The context for the below video is set in the current controversy over Rob Bell, his heretical universalism, and "evangelicalism's" utter disbelief that anyone would ever call him out on it. That's not what this blog post is about. Rather, in answering this question, Doug Wilson makes some phenomenal points about the nature of Christian ministry that I was hoping to echo in this series, and particularly in this post.
I absolutely love what he says about being a herald. Pay close attention to that around 3:00.
This must characterize our ministry. We are not to preach ourselves. We are not orators who have the luxury of altering our message or our method in order to win the favor of our audience. We are heralds -- men under assignment who must preach the message with which they've been commissioned and let the chips fall where they may.
Showing posts with label Philosophy of Ministry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy of Ministry. Show all posts
Friday, April 15, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
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."
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 -
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 -
Friday, February 11, 2011
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
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
- Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
- We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
- The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
- We Do Not Preach Ourselves
- God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
- The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
- Postscript
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
Last time we delved into God's prescription for the blindness in which the world finds itself. We observed that in 2Cor 4:4 and 4:6 that three levels of God's redemptive work are outlined. And as we progress through each level, we come to greater depth and greater ultimacy in God's work of salvation. We already looked at levels one and two. Now we come to the third.
Notice again the way the Apostle Paul speaks of spiritual life. Above he spoke of spiritual death as blindness to glory. Here he speaks of spiritual life and faith in the Gospel as seeing glory. And that is level three: God has shone in our hearts to give the Light (that’s level 1) of the knowledge, or of the gospel (that’s level 2), of the glory of God in the face of Christ (that’s level 3). This is the deepest level of the redemptive work of God. This is what salvation is about!
In A God-Entranced Vision of All Things, John Piper writes, “The way anybody gets converted…is that God sovereignly causes the darkened soul to see the beauty of Christ in the gospel. Just as He once said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light, so now he says, ‘Let the glory of Christ shine as an irresistible beauty,’ and it does” (263).
The nature of our spiritual death was that were blind to Christ’s glory. But in the miracle of regeneration, you were spiritually awakened so that you could finally see. And because you finally see Him, He is so sweet to you. You love Him! You can’t resist Him! And you forsake the rotting garbage of sin and you embrace Him with the glad, open arms of faith, and you are saved.
Do you see it? Paul calls the Gospel “the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” What the Good News consists in—what the Gospel is about—is the glory of God in Christ. Seeing and enjoying the glory of God in the face of Christ is what makes the Good News good news!
This is the way the whole of Scripture speaks of salvation. Consider these passages
And I’ve gotta tell you, so many people stop at level two! So many Christians preach the Gospel as if we were the ultimate goal in salvation. But we’re not! Ultimately, the ultimate reason for why God saves any sinner is to manifest His own glory! Listen to what Scripture says about God’s motivation, His goal, in saving sinners:
See, a lot of people are happy to confess that we should be God-centered, but that may be because they secretly think that God is man-centered. Then their God-centeredness is really man-centeredness. They say their joy is in God, but really their joy is in themselves. They're happy to worship God, just as long as God worships them.
But listen: if what you want out of the Gospel, or out of Christianity, is a god who makes you feel good about yourself, you need to repent of your idolatry and come to the God of the Bible through Christ. And if what you offer people in the name of Christ’s Gospel and in the name of Christianity, is a god who will make them feel good about themselves, and will work for their self-esteem, you’re not preaching the Gospel.
The love of God displayed in the Gospel is not that He makes much of us! The love of God displayed in the Gospel is He shines Light that cures our blindness to glory, and thus frees us from our love affair with sin so that—rather than only being able to be satisfied by being made much of—we can be entirely satisfied in the depths of our souls by making much of Him forever!
Yes, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. But finish the sentence! He did that for a purpose! So that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life! And what is eternal life? John 17:3: Jesus says, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, Father, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” God’s goal in sending Christ was not to show humanity how valuable we were; His goal was to give us the eyes to see how valuable He is! He shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
But because so many people have imbibed our culture’s distorted definition of love as being made much of, many people—maybe some of you reading this—have a hard time feeling loved when they hear that God loves them for His own sake. But loving someone is not making them feel good about themselves—especially, like in our case, when there’s so little to feel good about! Loving someone is doing what is best for them. And what is best for me, and best for you—what will most satisfy our souls and give us true and abiding joy—is to see the glory of God for which we were made.
And there is a wealth of satisfaction in feeling loved that way. I feel so safe, so protected, so loved by the fact that I am not uppermost in God’s affections, but that He is. In fact, we will never understand the sweet fullness of what it means to be loved by God—we will never know the breadth and length and height and depth of this love that surpasses knowledge (Eph 3:18-19)—until we understand that God’s love to us is not first to us, but to Himself.
And so John Piper writes, “God loves His glory more than He loves us and...this is the foundation of His love for us” (Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, 7). Because it is in loving Himself, in magnifying Himself, in displaying Himself, that you and I are able to see and enjoy the only thing that can truly satisfy our heart: the glory of God in the face of Christ.
In summary, then, 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 Good News is not merely that God gave His Son for us. The Good News is that God gave His Son for us to bring us to an eternity of seeing and knowing and loving and worshiping Him. 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 (Isa 43:7).
As we proclaim this Gospel, let us never forget that it is the gospel of Christ’s glory.
Series Outline
Notice again the way the Apostle Paul speaks of spiritual life. Above he spoke of spiritual death as blindness to glory. Here he speaks of spiritual life and faith in the Gospel as seeing glory. And that is level three: God has shone in our hearts to give the Light (that’s level 1) of the knowledge, or of the gospel (that’s level 2), of the glory of God in the face of Christ (that’s level 3). This is the deepest level of the redemptive work of God. This is what salvation is about!
In A God-Entranced Vision of All Things, John Piper writes, “The way anybody gets converted…is that God sovereignly causes the darkened soul to see the beauty of Christ in the gospel. Just as He once said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light, so now he says, ‘Let the glory of Christ shine as an irresistible beauty,’ and it does” (263).
The nature of our spiritual death was that were blind to Christ’s glory. But in the miracle of regeneration, you were spiritually awakened so that you could finally see. And because you finally see Him, He is so sweet to you. You love Him! You can’t resist Him! And you forsake the rotting garbage of sin and you embrace Him with the glad, open arms of faith, and you are saved.
Do you see it? Paul calls the Gospel “the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” What the Good News consists in—what the Gospel is about—is the glory of God in Christ. Seeing and enjoying the glory of God in the face of Christ is what makes the Good News good news!
This is the way the whole of Scripture speaks of salvation. Consider these passages
- Hebrews 2:10 describes Jesus’ ministry of salvation as “bringing many sons to glory.”
- 1 Peter 3:18 says that Christ suffered once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that He might bring us to God. To God! Not to a hall of mirrors where we can admire how valuable we are, but to an eternal worship service, where we can admire how valuable He is!
- 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14 is just wonderful. The way Paul speaks about salvation here is amazing. He says, starting in the middle of verse 13: “God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
And I’ve gotta tell you, so many people stop at level two! So many Christians preach the Gospel as if we were the ultimate goal in salvation. But we’re not! Ultimately, the ultimate reason for why God saves any sinner is to manifest His own glory! Listen to what Scripture says about God’s motivation, His goal, in saving sinners:
- Isaiah 43:25 says it as plain as day (God is speaking): “I, even I, am the one who wipes out your transgressions for My own sake.”
- Ezekiel 36:22 says the same thing more emphatically, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.”
- In the New Testament, Paul tells us in Titus 2:14 that Christ “gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession.”
- And in the opening section in Ephesians 1, Paul says three times that salvation is designed for the praise of God’s glory (Eph 1:6, 12, 14).
See, a lot of people are happy to confess that we should be God-centered, but that may be because they secretly think that God is man-centered. Then their God-centeredness is really man-centeredness. They say their joy is in God, but really their joy is in themselves. They're happy to worship God, just as long as God worships them.
But listen: if what you want out of the Gospel, or out of Christianity, is a god who makes you feel good about yourself, you need to repent of your idolatry and come to the God of the Bible through Christ. And if what you offer people in the name of Christ’s Gospel and in the name of Christianity, is a god who will make them feel good about themselves, and will work for their self-esteem, you’re not preaching the Gospel.
The love of God displayed in the Gospel is not that He makes much of us! The love of God displayed in the Gospel is He shines Light that cures our blindness to glory, and thus frees us from our love affair with sin so that—rather than only being able to be satisfied by being made much of—we can be entirely satisfied in the depths of our souls by making much of Him forever!
Yes, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. But finish the sentence! He did that for a purpose! So that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life! And what is eternal life? John 17:3: Jesus says, “This is eternal life, that they may know You, Father, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” God’s goal in sending Christ was not to show humanity how valuable we were; His goal was to give us the eyes to see how valuable He is! He shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
But because so many people have imbibed our culture’s distorted definition of love as being made much of, many people—maybe some of you reading this—have a hard time feeling loved when they hear that God loves them for His own sake. But loving someone is not making them feel good about themselves—especially, like in our case, when there’s so little to feel good about! Loving someone is doing what is best for them. And what is best for me, and best for you—what will most satisfy our souls and give us true and abiding joy—is to see the glory of God for which we were made.
And there is a wealth of satisfaction in feeling loved that way. I feel so safe, so protected, so loved by the fact that I am not uppermost in God’s affections, but that He is. In fact, we will never understand the sweet fullness of what it means to be loved by God—we will never know the breadth and length and height and depth of this love that surpasses knowledge (Eph 3:18-19)—until we understand that God’s love to us is not first to us, but to Himself.
And so John Piper writes, “God loves His glory more than He loves us and...this is the foundation of His love for us” (Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, 7). Because it is in loving Himself, in magnifying Himself, in displaying Himself, that you and I are able to see and enjoy the only thing that can truly satisfy our heart: the glory of God in the face of Christ.
In summary, then, 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 Good News is not merely that God gave His Son for us. The Good News is that God gave His Son for us to bring us to an eternity of seeing and knowing and loving and worshiping Him. 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 (Isa 43:7).
As we proclaim this Gospel, let us never forget that it is the gospel of Christ’s glory.
Series Outline
- Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
- We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
- The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
- We Do Not Preach Ourselves
- God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
- The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
- Postscript
Friday, February 4, 2011
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
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
- Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
- We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
- The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
- We Do Not Preach Ourselves
- God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
- The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
- Postscript
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
A Call to Be Truly Biblical
As I'm still marinating on the concept of what it means to "preach ourselves," as Paul repudiates in 2 Corinthians 4:5, I thought a few comments were in order which address a post I ran into recently in my travels through the blogosphere.
Recently, the folks over at Desiring God posted an excerpt of a chapter on missions from the new book, "Don't Call it a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day," edited by Kevin DeYoung. This particular chapter was written by David Mathis, who currently serves as the executive pastoral assistant to John Piper. The post at Desiring God also got picked up and excerpted even further by Justin Taylor over at Between Two Worlds. The blog post was entitled: A Call to Be Truly Missional.
I haven't spoken much about the issues surrounding being "missional" on this blog before now (here's one exception), not because I don't think it's an important issue but because I'm still formulating my thoughts on the topic itself and how to best address it. I suppose I plan to address it more directly in the future. But for now I feel comfortable saying that I don't feel comfortable with the missional idea and the ecclesiology and philosophy of ministry that it seems to identify. In that vein, I offered a comment on that original post, and I thought it would be helpful to post it over here as well.
That original post begins by saying, "Many of you reading this are living alongside us in a post-Christian Western culture. One where the term evangelism is a bit outdated and to be missional is in vogue." He continues to give a diagnosis of Europe and North America: they have "become more and more like a mission field—but a post-Christian, rather than pre-Christian field." Because of this, the ministerial prognosis is: "We now need a more missions-like engagement even on battleground here on the home front." Now, I actually don't think that that conclusion is true. I think one of the major failures of the "missional" philosophy of ministry is a conflation between a Christian missionary and a Christian witness and, correspondingly, between a culture and a subculture. But that's not the point of this current post.
What really jumped out at me and was extremely puzzling was the concession that the word "evangelism" is outdated. That seems like an outrageous statement, especially in light of the fact that it is falling out of favor and the word "missional" is taking its place. Evangelizing — gospellizing — is a Biblical word (euaggelizomai), which in and of itself should guarantee its rightful endurance, no matter how "outdated" it might seem. (I still get a confused look on my face even as I write that. Evangelism? Outdated? ... What???) Heaven and earth will pass away, but Jesus' words will never pass away (Mt 24:35; cf. Mt 11:5; Lk 4:43). Beyond the fact that it's a Biblical word, there's no question that it’s also a Biblical concept; that is, evangelizing is speaking and proclaiming the evangel, the Good News (Lk 4:18; Ac 8:4; 13:32; 14:15; Rom 1:15; 1Cor 1:17; 2Cor 10:16; 1Pet 1:12).
“Missional,” on the other hand, is not a Biblical word. And to the degree that it is a Biblical concept, the part of that concept that is Biblical is in fact expressed by the term "evangelism." The original post at Desiring God itself bears this out. Consider this:
[A church] is not fully missional in the biblical sense if it is not both pursuing mission at home among native reached people and being an engaged sender in support of missionaries to the unreached.
Well, first: What does it mean to "pursue mission"? (Even here we are getting away from Biblical language for poor, vague substitutes.) Biblically, pursuing mission cannot mean anything else but to fulfill the commission we’ve been given: to make disciples of all nations (Mt 28:19-20). And how do we go about that? We evangelize: We preach the Gospel. Why? Because nothing else contributes to the new birth, which is the first step in discipleship. Consider these texts:
Why the new language then? Well, I fear that a real reason for ditching “evangelism” and “evangelistic” for “missional,” whether it’s intentional or not, is that we desire to safely import into evangelicalism some of the nonbiblical ideas and worldliness that fall under the umbrella of being “missional.” If it was only about preaching the Gospel, being evangelistic and doing evangelism, the term evangelism would work just fine. But unfortunately, it seems that that's not all that being missional is about. In a nutshell, it seems like it's about getting Christians to be as much like the world as they can, trying to show unbelievers how much Christians are like them, and hoping that they can see that because we're like them, they can be Christians too. It's seeker-sensitive, attractional, market-driven, church growth strategy -- just on the individual level rather than the church level.
Getting back to why it's a bad idea to use the term, when you consider that there are indeed nonbiblical, worldly ideas being proclaimed under the banner of being missional, – whether you personally stop short of espousing those things yourself or not – it makes even less sense to trash “evangelism” for “missional.” Now you're using a term that means more than you want to say, in place of a term that says exactly what you want to say.
Listen, I definitely agree with David Mathis's call to suffer in the path of fulfilling the Great Commission, and to be as concerned with world missions and unreached people groups as we are with evangelism at home. I disagree, though, that we need to rubber stamp “missional” and the aberrant theologies and philosophies of ministry that find refuge under that banner in order to do it.
Am I simply wrangling about words (2Tim 2:14)? Well, to that accusation, I'd respond by noting, as John Frame says, that words are the theologian’s tools. And if we are to be workmen not needing to be ashamed, cutting a straight course in the word of truth (which Paul says in the very next verse, 2Tim 2:15), and if in the very same letter he commands us to retain the pattern of sound words (2Tim 1:13, ESV) and in doing so we guard the Gospel (2Tim 1:14), well then we’d better be using the right tools. In my opinion, “missional” falls short, and “evangelism” cuts just fine.
Rather than a call to be truly missional, let us sound and heed the call to be truly Biblical.
Recently, the folks over at Desiring God posted an excerpt of a chapter on missions from the new book, "Don't Call it a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day," edited by Kevin DeYoung. This particular chapter was written by David Mathis, who currently serves as the executive pastoral assistant to John Piper. The post at Desiring God also got picked up and excerpted even further by Justin Taylor over at Between Two Worlds. The blog post was entitled: A Call to Be Truly Missional.
I haven't spoken much about the issues surrounding being "missional" on this blog before now (here's one exception), not because I don't think it's an important issue but because I'm still formulating my thoughts on the topic itself and how to best address it. I suppose I plan to address it more directly in the future. But for now I feel comfortable saying that I don't feel comfortable with the missional idea and the ecclesiology and philosophy of ministry that it seems to identify. In that vein, I offered a comment on that original post, and I thought it would be helpful to post it over here as well.
That original post begins by saying, "Many of you reading this are living alongside us in a post-Christian Western culture. One where the term evangelism is a bit outdated and to be missional is in vogue." He continues to give a diagnosis of Europe and North America: they have "become more and more like a mission field—but a post-Christian, rather than pre-Christian field." Because of this, the ministerial prognosis is: "We now need a more missions-like engagement even on battleground here on the home front." Now, I actually don't think that that conclusion is true. I think one of the major failures of the "missional" philosophy of ministry is a conflation between a Christian missionary and a Christian witness and, correspondingly, between a culture and a subculture. But that's not the point of this current post.
What really jumped out at me and was extremely puzzling was the concession that the word "evangelism" is outdated. That seems like an outrageous statement, especially in light of the fact that it is falling out of favor and the word "missional" is taking its place. Evangelizing — gospellizing — is a Biblical word (euaggelizomai), which in and of itself should guarantee its rightful endurance, no matter how "outdated" it might seem. (I still get a confused look on my face even as I write that. Evangelism? Outdated? ... What???) Heaven and earth will pass away, but Jesus' words will never pass away (Mt 24:35; cf. Mt 11:5; Lk 4:43). Beyond the fact that it's a Biblical word, there's no question that it’s also a Biblical concept; that is, evangelizing is speaking and proclaiming the evangel, the Good News (Lk 4:18; Ac 8:4; 13:32; 14:15; Rom 1:15; 1Cor 1:17; 2Cor 10:16; 1Pet 1:12).
“Missional,” on the other hand, is not a Biblical word. And to the degree that it is a Biblical concept, the part of that concept that is Biblical is in fact expressed by the term "evangelism." The original post at Desiring God itself bears this out. Consider this:
[A church] is not fully missional in the biblical sense if it is not both pursuing mission at home among native reached people and being an engaged sender in support of missionaries to the unreached.
Well, first: What does it mean to "pursue mission"? (Even here we are getting away from Biblical language for poor, vague substitutes.) Biblically, pursuing mission cannot mean anything else but to fulfill the commission we’ve been given: to make disciples of all nations (Mt 28:19-20). And how do we go about that? We evangelize: We preach the Gospel. Why? Because nothing else contributes to the new birth, which is the first step in discipleship. Consider these texts:
- James 1:18 - In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.
- 1 Peter 1:23, 25 - ...for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God. ... And this is the word which was preached to you.
- Romans 10:17 - So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
Why the new language then? Well, I fear that a real reason for ditching “evangelism” and “evangelistic” for “missional,” whether it’s intentional or not, is that we desire to safely import into evangelicalism some of the nonbiblical ideas and worldliness that fall under the umbrella of being “missional.” If it was only about preaching the Gospel, being evangelistic and doing evangelism, the term evangelism would work just fine. But unfortunately, it seems that that's not all that being missional is about. In a nutshell, it seems like it's about getting Christians to be as much like the world as they can, trying to show unbelievers how much Christians are like them, and hoping that they can see that because we're like them, they can be Christians too. It's seeker-sensitive, attractional, market-driven, church growth strategy -- just on the individual level rather than the church level.
Getting back to why it's a bad idea to use the term, when you consider that there are indeed nonbiblical, worldly ideas being proclaimed under the banner of being missional, – whether you personally stop short of espousing those things yourself or not – it makes even less sense to trash “evangelism” for “missional.” Now you're using a term that means more than you want to say, in place of a term that says exactly what you want to say.
Listen, I definitely agree with David Mathis's call to suffer in the path of fulfilling the Great Commission, and to be as concerned with world missions and unreached people groups as we are with evangelism at home. I disagree, though, that we need to rubber stamp “missional” and the aberrant theologies and philosophies of ministry that find refuge under that banner in order to do it.
Am I simply wrangling about words (2Tim 2:14)? Well, to that accusation, I'd respond by noting, as John Frame says, that words are the theologian’s tools. And if we are to be workmen not needing to be ashamed, cutting a straight course in the word of truth (which Paul says in the very next verse, 2Tim 2:15), and if in the very same letter he commands us to retain the pattern of sound words (2Tim 1:13, ESV) and in doing so we guard the Gospel (2Tim 1:14), well then we’d better be using the right tools. In my opinion, “missional” falls short, and “evangelism” cuts just fine.
Rather than a call to be truly missional, let us sound and heed the call to be truly Biblical.
Friday, January 28, 2011
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.
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.
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 -
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 -
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
We Do Not Preach Ourselves
If, as we have seen in the previous post, that the world’s problem is that they do not see the glory of Christ, the Church’s mission is to preach a message which, by the power of God, overcomes that blindness. And so that is the third principle for faithfulness in Gospel ministry: to know the proclamation. Paul says in 2Cor 4:5, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake.”
What does it mean to “not preach ourselves?” It means that we don’t put ourselves forward as the appeal to unbelievers. We don’t make our methodology or our style the draw, or that which attracts and compels others’ participation. Instead, we get ourselves out of the way so as to be merely incidental—merely the finger that points to what counts: namely, the content of the message: that Jesus Christ is Lord.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5 really sheds light on what it means for Paul that he not be preaching himself. He says, “And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.”
What's amazing about that is superiority of speech, human wisdom, and persuasive words were exactly what you needed if you were going to get your message heard in first-century Corinth! Remember, eloquence and oratory were the prerequisites of cultural engagement and credibility in that society. And Paul says, “I determined—I resolved—to be just the opposite. They were seeking wisdom, and all I knew was Christ and Him crucified. They were looking for rhetorical skills and eloquence and I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling. They wanted someone skilled in the art of persuasion, and my message and preaching had no persuasive words.”
Why, Paul?!
“Because if I did that, I’d be preaching myself! And then your faith would rest on the wisdom of men, and not on the power of God!”
So we don’t preach ourselves. In fact, he says in 1 Corinthians 3:5, “What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Slaves through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.” And back in 2 Corinthians 4:7, Paul says, “Listen, we’re just earthen vessels, just clay pots. We don’t do anything to make much of ourselves because we want 'the surpassing greatness of the power [to] be of God and not from ourselves.'”
And so Paul says: We don’t preach ourselves, because we’re not trying to simply gain converts, fill seats, and get rich. The problem we’re trying to solve by our preaching is the world’s blindness to the glory of Christ. And so we don’t preach ourselves, because no matter how slick or clever our presentation is, that’s not what saves people. That’s not what opens their eyes to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.
An Epidemic
And dear friends, if there is anything that plagues the contemporary Church today it is an epidemic of preaching ourselves. The Church today seems like it’s trying to solve every problem in the world except the one it’s been commissioned to solve. And it preaches itself to do it. One of the greatest marks of the unhealthiness of today’s Church is that rather than manifesting the glory of Jesus and the offensiveness and foolishness of His cross, the culture-exegetes of today attempt to show the world how much alike we are. In so doing, the Church presents themselves to the world and asks the world to accept them, and go from there.
Unbelievers don’t like hour-long sermons and big Bible words, so church growth strategy says we ought to shorten sermons to 20-minute pep-talks on fixing your emotional problems and personal relationships. On the other hand, the Emerging church reminds us that we’re living in a post-Christian era, and before the 18 to 30 year-olds of this generation darken the door of a church, we’ve got to "contextualize the gospel" and be "missional." If your "target audience" likes exotic coffees, put a coffee shop in your church. If they’re into punk rock music and body piercing, buy a couple of albums and think about a tongue ring. If they’re into Ultimate Fighting, go with them to the bar after work and watch a match on the big screen over some imported beer. You see, once we can show them that Christians are like them—that we’re human just like them and can like the same things that they like—well then they’ll be interested in “trying Jesus.”
As I write that, the passage that screams out in my mind is James 4:4: “Adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
Here’s an actual example from a church’s “About Us” page on their website: “If you’re looking for a place to have some real fun, make some real friends, and explore and experience a relationship with the real God, FCF is the place for you! We believe that church ought to be the most exciting and meaningful experience of a person’s week! That’s why we—”
Now, I agree that church ought to be the most exciting and meaningful experience of a person's week. But how you finish that last sentence speaks volumes about what you believe about Jesus Christ and His Gospel. Right there I want to insert: “That’s why we faithfully exposit the Scriptures week by week, in order to present an exalted view of God, so that our members see and savor His glory that is revealed in Christ, and as a result be so satisfied with the sweetness of Christ that they willingly lay down their lives during the week to love their neighbor as themselves.”
But no, they believe church ought to be the most exciting and meaningful experience of a person’s week. “That’s why we use theatrical lighting, sound, and video. That’s why we have cutting-edge music along with creative and relevant messages that speak to real-life challenges. That’s why we designed and built a kid’s theater and village complete with a real fire truck in the wall, and more!” And it goes on.
Do you see how this is preaching themselves? They offer their church, and its various programs and multimedia presentations as the selling point, rather than the gospel of Christ crucified, risen, and reigning as Lord, which can alone open blind minds to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ. Paul calls this kind of thing peddling the word of God in 2Cor 2:17. And in 2Cor4:2 he calls it adulterating the word of God. And so Paul declares that we as Christians do not preach ourselves, because that will never solve the world’s problem. Rather we preach—that’s our method—Christ Jesus as Lord—that’s our message.
Will Metzger in his classic book on evangelism entitled Tell the Truth, writes, “The model for our witness is not to be a smooth-talking public relations agent”—and I’d add, nor an uber-cool, cultural hipster—“but an ambassador with a proclamation from a King” (36), which is exactly what Paul says a chapter later (2Cor 5:20).
Update: See Paul Washer offer his commentary on what it means for pastors and churches to preach themselves.
Series Outline
- Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
- We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
- The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
- We Do Not Preach Ourselves
- God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
- The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
- Postscript
Friday, January 21, 2011
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.
Series Outline
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 21st 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!
Series Outline
- Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
- We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
- The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
- We Do Not Preach Ourselves
- God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
- The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
- Postscript
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
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
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
- Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
- We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
- The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
- We Do Not Preach Ourselves
- God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
- The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
- Postscript
Friday, January 14, 2011
Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
Though I'm a bit late, it's still around that time of year when we feel like it's "the new year." And New Year’s is the time when everybody does some reflecting on the previous year and how we've lived our lives, and we make resolutions and determinations to live better in the coming year. The process seems to involve a kind of refocusing on things that are important to us so that when we will have come to the end of this next year we will look even more favorably on it than the previous one.
In that vein, I think it would be appropriate at the beginning of this New Year at For Our Benefit to start by refocusing on the fundamentals, by going back to the basics. That is to say, to meditate upon the centerpiece of Christianity and what Christian ministry is all about: The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the blessed Good News by which we are saved, sanctified, and eventually brought home to God to enjoy His glory forever.
And as I consider this I'm thinking about two categories of people that I'm addressing. The first, obviously, is that category of people who are confused -- or are just plain wrong -- about the nature of the Gospel and therefore the nature of Christian ministry. This series is intended to be a corrective for unbiblical thinking. The second category is made up of those who have the Gospel right and who are faithful ministers of it. In their case, I’m reminded of what the Apostle John says in 1 John 2:21. He says, “I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth.” The Apostle Peter speaks similarly in 2 Peter 2:12-15: “Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them, and have been established in the truth which is present with you. Even though Peter's readers already knew what he was going to tell them, he reminded them anyway, so that the believers in those congregations would so internalize Apostolic teaching that it would be natural for them to preach and teach sound doctrine and refute the errors of the false teachers. Paul also writes similarly to the Philippians in chapter 3 verse 1: “To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you.” He's saying, “I don’t mind saying these things over and over again, and doing so is a safeguard, a protection, for you.”
In the same way, then, I write this series not because I think nobody else is getting the Gospel right. To be sure, there are those who get the Gospel wrong. But to the faithful, I, like John, write to not because you don’t know the Gospel, but because to ponder and meditate on and muse over the glorious Gospel of Christ and its implications for Christian ministry is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you. It realigns and refocuses our mission in this world. The reason Jesus left the Church on earth between His first and second advents is to preach the Gospel to all people and by it to make disciples of all nations. And sadly, so many churches have forgotten the basics, and as a result—whether it’s intentional or not—they preach an adjusted gospel, an adulterated gospel, or a truncated gospel, which, as Paul says, is really no gospel at all (Gal 1:7). And that only requires that we be all the more diligent to be faithful to the Gospel we’ve received in the pages of Scripture.
To do that, I want to look at 2 Corinthians 4:3-6. That text comes in the context of Paul’s defense of his apostleship and the legitimacy of his ministry amid attacks by false apostles who were deceiving the church in Corinth. And as he is responding to a particular accusation, he makes some precious comments about the nature of the Gospel and the nature of Christian ministry. And so as we look into this text together I want us to observe four principles—and four corresponding implications—that inform our understanding of the Gospel and shape our ministry as a church so that we can be faithful witnesses of Christ in 2011. That’s what I’m after in this series: I want us all to be equipped to be faithful witnesses of Christ in the coming year in the various spheres of our lives. And to accomplish that goal I want to inform our understanding of the Gospel and to shape our ministry as the Church by four principles in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6.
We'll get into the first next time.
In that vein, I think it would be appropriate at the beginning of this New Year at For Our Benefit to start by refocusing on the fundamentals, by going back to the basics. That is to say, to meditate upon the centerpiece of Christianity and what Christian ministry is all about: The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the blessed Good News by which we are saved, sanctified, and eventually brought home to God to enjoy His glory forever.
And as I consider this I'm thinking about two categories of people that I'm addressing. The first, obviously, is that category of people who are confused -- or are just plain wrong -- about the nature of the Gospel and therefore the nature of Christian ministry. This series is intended to be a corrective for unbiblical thinking. The second category is made up of those who have the Gospel right and who are faithful ministers of it. In their case, I’m reminded of what the Apostle John says in 1 John 2:21. He says, “I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth.” The Apostle Peter speaks similarly in 2 Peter 2:12-15: “Therefore, I will always be ready to remind you of these things, even though you already know them, and have been established in the truth which is present with you. Even though Peter's readers already knew what he was going to tell them, he reminded them anyway, so that the believers in those congregations would so internalize Apostolic teaching that it would be natural for them to preach and teach sound doctrine and refute the errors of the false teachers. Paul also writes similarly to the Philippians in chapter 3 verse 1: “To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you.” He's saying, “I don’t mind saying these things over and over again, and doing so is a safeguard, a protection, for you.”
In the same way, then, I write this series not because I think nobody else is getting the Gospel right. To be sure, there are those who get the Gospel wrong. But to the faithful, I, like John, write to not because you don’t know the Gospel, but because to ponder and meditate on and muse over the glorious Gospel of Christ and its implications for Christian ministry is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you. It realigns and refocuses our mission in this world. The reason Jesus left the Church on earth between His first and second advents is to preach the Gospel to all people and by it to make disciples of all nations. And sadly, so many churches have forgotten the basics, and as a result—whether it’s intentional or not—they preach an adjusted gospel, an adulterated gospel, or a truncated gospel, which, as Paul says, is really no gospel at all (Gal 1:7). And that only requires that we be all the more diligent to be faithful to the Gospel we’ve received in the pages of Scripture.
To do that, I want to look at 2 Corinthians 4:3-6. That text comes in the context of Paul’s defense of his apostleship and the legitimacy of his ministry amid attacks by false apostles who were deceiving the church in Corinth. And as he is responding to a particular accusation, he makes some precious comments about the nature of the Gospel and the nature of Christian ministry. And so as we look into this text together I want us to observe four principles—and four corresponding implications—that inform our understanding of the Gospel and shape our ministry as a church so that we can be faithful witnesses of Christ in 2011. That’s what I’m after in this series: I want us all to be equipped to be faithful witnesses of Christ in the coming year in the various spheres of our lives. And to accomplish that goal I want to inform our understanding of the Gospel and to shape our ministry as the Church by four principles in 2 Corinthians 4:3-6.
We'll get into the first next time.
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,
in whose case 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 we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord,
and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus' sake.
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.
- 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 -
Series Outline
in whose case 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 we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord,
and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus' sake.
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.
- 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 -
Series Outline
- Principles for Faithfulness in Gospel Ministry: Introduction
- We Are Not to Amuse the Goats but to Call the Sheep
- The World's Problem is that They Are Blind to Glory
- We Do Not Preach Ourselves
- God's Remedy: The Shining of the Light of Life
- The Gospel of the Glory: What Makes the Good News Good News
- Postscript
Friday, August 27, 2010
How to Be An Effective Preacher: Be Passionately Thrilled by the Bible
I think everyone who is currently in a regular preaching ministry and everyone who aspires to serve God's people by preaching His Word should listen to this clip repeatedly. A transcript of a relevant portion (1:54 to 3:03) is below.
"I think the way I became a preacher was by being passionately thrilled by what I was seeing in the Bible in seminary. Passionately thrilled! When Philippians began to open to me, Galatians opened to me, Romans opened to me, the Sermon on the Mount opened to me in classes on exegesis -- not homiletics but exegesis -- everything in me was feeling, 'I want to say this to somebody! I want to find a way to say this! Because this is awesome! This is incredible!'
"So preachers today that go everywhere but the Bible to find something interesting or something scintillating and passionate -- I don't get it! I don't get that at all! Because I have to work hard to leave the Bible and go somewhere to find an illustration because everything here is just blowing me away. And it's that sense of being blown away by what's here -- by the God that's here and the Christ's that's here and the Gospel that's here and the Spirit that's here and the life that's here -- being blown away by this, you just kinda say, 'That's gotta get out. That's gotta get out.' ...
"I don't think there's much you can do to become a preacher except: (1) know your Bible and (2) be unbelievably excited about what's there, and (3) love people a lot."
As I listen to this, everything in me says, "YES!!! YES!!!" This is how a preacher that honors God is made, because God is honored when He is beheld and marveled at! And marveled at to such a degree that His glory compels praise.
I will not be an effective preacher -- one that plumbs and mines the depths of God's Word to feed the people on the meaty delicacies of the voice of their Shepherd -- if I am not blown away by the vision of an all-glorious, all-satisfying, high and lofty and exalted and lifted up God as is revealed in His Word. I must be affected -- thrilled! -- by God's own magnificent presentation of Himself, and worship over that in my study so that I can worship over that as I'm preaching. Because it is only as the preacher worships over the Word as he proclaims it that the people will worship over the Word as they hear it proclaimed.
This is just so huge! I love what Piper says about being thrilled in his exegesis classes and not his homiletics classes. You know what that shouts out to me? You can't fabricate a preacher. Preachers are not man-made. You can't study really hard to become a preacher. No matter how good a communicator you are, how clever you can turn a phrase, how good your outline is, or how white your teeth are, God and God alone makes preachers. When Christ ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives and He gave gifts to men. And He gave some as pastors and teachers (Eph 4:8, 11). Pastors and teachers are Christ's divinely-made gifts to His Church. They are not men who thought they could turn a phrase well and didn't mind the idea of talking for a living and so decided to take up preaching.
And the implications of that are wildly significant! It means that the Church must depend on Christ for the provision of these men. Do you want to be a preacher? I do. But all I can do is prayerfully, with fear and trembling, get on my face before the Lord Jesus and beg Him to open my eyes to behold wondrous things from the truth of His Word, and to affect me rightly with them, that I might be able to properly proclaim the excellencies of Him that called me out of darkness into His marvelous light (1Pet 2:9). You see? I am at His mercy to make me a preacher. And if He doesn't, I am not called to the ministry -- no matter how much I really think I am called, no matter how much I really want to preach and teach and shepherd and counsel and lead, and no matter how much passion I can muster up for those tasks.
"Preacher" is not merely a title. It is an identity. A God-given identity.
And if God hasn't granted that identity to you -- if He hasn't given you the vision to be blown away, to be passionately thrilled by what He's revealed of Himself in the Bible (and not the television, the newspaper, and the depraved human culture!) -- then for Christ's sake stay out of the pulpit! Don't torture the people of God by trying to give to them out of your own resources that which only Christ can give out of His.
Know your Bible, be unbelievably excited about what's there, and love people a lot. And trust Christ to provide all three by grace.
"I think the way I became a preacher was by being passionately thrilled by what I was seeing in the Bible in seminary. Passionately thrilled! When Philippians began to open to me, Galatians opened to me, Romans opened to me, the Sermon on the Mount opened to me in classes on exegesis -- not homiletics but exegesis -- everything in me was feeling, 'I want to say this to somebody! I want to find a way to say this! Because this is awesome! This is incredible!'
"So preachers today that go everywhere but the Bible to find something interesting or something scintillating and passionate -- I don't get it! I don't get that at all! Because I have to work hard to leave the Bible and go somewhere to find an illustration because everything here is just blowing me away. And it's that sense of being blown away by what's here -- by the God that's here and the Christ's that's here and the Gospel that's here and the Spirit that's here and the life that's here -- being blown away by this, you just kinda say, 'That's gotta get out. That's gotta get out.' ...
"I don't think there's much you can do to become a preacher except: (1) know your Bible and (2) be unbelievably excited about what's there, and (3) love people a lot."
As I listen to this, everything in me says, "YES!!! YES!!!" This is how a preacher that honors God is made, because God is honored when He is beheld and marveled at! And marveled at to such a degree that His glory compels praise.
I will not be an effective preacher -- one that plumbs and mines the depths of God's Word to feed the people on the meaty delicacies of the voice of their Shepherd -- if I am not blown away by the vision of an all-glorious, all-satisfying, high and lofty and exalted and lifted up God as is revealed in His Word. I must be affected -- thrilled! -- by God's own magnificent presentation of Himself, and worship over that in my study so that I can worship over that as I'm preaching. Because it is only as the preacher worships over the Word as he proclaims it that the people will worship over the Word as they hear it proclaimed.
This is just so huge! I love what Piper says about being thrilled in his exegesis classes and not his homiletics classes. You know what that shouts out to me? You can't fabricate a preacher. Preachers are not man-made. You can't study really hard to become a preacher. No matter how good a communicator you are, how clever you can turn a phrase, how good your outline is, or how white your teeth are, God and God alone makes preachers. When Christ ascended on high, He led captive a host of captives and He gave gifts to men. And He gave some as pastors and teachers (Eph 4:8, 11). Pastors and teachers are Christ's divinely-made gifts to His Church. They are not men who thought they could turn a phrase well and didn't mind the idea of talking for a living and so decided to take up preaching.
And the implications of that are wildly significant! It means that the Church must depend on Christ for the provision of these men. Do you want to be a preacher? I do. But all I can do is prayerfully, with fear and trembling, get on my face before the Lord Jesus and beg Him to open my eyes to behold wondrous things from the truth of His Word, and to affect me rightly with them, that I might be able to properly proclaim the excellencies of Him that called me out of darkness into His marvelous light (1Pet 2:9). You see? I am at His mercy to make me a preacher. And if He doesn't, I am not called to the ministry -- no matter how much I really think I am called, no matter how much I really want to preach and teach and shepherd and counsel and lead, and no matter how much passion I can muster up for those tasks.
"Preacher" is not merely a title. It is an identity. A God-given identity.
And if God hasn't granted that identity to you -- if He hasn't given you the vision to be blown away, to be passionately thrilled by what He's revealed of Himself in the Bible (and not the television, the newspaper, and the depraved human culture!) -- then for Christ's sake stay out of the pulpit! Don't torture the people of God by trying to give to them out of your own resources that which only Christ can give out of His.
Know your Bible, be unbelievably excited about what's there, and love people a lot. And trust Christ to provide all three by grace.
Friday, June 18, 2010
"All Truth is God's Truth"
Whenever I hear this assertion it's usually being given as substantiation for some devaluation of the sufficiency of Scripture. Whether that be trying to force billions of years into Genesis 1-3, claiming that one's counseling methodology ought to be informed by secular psychological theory, or seeking to legitimize an over-concern with worldliness in the name of being missional or contextualizing the Gospel, this phrase gets a lot of mileage from those seeking to evade the teaching of the sufficient Scripture by affording undue authority to other sources of knowledge. When it comes down to it, the question of the validity of this statement is a question of epistemology. How do we know what we know? What is the authoritative source of all knowledge?
The Bible contains the revelation of the specific words of God to specific people. Because of this specificity, the Bible is said to be the "special revelation" of God (cf. Grudem, p. 122-123). General revelation, on the other hand, is "the knowledge of God’s existence, character, and moral law, which comes through creation to all humanity" (Grudem, p. 122). Such revelation is "general," or "common," because it is revealed to all humanity -- it's something we all have in common, so to speak.
The relationship of the authority of special revelation and general revelation is of particular importance to the issues raised above, i.e., the age of the earth, Biblical vs. integrationist counseling, and the nature of the natural man's spiritual death. The scientist, psychologist, or postmodern thinker argues that all truth is God’s truth, and so if something is found to be true by means of scientific analysis of general revelation, well then that is a manifestation of God’s common grace. Since truth which is gleaned from general revelation, it is argued, is just as much God’s truth as truth gleaned from special revelation, both special and general revelation are equally authoritative and thus each ought to have a place in Christian epistemology.
As a dear brother of mine has said, "Perhaps all truth is God's truth, but not all words are God's Word."
The problem with this "All-truth-is-God's-truth" line of reasoning is that it simply does not acknowledge the inherent difference between general revelation and special revelation in both glory and authority. Scripture assigns to itself more authority than it does to general revelation. Though general revelation is perceived through God’s creation, and though God’s creation began as "very good" (Gen 1:31), the consequences of the Fall of man present a twofold problem. First, God subjected the entire creation to futility (Rom 8:20-23), cursing His "very good" creation as a result of Adam's sin (Gen 3:17). Second, when Adam sinned, all humanity died with him (Rom 5:12). So even though it is through creation that the invisible attributes of God have been clearly seen, leaving men with no excuse (Rom 1:20), the depravity of fallen man causes him to suppress that clearly revealed truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18), rendering both fallen creation and fallen man unqualified epistemological authorities. The creation in its current state is not a reliable subject of study because of its corruption, and since no part of humanity's existence was unaffected by the Fall, our total depravity makes us unreliable students.
The Word of God, on the other hand, is not fallen. Indeed, the law of Yahweh remains perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, true, and righteous altogether (Ps 19:7-9). Unlike the corrupted creation and its depraved students, the integrity – and thus, the authority – of special revelation is entirely unblemished by the Fall. Further, Yahweh's perfect law "restores the soul" (Ps 19:7) of depraved mankind, something general revelation cannot do. "Far greater than all general revelation is the glory of God revealed in His Word, because the Word transforms the heart of man" (Street, Counseling, p. 44).
Those who tout "All truth is God's truth" as a way to put observation of creation (scientific or otherwise) on equal footing with Scripture simply do not realize the inherent difference in glory and authority between general revelation and special revelation.
The Bible contains the revelation of the specific words of God to specific people. Because of this specificity, the Bible is said to be the "special revelation" of God (cf. Grudem, p. 122-123). General revelation, on the other hand, is "the knowledge of God’s existence, character, and moral law, which comes through creation to all humanity" (Grudem, p. 122). Such revelation is "general," or "common," because it is revealed to all humanity -- it's something we all have in common, so to speak.
The relationship of the authority of special revelation and general revelation is of particular importance to the issues raised above, i.e., the age of the earth, Biblical vs. integrationist counseling, and the nature of the natural man's spiritual death. The scientist, psychologist, or postmodern thinker argues that all truth is God’s truth, and so if something is found to be true by means of scientific analysis of general revelation, well then that is a manifestation of God’s common grace. Since truth which is gleaned from general revelation, it is argued, is just as much God’s truth as truth gleaned from special revelation, both special and general revelation are equally authoritative and thus each ought to have a place in Christian epistemology.
As a dear brother of mine has said, "Perhaps all truth is God's truth, but not all words are God's Word."
The problem with this "All-truth-is-God's-truth" line of reasoning is that it simply does not acknowledge the inherent difference between general revelation and special revelation in both glory and authority. Scripture assigns to itself more authority than it does to general revelation. Though general revelation is perceived through God’s creation, and though God’s creation began as "very good" (Gen 1:31), the consequences of the Fall of man present a twofold problem. First, God subjected the entire creation to futility (Rom 8:20-23), cursing His "very good" creation as a result of Adam's sin (Gen 3:17). Second, when Adam sinned, all humanity died with him (Rom 5:12). So even though it is through creation that the invisible attributes of God have been clearly seen, leaving men with no excuse (Rom 1:20), the depravity of fallen man causes him to suppress that clearly revealed truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18), rendering both fallen creation and fallen man unqualified epistemological authorities. The creation in its current state is not a reliable subject of study because of its corruption, and since no part of humanity's existence was unaffected by the Fall, our total depravity makes us unreliable students.
The Word of God, on the other hand, is not fallen. Indeed, the law of Yahweh remains perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, true, and righteous altogether (Ps 19:7-9). Unlike the corrupted creation and its depraved students, the integrity – and thus, the authority – of special revelation is entirely unblemished by the Fall. Further, Yahweh's perfect law "restores the soul" (Ps 19:7) of depraved mankind, something general revelation cannot do. "Far greater than all general revelation is the glory of God revealed in His Word, because the Word transforms the heart of man" (Street, Counseling, p. 44).
Those who tout "All truth is God's truth" as a way to put observation of creation (scientific or otherwise) on equal footing with Scripture simply do not realize the inherent difference in glory and authority between general revelation and special revelation.
Even though the heavens are declaring the glory of God (Ps 19:1) such that men are without excuse (Rom 1:20), general revelation cannot free man from the corruption that even it is enslaved to (Rom 8:20-23). Only special revelation can do that; that is, the Word of God which is perfect, restoring the soul (Ps 19:7), able to make us wise unto salvation (2Tim 3:15) .
So all truth may be God's truth, but not all words are God's Word. God's decisive, sufficient, perfect Word surpasses even His good, yet corrupted, creation in both glory and authority.
And that must drive our epistemology. Otherwise, it is not a Christian epistemology.
The law of Yahweh is perfect, restoring the soul;
The testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of Yahweh is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of Yahweh are true; they are righteous altogether.
They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them Your servant is warned;
In keeping them there is great reward.
- Psalm 19:7-11 -
All Scripture is inspired by God
and profitable
for teaching, for reproof,
for correction, for training in righteousness;
so that the man of God may be adequate,
equipped for every good work.
- 2 Timothy 3:16-17 -
The testimony of Yahweh is sure, making wise the simple.
The precepts of Yahweh are right, rejoicing the heart;
The commandment of Yahweh is pure, enlightening the eyes.
The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever;
The judgments of Yahweh are true; they are righteous altogether.
They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold;
Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them Your servant is warned;
In keeping them there is great reward.
- Psalm 19:7-11 -
All Scripture is inspired by God
and profitable
for teaching, for reproof,
for correction, for training in righteousness;
so that the man of God may be adequate,
equipped for every good work.
- 2 Timothy 3:16-17 -
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