The Church's Mission: Maturity in Christ

Köstenberger and O’Brien on Paul's missionary commission: “The activities in which Paul engaged as he sought to fulfill his missionary commission included not only primary evangelism, through which men and women were converted, but also the founding of churches and the bringing of believers to full maturity in Christ” (italics mine).[1]

In the push for the Church’s mission to evangelize the lost, which I hear a lot about today, there can oftentimes be no push toward Christian maturity, which I hear less about today. Get 'em in, keep 'em in (usually with programs), and get 'em bringing more in (usually with programs). We ought to make sure that we don’t lose the apostles’ mission and focus.

Paul wanted nothing short of maturity in Christ (Eph. 4:13-16; Col. 1:28-29), for which he labored and suffered in word and deed. Churches whose mission does not aim for converts and local churches to mature into the fullness of Christ fail to come up to the fullness of apostolic mission. For apostolic ministry, Christian maturity fits into conversion like hand in glove. No Christian maturity, no fulfilled mission. No push toward maturity, no real push in Christian mission. No matter how many people show up at church on Sunday.

---

[1] Andreas J. Köstenberger and Peter T. O’Brien, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A biblical theology of mission (ed. D. A. Carson; Downer’s Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2001), 184.

The Center of John Owen's Life and Theology

I heartily agree with the perspective of this post on Owen at Between Two Worlds. I've not got through Owen's entire corpus yet (still plodding away!), but this suggestion of an Owenian center rings true: "the doctrine that in the gospel we behold, by the Christ-given Holy Spirit, the glory of God 'in the face of Christ" and are thereby changed into his image" (Richard Daniels, The Christology of John Owen, 92).

In truth, before ever I knew there was talk about a center in Owen, I myself was gripped by this. I believe it's on the face of his writings. In fact, I lectured on Owen for a Sunday school class about a year ago and gave the same center as I expounded the heart of his theology and life. Another plausible center (or at least a dominant emphasis), though, in my judgment, could be something like this: true and full Christian experience consists in a continual holy communion with the God of triune glory, by the power, wisdom, and delight of the Gospel. But I'll let the scholars quibble over these matters. I simply exult and glory in them as I experience them.

Another point made in Taylor's post that I appreciate is the one about who Owen fundamentally was: he was first and foremost, above all else, whatever else he was, a pastor. That's inescapable, as I read him. And for this I love him, especially as one who is often nauseated by academic and professional puffery and posturing among scholars and pastors. O for more pastors like Owen, who love the flock of God up into the glories of Christ!

If you've never read Owen, what a treasure you've yet to find. My recommendation: start with either volume 1, 2, or 6 of his Works, published by Banner of Truth. Take up and read!

CREC: Baptism and Christian Education

Here is one of the many reasons (not the only reason, nor the main) why I've been so impressed with the CREC churches. If there is one in your area, you should probably visit it.

The Voice and Presence of Christ in His People

Consider John Owen's teaching on the voice of Christ in his apostles: "The epistles of the apostles are no less Christ's sermons than that which he delivered on the mount" (vol. 5, Works, p. 59).

I wonder: Do you agree with this? Do you believe this? I do. And I believe I've got scriptural reason to do so. And by due and necessary consequence, I'll even go a little further.

Consider two texts:

"The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me" (Lk. 10:16).

And,

"He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near" (Eph. 2:17).

Now, ask yourself just two questions:

First, considering that first clause in Lk. 10:16, ask yourself if our Christology and ecclesiology can really hear a text like this aright? You know, head and body theology, Christology and ecclesiology organically and vitally connected, as in like not separated by 200 pages in a systematic theology, as in the body not being decapitated. We are Christ's body, his presence, including his mouth. In the first instance, this has reference to the apostles, but it goes beyond them as well, as the apostolic Word is spoken by believers, and especially his appointed spokesmen.

Second, ask yourself who the "you" refers to in Eph. 2:17. Presumably, the Ephesians, right? And they never saw or heard Jesus in the days of his flesh. They never saw him with bodily eyes or heard his actual unique voice. But nevertheless they heard his voice (see Eph. 4:21—in Greek if you can—they heard him, not about him). Jesus himself preached to the Ephesians in his Spirit-indwelt ministers.

Now recall Acts 1:1, where Luke says that in his first volume, the Gospel according to Luke, he dealt with "all that Jesus began to do and teach." What does this imply about what Acts records and bears witness to? Well, naturally, that Acts testifies to all that Jesus continued to do and teach—by his indwelling Spirit, through his apostles.

Have you heard his voice? He still speaks. Let us hear him.

Deeply Grateful for Matter

Happy Thanksgiving to all! So much to be thankful for! To highlight one that covers a lot of ground and includes turkey and pie, I'm deeply grateful for matter. Yes, that is, solid stuff.

Oh how glorious is the ground under our feet and the sensory receptors to perceive it! How glorious is the gift of 10,000 flavors and 10,000 taste buds to enjoy them! Oh how glorious is this creation and the creature inhabiting it!—human beings, the crown of creation, are mind-blowingly amazing! Oh how glorious is the wisdom and power, infinitely so, of the Creator who thought this stuff up and spoke it all into being! And here we are, flesh and bone, careening around the sun, really fast, on this ball of dirt in this vast universe, enjoying 10,000 mercies and gifts, moment by moment. Glory!

We cannot be too thankful! All praise and thanks be to the triune God of glory—Father, Son, and Spirit—the three-in-one, and one-in-three.

Planking: The Provena True Stretch

To prove I'm not a Gnostic. To prove that, after all, I love my culture. To prove I don't just study theology. To prove to my wife that I really do have a job.

A Prayer for Charity and Trust with Our Tongues

A Lutheran prayer for a charitable disposition:

Give us true obedience and perfect resignation in all things temporal and eternal. Preserve us from the cruel vice of slandering, defaming, judging, and condemning others. Oh that the great misery and harm caused by such tongues were far from us! When we see or hear anything of others that seems blamable and disagreeable to us, teach us to cover it up and to keep silent about it. Help us to complain to you alone and leave all to your will, and so gladly to forgive all our debtors and sympathize with them. Amen. 

 —Martin Luther, Luther's Prayers (ed. Herbert F. Brokering; Augsberg: Minneapolis, 1994), 32.

A Leaky Brain and The Four Causes

If you're like me, you regularly experience frustration for forgetting things you shouldn't. For me, it's almost a way of life and, I confess, a great grief. In the Bible, remembering, particularly when it comes to God's deeds,  promises, and warnings, is a duty and virtue. We don't get to say to God as an excuse for disobedience, "But I forgot." That's just self-indictment. Forgetting God's works and words and ways is damning (e.g., Ps. 78:10-11).

Now although I don't want to overdue a recent episode of forgetfulness and make it some moral monster in my life, yet not being able to recall Aristotle's four causes in some recent reading, which causes I'd reviewed a dozen times in times past, feels like a character flaw. At the least, it's a weakness and grief to me. I've tried to lay up the four causes because in theology and philosophy the terms come up so often.

So, for the sake of review and attempting to make the four causes permanent furniture in my brain, here they are, stated simply by R. C. Sproul in The Consequences of Ideas (Wheaton: Crossway, 2000, p. 48):

Aristotle posited four distinct types of causes that produce changes in things. These causes are 1) the formal cause, which determines what a thing is; 2) the material cause, that out of which a thing is made; 3) the efficient cause, that by which a thing is made; and 4) the final cause, that for which a thing is made, or its purpose.

There they are, on the screen, perhaps still not in my brain. But now I have easier reference at my desk when my leaky brain leaks again.

A Due Apprehension of the Mystery of Grace

In the first part of Owen's work on justification (vol. 5 of Works), Owen pursues "general considerations" for a right apprehension of the doctrine. In a section in pursuit of exposing Socinian errors, which did not allow for embracing revealed truths that seemed contradictory to reason, Owen speaks of "a due apprehension of that harmony which is in the mystery of grace, and between all the parts of it" (49). He then says this:

This comprehension is the principal effect of that wisdom which believers are taught by the Holy Ghost. For our understanding of the wisdom of God in a mystery is neither an art nor a science, whether purely speculative or more practical, but a spiritual wisdom. And this spiritual wisdom is such as understands and apprehends things, not so much, or not only in the notion of them, as in their power, reality, and efficacy, towards their proper ends (49).

This is huge. The last thing we should want is a head stuffed with notions, even if true, without a Spirit-wrought and Spirit-taught apprehension of the mysteries held forth in the Gospel, an apprehension of "their power, reality, and efficacy, towards their proper ends." Enlighten the eyes of our hearts, O Lord! (Eph. 1:18).

Help Us, Father, to Honor Your Name

Luther praying for God's help to glorify and honor God's name:

Help that no one may perjure, lie, or deceive by your name. Preserve us from every false comfort fabricated under the disguise of your name. Guard us against all spiritual pride and vanity of earthly glory or distinction. Help us to call upon you in all our needs and weaknesses. Assure us that in the distress of our conscience, and in the hour of death, we may not forget your name. Help us that with all our possessions, words, and works we may praise and honor only you, and not through them seek to win a name for ourselves. We glorify you alone to whom all things belong. Guard us against the shameful evil of ingratitude. Amen (28).

And again:

Help us so that by our lives and good works others may be prompted not to exalt us but to praise you in us and to honor your name. Grant that no one may be offended by our evil works or shortcomings, and so dishonor you and praise you less. Keep us from desiring anything temporal or eternal that does not praise and honor your name. If we should ask you for any such things, we pray that you would not hear our foolishness. Help us so to live that we may be found true children of God, and that your fatherly name may not be used falsely or in vain because of us. Amen (29). 

 —Martin Luther, Luther's Prayers (ed. Herbert F. Brokering; Augsberg: Minneapolis, 1994), 28-29.

Promised Restoration: The Nations Shall Come!

Yet another word deluged me this morning about the nations streaming to YHWH in the latter days. This stuff courses through the prophets and Psalms. It's unavoidable; it's everywhere. And it ought to fire confidence within us as we consider how many still have yet to come to King Jesus and pay tribute with their very lives. But today I want to point to only one instance of this sure coming of the nations: "to you shall the nations come, from the ends of the earth . . . (Jer. 16:19). This one word (oh don't miss it!) is like a tidal wave of sovereign grace, casting up upon the shores of the nations, deluging, drawing, wooing, effectually moving idolaters to forsake their idols and foreswear their worthless ways.

Now briefly consider the context of this confident confession to feel its force: Jer. 16:14-15. It is restoration! Of Israel! Seamlessly the godless Gentiles are woven into the promise. One can almost miss it. But oh don't miss it! When YHWH calls forth his people for his name from exile, back to the land of promise, Jew and Gentile both come from the ends of the earth. Israel comes back to inherit the land and consists of those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation! "Oh the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" (Rom. 11:33).

To further fire your faith (I know I said I'd point to only one text, but I can't hold a few others back), see also these mighty missions texts: Isa. 2:2-4; Mic. 4:1-2; and Hab. 2:14. As I confessed—"Oh the depths!"

Domesticating the Untamable Word of God

In his Interpreting Galatians: Explorations in Exegetical Method, in a section on original meaning versus contemporary application, Moisés Silva surveys some of the history of exegesis. He then says this (p. 24):

We see, then, that the attempt to recognize both the importance of historical meaning (authorial intention) and the need for relevance (contextualization) characterized biblical interpreters from ancient times to the beginnings of the modern period. In the post-Enlightenment Age, when the grammatico-historical method definitively "triumphed," what really happened was that the task of application was severed from that of exegesis. The new ideal for interpreters was to set aside and forget their own context so that only the mind of the biblical author would be present.

Further on, he continues (p. 25):

The decision to sever "what it meant" form "what it means" also had some grave implications for the study of Scripture. Ironically, the better a commentary was, the less useful it became for the church. . . . Here [in Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer, as an example] truly was scientific exegesis come into its own—and even today his notes can be consulted with great profit. In the process, however, the biblical text tended to become an antiquarian curiosity, a lifeless object needing dissection. 

This treating of the biblical text as "an antiquarian curiosity, a lifeless object needing dissection," I do not doubt, has infected Protestant evangelical scholarship. I've experienced it firsthand. And even if you have no formal education, if you've read commentaries at all, you know what I'm talking about. And what has followed this infection of scholarship? Well, I think it's fair to say, the church became infected with the same. If you don't believe me, ask yourself why it's so hard for those with seminary or graduate training to move from academics to actually preaching to real people with real lives and to using the Word to shepherd the flock. Ask yourself why the professing Christian church in America struggles to know how to live out the Word of God in all of life. Something has gone wrong when Christian pastors and leaders continue to be trained with post-Enlightenment methods. Blows me away.

And that the divine Word does not penetrate ever inch of the church's soul and life probably owes, at least in part, to this severing of which Silva speaks. But the untamable Word let loose in pastors' and scholars' hearts and lives and through them in the people of God—that Word above all earthly powers produces profound change and effect and influence everywhere. Inevitably! That is, unless we've domesticated the text in our laboratories of scientific inquiry. 

The Imputation of Adam's Sin: A Gospel Fundamental

Satan seeks to overthrow the Gospel through various devices. Many of them seek to produce denial of the Gospel through denials of prerequisites for understanding the Gospel aright. John Owen exposes one of those schemes, namely, the denial of the imputation of Adam's fall and sin to humanity, a welcome denial in the modern world, sadly, even among so-called brothers.

He says this in The Doctrine of Justification by Faith (vol. 5, Works, Banner of Truth, p. 21):

By some the imputation of the actual apostasy and transgression of Adam, the head of our nature, whereby his sin became the sin of the world, is utterly denied. Hereby both the ground the apostle proceedeth on in evincing the necessity of our justification, or our being made righteous by the obedience of another, and all the arguments brought in the confirmation of the doctrine of it, in the fifth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, are evaded and overthrown.

Obviously denying a historical Adam would do the job as well. And many seek to do just that. But if Owen gets it right, and I'm convinced he does, how then do we need to think about defending and contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints? What are the fundamentals? (Essentials would be different.) What needs to be regarded as foundational because it supports the superstructure of the Gospel? After all, Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection make no gospel sense in the biblical sense without biblical foundations and a certain story line.

The Doers of the Law Will Be Justified

Will future justification depend on our works? That depends in part on how one defines the term justification and what one means by depend on our works. Works will not function as the ground or basis of a right standing or acceptance with the holy God of perfect rectitude who demands utter essential righteousness. The blood and righteousness of the risen Jesus alone provide that all-sufficiently. But works will be necessary to be declared just on the Last Day, the day of reckoning and reward or punishment. One text in particular makes this crystal clear: Rom. 2:13.

I know that good commentators and Gospel lovers think that Paul is speaking hypothetically (the same sort of thing is often said of the warning passages in Hebrews). But such does not consider evenhandedly Paul's plain language and the flow of thought. Without spending time on the exegesis here, I'll simply commend what I think the text is saying. Romans 1 indicts the Gentiles, those without the law. Romans 2 turns toward indicting the Jews, the "keepers" of the law. And Rom. 2:12-16 functions as part of that indictment, showing that some Gentiles will be justified apart from the law. That is, those Gentiles who are doers of the law, having "the work of the law written on their hearts" (Rom. 2:15; cf. Jer. 31:33; Ezek. 36:26-27)—they will be justified.

To understand what is being asserted here, let me say what is not being said. Romans 2 is emphatically not saying that the deeds of these doers of the law function as the basis or ground of this future justification in view. Future justification, in the sense of being declared righteous justly before a holy and righteous God, depends wholly on Jesus' blood and righteousness (Rom. 1:17; 3:21-26; 4:1-8; 5:18-19; 10:4). But what is being asserted is that only those who are doers of the law, who are fulfilling it (Rom. 13:8-10)—they alone will be declared righteous (and will be declared so for Jesus' sake), but not because they are doers of the law, and certainly not because they are mere possessors of the law.

Yet this doing of the law (doing deeds of love flowing from vital union with Jesus in the Spirit of love), since it necessarily flows from the faith that does justify—this doing is necessary (it has to be there or there is no saving faith), and it authenticates the justified. Good deeds therefore are necessary for salvation, but not at all as the ground or basis of God's giving the gift of salvation. That gift is free, received by faith alone apart from works of the law, purchased at infinite cost by Christ's atonement, offered freely to the sinner in Jesus' blood and righteousness. And this receiving of the gift through faith alone will be the way the justified sinner enters heavenly reward at the judgment as well—receiving God's free acceptance and "well done" in Christ as total gift. No ground for boasting! None! Whatever!

Consequently, there will be no one on the day of judgment who will be justified who has not in some measure been a doer of the law. For only those who truly believe, and are justified by faith alone, do what the law calls for, namely, reborn deeds of love in conscious dependence on the grace of Jesus alone. So the doers of the law, and the doers alone (not those who merely possess it)—they will be justified. And in Romans 2 this functions as a polemic against those Jews who thought that mere possession of the Torah guaranteed a right standing in covenant with God.

More Resources on the Reformation

Justin Taylor recently posted again on Reformation resources at Between Two Worlds. Click here for books and here for a lecture.

Jesus' Last Sermon

This Lord's Day sermon at NCC should be compulsory listening in the evangelical world as a model of how Matt. 25:31-46 needs to be understood and applied. In the hands of many sinners and preachers and teachers, who should be ashamed, it's been mangled almost beyond recognition in our day. But O'Donnell brings the clear teaching of Jesus with clear instruction as a workman who need not be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

"A Wild Ass" Sniffing About

Commenting on Jer. 2:24, Raymond Ortlund Jr. says this:

The harlot of Judah is "a wild ass," such as roams untamed in the wilderness. Restlessly sniffing for the scent of a male, her lust is out of control. The males of the species may spare themselves any effort, for when she is in heat she is the one who initiates the pursuit. The disgusting image of the covenant people driven with animal craving to be sexually satisfied by someone, anyone, shocks and offends. It was meant to.

—Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Whoredom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 87-88.

Where are American churches whoring about today? Under what trees do we spread our legs? What are we sniffing after? We ought not to kid ourselves. We need to understand our times and historical location. There is idolatry—whoredom!—virtually everywhere. So let's heed: "Repent! For the kingdom of God is at hand!"

Resources on Depression

Here are some good resources for battling depression.

Ron Paul, Enemy of Liberty?

There's a lot to like about Ron Paul. But we ought not to be naïve. There's a lot to like in part because he gets so much right; but there's also a lot to like just because the alternatives are so bad. Here's a good post that points out why unqualified support of Paul makes little scriptural sense. I point to this not because I don't think we should respect the man, nor because I don't believe he's a good man. Regarding the former: I think we should; and about the latter: I think he is. Yet, one can see and hear and feel the hitches and catches in his political machine. So, as Wilson says, if you're going to vote for him, as I may well do, do so with your eyes open. But don't vote for him with the same kind of naïveté that accompanied the vote for the guy we're now stuck with—stuck with, that is, with eyes wide open, mouths agape, aghast.