Justification is a declaration received by faith.

Isn’t that odd? Can one think of any law court situation in which the “not guilty” verdict would fail to apply because the accused failed to believe the judge?

On the other hand, it is not all that odd to see trust as the basic bond in a relationship. If we are entrusted to Jesus then we are are one with him and are accepted by the Father for his sake.

But that is not all. Hebrews 11.1-12.3 presents faith as powerful because it involves a confidence about God’s promise to bring about a promised deliverance. Right now, we hear no divine declaration. God’s voice does not split the rock roaring that we are righteous in his sight. Nor do we show much difference with unbelievers in the way we suffer under the curse. To the human eye it looks like we are all alike under that condemnation.

Of course, God has made a tangible verdict. He raised Jesus from the dead.

So perhaps justification by faith is how you deal with the anomaly of a verdict unaccompanied by the striking a gavel. Jesus is trusted. His past verdict and vindication (justification) means there is now “no condemnation” for us who belong to him. Jesus is trusted. His promise to come and publicly exalt us, to “openly acknowledge and acquit” us, is firm and certain.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

This is sad.

I get fed up with adversarial blogging and try to deal with public accusations of scandal through a private message. This is the result.

I’m not asking anyone to violate their consciences by allowing me to speak anywhere. I would not hesitate to encourage my session to stop John Gerstner from teaching my congregation that it is wrong to allow their young children to pray the Lord’s Prayer. What I’m asking is that we stop making false claims that certain people are “hiding,” engaged in “subterfuge” or “doublespeak.”

Presbyterians & Presbyterians Together

Having one’s sins forgiven is an awesome blessing, one that is greatly needed by sinful man.

Yet Paul never emphasizes forgiveness as much as justification. While justification includes forgiveness, that fact remains that justification is more frequently emphasized.

Why? What is so central about “justification” as opposed to other words that denote being counted as righteous?

The answer, I think, has to be found in the fact that God is a great King and Jesus is lord. If I sin against you I will ask you for forgiveness, but if I am brought up on charges by a public authority then I will be praying to be vindicated.

God isn’t just a personal friend but also the judge of all the earth. I would be inaccurate to reduce his judicial pronouncements to only the same level of one person forgiving another.

One of the personal high points at the conference was visiting some old friends. It was also great to finally meet Steve McCoy, aka “the reformissionary,” and his wife!

I’m sitting in the SeaTac Airport, trying to process what I heard, get a sermon tweaked for Sunday night, and catching up on email.

I already mentioned the Presbyterians & Presbyterians Together report (I’m not sure why my signature hasn’t appeared yet).

I’m catching reports of some rather strong insistence that this document is some sort of political attempt to circumvent or taint judicial process in the PCA.

That’s not the way I see it.

At our last meeting the Candidates and Credentials Committee reported to Missouri Presbytery that they had examined me in light of the Presbytery’s FV Committee findings and found me well within the bounds of orthodoxy. This was the seal on an identical decision made by the Presbytery last year when they voted to receive me as a minister of the gospel called to work in their midst. Sadly, for me and especially my wife at any rate, there were a lot of things being said about me that besmirched my reputation. I was thankful that for the Presbytery’s diligence and zeal for my good name.

I don’t want to circumvent judicial process. I want to see it honored. The document doesn’t circumvent any need to or any attempt to deal with real heresy in a truly Presbyterian process through the appointed courts.

It just asks us to love one another.

Despite my heavy conference schedule, I did manage to edit some of my past papers to get rid of or mute the “debate” tone. I’ll try to do more there as well as this blog, in an attempt to go beyond even what the Presbyterians Together report asks for.

May God give us better discernment by giving us love.

Last night was “preaching the gospel” and this morning was “doing justice.” Both were good and I might comment more in detail later. This morning, in Keller’s explanation of what justice means, he pointed to differeing (“liberal”/”conservative”) explanations for what is wrong with poor children who are likely to commit crimes sooner or later. The conservative response he described as “family values”–the children aren’t raised with proper values. But the point in common with other models that would emphasize “structural” factors is that it is not the child’s fault.

What I found interesting about this was that my own political/economic concerns and feelings began to change dramatically when my first child was born. News stories about other children in other situations suddenly became important to me.

…but sanctification is not optional.

For any of us.

Presbyterians & Presbyterians Together

First, this is great news.

But Keller is concerned that Christians are disproportionately absent from cities. He pointed to some reasons for concluding that American Christians are more anti-urban than any other nation. He pointed out that the French are proud of Paris and other countries have representative cities, but the US population doesn’t have that sort of feelings for those cities.

Second, he pointed out that a Christian culture must be both comprehensible and confrontational to the nonchristian society. In fact, it can’t be really confrontational unless comprehensible because one needs to be confronted (and attracted) by a version of oneself that has been transformed. If Christian culture gets too isolated and weird, then all the different sorts of nonchristians will never have any idea what they might look like as a Christian.

I thought it was a good point. Bear in mind I put it in my own words, not Kellers for the most part.

One of the things I loved about Providence back when I was security guarding at a baptist college was that I knew, when i got into “theological discussion” with an interested student, that I didn’t have to leave a discussion of Reformed theology to imaginary abstractions. No, I had a healthy church to invite them to visit. And that has more power than all the talking in the world. No matter how convincing you are, people raised as Arminians are going to fear what they will look like if they adopt these “new” (to them) beliefs. Seeing humanity flourishing is a great help.

Live blogging would be possible if there weren’t a billion laptops in the room here with me competing for bandwidth.

Anthony Bradley delivered a moving encouragement to kindom thinking and action. I’m tempted to call it postmillennial but I think Bradley would object. What I appreciated most about it was that it didn’t pretend that changing the world required moral superheroes. Using Isaiah 61, he pointed out that broken people are used to bring salvation to the world. Whether either one will embrace it or not, I have now firmly implanted this vision of “cruciform dominion” that I heard from him and have also heard from N. T. Wright into my version of postmillennialism.

Wow. The first speaker was a resident of Saint Louis, Darrin Patrick, the pastor of the local journey church.

His basic question was, “What is your biggest challenge in ministry.” He suggested the answer should be “yourself.”

It was a great talk made especially relevant by a list of statistics about pastors in theis nation and how many begin well but don’t end well. He mentioned a staggering number of pastors wives who claim that the day in their lives most destructive to their marriages was the day their husbands entered the ministry. There also many (didn’t get all the statistice) that end with moral burnout. You are tempted to say, “Well, they just fell away.” But no one falls away without walking away one step at a time. They didn’t deal with problems with their character when they had a chance.

“Ministry will kill you.”

His point was to let it. I think the idea is that, if you don’t, you will end in a worse self-destruction. To understand that these trials were for your good rather than becoming frustrated and bitter about them. His text was James 1.

Pastors, he pointed out, are just as prone to secularism, to focus all their hopes on the present world, as anyone else, and thus be prone to despair when things don’t turn out the way they expected. “We expect God to grant us an easy life because of the sacrifices we are making for his kingdom.”

Lots of convicting as well as encouraging material.

total uses of the word, “post-modern”: 0
total uses of the word “emergent”: 0