Category Archives: Bible & Theology

Are you an Advocate for your wife, or a Satan?

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding … – Google Books.

I was reading on page 55 and something Peter wrote hit me.

In Genes 3, Adam faced a choice. No I mean after he had already decided to use his wife as an experiment to see if the fruit would kill her. When confronted by God Adam faced a choice.

Would Adam intercede for his wife or would he blame her?

He blamed her. Not surprising. If he was willing to throw the woman in the path of the serpent, he wasn’t going to suddenly act like a man in God’s presence.

So what does that teach us?

Eve had really done wrong. Adam couldn’t exactly be accused of lying about Eve when he blamed her. On the other hand, he had been there with her and had kept silent to see what would happen. He let her go first and then he ate. He was more to blame than she was.

But even if he wasn’t, would it really have been right for him to point at her before God?

We”re supposed to intercede for our wives. We’re supposed to protect them from accusations as best we can. Yes sin should be dealt with, but in most situations, sin in others is an opportunity for exploitation, not justice and certainly not mercy. Husbands should protect their wives from that.

And also from the accuser in her head. Is a husband’s job to point out a wife’s faults or to build her up?

Did it ever occur to you that when Solomon wrote, “House and wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the LORD,” that he was trying to get you to be thankful for the wife you have?

The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.

Adam didn’t trust Eve, and he ended up with a great deal of lack. Regard your wife as faithful, before others and before your own heart. You are called to be her Advocate, not her Satan–her Prosecuter.

Humanly speaking, it is complete coincidence that this is scheduled to publish the same day as this.

The Story of the Bible 05

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So Adam and Eve are created to have dominion.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

All very simple and straight forward.

Only later do we learn that it required a passage through deep sleep to get to that point.

Adam and Eve were not created together. Adam was not given Eve immediately even though the above passage makes clear that he was not complete, and that humanity was not even fully yet in the image of God without her with him.

Adam is created and put in a garden where he is found to be “not good” because he is alone just the way God made him.

Then he is given the task of naming the animals (the cattle are already sanctuary creatures but God has to bring beasts and birds from the wild lands). Adam fulfills his task and names the animals. He learns none is right for him.

So then what? He can’t make a wife, obviously. God can make a wife. He could do so instantaneously. He could extract tissue from Adam painlessly and cause Eve appear right next to him.

But he doesn’t.

So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

The next time we will read about a deep sleep is when God makes a covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15). That gives us some idea why marriage is a covenant (as the prophet Malachi says) even though the word is not used in this passage.

But here is the point: all of this was required to get us to the place in Genesis 1 where God spoke to the Man and Woman together. Only now are Adam and Eve ready to be given their Dominion Mandate, their Great Commission. Only after a near death experience and a raising to new life is Humanity given all authority over the earth and sent out to disciple the nations (compare Matthew 28.19-20).

PS. Note that it has been awhile since I last contributed to this series.

RePost: Faith v. the Martyrdom Complex

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I’ve been re-reading Rich Lusk’s excellent essay from the “Knox Seminary Colloquium” where he brings the resources of Biblical theology in explainng and defending the basics of Protestant soteriology, nailing it down from explicit Scriptural teaching. (OK, I admit I have a quibble I was thinking of blogging about; but it is a minor one that I’ll mention at some point). One thing I had forgotten is that he uses some of my material, which means I get to feel flattered all over again.

However, I also had one of those “how-could-I-miss-that?” experiences at precisely a point where Rich is invoking my writings. In fact, I have been teaching a Bible study and completely missed an opportunity to drive this point home because I was incognizant of it. We were covering this passage:

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first” (ESV)

Now, I have always wondered at the fact that Jesus responded so positively to Peter’s bluster. I never mentioned this because I didn’t know what to do with it, but it has bothered me.

Here is what Rich wrote:

The story of the rich young ruler also presents an interesting slant on the keep-ability of the law. Jesus did not give commands to the young man as a hypothetical “covenant of works” to show him he was really a law breaker. Rather, Jesus is outlining the way of discipleship for this man, which at this particular juncture in redemptive history would have included selling all his possessions and journeying with Jesus to Jerusalem. We know this is the way the story should be read because immediately afterwards, Peter indicates that he and the other disciples have done precisely what the young man refused to do (Matthew 19:27). Jesus does not correct Peter’s claim; in fact he agrees with it, and then goes on to remind the disciples that they should not feel self-pity over the sacrifices they have made for the kingdom because it will all be paid back to them many times over (19:28ff). See Mark Horne online at Correcting 2 Mistakes in the Law/Gospel Hermeneutic and Did Jesus Preach Law or Gospel to the Rich Young Ruler?

The part that I had completely missed and forgotten was: “…and then goes on to remind the disciples that they should not feel self-pity over the sacrifices they have made for the kingdom because it will be paid back to them many times over.”

Peter and the rest had made real sacrifices–the same sort that the rich young ruler had refused to make. Yet, if they really believed in Jesus, they could not really regard these as acts of moral heroism. If someone were to offer a tenant in a hovel a free mansion to live in at no cost, then the disruption and expense of moving would be real. But no one would ever say that the family had “made a great sacrifice” to acquire the mansion.

Faith simply doesn’t allow for us to make a great deal of the sacrifices we have made for God. If we really trust God to care for us and to give us what he has promised, then what he calls us to leave behind, however hard it may be to do so, cannot be seen as some great sacrifice. When Jesus responded by assuring Peter of how much he would get back, he was rebuking any thoughts of grandness in Peter’s statement. The problem with the rich young ruler was not that he was unable to live up to the demands of great moral heroics. The problem with the rich young ruler was that he didn’t trust Jesus.

Thinking about this brings to mind Jesus’ promises of rewards in the Sermon on the Mount and his warning about doing good works in order to be seen by men because they you have already received your reward. The point is that you are supposed to really believe that God watches over you and cares for you. You are supposed to trust him. You don’t need the paltry rewards of human praise when God offers you His own praise.

And this an essential feature of saving faith. As the Apostle Paul writes, “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.” Caring about praise from God rather than man is, in my opinion, the most challenging ideal–one that proves to anyone who is honest that the flesh is always at war against the Spirit. Love God with all my mind, heart, soul, and strength? Please! Let me just spend a day (or even just a moment of a day) when I care more about God’s praise than man’s flattery.

Thank God that, no matter how sin obstructs us, if we trust him at all we are valuing his praise and his promises, and we are acceptable in his sight through the righteousness of Jesus Christ our Lord. The more we become self-conscious of what it is that God promises, the more we will realize that our efforts never amount to any real sacrifice. God accepts our offerings, but they are no real sacrifice for us.

By the way, if you haven’t listened to Rich’s sermons you are missing something great. Also, my question about Rich and imputation will have to wait for some other day when I have the time. In the meantime, those of you who have read his excellent work might be able to figure out my basic concern here.

003 The Victory According to Mark

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THE CALL (1:1-15)

The Prophecies (1:2 & 3)

When Paul preached to the Pisidian Antiochians, he summed up his message by announcing the gospel and then quoting prophecies of the gospel.

And we preach to you the good news [gospel] of the promise made to the fathers, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, “You are My Son; today I have begotten you (Acts 13:32 & 33).

Likewise, the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Romans follows that same form, first mentioning the gospel and then the prophecies: “Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures.” The author of Hebrews, also, first announces the identity of Jesus as God’s Son and promised one (vv. 1-4) and then begins quoting Scriptural prophecies (vv. 5ff.).

By announcing a gospel and then backing it up with Hebrew prophecies, Mark seems to be following the Apostolic presentation quite closely.

The beginning of the joyful proclamation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

Behold, I send My proclaimer before Your face,
Who will prepare Your way;
The voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Make ready the way of the Lord,
Make His paths straight.”

[I diverged from the NASB by translating “angel” or “messenger” (the same word) as “proclaimer.” I also translated “gospel” as “joyful proclamation.” I am trying to show the close relationship between verses 1 and 2 anchored in the similarity between evangelion (“good news” or “gospel”) and angellon (“angel” or “messenger”).]

This may seem like a rather straightforward prophecy, but it is actually not. What Mark has done is quote a verse from Isaiah with an introductory verse from Malachi. The angel or messenger sent to prepare the way comes from Malachi 3:1. The voice in the wilderness is found in Isaiah 40:3.

But things are even more complicated. Mark does not quote Malachi 3:1 verbatim, but subtly alters it. Consider them together:

Malachi 3:1 Behold, I am going to send My angel, and he will clear the way before My face.

Mark 1:2 Behold, I send My angel before Your face, who will prepare Your way

Now some of the differences could simply be the result of translating from Hebrew to Greek. However, the Malachi prophecy has God saying that his angel will prepare the way for himself. Mark has God sending an angel to prepare the way for someone else. Why is Mark changing the passage?

I would suggest [following Austin Farrar, A Study in Saint Mark (New York, Oxford U Press, 1952), 55] that Mark is intentionally combining a passage from Exodus with the passage from Malachi in order to introduce the prophecy from Isaiah.

Exodus 23:20 Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.

Malachi 3:1 Behold, I am going to send My angel, and he will clear the way before My face.

Mark 1:2 Behold, I send My angel before Your face, who will prepare Your way.

What do these two Old Testament passages mean, taken together as an interpretation of Isaiah’s prophecy? The passage from Exodus is God’s promise to Moses to lead the Israelites by his angel through the wilderness away from Egypt to the Promised Land. The prophesy of Malachi is God’s promise to once again to visit His people in a visible way for salvation and judgment.

God did not give a prophecy to Malachi which only happened to accidentally sound like his words to Moses. God’s Word is not prone to accidents. There are similarities between what the people desired at the time of Malachi, and what they were hoping for in the wilderness. The people of Israel in the wilderness were not simply moving to a better place; they were moving to a place where God promised to dwell with them.

Behold, I am going to send an angel before you to guard you along the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Be on your guard before him and obey his voice; do not be rebellious toward him, for he will not pardon your transgression, since My name is in him. But if you will truly obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. For My angel will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them (Exodus 23:20-23).

Notice that God’s presence, mediated by His angel bearing His name, is the key to their victory and acquisition of a new land. That angel was the Lord Himself who had led them out of Egypt as a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night (Exodus 13:21), the same angel who, in a flaring cloud, protected the Israelites from the Egyptian army (Exodus 14:19), and the same angel who descended on that dark cloud upon Mount Sinai(Exodus 19:16). Indeed, Moses sums up their entire journey through the wilderness by saying, “when we cried out to the Lord, He heard our voice and sent an angel and brought us out from Egypt” (Numbers 20:16). That angel, of course, is the Lord Jesus himself, the one whom Mark’s gospel is written about.

It is important to remember that the Angel of the Lord dwelt within the Tabernacle Moses built. God’s presence with His people was the whole point of the structure. As he told Moses, “Let them construct a sanctuary for Me, that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8). After the Tabernacle was built, the cloud on Mount Sinai moved into it (Exodus 40:34-38). When God threatened to only lead them out of the wilderness at a distance, Moses was not happy.

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, . . . “Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, because you are an obstinate people, lest I destroy you on the way.” . . . Then Moses said to the Lord, “See, You say to me, ‘Bring up this people!’ But You Yourself have not let me know whom You will send with me. Moreover, You have said, ‘I have known you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.’ Now therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways, that I may know You, so that I may find favor in Your sight. Consider too, that this nation is Your people.” And He said, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.” Then he said to Him, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here. For how then can it be known that I have found favor in Your sight, I and Your people? Is it not by Your going with us, so that we, I and Your people, may be distinguished from all the other people who are upon the face of the earth?” (Exodus 33:1a, 3, 12-16)

The reason Moses was not happy was that acquisition of the Land, as important as that was, was not of much value to him if God was not with them. Essential to the program of entering the Promised Land, was doing so with God’s visible presence in their midst. Without God’s presence in the Tabernacle in the middle of the twelve tribes of Israel, the trip was simply not worth making.

This helps us understand why God gave Malachi a prophecy which reminded the hearers and readers of Exodus 23:20. In Malachi’s day the Israelites were back in the Land after the return from exile. They had rebuilt the Temple—even though it was relatively dinky (Ezra 3:12 & 13). There priests were serving God in His house.

And yet something was wrong. The Land was in jeopardy due to Israel’s new sins (Malachi 4:6b). The Temple was not being treated as it should have been treated (Malachi 3:10). The priests were corrupt (Malachi 2:1-9). Despite dwelling in a special land, where God’s servants served Him in His dwelling palace, there was a real sense in which God was absent rather than present. Geographically, the situation for Malachi was completely unlike the situation for Moses. He was in the Promised Land whereas Moses was in the wilderness. Yet covenantally, the nation of Israel was just as much in the wilderness as the generation of Moses had been. They needed God’s presence. Only when He visibly visited his Temple, would they truly possess the blessings that God had promised them. As long as God was outside of the Land, in a sense, then so were they, no matter where they were geographically located.

When God promised Moses he would send an angel before them, He was promising to be present with them and lead them out of the wilderness into a place of communion with himself. In a sense, Malachi is prophesying the same thing. God will end the time of wilderness wandering by entering the Land, coming to His Temple, saving those who trust in Him, and destroying those who do not. For Malachi, as is the case for the gospel writers, Jerusalem and the Land now count as Egypt and the wilderness. God must re-enter the land for it to truly be the Promised Land. Even though Malachi’s people are already settled geographically, the still need to be saved by God’s presence and put in the real Land. God’s coming to His Temple is, in a real sense, their exodus out of Egypt and entry into the Land. By coming into the Land Himself, God is bringing His people into the Promised Land.

All of this is necessary, if Mark’s readers are going to understand his invocation of Isaiah 40, verse 3.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Make ready the way of the Lord,
Make His paths straight.”

Mark has already alluded to this passage by speaking of his document as a “gospel.” By quoting this passage Mark is not simply extracting an ad hoc prooftext but offering a comprehensive explanation for who Jesus is and why John the Baptist preceded him. He is also giving his readers a hint of what is going to happen in the rest of his story. The only way to grasp this is to have this portion of Scripture firmly in mind. Let us read it together:

Comfort, O comfort My people,” says your God.
“Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And call out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the Lord’s hand
Double for all her sins.”

A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together;

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
A voice says, “Call out.”
Then he answered, “What shall I call out?”
All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
When the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.

Get yourself up on a high mountain,
O Zion, bearer of the gospel.
Lift up your voice mightily,
O Jerusalem, bearer of the gospel;
Lift it up, do not fear.
Say to the cities of Judah,
“Here is your God!” (emphasis added)

The odds are that, if you are a Christian reader, you have been taught—correctly—that his is a prophecy of Jesus Christ and his ministry. But we need to do some study to understand how it works as a prophecy. Isaiah’s original readers would have—again correctly—read this passage in the context of Isaiah’s own life and it’s place in the his book. The last thing mentioned just before this prophecy is Isaiah’s confrontation with Hezekiah:

Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord of hosts, ‘Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and all that your fathers have laid up in store to this day shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left,’ says the Lord. And some of your sons who shall issue from you, whom you shall beget, shall be taken away; and they shall become officials in the palace of the king of Babylon.’” Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord which you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “For there will be peace and truth in my days.”

It is in the shadow of this prediction of the Babylonian exile that we are given a glorious prophecy that there will be “a highway for our God.” This is a promise of a return from exile to the Promise Land. Not only is this made clear by the immediate context of Isaiah 39, bur from the wider context as well. Early on in Isaiah, the Lord laments that “My people go into exile for their lack of knowledge” (Isaiah 5:13). Later, Isaiah will explicitly promise the return for the exiles (49:21; 51:14).

Thus the “highway for our God” is the highway by which He promises to lead the captives away from Babylon back to the Promised Land. In fact, God through Isaiah explicitly compares the journey from Babylon to the exodus from Egypt.

Awake, awake,
Clothe yourself in your strength, O Zion;
Clothe yourself in your beautiful garments,
O Jerusalem, the holy city.
For the uncircumcised and the unclean
Will no more come into you.
Shake yourself from the dust, rise up,
O captive Jerusalem;
Loose yourself from the chains around your neck,
O captive daughter of Zion.

For thus says the Lord, “You were sold for nothing and you will be redeemed without money.” For thus says the Lord God, “My people went down at the first into Egypt to reside there, then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. Now therefore, what do I have here,” declares the Lord, “seeing that My people have been taken away without cause?” Again the Lord declares, “Those who rule over them howl, and My name is continually blasphemed all day long. “Therefore My people shall know My name; therefore in that day I am the one who is speaking, ‘Here I am.’”

How lovely on the mountains
Are the feet of him who brings the gospel,
Who announces peace
And brings the gospel of happiness,
Who announces deliverance,
And says to Zion, “Your God is King!”(52:1-7)

The exile among the nations is comparable to slavery in Egypt. God’s deliverance then, will be a new exodus. As Isaiah also writes:

Go forth from Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans!
Declare with the sound of joyful shouting, proclaim this,
Send it out to the end of the earth;
Say, “The Lord has redeemed His servant Jacob.”
And they did not thirst when He led them through the deserts.
He made the water flow out of the rock for them;
He split the rock, and the water gushed forth (48:20 & 21).

The end of exile and return to Israel is explicitly compared to God’s deliverance of the Hebrews for Egypt and His care for them in the wilderness. The return from exile is a new exodus.

It is that prophecy of a return from exile which Mark is saying ultimately points to the calling and work of Jesus. He begins his writing by saying that his victory announcement is what was written by Isaiah the prophet, when Isaiah prophesied the restoration of Israel after their deportation from Babylon.

But what could a return from exile have to do with Jesus’ campaign in Palestine? After all, the Hebrews were living in the Promised Land at the time of Jesus. They had a Temple where they could hold their sacred feasts. They had a priesthood. What could a prophesy about the return from exile have to do with Jesus and the Israelites of his day?

In combining Exodus 23:20 with Malachi 3:1 to introduce the quote from Isaiah, Mark has explained the import of the return from exile. Yes the Israelites are in the Promised Land, just as the were in Malachi’s day. Nevertheless, they are covenantally in the wilderness and in exile—somehow back in Egypt and Babylon. In a very real sense they need to be brought back to the Promised Land. Mark has not yet told us why Israel is in such a bad situation, and he probably expects that his initial readers already have some idea. We will have to figure it out as we go along. Nevertheless, it is clear that Israel is in grave danger and needs to be rescued by God. They need God to come to them so that He is once again present with them. Only then will they truly possess God’s promise.

What does all this mean?

In the first place, we have a hint here of great humility on God’s part. Instead of God’s people needing to be taken out of the Land and then come back to it out of the wilderness, God himself seems to be the one undergoing the exile and exodus and returning to the Promised Land. It is not the people who must undergo a literal geographical exile. God is in some sense taking it upon himself. And Jesus will quite literally take all the weight of oppression by foreign powers upon himself.

In the second place, we see here a great advancement of the human race. In Exodus 23:20 it is the angel of the Lord—God Himself—who prepares the way for his people to inherit the promises. Yet in Malachi 3:1 the angel is no longer God, but a man as a messenger (again: remember that “angel” and “messenger” are the same word in both the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures). As we will see, like the Angel of the Lord in the wilderness, John the Baptist remains at Israel’s eastern frontier in the desert preparing the people to inherit the Land.

More than that, we also see here as clear a statement as we could hope for that Jesus is God Himself. Malachi 3:1 is unambiguous: the messenger will prepare the way for the arrival of Yahweh, “the Lord” as he is usually called in our English Bibles. Yet Mark, like the other three gospel writers, claims that the messenger is John the Baptist. And Mark is quite clear that it is Jesus for whom John has prepared the way. Jesus is the presence of God coming to His people.

But who can endure the day of his coming?

Indeed, the prophecy from Isaiah which Mark quotes goes on to promise that every valley will be raised and every mountain will be made low. Mark is warning us of what we will read. We can safely guess that the mountains are not going to be too thrilled about being flattened, even if the valleys do rejoice in being raised.

Repost: we are God’s outreach

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In Gene Wolfe’s excellent tetrology, The Book of the Long Sun, Patera Silk receives a vision from the Outsider that his predecessor’s prayers for help have been answered. He is the help. But this means he must not expect help. The help is him.

This seems symmetrical with what we need to realize about reaching modern culture. God reached modern culture by calling us. If we need to reach modern culture that defeats the entire point.

The Great but Fake Story of God’s Glory in Giving the Second Copy of the Ten Commandments

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The LORD said to Moses, “Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you, and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain.” So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the LORD had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The lORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God never merciful and gracious, quick to wrath, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands of generations of those who perfectly, personally, and perpetually obey my Law, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, “I now realize that I and all your people are doomed O Lord, because you demand perfection.”

via Passage: Exodus 34 (ESV Bible Online).

Remember, “Be Perfect as your Heavenly Father is Perfect.”

Sunday P.M. Post: Robert Dabney on God’s Feelings for Jacob and Esau

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Is not compassion for the miseries of his own lost creature as natural to a God of infinite benevolence as moral indignation against all sin is to a God of infinite righteousness? And when two guilty creatures are suffering similar miseries, equally deserved in both cases, can the divine immutability, consistency, and goodness be reconciled with the belief that the compassion which exists in the one case has not even the slightest existence in the other case? If this particular position be assumed, then the charge of unaccountable partiality, which the Arminian unjustly casts against predestination, will have some fair application. Not that either sufferer has a personal right to either compassion or succor as against God. But the anomaly will be this: how comes it that an essential principle of God’s nature should act normally towards one object, and refuse the similar exercise towards the precisely parallel object? This is God’s absolute sovereignty, answers the supralapsarian. But a sound theology answers again, no; while God is perfectly free in every exercise of his essential principles, yet he freely does some things necessarily, and other things optionally; and God’s optional liberty is not whether he shall have the propensions of his essential principles, but whether he shall execute them by his volitions. The counterpart truth, then, must be asserted of Jacob and Esau. As God had the natural and appropriate affection of disapprobation against Jacob’s ill desert (and still elected him) which he had against Esau’s; so, doubtless, he had the same affection, appropriate to his infinite goodness, of compassion for Esau’s misery (and yet rejected him) which he had for Jacob’s deserved misery. If any compassion for Esau existed in the sovereign mind, why did it not effectuate itself in his salvation? We answer with a parallel question: Why did not the righteous reprehension against Jacob’s ill desert, if any of it existed in the sovereign mind, effectuate itself in his damnation? All of us have agreed to the answer to this latter question; we dare not say that God could distinctly foresee all Jacob’s supplanting falsehood, and feel no disapprobation whatever; it would come near to blasphemy. We must reply: Because this disapprobation, while existing in the holy mind, was counterpoised by a wise, gracious, and sovereign motive unrevealed to us. Well, let the parallel answer be given to the parallel question: The divine compassion existing towards Esau’s misery was counterpoised by some holy, wise, and sovereign motive unrevealed to us; so that righteous disapprobation for his sin remained the prevalent motive of righteous preterition.

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Sunday A. M. Post: John MacArthur on God’s Love

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The fact that some sinners are not elected to salvation is no proof that God’s attitude toward them is utterly devoid of sincere love. We know from Scripture that God is compassionate, kind, generous, and good even to the most stubborn sinners. Who can deny that those mercies flow out of God’s boundless love? It is evident that they are showered even on unrepentant sinners.We must understand that it is God’s very nature to love. The reason our Lord commanded us to love our enemies is “in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). Jesus clearly characterized His Father as One who loves even those who purposefully set themselves at enmity against Him.

At this point, however, an important distinction must be made: God loves believers with a particular love. God’s love for the elect is an infinite, eternal, saving love. We know from Scripture that this great love was the very cause of our election (Ephesians 2:4). Such love clearly is not directed toward all of mankind indiscriminately, but is bestowed uniquely and individually on those whom God chose in eternity past.

But from that, it does not follow that God’s attitude toward those He did not elect must be unmitigated hatred. Surely His pleading with the lost, His offers of mercy to the reprobate, and the call of the gospel to all who hear are all sincere expressions of the heart of a loving God. Remember, He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but tenderly calls sinners to turn from their evil ways and live.

Reformed theology has historically been the branch of evangelicalism most strongly committed to the sovereignty of God. At the same time, the mainstream of Reformed theologians have always affirmed the love of God for all sinners. John Calvin himself wrote regarding John 3:16, “[Two] points are distinctly stated to us: namely, that faith in Christ brings life to all, and that Christ brought life, because the Father loves the human race, and wishes that they should not perish.”

Calvin continues to explain the biblical balance that both the gospel invitation and “the world” that God loves are by no means limited to the elect alone. He also recognized that God’s electing, saving love is uniquely bestowed on His chosen ones.

Those same truths, reflecting a biblical balance, have been vigorously defended by a host of Reformed stalwarts, including Thomas Boston, John Brown, Andrew Fuller, W. G. T. Shedd, R. L. Dabney, B. B. Warfield, John Murray, R. B. Kuiper, and many others. In no sense does belief in divine sovereignty rule out the love of God for all humanity.

We are seeing today, in some circles, an almost unprecedented interest in the doctrines of the Reformation and the Puritan eras. I’m very encouraged by that in most respects. A return to those historic truths is, I’m convinced, absolutely necessary if the church is to survive. Yet there is a danger when overzealous souls misuse a doctrine like divine sovereignty to deny God’s sincere offer of mercy to all sinners.

We must maintain a carefully balanced perspective as we pursue our study of God’s love. God’s love cannot be isolated from His wrath and vice versa. Nor are His love and wrath in opposition to each other like some mystical yin-yang principle. Both attributes are constant, perfect, without ebb or flow. His wrath coexists with His love; therefore, the two never contradict. Such are the perfections of God that we can never begin to comprehend these things. Above all, we must not set them against one another, as if there were somehow a discrepancy in God.

Both God’s wrath and His love work to the same ultimate end – His glory. God is glorified in the condemnation of the wicked; He is glorified in every expression of love for all people without exception; and He is glorified in the particular love He manifests in saving His people.

Expressions of wrath and expressions of love – all are necessary to display God’s full glory. We must never ignore any aspect of His character, nor magnify one to the exclusion of another. When we commit those errors, we throw off the biblical balance, distort the true nature of God, and diminish His real glory.

Does God so love the world? Emphatically – yes! Proclaim that truth far and wide, and do so against the backdrop of God’s perfect wrath that awaits everyone who does not repent and turn to Christ.

Does the love of God differ in the breadth and depth and manner of its expression? Yes it does. Praise Him for the many manifestations of His love, especially toward the non-elect, and rejoice in the particular manifestation of His saving love for you who believe. God has chosen to display in you the glory of His redeeming grace.

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RePost: Justification and Union Again

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I blogged a few years ago:

There is simply no getting around it: the marriage picture is a picture of precisely what Reformed Theology has taught both in Calvin and in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. And it is imputation.

The marriage picture I was defending was as follows:

So Scripture is teaching us that the faith which saves is not a work. It has no spiritual value in itself. Strictly speaking, the true Christian church does not teach justification by faith. It teaches justification by Christ. Where does the faith come in? It is simply the uniting with, joining with, becoming one with, the Lord Jesus Christ. Being married to Christ, all that is His becomes His bride’s, the believer’s. A wife becomes a co-heir of all that belongs to her husband simply by being his wife, by her union with him in marriage. That is the fact: she is his wife. There is no virtue or merit in that. She simply possesses what now belongs to her by that relationship. Marriage is not a virtue that deserves a reward, but a relationship that brings the husband’s possessions along with him.

That is the meaning of the word “reckons” or imputes or credits. The justified one “does not work, but trusts God who justifies the wicked.”

Wait a minute! Was I defending that particular statement?

Maybe this was the statement I was defending,

Allow me to illustrate. Suppose a woman is in deep, deep debt and has no means at her disposal to pay it off. Along comes an ultra wealthy prince charming. Out of grace and love, he decides to marry her. He covers her debt. But then he has a choice to make about how he will care for his bride. After canceling out her debt, will he fill up her account with his money? That is to say, will he transfer or impute his own funds into an account that bears her name? Or will he simply make his own account a joint account so it belongs to both of them?

In the former scenario, there is an imputation, a transfer. In the second scenario, the same final result is attained, but there is no imputation, strictly speaking. Rather, there is a real union, a marriage.

I would suggest the first picture (the imputation picture) is not necessarily wrong, though it could leave adherents exposed to the infamous “legal fiction” charge since the man could transfer money into the woman’s account without ever marrying her or even caring for her. It could become, as Wright has said, “a cold piece of business.”

The second picture (the union with Christ picture) seems more consistent with Paul’s language, and for that matter, with many of Calvin’s statements. It does not necessarily employ the “mechanism” of imputation to accomplish justification, but gets the same result. Just as one can get to four by adding three plus one or two plus two, or just as one can get home by traveling Route A or by Route B, so there may be more than one way to conceive of the doctrine of justification in a manner that preserves its fully gracious and forensic character.

The only problem I had with this was the use of the word “impute” as if it was an intrinsically a transfer term. The first statement I quoted was much more in line with the Greek word by suggesting that “reckon” was as good a term as “impute” or any other.

The author of the first quotation was John Gerstner. The second was Rich Lusk.

So, other than using “impute” as exclusively a transfer term, is there anything else different about Rich Lusk’s approach? Yes. Lusk doesn’t defend Thomas Aquinas as an orthodox teacher about justification. Also, Lusk doesn’t argue that the works of believers merit eternal rewards. Gerstner does.

Which is no doubt why Gerstner is criticized so much lately. A bunch of the NAPARC denominations have issued statements condemning his views on merit. And the PCA even erected a study committee. Finally, R. C. Sproul himself stood up at the General Assembly and begged the court to agree with the committee and defend the Gospel of free grace by denying that believers could ever merit eternal rewards.

Oh, wait a minute. I got confused again. None of that ever happened.

Members of the body

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Romans 6.13

Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

And then Romans 6.19b:

For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

Does this see an odd way to write? But it is right out of Proverbs wherein we are warned about wicked or foolish eyes, ears, hands, feet, and hearts, etc. Just one example among many:

There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies,
and one who sows discord among brothers.