Justification Reconsidered

I just finished Stephen Westerholm's Justification Reconsidered. It's a cogent and concise overview of Paul's understanding of justification over against modern misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and mishandlings of the doctrine of justification. Highly recommended for anyone who wishes to understand the basics at play in present-day discussions.

So Much for a Wandering Mind

"Depend on it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

—J. Boswell, Life of Johnson, 167 (as cited in F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 313).

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

—Rudyard Kipling

(Source.)

Smear and Censure

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) and John Calvin (1509–1564), two of the world's most prominent pastor-theologians, speak eloquently to the pervasiveness and ugliness of the commonest of sins—slander.

Commenting on Jas. 1:26, Calvin says this:

When people shed their grosser sins, they are extremely vulnerable to contract this complaint. A man will steer clear of adultery, of stealing, of drunkenness, in fact he will be a shining light of outward religious observance—and yet will revel in destroying the character of others; under the pretext of zeal, naturally, but it is a lust for vilification. This explains his desire to distinguish the honest worshippers of God from the hypocrites, and the bloated pharisaical pride that feeds indulgently on a general diet of smear and censure (The Epistles of James and Jude, 274). 

Edwards, in a sermon on 1 Cor. 13:4 in his famous series Charity and Its Fruits, describes this all too common injury:

Some injure others in their good name, by reproaching them, or speaking evil of them behind their backs. Abundance is done in this way. No injury is so common as this. . . . Some injure others by making or spreading false reports of others, and so slandering them. And others, although what they say is not a direct falsehood, yet a great misrepresentation of things, represent things in their neighbors in the worst colors, and strain their faults, and set them forth beyond what they are, and speak of them in a very unfair manner. A great deal of injury is done among neighbors by uncharitably judging one another, putting injurious constructions on one another's words and actions (Ethical Writings, 187).

—John Calvin, A Harmony of the Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke Volume III and The Epistles of James and Jude (vol. 3 in Calvin's New Testament Commentaries; transl. A. W. Morrison; eds. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrrance; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 274; Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings (vol. 8 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven: Yale University, 1989), 157–158.

Preaching Free of Charge—Because Grace Is Free

My gratitude to God, and esteem for D. A. Carson, increases by the day. I'm currently taking his course on Acts, Paul, and the General Epistles at TEDS. This morning Professor Carson walked us through 1 Corinthians 9 and Paul's radical commitment to the Gospel.

And in the course of this lecture, I found out that Carson has no speaking fee when he travels round the world to teach and preach. When asked what he charges or expects for his services, he simply says, "Nothing. It's free." He made a vow to God years ago that he'd never accept or turn down a speaking engagement based on money.

And that's right: the Gospel is free of charge. Grace is free. And those who show it forth in their living as well as speak it in their preaching hold forth the gift of God most powerfully. The Gospel embodied in deed powerfully attests to the Gospel held out in word.  

I praise God for Professor Carson, and for ministers who model free grace in their own lives. 

Paul Raw

Speaking of the Corinthian correspondence:

No part of the Pauline corpus more clearly illuminates the character of Paul the man, Paul the Christian, Paul the pastor, and Paul the apostle than do these epistles. He thereby leaves us some substance in his invitation to imitate him, and thereby imitate Christ (1 Cor. 11:1). 

—D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 450.

The Twenty-First Century Face of Feminism

Over at National Review, Mary Eberstadt has just penned an insightful piece on what is going on with feminism today. Please do have a look. And please don't let the provocative language in the beginning keep you from pressing on to the end. It gets more and more insightful as it presses on.

Here's a snippet:

Feminism has become something very different from what it understands itself to be, and indeed from what its adversaries understand it to be. It is not a juggernaut of defiant liberationists successfully playing offense. It is instead a terribly deformed but profoundly felt protective reaction to the sexual revolution itself. In a world where fewer women can rely on men, some will themselves take on the protective coloration of exaggerated male characteristics — blustering, cursing, belligerence, defiance, and also, as needed, promiscuity.

You can read the whole article (definitely worth doing) here. Which is the same place above where I urged you to go on ahead and have a look.

What ISIS Really Wants

This recent piece by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic is easily the most helpful piece I've read on ISIS. While acknowledging fully that I am a novice on matters of Islam and the world's political affairs, it appears that this piece contains substantial explanatory power and betrays unusual care, clarity, and accuracy.

Deposition

Rogier van der Weyden's Deposition, ca. 1436

For a concise exposition of this painting, see pages 65–69 in Art and Music: A Student's Guide, by Paul Munson and Joshua Farris Drake.

Antithetical to Ecclesiastical Unity

"A church full of people who are hungry to impress others and climb a little higher up the scales of social approval will not be a church characterized by deep spiritual unity."

—D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 428.

Precious in the Sight of the LORD Is the Death of His Saints

The following is what my wife Emily wrote yesterday as she reflected on the home-going of her grandpa Peter Wolfert:

Today I’m thanking God for the life of Grandpa Peter, who departed to be with Jesus early Friday morning. He married my grandma when I was in college and was such an encourager to me through each new step I took as an adult. Most of all, he encouraged me through his love for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

One Christmas he and I were discussing a message on “Comfort and Joy,” and he shared how the word "comfort" always reminded him of the Heidelberg Catechism. He then recited question one: “What is thy only comfort in life and death?” Answer: “That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” To hear that spoken with such faith and conviction from a ninety-two-year-old saint has left an indelible mark on my life.

Thank you, Jesus, for the encouragement of the saints who’ve gone before us! I look forward to rising one day with Grandpa Peter triumphant over death because we belong to Jesus. And I can’t wait to see his glorious resurrected body in the new heavens and new earth!

The Womb of Theology

"Mission is the mother of all theology" (M. Kahler, as cited in Michael F. Bird, Introducing Paul, 20).

Upsetting the World with the Gospel

On his second missionary journey, Paul (with Silas) preached Jesus as the Christ with good effect in a synagogue of the Jews in Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-3). This spawned jealously among some Jews who then stirred up men of the rabble to form a mob (Acts 17:4-5). Before the city authorities, this mob leveled a charge against Paul and his companions.

Well, what was the charge? Luke tells us in Acts 17:6-7. And F. F. Bruce paraphrases that charge:

These men who have upset the civilized world have now arrived here, and Jason has harbored them. Their practices are clean contrary to Caesar's decrees: they are proclaiming a rival emperor, Jesus (Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, 225).

I find this charge more than a little intriguing. Whatever the particulars of his proclamation in Thessalonica, Paul must have focused on Jesus as Lord (as in so much of the proclamation recorded in Acts). Jesus is Lord. His is risen and exalted and reigning. Now! Already! And so that's what the apostles preached. And this meant they routinely found themselves in a head on collision with local authorities, who found their message subversive to their own inflated authority.

Now, such charges are almost never brought against Christians today. And I submit that the reason for this is simply that we preach a different gospel than did the apostles. We don't proclaim Jesus as Lord, given all authority in heaven and on earth. But we should. And when we do, we should not be surprised when the authorities take notice and betray their panic.

O Sovereign Lord, King of the Nations

What follows is a recent prayer offered up at New Covenant Church in Naperville, IL. On the morning we prayed this corporate prayer, we were interceding for missionaries and for the persecuted church around the world. For obvious reasons, the missionaries' identities will be obscured in the prayer below by using curly brackets, like this: {     }. 

The Prayers at NCC

Our gracious God, the great Giver of good gifts, you have poured into our laps to overflowing. We receive the gifts you’ve given us, with gratitude, and we offer back to you a portion of these gifts in worship. We offer our resources in worship for the cause of Christ, and for the work of his kingdom. Get glory for yourself, we pray, through the Gospel going forth, and make us glad in the gladness of others receiving your free grace.

O Sovereign Lord, King of the nations, thank you for the privilege of partnering with {our missionaries} for the sake of your Name among the nations. We praise you for renewing and refreshing [them] while in {_____}, and we praise you for providing work for [our brother] where he can get to know and serve multiple people.

As [they] now settle in among the “People of the Plains,” O Great God, Our gracious God, give favor with local and government officials in the north; provide a place to live nearby gospel partners; grant grace, light, and power for wise living in a foreign land; grant grace and endurance for learning the local culture and adapting well; give grace as they move into a new city with new and unknown challenges; grant grace for [our brother] in his new job to speak the word of grace with power.

And as we remember our persecuted siblings around the world, in Burma and China, in India and Egypt, in Iran and Iraq, and elsewhere, especially in the ten-forty window, we remember your word, O Lord: “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” And we remember how your servant the apostle Peter taught us not to “be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon [the church] to test [us], as though something strange were happening to [us]. And we remember how Jesus himself taught us: “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you”; “if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before you.”

And yet, we cry out with the cries of those souls slain for the Word of God and for their witness: “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge [the blood of the church]?” How long? And we hear you telling us to wait until the full number of the martyrs spill their blood in witness to the Lord Jesus.

So we pray for the endurance of the saints around the world, for perseverance for those suffering for their faith in Christ. Keep them from fearing what they are appointed to suffer. Help them “to be faithful unto death, [knowing that you] will give them the crown of life.” May they be enabled by divine grace to “hold fast to [the name of Jesus].” May they remember and believe your word that “the one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.”

We pray also, O Sovereign Lord, for our patient endurance. And we ask you to give us the grace we need to imitate the faith of the martyrs and of our brothers and sisters who steadfastly “keep the commands of God and hold fast to the testimony of Jesus.” For our Lord Jesus is worthy of all our worship, and all our devotion. And it is in his worthy name we pray. 

Amen.

The Soul Itself Becomes a Precious Jewel

The meeting house where Edwards
preached "Charity and Its Fruits"

Jonathan Edwards' sermons on 1 Corinthians 13, preached in 1738, in Northampton, MA, shortly after the fervors of the first "Great Awakening" had passed, are a precious treasure for the Christian Church. Whenever I return to Charity and Its Fruits, I find myself simultaneously devastated and invigorated. I say "devastated" because Edwards' preaching on what real faith looks like as it works itself out in love leaves me feeling my shortcomings considerably more than the much less probing preaching common in the church today, preaching that rarely disturbs the comfortable, and comforts the disturbed. And I say "invigorated" because of how life-giving and renewing and refreshing is Edward's vision of the Christian life. It is beautiful, excellent, altogether lovely. It is life-giving, since it is itself swallowed up in the life of God.

And so I wish in this place to give my reader a flavor of what I'm talking about. The following excerpt comes from the second sermon in the series, entitled: "Love More Excellent than Extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit." And here Edwards is distinguishing between the "ordinary" (by which he means what all Christians are ordinarily given in the gift of the Spirit) and "extraordinary" (by which he means "miraculous") gifts of the Spirit. One paragraph ought to be enough to send you off longing and panting for more. Note especially the last two sentences of the quoted material below, where Edwards is illustrating his point.

This blessing of the saving grace of God is a quality inherent in the nature of him who is the subject of it. This gift of the Spirit of God, working a saving Christian temper and exciting gracious exercises, confers a blessing which has its seat in the heart; a blessing which makes a man's heart and nature excellent. Yea, the very excellency of the nature consists in it.  

Now it is not so with respect to those extraordinary gifts of the Spirit. They are excellent things, but not properly the excellency of a man's nature; for they are not things which are inherent in the nature. For instance, if a man is endued with a gift of working miracles, that power is not anything inherent in his nature. It is not properly any quality of the heart and nature of the man, as true grace and holiness are. And though most commonly those who have these extraordinary gifts of prophecy, speaking in tongues, and working miracles have been holy persons, yet their holiness did not consist in their having these gifts; but holiness consists in having grace in the heart; grace and holiness are the same thing. 

Extraordinary gifts are nothing properly inherent in the man. They are something adventitious. They are excellent things; but they are not properly excellencies in the nature of the subject, any more than the garments are which he wears. Extraordinary gifts of the Spirit are, as it were, precious jewels, which a man carries about him. But true grace in the heart is, as it were, the preciousness of the heart, by which it becomes precious or excellent; by which the very soul itself becomes a precious jewel.

—Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings (vol. 8 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven: Yale University, 1989), 157–158.