Kevin DeYoung's Blog, page 182

A Double Danger

I don't really cherish the promise of 2 Timothy 3:12. On the one hand, I don't want it to happen. That seems bad. On the other hand, if it doesn't happen, I wonder if I'm bad. The verse is sobering: "Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." This is one of those Bible promises that doesn't make it into the flower-covered book for graduates.

Granted, there is a danger that some Christians do all they can to invite "persecution." Thy refuse to accommodate–ever. They live to find hills to die on. They lead with their chins. They wear every bit of opposition as a badge of honor. The world hates them and they love it.

But for most Christians, there is another danger, the danger of thinking that if we clean up our image, smooth out the edges of our faith, change a few songs, do a few good deeds, then we can get people to think well of us. Sometimes we act like God has promised that if we do the right thing, with the right heart, and say things with the right attitude, then the world will stop choking on the church.

But God makes no such promise.

What he does promise is that if our singular aim is to live a godly life in Christ Jesus, if our goal every morning is to follow Jesus, if our first priority is to walk in God's way and believe his word, we will be persecuted. We act like persecution is the one thing God would never require of the sincere Christian, when actually its the one thing he promises.

Our fear of persecution–and it's my fear too–our refusal to even consider it an option, can prevent us from being obedient in a whole host of areas. Maybe it's going overseas, or letting your kids go to some war-torn country. Maybe its sharing your faith or letting on at work that you're a Christian. Maybe you are hesitating to become a Christian for fear of family and friends. Maybe you are worried you'll disappoint your home country if you join a church. Maybe you are hesitant about homosexuality or caving on creation because you don't want to be ridiculed. Maybe living a godly life in Christ Jesus will mean a lower GPA for you or getting passed over for a promotion. Maybe it means being overlooked, under-appreciated, and misunderstood. Or maybe, persecution means you lose your life, or worse, the lives of those you love.

2 Timothy 3:12 is a scary verse because it is a divine guarantee. It will happen. And considering whom the guarantee is for, the second half of the verse is even scarier if it doesn't happen.

How Not to Strive

The fight is not the oppressive struggle to earn God's final rest, but the satisfying struggle to rest in the peace that Jesus freely gives. . . .Don't think of striving to get his favor. Think of striving with the favor of his help.

(John Piper, What Jesus Demands from the World, 184-5).

Divine Wrath: Consequence or Curse?

It has become common for Christians to describe hell as our freely chosen identity apart from God. Hell, it is said, is not so much where God sends the wicked, as much as it is what the wicked choose or create for themselves. This is the view famously espoused by C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce. Lewis argues that hell is our own self-absorption and idolatry let loose for all eternity. Hell is God's way of saying "Thy will be done" to us when we refuse to say "Thy will be done" to God. Hell is what we get when we choose human freedom instead of divine salvation. The gates of hell may be locked for eternity, but they are locked from the inside. We refuse to give up the hell within us, so hell is what we get around us.

There is an element of truth in all this. As one way to look at hell, the Lewis version can be helpful. It emphasizes that no one in hell is truly penitent. God doesn't punish people for a few sins in this life and then keep them locked up forever as they pour out their hearts in genuine faith and repentance. No, the damned never turn from their rebellion. They may regret their choices like the rich man in Luke 16, but they never genuinely repent.

Lewis' description of hell is also a good reminder that God does at times give us over to our sinful desire. Romans 1 makes this clear. Part of our punishment is that God says, "Alright, have at it. Pursue your sinful ways." Hell is, in that limited sense, God giving us what we want.

Don't Mistake A Half-Truth for the Whole Truth

But if that's all we say about hell we are giving people a massively distorted view of divine punishment. Lewis' depiction of God's justice has an element of truth to it, but by itself it is monumentally misleading. Divine punishment–hell, in its eternal form–is not simply what we get because we make poor decisions or decide to live a selfish life. Hell is what we get because God is offended by our sin and punishes it. We see everywhere in Scripture that divine wrath is a curse on the ungodly, not a mere consequence for self-centered decisions. Hell is much more than God simply allowing us to have our own way and to experience all the bad effects of our choices. Hell is God's active, just, holy wrath poured out on the disobedient.

The whole warp and woof of the Bible demonstrates that God does more than simply allow bad choices to run their course and spill over into bad consequences. He actively and decisively punishes those who violate his law.

In the garden, God cursed the serpent, the woman, the man, and the ground. He said to the snake "I will put enmity between you and the woman" (Gen 3:15), and to the woman, "I will multiply your pain in childbearing" (Gen. 3:16). He sent the couple away and drove them out of the garden (Gen. 3:23-24). In this first episode of sin we see the way in which covenants work. Disobedience does not just result in bad consequences; it results in divine cursing.


At the time of the flood, God responded to the rampant wickedness on the earth by declaring "I will blot out man whom I have created" (Gen. 6:7).


In Genesis 12, the chapter where God promises to bless the whole world through Abram, he also promises to curse those who dishonor Abram (Gen. 12:3).


In Deuteronomy 28 we see the promise of covenantal blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience. Both are actively sent by God. The curse is not a passive consequence of bad choices. On the contrary, we read in verse after verse: "The Lord will make the pestilence stick to you. . . .The Lord will strike you with wasting disease. . . .The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. . . .The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt" (Deut. 28:21-27).

If Christians want to do away with a God who curses the ungodly, they'll have to do away with the whole covenant framework of the Bible. The Assyrian conquest, the Babylonian Captivity, the frequent prophetic harangues all presuppose, quite explicitly at times, that God is angry with his people and will punish their rebellion. When Joshua leads the Israelites in covenant renewal at Shechem he asks them to "choose this day who you will serve" (Josh. 24:15). What will happen if they choose poorly? Will God hand them over to their misdirected free will and allow the bad consequences to flow as the Israelites make a hell for themselves? Not exactly. The Lord says, "If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good" (Josh 24:20).

Same Old Language in the New Testament

This sort of language is not confined to the Old Testament. Jesus himself tells us to fear God who can destroy body and soul in hell (Matthew 10:28). Even if some want to argue that hell here is not eternal punishment (which I think it is), surely we must admit that Jesus believed in a God who would punish sin. Romans 1 may speak of God giving the ungodly over to their sinful desires. But Romans 2 speaks clearly of wrath stored up for "the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed" (Rom. 2:5). Likewise 2 Peter 3:7 warns that "the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly." This kind of admonition is so frequent in the epistles that to miss it is to skip over the Bible's own preferred categories for thinking of God's judgment.

It is not wrong to describe hell as eternal separation from God or a Christless eternity. Hell is both these things. But these euphemisms must not swallow up the unpleasant notion that God's judgment is more than a lack of something or someone, it is a divine curse upon the ungodly. The one passage that describes judgment as being "away from the presence of the Lord" says in the preceding half of the sentence: "They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction" (2 Thess. 1:9). If we always speak of eternal punishment as a "Christless eternity" or "being separated from God" or a "hell that we choose for ourselves" we are not being true to the language of Scripture. We are probably softening a blow that God–in his gracious, warning mercy–does not mean to soften. Wrath is not only a result. It is a recompense.

Here's how John Piper puts it:

Hell is not simply the natural consequence of rejecting God. Some people say this in order to reject the thought that God sends people there. They say that people send themselves there. That is true. People make choices that lead to hell. But it is not the whole truth. Jesus says these choices are really deserving of hell. "Whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable [that is, guilty of, or deserving of] the hell of fire" (Matt. 5:22). That is why he calls hell "punishment" (Matt. 25:46). It is not mere self-imposed natural consequence (like cigarette smoking leading to lung cancer); it is the penalty of God's wrath (like a judge sentencing a criminal to hard labor). (What Jesus Demands from the World, 93).

Covenantal Curses and a Covenantal Christ

The Bible, from start to finish, is a covenantal book, and covenants always contain blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. That's why Revelation ends with the blessing "He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God" (Rev. 21:3) and the curse "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death" (Rev. 21:8). The storyline of the Bible only works with a God who rewards obedience and punishes disobedience.

And it's only with this storyline that the gospel shines in all its glory. If we don't own up to the graphic cursing language of both Testaments, we won't marvel at the gruesome curse Christ bore for us (Gal. 3:10-14). It really is true: if you don't have a God who hates sin, punishes sin, and curses sinners, then you will not end up with the biblical gospel. Because the good news is that the one who deserved only blessing, was stricken, smitten, and afflicted for us (Isaiah 53:4).

The whole world is under a curse and everyone must face the unflinching wrath of God. Some will face it on their own in this life and in the life to come. Others–praise God!–have died with Christ, been raised with Christ, and now enjoy all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ (Eph. 1:3). That's not just a consequence of our good choices; that's a Christ-bought, Spirit-wrought, God-given blessing.

Blessed are the children of Abraham whose covenant curses were satisfied though our covenant keeping Christ.

Monday Morning Humor

A couple weeks ago I was in South Carolina for a wedding. One of the things I learned (the hard way) is that these are not mashed potatoes. What a nasty trick to play on a Dutchman.

On the brighter side, while I was in Columbia, I had a wonderful time getting together with Sinclair Ferguson. I thought you might want to see what we did for fun one morning. I wasn't so sure at first, but Sinclair promised me it would be a good time.

Don't worry, we were both ok.

What Kind of Feast For You?

"They enjoy breakfast more than the testimony of their salvation."

John Calvin on the sometimes worldliness of his congregation on Sunday morning.

Some Lessons Learned from Calvin's Biography

[image error]The title is all the introduction you need. Here we go. (All quotations are from Bruce Gordon's Calvin.)

1. If you want to make an impact beyond your little lifespan, teach people the Bible. "What made Calvin Calvin, and not another sixteenth-century writer was his brilliance as a thinker and writer, and, above all, his ability to interpret the Bible" (viii).

2. The big public personalities are often privately awkward. "In the public arena Calvin walked and spoke with stunning confidence. In private he was, by his own admission, shy and awkward" (x).

3. We read too much causality into our childhoods. "With his contemporaries, and much in contrast to our age, Calvin did not consider his childhood as psychologically formative: it was a brief and brutal preparation for adulthood associated primarily with ignorance, volatility and waywardness" (2).

4. The best friendships are forged in fire. "All his life Calvin would define friendship in terms of a commitment to a common cause; it was within that framework that he was able to express fraternity and intimacy" (29).

5. True strength is knowing your weakness. "However, one of his greatest strengths in his later career was an acute awareness that despite remarkable confidence in his calling and intellect he remained dangerously prone to moments of poor judgment on account of anger" (91).

6. If you want to impact your city, be prepared to work hard and consistently. "And here was a formula that would serve Calvin well throughout his time in the city: extremely hard work on his part combined with the disorganization and failings of his opponents" (133).

7. Beware the temptation to want to be proved right in everything. "From the pulpit, before the Consistory and Council, and from the printing press, issued forth a single-minded determination to have the last word and to be proved right. This was not simply for the sake of ego: he was absolutely certain that he was right" (145).

8. Some contextualization is appropriate. "Like Luther with his first translation of the Bible into German, he understood that the Reformation stood or fell on the ability of the reformers to speak to the people in their own language" (148).

9. Not every kind of accommodation is sinful people pleasing. Calvin wrote to the obstinate and fiery William Farel: "We only earnestly desire that insofar as your duty permits you will accommodate yourself more to the people. There are, as you know, two kinds of popularity: the one, when we seek favour from motives of ambition and the desire of pleasing; the other, when, by fairness and moderation, we gain their esteem so as to make them teachable by us" (151).

10. The Church needs good deacons. "The deacons of the Genevan church did just about anything and everything. They purchased clothing and firewood, provided medical care, and not infrequently were present at births. They arranged guardians for the children of the sick. Essentially, they attempted to meet any need. Their task was thankless" (201).

11. Endurance is a neglected virtue. "If one were to admire Calvin for nothing else, his ability to sustain the relentless onslaught of the 1550s is astonishing" (233).

12. Preaching has always been difficult. "Far from the solemn quiet of modern churches, preaching in the sixteenth century was somewhat akin to speaking in a tavern. Preachers had to compete with barking dogs, crying babies, general chatter and constant movements, even fist-fights. They required presence to command respect and their most important tool was their voice" (291).

13. Some traditions must change. "He argued for the freedom of the marriage contract and mutual consent of man and woman, a fundamental point he continually defended in his sermons. Consensual engagements were essential; children were not to be forced into unions by their parents" (295).

14. Every hero (except for Jesus) is a divided hero. "This was Calvin's divided self: the confidence in his calling as a prophet and apostle set against his ever present sense of unworthiness and dissatisfaction. . . .It was his acute sensitivity to the gap between what was and what should be that distressed him" (334-35).

15. Biography is particularly strategic and can be used to build up the church or lead it astray. "Calvin's friends had good reason for proceeding to publish [a biography] with haste. There were others who wanted to tell a very different story. Calvin's nemesis Jerome Bolsec lived to have the last word, and penned two accounts ten years after the reformer's death. Like many Catholics, he feared that the Protestant reformers were being accorded the status of saints, and he sought to destroy the reputation of Calvin and Geneva. In this, as Irena Backus has shown, he was extraordinarily successful" (338).

16. Work hard, but don't neglect the body. "Calvin's punishing routine and recurring illnesses aged him and put him in an early grave" (339).

17. Pray that your fruitfulness outlives you in expression of gratitude you will not see. "For a man who lived his life in exile, the most fitting memorial came from a land he never saw. In 1583 Geneva was under military threat from the Duke of Savoy, and Beza sent a delegation to England to seek financial assistance. Despite Elizabeth's frostiness towards Calvin, the collection raised was extraordinarily generous, reflecting the gratitude of a nation for a city and a man that had once offered refuge and Christian teaching" (340).

March Book Briefs

Bruce Gordon. Calvin (Yale University Press, 2009). For most people in my church, I still nod in the direction of T.H.L. Parker's biography of Calvin or a more popular version like John Piper's. But for those wanting more depth and scholarly research, this will be the book I now recommend. Of the six or seven biographies I've read of Calvin, this is the most impressive (although a Barthian gloss on Calvin creeps in here and there). Gordon writes well and fairly. He criticizes Calvin's penchant for anger and irritability, but for the most part is sympathetic to the Genevan Reformer. Gordon's treatment of the Servetus affair is especially helpful.

Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification. Edited by Donald L. Alexander (IVP Academic 1988). Let me be cliche, Sinclair Ferguson's chapter is worth the price of the book. His explanation of our growth in godliness through the lens of our union with Christ is masterful. And Ferguson's interaction with the Lutheran view is illuminating. A number of the positions overlap, but there are still enough differences to make things interesting. I'd love to see what an updated version of the book might look like: a lot has changed since 1988.

Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim. Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won (Crown Archetype 2011). A great book for people who loves sports and numbers. Some of the chapters seemed a little short (like the one on why the Pittsburgh Pirates stink and the Pittsburg Steelers are almost always great). But many were fascinating (like the profile of the Arkansas high school football team that never punts or the two chapters on what drives home field advantage). As a White Sox fan, my favorite chapter was the last one, "Are the Chicago Cubs Cursed?"  The answer, say Moskowitz (wasn't he a mouse in An American Tail?) and Wertheim, is actually the opposite. The Cubs are so blessed with a loyal fan base that there is no economic incentive to put a winning team on the field. As it turns out, attendance at Wrigley is more sensitive to beer prices than to the Cubs' winning percentage.

P.G. Wodehouse. Carry On, Jeeves (The Overlook Press, 2003 [1925]). I don't remember many of the plotlines in this collection of short stories about the foppish socialite Bertie Wooster and his unflappable butler Jeeves, but I remember having a good time fantastic sentences like this: "Professor Pringle was a thinnish, baldish, dyspeptic-looking cove with an eye like a haddock, while Mrs Pringle's aspect was that of one who had bad news round about the year 1900 and never really over it." Made me laugh out loud. As did this line: "There was a pause. The whole strength of the company gazed at me like a family group out of one of Edgar Allan Poe's less cheery yarns, and I felt my joie de vivre dying at the roots." And one more: "The Paddock was one of those medium-sized houses with a goodish bit of very tidy garden and a carefully rolled gravel drive curving past a shrubbery that looked as if it had just come back from the dry cleaner–the sort of house you take one look at and say to yourself, 'Somebody's aunt lives there.'" Ah, what fun.

Where Americans Are Moving

In 2008 more than 10 million Americans moved from one county to another. Forbes has a way cool map that visualizes these moves.

As you'll see, black lines indicate movement to the county (and where they came from); red lines represent people moving away from the county (and where they went). The map is pretty incredible. Click on Detroit to see lots of red; Seattle or Atlanta for lots of black. Zoom in on any county and you can get precise numbers of the number of people coming/going and their average income.

Fear and the Last Judgment

In the excerpt below, Peter Hitchins (Christopher's brother) explains how God used an artistic interpretation of the Last Judgment to bring him to faith. It's worth reading on a number of levels: as an example of the power of art to prod and provoke, as a sober warning to the ungodly, and as a story of converting grace.

What I can recall, very sharply indeed, is a visit to the Hotel-Dieu in Beaune, a town my girlfriend and I had gone to mainly in search of the fine food and wines of Burgundy. But we were educated travelers and strayed, guidebook in hand, into the ancient hospital. And there, worth the journey according to the Green Michelin guide, was Rogier van der Weyden's fifteenth-century polyptych The Last Judgment.

I scoffed. Another religious painting! Couldn't these people think of anything else to depict? Still scoffing, I peered at the naked figures fleeing toward the pit of hell, out of my usual faintly morbid interest in the alleged terrors of damnation. But this time I gaped, my mouth actually hanging open. These people did not appear remote or from the ancient past; they were my own generation. Because they were naked, they were not imprisoned in their own age by time-bound fashions. On the contrary, their hair and, in an odd way, the set of their faces were entirely in the style of my own time. They were me and the people I knew. One of them — and I have always wondered how the painter thought of it — is actually vomiting with shock and fear at the sound of the Last Trump.

I did not have a "religious experience." Nothing mystical or inexplicable took place — no trance, no swoon, no vision, no voices, no blaze of light. But I had a sudden, strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time. A large catalogue of misdeeds, ranging from the embarrassing to the appalling, replayed themselves  rapidly in my head. I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned.

And what if there were? How did I know there were not? I did not know. I could not know. Van der Weyden was still earning his fee, nearly 500 years after his death. I had simply no idea that an adult could be frightened, in broad daylight and after a good lunch, by such things. I have always enjoyed scaring myself mildly with the ghost stories of M. R. James, mainly because of the cozy, safe feeling that follows a good fictional fright. You turn the page and close the book, and the horror is safely contained. This epiphany was not like that at all.

No doubt I should be ashamed to confess that fear played a part in my return to religion. I could easily make up some other more creditable story. But I should be even more ashamed to pretend that fear did not. I have felt proper fear, not very often but enough to know that is is an important gift that helps us to think clearly at moments of danger. I have felt it in peril on the road, when it slowed down my perception of the bucking, tearing, screaming collision into which I had hurled myself, thus enabling me to retain enough presence of mind to shut down the engine of my wrecked motorcycle and turn off the fuel tap in case it caught fire, and then to stumble, badly injured, to the relative safety of the roadside. I have felt it outside a copper mine in Africa, when the car I was in was surrounded by a crowd of enraged, impoverished people who had decided, with some justification, that I was their enemy. There, fear enabled me to stay silent and still until the danger was over, when I very much wanted to cry out in panic or do something desperate (both of which, I am sure, would have led to my death). I have felt it when Soviet soldiers fired on a crowd rather near me, and so I lay flat on my back in the filthy snow, quite untroubled by my ridiculous position because I had concluded, wisely, that being wounded would be much worse than being embarrassed.

But the most important time was when I stood in front of Rogier van der Weyden's great altarpiece and trembled for the things of which my conscience was afraid (and is afraid). Fear is good for us and helps us to escape from great dangers. Those who do not feel it are in permanent peril because they cannot see the risks that lie at their feet. (The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith, 101-104)

Let us never forget that the one who says "fear not" to the Father's children also instructs the ungodly to "fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:31, 28). To say "fear not" when there is great reason to fear is not the triumph of love, but the silencing of it.

Clarifying Exclusivism

Jesus is the only way to the Father (John 14:6). In saying this I am making two claims (both of which can be supported from John's gospel): 1) The saving work of Jesus is the only way to be saved. 2) Putting faith in Jesus is the only way to appropriate that saving work.

In saying this, in espousing what is sometimes called "exclusivism," I should be clear what I am not saying.

1. I am not saying there is nothing decent or honorable in other religions or in people from other religions. Ultimately, there is no good deed apart from faith, but Christians should recognize that Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus (and secular atheists for that matter) can be charitable, honest, and kind. Exclusivism does not demand that we reject everything about every other belief or every other religious person. What we do believe is that the most important doctrines of the Christian faith are not shared by other faiths and that even the most moral neighbor cannot be saved by good works.

2. I am not saying that Christianity is nothing more than saying the right prayer. Often in deriding exclusivism the contrast is made between the best, noblest adherent of some other religion versus the most crass, hypocritical, superficial adherent of Christianity. Raising your hand or praying the sinner's prayer at camp does not automatically make you a Christian. If you are not changed and bear no fruit you have not been born again from above.

3. I am not saying that children who die at a young age, or those mentally incapable of expressing faith, cannot be saved. We know from Scripture that the Spirit can touch children in the womb (e.g., David, John the Baptist) and that the kingdom can belong to children (Mark 10:14). We see in Scripture that children from a believing household are in a different "position" than those outside the fold. They have Jesus as their covenant Lord (Eph. 6:1). When David's son dies he says "I will go to him" (2 Sam. 12:23), this could mean "I too will die." But in the next verse we read, "Then, David comforted his wife" (2 Sam. 12:24). I think it more likely that v. 23 was a comfort to David and Bathsheba because David knew he would see his child again in the next life. The juxtaposition of comfort makes less sense if David is simply assured he will join his son in the ground some day.

So I gladly affirm Canons of Dort, Article 1.17: "Since we must make judgments about God's will from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature but by virtue of the gracious covenant in which they together with their parents are included, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy." Beyond this, as a confessional Christian, I would not speak too dogmatically. Almost everything concerning salvation in the Bible assumes the presence of sentient human beings. Some of our other questions may not be answered directly.

4. I am not saying that unbelievers are punished because they did not put faith in a Jesus they never heard of. This may sound like the opposite of exclusivism, but it's not. This is actually a crucial point that exclusivists and their opponents often miss. Those who never hear the gospel are not punished for not knowing Jesus. Not knowing Jesus results in punishment, but sin is the grounds for punishment. Those who do not put faith in Christ are punished for being sinners. They are punished in the next life for turning the truth of general revelation into a lie (Rom. 1:18-25). They have broken God's law, and anyone guilty of even one violation is accountable for the whole law (James 2:10). Those with no knowledge of Christ will be judged less severely because they had less light, though that judgment will still be far from painful (Matt. 11:20-24). Our only hope in life and in death is that we are not our own but belong body and soul to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ.