Kevin DeYoung's Blog, page 183
March 28, 2011
March 25, 2011
Heaven Is a World of Love
Most people know Jonathan Edwards as the guy who preached hellfire and brimstone sermons like "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." But fewer realize that the pastor from Northampton, Massachusetts also preached sermons like this one, called "Heaven is a World of Love."
The Apostle tells us that God is love, 1 John 4:8. And therefore seeing he is an infinite Being, it follows that he is an infinite fountain of love, Seeing he is an all-sufficient Being, it follows that he is a full and overflowing and an inexhaustible fountain of love. Seeing he is an unchangeable and eternal Being, he is an unchangeable and eternal source of love. There even in heaven dwells that God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, every drop that is or ever was proceeds.
There dwells God the Father, and so the Son, who are united in infinitely dear and incomprehensible mutual love. There dwells God the Father, who is the Father of mercies, and so the Father of love, who so loved that world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life [John 3:16].
There dwells Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the Prince of peace and love, who so loved the world that he shed his blood, and poured out his soul unto death for it. There dwells the Mediator, by whom all God's love is expressed to the saints, by whom the fruits of it have been purchased, and through whom they are communicated, and through whom love is imparted to the hearts of all the church. There Christ dwells in both his natures, his human and divine, sitting with the Father in the same throne.
There is the Holy Spirit, the spirit of divine love, in whom the very essence of God, as it were, all flows out or is shed abroad in the hearts of all the church [cf. Rom. 5:5].
There in heaven this fountain of love, this eternal three in one, is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it. There this glorious God is manifested and shines forth in full glory, in beams of love; there the fountain overflows in streams and rivers of love and delight, enough for all to drink at, and to swim in, yea, so as to overflow the world as it were with a deluge of love. (The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, 245)
Jonathan Edwards was one of those rarest of persons who saw the terror of hell and the extraordinary beauty and loveliness of heaven. He understood that we do not have a cartoon God. God is not a one-dimensional character out of some blockbuster movie. He's not some petty, insecure deity with lightning bolts who nurses a grudge against the human race. But neither is he the divine equivalent of Ty Pennington, a god just waiting to yell "move that cosmic bus" at the end of Extreme Makeover: Universe Edition so he can show everyone all the nice stuff he's done to help nice people.
These are not biblical images of God. The God of the Bible is a God of unswerving justice and boundless mercy. And never can the two be divorced from each other.
One of the striking things in reading the excerpt above is to see just how much his heaven of love rises out from the most foundational elements of Christian theology. When some contemporary preachers try to exult in the love of God it sounds more like a paean to the Love that is God. And that love gets reduced to sentiment, sympathy, and Oprahfied versions of acceptance and affirmation.
By contrast, the love Edwards extols is rich with theological reflection on the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, substitutionary atonement, Christ as Mediator, the importance of the church, and the immutability of God. Edwards' heaven is full of a love that only makes sense in the world of thought shaped by the whole counsel of God. Cheap imitations of biblical love never plumb the depths of the Christian tradition. Instead they plunder the booty of traditional Christian vocabulary and employ in such a way that everyone from Dolly Parton to the Dali Lama will nod in agreement. Edwards tells a different story, reminding us that heaven is a world where Trinitarian wrought, cross bought, sorrow easing, wrath appeasing, Christ-centered, church focused, overflowing, inexhaustible love wins.
March 24, 2011
We Confess
Jesus is Lord.
This was one of the first and most central confessions of the early church.
Romans 10:9 "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
1 Corinthians 12:3 "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except in the Holy Spirit."
2 Corinthians 4:5 "For what we proclaim is not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord"
The language is so familiar to many of us that we don't understand the magnitude of the confession. We forget that when the first Christians spoke of Jesus in this way, they were speaking of a man they had seen and smelled and touched.
By outward appearances, Jesus seemed to be another run-of-the-mill Jewish 30something. You wouldn't have been able to pick him out of a crowd of Galileans. Remember what happens at his arrest? Judas must give Jesus a kiss to betray him. Why not just tell the Romans, "He's the guy with blonde hair and blue eyes"? Or, "He's the one who glows. He's got a halo and a sash. He's wearing a white robe and speaks with a British accent." Why the kiss? Because there was nothing unusual about Jesus to the physical eye. He was, more than likely, dark-haired, olive skinned, and bearded, just like his peers.
He was not more attractive than others; Isaiah tells us he was rather plain. He was not a towering physical specimen; some scientists figure the average first century Jewish male was little more than five feet tall. He was certainly not wealthier than others; he had no home of his own. He was quite ordinary in many respects. He had a family. He slept at night. He ate normal food. He didn't get fed by ravens his whole life or pack Lembas bread for their journeys. He ate what everyone else ate. He wore the same kinds of clothes. He spoke the same language. His names was one of the most common Jewish names, like Bob or Bill or Kofi.
Jesus was a normal looking guy, from a normal family, from a below normal town. But what he did and said was absolutely abnormal. No one spoke like this man before. No one claimed what he claimed. No one did what he could do.
So what do you make of this man? That was the question they had to answer in the first century, and the question we all must answer. Those carried along by the Holy Spirit will say, "Jesus is Lord." Not a Lord, but the Lord and my Lord.
March 23, 2011
Trampling Upon Human Hearts
Any Christian worth listening to loves the cross and is loath to see it robbed of its glory. To ridicule what the cross accomplished is to make war with the heart of the gospel and the comfort of God's people.
J. Gresham Machen understood this well:
They [liberal preachers] speak with disgust of those who believe 'that the blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death, placates an alienated Deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner.' Against the doctrine of the Cross they use every weapon of caricature and vilification. Thus they pour out their scorn upon a thing so holy and so precious that in the presence of it the Christian heart melts in gratitude too deep for words. It never seems to occur to modern liberals that in deriding the Christian doctrine of the cross, they are trampling upon human hearts. (Christianity and Liberalism, 120 [pagination may differ])
No doubt, some Christians get worked up over the smallest controversies, making a forest fire out of a Yankee Candle. But there is an opposite danger–and that is to be so calm, so middle-of-the-road, so above-the-fray that you no longer feel the danger of false doctrine. You always sound analytical, never alarmed. Always crying for much-neglected conversation, never crying over a much-maligned cross. There is something worse than hurting feelings, and that is trampling upon human hearts.
March 22, 2011
"The On-Going Need for the Law to Guide Our Steps"
A commenter asked a good question about a specific line in my previous post: What does it mean that Christians have an on-going need for the law to guide our steps? I like the way Tom Schreiner puts it:
It is clear, then, that Paul was free from the Mosaic law. Yet, he adds a qualification, emphasizing that he was still subject to Christ's law. Freedom from the Mosaic law does not mean that Paul was liberated from all moral normals. Freedom from the law does not mean freedom from ought; it is not the pathway to libertinism. (40 Questions About Christians and Biblical Law, 103)
Schreiner goes on to talk about Christ's law of love and how it relates to moral imperatives.
The life of Christ, then, exemplifies the law of love. It would be a mistake to conclude that there are no moral norms in the law of Christ, for Romans 13:8-10 makes it clear, as do many other texts in Paul, that the life of love cannot be separated from moral norms. (103-4)
Christians are not under law, but we still find in the law the precepts, or in many cases the principles under the precepts, that please God. The Christian is still subject to commands. Freedom from the law does not mean we are free to do as we please. It means we are free to do as we ought.
Heresy of the Free Spirit
Marguerite Porete was a French mystic born in the thirteenth century. She was part of the Beguines, a voluntary, informal semi-monastic community not unlike the new monasticism popping up in some urban centers. Marguerite, though unknown to almost all contemporary Christians, was influential and controversial in her day. She was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310 and her views later condemned at the Council of Vienne in 1312.
What got her in trouble was The Mirror of Simple Souls, Marguerite's exploration on what she calls the seven states of grace. In the fifth and sixth states (the seventh can only be reached after death) the human soul is so united to God that it disappears. Our wills are completely replaced by the divine will, such that we are no longer capable of sinning. All our thoughts, feelings, and desires get swallowed up in the Divine. We do not even wish for the comforts of God because we are already one with God.
The liberated soul, according to Marguerite, can freely give in to nature, because nature now is so well-ordered that it would not demand anything contrary to God's will. In her estimation, her heart was so united with God's heart that she only had to follow her own desires.
With such a mystical view of the Christian life, it's not surprising Marguerite had little patience for the institutional church. She taught a rigid two-tier ecclesiology. On one side (and these were her titles) was Holy Church the Little—a fading institution of non-liberated souls, guided by reason, relying on sermons and sacraments. On the other side was Holy Church the Great—a body of liberated souls freed from organizational shackles, governed by love, relying on contemplation. Her book was written for the enlightened ones set free from Holy Church the Little into Holy Church the Great.
Why reintroduce this long-forgotten, little known French mystic? Because the same ideas that got her labeled a heretic are alive and well in the twenty-first century church. Let me mention four problems with her free spirit theology that seem particularly relevant to our situation today.
The first problem, and the root of all the others, is that she conceived of a union between man and God that is more like heaven than earth. Marguerite insisted we could be like angels, always doing God's will, living in undisturbed bless. Such thinking makes us passive and ignorant of the spiritual battles before us. It is the ultimate let-go-and-let-God theology.
Second, Marguerite, like some of today's young passionate Christians, operated with an unrealistic perfectionism. It seems to me Jesus could not have passed muster for Marguerite. After all, our Lord was tempted and tried, a man of sorrows and struggle. He had to choose to submit his will to the Father, even though they were in purpose and essence one. If Christ's soul was not "liberated," how will ours be?
Third, Marguerite overestimated how much we can trust ourselves. I sometimes hear from well-meaning Christians, "Look, you are a new creation in Christ. The old had gone; the new has come. You are no longer depraved. Your heart belongs to God. So listen to your heart." There's some truth here, but such advice grossly underestimates the presence of indwelling sin and the on-going need for the law to guide our steps. We are not liberated souls that know "neither shame nor honor, neither poverty nor riches, neither joy nor sorrow, neither love nor hate, neither hell nor heaven." This disavowal of desire is more Buddhist than Christian. No, we are desiring creatures and those desires, even after conversion, do not always pull us in the right direction.
Fourth, Marguerite's theology exposes the fundamental flaw in mystical approaches to knowledge: she had no place for means. She claimed her insights could "be understood only by those to whom God has given understanding and by none other; it is not taught by Scripture, nor can human reason work it out…It is a gift received from the Most High." This is akin to those Christians who think they can move beyond traditional devotional practices or the humdrum of the local church. But no healthy Christian ever moves past sermons, Scripture, Bible reading, prayer, sacraments, and the organized church. These are the God-appointed means by which we grow in Christ. When we reject these ordinary means laid out in inspired Scripture we not only invite the kind of spiritual elitism that flowed from Marguerite's two-tier ecclesiology, we also show ourselves to be more "spiritual" than the Spirit himself.
This article originally appeared in the March 2011 issue of Tabletalk.
March 21, 2011
March 19, 2011
Pray for Your Pastors as They Prepare to Preach
John Newton:
I trust I have a remembrance in your prayers. I need them much: my service is great. It is, indeed, no small thing to stand between God and the people, to divide the word of truth aright, to give every one portion, to withstand the counter tides of opposition and popularity, and to press those truths upon others, the power of which, I, at times, feel so little of in my own soul. A cold, corrupt heart is uncomfortable company in the pulpit. Yet, in the midst of all my fears and unworthiness, I am enabled to cleave to the promise, and to rely on the power of the great Redeemer.
March 18, 2011
Who Was St. Patrick?
A day late I realize, but I didn't think about St. Patrick's Day until my son asked me yesterday who Patrick was. This question forced me to pull down from the shelf one of my favorite history books. It's not a page turner, but I learned something on every page. Actually, I learned something with almost every paragraph. The book is The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity by Richard Fletcher. For a readable, scholarly treatment on the long, slow, amazing transition in Europe from paganism to Christianity there is simply no better book.
So what does Fletcher say about Patrick?
Well, first you need to know what Patrick did not do.
He did not expel snakes from Ireland: the snakelessness of Ireland had been noted by the Roman geographer Solinus in the third century. He did not compose that wonderful hymn known as 'Saint Patrick's Breastplate': its language postdates him by about three centuries. He did not drive a chariot three times over his sister Lupait to punish her unchastity. . . . He did not use the leaves of the shamrock to illustrate the Persons of the Trinity for his converts: true, he might have done; but it is not until the seventeenth century that we are told that he did. (82)
Determining fact from fiction for Patrick is difficult, in part because his writings were not always passed along reliably. More important, Patrick wrote in particularly poor Latin. He received little education and did not handle Latin well. Fletcher says his Latin is "simple, awkward, laborious, sometimes ambiguous, occasionally unintelligible" (83). This makes it hard to know too much for certain.
But here's what most scholars agree on: Patrick–whose adult life falls in the fifth century–was actually British, not Irish. He was born into a Christian family with priests and deacons for relatives, but by his own admission, he was not a good Christian growing up. As a teenager he was carried by Irish raiders into slavery in Ireland. His faith deepened during this six year ordeal. Upon escaping Ireland he went back home to Britain. While with his family he received a dream in which God called him to go back to Ireland to convert the Irish pagans to Christianity.
In his Confessio Patrick writes movingly about his burden to evangelize the Irish. He explicitly links his vocation to the commands of Scripture. Biblical allusions like "the nations will come to you from the ends of the earth" and "I have put you as a light among the nations" and "I shall make you fishers of men" flow from his pen. Seeing his life's work through the lens of Matthew 28 and Acts 1, Patrick prayed that God would "never allow me to be separated from His people whom He has won in the end of the earth." For Patrick, the ends of the earth was Ireland.
Over decades, Patrick made "many thousands of converts." He evangelized in cities and in the countryside. He encouraged the monastic way of life, ordained priests, and planted churches.
Patrick, says Fletcher, "was soaked in the Bible." This was commendable, but not completely unusual. What was new was Patrick's embrace of the missionary mandate to lead the nations to Christ.
Patrick's originality was that no one within western Christendom had thought such thoughts as these before, had ever previously been possessed by such convictions. As far as our evidence goes, he was the first person in Christian history to take the scriptural injunctions literally; to grasp that teaching all nations meant teaching even barbarians who lived beyond the border of the frontiers of the Roman Empire. (86)
Sounds like a man deserving of his own holiday. It's too bad today the forefather of western missions is chiefly celebrated by drinking beer and dreaming of leprechauns. We don't know much for certain about Patrick. But what we know of his ambition and ministry should be enough to make all of us a little green with envy.
March 17, 2011
The Only Hope We Have, And It Is Hope Enough
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree"—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. (Galatians 3:13-14)
