Category: Bible & Theology

In his commentary, John MacArthur suggests that 1 Corinthians 4:14-21 describes six characteristics of Christian ministers. Faithful servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries (1Co4:1-2)serve Christ by 1) admonishing, 2) loving, 3) begetting, 4) setting an example, 5) teaching, and 6) disciplining.

The Apostle Paul, in this letter, addresses the Corinthian church’s attitudes that ran directly counter to his description of the Christian minister.

They certainly didn’t want to be ‘admmonished’ for any poor behavior or attitude, for what business was it of Paul, after all, to pry into their private affairs? Any attempt by other men to point out error, with a view to positive change and conformity to the image of Christ, was seen as an affront to their ‘liberty in Christ’, the ‘priesthood of believers’, and –perhaps the sine qua non of Christian deferrals — it was not ‘loving.’

But Paul anticipated this response, and as he frequently did, combined two seemingly disparate and contradictory concepts in such a joinder that neither can be believed or experienced without the other: Paul wrote “to admonish [them] as beloved children.”

What? How can that be? And, perhaps for many today, who have swallowed the world’s line and suppose that loving children means never speaking harshly to them, let alone administering corporal punishment, it is a mind-blower to think that loving someone means admonishing them from time to time.

Furthermore, Paul did not merely mention the “rod” in verse 21 as a rhetorical flourish: he would deal with them as their level of repentance — or lack thereof — required, in order to preserve the edification of the body and the hallowing of God’s name.

Admonishment is largely out of fashion in today’s pulpit. The congregation considers the minister who attempts it ill-suited to serve them. Many preachers lack Paul’s boldness to insist that it is included in his charge to serve Christ. And one can only suppose that our failure to recognize this mark of the minister has resulted in much leaven in the lump.

There is no doubt that in God’s economy, every person is of equal value before Him. No soul is better or worse than another — none more worthy of damnation or salvation, since all sin and all must come to Him through Christ.

Among believers, every one is privileged to be sealed with the Holy Spirit and to possess a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Some Christians, however, maintain that not only are all believers of equal value before God, but also that the opinions of every believer are equally valid, on every subject.

This thinking appears in notions that each manifestation of the Spirit is the same. The opinion of the church member who rarely reads his Bible, studies, prays or researches any issue is considered equal to the one who is studied and experienced.

We would never think of asking our lawyer to read our x-rays, or of asking our radiologist to prepare our will.

It isn’t exactly the same in church life, but the reality is that the Spirit gives gifts to men, and those gifts are different. To paraphrase Paul on the subject, “some are feet, some are eyes.” All are of equal value and are all necessary, but they do not perform the same function. We wouldn’t ask the foot to watch where we’re going, and we wouldn’t ask the eye to support the weight of the body.

Is the Holy Spirit egalitarian? Yes, in the sense that He seals, abides in, and provides gifts to every believer without distinction. But No, in the sense that His manifestation does not create uniformity among believers. When we fail to recognize and appreciate the different ways that He works through the lives of believers, and the unique spiritual contributions of each, we run the risk of quenching the Spirit.

So we know that Peter and Paul (sans Mary…well, not in the same way) got into it over the gospel. Peter had been hangin’ out with the Gentiles – without requiring them to be circumcised – until the Judaizers caught wind of the whole thing. Peter felt the pressure from a small, but vocal, element of the congregation and caved in. Sound familiar?

Paul didn’t think this was such a good idea, and decided to confront Peter. Publicly. Sound UNfamiliar?

We don’t seem to get many sermons on Galatians that focus on how we should fight for the truth of the gospel like Paul did. This is somewhat understandable, since there is not much dispute these days about cutting our sons’ foreskins. It’s also understandable in light of the fact that complaints of modern Judaizers don’t sound that bad to us. In fact, they sound pretty good. More on that later.

Paul reminds Peter that they are “Jews by birth” and not “Gentile sinners” (Galatians 2:15), then launches into a thrice-stated description of what some have called his “theory of justification in a nutshell”, that men are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, not by works of the law (vv15-16). Paul’s immediate meaning is clear: being circumcised does not save a man, and not being circumcised does not damn him. For Peter and his blade-happy Judaizers to insist that new believers had to be circumcised was peddling a different gospel. One that would not save.

Circumcision, once the mark of God’s covenant, had become a threat to the gospel covenant. But it was not the only threat faced by the early church, and it is not the only threat we face now.
Paul explains that Christ would not be made an agent of sin if they – Jews – in seeking to be justified in Him were found to be sinners (v17). There are a few ways to understand this. Some think he means that if others (like the Judaizers) view them as sinners because they hang with Gentiles, no problem. Others think he means that others might view them as having rejected the law, thus having become like the Gentiles.

It might be that the Judaizers were not so much concerned about specific transgressions of the law, as with the appearance that Peter and the others had set it aside as their governing principle. It is much easier for men to check their righteousness against lists of approved behaviors than to serve God with a transformed heart. So Paul can say that they should not rebuild what they have torn down. That is, they should not return to the checklist. If this is true, then Paul and Peter and the others were not ‘rejecting’ the law, or abandoning the law, but were actually fulfilling the law and finally submitting to its judgments and punishments. In Christ. By faith in His obedience to it and reception of its penalty for us.

Paul can truly say, then, “I have been crucified with Christ,” because in having faith in Christ, the requirements of the law are satisfied in exacting punishment on the only One able to bear it.

We don’t like Paul. We rebel against his teaching all the time. We prefer law both for ourselves (it gives us a measure of our obtaining favor with God) and for others (it gives us a measure of how others have failed to please God). What is the evidence of our legalism on this point? Don’t look for Baptists United for Circumcision or the Cutters’ Union. Instead, our legalism today looks much better than that.

I ask that because Psalm 88 appears to be merely an intense, bitter lament against God. Unlike many of the lament Psalms, which indicate a turning point after the lament which results in a renewed trust in God for deliverance, and usually end on a positive note, in 88 Heman plays the role of killjoy.

His Psalm becomes a big ol’ buzzkill by ending badly: “You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness” (v18). But, sure, despite my provocative title, Psalm 88 belongs, and also points us to Christ, as well.

The cause of Heman’s lament seems to revolve around certain relationships and God’s perceived responsibility for their falling apart. In verse 8 Heman reports “you have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a horror to them.” Because of this, Heman views the whole of his life as one continuous stream of effluence: “afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am helpless” (v15). In fact, Heman waxes a bit hyperbolic by stating he is as good as dead: he draws near to Sheol (3), is regarded as going to the pit (4), like the ‘slain that lie in the grave’ (5), and is overwhelmed by God’s wrath (7, 16). One would think he might have taken the advice of Job’s wife, to simply curse God and die.

Yet hope abides in Heman and shines through the darkness of his emotional valley.

The Psalm begins with a recognition that the God Heman addressed is the God of his salvation (v1). Furthermore, Heman reports that his cry is to God, ‘day and night’, and beseeches God to hear his prayer even more. This expression of hope is repeated in the middle, at verse 13, indicating that despite his misery Heman knows that relief is to be found in the God of his salvation.

His may be honest questions, but more than likely are a bit of sarcasm dripping from Heman’s lips:

“Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Is
your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are
your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of
forgetfulness?” (v10-13).

One might suppose that Heman’s answer to all these is an emphatic – and bitter – No, No, No, No, No and No.

Yet despite Heman’s sarcasm and despair, we know differently. We know that Yes, God does work wonders for the dead! Whether we think we’re dead, or wish for the grave, or are actually dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2), it is precisely for the dead that God works his greatest wonders! Paul reports to his Corinthian brothers that “we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (1 Corinthians 1:9).

Yes, God works wonders for the dead! See Elijah raising the widow’s son. See Lazarus come forth from the grave. See Jesus’ empty tomb.

Yes, God works wonders for the dead! See God making us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:5). See God making us alive together with him (Colossians 2:13-14). See God bringing us from death to life (Romans 6:13).

Yes, God works wonders for the dead! And not only that, the ‘departed’ who have been made alive in Christ DO rise up to praise God. His steadfast love IS declared ‘in the grave’ – to those walking dead, spiritual zombies, that we all are before being made alive in him. His faithfulness IS declared in the realm of spiritual death that enslaves us until our release in Christ. His wonders ARE known in the darkness, and his righteousness IS known in the land of forgetfulness, because there is no darkness strong enough to hide the light of truth and there is no forgetting the righteousness of the Creator.

At some point, most of us feel like Heman, and like Paul. If not physically dead already, we think that we are emotionally dead, and that it’s all over but a lame graveside service and ignominious burial. But the fact that God has raised the spiritually dead to newness of life, and that He promises to someday raise the physically dead in Christ to a renewed body and creation, should give us great hope that God can work wonders among the deadness of any situation we face.

Yes, God works wonders among the dead.

I caught part of a TV sermon last night (yeah, I know) and watched enough to figure out that the story of Gabriel’s announcement to Mary about the birth of Christ and Mary’s response in the Magnificat (Luke 1) had been reduced to a How-To message regarding character. Mary’s actions and attitudes demonstrated, apparently, “Christian” character, which we can learn in a few easy steps: “Christian Character Submits To God”, for example.

This is not, I’m afraid, an isolated method of treating the advent texts. Perhaps preachers don’t know quite what to do with sermons at Christmas to make them “fresh” and “relevant.” Other Christmas sermons I’ve heard fall into the same trap. One maintains that if God could use a bit-part priest like Zechariah and his dried-up wife, Elizabeth, then “he can use you, too” and “what great plans God must have for you!” Another opines that if God could use a no-place like Nazareth and a no-body like Mary, “he can use you, too” (starting to see a pattern?). One used the prophecy about John the Baptist as a stimulus for us to “always point people to Christ, as John did, in your workplace.” Still another take on the advent text says that if “nothing is impossible with God,” we should not fail to believe it when “we face that pile of work on our desk next week.” Huh?

It is, to be sure, terribly difficult to avoid being sinfully man-centered. But the only possible manner in which Christmas is centered on man is the fact that the incarnation is necessary because of man: our sinful rebellion against God left us dead and in need of dramatic rescue which God provided in the Messiah. To reduce the advent story to proof that God will do something else to make my life easier or more meaningful is dreadful, indeed.

As Gabriel told Mary, Elizabeth had also conceived, “for nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). This is not a blank check for Christians to claim God’s power to complete a project at work, or to dunk a basketball, or to win a political victory. God’s divine grant of fertility to a barren womb and his miraculous short-cut through biological reproduction to impregnate a virgin teen were not signs that God will also “use us.”

Rather than those events pointing down to man — to illustrate how the incarnation will grant me success at work — those events point back up to God, and to what he has accomplished for us in salvation. A good guide for us to know how to celebrate the first advent (and how to preach it) is found in the responses of some the immediate participants: Mary, Zechariah and Simeon.

After a brief expression of her own involvement (Luke 1:46-49), Mary focuses on what God has done (1:50-55). He has shown strength, scattered the proud, brought down the mighty, exalted the humble, filled the hungry, sent the rich away, and helped Israel. A powerful exposition of this text might explain Mary’s reference to Old Testament texts to recite what God had already done before, and how he was doing this through and in the incarnation. Why speculate on Mary’s anxiety about telling her parents when God has given us such rich text to mine?

Zechariah had been silent through Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Finally, after Zechariah witnessed the birth of his first son, John, God looses his tongue and inspires Zechariah to recite what God had done. God had visited and redeemed his people and raised up a horn of salvation so that we “might serve him without fear” (1:74). John would serve as prophet to the Most High to give knowledge of salvation to his people. What great truth is expressed here!

And Simeon, whom God had apparently kept alive just for this, upon seeing the infant Jesus proclaimed “now let me die!” (paraphrase) because because he had been permitted to see “your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples” (2:31). And not only that, Simeon reveals that Jesus was “appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel” and because of him “thoughts from many hearts may be revealed” (2:35).

How impoverished is our preaching, how threadbare is our celebration of the birth of Messiah when our discussion ignores redemption from sin, serves as mere backdrop for a nativity scene, and focuses instead on what remains for God to do in my life to make things interesting. The drama of the incarnation is not some banal “application”, but the drama is God’s rescue of helpless man. As we sing in O Holy Night:

Long lay the world in sin and error pining
‘Til he appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new a glorious morn.

Merry Christmas!

Not many professing Christians would assert outright that they purchased their salvation. In fact, many would list among their “essentials of the faith” the doctrine of “salvation by grace through faith.” But the tendency of the sin nature to lean toward Pelagianism and its Arminian kin is insidious, and takes more subtle forms. (Q: How do you know you’re saved? A: Well, I’m a good person.)

But if we truly believe that sin has radically corrupted our nature, so that without the prior choosing of God and the Spirit’s washing and regeneration we would willingly choose to continue in our sin rather than turn to God in repentance and faith, then the only sure foundation of our salvation is the sovereign saving and keeping power of almighty God through Jesus Christ.

We don’t talk much of God’s sovereignty in salvation. It’s considered by some as too divisive. We do, however, talk a lot about grace, singing of “Amazing Grace,” “grace that is greater than all our sin,” and saying things like “there but for the grace of God, go I.” Ironically, however, behind any notion of grace lies that old argument-starter – sovereignty in salvation.

Were it not for God’s prior sovereignty in shedding grace on us, our radically corrupted sin nature wouldn’t even reach a hand out to accept God’s gift, much less stumble around looking for it. And Paul was not concerned about being too “divisive” when he confronted Peter – in public, no less (Galatians 2). Peter’s acquiescence to a faction within the believing community (not an unfamiliar situation, to be fair) led to the appearance that he supported a view of the necessity of Gentile circumcision. Paul saw clearly that this was a direct challenge to salvation by grace (through faith).

Some who point to their belief in “salvation by grace through faith”, however, also reject debate about Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, or sovereignty in salvation, claiming that those are peripheral issues about which true Christians can disagree, and which are good for nothing but disrupting unity.

For the purposes of much-maligned argument, however, let’s suppose that the Calvinist believes that God’s sovereignty in salvation carries implications regarding the dichotomy between faith and works as the instrumental cause of salvation. Let us also suppose that the Calvinist believes that the less grace is operative in the process of salvation, the more works is operative (from the human perspective). That is, the more a man claims to have contributed to his salvation, the less room there is for that salvation to have been secured through grace (by God).

Let us further suppose that the Calvinist sincerely holds that the less a man believes that God is sovereign in salvation, the more that man must rely upon some other causal agent to secure his salvation. Since the Calvinist and anti-Calvinist alike would agree that Satan is not in the salvation-securing business, by process of elimination no one is left to procure salvation but man. And, ineluctably, if salvation is secured by human will, it is a false salvation. Those who proclaim it proclaim a false gospel.

One can see, then, that for that Calvinist sovereignty in salvation is not a peripheral issue, about which believers can disagree without consequence, but is instead crucial to salvation: is salvation of man, or is it of God? This is why reformed theology regarding salvation, Calvinism, TULIP, and sovereignty in salvation can all be referred to as “doctrines of grace.” For Paul, circumcision was not a peripheral issue about which culturally diverse believers in an era of transformational religious expectations could disagree. Instead it was a matter of preaching a false gospel. It was about believing a false gospel that could not save because it diminished grace and elevated law (works).

Calvinists might be wrong that God’s sovereignty in salvation presents such an issue. They might be wrong – frequently are – to lose sight of the purpose of accuracy regarding salvation and instead focus on winning arguments. But believing it, they would be heartless, indeed, if they did not attempt to persuade their brothers in Christ.