Kevin DeYoung's Blog, page 195

Sovereign Grace Church Planting Conference

Name: PLANT!

Dates: March 24-26, 2011

Location: Covenant Fellowship Church, Glen Mills, PA

Cost: $99/person

Who should come?

Church planters, pastors, pastors who desire to see their church plant churches, members of churches who desire to be a part of planting a church some day

Why should someone come to the PLANT conference?

§         What is unique about this conference is that Sovereign Grace is gathering church planting thinkers and doers from different denominations and church planting movements for three days of teaching and dialogue about planting and building churches on the gospel.

§         Learn from a group of men from Acts 29, Sovereign Grace, the PCA, and 9 Marks who have planted, replanted and are in the midst of leading planting movements.

§         Men like Darrin Patrick and Daniel Montgomery from Acts 29, Mark Dever and Mike McKinley from 9 Marks and the SBC, Tim Witmer from the PCA, CJ Mahaney, Dave Harvey, Pete Greasley, Craig Cabaniss from Sovereign Grace Ministries

You can get more information and register for the conference on the conference website:  www.sgmplant.org

If you register before December 12th, you are automatically entered into a drawing for a free iPad.

The Gospel Centered Life Conference

This looks like a great conference at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church (Fort Lauderdale, FL), January 21-23, 2011. Speakers include Michael Horton, J.D. Greear, and Tullian Tchividjian.

If you're in South Florida in January, first give God thanks (you could be in Michigan in the dead of winter). Second, you may want to check out The Gospel Centered Life Conference.

Why We Must Pursue Holiness

This letter of 2 Peter has one main point: grow in godliness. We see this at the beginning of the letter in chapter 1.

Verse 2: May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
Verse 3: His divine power has granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us.
Verse 5: For this reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, and love.

That's what Peter means by holiness–growing in these virtues. And he writes this whole letter (1:12) to remind his audience of these qualities.

In this last section of the letter in chapter 3 Peter circles back to these same themes. He even uses some of the same language.

Verse 14: Be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish.
Verse 17: Take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability.
Verse 18: Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The big idea is pretty clear: Avoid these false teachers telling you anything goes. Make an effort to be godly. Grow in grace.

But why must we grow in grace? Why should make every effort to increase in virtue? Why should every Christian earnestly, faithfully, diligently pursue holiness? The Bible is wonderful because it never gives us just one motivation for obedience. God says more than, "Because I told you so." He motivates us from several different angles and based on several different reasons.

I see in 2 Peter alone twenty motivations for holiness.

We pursue holiness so that we might become partakers of the divine nature (1:4).
We make every effort to grow in godliness because God has already set us free from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire (1:4).
We grow in grace so we will not be ineffective and unfruitful  in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (1:8).
We pursue Christlike character so we will not be blind, having forgotten that we were cleansed from our former sins (1:9).
We work hard at holiness in order to make our calling and election sure, so that we will not fall (1:10).
We practice these godly qualities so there will be richly provided for us an entrance into the eternal kingdom (1:11).
We pursue godliness because Jesus is coming back again in great power, and we know this to be true because of the glory revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration and because of the prophecy of Scripture (1:16-21).
We walk in obedience to Christ because those who wander into sensuality are condemned and will be destroyed (2:3).
We are serious about holiness because we believe God knows how to judge the wicked and save the righteous (2:4-10).
We turn from ungodliness because those who revel in sin are ugly blots and blemishes, irrational animals, unsteady souls, and accursed children (2:10-16).
We pursue holiness because sin never delivers on its promises (2:17).
We pursue holiness because those who live in their sin again are like those returning to slavery, returning to the mire, and returning to vomit (2:19-21).
We must remember to be holy so we will not be drawn away by those scoffers who will come in the last days following their own sinful desires (3:3).
We make every effort to be godly because the world will not always continue as it does now; the heavens and the earth are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly (3:4-7).
We must take Christlikeness seriously right now because we do not know when the Lord will return (3:10).
We pursue holiness because all our works will be exposed on the last day (3:10).
We pursue holiness because whatever we live for in this life will be burned up and dissolved (3:11).
We strive to walk in obedience and repentance because in so doing we may hasten the coming of the day of God (3:12).
We live in righteousness now because we are waiting for new heavens and a new eath in which righteousness will dwell forever (3:13).
We pursue godliness so that Christ might be glorified both now and to the day of eternity (3:20).

If you want to see clearly our need for effort in sanctification and if you want see why this diligent pursuit of holiness is so needed, 2 Peter is the book for you. Read, mark, learn, inwardly digest.

Happy Thanksgiving

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Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,

Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;

Who from our mothers' arms has blessed us on our way

With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,

With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us;

And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed;

And free us from all ills, in this world and the next!

All praise and thanks to God the Father now be given;

The Son and Him Who reigns with Them in highest Heaven;

The one eternal God, whom earth and Heaven adore;

For thus it was, is now, and shall be evermore.

Where are the Nine?

Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising god with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine?" (Luke 17:15-17)

Everyone reading this blog has reason to give praise to God. The question is whether we will go on our thankless way like the rest of the former lepers, or turn around and fall at Jesus' feet like the Samaritan. Are you part of the one or one of the nine?

I find it easy to ask God for things.  I find it relatively easy to confess sin, perhaps because I have so much of it and feel guilty for it.  It is harder for me to give thanks, not because I think I'm too proud to say thank you, but because I don't have my eyes open to see all that God has done and is doing.

All of us, I imagine, got sick in the past year.  And almost all of us got better.  Have we given thanks?  If we are getting sicker, maybe even approaching death, have we given thanks for the grace to make it this far and for the grace that will lead us home?

There is so much God has done for us: jobs, paid our bills, paying our bills at church, safe travel, safe surgeries, miraculous provision for little babies over the past year.  We've had good test results, open doors, and unexpected blessings.  Have we thanked God?

Did you sleep last night?  Did your kids?  Will you eat tomorrow?  Have you seen people recently converted?  Are their relationships in the process of being healed?  Did you sell your house or get married or finish school?  Have you enjoyed the encouragement and support of the church?  Have you enjoyed laughter and sympathy with friends?  We've known guilt. We've received grace. Will we live out gratitude?

We aren't all blessed in the same ways. But we all have been blessed in innumerable ways. Some return to Jesus with praise. Others do not. Which prompts Jesus to say two things: "Your faith has made you well" and "Where are the nine?"

The Hole in Our Holiness

I have a growing concern that younger evangelicals do not take seriously the Bible's call to personal holiness. We are too at peace with worldliness in our homes, too at ease with sin in our lives, too content with spiritual immaturity in our churches.

God's mission in the world is to save a people and sanctify his people. Christ died "that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised" (2 Cor. 5:15). We were chosen in Christ "before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him" (Eph. 1:4). Christ "loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her…so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5:25-27). Christ "gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works" (Titus 2:14).

J.C. Ryle, the Bishop of Liverpool from the nineteenth century, was right: "We must be holy, because this is one grand end and purpose for which Christ came into the world…Jesus is a complete Saviour. He does not merely take away the guilt of a believer's sin, He does more–He breaks its power (1 Pet. 1:2; Rom. 8:29; Eph. 1:4; 2 Tim. 1:9; Heb. 12:10)." My fear is that as we rightly celebrate, and in some quarters rediscover, all that Christ saved us from, we will give little thought and make little effort concerning all that Christ saved us to.

The pursuit of holiness does not occupy the place in our hearts that it should. Let are several reasons for the relative neglect of personal holiness.

1) It was too common in the past to equate holiness with abstaining from a few taboo practices like drinking, smoking, and dancing. In a previous generation godliness meant you didn't do these things. Younger generations have little patience for these sorts of rules. They either don't agree with the rules or they figure they've got those bases covered so there's not much else to worry about.

2) Related to the first reason is the fear that a passion for holiness makes you some kind of weird holdover from a bygone era. As soon as you talk about swearing or movies or music or modesty or  sexual purity or self-control or just plain godliness people get nervous that others will call them legalistic, or worse, a fundamentalist.

3) We live in a culture of cool, and to be cool means you differentiate yourself from others. That has often meant pushing the boundaries with language, with entertainment, with alcohol, and with fashion. Of course, holiness is much more than these things, but in an effort to be hip many Christians have figured holiness has nothing to do with these things. They've willingly embraced Christian freedom, but they've not earnestly pursued Christian virtue.

4) Among more liberal Christians a radical pursuit of holiness if often suspect because any talk of right and wrong behaviors feels judgmental and intolerant. If we are to be "without spot or blemish" it necessitates we distinguish between what sort of attitudes, actions, and habits are pure and what sort are impure. This sort of sorting gets you in trouble with the pluralism police.

5) Among conservative Christians there is sometimes the mistaken notion that if we are truly gospel-centered we won't talk about rules or imperatives or exhort Christians to moral exertion. To be sure, there is a rash of moralistic teaching out there, but sometimes we go to the other extreme and act as if the Bible shouldn't advise our morals at all. We are so eager not to confuse indicatives and imperatives (a point I've made many times) that if we're not careful we'll drop the imperatives altogether. We've been afraid of words like diligence, effort, and obedience. We've downplayed verses that call us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12), or command us to cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit (2 Cor. 7:1), or warn against even a hint of immorality among the saints (Eph. 5:3).

I find it telling that you can find plenty of young Christians today who are really excited about justice and serving in their communities. You can find Christians fired up about evangelism. You can find lots of Generation XYZ believers passionate about precise theology. Yes and amen to all that. But where are the Christians known for their zeal for holiness? Where is the corresponding passion for honoring Christ with Christlike obedience? We need more Christian leaders on our campuses, in our cities, in our seminaries who will say with Paul, "Look carefully then how you walk"? (Eph. 5:15).

When is the last time we took a verse like Ephesians 5:4–"Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving"–when is the last time we took a verse like this and even began to try to apply this to our conversation, our joking, our movies, our you tube clips, our t.v. and commercial intake? The fact of the matter is if you read through the New Testament epistles you will find very few explicit commands that tell us to evangelize and very few explicit commands that tell us to take care of the poor in our communities, but there are dozens and dozens of verses in the New Testament that enjoin us, in one way or another, to be holy as God is holy (e.g., 1 Peter 1:13-16).

I do not wish to denigrate any of the other biblical emphases capturing the attention of younger evangelicals. But I believe God would have us be much more careful with our eyes, our ears, and our mouth. It's not pietism, legalism, or fundamentalism to take holiness seriously. It's the way of all those who have been called to a holy calling by a holy God.

Monday Morning Humor

If humanity lives to play soccer for another thousand years, they will never say this was their finest hour.

Spiritual Not Religious?

Is "spiritual" the right word to describe our friends and neighbors interested in God, prayer, and the mysterious? Jonathan Edwards thinks not:

Now it may be observed that the epithet "spiritual," in these and other parallel texts of the New Testament, is not used to signify any relation of persons or things to the spirit or soul of man, as the spiritual part of man, in opposition to the body, which is the material part: qualities are not said to be spiritual, because they have their seat in the soul, and not in the body: for there are some properties that the Scripture calls carnal or fleshly, which have their seat as  much in the soul, as those properties that are called spiritual. Thus it is with pride and self-righteousness, and a man's trusting to his own wisdom, which the Apostle calls fleshly (Col. 2:18).

Nor are things called spiritual, because they are conversant about those things that are immaterial, and not corporeal. For so was the wisdom of the wise men, and princes of this world, conversant about spirits, and immaterial beings; which yet the Apostle speaks of as natural men, totally ignorant of those things that are spiritual (I Cor. ch. 2). But it is with relation to the Holy Ghost, or Spirit of God, that persons or things are termed spiritual, in the New Testament. (Religious Affections, 198)

I think Edwards is spot-on here. Now, it's not worth correcting the people we are trying to reach. But it's really more accurate to stay an increasing number of Westerners are religious, not spiritual.

From Bad to Worse: Miroslav Volf on Augustine and Non-Christians

Never forget this: sometimes even very smart people make very bad arguments. Case in point is chapter five of Miroslav Volf's new book Captive to the Word of God (Eerdmans 2010). In this chapter the well respected Croatian theologian who teaches at Yale Divinity School uses "God is love" as a starting point for "Biblical reflections on a Fundamental Christian Claim in Conversation with Islam" (133). In the background, of course, is the dialogue between Christians and Muslims about A Common Word.

There are several problems one could mention in conjunction with Volf's chapter. For example, why should the statement "God is love" be given priority over John's other "definitional" statements that God is light (1 John 1:5) or God is spirit (John 4:24)? And what about the "definition" in Hebrews 12:29 that "God is a consuming fire" or the repeated assertion that God is "holy, holy, holy"? One could (and should) also raise issue with Volf's understanding that God's love is "completely unconditional," "universal," and "indiscriminately forgiving of every person and for every deed" (142-43, emphasis in original). These descriptions simply don't comport with the totality of biblical teaching about divine mercy and divine wrath.

There are other problems too, but I'd like to focus on one egregious example: Volf's use of Augustine to support the notion that concrete acts of love toward neighbor are more important than thoughts about God–the old deeds over creeds argument.

Volf looks at 1 John 4:7–"Whoever does not love does not know God"–and argues "God is not known where neighbor is not loved" (146). So far so good. He then quotes Augustine's Homily (The Epistle of St. John 7.2): "Whosoever therefore violates charity, let him say what he will with his tongue…this [person] is an antichrist" and "acts against God." Volf comments, "Not to love neighbor is not just not to know God; it is actually to deny God" (147). Yes, I think that's what Augustine is saying. Good summary of 1 John 4:7.

But then the argument gets real fuzzy real fast. "Clearly," Volf maintains, "Augustine believed, it is worse for concrete deeds toward neighbor to be misaligned with the character of God than for thoughts about God to be misaligned with the character of God" (147). Actually, though, the line from Augustine never prioritized deeds over thoughts. In the quote he simply states that right thoughts, devoid of the right deeds, are not pleasing to God.

Volf goes on to use this bad argument to make an even worse argument: "If Augustine is correct in his assessment, the consequence for Christians' relation to non-Christians are astounding: non-believers or adherents of another religion, if they love, can be closer to God than Christians notwithstanding Christians' formally correct beliefs about God or even explicit, outward faith in Jesus Christ! The elevation of deeds above beliefs is the consequence of the claim that God is love" (147). The path from Augustine's homily on 1 John 4:7 to Volf's logic is far from obvious. Augustine said faith without works is dead; Volf concludes that works without faith is a sign of spiritual life. The one does not imply the other.

What's more, the real Augustine clearly disagrees with Volf's version of Augustine. In Homily 10 the Bishop of Hippo argues that works apart from belief, though "they seemed good, were nothing worth." When the non-Christian does good deeds it is like running, but not in the right direction. "[B]y running aside from the way thou wentest astray instead of coming to the goal…He that runs aside from the way, runs to no purpose, or rather runs but to toil." And "What is the way by which we run?" Augustine asks. "Christ hath told us, 'I am the Way.'" In other words, the only deeds that please God are the ones done through faith in Christ. Deeds apart from creeds are nothing and worse than nothing. For, "He goes the more astray, the more he runs aside from the way [Christ]."

For Augustine, true faith works itself out in love. But this does not mean any priority for good behavior over good thoughts. Quite the contrary. Augustine writes: "With love, the faith of a Christian; without love, the faith of a devil: but those who believe not, are worse than devils, more stupid than devils. Some men will not believe in Christ: so far, he is not even upon a par with devils" (10.2). So according to Augustine faith without deeds makes you a devil, but if you don't have faith you are worse than a devil.

A bit inelegant I admit, but closer to the Scriptural mark than Volf's logic, not to mention a lot closer to Augustine's actual theology.

The Horror of the Same Old Thing

The devil's sage advice to his apprentice in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters:

What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of what I call 'Christianity And.' You know–Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform…Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing. The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart–an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, an inconstancy in friendship. (quoted by Michael Horton in Always Reformed: Essays in Honor of Robert Godfrey)