Sons of Abraham from All Eternity

It is well known and often pointed out that Luke 19:10 states the great theme (or at least one of the great themes) of Luke's account of the gospel of the kingdom. "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." That's a dominant element, if not the dominant element, in Luke's message.

Just before this verse there is a peculiar and striking word from Jesus about Zacchaeus' salvation. Zacchaeus repents of his sin (Lk. 19:8) and manifests that repentance with "fruits in keeping with repentance" (Lk. 3:8). Then Jesus says, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham" (19:9).

Now take careful notice of the order. The dependent clause beginning with "since" gives the reason salvation comes to Zacchaeus' house. To say what it is not saying, in order to see what it is saying, Zacchaeus does not become a son of Abraham because salvation comes to his house. No. It's the other way around. Salvation comes to Zacchaeus' house because he is a son of Abraham. His being a son of Abraham is why Jesus came to seek and save him.

So it's clearer now why Jesus says in v. 5 that he "must stay at [Zacchaeus'] house today." He had to stay at his house because it was the next stop in seeking and saving the lost—the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

So we better take this to heart, and let it deeply move and affect us inwardly right the way to the bottom of our beings. Jesus seeks and saves, and salvation comes to us not because of anything we've done—but because we're chosen from all eternity as sons of Abraham.

Incidentally, note well the tension between 19:9 and 3:8, and engage in doing theology to figure out what this must imply. It seems it must mean one of two things. Either this man was a Jew, and so there is an "Israel within Israel" (cf. Rom. 9:6). Or, if Zacchaeus was a Gentile, then there are true Jews who are Jews, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit, that is, who are circumcised in heart (Rom. 2:28-29; cf. 9:8; Phil. 3:3).

Loving People in God

St. Augustin's God-besotted God-centeredness in the Confessions is well known. Reading through the Confessions, I'm struck also by how God-centered is Augustin's thinking about love for people. The following quotations from book 4 will give you a good feel for this (italics mine).

In a section discussing friendship, Augustin confesses to God:

Blessed are those who love you, O God, and love their friends in you and their enemies for your sake. They alone will never lose those who are dear to them, for they love them in one who is never lost, in God, our God who made heaven and earth and fills them with his presence, because by filling them he made them (79–80).

Then in a portion discussing delighting in things of this world, Augustin addresses those who would delight, among other things, in souls:

If your delight is in souls, love them in God, because they too are frail and stand firm only when they cling to him. If they don't, they go their own way and are lost. Love them, then, in him and draw as many with you to him as you can. Tell them "He is the one we should love. He made the world and he stays close to it" (82).

Oh for more Augustinian God-besotted God-centered love for people!

—Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961).

Leaders Lead Worldviewishly

Al Mohler's book The Conviction to Lead is outstanding. Chapter 5 is titled "Leaders Understand Worldviews: The Leader Shapes the Worldview of Followers." Here are a few choice quotations:

The recovery of a Christian mind and the development of a comprehensive Christian worldview will require the deepest theological reflection, the most consecrated application of scholarship, the most sensitive commitment to compassion, and the courage to face all questions (46).

Further on:

We have to be faithful in the discipleship of the mind before we can expect faithfulness and maturity in those we lead (47).

And more:

Far too often leaders aim at the surface level and stop there. Real leadership doesn't happen until worldviews are changed and realigned (47).

Undoubtedly Mohler puts his finger on an essential element of leadership. And though always true, perhaps the need is as great as ever in leadership. In the post-Christian western world, with the seismic shift in epistemology that's occurred in recent decades, training disciples to think Christianly in a comprehensive way is one of the greatest discipleship needs of the day.

And so we need worldviewish leaders, not mere expositors of the Bible, not managers of people, not professionals with technical proficiency in this or that discipline. We need generalist leaders who lead with a big vision that embraces the world. Anything less is too small and will end up in fragmented thinking and living among followers.

O Heavenly Father, I Know I Will Remain with You Forever

Luther:

O heavenly Father, God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ and God of all comfort, I thank you for revealing to me your dear Son, Jesus Christ, whom I believe. Him I have known and preached. Him I have loved and praised. Him heretics and all godless people do blaspheme and persecute. I pray, Lord Jesus, let my soul please you. O heavenly Father, although I must be separated from this body, I know I will remain with you forever. No one can pluck me from you hands. Amen.

—Martin Luther, Luther's Prayers (ed. Herbert F. Brokering; Augsberg: Minneapolis, 1994), 103.

Don't Boast about Tomorrow, for Your Life Is a Mist

I'm not sure why I've never made the connection before, because it now seems rather obvious: Jas. 4:13-17 appears to be an unpacking of Prov. 27:1.

Dating the Gospels and Spiritual Warfare

Peter Leithart:

As with the synoptic problem as a whole, the issue of dating is ultimately a spiritual battle. Consider: If the gospels are written shortly after Jesus dies and rises again, by eyewitnesses, are you inclined to believe them? What if they are written fifty years after Jesus, by people who never knew Jesus Himself? Are you as likely to believe the gospels then? The further away the gospels are from the events of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, the less reliable they seem.

—The Four: A Survey of the Gospels (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2010), 104.

The Synoptic Problem, Questioning Q, and Satan

Peter Leithart:

If the view of the church fathers explains the gospels, and does so fairly simply, why do scholars have to invent a complicated "synoptic problem" and resolve it with a mythical document called "Q"? 

There are many answers to that question, but at base the answer is that much of modern New Testament scholarship is a Satanic attack on the truth and reliability of the gospel of Jesus. . . . This is not to say that New Testament scholars themselves are demonic. They aren't. But New Testament scholarship is an arena of spiritual battle, where we fight not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and rulers of wickedness. 

—The Four: A Survey of the Gospels (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2010), 101.

God's Handing Over

The OT equivalent of the NT "handing over" in Rom. 1:24, 26, 28 appears in texts such as Ps. 81:11-12: "But my people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels."

God hands people over—even his own people!—"to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels," when they refuse to listen to him, that is, when they choose to worship and serve "the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen" (Rom. 1:25).

Augustin's Conversion Critiqued and Defended

Some have offered critique of how stylized or superstitious or otherwise faulty is the "conversion" of Augustin (e.g., Adolf von Harnack) as he tells his conversion story in book VIII of his justly famous Confessions.

Dealing with this criticism, B. B. Warfield sympathetically considers what Augustin was doing in writing the Confessions:

The person we meet in [the Confessions] is a person, we perceive, who towers in greatness of mind and heart, in the loftiness of his thought and in his soaring aspirations, far above ordinary mortals: and yet he is felt to be compacted of the same clay from which we have ourselves been molded. . . . It is the very purpose of this book to give the impression that Augustine himself was a weak and erring sinner, and that all of good that came into his life was of God. 

It is especially important for us precisely at this point to recall our minds to the fact that to give such an impression is the supreme purpose of the Confessions. This whole account of his life-history which we have tried to follow up to its crisis in his conversion is written, let us remind ourselves, not that we may know Augustine, but that we may know God: and it shows us Augustine only that we may see God. The seeking and saving grace of God is the fundamental theme throughout. The events of Augustine's life are not, then, set forth in it simpliciter. 

Speaking then of the aim of Augustin in recounting the sins of his infancy and childhood, Warfield says:

In these traits of the narrative, however, Augustine is not passing judgment on himself alone, but in himself on humanity at large in its state of sin and misery. By an analysis of his own life-history he realizes for himself, and wishes to make us realize with him, what man is in his sinful development on the earth, that our eyes may be raised from man to see what God is in his loving dealing with the children of men. We err, if from the strong, dark lines in which he paints his picture we should infer that he would have us believe that in his infancy, youth, or manhood he was a sinner far beyond the sinfulness of other men. . . .

He knew his own sinfulness as he knew the sinfulness of no other man, and it was his one burning desire that he should in his recovery to God recognize and celebrate the ineffableness of the grace of God. The pure grace of God is thus his theme throughout, and nowhere is it more completely so than in this culminating scene of his conversion. 

—"Augustine and his 'Confessions,'" in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: Studies in Tertullian and Augustine (vol. 4; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 267–268.

Goods Well Spent

"O Lord, come to me and use my bread, silver, and gold. How very well they are spent if I spend them in your service. Amen."

—Martin Luther, Luther's Prayers (ed. Herbert F. Brokering; Augsberg: Minneapolis, 1994), 96.

N. T. Wright All for Dialogue: Until You Think He's Wrong

Criticizing N. T. Wright's public comments in this post (whether the critique is valid or not) was bound to get a reaction from those for whom one must never do such a thing. And we thought Wright himself was all for dialogue. No? Isn't he up for hearing from people all over the spectrum on all sorts of issues? No? Or is this only the case when someone is kissing the right part of his hind parts?

With all due respect to N. T. Wright (and I do respect him and read and learn from him often), if you wish to see him being a bit of a baby (and condescending) and pulling his oft-repeated "I-don't-recognize-myself" shenanigans, check out his comment in the comments section of this post by Pastor Wilson.

Wilson and Wright are both good men, faithful Christians, and their teachings are worth studying diligently. Wherever one falls on the theological, political, and cultural spectrum on the full range of issues, surely we can agree that these two men disagreeing isn't cause for grave concern. We ought to hang in there with them, that is, if Wright is even willing himself to do so. But it appears he's not willing to dialogue with people who disagree with him quite so sharply.

Update: Wilson's follow-up post responding to Wright's comment in the comments section.

The End for Which God Created the Local Church

With the passing of time and the experience of living longer in this world and in the anemic American evangelical church, and with another year passing of reading through holy writ, I'm convinced that the heartbeat of every church—palpable in doctrinal statements, vision statements, and all of church life—must be a passion and zeal for the glory of God. Anything else is too small, too man-centered, too sub-biblical.

The combination of a pervasive man-centeredness today and the pervasive presence of texts like the one I read this morning—

Help us, O God of our salvation,
for the glory of your name;
deliver us, and atone for our sins,
for your name's sake! (Ps. 79:9)—

conspire to make me more eager than ever for God's name to be hallowed in all things in the life of the Church, in the world, and in homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces. Texts like the one quoted are everywhere in Scripture. It is the major note struck in the Bible. It is the major note God is striking in the symphonic narrative of redemptive history that he has orchestrated. And yet (to my great dismay and grief), it is hardly even a minor note in many, many churches.

As Jonathan Edwards reminds the church so well, the display and approbation of the glory of God is the end for which God made the world. And if it is God's end or goal in creation—and it most certainly is!—it ought to be our end in everything we think, say, plot, and do in the local church. Such a heartbeat ought so to thump in a local church that it is felt immediately and pervasively by all who come in contact with her living and breathing ministries and members. That is, unless she is dead or dying. 

Specifically, the glory of God must be manifestly known and prized. We must manifest that we know something about it, and then we must show how we treasure it above all else. And this must be included in doctrinal and vision statements, but must go way beyond such statements. In other words, it needs to be institutionally up front and center, like the first thing you see when you go to a website; but it must not be a dead letter, either. The glory of God affirmed on paper only is only an indictment. 

Even more specifically, based on Eph. 1:6, the aspect of the glory of God that needs to be highlighted and emphasized and gloried and rejoiced in is the glory of God's free grace for sinners. God's redemption planned from eternity past aims at this: "the praise of the glory of his grace" (Eph. 1:6, translation mine). So we should openly and vocally exist for this ultimate reason. 

So many other things in vision statements are good and right in their own place. But inasmuch as they are penultimate (that is to say, not the display and enjoyment of the glory of God), then they ought to exist openly for the ultimate: the glory of God. Otherwise, they betray a profound betrayal of the Bible's dominant emphasis and the goal of the universe—that is, God's goal to glorify himself in all things. 

So my prayer for local churches today is for the name of God to be esteemed and hallowed and praised and gloried in and valued above all else—manifestly, palpably, pervasively. 

Conviction to Lead: The Leader and Time

I've been reading a very good book by Albert Mohler that has surpassed my expectations: Conviction to Lead. To be honest, I expected to find it helpful and instructive only here and there, but every chapter is chock-full of useful instruction. I would not be surprised if this book turns out to be Mohler's most significant and enduring.

Here's a sample from a chapter I just finished called "The Leader and Time":

I fear that many Christian leaders (including many pastors) have made themselves too unavailable. Leaders must protect time against constant interruption and distraction, but the people placed within their care and influence are not, in themselves, interruptions or distractions. No one said striking the right balance would be easy. The most effective leaders, however, learn to negotiate this balance by both insight and intuition (187).

From another section a little further on:

Long ago, I developed a habit of wearing a watch with an old-fashioned sweep second hand. I like to hear it tick, knowing that every tick marks the passing of time. I like noisy clocks in my study—clocks I can hear marking the time. I can feel the passing of time in my bones, and that knowledge makes me want to be a more faithful steward of time tomorrow than I was today. Time will tell (189). 

—Albert Mohler, The Conviction to Lead: Twenty-five Principles for Leadership that Matters (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2012). 

Affection Among Friends

Augustine on the charms of friendship:

We could talk and laugh together and exchange small acts of kindness. We could join in the pleasure that books can give. We could be grave or gay together. If we sometimes disagreed, it was without spite, as a man might differ with himself, and the rare occasions of dispute were the very spice to season our usual accord. Each of us had something to learn from the others and something to teach in return. If any were away, we missed them with regret and gladly welcomed them when they came home. Such things as these are heartfelt tokens of affection between friends. They are signs to be read on the face and in the eyes, spoken by the tongue and displayed in countless acts of kindness. They can kindle a blaze to melt our hearts and weld them into one.

—Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), 79.

True Friendship: A Holy Spirit Bought Bond

"For though they cling together, no friends are true friends unless you, my God, bind them fast to one another through that love which is sown in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us."

—Saint Augustin, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), 75.

Love (2)

Immortal Heat, O let thy greater flame
    Attract the lesser to it: let those fires,
    Which shall consume the world, first make it tame;
And kindle in our hearts such true desires,
As may consume our lusts, and make thee way.
    Then shall our hearts pant thee; then shall our brain
    All here invention on thine Altar lay,
And there in hymns send back thy fire again:
Our eyes shall see thee, which before saw dust;
    Dust blown by wit, till that they both were blind:
    Thou shalt recover all they goods in kind,
Who wert disseised by usurping lust:
    All knees shall bow to thee; all wits shall rise,
    And praise him who did make and mend our eyes.

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 48.