In his Abstract of Systematic Theology, James P. Boyce gives a classically Reformed presentation of sin. In four points, he affirms (1) all men have sinned, (2) all men are sinful from birth (i.e., they possess a sinful nature), (3) the world suffers from the corruption of sin, and (4) all parts of humankind are infected and affected by sin. Altogether, Boyce makes a Scriptural defense of ‘Total Depravity.’
However, in all of his efforts to affirm what Scripture teaches about sin and its effects, he simultaneously relates what ‘Total Depravity’ is not. In fact, he posits more statements related to what sin is not than what it is. Consider these five. Continue reading →
Here is the sermon audio to yesterday’s sermon: “Evangelism in a Post-Marriage World.” This is the first in a series of messages on God’s Design for Marriage and Sexuality. In three sections, it introduces the challenge of evangelism a post-modern and post-marriage age; it calls us to have new hearts and minds as we approach the subject of sexual sin; and it gives five ways we must change our approach to evangelism, in order to reach a culture infatuated with sex and ignorant of God’s good design for marriage and sexuality.
For Your Edification: Here are few things for you to read over, watch, pray, and think about this weekend.
God’s Creation Is Wonder-Full. This week researchers discovered a cave in China with its own weather system. Appropriately, The Weather Channel reports on this 12-acre cave that dwarfs our own Mammoth Cave. The name of the cave is called Er Wang Dong, and ‘impressive’ does not fully capture the beauty and grandeur of this cave. Check it out and give God praise for the world he has made: “For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy” (Ps 92:4).
Be True To God. A few months ago, Trevin Wax questioned a view commonly held by many in our culture—the idea that above all we must be true to ourselves. Pointing to the way that corporations market this view, Wax writes,
Disney movies (and most of the rip-offs) tell our kids again and again that the most important lesson in life is to discover yourself, be true to whatever it is you discover, and then follow your heart wherever it leads.
Now, I’m not a Disney hater, and I enjoy watching good movies with my kids and passing on these memorable stories. Still, there are two assumptions behind the Disney formula that we ought to be aware of: (1) You are what you feel; (2) Embrace what you feel no matter what others say.
Trevin’s insights are well-made and deserve consideration. From the couch to the counseling room, Christians are led astray by ‘following their hearts.’ We need to reconsider this counsel and be true to God.
Football, Football, Football. Owen Strachan touched off a firestorm, when he wrote in Christianity Today a piece about “our shaken faith in football.” David Prince and Jimmy Scroggins shot back—first on Twitter and then in a full article at the ERLC Blog—arguing that the NFL data is incompatible with the sport millions of young people play. Prince and Scroggins point to other statistics related to the dangers of endurance running and cheerleading, to make the point that we should not be overly sensitive to safety. Ironically, a point that Owen affirms whole-heartedly—see his new book The Risky Gospel.
In the end, I think both arguments have merit, and of course, I am torn because I know each of these men and consider them friends. Personally, my mind is not made up, either way. I didn’t play high school football because I valued my body for other things. Yet, I am not ready to ban the sport, and if my son wanted to play I would support it. Still of all the comments that have ensued, I found Jason Allen’s article the most insightful, especially as it relates to football and gender roles: Three Reasons Why My Sons Are Not Playing Football (This Year).
Heaven, A World of Love . In September, I spent the month preaching on 1 Corinthians 13. As I preached, I picked at Jonathan Edwards book on 1 Corinthians 13, Charity and Its Fruits.His final chapter speaks on the permanence of love in heaven. He rightly suggests that heaven is a world of love. Here is a sample:
Heaven is a part of creation that God has built for this end, to be the place of His glorious presence, and it is His abode forever; and here will He dwell, and gloriously manifest Himself to all eternity. And this renders heaven a world of love; for God is the fountain of love, as the sun is the fountain of light. And therefore the glorious presence of God in heaven, fills heaven with love, as the sun, placed in the midst of the visible heavens in a clear day, fills the world with light. The apostle tells us that “God is love”; and therefore, seeing He is an infinite being, it follows that He is an infinite fountain of love. Seeing He is an all-sufficient being, it follows that He is a full and over-flowing, and inexhaustible fountain of love. And in that He is an unchangeable and eternal being, He is an unchangeable and eternal fountain of love.
Kingdom, Culture, and Mission. Finally, if you haven’t heard Dr. Russell Moore’s inauguration address from his installation as the new President of the ERLC (Ethics and Religious Liberties Committee), you should.
Recently, archaeologists discovered what they think is a missing section of 1 Samuel. It is a section of the book which describes what Saul did after he chased David out of his courtroom. You might remember, David was ‘hired’ by Saul to play his harp in order to sooth Saul’s soul when evil spirits tormented him (1 Sam 16:14-23).
The recent discovery tells of how after David departed, Saul was left with no choice but to call on Israel’s philosophers to come and comfort him. And apparently, it did not go well. Instead, of refreshing his soul, these debaters of the age reasoned why bad things happened to good people and why men like Saul suffered as they did. The missing section claims that these foolish lovers of wisdom only exacerbated the problem and that Saul actually pinned a couple of them to the wall with his spear.
Apparently, they were not as agile as David. Nor were they as existential as David, either—meaning, they did not exist.
In truth, there is no such archaeological account and there were no such philosophers. But you already knew that because surely no king would hire philosophers for solace and comfort. Philosophers do well to afflict the comfortable, but they are less skilled at comforting the afflicted. Continue reading →
It’s always interesting to hear Non-Calvinists interact with Calvin and his magnum opus, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Most recently, James R. Rogers, a political science professor at Texas A & M and a self-described non-Calvinist, made some astute observations about Calvin, Luther, and Augustine. Here is his lead paragraph.
I picked up John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion some years back. Dipping into it, I anticipated a dry, grim, and doctrinaire treatise. Perhaps because I came to it with such low expectations, the books surprised me. I found the Institutes surprisingly accessible, written by a lively, engaged mind. I anticipated the argument of the books to be tightly wound around the theme of God’s sovereignty—with the focus on God’s glory coming at the expense of humanity’s abasement. Instead, as in Martin Luther’s treatment of predestination, I found that God’s sovereignty and the doctrine of predestination played a manifestly pastoral role in Calvin’s theology. The focus was not on obliterating the human, but rather underscoring God’s great love for his people in rescuing humanity from death, darkness, and despair. The upshot of the doctrine as I read Calvin was “This is a God you can trust.”
I would whole-heartedly agree with Rogers. Anyone who critiques Calvinism carte blanche has never read Calvin. Calvin’s Institutes—aside from his polemical arguments against Roman Catholicism—is entirely devotional. It beckons the reader not to know theology, but to know God. Predestination for Calvin—and the Calvinists I know—is not a heady doctrine to figure out who’s in and who’s out. It’s the humbling truth that God from eternity past has been at work to secure my salvation.
Rogers whole article, “Credit the Calvinists,” is worth reading, as it recognizes a major reason why Calvinism is both loved and hated today. Against the current spirit of the age, Calvinism offers an anthropology (i.e., a view of humanity) that bespeaks man’s moral inability to seek after God. He summarizes why many oppose Calvinism,
Modern man does not want to be transparent before God, or before anyone else. We deem it an invasion of our privacy and of our autonomy. We want our hearts to be the one place in creation so sacred that even God dare not tread there.
Rogers is right. No one naturally desires to relinquish sovereignty over his life. As Paul put it, quoting the Psalms,
None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. (Rom 3:10-12)
The glory of a Reformed soteriology (doctrine of salvation) is that the Triune God liberates the heart enslaved to sin, so that regenerate man might freely choose Christ. Calvinism does not decimate free will; it rehabilitates it by means of the resurrecting power of the effectual call. May we rejoice in that truth and preach the gospel to all men, so that the good shepherd would claim his sheep by name.
That’s a good question. Whether you are lost in the woods or lost in the world, retracing your steps is a vital way of finding our bearings and dealing with lostness.
This Sunday, I begin a sermon series on a biblical view of marriage and sexuality. However, before approaching the horizon of the biblical text, we must know where are we and what are we dealing with. I am not suggesting that our cultural location is the church’s normative authority. Just the reverse. However, to help Christians (and non-Christians) understand what God expects of our sexuality, we must consider some of the influences that have shaped our present sexual climate.
With that in mind, I have drawn up a basic graph that traces how Westerners have changed their thinking over the last two millennia. Continue reading →
Pastors have a responsibility to teach the whole counsel of God and to help the people of God form a biblical worldview. With this conviction in mind, I will be leading a series on what the Bible says about marriage and sexuality. In preparation for that series, I wrote this letter to our church: ‘A Sexual Manifesto: Embracing the Church’s New Mission.’ Let me know what you think.
If you haven’t noticed, things aren’t the way they used to be.
It wasn’t long ago that the boys’ bathroom was for . . . well, boys. Homecoming queens had to use a razor on their legs (not their face). Marriage was legally defined as the union of a man and woman. And Christians had a place at the table in regards to influencing public policy.
In what seems like the blink of an eye, all of these givens are gone. With more people in Georgia supporting same-sex marriage than opposing it, the once influential Bible Belt is nor more. Christendom as we know it—or should we say, as we knew it—has collapsed. Welcome to the new America. Continue reading →
Last night, our church meditated on the subject of suffering and the problem of evil. It is a complex subject that requires a multi-layer response, which when it is all said and done, still requires agonizing faith to endure in times of horrendous suffering.
That said, good theology is essential to suffering well. On that note, Oliver O’Donovan has a helpful statement about the ‘inscrutability of providence’ and the need to interpret evil in light of Christ’s resurrection. Here’s what he said. Continue reading →
Over the month of September, our church has been meditating on 1 Corinthians 13 and what it means to love. In preparation for last week’s sermon, I came across this quote by John Piper. In it he turns the therapeutic counsel of learning how to love yourself on its head. Instead of telling sinners whose greatest penchant is to love themselves, Piper points out how Jesus—who knew what was in a man’s heart (see John 2:23-25)—assumed that we already love ourselves and that we must learn to love others “as yourself.” Speaking of Matthew 22:39, Piper unpacks Jesus’ words, Continue reading →
In theological terms, the Bible is God’s inspired Word, his authoritative revelation of who he is, what he has done, and what he expects from his creatures. Yet, in terms of genre, what is the Bible?
Some speak of Scripture as God’s love letter to humanity; others describe it as God’s instruction manual—Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth (B.I.B.L.E.). I am much more inclined to ground the Bible’s imperatives (read: laws) in the infinitives of what God has done (think: gospel). The Bible is not a human book for struggling humans. More fundamentally it is a book from God, about God, for God’s people to be reconciled to God. To say it differently: It is a word about the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one in whom all creation is unified (Eph 1:10).
For this reason, the most appropriate designation for the Bible is that it is an Epic Comedy that effects Salvation and Judgment. Let me explain. Continue reading →
Via Emmaus 