The Love of God and the Love of Our Neighbor in God

"All God's commandments, one of which is, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery,' and all those precepts which are not commandments but special counsels, one of which is, 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman,' are rightly carried out only when the motive principle of action is the love of God, and the love of our neighbor in God" (Augustine, Enchiridion, 139–140).

Zealous for God's Fame

"Zeal is a mixed affection, a compound of love and anger; it carries forth our love to God, and our anger against sin in an intense degree. Zeal is impatient of God's dishonour; a Christian fired with zeal, takes a dishonour done to God worse than an injury done to himself" (Thomas Watson, Body of Divinity, 16).

Austin Owen, Child of God's Covenant Love

Our baby boy is going to be baptized next weekend at College Church in Wheaton. We're looking forward to his being baptized into Christ our King and Redeemer.

“Austin” is named after St. Augustin(e), whom the Puritans called Austin. Augustin(e) is known as the "doctor of grace” in the Church. He eloquently defended and articulated the doctrine of the sovereign grace of God in Christ, as well as anyone in the faith, having himself experienced it so potently as a thirty-two-year-old lecherous man. And it is our prayer that Austin will know God’s sovereign grace deeply, as did Augustin(e), to the “praise of the glory of God’s grace.”

His middle name “Owen” has nothing to do with the origin of the word or its present day meaning. Emily and I have given it to him after that greatest of English Puritans John Owen (one of his daddy’s most influential teachers). The center of John Owen’s theology is arguably steadfastly beholding "the glory of God in the face of Christ" (e.g., Owen cites 2 Cor. 4:6 more than any other verse in his works). Our prayer is that our little Owen would embrace the centrality of the glory of Christ in his life and steadfastly behold that glory all his dying days, being transformed into that same glory, to the glory of God.

What God-Centeredness Looks and Sounds Like

Edwards:

The emanation or communication of the divine fullness, consisting in the knowledge of God, love to God, and joy in God, has relation indeed both to God and the creature: but it has relation to God as its fountain, as it is an emanation from God; and as the communication itself, or thing communicated, is something divine, something of God, something of his internal fullness; as the water in the stream is something of the fountain; and as the beams are of the sun. And again, they have relation to God as they have respect to him as their object: for the knowledge communicated is the knowledge of God; and so God is the object of the knowledge: and the love communicated, is the love of God; so God is the object of that love: and the happiness communicated, is joy in God; and so he is the object of the joy communicated. In the creature's knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged; his fullness is received and returned. Here is both an emanation and remanation. The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair (End for Which, in WJE 8:531).

Unmistakable Marks of Glory

Calvin:

The final goal of the blessed life, moreover, rests in the knowledge of God. Lest anyone, then, be excluded from access to happiness, he not only sowed in men's minds that seed of religion of which we have spoken but revealed himself and daily discloses himself in the whole workmanship of the universe. As a consequence, men cannot open their eyes without being compelled to see him. Indeed, his essence is incomprehensible; hence, his divineness far escapes all human perception. But upon his individual works he has engraved unmistakable marks of his glory, so clear and so prominent that even unlettered and stupid folk cannot plead the excuse of ignorance.

—John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.5.1

Do It Again!

Chesterton:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daises alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

—G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995), 36–37.

What Is Theology?

Here's my present attempt at a definition that embraces the whole enterprise of theologizing. It aims at making clear that doing theology is an activity that invests the whole person as a living sacrifice of worship as one who is God addressed, God possessed, and God obsessed. It is not, in other words, a lifeless and arid academic exercise. You'll perhaps notice that it is heavily influenced by the likes of Anselm, Vanhoozer, Packer, Edwards, and, no doubt, many others.

Theology is faith seeking, speaking, and showing (i.e., doing/living) contemporary, contextual, communal, catholic, and canonical understanding of the things of the Spirit (i.e., the things of the triune God, the things of the gospel)—to the glory of God the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Face to Face with God's Majesty

"Man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God's Majesty" (Calvin, Instit. 1.1.3).

God-Centered Anger

In "Charity Contrary to an Angry Spirit," preached in 1738, Edwards speaks of what God-centered anger looks like:

If men's own private interest was not what men sought, but the glory of God and the common good chiefly, then their spirit would be much more stirred in God's cause than in their own. And they would not be prone to hasty, rash, inconsiderate, immoderate and long continued wrath for injuries to themselves. They would in a great measure forget themselves for God's sake, and Christ's sake; and the end, at which they would aim in their anger, would not be making themselves feared, or getting their own will, but God's glory, and others' good.

—Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings (vol. 8 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven: Yale University, 1989), 279.

Christian Love

"Love of benevolence is that disposition which a man has who desires or delights in the good of another. And this is the main thing in Christian love, the most essential thing, and that whereby our love is most of an imitation of the eternal love and grace of God, and the dying love of Christ."

—Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings (vol. 8 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven: Yale University, 1989), 213.

Dullness

Why do I languish thus, drooping and dull,
                    As if I were all earth?
O give me quickness, that I may with mirth
                           Praise thee brimfull!

—George Herbert, The Complete English Poems (New York: Penguin, 1991), 107.

New Birth and the Supremacy of God

"In the new life which follows repentance the absolute supremacy of God is the controlling principle. He who repents turns away from the service of mammon and self to the service of God."

—Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church (New York: American Tract Society, 1903), 174–175.

Unintelligible to Man Magnifying Man

"The kingdom is a conception which must of necessity remain unintelligible and unacceptable to every view of the world and of religion which magnifies man at the expense of God."

—Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of Jesus Concerning the Kingdom of God and the Church (New York: American Tract Society, 1903), 83–84.

The Fullness of the Godhead

Edwards:

Now God's internal glory, is either in his understanding or will. The glory or fullness of his understanding is his knowledge. The internal glory and fullness of God, having its special seat in his will, is his holiness and happiness. The whole of God's internal good or glory, is in these three things, viz. his infinite knowledge, his infinite virtue or holiness, and his infinite joy and happiness.  

Indeed there are a great many attributes in God, according to our way of conceiving them: but all may be reduced to these; or to their degree, circumstances, and relations. We have no conception of God's power, different from the degree of these things, with a certain relation of them to effects. God's infinity is not properly a distinct kind of good, but only expresses the degree of good there is in him. So God's eternity is not a distinct good; but is the duration of good. His immutability is still the same good, with a negation of change. So that, as I said, the fullness of the Godhead is the fullness of his understanding, consisting in his knowledge; and the fullness of his will consisting in his virtue and happiness.

—John Piper, God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), 243–244.

The Glory of God

Jonathan Edwards:

All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God's works, is included in that one phrase, the glory of God. . . . The thing signified by that name, the glory of God, when spoken of as the supreme and ultimate end of all God's works, is the emanation and true external expression of God's internal glory and fullness; meaning by his fullness . . . God's internal glory, in a true and just exhibition, or external existence of it. 

—John Piper, God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), 242.

The Argument and Flow of Colossians

What follows comes from a paper I produced for Professor G. K. Beale in 2010 for his New Testament Theology class (one of the best classes I have ever taken):

Col. 1:1-2: Paul and Timothy greet the faithful saints in Christ at Colossae with grace and peace from God their Father. 

Transition:  Because the Colossians are faithful saints in Christ in response to the gospel of grace, Paul and Timothy have reason for gratitude to God, expressed in vv. 3-8.

Col. 1:3-8:  Constant thanksgiving is offered to the Father for gospel fruitfulness—faith in Christ and love in the Spirit—because of the heavenly hope of the gospel of grace.

Transition:  Based on manifest fruit, prayer is offered in v. 9ff for still more fruit.          

Col. 1:9-14:  Constant prayer is offered for the saints to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all Spirit-given wisdom so as to walk worthily of the Lord in his kingdom.

Transition:  Col. 1:15-20 specifies who the Son mentioned in v. 14 is. 

Col. 1:15-20:  The Son in whom the fullness of God dwells and who images forth God is Lord of Creation and Recreation and will therefore have the supremacy in everything.

Transition:  Having made peace by the cross, the results are spoken of in vv. 21-23.

Col. 1:21-23:  God reconciled the formerly alienated Colossians through the death of the Son to present them holy, faultless, and blameless before him.

Transition:  After speaking of becoming a minister of the gospel, Paul explains the design of his Christ-shaped, joy-filled sufferings.

Col. 1:24-29:  Paul’s joyful sufferings in the gospel for the church fulfill the prophetic word of God among the Gentiles—the mystery of Christ in them as the hope of glory. 

Transition:  In 2:1-5 Paul tells more specifically why he has been agonizing and toiling.

Col. 2:1-5:  In view of false teaching, Paul’s joyful struggle aims at encouraging the saints’ hearts unto gospel understanding and continued good order and firmness of faith in the Christ in whom reside all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Transition:  Paul’s exhortation in 2:6-7 accords with the aim of his struggles in 1:24-2:5. 

Col. 2:6-7:  Paul urges a grateful walk with reference to Messiah Jesus as the Lord of all.

Transition:  After urging the Colossians how to walk, Paul shows the way to continue that walk by issuing a warning to avoid what would lead away from Christ.    

Col. 2:8-15:  Do not be taken captive away from Christ in whom is the fullness of the deity and in whom you have been filled when you died and rose with him.

Transition:  On the basis of what was achieved through Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul confidently exhorts the Colossians concerning shadows and substance.

Col. 2:16-19:  Let no one judge you concerning shadows that have their substance in Christ, nor let anyone disqualify you of the prize through not holding fast to the head.

Transition:  Verse 20 refers back to the condition of believers’ dying with Christ to the old world (vv. 11-12) as the basis for exhortation in v. 20ff.  

Col. 2:20-23:  Since you died with Christ to the elements of the world, do not submit to the doctrines of men that are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.

Transition: Col. 3:1 now refers back to the condition of believers’ rising with Christ (2:12-13) as the basis for exhortations in 3:1f.

Col. 3:1-4:  Seek the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Transition:  Col. 3:5ff is an inference based on dying, rising, and being glorified with Jesus in vv. 1-4. 

Col. 3:5-11:  Put to death and put away the deeds of the old man because you have put on the new man who is being renewed according to the image of Christ—who is all.

Transition:  Verses 12ff give another inference based on having put off the old man and having put on the new man—where Christ is all. 

Col. 3:12-17:  As God’s holy and loved people, wear clothes that fit the new man, doing all—whether in word or deed--in the name of the Lord Jesus. 

Transition:  Verse 17 gives the general injunction, and 3:18-4:1 give specific injunctions that focus on deeds in Jesus’ name.

Col. 3:18-21:  Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus: serve the Lord Christ in the home!

Transition:  Verse 17 gave the general injunction, and v. 22ff continue the specific injunctions that focus on deeds in Jesus’ name. 

Col. 3:22-4:1:  Do all in the name of the Lord Jesus: serve the Lord Christ in society!

Transition:  Col. 4:2-6 continues to work out the general injunction given in 3:17, now focusing on words in Jesus’ name in relation to prayer, evangelism, and outsiders.   

Col. 4:2-6: Continue steadfastly in prayer for gospel proclamation and walk and speak wisely for gospel witnessing.

Transition:  The verses that follow elaborate upon the concerns of apostolic ministry.

Col. 4:7-9:  The faithful brothers will make known Paul’s circumstances.

Transition:  The following verses continue to expand upon apostolic ministry concerns.

Col. 4:10-17:  Gospel greetings, concerns, and love are extended from gospel workers. 

Transition:  After greetings from others, Paul himself adds his personal touch.

Col. 4:18:  Paul himself greets them in chains and extends the grace benediction.

One Sentence Exegetical Summary:  In the face of cosmic opposition, God is bringing about the promised new-creation kingdom of his Son through the apostolic gospel in order that the Lord Jesus might be pre-eminent in all things.

A Supreme Regard for the Supreme Being

Edwards speaking of the supreme regard due God as an exceedingly fitting thing:

To determine, then, what proportion of regard is to be allotted to the Creator, and all his creatures taken together, both must be as it were put in the balance; the Supreme Being, with all in him that is great, considerable, and excellent, is to be estimated and compared with all that is to be found in the whole creation: and according as the former is found to outweigh, in such proportion is he to have a greater share of regard. And in this case, as the whole system of created beings in comparison of the Creator would be found as the light dust of the balance (which is taken no notice of by him that weighs) and as nothing and vanity; so the arbiter must determine accordingly with respect to the degree in which God should be regarded by all intelligent existence, and the degree in which he should be regarded in all that is done through the whole universal system; in all actions and proceedings, determinations and effects whatever, whether creating, preserving, using, disposing, changing, or destroying. And as the Creator is infinite, and has all possible existence, perfection and excellence, so he must have all possible regard. As he is every way the first and supreme, and as his excellency is in all respects the supreme beauty and glory, the original good, and fountain of all good; so he must have in all respects the supreme regard. And as he is God over all, to whom all are properly subordinate, and on whom all depend, worthy to reign as supreme head with absolute and universal dominion; so it is fit that he should be so regarded by all and in all proceedings and effects through the whole system: that this universality of things in their whole compass and series should look to him and respect him in such a manner as that respect to him should reign over all respect to other things, and that regard to creatures should universally be subordinate and subject.

—Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings (vol. 8 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven: Yale University, 1989), 423-424.

The Limitations of Reason in Discerning Teleology

Toward the end of his life, Jonathan Edwards wrote one of his most important works—The End for Which God Created the World.

The bare bones broad outline for this "dissertation" is as follows:

I. Explanation of Terms and General Positions
II. Chapter 1: What Reason Teaches in This Affair
III. Chapter 2: What Holy Scripture Teaches about the End for Which God Created the World 

The section explaining terms and the first chapter on reason display close, careful, and acute argumentation. That is, really tight, profound reasoning. Yet, at the beginning of chapter 2, Edwards (America's greatest philisophical mind) says this fitting word about the limits of reason:

Indeed, this affair seems properly to be an affair of divine revelation. In order to be determined what was aimed at or designed in the creating of the astonishing fabric of the universe which we behold, it becomes us to attend to and rely on what he has told us who was the architect that built it. He best knows his own heart, and what his own ends and designs were in the wonderful works which he has wrought.

—Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings (vol. 8 in the Works of Jonathan Edwards; ed. Paul Ramsey; New Haven: Yale University, 1989), 419.

What Sin Is at Its Core

"Sin is trying to quench our unquenchable soul-thirst anywhere but in God. Or, more subtly, sin is pursuing satisfaction in the right direction, but with lukewarm, halfhearted affections (Rev. 3:16)."

—John Piper, God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), 81.

Man's Ineffably Profound Fitness

Defining in what the image of God consists has proven more challenging than might be expected. I think this definition given by John Piper is as good as any I've seen:

"The image of God in man is man's ineffably profound fitness to image forth Christ's glory through everlasting joy in God."

—John Piper, God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998), 39.