The Regrafted Branch

How to Love God's Law Without Being Legalistic

2009-08-20T00:37:00.000-07:00

I didn't know what it meant to "love God's law" (Psalm 119:97) until two nights ago, when I read one of the articles I linked to in my previous post, John Warwick Montgomery's "The Third Use of the Law," an excerpt from his book The Suicide of Christian Theology.

"The third use of the Law" is a term I had encountered in the past, but hadn't bothered to look up, on the assumption that it was some bit of abstruse, Puritan-era theologizing.

Boy, was I ever wrong! It turns out that "the third use of the Law" basically encompasses the whole question of how the Law of God applies to believers—or whether it applies at all.

The Reformers outlined three purposes—or uses—of the Law of God:

To constrain evil;
To convict sinners and bring them to repentance; and
To guide believers in their Christian walk.

The first and second uses had been fairly obvious to me, but the third had never really occurred to me. And so I have struggled for two years to understand exactly how a believer is to walk in obedience to Christ—how does that manifest itself? How does it not devolve into works righteouesness?

(And I receive excellent instruction from my church on sanctification...the fault lay entirely in my overthinking things, or not being able to connect the biblical dots and seeing the rationle behind the Apostles' [not to mention Puritans'!] calls to holiness.)

But Dr. Montgomery lays it all out quite clearly—and briefly. He briefly surveys the swinging pendulum between "justification without sanctification" and "'sanctification' without justification" in the history of Protestantism; the rise of the social gospel and Christian existentialism; and the dead end of the latter movement. All this is presented as a motivation for what follows: a discussion the Reformation-era discernment of the three uses of the Law outlined above.

He then provides an extended quote from Chapter 6 of Horatius Bonar's God's Way of Holiness; and between that quote and his introduction to it, the scales fell from my eyes, by God's grace.

Essentially, the case comes down to this: above all, we are commanded as Christians to love: Love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; and love our neighbour as ourself (Matthew 22:34-40). But—and here's the rub—how do we love? The answer is that God has graciously shown us the way to love—the way to fulfill this supreme of all commandments—through His Law as an expression of His will!

And not the letter of the Law—external obedience, though that is important—so much as the spirit of the Law—having it written upon our hearts, by the supreme grace of God (Jeremiah 31:33): hence, Jesus Christ's expounding of the Law (and especially the Ten Commandments) in His Sermon on the Mount.

No, we are no longer enslaved to the Law and no longer cursed by it—for Jesus Christ has borne the curse for us, on the Cross. But we are now at liberty to follow the Law out of love, by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

We are still sinners—simul justus et peccator—and still capable of disobeying God's Law, in which case the only remedy available to us is the same as that for non-believers: repentance and faith in the atoning work of Jesus Christ as our sin-bearer and propitiation. But now, when we do obey God's Law, we should do so not out of fear or a sense of grudging compulsion, but out of love for God, gratitude to Him, and a desire to live out His command to love as He has graciously provided and decreed.

For now, I can only respond by quoting Paul (though admittedly from an entirely different context):

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

"For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?"
"Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?"

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33-36)

Soli Deo Gloria!

The Law and the Gospel

2009-08-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

The delineation of and disinction between Law and Gospel is fundamental to Christian theology.

Martin Luther drew a clear divide between the two, essentially identifying all commands of God as "Law" that can we never perfectly fulfill and therefore only condemn us, and all His promises—especially as mediated through the atonement of His Son Jesus Christ—as "Gospel."

There are other, subtly different ways to define the Law and the Gospel, and then different theological positions concerning the relationship between Law and Gospel, and the place of the Law in the life of the believer. These positions appear to reflect to a certain degree the distinctions between different hermeneutical systems—for example, Covenant Theology, Dispensationalism, and New Covenant Theology.

And none of this is abstract theorizing. If our understanding of what the Gospel is impacts our doctrine of justification, then our understanding of what the Law is impacts our doctrine of sanctification—and therefore how we are to live as believers in a right relationship with God.

As always, we must be careful when determining the proper application of the Law in the life of believers, to avoid the twin perils of legalism (emphasizing the Law at the expense of the Gospel, in the most extreme case teaching justification by our own righteousness) and antinomianism (emphasizing the Gospel at the expense of the Law, and disregarding the calls to holiness that appear in every book of the New Testament).

Above all, we are justified and made right with God solely by His sovereign grace, through the unmerited gift of His faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone. As redeemed believers, adopted sons and daughters of God the Father and brothers and sisters of His Son Jesus Christ, we have full assurance of salvation, and He will preserve us until the end.

Great damage has been done through bad teaching to grant believers (real or nominal) either false assurance or no assurance—in both cases on the basis of good works that the hearer does or does not do. Our assurance rests in the finished work of Christ.

Nevertheless, it is manifestly clear from every book of the New Testament that—even as redeemed believers bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ—we are called to live and conduct ourselves in a certain way. I struggle with this every day; but this principle seems inescapable. And the only answer, the only solution—whether you're a Lutheran, a Calvinist, or a Mennonite—is to turn to the Cross in repentance every day, rest in Christ, and seek the grace of God through the guidance and comfort of the Holy Spirit, so that we can live as God calls us to live, even if we can never perfectly do so until Christ returns or calls us home.

Here are some articles and sermons by teachers of the past and present that have helped me start to get a handle on all this:

* J.C. Ryle on "Justification and Sanctification."

* John Warwick Montgomery on "The Third Use of the Law" as a didactic guide for believers.

* John M. Frame on "Law and Gospel."

* Not directly related to the Law-Gospel distinction, but concerning the relationship between assurance and sanctification: Phil Johnson on "Assurance and the Struggle with Sin" (MP3 sermon audio).

Sanctification and the Gospel

2009-04-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

I came to Christ in repentance a little over two years ago now, and was baptized two years ago this month, in April of 2007. The progressive sanctification that we undergo as believers has been an uphill struggle for me—as it is, evidently, for all believers.

I thank God for the pastors and other elders at my church, who teach the Christ-centeredness of everything: creation; life; redemption; justification; sanctification—the whole nine yards.

But I read a fair amount of Christian writing: both in book form, and on the Internet. I try to be discerning, and am careful to restrict myself to teachers and writers who are Scripturally and doctrinally sound. Even so, there is, in some quarters, a troubling lack of clarity on the nature of sanctification.

Many writers appear to lay too much emphasis on what I must do to become sanctified, and too little emphasis on what Jesus Christ has already done, and what the Holy Spirit continues to do. This can lead to a kind of legalism (for lack of a better word).

* * *

There are two kinds of "legalism" that believing Christians can stray into:

1. A legalism that binds believers' conscience with extra-Scriptural rules: for example, an obligation that men must wear suits and ties on Sunday mornings, with condemnation by oneself and others for not doing so. This kind of legalism can easily be identified as such.

2. A legalism that binds believers' conscience by exhorting the believer to obey the commands of Scripture, in such a way as to make obedience the fruit of human endeavour, rather than the fruit of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

The second kind of "legalism" is the one I am referring to here. It is subtle and pernicious, and intentionally or unintentionally taught even by many well-meaning, ostensibly Gospel-centered teachers. In fact, I would dare say that such teachers understand the true nature of obedience and sanctification, but that in the way they convey it to their hearers, it may sometimes come across as a work of the flesh, and not of the Spirit.

The premise of the teaching is that at the moment of our rebirth, we were freely justified in Christ by the grace of God, but now that we have the indwelling Holy Spirit, we have both the ability and obligation to obey God for ourselves.

On the face of it, this is plainly true. But the end result is teachers exhorting readers or listeners to be holy—manifested in a thousand various and particular ways, all perfectly Biblical—and the binding of believers' consciences when they fall short. The problem is that our utter dependence on the finished work of Jesus Christ and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit as they pertain not only to our redemption, but to our sanctification can be underemphasized, turning an ostensibly God-centered theology of salvation into a me-centered theology of sanctification.

* * *

Before continuing, I should note, however, that there are dangerous errors if we swing too far the othr way in reaction. We can fall into "antinomianism" ("lawlessness"), whereby either we reject the idea that believers must exhibit any kind of spiritually changed life at all, or we simply take a completely passive approach to our own sanctification, and wait for the Holy Spirit to do for us what we are called upon to actively participate in. These approaches lead straight to carnality and backsliddenness, condemn us to an unfulfilled life as believers, and bear poor witness to the watching world, making a mockery of the hope that we claim is in us.

So what is the answer? How can we be obedient to Christ and bear the fruits of the Holy Spirit in our lives, if taking too active a role leads to legalism, and too passive a role to antinomianism? The answer lies in this: Legalism lays everything upon us and nothing upon God, while antinomianism lays everything upon God and nothing upon us. Sanctification should rather be understood as a process begun, sustained, and completed by God, but in which we take an active role as His disciples.

* * *

It is manifestly obvious that the inspired writers of Scripture exhort us to walk in obedience to Christ. For example, Paul writes to the believers in Philippi to "work out [their] own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12), and Peter exhorts his readers to "be all the more diligent to make [their] calling and election sure" (2 Peter 1:10). These commands accord with John the Baptist's call to the Pharisees and Sadducees to "bear fruit(s) in keeping with repentance" (Matthew 3:8; Luke 3:8).

But divorced from their contexts, verses like these imply that we must work at our sanctification as if it depended upon and flowed from nothing but ourselves, disregarding our utter reliance upon the finished work of Jesus Christ and the ongoing work of the living, indwelling Holy Spirit. And likewise, if we attempt to bear fruit in our Christian walk by merely striving to follow rules—even if those rules are Biblical commands—we are no better than the Pharisees.

Both Philippians 2:12 ("work out your own salvation with fear and trembling") and 2 Peter 1:10 ("make your calling and election sure") begin with the word "therefore." Both exhortations are predicated on something: "Statement A, therefore, Statement B." What is that "Statement A"?

* * *

Paul wrote to the Philippians:

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
     Who, though He was in the form of God,
          Did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
     But made Himself nothing,
          Taking the form of a Servant,
          Being born in the likeness of men.
     And being found in human form,
          He humbled Himself
          By becoming obedient to the point of death,
          Even death on a Cross.
     Therefore God has highly exalted Him
          And bestowed on Him the Name that is above every name,
     So that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow,
          In heaven and on earth and under the earth,
     And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
          To the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God Who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

(Philippians 2:1-13, ESV; reformatting my own.)

Here, "work[ing] out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling" is given in the context of "being in full accord and of one mind...which is [ours] in Christ Jesus." "This mind" is "in humility count[ing] others more significant than ourselves" and looking "to the interests of others," as Jesus Christ did, "Who took the form of a servant...[humbling] Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death."

In other words, we work out our "own salvation with fear and trembling" through humility, obedience, and servanthood, loving one another, being of one mind with Jesus Christ, the Suffering Servant, Who obeyed God to the point of suffering and death, being crucified for our sins, and being raised on the third day in triumph and exaltation.

Our sanctification and obedience proceeds, in other words, from the finished work of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It is not work that we do on our own, in a vacuum, but is predicated upon and proceeds from "this mind [that we are to have] among [ourselves], which is [ours] in Christ Jesus." Nor is it sustained merely through our own efforts, "for it is God Who works in [us], both to will and to work for His good pleasure." (Amen!)

* * *

So that's Paul writing to the Philippians. What about Peter? He wrote:

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him Who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

(2 Peter 1:3-11, ESV; reformatting my own)

So in this letter, Peter exhorts his audience to "make [their] calling and election sure," but again, predicated upon what? That God:

has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him Who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

And by what means has God granted "all things that pertain to life and godliness" and "His precious and very great promises"? "Through the knowledge of Him Who called us to His own glory and excellence." And on what basis is this knowledge granted? "That [we were] cleansed from [our] former sins" by the person and work of Jesus Christ, Who was a propitiation for our sins upon the Cross, was raised from the dead, and now sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

So again, our sanctification proceeds from the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is predicated upon what God the Father has granted to us through His Son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.

* * *

Sanctification is not merely a matter of following the rules, nor even a matter of following the rules out of gratitude or indebtedness to Jesus Christ. The gift He has given us is one we never deserved, could never earn, and can never repay, no matter how hard we try. And indeed, the harder we try, the more we heap condemnation upon ourselves, for presuming that we can earn our way into salvation—even after God has freely justified us on the basis of Christ's sinless obedience and the penalty He paid for our sins.

No, what Christ has done forms the very basis and foundation of everything we do. Everything we do in obedience to Christ is from God, "Who works in [us], both to will and to work for His good pleasure," through the agency of the living, indwelling Holy Spirit.

The minute we begin trying to obey the commands of Scripture out of a sense of obligation—so that we can justify to ourselves or to others or to God that we are worthy of salvation—we are falling upon our own pride, our own self-righteousness, our own fleshliness: our own sin nature rearing its ugly head. We are disobeying God by attempting to follow His rules from a wrong motivation.

* * *

The Pharisees excelled at obeying God's commands to a "T." They strayed legalistically in both the senses I enumerated earlier. First, they added rules to Scripture, unnecessarily binding the conscience of their fellow Jews with "the commandments of men" (Matthew 15:1-9 and Mark 7:1-13, quoting Isaiah 29:13).

Second, they could obey the Law perfectly, yet still have hearts far from Him. The Rich Young Man in Matthew 19:16-22 and Mark 10:17-22, and the Pharisee who thanks God that he is not "like this tax collector" in Luke 18:9-14 were two such men.

True, God has "put [His] law within us, and [He] has [written] it upon [our] hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33), so that unlike the Pharisees, the fundamental disposition of our hearts is towards God and not towards ourselves.

But again, as soon as we strive of our own efforts to obey God, not contemplating the persons and work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit for and in our lives, we are drifting into the same mire in which the Pharisees ended up, being excoriated repeatedly by their fellow Jew, our Lord and Saviour, for how they followed God's Law in the letter, yet not in the spirit (or in the Spirit, for that matter!).

* * *

How, then, do we walk in obedience to Christ—as we are clearly commanded to do—without straying into legalism, pride, self-righteousness, and all the other sins that, as empirical evidence amply demonstrates, beset Christians left, right, and centre?

The only answer seems to be that we must approach ongoing sanctification the same way we approach our initial regeneration. In both processes, as the Holy Spirit lays convictions and burdens upon our heart, we must humble ourselves and turn to the Cross of Christ in prayer and repentance—repenting for both our bad deeds and our "good" deeds, for even our good deeds are tainted with sin—turn our burdens over to Christ, "for [His] yoke is easy, and [His] burden is light" (Matthew 11:30). Resting in the finished work of Christ—for He already accomplished for us in His crucifixiion and resurrection what we will never be able to accomplish for ourselves—we then accept the ministry of the living, indwelling Holy Spirit in us, allowing Him "to will and to work for [God's] good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13).

In fact, the one-time process of regeneration and the ongoing process of sanctification appear to be one of a piece. In both, God commands us to obedience, and holds us responsible for our response. In regeneration, we are powerless in and of our natural selves to respond, except by the monergistic work of God. In sanctification, we are able to respond, but we cannot do so adequately without relying wholly upon the Holy Spirit to work through us, and bear fruit in our lives.

So in practical terms, how do we respond? How do we cultivate obedient hearts, out of which will flow the fruits of the Spirit: the fruits of repentance in our lives? The only satisfactory answer seems to be to rest daily upon the grace of God made manifest in the finished work of Jesus Christ upon the Cross, and the ongoing work of the living, indwelling Holy Spirit.

And we can only do this through daily prayer and repentance, always turning back to the One Who created, redeemed, sanctifies, and sustains us: the One Who teaches, guides, protects, disciples, and chastises us, and Who, when we stand in His presence, will perfect us as a people whom He has called to Himself, for the sake of His everlasting Kingdom and Glory.

Amen!

Note: Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Eyewitness Testimony and the Gospel Proclamation

2009-04-13T10:47:00.001-07:00

So on Easter morning, I finished re-reading the four Gospels. I read through them slowly once before, as a non-believer, many years ago; and since coming to faith in Christ, I've read through them fast—not really reading them for all they're worth. This is the first time, as a believer in Christ, that I have read the Gospels slowly and carefully—not skimming through rapdily—allowing their words to sink in.

The one key common theme to all four Gospels appears to be the emphasis on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ—as a fulfilment of the Scriptures—and the large amounts of eyewitness testimony surrounding those events: especially to His death and bodily resurrection. (A prime example is John 19:31-37, with the emphatic statement in verse 35.)

Indeed, when we look at Paul's definition of the Gospel in 1 Corinthians 15, all those elements are there: "...that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures" (verses 3-4). Paul then goes on to give a long list of witnesses who saw the resurrected Jesus Christ, who—as the Gospels make clear, and Paul expounds further in this chapter—appeared to them in bodily form: Cephas (Peter), the other of the twelve Apostles, five hundred witnesses at once, James, and then all the other apostles (verses 5-7). (Paul then goes on to say that last of all, Christ appeared also to him, though Paul never claims that he saw Christ in His physical resurrection body, in the same intimate way that the others did.)

The portions of the four Gospels preceding Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, seem mainly intended to lay the groundwork for what followed, and to give a fuller picture of who Jesus Christ was and is. But the heart is this Gospel kerygma, the same one summed up by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with Scripture, was raised on the third day in accordance with Scripture, and appeared to many witnesses.

When the Evangelists wrote their respective accounts of the Gospel, the Gospel preaching tradition would already have been well established: the heart of the Gospel message preached by the earliest missionaries in Judea, Samaria, and the wider world. Each Evangelist expanded the core message to reflect His particular interest and audience, and to add from personal memory (Matthew, John) or first-hand recollections (Mark, Luke), accounts of our Lord and Saviour's life before the events of His last week in Jerusalem.

Last week, Justin Taylor linked to an article by C. Michael Patton, "What Happened to the Twelve Apostles? How Their Deaths Evidence Easter." There is historical evidence—of varying degrees of reliability—that all of the twelve Apostles except for John the Divine (and including Matthias, who replaced Judas Iscariot) eventually died for their faith: a faith that was grounded in their claim that they witnessed firsthand Christ's bodily resurrection from the dead. It would have been one thing if they had believed someone else's testimony, but they stood by their claim that they themselves could attest to what had happened.

The power of the Gospels lie in the fact that they are, in fact, expanded, fleshed-out versions of the Gospel message, based on eyewitness testimony to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Sanctification

2009-04-11T14:23:00.001-07:00

The sanctification of the believer is a subject that takes a lifetime to comprehend (it seems), not to mention a lifetime to live out in practice! It is a matter that consumes a great amount of my thought and prayer life. How is it related to justification? What is the right balance between Divine sovereignty and human responsibility in sanctification? How do we walk the thin tightrope between antinomianism on the one hand, and works-based self-righteousness on the other?

Here is a short "catechism" (if you will) of where my thinking currently lies on sanctification. It is woefully in need of fleshing out with Scripture and more careful thought, but this is a starting point, at least.

How is sanctification manifested? Through the fruits of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.
What is evidence of the fruits of the Holy Spirit? Works done from a heart of obedience.
How does one cultivate an obedient heart? It cannot itself be cultivated through human works: this is pretty much the whole point of the Gospel! Consider, for example, the necessity of a New Covenant in Jeremiah 31:31-33.
How then does one cultivate an obedient heart? It can only be through prayer and repentance, for it can only be by throwing ourselves upon the grace and mercy of God, through the person and work of His Son Jesus Christ and the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Well, that's it for now. Short, and very much in need of revision and expansion.

The point—assuming I've got it right (and that's a big assumption!)—is that our sanctification is the out-working of our walk in obedience to Jesus Christ, and this is not a walk we can do of our own efforts. This is not to say that we should be passive in our sanctification (for that would lead to antinomianism), but that we can never rely upon our own flesh to achieve it.

One could argue that this is the process for justification, but not for ongoing sanctification. Once we have been justified in Christ, we have the seal of the Holy Spirit, and obedient, regenerated hearts, by which we are capable of walking in obedience to Christ. True, but we so easily fall back upon our flesh, and upon on our deceitful, natural inclinations, even as believers. How then can we become sanctified, except by constantly, repeatedly throwing ourselves back upon the Cross?

Rereading the Synoptics

2009-04-04T14:28:00.000-07:00

As part of the Bible School course I'm taking currently, I have now re-read the Gospels According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Next will be John, followed by the rest of the New Testament.

The first time I comprehensively read the Gospels (including John) was in the late summer of 1992, long before I became a believer. I had read parts of the Old Testament two summers previously, and now it was time to read the New Testament. I was also attending a mainline United (Methodist-Presbyterian) church, and was generally going through a "spiritual" (for an agnostic) time in my life. I took the Gospels at face value, and my understanding of Christ deepened as a result, but there was stuff in all four Gospels that I just didn't understand, or that went over my head.

Within a couple of years, I had plunged into deep skepticism. I pored over the Synoptic Gospels a lot, though, influenced by the Jesus Seminar and writings in that vein, trying to identify the "authentic" Jesus buried under what I thought at the time were subsequent Christological accretions. As a result, I was so focussed on parts of the Gospels (the individual stories that appear in different versions in the three Synoptic Gospels), that I utterly missed the whole picture.

Fast forward many years, and I came to faith in Jesus Christ as our sole Lord and Saviour. A few months later, I participated in a class to read the Bible in 90 days, which I did. I was so excited to try rereading the Gospels—especially the Synoptic Gospels—now as a believer, but by the time I got to the Gospels, I was reading so fast (determined to finish), that I couldn't really savour the whole breadth and depth of what I was reading. Instead of minutely examining individual verses (as I'd done as a skeptic), now I was focussed on the overall redemptive narrative from Genesis to Revelation, so flew over the Gospels from a bird's-eye perspective, without taking the time to fly down and explore their nooks and crannies.

So now, two years later, I've finally had an opportunity to slowly, comprehensively reread Matthew, Mark, and Luke, taking time to pause, make notes, look up cross references, and so on. And what have I found? A multi-layered depth and richness to all three Gospels that could take a lifetime to really draw out and learn from. All the theology that is more explicitly and systematically set out in the writings of John and Paul is there in the Synoptic Gospels, but scattered about like so many glittering diamonds inlaid into a multi-coloured mosaic.

What strikes me in all three Gospels, above all else, is how delicately and inextricably intertwined are the two aspects of the person and work of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom: the human and divine; the "already" and "not yet"; the temporal and eternal. Focussing exclusively on Jesus Christ as teacher and on the Kingdom here and now, misses the divine, eternal King who existed before the foundation of the world, and who will return to judge the living and the dead. Focussing exclusively on Jesus Christ as the Son of God, Alpha and Omega, Judge and Redeemer, misses His many teachings on how we are to live in the here and now, waiting for His return.

There are other "paradoxes," too. We think of Matthew as focussing on Christ's being the long-promised Davidic King, but we also find the Great Commission. We think of Mark as being short and action-oriented, yet risk missing the teaching on discipleship through suffering and servanthood that lies at the heart of his Gospel. We think of Luke as being the evangelist to the Gentiles and the outcasts of society, yet miss the fact that he—the only Gentile writer of Scripture—was steeped in the Old Testament's teaching on God's grace towards just such people.

And another paradox. As conservative, evangelical Christians, we are all about the Gospel. And yet, we can easily spend time dwelling on Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Isaiah, or Paul's letters—and easily attest that all Scripture points to Christ—while overlooking the one place where the birth, life, ministry, suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour is set out more clearly than anywhere else: the Gospels themselves. Not only that, but there are, of course, clear teachings throughout the Gospels on how we are to live on a day-to-day basis as disicples of Christ, and on how we are to live in anticipation of His return. Are we truly living as He has called us to live? Or do we skip over His teaching for fear of falling into the trap of Kingdom-now liberalism, and losing sight of the Gospel altogether?

May we, as evangelical Christians who are by definition committed to and driven by the Gospel, keep the Gospels themselves front and centre in our minds, and may we never focus on the eternal at the expense of the temporal, nor on the temporal at the expense of the eternal.

Praying in Unusual Circumstances

2009-03-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

Something happened last Monday evening that was totally, completely out of the ordinary...so much so that I am still amazed.

I had just finished re-reading the Gospel According to Matthew the day before, and was wondering how to apply Matthew 25:31-46 in everyday life. There seems to be a clear command there for us to care for our fellow Christian brothers and sisters—the implication seems to be that how we treat our brothers and sisters in Christ is evidence of whether we are truly God's children or not. (Which seems patently obvious, but what are the practical implications of working it out in everyday life?)

Anyhow, I was taking the bus home on Monday evening. Now, I was travelling earlier than normal—I usually leave work quite late—and furthermore, the bus I should have caught was delayed, and I ended up waiting half an hour and catching the next bus. So I was on completely not my normal bus, twice removed!

The bus was full. Every seat was taken, though no one was standing. I was sitting near the back of the bus.

Suddenly, I heard a woman across from me crying out; I looked over, and noticed she was reading a Gideon's New Testament. She continued crying out; someone asked if she was okay; some other people started moving away from her.

Then she called out in a panicked voice, "Is there a Christian on the bus? Someone who can pray in tongues with me?" I normally keep to myself on the bus—read my Bible sometimes, but that's about it—but there was nothing normal about this situation. This was a fellow believer in the throes of spiritual distress! I couldn't very well not speak up: I wouldn't be able to live with myself afterward. So I called back, "I'm a Christian, but I don't pray in tongues...."

The person sitting beside me moved aside so that I could get up and sit down beside this lady (I won't use her name, to protect her privacy). As I was moving over to where she was sitting, she started praying aloud in tongues. If I'd stopped to think about it, I probably would have asked myself what I was getting into; but everything happened so fast, I didn't even have time to think about it. At any rate, I was almost certainly the only person on that bus who could provide this lady with the help she needed.

She had her bag on the seat beside her, so standing beside her, I asked, "Are you okay?" She explained that she'd had a physical, oppressive feeling, like she was undergoing a spiritual attack. "Can I pray with you," I asked.

So she moved her bag out of the way, and I sat down beside her, and asked her for her name, so I could pray for her by name. She replied, and we prayed, me out loud, on a crowded bus, for the three or four minutes before we were getting close to my bus stop (in fact, I skipped my stop, to get off at the next one 400 yards further down the road).

I prayed that the Lord God and the Holy Spirit would protect and guide her, in the name of Jesus Christ, by whose broken body and shed blood we are saved. Of course, in such a spontaneous situation, I just prayed as the words came to me. The bus was noisy, so I had to speak up as I prayed, so that she could hear me—it was probably loud enough that others could hear me as well. But she and I had our eyes closed, and we were, of course, just focused on praying.

Providentially, the Bible School assignment I'd completed just a couple of weeks previously gave me the words to reassure her—after we'd finished praying—that Jesus Christ commands invisible legions of angels (Joshua 5:13-15; 2 Kings 6:15-17; Revelation 19:11-16), and as not only our Lord and Saviour but also our protector, can fight the spiritual battles that we cannot fight. We're not alone, and we don't have to fight these battles on our own!

She asked for my name, too, and my church, and I found out her church as well: a Foursquare Gospel church. I didn't know anything about the Fousquare Gospel movement, but oddly enough, when I got home, a TV documentary on the life of Aimee Semple McPherson was just starting, and I learned all about it!

That evening and the next day, I was in a stupor. What had just happened, I wondered. After a lot of sober-minded reflection, I can honestly say only that it all just unfolded in some strange, Spirit-led way. It was the strangest thing, not least because I was on a bus I don't even normally take—but for this lady, I was in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. God in His sovereign providence had led me to that be on that bus, that evening, to minister to that lady.

She later contacted our church to thank me for what I'd done. The whole episode was as strange to her as it was to me! I found out that when she started getting this oppressive physical sensation, she pulled out her Gideon's New Testament, which she doesn't even normally carry with her. I learned that these were the verses she'd felt led to read before I prayed for her:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his Cross (Colossians 1:15-20).

So from a non-believer's point of view, here were a couple of crazy Christians having their own prayer service at the back of a crowded bus. But it was a witness to the power of the Word and the Spirit—and the Spirit working through the Word—and I pray that in some small way it advanced the Kingdom. Had she been having a medical emergency, I wouldn't have had the skills to help. But if it's a spiritual emergency, evidently God has given me a gift I didn't know I had—albeit a gift he'd already given me opportunity to practise in our church's weekly prayer meetings. I'd never before had to exercise this gift in such a rubber-meets-the-road situation.

And the strangest thing of all? A non-Charismatic Calvinist had the privilege of relying on the Holy Spirit to minister in word and prayer to a Charismatic sister in Christ, seeking the intercession of our common Mediator and High Priest, our soul hope and salvation.

Soli Deo gloria!

The Gospel

2008-09-11T11:20:00.000-07:00

Update (October 16, 2008): made some minor edits for clarity.

Recently, I have been wrestling with the question of what exactly is the Gospel.

If you go by Paul's definition in 1 Corinthians 15, and go over the sermons in Acts (especially Peter's sermons in chapters 2 and 10 and Paul's sermon in chapter 13)—as well as the Old Testament texts cited throughout Acts (especially Psalm 2:7, Psalm 16, Psalm 110:1, Isaiah 52-53, and Joel 2)—and consider Jesus Christ's own pronouncements in Luke 24, a few basic elements emerge:

1. Jesus Christ died for our sins in accordance with Scripture.
2. Jesus Christ was raised bodily on the third day in accordance with Scripture, appeared to many witnesses, and sits at the right hand of God.
3. Jesus Christ will return to judge the living and the dead.
4. We are called to repent for our sins and be baptized, for all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Providentially, Phil Johnson has posted John Newton's very beautiful description of the Gospel here (see the last two paragraphs). Note that the contrast Newton depicts in the very last sentence between those who are self-sufficient and those who are hungry echoes Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and publican in Luke 18.

In fact, the essence of what our response should be is summed up in the publican's prayer in Luke 18:13—compare it especially to the heart of David's prayer in Psalm 51:1, and Asaph's prayer in Psalm 79:7. And on what basis should God have any mercy on us at all? On the basis of Christ's imputed righteousness to us, for He died for our transgressions.

There are a couple of sermons on the Pharisee's and publican's prayers in Luke 18 that are very much worth reading or listening to. First, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, whose words are recorded here. Secondly, Reddit Andrews, who may be heard here (MP3 file).

Finally, the recent discussion a few of us have been having on my old Old Testament post also helped to bring a lot of the stuff I've written above together.

The Gospel is the good news of what Jesus Christ has done to reconcile us sinners to our holy and righteous God. What wonderful news it is. Isaiah couldn't even have known its ultimate fulfilment in the incarnation, death, and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour when he wrote this in Isaiah 53:7:

How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."

(Note that in the Septuagint, "brings good news" is "euangelizomenou," or "proclaims the Evangel": proclaims the Gospel. This is hardly a novel observation, either, since Paul quoted this very verse in Romans 10:15.)

I want to flesh out this post in future days, but this is all I can write for now, due to other demands on my time. Praise God for His grace and mercy, and to Him be all power and dominion and glory, forever and ever. Amen.

reFocus Conference Notes

2008-04-21T11:25:00.001-07:00

My session notes from the reFocus Canada 2008 conference, Leading with Biblical Authority, are now up at the reFocus blog.

Update (April 29th, 2009): The conference notes are temporarily unavailable, and may be moved to a new location, when I have an opportunity to do so. For now, you can access audio and video recordings for the main sessions of both the 2007 and 2008 reFocus Canada conferences at this page.

reFocus Liveblogging

2008-04-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

From Monday, April 12th through Wednesday, April 14th, I'll be liveblogging the 2008 reFocus Canada conference at Willingdon Church in Vancouver, Canada. This year's speakers will include Bruce Ware, David Short, D.A. Carson, R. Kent Hughes, and John Neufeld.

The overall purpose of the annual conference is to encourage pastors in their calling to preach the Word of God; this year's theme is leading with biblical authority.

It seems that everyone and his uncle will be in Louisville for Together for the Gospel '08, but who said you couldn't follow two conferences simultaneously?

Notes from each session will be available on the reFocus Canada blog. And on the off chance that anyone reading this is going to be there, look for the guy with a reFocus staff tag furiously typing away on his laptop, somewhere near a power outlet. Soli Deo gloria!

The Old Testament

2007-11-26T07:01:00.000-08:00

By the grace of God, I have recently finished reading the Old Testament, as part of a 90-day Bible reading program some of us at our church are participating in. Yesterday, someone at my church asked me if I "understood" it—if I understood the Old Testament. Do I understand it all? Absolutely not! But thanks be to the Lord our God that the Holy Spirit has given me enough to have a general idea. There seem to be three tracks to the Hebrew Scriptures:

(1) The holiness, righteousness, and justice of God, made manifest in His covenants, His laws, His precepts, and above all His sovereign will, working itself out even at the level of using nations and kings to work out His will (Isaiah, Habakkuk). This is the God we fear (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14), and with good reason, for he alone is perfect, holy, and righteous; and we, quite simply, are none of those! This is the God who gave us the Law, and who judges our conduct in the Prophets. This is the thrice holy God (Isaiah 6:3) from whose throne pours a river of fire (Daniel 7:10).

(2) The flawedness, sinfulness, imperfection, and open hostility towards—and rebellion against—God by man. This manifests itself on almost every page of Scripture and in every sinful act, and every demonstration of lack of faith or trust in God (even in the likes of Moses at Meribah, or Gideon and his fleece). It expresses itself most poignantly in the book of Judges, in the endless cycle of falling away, repentance, and restoration. It even pops up in Nehemiah 13, when even the faithful remnant that voluntarily came out of exile to restore the Temple begins to fall away, while Nehemiah is out of town for a couple of years to attend to business. It is because of our human tendency to sinful rebellion against God that the Promised Land fell to Assyria and Babylon.

(3) The grace, mercy, and lovingkindness of God. This is the God of Samuel (1 Sam 15:22), David (Psalm 51:16-17), Hosea (6:6), and Micah (6:6-8), the God who does not delight in sacrifices or burnt offerings, but in repentance and a broken and contrite heart. This is the God of Rahab (Joshua 2) and Ruth. This is the God of the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-33), who has the power to save and redeem through His grace alone (Ezekiel 37:5-6; Hosea 13:14; Jonah 2:6, 2:9; Joel 2:32). This is the God who preserves a Holy remnant to himself and calls the faithful out of every nation to worship at His Holy Mountain, as promised through practically every prophet. This is the God out of whose holy city flows the water of life (Ezekiel 47), and who breathes life into man (Genesis 2:7; Ezekiel 37:10).

And now, as I begin to read the New Testament, I read of the promised Messiah, who it would turn out, is the Son of God. He is the thrice anointed Prophet, Priest, and King, in the line of (and greater than) Moses and Elijah; Melchizedek; and David. He is the fulfilment of the Prophets (especially Isaiah, Daniel, Micah, and Zechariah), but he also speaks as one with prophetic authority, embodying both the kindness of God: the call to repentance, and the offer of mercy to sinners (the third track mentioned above), and in his pronouncements against "whitewashed tombs" and prophesying the destruction of the Temple and the last days, the severity of God (the first track). And He is not merely God incarnate, fully God and fully man in one moment on earth, but he is the eternal, living Christ, sitting at the right hand of God.

And as if all that were not enough, Jesus Christ is also—as I will soon read—the only perfect fulfiller of the Law, and it was through his sacrificial atonement, his suffering, death, and resurrection, that the Lord God Almighty imputes His Son's righteousness to us, and covers our sins—and not only of those who were personally saved by Jesus Christ during His ministry on earth, or of those who were born after Him, but even of those to whom God extended His grace, who died before His Son came into the world.

Having finished the Old Testament is not a source of pride for me, but one of humility, astonishment, joy, and thanksgiving. I am humbled by the piercing, convicting Word of God, and by His grace and mercy—by His power to save sinners. I am astonished that I finished it at all, but it's because it wasn't by the power of my flesh that I accomplished this, but solely by the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And I am joyful that I have now done this, and thankful to God for giving me the determination, perseverance, and daily grace to finish this. All praise be to the Lord our God.

490 Years Ago Today...

2007-10-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

490 years ago today, a Catholic monk published a list of 95 propositions, discussion of which was intended to reform church teaching around the principle of salvation by grace alone: a principle taught throughout Scripture—as a quiet subtheme in the Old Testament, rising to a trumpeting crescendo in Christ's work on the Cross, and taught explicitly and at length in the writings of Paul. In the years to come, that monk's action would shake the Christian world. Little could he have realized what he was about to unleash.

Let us thank God for those down through the ages who—like that monk—have been called to steadfastly teach the greatest and most surprising truth of all: that salvation is by grace alone, a gift of God's mercy whose splendour, beauty, and matchless value lies precisely in the fact that it is a work untouched by human hands.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (Romans 3:22b-25a)

(This article is part of the Reformation Day Symposium.)

reFocus Canada

2007-10-20T14:25:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm spending too much time in the Reformed blogosphere, because I have been asked to create and maintain reFocus Canada, a blog that will serve as an ongoing extension of the annual reFocus Conference held at Willingdon Church near Vancouver. The conference and blog are intended to encourage a reorientation in Canadian evangelical churches towards biblical, Christ-centered preaching. This past spring, we had J.I. Packer, John Piper, Bruce Ware, and Mark Driscoll, among other guest speakers. Next year, in 2008, we have D.A. Carson, Kent R. Hughes, and a returning Bruce Ware scheduled to come and speak.

Now I have even more of an excuse to neglect my other two blogs (this one, and one for learning Korean), but I am humbled and grateful to God for being given this ministry opportunity. Soli Deo gloria!

Psalm 19

2007-10-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be acceptable in your sight,
O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
(Psalm 19:14)

(This post is part of a continuing series on background research I did for the Psalms our church preached through this past summer.)

It seems that Psalm 19 is a natural stumbling block for liberal and secularist scholars who wish to analyze Scripture into what they see as its constituent parts—in this case, attributing different parts of the psalm to different writers or editors, based on the different names used for God. I have read both liberal and Catholic commentaries that take this tack, and a couple of years ago, I myself would have thought there was nothing amiss in such an approach.

The basis for breaking this psalm down appears to be the use of אל ("El"; "God") for God in verse 1, versus the use of יהוה ("YHWH"; "the LORD") in verses 7-9 and 14 in the original Hebrew (note that verse numbers are offset by 1 in the Hebrew) [1]. There are, nevertheless, a number of ways of approaching this and other issues in a way that integrates the psalm into a meaningful whole. What follows is one such approach.

Psalm 19 represents a progression from God's self-revelation in nature, to His self-revelation to his chosen people (be they a physical nation or the Church), to the personal relationship between God and those whom He has saved by His grace.

We start with verses 1 to 6, where God is referred to as "El" ("God"). According to Harper's Bible Dictionary, "El is the common Semitic name for deity in ancient Near Eastern cultures. Every divine being was properly designated by this generic name" [2]. In the people, nations, and times where God's Word has not been heard, they have only had the beauty and awe of nature to give glorious evidence of the existence of a supernatural entity who created it all. This seems to be what Paul is writing of in Romans 1:20. This is how I—growing up in a nominally Christian nation with a secular Jewish education—began to understand God, when by the grace of the Holy Spirit I got beyond the strict atheist worldview I was born into; that is, I began to perceive some kind of supernatural, personal force that had created the universe, but I wasn't yet sure if this was the God of the Bible.

From there, we then move into those three wonderful couplets of verses 7 to 9, and the "more to be desired..." of verse 10. Here we come to people and nations who have heard God's Word revealed not merely in nature, but in the Law, in His precepts and commands. And we have God described here by His most intimate, personal name, the name he revealed to his chosen people: "YHWH" ("the LORD") [3]. But these verses speak of a general, corporate relationship with the Lord: there is none of the personal emphasis of the concluding verses. Not only that, but they describe the Lord in the third person, whereas the concluding verses address Him directly.

Finally, we arrive at verses 11 to 14, and the culmination of this natural progression in a personal relationship between the David (the psalm's author) and God. We have the grace-filled relationship God sovereignly ordains and brings about between Himself and His elect. We have the personal application of the Law of the Lord to David's life, and to our own lives. And where the psalm opened in verse 1 with the heavens' declaring the glory of a supernatural deity who goes by the vague, generic name of El, David closes the psalm by personally addressing the Lord as his rock and his redeemer.

And throughout—Christ. Christ the Word whose work is spoken of by nature; Christ whose coming into the world was prefigured and prepared for by the Law; Christ who calls us into a personal relationship with God; Christ who is our rock and our redeemer.

References:

[1] Corey Keating: Exegesis of Psalm 19 (link), p. 3.

[2] Leo G. Perdue: "Names of God in the Old Testament." In Paul J. Achtmeier (gen. ed.): Harper's Bible Dictionary, p. 686. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1985.

[3] See Genesis 13:4, where Abraham (or Abram, as he was then known) "called upon the name of the LORD," and Genesis 15:6, where God identifies Himself to Abram as "the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans."

Psalm 13

2007-10-11T16:07:00.000-07:00

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
	my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
	because he has dealt bountifully with me.
(Psalm 13:5-6)

Continuing with this occasional series on the Psalms our church preached through this past summer, we come to Psalm 13. What follows is an adaptation of the notes I wrote upon my research for this psalm.

Overall, Psalm 13 reminds me of the experience of Job, who waited and waited and waited in the face of incredible suffering, without ever abandoning or blaming God for his woes. This was brought home to me by an idle cross-reference I saw in one Bible from verse 1a to Job 13:24: "Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?"

The key word in the entire psalm seems to be "trusted" in verse 5. Everything up to that point is despair, with no hope in sight. "But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation." In the face of adversity and seeming hopelessness, I trust in the Lord. This is faith. No matter what happens, I trust in the Lord.

And then in verse 6: "I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me." I trust in the Lord's love, rejoice in his salvation, and sing praises to him, because he has dealt—he has already dealt—bountifully with me. David has written four verses lamenting his fate and despairing, and yet here he praises God for his providence.

I was reminded of something Dan Phillips wrote as an "Afterthought on the crucial nature of pastoral/Christian suffering," in which he advanced the idea that not only is suffering to be an expected part of the Christian life, but in fact it should be welcomed, as way in which the Lord tests and teaches us, and purifies us. As unpalatable a concept as it may be, even the suffering we endure is a gift from Him, even though in the midst of it, we may be utterly unable to discern where He is leading us.

Personally speaking, I know that in at least two long, painful periods of my life in the past, the Lord God caused me to suffer in order, ultimately, to bring me closer to Him, all for the sake of teaching me how to be His servant. All we can do is praise the Lord for his providential will and wisdom that surpasses all our understanding.

Psalm 2

2007-08-15T18:00:00.001-07:00

The Lord said to me, "You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession."
(Psalm 2:7b-8)

Over the past several months, I have been doing background sermon research for some of the pastors at my church. Since they are men of God, deeply discipled in the ways of the Lord, my insights—such as they have been—have often been superfluous. Nevertheless, over the next few posts, I will reproduce (with some editing) some of the research I have done for them over the course of this summer, as a way of getting this blog going.

After our church's springtime series on 1 Corinthians ended, we started a summertime series on the Psalms, starting with Psalm 2. I didn't come up with much that was uniquely insightful for the psalm, nor could I find many expository sermons by the great preachers of the past or present. Furthermore, I was simultaneously struggling with the Doctrines of Grace, in particular, the matter of Limited Atonement. The Lord seemed to be pointing me in the direction of His sovereignty over all things, however, so I prayed to Him for guidance.

A few days later, He providentially answered my prayer. Out of the blue, Pastor Roy Hargrave of Ormond Beach, Florida's Riverbend Community Church gave the opening session at the 25th annual Founders Conference outside Tulsa, Oklahoma (which I did not attend, but whose proceedings I followed online). And wouldn't you know it: it was an exegesis of Psalm 2—on the sovereignty of God! The timing was indeed providential, because the Psalm 2 sermon was coming up the very next weekend. (The session was liveblogged here and here.)

I don't have any original material of my own to provide for Psalm 2, but the events that unfolded during my research for it convicted me of the Lord's sovereign hand at work in all of creation.

Next up: Psalm 19. (Update: Actually, Psalm 13 comes next logically, although it wasn't preached next chronologically.)

The Miraculous Workings of God

2007-06-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

What I am about to describe are not exactly miracles, but they are evidence of an amazing pattern in the way God intercedes in the world. As I grew up with an atheist Jewish mother and an agnostic Christian father, I thought I was alone in the world in my struggles with faith. Over the years, however, the Holy Spirit has led me to see that among my own ancestors were some who were faithful to Him under the Old Covenant, or who were among His faithful remnant under the New. The anecdotes that follow about three such ancestors—an Orthodox Jew, an Anglican clergyman, and a Presbyterian hymnodist—and are no testimonial to my own sinful nature, but rather to the amazing trans-generational ways in which God sometimes works.

The Inheritance

As I've mentioned before, Jews trace Jewishness matrilineally. The last matrilineal ancestor to have any kind of faith in God was my great grandmother, who passed away a decade before I was born. She was, so far as I know, an Orthodox Jew—to exactly what degree she was Torah observant, I'm not entirely sure, but at the very least, she kept kosher. When I heard my pastor preach on Paul's olive tree metaphor in Romans 11 and specifically on God's promise through Paul to believing Jews (Paul himself being one such) in Romans 11:23, I immediately thought of my great grandmother, with whom the family faith had died. By saving me, God in his sovereign will restored me in my ancestral faith, albeit with fulfilment in Christ as the final, perfect sacrificial atonement for our sins. I had yearned for years to restore whatever was lost when my great grandmother had passed away, and God had indeed restored it, but under the Covenant of Grace as fully revealed finally in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ. What I received when I was born again was, by God's grace, a spiritual inheritance from my great grandmother.

I surrendered to Christ on a Thursday night, and received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit the next night. Nine days later—a week after the following Sunday—my wife and I went to visit my mother. I was not yet ready to tell her the wonderful news of what had happened—and in my shame, I must admit that I still haven't told her, although I haven't yet set aside a time to be with her and tell her in person what's happened. At the time, I was still trying to come to terms with the enormity of what had happened—after all those many years of searching and striving and wondering, all without fulfilment—and still not 100% sure if I had really been born again. Practically all my life, I had so mistrusted and misunderstood the concept of being "born again," that I was still in disbelief that it had happened to me! I needed confirmation from the Lord, for I was not yet tutored in the concept of assurance of salvation.

We are not a wealthy family, and as far as I knew, my mother doesn't even own anything that goes back further than her own parents, except for some old photographs. I had long been very curious about my great grandmother, not least because in the absence of tangible relics from her life, she was highly enigmatic to me. What happened that evening at my mother's place was just as much a shock as my rebirth in Christ had been just barely a week earlier. We had finished dinner, and my mother said she had something for my wife. Out of the blue, she produced a gold bracelet. Now, it wasn't any old gold bracelet: it was one from my great grandmother, the person from whom I thought we had no heirlooms, and yet the very same person from whom I'd inherited the faith of my ancestors. I was gobsmacked! The Lord in His sovereign Will and inimitable style—working through my mother who has never known God and yet in this was an agent of His Will—confirmed the validity of my spiritual inheritance from my great grandmother with the small but meaningful symbol of my wife's material inheritance from the self-same person! When it comes time to sit down with my mother and tell her the Gospel, this story will be Exhibit Number One.

The Hebrew Scholar

My passion for Bible scholarship—which preceded my rebirth in Christ by many years—may have come from one of my great grandfathers—my father's mother's father—who also passed away before I was born. Charles Alexander Brodie Brockwell immigrated from England to Canada in 1906 to teach Hebrew and Semitic languages at McGill University in Montreal, where he would teach until 1937. He was an Anglican clergyman by background, and came to be an outspoken Canadian supporter—along with a number of North American evangelists—for the formation of a Jewish homeland in the Holy Land. He would sometimes speak publicly in Hebrew and encouraged "both Christians and Jews to study Jewish culture and the Hebrew language" (source). He was also an eccentric: according to my father, he claimed to be able to "prove" that any word in the English language derived ultimately from Hebrew.

But here's the kicker: he himself just might have been part Jewish. I don't know the fully family history yet, but he's probably related to the Scottish Clan Brodie. More remarkable yet, however, is that the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth from 1948 to 1965 was a gentleman by the name of Sir Israel Brodie—is Brodie some kind of Judeo-Scottish family name!? Could there be any relation—no matter how distant—between my Hebraicist, Anglican, Anglo-Scottish great grandfather and the former Chief Rabbi!? That's a mystery I will have to investigate in the years to come.

The Reformed Hymnodist

I suspect my great grandfather might have been a Dispensationalist, but fortunately, my father has some ancestors with more soundly Reformed tendencies, or at least sympathies. Before today, I only knew that Henry Thomas Smart was the nephew of Sir George Thomas Smart, an English conductor and friend of Beethoven and Weber, who was born in 1776 (the year of American independence) and died in 1867 (the year of Canadian confederation). Unlike his uncle, Henry Thomas was not a friend of famous composers, but he did his work for God. He was the organist at St Luke's Old Street for many years, then at St Pancras—both in London, and both Anglican churches. He may, nevertheless, have been himself Reformed, for apart from his tentmaking worship ministries, he was heavily involved for many years with Presbyterian hymnody. According to one website:

He edited The Presbyterian Hymnal, 1875, and the Chorale Book, 1856, which was later considered the standard for hymn-tune harmonization. Lightwood regards this work as instrumental in determining the harmonic structure of English hymn-tunes just as Bach's harmonizations did for the German chorale. He was also the music editor for [the English Presbyterian hymnbook] Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship, 1867, and the hymn book of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. He also contributed tunes to Hymns Ancient and Modern, 1861, and to Psalms and Hymns, 1867.

Frankly, I myself am not so thoroughly versed in church hymns that I immediately recognize any of the hymns he scored, but he wrote the tune for Lead On, O King Eternal and the tune Regent Square, which is used in a number of hymns and which was named for Regent Square Presbyterian Church in London, whose pastor, a Dr. Hamilton, was the chief editor of Psalms and Hymns for Divine Worship. He also wrote Misericordia, an alternate arrangement for Just As I Am, the usual preferred scorings being Woodworth or Saffron Walden.

Anyhow, this concludes today's excursus. The purpose of today's post was not boastfulness—how can I boast in three such unknown people, two of whom might have been somewhat well known in their time but are certainly not famous today?—but to try to dig a bit deeper at why God called me. Why did He call me? I have no idea. None of us can know why he calls some and not others. It's certainly not due to any meritorious qualities of my own, and definitely in spite of my own sinful obstinacy, stubbornness, and selfishness. Who knows why He chooses any of us, but for His own glorification? But maybe, just maybe, He had let enough generations in my mother's and father's families lapse into faithlessness, that it was time to reignite in my generation the spark of faith of my ancestors—both Jewish and Gentile.

On Baptism and Books

2007-05-23T19:14:00.000-07:00

Praise God that by his grace and sovereign will he has led me to salvation. On January 26th of this year, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit; on April 8th, I was baptized by immersion. (The church I attend is a Mennonite Brethren church—essentially an evangelical Mennonite church—with strong Reformed tendencies. The MB come out of the same tradition as the Baptists, and like the Baptists hold believers' baptism as one of their distinctives.)

Over the many years before God saved me, I read countless books, chapters, articles, commentaries, sermon notes and the like on Christianity, but upon being born again, I had to start from scratch—relearn everything from a new, Christ-centered, evangelical paradigm. Most of my reading since January has been the scads of contemporary and historical writing available online, but I have actually managed to read the occasional physical, "hard-copy" book—above all, the Bible, including the Gospel According to John, which I read through on "Easter eve" as a sort of cram course in preparation for the Easter church service.

I should have kept better track of what I've read "offline," but apart from sections and chapters of a number of books, I've only actually read one book full through from beginning to end since I've been saved (apart from John): Now That You're a Christian from the Christianity 101 series by Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz. Okay, stop laughing. Yes, it's a short book with some Arminian overtones, but I needed to start somewhere, and this short handbook on how to live after salvation was not so bad. In the same vein, I'm now working on Dave Branon's Where Do I Go From Here? which seems to be doctrinally sound and is actually pretty good.

For meatier stuff, I'm halfway through Michael Green's The Day Death Died, an apologetical work on the bodily resurrection of Christ. Praise the Lord for showing me through apologetics (a field I discovered before picking up Green's book) that it is possible even in the 21st century to have an intellectually solid faith in the reality of the Risen Christ. Next up will be John R. W. Stott's Our Guilty Silence: The Church, the Gospel, and the Word (1967), which is a call to evangelism.

Now, those are all short books and ones that are easily available to me (through my church library). The stuff I really want to read may be trickier to obtain, for reasons of finance or simply availability. Just within the last couple of days, I've had all the following authors or books recommended or mentioned to me—all books definitely worth taking a look at:

* David Wells' various books on the state of modern evangelicalism;
* J. Gresham Machen's What is Faith? and Christianity and Liberalism (the latter available online);
* Carl F. H. Henry's The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (the link is not a book review per se but includes some excerpts);
* And far above and beyond any of the above three authors, Jonathan Edwards' A History of the Work of Redemption.

Edwards' work in particular is important, both for the obvious fact that it's Edwards, but because I need to find a wholistic understanding of God's redemptive history that among other things, is consistent with God's promise to believing Jews in Romans 11:23 (for how else could I have been saved?). From what little I know of them, dispensationalism and supersessionism won't do it for me; Edwards' theology, on the other hand (which apparently is somewhat related to covenant theology) seems to be closer to the right approach.

At any rate, I'd better get busy!

Welcome!

2007-02-01T11:44:00.000-08:00

What does it mean for an atheist Jew to declare Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour? What does it mean for the branch of an olive tree that has been cut off from that tree to be grafted back in (Romans 11.23-24)? This blog will seek to answer those questions.

Judaism and Christianity

In his Letter to the Romans, Paul wrote of the possibility of both Jews and Gentiles finding salvation in Christ. Paul knew what he was writing about, for he himself was a Jew who through God's grace had come to know Jesus. Jesus was born and died a devout Jew, and all of Jesus' earliest followers were Jews. The Evangelists drew heavily on their understanding of Hebrew scripture in writing the Gospels, and the very heart of the Gospel—that Jesus is the only son of God, sent by God to suffer, die on the Cross, and rise again so that we may be saved from our sins—makes no sense without the Jewish theological context from which it arose.

The Jewish heritage fills and enriches Christianity, but for many centuries was ignored or downright suppressed. Jews were held to be collectively responsible for the Crucifixion, despite the fact that Jesus himself and all of this followers were also Jews. (It would be more accurate to say that the 1st-century Jewish elite—members of the Pharisaic and priestly classes—were responsible for Jesus' death, insofar as his message was a threat to the socio-religious status quo.) Over the centuries, many Jews suffered at the hands of people who called themselves Christians. One of the many ways in Jews were made to suffer for their alleged misdeeds were through forced conversion to Christianity. (How can someone be forced to convert, when true conversion can only be brought about through God's grace, a gift he imparts however he likes to Jew and Gentile alike?) As a result, many Jews even today are deeply mistrustful of Christian efforts to convert Jews—and even spontaneous Jewish conversion (without evangelical outreach) to Christianity.

Finding God

I am a Jew* who affirms that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour. Nobody evangelized to me—in fact, when I was younger, I despised anyone who preached that to be saved, one needed to believe the Gospel. My mother is an atheist, and I did not believe in God—not even the Jewish conception of God, let alone Jesus Christ as the Son of God!—right up through my teenage years. I went to a secular Jewish Sunday school (yes, Sunday school), where I learned, for example, of Moses' deliverance of the Jews from Egypt, but all the stories I learned were completely stripped of any reference to God. Moses was simply an ancient version of Gandhi, not someone appointed by God to deliver his Chosen People and give them the Torah. On top of all this, I was a cynical and skeptical child, and deeply mistrusted anyone who professed any kind of religious belief.

Despite this religiously impaired background, Jesus started calling to me when I was 17. I didn't even understand what was happening at first—God spoke to me in a dream, but I didn't even know it was God, for example (more on that in another post)—but slowly, I started reading the Bible, praying, and inexplicably, believing in God. This went on for years, but it was a struggle. I went through periods of faith and doubt, strong and weak belief. I did not understand the Gospel message—that Jesus died on the Cross for our sins—although I wanted to. I could only conceive of Jesus as a gifted teacher. I thought of myself as a Christian—I read the Gospels and went to Church every Sunday—but the faith that God was nurturing within me was at really more Jewish than Christian, though with a fairly open-minded attitude towards Jesus.

In hindsight, going through a "Jewish" phase was probably necessary. How could I embrace Christ when I didn't even understand the religion that was the common heritage of both him and me? But ultimately, the well ran dry. I could only nurture for so long a faith in God that did not understand Jesus as the Son of God. I felt no compulsion to follow the 613 laws of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), but without understanding Paul's doctrine of salvation through grace, I knew there was no intellectual or theological basis for claiming belief in God but not following his laws. On top of it all, remember that I was coming into all this from an atheistic background. I had a natural inclination to not believe in God at all! So for over 18 years from when Jesus first called me till now, I struggled and struggled with my faith. Over time, I couldn't imagine living without God, yet I couldn't figure out how to live with God!

Accepting Jesus Christ

Two years ago, God revealed the mystery of the Cross to me. Through a dream and the events that led up to the it and followed it, I finally began to understand the nature of Christ's suffering and dying as atonement for our sins. Then a year ago, a Bible study group I was participating in studied the [Book of/Letter to the] Hebrews. God showed me the full significance of Christ's being crucified for our sins, as it was grounded in ancient Jewish concepts of atonement through sacrifice. Despite all this, I wasn't yet fully ready to accept Jesus.

About a year ago, my wife (who was also not born into a Christian household and who also struggles with her faith) and I found a wonderful church to attend right in our own neighbourhood. We started attending services there every week, and participating in weekly Bible study classes. Our pastor spent most of this winter—apart from Christmas-related services—preaching on Paul's Letter to the Romans, Chapters 9 to 11. Now, I had long struggled with Paul's letters. In fact, in almost decades of Bible reading, I'd read through the entire Torah (the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses) Joshua, Job, all four Gospels, Acts, Revelation, and smatterings of other books, and yet never been able to finish even a single one of Paul's letters. I just couldn't understand his theology—I couldn't get where he was coming from. Even going through all but the penultimate sermon in the series, I couldn't really dig what this (Romans 9 to 11) was all about, except it had something to do with the relationship between Christians and Jews.

Meanwhile, I was falling further and further into sinfulness. No, nothing really horrible or scandalous, but that was my problem—because I hadn't done anything really bad, I thought I wasn't an inherently sinful person. Without acknowledging my sinfulness, of course, it was impossible for me to make the necessary leap and ask God to forgive me for my sins. Anyhow, my sin was selfishness. (It still is my sin, but at least I'm aware of it now and trying to change my life so that I am not a slave to it.) I was self-absorbed. I was always doing my own thing. I didn't pay attention to my wife. I never wanted to do the things she wanted to do. I never wanted to do anything to help her out or make her life easier. It's like I was determined to make her regret marrying me! Meanwhile, I figured if I could only have a strong faith in God, I would become a changed man. Then I would be a better husband. The problem was, I kept on putting off trying to find God. I'll do it tomorrow, I would keep on telling myself.

Things finally came to a head two and a half weeks ago. First, our pastor preached on Romans 11, Verses 16 to 24. The crux of this passage—and especially of his wonderful sermon—is that Jews are just as entitled to salvation—no more, no less—than Gentiles. We can all be children in Christ's family. My grandmother and mother rejected God and therefore turned our bloodline away from the faith of our ancestors, but God could graft me back in to the natural olive tree of my own ancestral faith—with the added affirmation of Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, since he is the Messiah, the natural completion of the faith of my ancestors, the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. (Actually, shortly before she died, even my resolutely atheist Grandmother took up a course or two in comparative religion, though I don't know if she actually turned to God or not. After she passed away, we discovered she had a Jerusalem Bible, books about the Bible, and even the writings of St. Theresa Avila!)

For the first time, it made perfect sense to me that I should be a Christian. Calling myself a Christian had always felt somewhat unnatural to me. I had always felt like an outsider in Church, since I as a Jew had a very different background from all the Gentiles around me. (It helps that the church we go to now is very multi-ethnic, with as many Asians as Caucasians.) Meanwhile, remember that my non-spiritual life was falling apart. My wife hated me for my self-absorption—I was so wrapped up in myself that I was actually completely oblivious to it!—and we basically stopped even talking to each other.

Things had come to a head, and I saw no way forward. My life and marriage were falling apart. I wanted to get close to God—and for the first time in my life, had found a community where I would feel comfortable doing that—but I didn't know how to go about it. I was lost. One week ago today, I took the first step and prayed to accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour. Despite years of praying to God and even to Jesus, I had never actually accepted Jesus. At first, I didn't feel any different. But the next night, my wife and I went to an evening prayer and worship service at our Church. After the hymns had all been sung and it was time for individual prayer, I started praying. I prayed for Jesus to forgive my sins, but at first, it was just empty words. But gradually, a strong feeling came over me, and I started to feel more and more strongly how sinful I had truly been throughout my life, and how much I really, truly needed God to forgive me for my sins. I started sobbing uncontrollably. Someone came over to hold my hand and pray with me. Someone else was holding me. I couldn't stop crying! I didn't feel contrite enough sitting in the chair praying, so I got down on the floor. By the time the prayer session was over, I was bent over, crying, in a fetal position. The Holy Spirit had come into me.

Receiving the Holy Spirit

I was born again—reborn in the Holy Spirit. I had never understood what "born again" meant. In fact, I deeply mistrusted anyone who claimed to be "born again." And yet, here I was, born again. Instantaneously, Paul made sense. I got where he was coming from. The Gospel of John makes sense—more Biblical writing that I had long had trouble understanding. For the first time in my life, I had no doubt that God had been working all these many years to save me, and that salvation had come through Jesus Christ. This atheist found God, and this Jew found Christ.

I am still getting used to writing as someone who once and for all has found salvation in Jesus Christ. I am still trying to find my new footing. In the days and weeks to come, I will use this blog to explore various aspects of my faith journey. What does becoming a Christian mean for a Jew? What does it mean for an atheist? Why did God call me? What is he calling me to do? As unworthy as I am, what spiritual gifts has he given me to carry out whatever ministry he wants me to carry out? I will also explore the process involved in becoming a member of my church, as my wife's Korean pastor at the church (during whose prayer and worship service the Holy Spirit visited me) has invited me to become baptized.

Wherever you are on your faith journey—even if like I once was you are an avowed atheist—welcome. No matter what your religion may be, welcome. I will not use this blog to preach what you should believe, especially when I myself am such a neophyte in the family of Christ. Truth be told, I have far more questions than answers at this point! Anyhow, for most of my life, Christian evangelists pushed me away from Christ—through no fault of their own, mind you, but because I wasn't ready to hear what they were saying, and coming from such a different cultural-religious-philosophical background, I couldn't relate to their message. If you feel that God has been calling you, however, and you are struggling with this as I did for so many years—or you feel that you are ready to accept God—or you are wracked by doubt—perhaps I can help you in some small way, although you should not take me to be any kind of authority on the matter. Ultimately, I can only speak with authority on the basis of my own faith experience, and your experience with God may very well be quite different from mine.

Praise be to Jesus.

*Actually, I'm half Jewish. My mother is Jewish, and my father is Christian. According to Jewish law, however, because my mother is Jewish, I'm fully Jewish, even though she's an atheist. Plus I received some secular Jewish cultural education through my Mom, but never anything on the Christian side from my Dad, who although nominally Christian is agnostic and has probably never attended a church service since well before I was born. So it's easier just to say I was raised Jewish! (Back to article)

Statement of Faith

2007-01-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Note: I last updated this on April 21st, 2009 (based on material written up to two years earlier), but to keep it at the "end" of the blog, I've given it a posting date of January 1st, 2007.

Your humble writer is an evangelical Christian. Since "evangelical" is a term that is at once both so fluid and so loaded (so that it can denote almost anything its adherents or detractors wish it to mean), it begs clarification.

Strictly speaking, "evangelical" means "of or pertaining to the 'evangel.'" "Evangel" is an anglicized form of euangelion, a Greek word meaning "good news," which in the Bible refers specifically to the Gospel: the good news of Jesus Christ. ("Gospel" itself is the modern form of the Old English godspell, which literally meant "good news.")

In other words, I am committed to the truth of the Gospel: the good news that God gave His only Son Jesus Christ to die on the Cross for our sins, for it is only by Christ's mediating work on the Cross that we can be reconciled to a just and holy God.

"Just hold it right there!," you respond. "Does anyone really believe this stuff any more?" Let me say plainly: I am Jewish by birth (half-Jewish technically, but on my mother's side, which makes me wholly Jewish according to rabbinic tradition) and was raised as an atheist. I spent the bulk of my adult life somewhere on the continuum between open agnosticism and thoroughgoing skepticism. It took many, many years to come to terms with what the Bible says, and when I did, I'd learned through many hard lessons that it had to be on the Bible's terms, and not my terms. (You can read my testimonial here for more background.)

Reading the Bible on its own terms, we learn that Jesus Christ existed from before the foundation of the world, dwelled among us in human form, led a sinless life, suffered and died for our sins in accordance with what was foretold in the Old Testament, was raised from the dead, appeared to many witnesses after His resurrection, sits at the right hand of God, and will return at the end of time to judge the living and the dead.

"Christ" is the Greek term for "Messiah," the anointed descendant whom God promised to David, who would reign on his throne forevermore. God's promise to us is that if we repent for our sins—for none of us is truly righteous—and place our faith and trust in what Jesus Christ did on the Cross for us, we will have eternal life in fellowship with God as His adopted children, made citizens of an everlasting Kingdom by God's grace and for His glory.

If you want to know more about who Jesus Christ is, please see Two ways to live: The choice we all face. If you have questions or want to know what to do next, please contact me at sa_ewing AT hotmail DOT com.

Now, for those keeping score at home:

In practical terms, I'm a baptized member of a church in the Mennonite Brethren tradition, which practises believers' baptism. I affirm the Five Solas and the Doctrines of Grace (the foundational principles of historical orthodox Protestantism), the full inerrancy of Scripture in its original languages, and the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ for our sins, as set out in the Pentateuch, taught by the Prophets, proclaimed in the Gospels, exposited in the Epistles, and brought to its denouement in Revelation.

I affirm my church's Statement of Faith, which reflects a century-plus-old lineage of denominational confessions. It is also consistent on key matters of doctrine with the historic confession for those who affirm the historic Protestant essentials together with the practice of believers' baptism: the 1689 London Baptist Confession.

I also affirm in whole the following modern evangelical declarations and statements: the Cambridge Declaration; the Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy, Hermeneutics, and Application; and the Confessional Statement of the Gospel Coalition.

To sum up and elaborate, somewhat more poetically: I am broken branch regrafted into God's olive tree (Romans 11:23), a child of the Old Covenant by the flesh (Exodus 24:8) and of the New Covenant by the Spirit (Jeremiah 31:33, 1 Corinthians 11:25). In soteriology reformed, in hermeneutics covenantal, in ecclesiology credobaptist, and in eschatology posttribulational.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
	be acceptable in your sight,
	O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
	(Psalm 19:14)

The Lord said to me, "You are my Son;
	today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
	and the ends of the earth your possession."
	(Psalm 2:7b-8)