Nick Roark's Blog, page 16

“Nothing could reconcile us except the death of Christ” by J.C. Ryle

“Would I know how exceedingly sinful and abominable sin is in the sight of God?

Where shall I see that most fully brought out?

Shall I turn to the history of the flood, and read how sin drowned the world?

Shall I go to the shore of the Dead Sea, and mark what sin brought on Sodom and Gomorrah?

Shall I turn to the wandering Jews, and observe how sin has scattered them over the face of the earth?

No: I can find a clearer proof still!

I look at the cross of Christ.

There I see that sin is so black and damnable, that nothing but the blood of God’s own Son can wash it away.

There I see that sin has so separated me from my holy Maker, that all the angels in heaven could never have made peace between us.

Nothing could reconcile us except the death of Christ.

If I listened to the wretched talk of proud men, I might sometimes fancy sin was not so very sinful!

But I cannot think little of sin, when I look at the cross of Christ.”

–J.C. Ryle, Old Paths: Being Plain Statements of Some of the Weightier Matters of Christianity (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1898/1999), 237-238.

“I look at the cross of Christ” by J.C. Ryle

“Would I know the length and breadth of God the Father’s love towards a sinful world?

Where shall I see it most displayed?

Shall I look at His glorious sun, shining down daily on the unthankful and evil?

Shall I look at seed-time and harvest, returning in regular yearly succession?

Oh, no! I can find a stronger proof of love than anything of this sort.

I look at the cross of Christ.

I see in it not the cause of the Father’s love, but the effect.

There I see that God so loved this wicked world, that He gave His only begotten Son,—gave Him to suffer and die,—that “whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

I know that the Father loves us, because He did not withhold from us His Son, His only Son.

I might sometimes fancy that God the Father is too high and holy to care for such miserable, corrupt creatures as we are!

But I cannot, must not, dare not think it, when I look at the cross of Christ.”

–J.C. Ryle, Old Paths: Being Plain Statements of Some of the Weightier Matters of Christianity (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1898/1999), 237.

“Jesus Christ is the glory of the Lord” by Thomas Goodwin

“Now as the gospel only conveyeth the Holy Ghost to men, and the knowledge of it, so the receiving of the Holy Ghost is to receive all glory. For the Holy Ghost will never rest till he hath glorified you fully and perfectly.

As Jesus Christ’s work was to redeem you, so the Holy Ghost’s work is to work all grace and glory into you; therefore when you receive the Holy Ghost you receive all glory in the seed and foundation of it.

It is the foundation of our union with Christ; ‘they that are joined to the Lord are one spirit;’ it is by the Holy Ghost.

To give you an express scripture for it, 1 Pet 4:14, ‘The Spirit of glory shall rest upon you.’ And the giving of this Spirit of the Holy Ghost unto you is more than all grace and glory that ever you shall have.

If you would ask now what is the substantial glory of a man, that is the foundation of all his parts and wit, and makes him capable of the glory the world puts upon him, without which he would lose all in an instant, what is it?

It is his soul that dwelleth in his body; take that away and he is a beast; nay, take that away and he is a dead carcase, he is sown in dishonour instantly as soon as that is gone.

Therefore, in Gen. 49, the soul of man is called his glory, ‘Into his secret,’ saith he, ‘let not my glory enter.’ Now look, what the soul is to a man, that is the Holy Ghost to a holy man.

He is the foundation of all glory, of all grace.

When He hath given you the Spirit, He hath given you all the grace and glory in the foundation that ever you shall have, for He will never leave you till He hath wrought you up to glory.

And the gift of Him is the earnest of glory; so He is called expressly in 2 Cor. 5:5.

Jesus Christ is the glory of the Lord to you objectively, but the Holy Ghost is all grace and glory efficiently, yea in heaven.

And when you receive the Spirit, you receive glory, because you receive a Spirit that will never rest till he hath made you glorious.

And this Spirit you receive by the gospel, and by nothing else, by no knowledge else, either of the law or whatever else.

Hence therefore the gospel that communicateth this is called a glorious gospel, in respect of what it ministereth; for, saith he, ‘if the ministration of the letter was glorious,’ which did give nothing else but the literal knowledge of the law in men’s heads, then the ministration of the Spirit is much more glorious.”

–Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, Volume 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 1861/2006), 4: 326-327.

“God’s mercy is His glory” by Thomas Goodwin

“Of all things God’s mercy is His glory.

And while you look upon the face of Jesus Christ, you there behold nothing but grace and mercy shine in the gospel.

‘We behold,’ saith he, ‘the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,’ (2 Cor. 4:6) that as in the face of a man you behold His disposition toward you, so you see the disposition of God in the face of Christ, you see His mercy, you see His glory.

Not a whit of this did shine in the law, not a whit of mercy or free grace, and yet that is the glory of God.

In Exod. 33:18-20, Moses there desired to see the glory of God: ‘I beseech thee,’ saith he, ‘shew me Thy glory.’

Saith God, Exod. 33:19, ‘I will make all My goodness pass before thee.’

But how should all His goodness appear? Clothed all in mercy; for it follows:

‘I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee, and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’

The law speaks not such a word; no, my brethren, this is the very bottom of the gospel, the bottom of God’s heart.

Here is His glory, ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’

It is the glorious gospel of the blessed God, that being blessed in Himself, thus resolveth to be gracious and good to poor creatures, to such sinners as we are.

Moses had seen the glory of God upon the mount; he had seen the glory of God in delivering the law in a great deal of state; after all this, ‘Lord,’ saith He, ‘let me see Thy glory.’

What is God’s answer?

‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.

Here is my glory.

And this glory shineth in the gospel, and if you will see it, look upon the face of Jesus Christ.

You may see Jesus Christ’s face in the glass of the gospel, and in that face you may see all this grace and mercy shine.'”

–Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, Volume 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 1861/2006), 4: 325-326.

“The triumph of biblical theology” by Carl Trueman

“The triumph of biblical theology has been so complete in some quarters that we now need to realise that this new establishment might itself be generating problems of its own.

Well, what’s wrong with a biblical-theological approach, you ask? Nothing, in and of itself. But the way it pans out has, I would suggest, sometimes been less than helpful.

First, there is the problem of mediocrity. It is one thing for a master of biblical theology to preach it week after week; quite another for a less talented follower so to do. We all know the old joke about the Christian fundamentalist who, when asked what was grey, furry, and lived in a tree, responded that ‘It sure sounds like a squirrel, but I know the answer to every question is “Jesus” ’.

One of the problems I have with a relentless diet of biblical theological sermons from less talented (i.e., most of us) preachers is their boring mediocrity: contrived contortions of passages which are engaged in to produce the answer ‘Jesus’ every week. It doesn’t matter what the text is; the sermon is always the same.

Second, the triumph of the biblical theological method in theology and preaching has come at the very high price of a neglect of the theological tradition. The church spent nearly seventeen hundred years engaging in careful doctrinal reflection; formulating a technical language allowing her theologians to express themselves with precision and clarity; writing creeds and confessions to allow believers over the face of the earth to express themselves with one voice; and wrestling long and hard with those aspects of God which must be true if the biblical record was to be at all coherent or make any sense whatsoever.

Classic systematic theology was taught systematically, not because it was divorced from exegesis (no scholar of the Middle Ages or of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would argue such a ridiculous thing, although the claim is frequently heard in popular circles), but because the church had a firm understanding of the need for clear teaching, a confidence in the substantial unity of God’s revelation, and a deep appreciation of the need to push beyond economic questions if there was to be such a thing as orthodoxy and it was to be defended in a coherent fashion.

The economics of the history of salvation, on which the biblical theology movement is so good, were always carefully balanced by judicious reflection upon the ontological aspects of God which undergirded the whole of the church’s life and history.

My greatest concern with the biblical theology movement is that it places such an overwhelming emphasis upon the economy of salvation that it neglects these ontological aspects of theology. In doing so, it will, I believe, prove ultimately self-defeating: a divine economy without a divine ontology is unstable and will collapse.

Trinitarianism will dissolve into modalism; the theological unity of the Bible will be swallowed up and destroyed by its diversity because it has no foundation in the one God who speaks; and Christian exclusivism will be sacrificed to a meaningless pluralism as the church’s narrative is reduced to having significance only within the bounds of the Christian community.

I suspect that ‘openness theism’ is merely the most well known heresy to have been nurtured in the anti-doctrinal, anti-tradition world of contemporary evangelicalism; it will certainly not be the last. And my fear is that the overwhelming economic emphasis of the biblical theology trajectory effectively cuts the church off from probing the ontological questions which I believe are demanded by reflection upon the biblical text, by consideration of the church’s tradition, and by our Christian commitment to the notion of the existence of a God who has revealed himself yet whose existence is prior to that revelation.

The strategic problem, is of course, getting anyone to believe that this is so, and not just another one of Trueman’s eccentric and pessimistic takes on contemporary evangelicalism. And that problem is really a function of the fact that the old biblical theological rebels have become the new establishment but have not yet realised this and have therefore not relativised their contribution accordingly. Important insights have become controlling ideologies which cut the church off from her tradition and render her thereby impoverished.

Biblical theology is—or rather, was—a necessary corrective to fanciful pietistic exegesis and mindless doctrinalism—but anyone who thinks that these are still the major problems in evangelical churches clearly inhabits a different world to the one of which I have experience. In most churches where preaching still holds a central place, I suspect that an overemphasis on doctrine and systematic theology is not the problem.

After all, how many of us go to churches where the Trinitarian nature of God, while upheld in our doctrinal statements, is sidelined in preaching and worship to the point where most of us are functional Unitarians. In my experience as a teacher, it is a lack of knowledge of, say, the doctrine of the Trinity rather than puzzlement over how to preach a Christian sermon on David and Goliath which is today the most pressing problem.

Year in, year out, I teach the history of Christian doctrine; and, year in year out, I have not only taken flack from those liberals for whom the whole idea of doctrine is somewhat fanciful; I have also taken flack from those evangelicals who ‘just have their Bible’. That the church wrestled for at least 1700 years with issues of systematic theology, not just biblical narrative, and did so in a manner which sought to preserve the balance between economy and ontology in the church’s proclamation of God in Christ, is lost on such students.

My fear is that the biblical theology movement, while striving to place the Word back at the centre of the church’s life, is inadequate in and by itself for the theological task of defending and articulating the faith. Reflection upon the wider church tradition is needed, creeds, confessions and all, because this is the best way to understand how and where the discipline of biblical theology and redemptive history can be of use to the wider picture without it usurping and excluding other, equally necessary and important theological disciplines.

Christianity is Trinitarian at its very core, and it is my suspicion that biblical theology on its own is inadequate to protect and defend that core. We need ontology as well as economy if we are to do justice to the Bible’s teaching on who God is and what he has done.

The biblical theological revolutionaries have become the new establishment, it is time for those of us rebels who think that the Bible raises more than just redemptive-historical questions, and that the creedal tradition of the church gives important insights on this, to raise our voices in dissent, to highlight the very real dangers of making this insight into an ideology and to do our best to bring the pendulum back a little.”

–Carl Trueman, “Editorial: A Revolutionary Balancing Act,” Themelios 27, no. 3 (2002): 2–4.

“As high as possibly I can” by Jonathan Edwards

“I don’t think ministers are to be blamed for raising the affections of their hearers too high, if that which they are affected with be only that which is worthy of affection, and their affections are not raised beyond a proportion to their importance, or worthiness of affection.

I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth.”

–Jonathan Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival of Religion in New England,” in The Great Awakening, ed. Harry S. Stout and C. C. Goen, Revised Edition, vol. 4, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2009), 4: 387.

“The melody line of preaching to the heart” by Sinclair Ferguson

“The fifth key to fruitful preaching to the heart is the preacher’s own grasp of the principle and the reality of grace.

This needs to be set within the multifaceted context of a growing familiarity with the uses of sacred Scripture, an awareness of the actual condition of our hearers, and a conscious recognition of the preacher’s task.

But always the melody line of preaching to the heart lies in our own grasp of the principle of grace.

That is what makes preaching sing.”

–Sinclair Ferguson, “Preaching to the Heart,” in Some Pastors and Teachers: Reflecting a Biblical Vision of What Every Minister is Called to Be (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2017), 729.

“Nature gave the word ‘glory’ a meaning for me” by C.S. Lewis

“Many people— I am one myself— would never, but for what nature does to us, have had any content to put into the words we must use in confessing our faith.

Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty.

I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word ‘glory’ a meaning for me.

I still do not know where else I could have found one.

I do not see how the ‘fear’ of God could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe, if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags.

And if nature had never awakened certain longings in me, huge areas of what I can now mean by the ‘love’ of God would never, so far as I can see, have existed.”

–C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Mariner, 1960/2012), 20.

“Whatever storms may arise, there is an infallible and almighty Pilot” by John Newton

“The newspapers (which in this retired place are the chief sources of our intelligence) give us but a dark view of what is passing abroad.

A spirit of discord is spreading in the nation, and we have hints and items respecting ecclesiastical matters, which I hope are premature, and without sufficient ground.

But, whatever storms may arise, there is an infallible and almighty Pilot, who will be a Sun and a Shield to those who love Him.

I endeavour to answer all fears respecting political matters with the sure declarations of the word of God. Such as Psalm 99:1; 29:10-11; Isaiah 8:12–14; 51:12-13; John 3:35.

Jesus is King of kings, and Lord of lords; King of the church, and King in the nations; who doth his pleasure in the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth.

Therefore by faith in him, we may adopt the triumphant language of Psalms 2, 27, 46, and 118, for the Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble, and knoweth how to deliver them that trust in him.

Oh, Sir, what a light does the gospel of Christ throw upon the world when our eyes are open to receive it!

Without it, all would be uncertainty and perplexity; but the knowledge of his person, blood, and righteousness; of the love he bears us, the care he exercises over us, and the blessings he has prepared for us,—this knowledge gives peace and stability to the soul, in the midst of all changes and confusions.

And, were it not for the remaining power of unbelief in our hearts, which fights against our faith, and damps the force of divine truth, we should begin our heaven even while we are upon earth.

We have need to adopt the apostle’s prayer, and to say, ‘Lord, increase our faith.‘ (Luke 17:5)”

–John Newton, The Works of John Newton, Vol. 6, Ed. Richard Cecil (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1988), 6: 218-219.

“The tale of Warfield’s marriage” by Dale Ralph Davis

“David’s question was: ‘Is there yet someone left in the household of Saul that I might deal with him in a ḥesed-way for Jonathan’s sake?’ (2 Samuel 9:1).

You may wonder why I drag in covenant as the central theme of this passage. Because ḥesed (three times, 2 Samuel 9:1, 3, 7) is the devoted love promised within a covenant; ḥesed is love that is willing to commit itself to another by making its promise a matter of solemn record.

So when David mentions ḥesed and ‘for Jonathan’s sake’ we know he is alluding to the sacred commitment Jonathan had asked David to make in 1 Samuel 20:15: ‘And you must not cut off your devoted love from my house forever, not even when Yahweh cuts off each one of David’s enemies from the face of the ground.’

And David had gone on oath about that. Now he is preparing to fulfil that pledge.

David’s officials locate a certain Ziba, a servant connected to Saul’s family, and summon him for a royal interview. David inquires and Ziba informs him that there is still one of Jonathan’s sons left, one who is ‘stricken in his feet’ (2 Samuel 9:3).

He is living in Lo-debar, east of the Jordan, under the patronage of Machir (9:4). It has now been fifteen to twenty years since David had made that promise and entered into that covenant with Jonathan.

But it still controlled and directed his behavior: ‘Is there anyone belonging to Saul’s family left, to whom I might show faithful love for Jonathan’s sake?’ (9:1).

That solemn word, given in that solemn ceremony, under a solemn curse, constrained him to act with devoted love. Nothing about it being a long time ago, about conditions being different, about it being only a formality.

Here is the power covenant exercises—the promise made in the past directs fidelity in the present. Does this not press upon us the urgency of keeping all our covenants?

This is something our world and culture does not understand. What the world does not see is that love that truly loves is willing to bind itself, is willing to promise, willingly and gladly obligates itself so that the other may stand securely in that love.

If you are a Christian, your life consists of covenant obligations, times when you have made sacred promises.

In my own communion, we make vows when we publicly confess our faith before the congregation, when our children receive baptism, when someone assumes church office (elder, deacon), and, of course, when entering into marriage.

One does not keep such vows because it is dramatic but because it is faithful. Sometimes you do not keep your covenants because you feel like it but simply because you promised.

The works of B. B. Warfield, the esteemed biblical theologian of old Princeton Seminary, are still known and read in the evangelical church today.

What is not so well-known is the tale of his marriage. Warfield was pursuing studies in Leipzig, Germany, in 1876–77. This time also doubled as honeymoon with his wife Annie.

They were on a walking tour in the Harz Mountains when they were caught in a terrific thunderstorm. The experience was such a shock to Annie that she never fully recovered, becoming more or less an invalid for life.

Warfield only left her for his seminary duties, but never for more than two hours at a time. His world was almost entirely limited to Princeton and to the care of his wife.

For thirty-nine years.

One of his students noted that when he saw the Warfields out walking together ‘the gentleness of his manner was striking proof of the loving care with which he surrounded her.’

For thirty-nine years.

That is the power covenant exercises.”

–Dale Ralph Davis, 2 Samuel: Out of Every Adversity, Focus on the Bible Commentary (Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2002), 120–122. Davis is commenting on 2 Samuel 9.