That's My King!

I doubt this will ever get old, and I can't think of a better Resurrection Sunday post.

I rejoice this day in the resurrection and the life of my King, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, King Jesus the Christ, the Name above all names.

Rejoice with me.

Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance,
God is now declaring to men that
all people
everywhere
should repent,
because He has fixed a day
in which He will judge the world in righteousness
through a Man whom He has appointed,
having furnished proof to all men
by raising Him from the dead.
- Acts 17:30-31 -

Jesus said to her,
"I am the resurrection and the life;
he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,
and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.
Do you believe this?"
- John 11:25-26 -

He proved it.

Do you believe this?

Horton on the Gospel

Came across this video, and really liked it.

Some notable quotes:

A definition of the Gospel: "From Genesis to Revelation, the Gospel is God's promise of a Son who will crush the serpent's head, forgive the sins of His people, raise them from the dead, and give them everlasting life solely on the basis of His grace for the sake of Christ."

The Gospel is founded upon God's grace: "The Gospel never tells us something to do. The Gospel tells us about something that's been done."

Confronting popular catch-phrases that betray false conceptions about the nature of the Gospel: "We hear people say today, 'We need to live the Gospel. We need to do the Gospel.' But actually, we need to do the Law. You can't do the Gospel. That's a category mistake. It's the most fundamental, basic theological mistake you could make: to confuse the Law with the Gospel. ... If we confuse those two things, we'll make ourselves partly our own saviors."

Confronting popular catch-phrases that betray false conceptions about the nature of mission and Gospel ministry: "We do not extend Christ's incarnation. We do not contribute to His redeeming and reconciling work in the world. We are the ones who are redeemed and are telling everyone else about it. We are witnesses to His redeeming work, not extensions of it."

Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law
through the body of Christ,
so that you might be joined to another,
to Him who was raised from the dead,
in order that we might bear fruit for God.
- Romans 7:4 -

Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,
and He said to them, "Thus it is written,
that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day,
and that repentance for forgiveness of sins
would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.
- Luke 24:45-48 -

Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry in 2011: A Postscript

As we close this series on principles for faithful Gospel ministry -- principles which center on seeing the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ (2Cor 4:6) -- the question to you is: Do you see Him? Is He glorious? Can you find your joy in the exaltation of another? Do you gladly and eagerly say with John the Baptist, “He must increase, and I must decrease”?

If not, I bid you to look and see the glory of Christ revealed in the Gospel that we’ve meditated on here for the past month. See the beauty and the preciousness of the miraculous birth, sinless life, substitutionary death, and undeniable resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, sent to ransom a remnant of worshipers who would proclaim the glory of His grace forever! And pray that God would shine in your heart—pray that He would grant you the eyes to see this Jesus for who He is. The Bible promises that this faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. You have heard much. Now ask God for the heart to believe it.

And for those of you who answer, “Yes,” to those questions, be diligent to heed these principles from the Apostle Paul as you seek to faithfully minister the Gospel in 2011. Remember your purpose is to call the sheep, not entertain the goats; and so you must measure your success by faithfulness to the message. Remember that the problem you’ve been commissioned to solve is that the world is blind to glory. And therefore remember that your proclamation must not be yourselves, but Christ as Lord. And remember that God provides the prescription, overcoming the problem of spiritual blindness with the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Christ.

And so preach the Gospel in accordance with the reality that God’s own glory is the great and ultimate end in His love for sinners; and in accordance with the reality that what makes the Good News good news is that rebels’ blind eyes are finally opened to enjoy the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, for which they were created.

Series Outline

1. Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
2. We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
3. The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
4. We Do Not Preach Ourselves
5. God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
6. The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
7. Postscript
   

Update: If you'd like to hear this series as preached in one sermon, click here.

God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life

So far we have gleaned three principles that inform our understanding of the Gospel and shape our ministry in order that we might be faithful witnesses of Christ in 2011. We’ve seen from 2Cor 4:3 that our purpose is not to amuse the goats, but call in the sheep, and so we measure our success by faithfulness and not numbers. We’ve seen from 2Cor4:4 that the world’s most fundamental problem is that they cannot see the glory of Christ, and so that is to be the focus of the Church’s mission. Because that’s the case we saw in 2Cor 4:5 that our proclamation must not be anything about ourselves, but must be the Gospel of Christ’s Lordship. And after two brief implication/application-type comments on ways contemporary churches preach themselves (one, two), we finally come to the fourth point: we must know the prescription.

Remember humanity’s predicament. All have sinned and fall short of God’s standard of righteousness, and are thus incapable of enjoying a relationship with their Creator. And because they can do nothing to save themselves, God sends Christ to live and die on their behalf, so that if they believe in Him He pays for their sin and imputes His righteousness to their account. Being declared righteous before God, man can enjoy a restored relationship with his glorious Creator for which he was made. And yet the tragedy is, their minds have been blinded so that when they hear that wonderful news, they can’t see it for what it is. They see no glory in it. It’s simply foolishness, and so they continue to disbelieve and resist it.

But now, Paul says, in magnificent love, God Himself—the same God who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness”—shines in the hearts of His elect to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. God overcomes our resistance to the Gospel by giving us the light needed to see things as they actually are. The prescription, or the remedy, for man’s spiritual blindness is God’s sovereign work of regeneration.

Now, there is a parallelism going on between verses 4 and 6, and comparing them sheds light on some precious realities.

In verse 4 we have: The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

And in verse 6: The Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

The first thing to notice is that the glory of Christ who is the image of God and the glory of God in the face of Christ are entirely parallel. What’s awesome about this is that Paul is very clearly teaching that the glory of the Father and the glory of the Son are not competing glories. They are the same! The Father is God and is glorious! And Jesus the Son is God and is glorious!

The second thing to notice is that Paul outlines three levels of God’s redemptive work, and as we progress through each level we penetrate to further depth and ultimacy. Examining these three levels of increasing depth of God’s redemptive work and understanding their implications will help us understand the fullness of the Good News, and will keep us from preaching a truncated Gospel.

Level 1: Light

The first level is the one that I just briefly mentioned: the level of “light.” This is the miracle of regeneration whereby God sovereignly imparts spiritual light to the blinded mind, or, to use the other metaphor, whereby He sovereignly imparts spiritual life to the dead heart. Paul compares this act of God to the creation of the world. He says, “the God who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’” is the One who has shone in our hearts. In the beginning, God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. This means (1) that just as God created the world out of nothing, so He created spiritual life in us out of nothing (cf. Rom 4:17); and (2) it means that the new birth is just as much a sovereign act of God as was the original creation of the universe. And if there’s any doubt, let me ask you: How active or cooperative was the creation in its creation?

It wasn’t. It didn’t exist, and then it did. That’s why the metaphor of being born again is so apt: just as a baby contributes nothing to his first birth, so also those who are born again from above are born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:13).

Level 2: Knowledge of the Gospel

And so the first level of God’s redemptive work is regeneration. God shines Light where there was once darkness. But notice the second level: God shines the light of the knowledge, or, as verse 4 says, the light of the gospel.

Again, these are parallel. We can understand the second level as the knowledge of the Gospel. What this means is that it is the Light of regeneration that causes the sinner—who once was blind and saw no glory and no beauty in the gospel—to look upon the message of what Christ has done in history to provide salvation for guilty sinners, and to see it as the greatest news they could ever imagine.

Before this light shines, the story of the angelic announcements, the virgin birth, the perfect life, the miracles, the betrayal, the unjust trial, the horrific crucifixion and death, and the resurrection of Jesus— all of it is just a story, like a fairy tale. But now the light has shone, and the eyes of their hearts are opened, and they look upon the old, old story, and It. Is. beautiful!

Level two is the knowledge of the Gospel.

But you know, this is where many Christians -- even many orthodox, conservative evangelicals -- just stop. They don't go beyond this. But there is a third level that we will delve into next time. Don't miss that.

Series Outline

1. Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
2. We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
3. The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
4. We Do Not Preach Ourselves
5. God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
6. The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
7. Postscript

He Will Look for You to Deal With You

As Christians left on earth, awaiting the second coming of our Savior, what we're after is that God would sovereignly overcome the blindness to glory that is the universal problem of the human race (2Cor 4:4), and save them from their suicidal love affair with themselves.

A problem arises, though, when well-meaning Christians, who have a genuine desire to see people come to Christ to be saved from God's wrath and to enjoy the relationship with their glorious Creator, employ methods and means that are contradictory to the message we have to give them. In the video below, Paul Washer decries the "carnal means" that church leaders are using to (a) keep worldly members in the pews and (b) attract new ones with an eye to numerical growth. And it illustrates what it means that pastors be "preaching themselves" (2Cor 4:5), and "peddling the Word of God" (2Cor 2:17) rather than the Gospel: Christ Jesus as Lord.

It is a legitimate question to ask what he means by "carnal means." I would say that carnal means are any means that appeal to people on the basis of what they want as natural people. If your church's draw to the unbelieving world is giving them something that they don't need to be converted to be attracted by, you're using carnal means. You're appealing to the worldliness of the unbeliever.

And in order to do that, you must preach yourself (2Cor 4:5). Yesterday in chapel at TMS, John MacArthur called that very thing "prostituting your calling" as a pastor. The examples of this are legion, and we mentioned some of them last time. Theatrical lighting and high-tech multimedia in church services designed to attract and entertain. Shorter "talks" about people's emotional problems, full of anecdotes and light on Scripture because people don't listen to theology for an hour. Coffee shops and art galleries in the church foyer to appeal to that demographic. Adopting a particular music style because you think it will bring a bigger, or a particular, audience.

And the reason that all of that (a) ultimately fails and (b) is grossly offensive to God is because that never solves the problem of blindness to glory, and implies that the message of Christ's cross is insufficient to do so. None of those things is how anyone gets born again. Because the agent of the new birth is not the "will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:13). The means of the enlightening of minds is the preaching of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes (Rom 1:16). And the Gospel has, is, and always will be necessarily and radically opposed to the unbeliever’s worldview.

As I said earlier, we're not called to attract and entertain the goats but to call Christ's sheep into His fold. And His sheep know His voice, and when they hear it, by grace, they come (Jn 10:27). Therefore, our appeal in Gospel ministry is to the spiritual, not the fleshly.

And so what is our responsibility? First, it is to repudiate all carnal means of attempting to do Christian ministry. It is to forsake the business of preaching yourself, and devote yourself wholly to the preaching of the Gospel of Christ's Lordship (2Cor 4:5) as the means of the opening of the world's blinded minds (2Cor 4:4, 6).

But once we have done that -- once we have cleansed ourselves from such peddling (2Cor 2:17) and adulterating (2Cor 4:2) of the word of God, such prostitution of our calling, our responsibility is to refuse to stand idly by while Christ's Bride is being assailed. It is to bring the truth of Scripture to bear on both the message and the methodology of all those who claim to be doing Christian ministry, and to lovingly instruct them away from preaching themselves by employing carnal means. For if you do not -- if you fail to live up to this responsibility in the name of being irenic and for fear of being labeled divisive -- after dealing with His Bride's assailants, Christ will look for you to deal with you, too, for failing to protect the honor of His Beloved, the Church.

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock,
among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers,
to shepherd the church of God
which He purchased with His own blood.
- Acts 20:28 -

The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory

As a sort of a New Year's resolution type of thing, I've been endeavoring to go back to the basics regarding the nature of the Gospel and of Gospel ministry. We're looking at four principles for faithful Gospel ministry in 2011 from 2 Corinthians 4:3-6. We've already seen that we must know the purpose of our ministry; namely, that we're calling Christ's sheep, not the goats, into His fold. We learned that an implication of that principle is that success in ministry is not measured by numbers, or visible "results," but by faithfulness to the message we've received.

The next principle that we must understand in order to be faithful ministers of the Gospel is to recognize the desperate situation that the world is in. That is, we must know the problem we’ve been commissioned to solve. And Paul states it in verse 4. He says, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.”

Now, what does it mean that their minds have been blinded? Well, a few verses earlier, Paul used this same language to describe the Israelites in Moses’ day, and even the Jews up to this present day. In 2Cor 3:12-16 he says, “[We] are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away. But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” Note the parallel between hardened minds and a veiled heart. Both are communicating the same reality as verse 4: the essence of spiritual death is spiritual blindness. What it means for someone to be dead in their trespasses and sins (Eph 2:4), is that the eyes of their heart have been blinded so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.

Now, if that connection isn’t immediately clear, I want to draw your attention to how frequently Scripture speaks of light being analogous to spiritual life, and darkness being analogous to spiritual death and unbelief. So look for that connection in these passages.

• John 12:46 - I have come as Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness.
• 1 Peter 2:9 - God saved you so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.
• Ephesians 5:8 - You were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord.
• Acts 26:18 - I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.

So we see that there is this consistent parallel between light and life and between darkness and death. But it doesn’t stop there. The Scripture also presents the spiritual sight of Christ as analogous to the spiritual life of knowing Him. It goes beyond light and life into sight and life. See that connection:

• 1 John 3:6 - No one who practices sin has seen Him or knows Him.
• John 6:40 - For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.
• In fact, faith itself is spiritual sight. Hebrews 11:1 says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen. That word “conviction” is elengchos in the Greek, and it comes from a verb that means “to bring to light, to expose.” Faith is the spiritual sight by which things that are unseen are exposed and brought to light.
• Which is why it says in Hebrews 11:27: “By faith [Moses] left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is unseen.”

And so when Paul says that the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, he is saying that those who do not believe are spiritually dead.

But I want you to notice what the nature of this spiritual death is. It is that they cannot see the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. This is the world’s problem: they are blind to glory.

Picture with me this most miserable tragedy! Everybody in the world—whether they know it or not—stands guilty before a holy God. All have sinned and thus fall short of the perfection of His glorious standard of righteousness. And so they are incapable of doing the very thing for which they were created: namely, enjoying a relationship with and communion with their glorious Creator. They are doomed to waste their lives.

But in magnificent love, God sends Christ to live the perfect life that they should have lived, but could never live; and to die the horrifying, eternal death that they should have died, so that the penalty they owed would be paid by a substitute; such that if they simply abandon any claim of self-righteousness and trust entirely in Christ alone for their righteousness before God, they can have the restored relationship with their glorious Creator that He designed them to have—that He designed to be the most satisfying, enjoyable, thrilling endeavor in which we ever engaged!

And so you go and you tell these people this most awesome news in the world—the greatest news that anyone could ever conceive of!—and they go, “Ehh. I mean, that's really awesome for you. I mean it! It's great for you. It's just not for me.”

Oh, dear friends, this is the miserable nature of spiritual death: People can look directly at the glory of Christ—whether they be rulers of the Jews in the Ancient Near East witnessing miracles, or 21^st century Americans reading their Bibles—and they can be entirely unaffected. Jesus looks foolish. Or He looks like a mythical, psychological crutch made up for weak people. Or He’s just boring. Because unless we’re born again—unless God shines in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ (as we’ll see in verse 6)—our minds remain blind, and we can’t see Christ for who He is.

Brothers and sisters, this is the world’s problem! This is what the Church has been left on earth to solve! The world’s problem is not that they have bad marriages. It’s not that they don’t have high enough self-esteem and need to feel loved! It’s not, as one megachurch pastor said in his 3-D Christmas service this year, that they need to add depth to their lives! It’s not that they have broken personal relationships. It’s not that they don’t feel comfortable and relaxed in church! It’s not that Christians don’t like the same music they listen to, don’t dress the same way, or don’t use the same language! It's not even that they don't have enough evidence of the truthfulness of the claims of Christianity! And it’s certainly not that they're not living their best life now and don’t have a 7-bedroom house with a 3-car garage!

The world’s problem is that they don’t see glory!

And so that means, that whatever we do as the Church, we better be doing it to solve that problem. Paul gets into how we do that in verse 5. That's for next time.


Series Outline

1. Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
2. We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
3. The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
4. We Do Not Preach Ourselves
5. God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
6. The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
7. Postscript

We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep

In the spirit of the New Year and reflecting on and refocusing our mission in the world as the Church, I've recently introduced my plan to lay out four principles for faithfulness in Gospel ministry in 2011. I plan to couple those with four implications, so that we as the Church will be faithful witnesses of Christ in our various spheres of life in the coming year. I'm going to discuss those principles and implications under four headings. We must (1) know the purpose, (2) know the problem, (3) know the proclamation, and (4) know the prescription.

We'll consider the first of those today. The first principle for faithful ministry that Paul gives us in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 is to know the purpose of Gospel ministry, the aim. Namely: we are calling Christ’s sheep, not the goats, into the fold.

I get that from verse 3, where Paul says, “even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” Now, where is that statement coming from? Well, as I briefly mentioned on Friday, Paul wrote the letter of 2 Corinthians primarily to defend his own apostleship against the teachings of certain men of Corinth who Paul later dubbed false apostles (2Cor 11:13). These men were teaching that Paul was not a true apostle, and were advancing many attacks against both his character and his ministry, to the point that the Corinthians began to doubt Paul, and thus doubt the gospel he preached.

For example, these false apostles accused him of being under God’s judgment because of his constant sufferings. The thought was that if Paul was really sent from Christ he wouldn't have such opposition and such turmoil, but rather that God would bless him. And so in 2Cor 1:3-11 Paul defends himself by saying that his sufferings for the Gospel are actually a mark of God’s favor. Far from discrediting him as an apostle, sufferings are a badge of his authenticity as a minister of Christ. Further, they accused him of vacillating, and “purposing according to the flesh” (2Cor 1:17) because he had changed his plans about coming to Corinth. And so in 2Cor 1:15-22 he defends himself by saying his word to the Corinthians is not yes and no, but yes, just as all God’s promises are yes in Christ. They also accused him of being uncredentialed, a sort of Johnny-come-lately apostle who wasn’t part of the original twelve. And so in 2Cor 3:2 he asks the Corinthians, “Do we need letters of commendation to you? You are our letter of commendation. The fact that you now know Christ because of the Gospel we preached to you is evidence of our authenticity.”

And now in chapter 4, we find that another accusation was that his message was obscure. Now remember, the Corinthian culture praised human wisdom and cleverness of speech and oratorical persuasion. They highly regarded those who were skilled in rhetoric and oratory, and looked down upon those who weren’t. And so these men were saying, “Hey, look, Paul, only a few people are believing your message. If it was true, and you were really sent from Christ, more people would believe!” And oh, that sounds like today, doesn’t it? “If God was really blessing you, you’d have more people in your church! If you really had sound doctrine—and if sound doctrine really mattered!—more people would believe!” And Paul’s response to this is to tell the false apostles, “You don’t understand the doctrine of election.” It may be that our gospel is veiled—that is, granted: there are many who do not believe our message—but our gospel is veiled only to those who are perishing.

He says a similar thing in 2Cor 2:14-16: “For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life.” As a preacher of the Gospel, Paul calls himself a fragrance of Christ to God. He likens the preaching of the Gospel to the emission of an odor that finds its way into the nostrils of all people. And among those who hear the Gospel there are two kinds of people: those who are being saved and those who are perishing, those whom God chose in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before Him (Eph 1:4), and those whom He did not so choose. And when the elect of God smell the fragrance of the Gospel, it is to them an aroma of life that leads to life. But when the non-elect hear it, it is an aroma of death that leads to death.

Christ Himself said the same thing to the Jews in John 10:26-27. He said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish. But you don’t believe because you are not of My sheep.” Get that. Not, "You are not My sheep because you don't believe," but, "You do not believe because you are not of My sheep. You are not of those that the Father has given to Me" (cf. Jn 6:37, 39).

And so Paul’s defense is that one should not expect the goats to believe the Gospel; for it is only the sheep that hear the voice of their Shepherd.

The Implications

Now, understand the implications this doctrine has for our ministry of the Gospel. If we continue to take the unadulterated, Biblical Gospel to the world and they continue to reject it, that is not a sign of the weakness of the message. It’s not even necessarily a sign of the weakness of the messenger, but rather it is the outworking of God’s purpose to redeem a particular people.

Now, there are at least two ways this doctrine is abused, and I’m not advocating either of them. First, there are those who are uncompassionate, who take the precious truth of sovereign election to mean that we just bluntly and uncaringly preach a hard message to people, and if they don’t accept it at first hearing, well they’re just not elect. That is an evil way to think. And if there are some of you reading this that struggle with those kinds of thoughts and that kind of an uncaring attitude, I invite you to repent of them, and to hear the words of Jesus who wept over Jerusalem saying: “Oh Jerusalem. How often I wanted to gather your children! Oh if you had known this day the things which make for peace!” And the words of Paul: “We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother caring for her children. I did not cease night and day for three years to admonish each one with tears.” Do not let the doctrine of sovereign election lead you to be uncompassionate. It did not lead there for the Lord Jesus or for the Apostles.

Secondly, there are those who are just plain lazy. They're just too proud to examine their understanding of the Gospel. But get this: if we’re preaching what the Bible calls the greatest news in the universe, and nobody is listening, we have to be humble enough to at least examine whether we are getting in the way of a pure Gospel presentation. We must ensure that what we are taking to the world is indeed the Biblical Gospel.

But if we have taken the Biblical Gospel to our neighbors and our community with the patience and the compassion of Jesus, and they reject it, we must not conclude that we need to start playing rock and roll music and having light shows and performing skits and playing videos in church to attract them. The church is not called to amuse the goats; rather we are to sound the Shepherd’s voice in the Gospel message and call His sheep who know that voice into His fold.

Our gospel is indeed veiled to those who are perishing. And therefore the first principle for faithful ministry that Paul gives us in this text is: success in Gospel ministry is measured not by numbers but by faithfulness to the message. Therefore, in what seems like seasons of external failure, we must not ask what offers the greatest appeal or what will fill the most seats. We must ask, “Have we gotten the Gospel right? Are we preaching the message we’ve received?”

Come back for principle number two.

Series Outline

1. Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
2. We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
3. The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
4. We Do Not Preach Ourselves
5. God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
6. The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
7. Postscript

Acknowledging Sin's Role in Suffering

After learning from Jeremiah that one way to suffer righteously is to identify with and suffer along with those who are suffering, we come to this next lesson: we are to acknowledge sin to be at the root of suffering.

Just as it is significant that Jeremiah identifies with the suffering of his people even though he had little to no part in bringing it about, it is also significant that in his deep mourning Jeremiah acknowledges Israel’s sin. Unlike Job, Jeremiah’s lamentations in response to suffering contain no protest of innocence. He confesses that this judgment is due to “the multitude of her transgressions” (Lam 1:5) and that she “sinned greatly” (Lam 1:8-9) and “rebelled against His command” (Lam 1:18). He goes on to say that Israel’s iniquity had exceeded even that of Sodom (Lam 4:6), and that even the prophets and the priests worked unrighteousness (Lam 4:13). He makes no excuses for the people, but accepts their responsibility for the suffering they are experiencing.

Now, it’s important that we make the point that not everyone who suffers suffers as a direct result of particular sin. That’s an error that Job’s counselors made, and they were severely rebuked for it when God showed up at the end of the book. It's also an error Paul's opponents made against him in 2 Corinthians, and throughout that letter he presents his suffering as evidence for the authenticity of his apostleship, not as evidence for its falsehood.

However, we do need to acknowledge that on a general level, all suffering is a result of the condition of sin that we find ourselves in as children of Adam. Had we not sinned in Adam, and had the human race never fallen into sin, we would never have known suffering (Gen 3:7-24; Rom 5:12; Rom 8:19-25).

And because of our sin, we all deserve to suffer infinitely and eternally, to a horrifying degree and all the time. The comfort that we do receive when we suffer from the “Father of mercies” (2Cor 1:3) is just that: mercy. And that the comfort is mercy implies that we do not deserve it, for mercy is the withholding of deserved punishment. Part of our problem in responding to suffering righteously is thinking that we are entitled to something other than suffering. Yet really, we deserve much worse than we even experience.

2 Peter 2:4 – …God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment.

That we are all not suffering eternally in hell at this very moment is a sheer gift of God. The only difference between our sin and the sin of the angels who were damned without mercy is that our sin was graciously paid for by the perfect sacrifice of Christ (cf. Heb 2:16).

And so when we undergo intense suffering, we should not act surprised as if we deserved something better (cf. 1Pet 4:12). We should acknowledge what Jeremiah says in Lamentations 3:39-40: “Why should any living mortal, or any man, offer complaint in view of his sins? Let us examine and probe our ways, and let us return to Yahweh.” When in our times of suffering we are tempted to complain, we should be reminded that we are but dust, are entitled to nothing good at all, and thus -- because in ourselves we are hopelessly sinful -- even in intense suffering we get better than we deserve.

Jeremiah's Five Lessons

1. He identifies with, and suffers alongside, his people.
2. He acknowledges that sin is at the root of suffering (even though not all suffering is a direct result of personal sin).
3. He acknowledges God’s absolute sovereignty in his suffering.
4. He recognizes that although God is sovereign, He is not the enemy.
5. He sets his hope entirely on, and rests in, God’s character.

Jesus Came Not to be Useful, but to be Precious

"No amount of working will make Me precious to you."

Amen.

Be benefited by this.

The Three Most Important Realities of Life

I have the outstanding privilege every Tuesday and Thursday morning to gather with my brothers in seminary, read the Word together, worship together, pray together, and sit under wonderful exposition of the Scriptures together.

This Thursday morning was no different. We had the privilege of listening to the preaching of Rick Holland, which is always a pleasure. He is fast becoming a favorite of mine to listen to. He is a man who worships over the Word of God as he presents it, thereby helping those in the pews to worship over the Word of God as its presented. (I'm still praying God brings him back to the M. Div. program to teach preaching.)

Anyway, his message, entitled, "Ministry and the Reality of Death," treating Hebrews 9:27-28, was an absolute treat. It was the kind of sweet sting (or, stinging sweetness) that we all need to experience as often as we can, especially as it regards the universality and inevitability of death, the certainty of judgment, and the accomplishment of salvation in Christ. I talk a little bit more about that in this post, on why we need to talk about ultimate things in general and about hell in specific.

I really commend Rick's message to you. You can stream it by clicking here, and you can download it by clicking here. Please do yourself the favor, the benefit, of listening to his message.

He outlined the three most important realities of life from Hebrews 9:27-28, and they are as follows:

1. Death is Unavoidable
2. Judgment is Certain
3. Salvation is Possible
   

These realities compel us to "preach the Gospel not some time, but every time."

And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once
and after this comes judgment,
so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many,
will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin,
to those who eagerly await Him.
- Hebrews 9:27-28 -

Where the Contemplation of Our Freedom Should Point Us

I referred to the following post in last year's Independence Day post at For Our Benefit. It's entitled, "What Price Freedom?" and was written by PyroManiac Dan Phillips. Last year, I noted that I copied his post because everyone had written something with a 4th of July theme, and I, being a rookie blogger, didn't have anything prepared. I copy Dan's post this year, though, not (merely) because I wasn't ready for an Independence Day theme, but because I honestly don't think I could write -- or find elsewhere -- something better.

Enjoy. And Praise God for His gift of freedom. Political freedom, absolutely. But infinitely more important, praise God for freedom from sin.

“…and from Jesus Christ, the Faithful Witness, the Firstborn over the dead, and the Ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood; and He made us a kingdom, priests to His God and Father — to him be the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages! Amen!” (Revelation 1:5-6, my rendering)

In America, we enjoy a degree of freedom unknown throughout most of the history of the world. This freedom had its formal birth with the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, in which the 13 colonies declared themselves independent of Great Britain, and which ended with the words “for the support of this declaration…we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Was that just big talk, or flowery rhetoric? Well, the 56 signers were marking themselves as traitors to the Crown. “By the end of the war, almost every one had lost his property; many had lost wives and families to British guns or prisons; and several died penniless, having given all to the Revolution” (Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, A Patriot’s History of the United States [Sentinel: 2004], 81).

Americans enjoy freedom today because of the blood spilt by thousands of men and women from before 1776 until this very day. Our freedom, as Americans, is not free. If it hasn’t cost us personally, it surely has cost someone else!

But my mind turns today to a far deeper bondage, however, and an infinitely greater freedom — and to the far more dreadful price that was paid for that freedom.

It is found in Revelation 1:5b: “To Him who loves us, and loosed us from our sins by His blood.”

I'd like to focus on two aspects only of that text: the love of Jesus, and the cost of that love.

As to the love of Jesus, we can discern four aspects here:

First, Christ's love is FREE. God is, by definition, the one and only truly free Being. He is under no external controls, subject to no overrides nor limitations. He can will and do anything in accord with His nature. Therefore, He was under no external nor moral compulsion to love guilty rebels. No committee or authority had petitioned nor ordered Him. Certainly His love was provoked by nothing in us — no foreseen faith, no anticipated holiness, as if the ultimate cause lay in us.

More accurately, He loves in spite of the continued rebellions, treacheries, and unbelief of the objects of His love. When He loves, He loves because He loves. It is the only satisfactory and Biblical answer.

Second, Christ's love is DISTINGUISHING. The text says that He loves "us." The context defines "us" as “His servants" and "his servant John" (1:1; cf. v. 4), as “the seven churches” (1:4), and as people who were “loosed …from sins… made… a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (1:5-6). They are contrasted with false, pretend-Christians (chapters 2—3).

They stand apart from those who try to hide “themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Revelation 6:15-17).

It was a targeted love, a definite love, a particular love. There were people — "us" — whom Christ meant to free. Not "offer freedom to," but free, "loose."

Would anyone dare say He failed to free even one soul whom He determined to deliver?

Third, Christ's love is ETERNAL. John calls Jesus “Him who loves us.” The verb is present in tense, but it is a participle, not a finite verb. It marks no starting point, it erects no terminus. It isn't “Jesus loved us," nor "Jesus will love us.”

Being a verbal noun, it is a characteristic of Jesus'. It was true when John wrote it, it is true as we read it, it will be true through all the centuries and millennia and ages of eternity. Before the world began, He set His love on His own. When the last rebel fist has been shaken, and judged, still He will love His own.

This characteristic trumps all of the fears of God’s people. “But I am unworthy!” So are we all; yet Christ is He “who loves us.” “But I sin!” So do we all; yet Christ is He “who loves us.” “But I am going through a dark, awful time!” So have we all; yet Christ is He “who loves us.”

There is no “use by” date, no expiration, no sunset provision. Because it is eternal, it is invincible; nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.

Fourth, Christ's love is revelatory of HIM, not of US. If ever you find yourself starting a sentence, “Well, I think God loved me because I…” — bail out! Quick! Step away from the stupid statement! The only true and Biblical way to finish that is, “God loved because God loved." And the fact that God loved, and the wretches whom God loved, and the invincible fierceness with which God loved all say a great deal about God — and nothing about me.

Away with all self-help pop-psychologizing, that tries to find self-esteem in the Cross. Many say, “God loved me so much that He gave His Son to die for me — so I must be worth a lot! I must be worthy! I must be special!” I can’t easily imagine a more perverse line of reasoning. What the Cross says about us is that we’re helpless, we’re hopeless, we’re lost and doomed, and only the most extreme, radical, scandalous act on the part of God could redeem us from the wreck and ruin in which we’d buried ourselves!

The Cross says horrible things about us, as we are in ourselves, as Christ finds us! But it says wonderful things about God!

In fact, as a brief aside, to speak of loosing is to assume binding. That is, only those who are bound are interested in deliverance from their bonds. So what is it that binds us? The world, the flesh, and the Devil -- mighty, ubiquitous, tireless forces. [Sheerly because of the length of this post, I expand on this point elsewhere.]

Now let's turn to the COST undertaken by Jesus, because of His love: He freed us from our sins “by His blood.” We'll focus on three aspects.

First, Christ's blood is PRECIOUS blood. It is precious because of whose blood it is. It belongs to God’s Messiah, the Anointed One, the Faithful Witness, the ruler of the kings of the earth. It belongs to the blood of God incarnate; the Bible calls it the blood of God (Acts 20:28). This blood is of infinite worth. Dare anyone set a limit on the value of this blood? I would not! (It is a great misrepresentation of the Calvinist position to think that we do. We see its value as limitless, and its aim as specific.) Thus could Christ shed it on behalf of, and actually accomplish the redemption of, countless scores of multitudes of sinners from every nation, tribe and language.

Second, Christ's blood is PURE blood. The blood that looses us from our sins is itself that of a sinless Man. This is the blood of the one Man who did not share Adam’s guilt, and did not replicate Adam’s sin. It is the blood of one who never violated God’s law in thought, word or deed, who kept every bit of God’s law in thought, word and deed. Can the contrast between the Lord Jesus and those for whom He died be any starker and more immense?

Third, Christ's blood is POWERFUL blood. The apostle John does not say that Jesus made it possible for us to loose ourselves from our sins by His blood. Nor does He say that Christ made loosing from our sins available by his blood. Rather, Jesus Christ actually loosed us from our sins by His blood!

Christ's blood is powerful, and it is effectual. Can any imagine that a drop of that blood would be wasted, would fall to the ground defeated and impotent? I cannot.

Notice the wonders He accomplishes by His blood (vv. 5b-6). Before, we were lost, rebellious, hopeless, impure slaves. After, we are a kingdom, and we are priests. We need no mere man to rule us. We need no man to stand for us before God. We are members of Christ’s kingdom, and priests to God through Him.

This, my brothers and sisters, is freedom!

But at what a cost!

Now, it's beyond us to know who reads our posts. So let me just say, Dear Reader, if your thinking is, “Oh, I don’t need such a drastic conversion; religion is all very well for weak men and old ladies, but I have a fulfilled and meaningful life. I must follow my heart. I don’t need fairy tales to brighten up my life,” then you are still a slave to the world, the flesh, and the Devil. The worst slave is the one who has grown accustomed to his chains.

What power on earth can save us from these things? No power on earth! Only Christ can — but at what a dreadful price! No mere example, or teaching, or method can save. Only the blood of God incarnate can loose us from our sins! Do you know that freedom?

If you do, praise and honor Him alone who loves you, and loosed you from your sins at such a staggering price!

If you do not, throw yourself on the mercy of God, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, look to Him this day!

Making Friends with Your Brother's Murderer

In my travels around the internet, I came across a sermon by Charles Spurgeon from which the following excerpt is taken. The name of the sermon is Lama Sabacthani? and was preached on the text of Matthew 27:46: Jesus' cry from the Cross. It was preached on March 2, 1890 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. The below excerpt is his final exhortation and conclusion to the sermon.

Nobody says it quite like he does.

Let us abhor the sin which brought such agony upon our beloved Lord. What an accursed thing is sin, which crucified the Lord Jesus! Do you laugh at it? Will you go and spend an evening to see a mimic performance of it? Do you roll sin under your tongue as a sweet morsel, and then come to God's house, on the Lord's-day morning, and think to worship him? Worship him! Worship him, with sin indulged in your breast! Worship him, with sin loved and pampered in your life!

O sirs, if I had a dear brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I valued the knife which had been crimsoned with his blood? —if I made a friend of the murderer, and daily consorted with the assassin, who drove the dagger into my brother's heart? Surely I, too, must be an accomplice in the crime! Sin murdered Christ; will you be a friend to it? Sin pierced the heart of the Incarnate God; can you love it? Oh, that there was an abyss as deep as Christ's misery, that I might at once hurl this dagger of sin into its depths, whence it might never be brought to light again!

Begone, O sin! Thou art banished from the heart where Jesus reigns! Begone, for thou hast crucified my Lord, and made him cry, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" O my hearers, if you did but know yourselves, and know the love of Christ, you would each one vow that you would harbour sin no longer. You would be indignant at sin, and cry,

"The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Lord, I will tear it from its throne,
And worship only thee,"

May that be the issue of my morning's discourse, and then I shall be well content. The Lord bless you! May the Christ who suffered for you, bless you, and out of his darkness may your light arise! Amen.

Do not love the world nor the things in the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world,
the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life,
is not from the Father, but is from the world.
The world is passing away, and also its lusts;
but the one who does the will of God lives forever.
- 1 John 2:15-17 -

How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
- Romans 6:2 -

And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross,
so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness;
for by His wounds you were healed.
- 1 Peter 2:24 -

That's My King

I rejoice this day in the resurrection and the life of my King, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, King Jesus the Christ, the Name above all names. Rejoice with me.

Jesus said to her,
"I am the resurrection and the life;
he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,
and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.
Do you believe this?"
- John 11:25-26 -

He proved it.

Do you believe this?

God's Love Defined by His Holiness

A couple of Fridays ago I posted some of my own ruminations on the relationship between God's love for us and His glory. I argued that it is wrong to say that God created us for His glory because of His love for us, because such a statement confuses God's end with His means. It makes His glory subordinate to His love, when really it is His love that is subordinate to -- indeed, it serves -- His glory. And I demonstrated that that is Biblical based on 2 Corinthians 4:4 and 4:6. If you haven't read that post, read it.

An objection that I'd expect to hear regarding that post goes something like this: "Mike, I appreciate your zeal for God's Word and for His glory. Those are good things, and we should be talking about those things. But you cannot say that God's love is subordinate to His pursuit of His glory. In fact, you can't say that God's love is subordinate to anything. It's true that God is glorious, but it's not true that God is just loving. He is love, as 1 John 4:8 says. Love is not merely another of His attributes, it is His very nature!"

The problem with this argument is that it ignores the other two "God is" statements in the Bible. Not only does Scripture reveal that God is love (1Jn 4:8), but also that He is spirit (Jn 4:24) and He is Light (1Jn 1:5). It is the latter of these three that we must consider if we are to order our thinking aright in this matter.

To say that God is Light is to declare that He is utterly holy, pure, and righteous. "In Him there is no darkness at all," the Apostle continues (1Jn 1:5). Just as much as love is essential to the very nature and character of God, so is holiness so essential. This means that, simply within the context of these two absolute statements, there is no reason to subordinate one attribute to the other. God is love, and God is holiness. However, if we turn to the rest of the Biblical witness, we do find a reason to subordinate one to the other, but it's not in the direction that many 21st-century American evangelicals think it is.

Isaiah chapter 6 chronicles Isaiah's call to the prophetic ministry. We know the story. In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw a vision of heaven. He saw the Lord Jesus sitting on His throne, high and exalted in His glory. And he saw six-winged angels above him, covering their face and their feet in humility. And those angels had a perpetual song as they beheld the glory of the Lord. They cried out in acclamation and exultation: "Holy! Holy! Holy!"

As you may know, a way to express emphasis in Hebrew is to repeat that which you want to emphasize. One way to use the superlative in Hebrew is to repeat what you want to say multiple times. So if you wanted to say something was exceedingly good, you might repeat the word 'good.' And here in Isaiah 6, the angels call out, "Holy! Holy! Holy!" It's the only word in Scripture that's repeated three times.

This is what occupied the angels' worship as they beheld the glory of the Lord God high and lifted up on his exalted and glorious throne. This aspect of his nature. This attribute. The Bible never says that God is "love, love, love!" The one time the Bible gives this kind of emphasis to a particular attribute of God it is His holiness.

So how does this fit with my previous post?

God's holiness, or righteousness, consists in His doing what is right. He must love what is most worthy to be loved, delight in what is most worthy of delight, regard what is most worthy of regard, and esteem what is most worthy of esteem. For Him to not do any of those things would be for Him to fail morally. He would become an idolater, and would no longer be holy. So God's holiness demands that He treasure that which is most worthy to be treasured.

So what is most worthy to be treasured? The answer must be God Himself, for He is perfect. God must treasure Himself above all things, because He Himself is actually worthy of being treasured above all things. The way God treasures Himself above all things is to be unwaveringly committed to upholding the glory of His name. He pursues His glory in everything He does. This pursuit is at the foundation of the most foundational attribute of His nature. What it means for God to be God is that He is holy. What it means for God to be holy is that He pursues His own glory. That is what He is about. That is what is at the heart of His nature.

But what about love? Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to downplay the love of God. I'm trying to downplay the man-centered love of man that we attribute to God and call God's love. I'm trying to explode the idea that love is making much of someone, and instead present the Biblical truth that love labors, and, if need be, suffers to enthrall the beloved with what will make him eternally happy and satisfied. And reality is, we will not be eternally happy and satisfied with a God who makes much of ourselves. We are not worthy of being so magnified.

He, however, is. He is worthy of being so magnified, such that His very act of seeking His own glory (that is, manifesting and communicating the beauty of His manifold perfections to people) is love. Do you see how God's glory defines what it means for Him to love? Strictly speaking, God's seeking His own glory and His acts of love that benefit us are the very same thing. When God shows Himself off, that is love, because my seeing that beauty will most fully and abidingly satisfy me.

But even though they are manifested in the same action, God's love is logically dependent on His pursuing His own glory. If you try to reverse those and make His glory dependent on His love, you wind up with the small, pitiful God I described at the end of the original post. But if you rightly see God's love as a means to glorify Himself, you see more of God as He's revealed Himself, and not how 21st-century evangelicals have imagined Him to be.

As it seems to challenge an excellency above all His other perfections, so it is the glory of all the rest; as it is the glory of the Godhead, so it is the glory of every perfection in the Godhead; as His power is the strength of them, so His holiness is the beauty of them; as all would be weak without almightiness to back them, so all would be uncomely without holiness to adorn them. Should this be sullied, all the rest would lose their honour; as at the same instant the sun should lose its light, it would lose its heat, its strength, its generative and quickening virtue. As sincerity is the luster of every grace in a Christian, so is purity the splendor of every attribute in the Godhead. His justice is a holy justice, His wisdom a holy wisdom, His arm of power a "holy arm" (Ps. 98:1), His truth or promise a "holy promise" (Ps. 105:42). His name, which signifies all His attributes in conjunction, "is holy," Psalm 103:1.
- Stephen Charnock -

A true love of God must begin
with a delight in his holiness,
and not with a delight in any other attribute;
for no other attribute is truly lovely without this.
- Jonathan Edwards -

And I will be glorified in your midst.
Then they will know that I am Yahweh
when I execute judgments in her,
And I will manifest My holiness.
- Ezekiel 28:22 -

Christless Christianity

This past weekend I had the privilege of attending yet another conference, packed with wonderful speakers. Grace Church hosted Ligonier Ministries' West Coast Conference, entitled Christless Christianity. The title of the conference came from Michael Horton's book title in which he discusses the "Alternative gospel of the American church." You can read more about the conference here. I just wanted to relay a couple thoughts/quotes from Michael Horton's first talk.

In decrying the consumerism that has crept into the Church -- both in evangelicalism and the new religious paganism that characterizes guys like Joel Osteen and movements like Word-Faith and Emergent -- Horton offered that we are exalting our methods over God's means of grace, and our contract over God's covenant. We really have taken our philosophy of ministry from secular marketing: the customer is king. Those who listen to the Gospel have become more important than the Gospel itself!

This was just great: "God is not about improving our life in Adam. He's about killing us and making us alive in Christ." So good. Don't sell Jesus to people as the one who will deliver your best life now. Stop appealing to people on the basis of what the natural man already wants. If you offer to people what they already want as natural people, then they don't have to be converted to believe your Gospel. Stop trying to make the Gospel more acceptable, and preach the eternal message we've been entrusted to guard.

Horton continued, and puts it this way: "Stop trying to climb the down escalator!" Referring to Romans 10:6-8, he reminded us that we don't have to reinvent the wheel trying to figure out what it is we're supposed to preach! The Word is on our hearts! And the power is in the Gospel itself. So many are wondering how to make the Gospel relevant, palatable, acceptable, etc., that they empty the cross of its power (1Cor 1:17). We chase our tails with all these methods of evangelism and attempts at attracting unbelievers to our churches when it is the Gospel that is the power of God unto salvation (Rom 1:16).

The rest of the conference was absolutely awesome. I encourage you to visit Ligonier's blog to read up on it.

God's Love is a Means to His Glory

One thing that I've been thinking about over these last couple days was spawned from listening to a recording of a Sunday School class that I taught on the Second Greatest Commandment. (It was actually out of the study that I did for that lesson that gave birth to For Our Benefit; see here, and here.)

In the lesson, I was speaking on how the essence of our love for our neighbor must be defined by, controlled by, and flow out of our love for God. A person in attendance asked if the gist of what I was saying undermined at all the notion that God created us for His glory. As I understood him at the moment, I answered, "What I'm saying doesn't undermine that at all. It actually establishes that very thing."

The Problem

Then he made a comment which, upon hearing it again, leads me to believe that even though it sounded like we were agreeing and saying the same thing, we really believed two different things about the subject. We spoke the same words, but meant different things by them. The comment he appended to "God created us for His glory," was "...because of His love."

Now, at the time, even as he said that, I offered hearty agreement. And I've actually listened to that recording a couple of times since then and haven't thought anything of it; it never occurred to me that I would have -- or even should have -- responded differently on second thought. But as I listened to that recording again a couple of days ago, and as I've mulled it over since, I think there is indeed something very wrong with that, that is, with saying: "God created us for His glory because of His love for us."

The Confusion

Put simply, it confuses the end and the means. Specifically, it makes God's pursuit of His glory subordinate to His love. In reality, His love is subordinate to His purpose to glorify Himself. It makes God's love the ground for the pursuit of His glory. Biblically, however, God's pursuit of His glory is the ground of all His acts of love. The error makes God's love His ultimate end and the pursuit of His glory the means of achieving the end of being loving. The truth is that God's glory is His ultimate end and loving undeserving people is a means to achieving that glory. God did not create us for His glory in order to love us. Rather, it is Biblical to say that God loved us in order to glorify Himself.

The Doctrine

I keep saying, "Biblically," and "Biblical," so I'd better back that up, right? I'll do it by turning to one of my favorite passages in the Bible: 2 Corinthians 4:4, and 4:6. They say:

The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. ... For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

There is a parallelism in these two verses which sheds glorious light on the concept I'm trying to explain. Let's note the parallels before going any further:

Verse 4: The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Verse 6: The Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

So we see there's a correspondence. Each verse is teaching the same thing. The question is, what are they teaching, and what does it have to do with what I'm talking about?

These verses present three levels of the redemptive work of God. At level one, there is light. This is speaking of the Divine work of regeneration, when God gave us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to believe. Regeneration is not the end, but the means to something more ultimate, namely, level two. At level two there is the knowledge of the Gospel. This is where God's love is consummately expressed: "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." The love of God expressed in the Gospel is level two. But even that is not the end, but is itself the means to something more ultimate, namely, level three. At level three, there is the glory of Christ who is the image of God, or the glory of God in the face of Christ. The Gospel -- the Good News -- is the Good News of God's glory!

The Good News is not merely that Jesus died for us! The Good News is that Jesus died for us in order to bring us to God (1Pet 3:18)! The loving, atoning work of Christ in the Gospel is a means to a greater end: that the people God has created would finally glorify Him by enjoying and being satisfied by His glory, for which they were created.

2 Corinthians 4:4 and 4:6 teach us that God did not open our eyes to see the glory of the gospel.
He opened our eyes to see the gospel of the glory.

So, when my commenter in Sunday School remarked that "God created us for His glory because of His love for us," he was subtly, yet extremely importantly, mistaken. God did not create us for His glory because He loved us. He loved us because it is by loving us that He achieves His greatest glory.

What Difference Could that Possibly Make?

A reasonable, yet frustrated objector might ask what in the world this has to do with anything. Is it just religious philosophy? Is it just argument for argument's sake? Is this just an entirely impractical seminary discussion?

I don't think so. I think that the position you take on this very issue defines who your God is, because it defines most fundamentally what your God is about. It defines what your God's ultimate purpose is in all that He does.

A God who submits the pursuit of His glory to a greater desire to "love" implies that He regards the objects of His love more highly than He regards Himself. While that might sound noble and selfless to man's reasoning (because of our man-centered view of love), it either (1) makes for a pitifully weak and small God -- because He is not worthy of His own chief regard -- or (2) it makes for an unrighteous God -- because even though He is worthy of His own chief regard He regards more highly something that is less worthy. This God is neither worthy of worship, nor able to save.

However, a God who is unwaveringly committed to upholding and displaying the glory of His name demonstrates a chief regard to Himself. In His own perfect judgment, there is nothing that deserves His allegiance more than Himself. This God then determines and defines His love by His ultimate purpose to bring glory to Himself. "Love," then, comes to mean benefiting the object of love by presenting to them what satisfies them most fully, namely, the glory of God which deserves unwavering allegiance. This God is absolutely worthy of all worship from all creatures. And it is out of such sufficiency that He is able to save freely.

Amazing, isn't it, the difference one little phrase can make?

UPDATE: See a follow-up post, where I answer an anticipated objection, here.

Him We Proclaim

Over at Christ is Deeper Still, Ray Ortlund offered some really helpful, succinct comments on Colossians 1:28: "We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ." "We proclaim Him" stands at the heart of a verse that explains how Paul believed the Church was to achieve the maturity of individual believers. According to Paul, the heart of the discipleship and Christian ministry is: "We proclaim Him." Ortlund looked at each of those three words one at a time (in the order they appear in the ESV: "Him we proclaim").

Him. Paul summarized his ministry in one word: “Him.” Not “Christ + _________” but Christ as the only focus. All other topics of interest had to fit in around Him and promote Him and make Him clearer. If they didn’t serve that purpose, Paul got bored quickly.

We. Whatever others may do, this is what we do. Whatever message others may shout out, we’ll shout louder about Jesus Christ. We are responsible to Him and will give an account to Him only and finally.

Proclaim. Not beg, as if He were poor. Not suggest, as if He were doubtful. Not propose, as if He were the premise of something larger. But proclaim as the only life that is truly life, accessible to everyone on terms of grace, received with the empty hands of faith, giving all, demanding all.

I just think that is so sound.

We will not dishonor the sufficiency of Christ by, in our actions, presenting something more than Him to the world and to each other. We will not present Christ and programs, or Christ and gimmicks, or Christ and coffee houses, or Christ and funny skits and videos, or Christ and rock concerts.

Neither will we dishonor the sufficiency of Christ by parroting the world as we seek to minister the Gospel. We will not market Jesus. We will not market His Church. We will not conform to the pattern of this world as we seek to build each other up in faith and to evangelize the lost. We will not seek to win the world by becoming like the world. And we will not be controlled by the world's felt needs or their opinion of us. We will recognize that we are called out of the world and so will be an aroma of Christ from life to life to His sheep whom He will call according to His sovereign decree. And we will do this by being utterly different than the world around us, just as Jesus was. (The Greek word for 'church' is ekklesia. It comes from two words: (1) ek, meaning 'out of' and (2) kaleo, meaning 'to call.' The Church is made up of the called-out ones.)

Finally, we will not dishonor the sufficiency of Christ by doing anything less than proclaiming Him. I liked Ortlund's examples. We won't beg, and thus make Jesus look poor and needy. We won't merely suggest, and thus make Him look optional. We will not merely invite, or offer, or (the favorite) share. We will proclaim.

The proclaiming, the heralding, the preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified is the God-ordained means of accomplishing the ministry He has given to us, both to other believers and to the unbelieving world. The most solemn, severe charge in all of Scripture came from Paul to young Pastor Timothy regarding what his ministry was to be:

I solemnly charge you
in the presence of God
and of Christ Jesus,
who is to judge the living and the dead,
and by His appearing
and His kingdom:

preach the word!

Oh, may we never become more clever than the Word of God!

And may God grant swift repentance to the many thousands throughout evangelical churches today who already have.

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception,
according to the tradition of men,
according to the elementary principles of the world,
rather than according to Christ.
For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,
and in Him you have been made complete,
and He is the head over all rule and authority.
- Colossians 2:8-10 -

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel,
for it is the power of God for salvation
to everyone who believes.
- Romans 1:16 -