Category Archives: The Faith

November 29, 2011

I Don’t Exactly Surrender All

By Pooka

 

So this is another long one. It’s an exploration one of the most popular themes from my yesteryear, that which failed to sink Gospel teeth into me. It’s probably not perfectly formed, so I’m up for clarifying critique. On with the show.

The last two White Horse Inn episodes I’ve listened to, along with reading J.G. Machen have started me on another round of anti-navel-gazing ponderance. The questions posed in the gospel of pragmatism are whether our experience, or life story is the Gospel and whether making disciples can be a system similar to the process of a factory. Yep, back to the Finney Finish and Me-ism I go.

What should be amazingly easy, but we all seem to forget constantly, is that ever-present religion of Me-ism. It’s not just that we believe our personal testimony is the prime tool for bringing people to Christ, but that our very life is critical to everything in our Religion. I mean here that if I sin grievously, persistently, that my faith is in doubt. That I might not be saved. I also mean here that if I’m not living “as a Christian should”, that I have no witness to bear.

This is insane. If I sin grievously once or persistently over time, my faith could be in doubt. But that is missing the point. My salvation can not be in doubt, because God has promised me eternal life, salvation by Grace through faith, entirely being His gift. He has not promised me a cleaned-up, perfected life right now. If this was not the case, my baptism should’ve been a bit more dramatic in its results, I believe, and I should also be a very effective preacher, missionary or seminary prof by now. And a lot of other really awesome Bibley things. 

Salvation does not hinge on what I’m doing right now or late at night with my friends. It does not hinge on me falling off the wagon or getting on the wrong wagon. It hinges on me trusting in Jesus Christ. It hinges on me believing The Gospel and not, especially not, in the testimony of somebody else or the change in my life. And my believing the Gospel does not hinge on me! It hinges on God. Assurance is not me and is not subjective. It is God and His Word that assure me.

But we turn round again, at every turning, back to this doubt and sense of hopelessness that we are not saved, or that we have forsaken our right to the fellowship of the church. Garbage. Instead of us re- blanket training ourselves the Gospel has removed us from the sin blanket that makes us dependent on our own goodness to get in with God.

Getting all this Gospel-centeredness straightened out should lead to another amazing revelation. The Gospel is The Gospel. It’s not me and my long tale of conversion. The story I have put up in the About here at LAH is not the Gospel. Notice all the potential Me-ism in there. I put it up there not in hopes that somebody would come to faith by reading it but to show where I come from and where I’ve been, for relevance and sharing the joy of what’s happened. 

If I crash and burn tomorrow, falling into a pit of sinful misery at the bar in Thailand with two women, tequila, a doobie and a stolen car, my pretty story suddenly takes on  a new light. It begs the question, “What about now? All that awesome stuff really didn’t mean anything, did it?” And so my “witness” is shot. And in a majority of churches, I’d be suddenly out of grace, considered unsaved, reprobate, a false convert or maybe even just plain subject to losing my salvation. Garbage. In fact, based on what most Christian teaching implies, if I show up in church next Sunday after my vacation, reformed and confessing my sin, I’d better ask Christ into my life and forgive my sins, heck – even get baptized again, cause I wasn’t really saved last week. But that’s not it at all.

Now I hope and pray the Lord will forever protect me from such a demise. He’s definitely put in place a lot of safeguards that are very likely to limit the chances of me getting into such a situation. But that’s not it for the Gospel. The point here is that what I do is not critical to the Gospel. What Christ did is critical to the Gospel. It is the Gospel. And if I believe it, I’m saved. Not perfected. Romans 12:1-2 the whole New Testament is about believing the truth and then working it out, not hearing the truth and then meeting Joel Osteen.

Okay, so what can I look for, for indicators that I’m saved? If all the stuff above doesn’t clear any fog, maybe this might help a little: Here’s what changes, in varying degree and extent, for a Christian.

Before:  I loved to sin. I felt guilty because I knew I was doing wrong, sometimes, but mostly because of consequences. I constantly dug for reasons to legitimize my evil, self-centered desires and pursuits. I hated the idea of a judging God who set the rules and, regardless of my opinion, made them not-optional.

After: I hate being sinful. I hate that everything I do is tainted with Me-ism and weakness. I do as much wrong as I did before, only now it’s worse. Much of that obvious evil activity that characterized my life is now well hidden. Maybe some of it really is deleted from my programming, but most? Still here. I’m essentially the same dirty person. But I believe that God has promised me salvation. I believe that Christ did what is impossible for me and then paid the price for all that I have done (and will do). So I can rest in these things, thankful that everything I have that is good is provided, not by anything I’ve done, by God Himself.

I don’t exactly surrender all, rather I believe and increase in beliefs about what is true and what follows is a deeper love for God and His ways. That causes a deeper hatred of my ways and the world’s ways. But what everything returns to is the Message. Christ lived for my righteousness, died for my sins rose again for my life.

Sheesh

All to Jesus I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.

Refrain:
I surrender all,
I surrender all;
All to Thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Humbly at His feet I bow,
Worldly pleasures all forsaken;
Take me, Jesus, take me now.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;
Let me feel the Holy Spirit,
Truly know that Thou art mine.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Lord, I give myself to Thee;
Fill me with Thy love and power;
Let Thy blessing fall on me.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Now I feel the sacred flame.
Oh, the joy of full salvation!
Glory, glory, to His Name!

Feeling? I can’t trust my feelings. Surrender? How can I give up this stuff of my own volition? Freely give? I think it’s better if He takes, so I’m gonna pray for that. Giving me to Christ? God gave me to Christ:

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. — John 6:37

Here’s what is good. I fight all day against my sin. At the end of the day I look back and usually I can dump out a decent bucket of sin onto the table for sorting and examining. Sometimes there’s a piece of sin that is not there, often one that is pretty familiar and usually in the mix. But not often. It seems that my evil just won’t diminish, in fact it seems to become more detailed heavy. And I can, by the grace of God, look at it and then at my Savior and know that I’m forgiven and that someday this mess is really going to be cleaned up. And then I look ahead to Sunday, always looking ahead to Sunday, and the reunion with the rest of my people who are just like me, gathered to worship the One we are not: The Saving God Who Keeps His Promises.

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November 27, 2011

Who’s The Moral Monster?

By Pooka

Machen claims there’s a better relationship to be had with the atheist than with liberal christians. Atheists hold that God is a moral monster, capricious and petty, even inconsistent between the Old and New Testament. Some liberal christians seem to have the idea that there are two different gods in the two Testaments, which puts them essentially in the same camp as the atheists. Well, except for the fact that atheists deny God outright and only render philosophical judgement of Christianity’s beliefs. Liberals deal viciously with the Christian religion at the same time as they pretend to uphold it. But they come to their pulpits with a demolished Gospel, misrepresented Christ and much more. Both they and the atheists get a lot in common when you pare it all down. Humanists, the lot of ‘em.

I think we should turn this all on its head, this conception of God. An honest look at Scripture must force a different God on the scene and therefore a different man than what men presume to understand.

Genesis 19 is a great place to start a case. We heard this chapter from the pulpit today, and it is a rich passage. It makes a very powerful claim that men, not God, are the moral monsters. Where He is consistent through all of Scripture (and History, believe it or not) we are the ones who are wandering around, blind and helpless. Men are without a moral compass and have been experimenting with the means of government, piety and morality for millenia without any great success to date.

Conversely, when God hates a thing, it is clear that He hates it. When God promises, He is faithful. When God requires, He does not lower the bar.

Consistency. The God of the New Testament, if anything, is even more intense than in the Old. He wipes out entire cities, countries, nations and even the whole world in the Old Testament. But in the New, He unleashes His full wrath on just one man. And not only that, the man who suffers is God’s Son, who deserves none of the punishment meted out. God is consistent in the small stuff too, taking care of Ananias and Sapphira, Herod through OT methods as well as blinding, muting, cursing, condemning and other things which certainly hail back a few centuries before the advent of Christ and Apostles.

Meanwhile, men are also consistent. In Genesis, we are vicious, intolerant toward right-thinking men, murderous to strangers and unfaithful to each other. In the New Testament, we’re unfaithful spouses, debauchers and drunks, hoarders, liars and unjust judges. We kill indiscriminately, free convicted criminals for innocent prisoners, wash the blood from our hands and pretend to be gods. We have no concept of sexual purity, legal propriety or familial honor in any place in history. We praise the corrupt man and seek to destroy the pure man.

Who is the moral monster? It’s us, not God. God knows His rules and abides by them. Not only that, but since they’re His rules, He expects us to abide by them too. I’ll call God consistent and faithful, how about you? An honest reader, whether Christian or not, should be able to see this in the Bible. Lamentably, it appears even our reason is ruined to the point where we cannot make sense of the most blatantly simple logic.

Thankfully, He is consistent and faithful. The real God is faithful enough that, knowing we are hopelessly bent and lacking any ability to break out of our condition, He promises help and then keeps His promise. Christ, the Son who suffered unjustly in our world, kept God’s requirements to the letter and then willingly assumed the position as the representative of all men of all times. God delighted to judge Christ as a sinner rather than us who deserve judgement, and Christ delighted to see that suffering. The delight is in looking at the results. The horror lifted our death sentence and freed us to cleave to Him, Jesus, and finally rest in hope of a day without missing God’s love, without missing His mark. We can see the tiny changes in a life that’s reborn because of Jesus. Believing this, we too will suffer and most of us will die, but we will, like Jesus, be brought back alive to reside with Him. God is consistent and keeps His promises. Someday, we who belong to God will no longer be moral monsters. We’ll be righteous sons and daughters, and God can already see us like that: for Him, we look like Jesus.

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November 23, 2011

Where we go, will you go?

By Pooka

Where you go, I will go...

Here is what Ruth said to Naomi:

“Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the LORD do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.”

Here is R.C. Sproul’s note on Ruth:

The Hebrew for clung in Ruth 1:14 is the same word used to describe the marriage relationship. In other words, Ruth clung to her mother-in-law in covenant fidelity, knowing that she was bound by her promise before the face of God to remain with and aid her mother-in-law, no matter how difficult it would be. This is the same devotion we are to have to the Lord’s people today. No matter our flaws, we Christians must love and serve one another.

And Matthew Henry’s Commentary:

Nothing could be said more fine, more brave, than this. She seems to have had another spirit, and another speech, now that her sister had gone, and it is an instance of the grace of God inclining the soul to the resolute choice of the better part. Draw me thus, and we will run after thee. Her mother’s dissuasions made her the more resolute; as when Joshua said to the people, “You cannot serve the Lord,” they said it with the more vehemence, “Nay, but we will.”

We might say today that no one can commit to such a thing as Ruth did without some move of the Spirit. This is an amazing speech from someone like Ruth, amazing and weighted with intensity. She’s entering into the covenant here. And we can’t think she doesn’t know what she’s saying, either. There is plenty of evidence that God’s covenantal structure was present in ancient non-Jewish traditions as well. This fine lady is dropping everything to align herself with Israel.

These are the membership vows we took upon joining our church. I’ve edited so they are personal and line up. The reference is the PCA Book of Church Order, Chapter 57.

I acknowledge myself to be a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure, and without hope save in His sovereign mercy. I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and Savior of sinners, and I receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered in the Gospel? I now resolve and promise, in humble reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit, that I will endeavor to live as becomes the followers of Christ. I promise to support the Church in its worship and work to the best of my ability. I submit myself to the government and discipline of the Church, and promise to study its purity and peace.

I wonder that Ruth 1:16 isn’t commonly considered in the basic introduction for new believers. I certainly never encountered it. I don’t think it was covered much in the years I was in the church as a kid, either. I think this is something to plumb out in discussion with those who frequently reach out in evangelism. When we follow-up with folks, should we not use such clear examples of covenant-making? I must admit, a die-hard Arminian can see the value in Ruth’s declaration here.

Someone could say that Ruth didn’t know what she was getting into here, and was just being expedient about the whole cleaving to Naomi. Ruth just needed something to hang on to, right? I doubt it was that easy, though certainly some pragmatism should be understood. Ruth wouldn’t have a naive approach to what she committed to, considering it was a Jewish family into which she’d married and a Jewish woman with whom she was returning to Israel. Though Alimelech had taken his family out from Israel, I highly doubt he could have conceived of taking Israel out of his family. The traditions and practices would’ve remained, and from first meeting to final words in that relationship, Ruth and Orpah would have been exposed to the richness of the Israelites’ relationship to God. No doubts she had the best introduction to what she was getting into well before she committed herself to Ruth and the One True God on the roadside.

I wonder that our churches do not query us in the way that Ruth volunteered herself. I wonder if there’s anyone today who has been asked,

“Where we go, will you go? Where we lodge, will you lodge? Will our people be your people, and our God, your God? Where we die, will you die, and there be buried? Shall thus the LORD do to us, and worse, if anything but death parts you and us?”

It sounds a bit harsh for these modern days, doesn’t it?

So there’s another version:

1. Do you acknowledge yourselves to be sinners in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure, and without hope save in His sovereign mercy?

2. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and Savior of sinners, and do you receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered in the Gospel?

3. Do you now resolve and promise, in humble reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit, that you will endeavor to live as becomes the followers of Christ?

4. Do you promise to support the Church in its worship and work to the best of your ability?

5. Do you submit yourselves to the government and discipline of the Church, and promise to study its purity and peace?

Updated for modern parlance and conversant with the realized covenant of Grace, of course, but isn’t it quite similar? The God of Israel instituted the church; and it is Christ’s body, sustained by Him, founded on Him, with all members finding their place in Him. We can all agree on that, it being well-developed throughout the New Testament.

So I find that this pair of vows, in Ruth and in the church are important enough to make me wonder what in the world could possibly be right about a church that refuses to require this of her members? Shouldn’t that be cause for deep concern? That one who hasn’t committed to the people of God, to Israel, to Christ is seen as an accepted, acceptable part of the Body? Good Lord! What standard is there for communion if not this? It would be like the President just walking in after elections and taking over the Oval Office without first standing in front of the nation and taking the Oath of Office! Only worse! God’s people are in office for far more than 4 years in a country far larger than one nation. We’re eternally bound to God and His country! And in our commitment, do we not absolutely have to have a door into that commitment? Dare I say a public one?

I didn’t have a problem taking the vows of membership at New Life. Now, after a year here, having learned much more about what Reformed, Confessional, Creedal and Covenantal really mean, I would retake those vows in a heartbeat, and say them again with far more gravity than the first time. I realize that we have a situation very analogous to Ruth’s covenant promise when we come to Christ’s church. I don’t see how a church could survive otherwise, for without these covenant oaths, there isn’t even a door-keeper. Ruth understood that, and said the password – and I don’t for a minute assume she didn’t intend to make this in front of God as much as Naomi and then expect to have to maintain the same before the Israel she was about to encounter.

Sheesh. The severity of these oaths, the commitment God has delivered to us, in light of the salvation He has made for us, all should take our breath away. If the continuity of God’s covenants and the Biblical consistency of our own promises which we make in return isn’t obvious by now, where can we go? I guess the test really is, at some point, to look carefully and see if we can honestly say, along with Ruth,

“where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the LORD do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.”

If that can happen, then we’ve at least the satisfaction of the keepers of the keys to Heaven.

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November 22, 2011

Rolled Back As A Scroll

By Pooka

The Clouds Rolled Back

 

There are moments when things click for us. Moments, short as a breath atop the mountain, that seem to clear the view can hit once in a long while. We learn to look forward to them; hope for them. But they’re not only brief but few. I think that’s good, since too much of a good thing ruins the impact. I wait impatiently for those glorious times when I’m absolutely in love with my wife. Those are the times when everything seems just right, the world is good and there’s nothing raging for our attention to fix, mediate or put down. They aren’t often predictable, and there’s not much I can do to increase the odds. It’s like God knows just when to make the peace happen.

Another is that split second when I grasp the depth of my sin. There are not enough moments like this wherein I really get as small as I know I am. Head knowledge is not the same as heart knowledge. Sometimes, maybe in church though not always, there’s this sudden snap-freeze in my soul that shows me how thoroughly I need my Savior. That’s a painful thing, but it’s like pressing my hand against something sharp when I need to focus or maintain control of myself – almost ecstatic to realize the Real Truth about me, if just for a heartbeat. It’s always fleeting, probably because if, like Isaiah, I’d be undone to actually pursue the depths of what I’ve only barely tasted.

The glorious value of my Savior is one that hits from time to time. I’d like to cultivate this appreciation, maybe of all these, most. It probably goes hand-in-hand with grasping my sinfulness, but if that’s the case, so be it. Sometimes we’re in church, we pray, confessing our sin and in the moments between confession and absolution the lights come on. Or at the Table, the bread comes down in the minister’s hands and I connect that with our Savior coming down, being broken for us, His church. It’s not really a “spiritual” sort of feeling, it’s like a concentrated realization of truth that’s in the head just breaking through to the heart.

I’ve recently hit the same “high” in studying on these ideas of God’s relationship, covenant and promises with His people. It’s rather overwhelming, if you think about it, to start to realize how far-reaching His faithfulness really is. I wish I could grasp the fullness of the plan of redemption made in eternity past. It’s connections to all that we’ve been told in the Scriptures is just plain awesome (I sure wish the skater crowd of yesteryear hadn’t ruined the meaning of awesome, it would sound more awesome right now).

Christ died for us because He was promised to us. Long before we came around and before He came around, He was on the way to us, the Rescuer of rescuers. When we hear the sirens coming that mean we’re to be saved from the fire, we just know it’s all going to be all right. Christ is a thousand times more than that. We have nothing to fight the blaze that is consuming our souls and spreading the destruction to every soul we touch. We’re all on fire and the Water of Life came to quench our destruction. This is what tastes best at the banquet of this religion. The realization that salvation has come, is coming, was always coming and is still to come. Our God is from everlasting to everlasting and so are His mercy and grace.

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November 21, 2011

People Are Designed Covenantally

By Pooka

The following quotes are definitions of covenant and come from a .PDF created by Grace Community Churc in PA.

Meredith Kline (1922‐2007)

…a berith (Hebrew word for covenant) is a legal kind of arrangement, a formal disposition of a binding nature. At the heart of a berith is an act of commitment and the customary oath‐form of this commitment reveals the religious nature of the transaction. The berith arrangement is no mere secular contract but rather belongs to the sacred sphere of divine witness and enforcement. The kind of legal disposition called berith consists then in a divinely sanctioned commitment. In the case of divine‐human covenants the divine sanctioning is entailed in God’s participation either as the one who himself makes the commitment or as the divine witness of the human commitment made in his name and presence.

J. Ligon Duncan

Now, berith in the Old Testament signifies a binding, mutual relationship with mutual obligations, a binding mutual relationship with attendant obligations.

Michael Horton

So what exactly is a covenant? Anticipating the definition in the next chapter, we can start by saying that from the most commonly used Hebrew word for this concept (bent), a covenant is a relationship of “oaths and bonds” and involves mutual, though not necessarily equal, commitments. As we will see shortly, some biblical covenants are unilaterally imposed commands and promises; others are entered into jointly. Some are conditional and others are unconditional. In other words, under the overarching concept of oaths and bonds we encounter a substantial variety of covenants in Scripture.

Something that I wonder at is how covenants are insanely far reaching. I think that this idea stems from God’s eternal perspective and, though we are “in time” where He is “outside time”, there is a reflection of our Lord’s span of attention. God steps in and does things that are temporal, of course, but we look at the first recorded covenant and see that it is one that comes before creation.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,

This is the classic predestination verse, right? It’s covenantal language. There’s a word study on this that I think is fitting: Ephesians 1:4 and that leads to another verse, 1st Corinthians 15:22 which talks about another covenantal impact (Adam’s federal headship).

When God declares or sets a covenant, it’s not a short-deal. It lasts. The first one He made with Adam is still killing us today. The second one, about the snake and the heel? Took us right to Christ.  The promise for Noah – still on: no water apocalypse. Moses? Law still here, though in Christ we’re freed from it. Redemption – always been in God’s agenda and as soon as it was served to us in Christ, became permanent backwards and forwards.

I’m just thinking about how we, as God’s creation, were first introduced to relationships by lasting relationships, or covenant agreements. And when we tried to sidestep or violate the covenants, retribution was swift and disastrous. But the covenants were there and in force, irrevocable and lasting.

Just because men were dispersed after the garden, Babel and then reset at the flood doesn’t seem to have eradicated the existence of God’s covenants. They, we might say, are in the blood. People are designed covenantally. The effects of the fall is that we become covenant breakers.

There is no point in history where we are found free of God’s promises, threats, commitments or agreements. What is happening, though, is that we’re getting worse about the whole thing. Our sin nature is denying God’s framework more and more fanatically which brings us to today where we’ve tried to delete the concepts entirely.

I don’t know how useful this line of thought really is. It doesn’t give me much to work with. Now, it’s helped me greatly in getting what I think is an improved understanding of our weekly Covenant Renewal, which is Sunday worship. It’s helped me understand baptism and the Lord’s Table better. It’s definitely built a bit more sense of responsibility and dedication to my family. But so far as “doing something” I’m not sure there actually is something to do. Perhaps this increased understanding is a thinking-changer rather than an imperative generator.

Maybe comprehending God’s covenant system is likened to the Gospel? The Gospel is a proclamation, not a to-do list. Understanding covenants is not the same as making covenants. I’m sure that, should I encounter another relationship commencement in my lifetime, I’ll look upon it differently, but I don’t think I’m going to be taking action in my local church to affect some system of covenant-making gunk. Besides, whatever I do, as a natural covenant-breaker, isn’t going to pan out much anyhow.

It looks like, just as God created our relationships, He also sustains them and there ain’t much we can do about either. All we’re doing, as I see it, is hitching along for the ride. Elbow grease is always in response to something God has done, not to get God to do something. And He supplies the motive power for the response, too, right?

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November 18, 2011

How To Get That Old Time Religion

By Pooka

Based on yesterday’s LONG post, here’s a shorter one.

Remember this part?

A few weeks ago, I put up a little bit about how painful it must have been to be one of the convicted Pharisees at Peters Big Sermon at Pentecost (I should rename the post “Cut To The Heart Thrice“). Think about this:

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

All the people answered, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!”

Those Pharisees were almost certainly thinking of what they had done to their families! When Peter said this (emphasis mine):

“Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

We know what happened:

When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

Look again at Peter’s response:

Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

Imagine their response to Peter. Here, I’ll help.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved

But think about this. If I’m right and the Pharisees were deeply grieved in their awareness of the vast curse they’d brought upon their families, how much more the impact on their souls when Peter gave them the absolution they so needed to hear. They changed radically because the seeds were already planted. Their lineage (think Abraham and how important that theme means) was saved! That is, if you understand the covenantal undergirding of this exchange between Peter and the Jews.

Now,

Think about this: We can best understand how Christ saved us by this very same covenantal perspective. How can He save us if there is no such thing as the covenant that Adam broke, Abraham received, Moses continued, Prophets and Judges and Kings and Priests maintained and returned to year after year? It’s The One Thing that best explains all this. God imputed Christ’s righteousness to His Children! He has died for us and our children – all those God has chosen for His Son.

Now how do we deny the same thing for our children? They’re God’s to do with as He pleases. According to the Bible and its covenants He pleases to have them brought to the sacraments of our church and to be a part of the covenant community.

How did Moses think about the prediction God gave him at the end of his days?

Then the Lord appeared at the Tent in a pillar of cloud, and the cloud stood over the entrance to the Tent. And the Lord said to Moses: “You are going to rest with your fathers, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. On that day I will become angry with them and forsake them; I will hide my face from them, and they will be destroyed. Many disasters and difficulties will come upon them, and on that day they will ask, ‘Have not these disasters come upon us because our God is not with us?’ And I will certainly hide my face on that day because of all their wickedness in turning to other gods.

Maybe he was a covenant type? I wonder what he thought about the demise of Israel?

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November 17, 2011

Let’s Presuppose A Few Things

By Pooka

Courthouse

Part 3. The first two in this line of thoughts on covenants, community and our relationships are here: Anti-Covenant and Individualism  and I Might Just Need To Be A We

At first, this may appear to be more of a formal apology for Covenant Theology, but bear with me. Also, I’m quite sure this has all been said before, so I can’t claim any originality here. That’s safer anyway since any time we deny the last 2,000 years of church history, we’re claiming that our current religion is the only one that is Christian throughout all history. Scary thought, eh? And what I’m about to discuss reaches back just a bit farther than Tertullian or Irenaeus or even Pentecost. Maybe a few thousand years past that. This is long, but I hope it has good returns. And I hope I’ve portrayed this accurately and understandably.

This doctrine of covenants is not pure theology. It’s not a tight, air-less doctrine that we can take or leave and not be deeply affected by the ramifications of the choice. It is hugely important. Once the barrier of modern presupposition is torn down, the other conflicts will start to resolve themselves fairly easily. That’s my own experience, at least.

Let me make the claim about this presupposition thing. There’s all sorts of discussion about presuppositional hermeneutics and theology. And it is absolutely correct to presuppose there are presuppositions required in the study of the Word. Which presupposition, or assumption if you will, is correct is vital, of course. And here’s the basic premise: The Bible is not speaking in the context of the 21st Century, modernity, the Reformation or even back in the days of Augustine. The Bible’s context is the Biblical eras. Get that and you’re on your way to 1st base.

Next, the Bible itself is filled with assumptions. Do you know the importance of Boaz heading out to the city gate when he’s checking on the status of Ruth’s availability? The Bible doesn’t add a footnote or aside comment to plumb the depths of this significant event. It assumes the reader knows what’s going on. The history and cultural importance of what’s going on at the city gate amongst the elders of the community is far more than what some consider just a civil affairs court setting.  Lot’s story was another one with that gate thing going on. But let’s put all that in the back of our minds. We’ve got to go deeper to make better sense of this.

The Bible assumes Covenant Theology. Really. No joke. It assumes the stuff I’ve been writing about in the last few days. We’ve heard all the debate over baptism, the Lord’s Table and Israel’s future so many times. There are conflicts that are so persistent they’ve lasted hundreds of years. I think they’re more heated today than ever. And it’s because, primarily, we have lost the sense of community and covenantal relationships that are assumed in the Bible.

Look at this language:

The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off–for all whom the Lord our God will call.

When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

And then look at this list: And Your Children and Household

Everybody wonders or fights over these sorts of passages. The Covenant guys extrapolate a connection to things like baptism of infants and the Baptist guys extrapolate the non-existence of infants. All sorts of ideas come up to try to explain this. Sometimes, I wonder if some of the Covenant guys are just as disrespectful of the text as the Baptists when trying to explain their position through use of household and your children. Does the Bible explain what is meant by these sorts of terms? No, not any more than with the gate-court thing in Ruth or Genesis.

Here’s why it’s confusing in the New Testament: When these terms are used, they’re repetition of Old Testament Language. And no, that’s not to “bring” the Old Testament way of thinking back to these Jews of the first century. It was to remind them of the significance of events past that correlate to current events. In all that was changing around in the New Covenant, there was going to be some conflict. Pharisaical law, gentile inclusion, realized forgiveness and justification, missionary trips, diaspora – all these things were new and scary and confusing. People needed to, get this, hear that everything hadn’t just stopped or fundamentally altered!

Peter and his fellow apostles were using this language because the Jews understood it. This means that we cannot presuppose our own 21st century opinion, which is grounded not in the Scriptures but in modern, pagan, non-covenantal thinking. We must look at this language as the Jews did. That’s why we don’t get an explanation in the Bible about what gate-courts, households and your children mean. And that’s why we don’t get a greater development of what the Table and Baptism mean right out of the text. It’s in there, absolutely, but in a, wait for it… presupposition.

I’ll say it again. This is all so hard because we aren’t looking in the right place. The Bible started out its narrative in the context of covenants – relational, promise-keeping, life-sharing, trust-bearing covenants. We are the ones who have changed over the millennia, not the Bible and not at the triumphant entry of Jesus Christ whose birthday celebration we are fast approaching. We have lost the perspective the Jews had.

I’m not calling for a return to Judaism or tossing our technology so we can wear robes to tear each time we’re cut to the heart. I’m not interested in raking dust for a few measly rows of fava beans and wheat sheaves. I like my Pollo Loco too much and I’d much rather have easy access to the last 2,000 years of theology right here on my infernal machines. I’m calling for us to look at Scripture in the historical, cultural frame in which it’s set. No helicopters in Revelation. No civil affairs court for the young moabitess. No ditching of infants until they’re old enough to say they believe.

Side comment: Refusing baptism of our kids is telling them that they are no different from the other kids across the block (the ones who have Wiccan parents right over there). We’re destroying their identity in a Christian family! No sacraments = no sense of being in the family of God.

A few weeks ago, I put up a little bit about how painful it must have been to be one of the convicted Pharisees at Peters Big Sermon at Pentecost (I should rename the post “Cut To The Heart Thrice“). Think about this:

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”

All the people answered, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!”

Those Pharisees were almost certainly thinking of what they had done to their families! When Peter said this (emphasis mine):

“Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

We know what happened:

When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”

Now look again at Peter’s response:

Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

That’s reaching all the way back to things like:

They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their descendants with them.

The OT said this in Deuteronomy 12:

Be careful to obey all these regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is good and right in the eyes of the LORD your God.

Here’s what changed when Christ fulfilled the Law, died in our place and rose again: I’ll grossly paraphrase this:

Be careful to believe this good news I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you and your children after you, because you will be doing what is good and right in the eyes of the LORD your God.

Nowhere is the concept of covenants, community and our relationships altered in the New Testament. It’s ratified by simply not changing the language.

End of story? We have to look at the Bible and realize that our presuppositions that make us unwilling to include our children in sacraments, unwilling to include them in worship are modern insertions to the Scriptures. Also, equally important are the concepts of family solidarity, congregation solidarity, discipline, submission, faithfulness and loyalty to our heads, elders and rulers. These things are assumed to be normal in the Scripture even more than they are overtly commanded. Dropping the concept of covenantal theology kills more than just National Israel’s future and sprinkling babies. It can kill our faith, folks – by confusing the message and hiding the promises God has made to us (and our children).

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November 15, 2011

I Might Just Need To Be A We

By Pooka

Calvin not Hobbes

In the last post, Anti-Covenant and Individualism, I was trying to start my line of though by expressing my impression of the extreme difficulty we have in communicating the idea of covenant baptism in general. I believe it is difficult because there is so little framework in our modern culture with which to understand it. We’ve lost the concept of covenants and commitments. Everything has to be spelled out on paper and even then there’s always somebody ready to weasel a way out of (or into) something in the relationship.

In fact, I was listening to Albert Mohler’s Thinking In Public today: Believing Without Belonging? A Conversation With Sociologist Grace Davie. The discussion ranged around quite a bit but hit on what I’m pondering here. I think it’s well worth a listen.

Yesterday, I was ultimately lamenting how our one-istic, individualist culture seems to have separated us from what God set up as the standard pattern for human relationship. That being family, church, Him. We’re so unrelated to each other nowadays that it’s really hard to come together under a single creed. I do believe that the confessional Reformed folk have the best understanding and therefore the closest stance on being united in relationship. I mean, we believe it, strive to inculcate it and act it out. But the culture, 7 days a week, fights tooth and nail for us to return (right after church on Sunday) to our covenantal relationship to computers, food, drink, cars, idle silliness, community service and everything else. We don’t look back, as we’re doing our mundane things, at our relationships with family, church and God to connect and assess value.

I certainly understand and embrace the beautiful assertion (I believe Calvin and others have said it too) that God is our Father and Church is our mother. It’s just that I don’t, in my own experience, value that hugely important pair of facts enough – and if I’m in sorry shape here, I’m willing to bet there are plenty of others as well. Not because we don’t want to, but in many ways because we can’t – the code has been obfuscated or even deleted to the extent that we just don’t get it. The concept is opposed from the start. Even the Biblical family is under attack (and in many cases demolished) as a valid relationship.

I think I begin to see the challenge our loving pastors face – they are fighting to reintroduce the concept of covenant relationships and rework our thinking so that our responses are in the right place. They know our belief is made deeper because of what we see, hear, touch and taste in preaching, the Table and baptism. They also know that to appreciate and embrace these things, we need to chew hard on the idea that we’re not just I, me, personally or “this is just me, but…”

Parting thought,

“If a man is not faithful to his own individuality, he cannot be loyal to anything.” — Claude McKay

What if it’s more like: If a man is not faithful to his identity in Christ, he cannot be loyal to anything but himself?

We are saved by grace through faith and enter into a relationship with God as our Father, Christ as our Savior, brother, priest, king, prophet. But we are not alone. We are, individually, grafted into a group. A family. Into a whole that is our mother, the church. Thinking like a child would, our identity is there. I am a child of God and I belong in His church. I don’t do church or go to church. I am in it. With the others. Never alone. You’re never alone when you’re in Him.

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November 14, 2011

Anti-Covenant and Individualism

By Pooka
Cuz it's all about me!Note: There’s a Part 2 after this: I Might Just Need To Be A We.
 
The pastor’s comments on Acts 16 last night resound in my mind. In my study toward accepting the doctrine of paedobaptism, I pretty much discarded paedo as the paradigm in preference for oikos. It makes more sense. Paedo may be clearer-cut for others to comprehend where we’re differing from non-paedo, but it’s way better and images our covenantal relationship so much more. Family, congregation, catholic church, history all have this covenant upon which we hang. Paedo doesn’t get us there. Oikos does. If you don’t know, Oikos means household, so I’m talking about the household baptism concept which is all over the N.T. and O.T. in both circumcision and baptism.
 
It also sure does say something about where modern culture has lost the concept of family hasn’t it? When would we ever baptize our household just because the daddy or the mommy or even the grandpa got dunked? There’s no way to understand what Genesis 17 says about Abraham and the circumcision party he held on his 99th year unless we look at this household thing.

So by “lost the concept of family” I mean we’re individuals even in our families. The dad is just the individual. He is not truly Dad-the-head-of-a-body-that-is-a-family. If a family today was entirely comprised of witches and the father converted to Christianity, the rest wouldn’t think twice about whether they should follow Dad’s lead. They wouldn’t. You can see it in just about any family. If Gospel truth comes from the leader’s mouth, the response is rarely positive affirmation or ponderance. If the mother decides something is best, the rest of the family won’t assume anything, but tend to ignore it unless it clearly serves self-interest. From the root, we are anti- or a-covenantal.

This is something I would dearly love to get conditioned right out of me ASAP. And following that, same for my family. I speak in extremes here: Attending church as a family? Unimportant. Missing out on Sunday or Sunday Communion? Forgiveable. Burning commitment of one family to another in the church? Not a chance.

What’s all this? Duh, individualism. We’ve isolated and isolated until “my responsibility is only to God” which really means “my responsibility is only to me” – a lie, of course. Now, I’m not down-playing individuality. The God we worship is a God of great diversity and colors. He created individuals and uniqueness, called it all good and then set all in motion. We individually contribute to a whole that is greater than the parts. We are hands and feet and eyes and mouths, some one and some many in their gifts and abilities. But we’ve overgrown the garden of plenty so much that the unity is gone for the sake of the individual branches and fruits.

One factor, a cause and a symptom is the idea of Individual Liberty. First off, I think that 200+ years ago the Liberty we had was not the same as it is today. Back then, there was a concept of unity that is missing now. So I don’t think (especially today’s) liberty is necessarily a good thing. There are so many out there who call our liberty a great blessing, but I’d rather lean toward it being just a thing, an event that is comprised of good and bad.

The bad is really bad – it allows me to interprete everything myself. Nobody can hold me to a covenant. That means my family is a group of 6 islands loosely connected by reefs of common ideas or dependency. We don’t cleave to each other and so cannot conceive of cleaving to the church. In modern day, our modern culture and nation, in my modern family, I can worship the way I want.

Doesn’t that just sound wrong? I’m free to choose New Life PCA and if the pastor says something from the pulpit that I don’t like. I’m leaving. No commitment. And though my family may follow me, they certainly don’t have to, and might not. The pastor preaches in and out on Sundays to a crowd of people who are saturated in “my way” Even if they’re born-n-bred old school uber-presby saints, it’s still lurking in there. The pulpit’s constant litany of covenants, corporate worship, community and family must continue – it’s fighting the insanity of Individual Liberty’s dark side.

Once upon a time, the wife, the son, the workers, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren belonged to the father. They served each other under his watchful care and their sins were his responsibility. He was accountable for his family. Today? I do not belong to my father, nor do my kids, or anything else. His responsibility is to love me in some distant way, and though as a God-fearing man I’m sure he cares for me, wishes the best for me and prays for my growth and godliness, I can’t look to him as the head of a covenant family. Who can? I know this is insanely silly for today, but I’m exaggerating the point on purpose. We’ve sacrificed our vital corporate identity for our excessive and decadent individual identity.

So excessive is the individual identity today that I begin to wonder how much of me is entirely false. How much have I been italicized and underlined and bolded and iconified and nicknamed and networked until what’s important about me is blown out of proportion. I’m purely the sum of me and no longer does belonging come easily. I don’t belong to my family, to my church, to Christ…! because I’m too much me. I wonder if that is part of the root of strife in the family. I wonder about a lot of my problems and if they’re because of the devilishly inflated selfishness of this age? Heck, I try to find me in the Bible – how does it apply to me is more important than God’s people most of the time.

Relevant Tangent: I find that when I’m at the Lord’s Table, awaiting the food and drink that we are taught is our sustenance, I must consciously break from me and think of the others. I watch the plates served to others, I pray for my girls or whoever in the congregation comes to my mind – that they would be sustained and gathered into the arms of the rest of us as Christ is gathering us at His Table. I perceive the Supper as a sharing, not an individual act. I’m not savoring the choicest gift of all time on my own, but participating in a toast, a communal sharing of life. I try to visualize this, or recite it, as breathing from the same air, just for the moments we are together. I’m not bragging on my piety or spirituality here, rather I’m lamenting the effort it requires! All of this is a force of will. It does not come to me naturally.

Don’t get me as if I’m going all mystical, though the word mystical is there in our words. I’m not talking about contemplative prayer and zoning out to the collective consciousness junk. I’m talking about how we are all united in Christ and that this means something more than just me and you and him and her across the room. Think about it – lift the bread so that the ones around you can see you lift it, and place it in your mouth with them. Ever see a real wedding where the husband and wife feed each other the cake? That’s it. That’s us. Same with the cup – it’s a toast, too! A toast to the love the father has for us that has given us His Son, the best gift ever given.

Now can we apply that to any other part of our lives? Can we see that He has fed us on Sunday as we are united and this does not change on Monday? We’re still one, just separated by different places. From space, from God’s perspective, we’re all right next to each other. And we’re all in the same time zone.

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November 3, 2011

Trophy Husband

By Pooka

There was a survey I checked out over on SharperIron. Couldn’t resist participating because I’m a Christian Survey Junkie and because there was an option to share “marriage axioms” in the commentary. Plenty of things keep reaching around to smack me about how I’m doing as a husband. So here is what I said along with some additional thinking.

I will have been married 15 years this Christmas Eve. I’ve learned far more of what not to do than what to do. Two verses come to mind that speak to my experience.

On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

- is not a fundamental mindset to maintain in your relationship to The Spouse. Two reasons:

  1. Sometimes we have to be firm about our convictions and the temptation to overcompensate conflict with sweetness and light can set us up for worse later on.
  2. And sometimes we tend to be more interested in heaping burning coals via our “good deeds” because we perceive The Spouse as Our Enemy. I’ve fallen for both of these repeatedly.
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you,

- should be a fundamental mindset to maintain in your relationship to The Spouse. 3 Points:

    1. Don’t actively pursue or require hugely dynamic lifestyles in attempts to “devote the family to Christ” or whatever religious theme sounds awesome. The call to such a heavy burden shouldn’t be sought – just try to live as Paul says.
    2. MYOB- sometimes in Keeping Track of the Joneses and their religious or anti-religious activities the temptation to draw The Spouse into the equation is a temptation. Our “Christian Agenda” may well not be of value to The Spouse and may even be detrimental to a good marriage in general.
    3. Work with your hands – Do the things that hands were made for: fix and clean and maintain the framework of life together. Things like the house and the car and food and touching are built in – don’t find “other more important things to do” when you could be sprucing up the environment.

    I was just listening to the radio and caught the tail end of Focus On The Family’s regular broadcast. I don’t usually pay attention to FOTF but this one grabbed me. The speaker was describing himself. But he was really describing me. He said I was avoiding conflict or putting down conflict with words. With the sheer weight of words, I am able to defeat any opponent in my family.
    The stupid thing about this is that I knew this already. My beloved bride has told me herself. My oldest kid has said the same thing. You know what I did to them? I did just what they told me I do and shut ‘em up about me shutting them up. With a ton of running arguments that don’t really allow for even breathing, I can stomp out anything that could potentially cause conflict or bring up something distasteful to me or, worse, cause me to look honestly at something.

I’m not just putting up my confession. The point is that there is another man out there who is just like me. That should indicate there are probably a great deal more of us than just two. And so my evasion of conflict isn’t some fluke. Dudes need to shut their self-righteous pie-holes and treat their wives like humans. So that is the third thing I have learned from 15 years of marriage.

Notice the sin trend? I’m able to figure out what not to do very easily. That doesn’t mean I can turn that into either stopping the sinful activity or doing good.

Here is the contrast. It’s not solid gold, though I wish it was.

Things I’ve been blessed with, through no merit of my own, that are good in my marriage.

I love her. Despite every single thing that has come up between us, whether her fault or mine, I can’t stop loving her. That is entirely God’s grace in my life. He has preserved me. It’s a constant reminder of His own love toward me, a sinner who needs a Savior.

Perhaps you thought there was more? I can’t think of anything else. I’m not good at much, really. What good I have is not mine, really. If I go back to before I was saved, I can’t find any redeeming features of me. Now, all I have is this faith that is tiny and weak accompanied by these tiny little advances that we call sanctification. Mostly it’s just recognizing sin and resting on Christ’s work to preserve me whether I commit or omit anything that results in sin against Him (and my Wife).

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