is affirmation of absolute truth, goodness, and beauty and the fundamental part each of these principles play in truly knowing God and his world.
Belief in transcendent principles is rooted in a conviction that God is the source, sustainer, and end of all things. The Bible clearly proclaims that God is self-existent and self-sustaining, and all things come from him (Rom. 11:36). Everything that is true is so because God is Truth. Everything that is good is so because God is Good. And everything that is beautiful is so because God is Beauty. There are no such things as brute facts apart from God; they are facts because God determined them to be so. There are no such things as moral standards that are merely conceived out of convention apart from God; actions are moral or immoral because God says they are. And in the same way, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder; something is beautiful when it reflects God who is Beauty.
With this in mind, Christians as image-bearers of God must be committed to thinking God’s thoughts after him, to behaving in certain ways that conform to God’s moral will, and to loving those things that God calls lovely. Thoroughly Christian living is therefore concerned with orthodoxy—right belief, orthopraxy—right behavior, and orthopathy—right loves.
And yet the realm of orthopathy—right loving—is often missing from even the most theologically robust churches. We are all about rigorous theology, and we recognize our goal of cultivating thoroughly Christian values in every area of life, but do we recognize beauty as the essential means through which this will happen?
The Aesthetics of Scripture
The primary, fundamental reason we ought to recognize the significance of beauty as a central means through which our loves are shaped and through which we really come to know God and his world is that the Bible itself is God’s truth communicated in beautiful forms. God’s Word is “more than divine data.”1 Instead, God’s revelation of truth and goodness comes to us in various aesthetic forms such as “narratives, proverbs, poems, hymns, and oratory whose artistic tools include allegory, metaphor, symbolism, satire, and irony.”2
These aesthetic forms are essential to the truth itself since God’s inspired Word is exactly the best way that truth could be presented. Clyde S. Kilby observes, “The Bible comes to us in an artistic form which is often sublime, rather than as a document of practical, expository prose, strict in outline like a textbook.” He asserts that these aesthetic forms are not merely decorative but part of the essential presentation of the Bible’s truth: “We do not have truth and beauty, or truth decorated with beauty, or truth illustrated by the beautiful phrase, or truth in a ‘beautiful setting.’ Truth and beauty are in the Scriptures, as indeed they must always be, an inseparable unity.”3
To put it another way—truth, goodness, and beauty, are three strands of a single cord that cannot be separated if we desire to truly know God and his world.
I am afraid that most Christians do not recognize this, and this is evidenced at very least by the fact that many Christians are afraid to affirm and defend absolute beauty in the same way we do absolute truth and morality. We have bought into the modernist idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the postmodern multicultural agenda that argues art is merely neutral contextualization of a given civilization. We still view beauty and the arts as means to the end of making truth interesting instead of as ends in themselves. We view beauty as something to see rather than something by which we see.
Looking Through
I phrase it that way specifically because again, often when we consider aesthetics, it becomes something we talk about and think about. Talking about, thinking about, and looking at beauty are all good as far as they go, but what I am calling the tools of loving—that which shapes our loves and cultivates virtue in us—is not something to look at but rather what we see through.
By aesthetics, I am referring to the very broad idea that finds its roots in the Greek word aisthanomai, which means, “I perceive, feel, sense.” Aesthetics involves all that affects perception. It involves the how ideas are expressed and communicated. It certainly includes a consideration of beauty and art, but it is far more than that. Every way in which we learn, every way in which we encounter truth aesthetically shapes the way we perceive the truth. Even what we might consider the least artistic elements of your education had aesthetic aspects to them. A straightforward didactic lecture has a certain aesthetic that shapes perception just as much as a poem does. Aesthetic form is the container in which we perceive truth, and the truth takes the shape of the container such that perception of the truth is affected by the container.
So the power of aesthetics is that everything about the forms through which we perceive truth themselves form us to know and love God and his world through renewed eyes.
That Your Love May Abound
The apostle Paul prays for this very kind of renewal in Philippians 1:9–11, when he says,
And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
Paul knows that what truly characterizes a Christian is love, what he describes in the previous verse as “the affection of Christ Jesus.” Jesus himself taught that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
But this love is not the romanticized sentimentalism so characteristic of our day. Notice in particular how Paul characterizes this love— “love with knowledge and discernment.” Here, perhaps, is an apt description of the goal of Christian sanctification—that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and discernment so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
What Paul prays for here is a love characterized by “full knowledge,” knowledge of God and his world, knowledge of his works through history, knowledge of his Word.
But Christian love is not characterized by knowledge alone, and likewise the goal of Christian sanctification is not simply knowledge. What does Paul say: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge, and all discernment.”
Discernment. There’s the other half of Christian love; there’s the other half of the goal of your sanctification, and indeed what you must pursue in the entirety of your life.
Discernment. This is the biblical virtue of wisdom, what Kevin Vanhoozer defines as “the ability to see what is right and fitting in a particular situation given our understanding of the larger whole of which we are a part.”4 Wisdom is “the virtue that orders all other virtues,” it is the ability to take all of the knowledge you have gleaned about God and his world and then discern how other elements fit into the larger whole, whether they be ways of life, personal experiences, events happening around us—wisdom is the ability to discern what fits in God’s design for the world and what does not fit.
My favorite illustration of the difference between knowledge and wisdom is that knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom is discerning that a tomato doesn’t fit in a fruit salad.
The cultivation of knowledge and discernment is the aim of Christian sanctification because it prepares you for a life of properly fitting together all of the particular information you will encounter around you into the larger whole as God intends. There are many people who have accumulated a lot of knowledge, but relatively few who truly know what to do with that knowledge, who have the ability to perceive how that knowledge fits together properly. As Paul continues to say in Philippians 1, “so that you may approve what is excellent.” That’s wisdom. That’s discernment.
Now here’s the fascinating thing thing about this little word “discernment” in Philippians 1:9. “Discernment” is a translation of the Greek word aisthanomai—from which we get the English word “aesthetics.”
This reveals the important, fundamental purpose behind of beauty in Christian sanctification. The aesthetic elements of our sanctification are not merely value-added; they are not included merely to make the acquisition of knowledge more engaging or interesting. The aesthetic elements of our sanctification are fundamentally moral because they help form discernment within us—they helped form wisdom. This is the formative power of beauty.
The Eyes of Your Heart
Now how, exactly, does beauty form wisdom? It does so through the imagination. If wisdom is the virtue that enables us to perceive fittingness, imagination is the human faculty through which we do so. As Vanhoozer notes, imagination is the “faculty for making or discovering connections and meaningful forms,” it is “the ability to create or perceive meaningful wholes and coherent forms.”5 As we encounter true beauty, our capacity to perceive beauty ourselves is what cultivates the virtue of wisdom.
I’d like to highlight two ways that this ought to take place in a Christian’s life.
First, beautiful works of the imagination form your capacity to properly perceive fittingness in the world. Beauty is fittingness, and so when we immerse ourselves in beauty—in works of art and means of communication that manifest a profound fittingness in God’s world as he has intended, our moral imaginations are shaped as to what is fitting in the created order.
One of my favorite paintings on display at the national gallery in Washington D.C. is a work called “Fanny/Fingerpainting” by Chuck Close. If you turned the corner in the gallery and encountered the painting up close, all you would see would be a mess of fingerprints. Apparent randomness and disorder. But as you back away from the painting, you would behold a stunningly detailed portrait of an old women that looks photo-realistic. What appeared to be random disorder when viewed up close actually fits in much larger beautiful whole.
This kind of phenomenon characterizes all beautiful art to one degree or another in an almost endless variety of ways. A moment of musical dissonance frozen in time seems harsh and purposeless, but conceived as but a moment in a larger musical composition, we begin to understand how the parts fit into a beautiful whole. One gesture of the body alone may seem awkward, but together with other complementary gestures, it creates a beautifully graceful dance.
By studying and emerging ourselves in and especially performing truly beautiful works of art like these, we are developing wisdom, the ability to perceive a part—a moment frozen in time—and discern how that part fits in the whole of God’s all-wise and beautiful plan for his world.
And likewise, second, beauty in worship orients us to what is fitting in our relationship to God and his world. As Vanhoozer observes, “Both great art and worship awaken our senses and imaginations to the contours of the created order. Yet, unlike art, worship engrafts us into the drama of redemption, into that Trinitarian design for life in which beauty is a loving consent toward another.”6 The beauty of gospel-shaped, covenant-renewal worship regularly orients us to the drama of redemption, enabling us with enlightened eyes to perceive God’s work in the world for his glory and the glory of his people. Beautiful liturgy and music orders our affections into what Lewis called “stable sentiments.” Worship that liturgically participates in the real worship of heaven realigns us with that true reality.
I do not need to tell you that our world is filled with ugliness, disorder, chaos, and pain. Considered as frozen moments in time, such realities might cause us to despair if we cannot perceive how these moment of ugliness fit into an ordered plan of a sovereign God. But having the eyes of our hearts enlightened, having gained through beautiful art “the ability to grasp meaningful patterns or conceive unified wholes out of apparently unrelated elements,” we are better able to “‘see’ God and the kingdom of God at work in the world.”7
Conclusion
Beauty is an essential part of your sanctification since it is what forms within us true love with knowledge and all discernment.
As you continue to pursue holiness and Christlikeness, don’t simply strive to acquire theological knowledge alone, but let your love abound more and more, with knowledge and discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
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References
References
1 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 5.
2 James S. Spiegel, “Aesthetics and Worship,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 2, no. 4 (1998): 44.
3 Clyde S. Kilby, Christianity and Aesthetics (Chicago: Inter-varsity Press, 1961), 19, 21.
4 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Pictures at a Theological Exhibition: Scenes of the Church’s Worship, Witness and Wisdom (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016), 137.
5 Vanhoozer, Pictures, 24.
6 Vanhoozer, Pictures, 139.
7 Vanhoozer, Pictures, 27.
AUTHOR
white book page on black textile
Scott Aniol
Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief G3 Ministries
Scott Aniol, PhD, is Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of G3 Ministries. In addition to his role with G3, Scott is Professor of Pastoral Theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas. He lectures around the world in churches, conferences, colleges, and seminaries, and he has authored several books and dozens of articles. You can find more, including publications and speaking itinerary, at www.scottaniol.com. Scott and his wife, Becky, have four children: Caleb, Kate, Christopher, and Caroline. You can listen to his podcast here.
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Post by Admin on Jan 6, 2024 17:10:54 GMT -5
The Reformation of Worship
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SCOTT ANIOL
man holding book statue under white clouds during daytime
The immediate causes for Reformation in various regions, as well as what caused divisions among various Reformation figures, are diverse. However, much of what lay at the core of what both unified Reformers in their reaction against the Roman Catholic Church and what ended up dividing them in the end, involved theology and practice of worship.
Yet what is remarkable is that some of the very same problems with worship that the Reformers criticized with medieval worship have appeared again in contemporary worship. No, the contemporary church has not denied the five Solas or submitted once again to Rome; rather, the practices of contemporary worship suffer from some of the same fundamental problems that Rome’s worship did at the start of the sixteenth century.
Core Problems with Medieval Worship
Although much of the development of worship during the Middle Ages was originally rooted in biblical prescription, example, and theology, heresy did grow, and several aspects of how many Christians worshiped by the end of the fifteenth century made significant reformation necessary.
Problems specifically with worship can be summarized with the following categories:
Sacramentalism
One of the first significant errors in late medieval worship was sacramentalism, attributing the efficacy of an act of worship—especially the eucharistic elements—to the outward sign rather than to the inner working of the Holy Spirit. Christians during this period came to believe that just by performing the acts of worship, they received grace from God, whether or not they were spiritually engaged in the act. Along with this belief came the idea of ex opera operato (“from the work worked”), the belief that the acts of worship work automatically and independently of the faith of the recipient.
Necessity of faith
Martin Luther stressed the need for personal faith in those who wished to participate in worship. The mass is not, Luther insisted, “a work which may be communicated to others, but the object of faith, . . . for the strengthening and nourishing of each one’s own faith.”[4] Martin Bucer’s most significant work on the subject, Grund und Ursach (“Ground and Reason”), called the Roman view of the Table “superstition.” He insisted that worship that is “proper and pleasing to God” must always be based upon “the sole, clear Word of God.”
These Reformers insisted that the sacraments were limited only to the two Christ himself commanded and were considered visible signs of spiritual realities. Though the sacraments are means of grace given from God, then are not effectual in and of themselves; rather the benefits of the means of grace to sanctify a person necessitate the sincere faith of the worshiper and were brought about ultimately by the inner work of the Holy Spirit.
Sacerdotalism
Medieval worship also developed the error of sacerdotalism, the belief in the necessity of a human priest to approach God on the behalf of others. As a result of the drastic increase of church attendance in the fourth century, a strict distinction between clergy and laity had developed wherein the clergy did not trust the illiterate, uneducated masses to worship God appropriately on their own. Thus, the clergy offered “perfected” worship on behalf of the people. The pronouncement by the Council of Laodicea in 363 illustrates this: “No others shall sing in the church, save only the canonical singers, who go up into the ambo and sing from a book.” While this was a local council, it illustrates what became common among most churches in the Middle Ages.
The quality of worship became measured by the excellence of the music and the aesthetic beauty of the liturgy, and while this facilitated the production of some quite beautiful sacred music during the period, it resulted in “worship” becoming mostly what the priests did in the chancel, which eventually was often distinctly separated from the nave by high rails or even a screen. This clergy/laity separation was only exacerbated by the continued use of Latin as the liturgical language despite the fact that increasing numbers of people did not understand the language.
By the end of the fourteenth century, members of the congregation rarely participated in the Lord’s Supper, and even when they did, the cup was withheld from them lest some of Christ’s blood sprinkle on the unclean. Roman worship had moved from the “work of the people” (leitourgia) to the work of the clergy. As even Roman Catholic liturgical scholar Joseph Jungmann notes, “the people were devout and came to worship; but even when they were present at worship, it was still clerical worship. . . . The people were not much more than spectators. This resulted largely from the strangeness of the language which was, and remained, Latin. . . . The people have become dumb.” The people became mere spectators of the worship performed by priests on their behalf.
Congregational Participation
Luther criticized this very reality in the Preface to his German Mass: “The majority just stands there and gapes, hoping to see something new.” The Reformers countered this mentality by insisting that each member of the congregation ought to be an active participant in worship, including praying, singing, receiving the sacraments, and hearing the Word. Martin Luther stated in the Preface to his Latin Mass:
I also wish that we had as many songs as possible in the vernacular which the people could sing. . . . For who doubts that originally all the people sang these which now only the choir sings or responds to while the bishop is consecrating?
Preoccupation with Sensory Experience
Medieval Christians likewise became enamored with sensory experience in worship. Church architecture deliberately kept the nave dark and the elevated chancel bright and included ornate, elaborate decorations. Liturgy included rich vestments, processions, and other elaborate ceremonies that included bells and incense in order to create a mystical experience.
The Reformers rejected visual images as essential to worship.
Even Luther considered them “adiaphora”—“things indifferent.” He said of worship in The Babylonians Captivity of the Church, “We must be particularly careful to put aside whatever has been added to its original simple institution by the zeal and devotion of men: such things as vestments, ornaments, chants, prayer, organs, candles, and the whole pageantry of outward things.” In On the Councils and the Church (1539):, Luther said, “Besides these external signs and holy possessions the church has other externals that do not sanctify it either in body or soul, nor were they instituted or commanded by God; . . . These things have no more than their natural effects.”
The Reformed wing argued that if they were adiaphora, they should be eliminated. For example, Ulrich Zwingli was committed to church practice being regulated by Scripture alone, leading him to advocate much more radical reforms than even Luther did. He insisted that worship practices must have explicit biblical warrant, causing him to denounce images, other ceremonial adornments, and even music from public worship since he could find no warrant for them in the New Testament. His new vernacular liturgy, Act or Custom of the Lord’s Supper (1525), was far simpler than Luther’s, consisting of Scripture reading, preaching, and prayer. Zwingli adamantly opposed the use of images in worship, a conviction that came to be known as iconoclasm. He was convinced that worship was at its core spiritual, and thus “it is clear and indisputable that no external element or action can purify the soul.”
Martin Bucer rejected what he considered ceremonies of human origin, including vestments, insisting that church leaders had no right to invent new forms or to “enrich” existing forms with such innovations which either hid or replaced the basically biblical signs in worship. He noted,
The Lord instituted nothing physical in his supper except the eating and drinking alone, and that for the sake of the spiritual, namely as in memory of him. . . . [Yet] we have observed that many cared neither to consider seriously the physical reception nor the spiritual memorial, but instead, just as before, were satisfied with seeing and material adoration.
Similar to Zwingli and Bucer, Calvin’s central goal was to return to the simple worship practices of the early church, strictly following biblical prescription. He argued that “a part of the reverence that is paid to [God] consists simply in worshiping him as he commands, mingling no inventions of our own.” He interpreted the Second Commandment as God defining “lawful worship, that is, a spiritual worship established by himself” and insisted upon “the rejection of any mode of worship that is not sanctioned by the command of God.” Calvin also agreed with Zwingli and Bucer concerning iconoclasm. He argued, “While the sacrament ought to have been a means of raising pious minds to heaven, the sacred symbols of the Supper were abused to an entirely different purpose, and men, contented with gazing upon them and worshiping them, never once thought of Christ.” He said elsewhere,
Our Lord Christ, says Augustine, has bound the fellowship of the new people together with sacraments, very few in number, very excellent in meaning, very easy to observe. How far from this simplicity is the multitude and variety of rites, with which we see the church entangled today, cannot be fully told.
Individualization of Piety
All of this resulted in an individualization of piety. The only real benefit of corporate worship was the sacramental experience achieved only by a sacerdotal system and the splendor of the corporate setting. The Service of the Word diminished, and the Service of the Table became a mystical sacrament by which worshipers were infused with grace as they observed the clergy offering a sacrifice on their behalf. Herman Wegman diagnoses the problem: “The decline in medieval worship must first of all be laid to clericalization and the related individualizing of the piety of the faithful, a piety that grew apart from the liturgy. . . . This liturgy was marked by an excess of feasts, by popular customs, and by details and superstitious practices that overlaid the heart of the faith.”[21] The Reformers insisted that piety should be corporate.
Diagnosing the Problem
Many factors account for the rise of heretical and erroneous theology and practice, including worship, during the Middle Ages. But perhaps one central factor is that in many cases, church leadership derived worship theology and practice primarily or even exclusively from OT Israel—an empire that essentially consisted of a union between the civil and religious found more support and guidelines from the OT than from the NT.
Therefore, the OT increasingly became the pattern for medieval worship theology and practice, the church becoming the “new Israel.” For example, early theologians explicitly explained the ecclesial hierarchy based on its parallels with OT high priest (bishops), priesthood (priests), and Levites (deacons). Theologians used the OT as the basis for priestly vestments, mandatory tithing, infant baptism, altars, sacrifice, richly adorned sanctuary, incense, processions, and ceremonies. As early as the third century, for example, Tertullian described standing “at God’s altar . . . [for the] participation of the sacrifice” and proclaimed, “we ought to escort with the pomp of good works, amid psalms and hymns, unto God’s altar, to obtain for us all good things from God.” Whether he meant this in the NT metaphorical sense is debatable, but this kind of language unquestionably became more literal in later worship practice.
Priority given to the OT for worship theology also accounts for the sacramentalism, sacerdotalism, and preoccupation with sensory experience that came to characterize worship by the end of the fifteenth century. Christians desired a “worship that can be touched” led by human mediators.
The Reformers criticized this rational in particular. For example, Calvin employed a particular argument of emphasizing the critical discontinuity between OT worship and NT worship in much of his worship reforms. In commenting on Roman Catholic worship, Calvin exclaimed, “What shall I say of ceremonies, the effect of which has been, that we have almost buried Christ, and returned to Jewish figures?” He complained, “A new Judaism, as a substitute for that which God had distinctly abrogated, has again been reared up by means of numerous puerile extravagances, collected from different quarters.” He criticized the priesthood, noting, “Then, as if he were some successor of Aaron, he pretends that he offers a sacrifice to expiate the sins of the people.”
However, a second factor contributing to errant theology and practice of worship was that some theologians, rightly understanding that Christian worship is participation with the worship of heaven (Hebrews 12:22–24), nevertheless failed to recognize that this is currently something to be accepted in faith as a spiritual reality rather than expected as a physical experience. Medieval Christians wanted to experience the worship of heaven tangibly here on earth, either expecting that heaven came down to them while they worshiped or that they were led into the heavenly temple through the sacramental ceremonies. Therefore, if not bringing into worship altars and incense and adornments by appealing to OT Israel, some drew from pictures of heavenly worship, especially those from the book of Revelation. Even the church architecture pictured this theology, with the nave where the people sat symbolizing earth, the “sanctuary” where the mass took place a picture of heaven. In this way, they desired a heavenly worship “that can be touched.”
Again, the Reformers objected. Calvin insisted, “The first thing we complain of here is, that the people are entertained with showy ceremonies, while not a word is said of their significancy and truth.”
Providing the Biblical Solution
The first solution to problems in both medieval and contemporary worship is to submit to the authority of God’s Word over worship, what is sometimes referred to as the regulative principle of worship.
The first solution to problems in both medieval and contemporary worship is to submit to the authority of God’s Word over worship, what is sometimes referred to as the regulative principle of worship.
Affirming this principle alone would go a long way in preventing the errors of sacramentalism, sacerdotalism, preoccupation with sensory experience, and individualization of piety that has plagued both medieval and contemporary worship.
Worship That Cannot Be Touched
But second, a proper application of New Testament Revelation to the theology and practice of corporate worship is essential for correcting errors. In Hebrews chapter 12, the author climaxes his argument with a vivid description of drawing near to God for worship in the Old Testament compared with drawing near for Christians. In verses 18–24, he contrasts two mountains—Mt, Sinai, representing Old Testament worship, and Mt. Zion, representing New Testament worship.
Approaching God in the OT is physical—it can be touched; it has visual sensations—burning fire, darkness, gloom, and storm; it has aural sensations—the sound of a trumpet blast and actual words spoken from God Himself. In other words, this OT worship was decidedly sensory.
In contrast, the author uses Mount Zion to represent NT worship. Christians are not actually worshiping physically in heaven yet, but in Christ they are worshiping there positionally in a very real sense—they “have come to Mt. Zion” (12:22). With the NT, God no longer has to condescend and enter the fabric of the physical universe to manifest Himself to his people; he can now allow his people to ascend into Heaven itself to worship him, which the author argues is superior to the former worship. This is possible because of Jesus’s mediation on the behalf of his people (12:24), and thus Christians can now approach God with full confidence in worship.
But here is the important point: this kind of superior worship through Christ is not physical in its essence. Living Christians are not physically in heaven yet; when they worship, they are positionally worshiping in heaven with all the angels and saints, but they are doing so spiritually. That is the essential difference between these two kinds of worship. OT worship was physical; it was sensory; it happened on earth. NT worship, however, is immaterial; it is spiritual; it takes place in heaven.
Simple, Spiritual Worship
This is why the Reformers argued that worship should be spiritual and simple. Calvin said,
For, if we would not throw every thing into confusion, we must never lose sight of the distinction between the old and the new dispensations, and of the fact that ceremonies, the observance of which was useful under the law, are now not only superfluous, but vicious and absurd. When Christ was absent and not yet manifested, ceremonies, by adumbrating, cherished the hope of his advent in the breasts of believers; but now that his glory is present and conspicuous, they only obscure it. And we see what God himself has done. For those ceremonies which he had commanded for a time he has abrogated for ever. Paul explains the reason,—first, that since the body has been manifested in Christ, they types have, of course, been withdrawn; and, secondly, that God is now pleased to instruct his Church after a different manner. (Gal. iv. 5; Col. Ii. 4, 14, 17.) Since, then, God has freed his Church from the bondage which he had imposed upon it, can any thing, I ask, be more perverse than for men to introduce a new bondage in place of the old?”
He continued, “Then, as it has for the most part an external splendor which pleases the eye, it is more agreeable to our carnal nature, than that which alone God requires and approves, but which is less ostentatious.”
This same emphasis would go a long way in correcting many of the same errors characteristic of contemporary worship.
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