Jared Longshore's Blog, page 29

Take Heed How You Build

When we fell in our father Adam, our work became fraught with difficulties. But our sin does more than simply make work hard. Our sin has also made work risky. I don’t simply mean that we can now climb up ladders and fall down to break bones. I mean that the fruit of our hands itself is put in jeopardy by our sin. The spirit of the age rejects this truth. It says that you can live like a wretch and keep your business in order. You can keep your immorality in one compartment of your life and keep your entrepreneurial endeavors in another compartment, unstained by your envy, lust, and temper.

But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3 that every man must take heed how he builds on Christ. Yes, you have Christ as the foundation. And thanks be to God for that. But some will build with gold and others silver. Still others will build with wood, hay, and stubble. And what you have built will be brought into the light and tested by fire to show whether it was the real thing or not. 

Put it this way: You never get away with sin. And this is God’s kindness to us. You may be able to hide it for a short while. It may not destroy your grades, your company, or your family in an instant. But hear this soberly. The rot always rots. You work far too hard to ruin your work because of unconfessed sin. 

God is going to test all of the little projects you are working on and all of the big ones too. So take heed how you build. Build in holiness. Build in wisdom. Build in humility and gratitude. Build diligently and always build while confessing your sin.

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Come to Christ

Every Sunday at this table you are reminded to come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ. You are not merely coming to bread and wine. You are coming to a living man. A human. A human who is also God. Your God. Your Savior, who was made like you in every way yet without sin.

Nothing satisfies apart from this Christ. Work, apart from Christ, is empty. Rest, apart from Christ, never refreshes. Eating and drinking, apart from Christ, will not bring joy. Fasting, apart from Christ, leaves you but a pharisee with the devil as a father. So you must ensure that you come to Christ in faith and not merely to that which represents Him.

As you come to this table in faith, you truly participate in Christ. You feed on Him spiritually. He is here among us in a special and peculiar way at this table. So we should come mindful of His presence among us here.

As we do, we are training ourselves for how we should always live. When Christ said, “Take, eat, this is my body. Do this in remembrance of me,” He was teaching us how to come to this table; and how to live every day. You must live in remembrance of Him, recalling that He is with you always.

Why do you work hard when no one is watching? Because Christ is with you. Why do you mortify those sins that have not yet manifested themselves before the eyes of others? Because you live before the face of God. How can you rest from your many labors without anxiety about all of the deadlines out in front of you? Because Christ is with you always and will never leave nor forsake you. So come remembering Him. Come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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More Than a Celestial Uber Driver

Well, let’s dive right in, shall we? As of late, it is like we are caught in a cosmic makeover show in the reformed and evangelical world. Donald J. Trump was the material cause, maybe. But he was not the originating cause. We are dealing with political disagreements that stem from doctrinal disagreements. But we didn’t see the doctrinal differences until the political revealed them. Thus we’re all befuddled and scratching our heads.

Now, there’s this thing called Christian nationalism that’s decided to park itself in our mental garage. Imagine those gospel-loving folks, sipping their cold brew and minding their own business, when someone barges in with the notion that even the posh chambers of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. are part of Christ’s property portfolio. Well, you can bet your last biscuit that those ostensibly devoted Kuyper theology fans are blinking in disbelief. They’re good with Christ claiming every inch, until you mention that one square inch is smack dab in the middle of our political hubbub. That is when they give you the side-eye, worried that you are watering down the salvation message and bringing back the days of poor Obadiah Holmes’ misadventures.

And that’s just the beginning of our troubles. The unity tasted at the conferences so many attended, where all were belting the same gospel tune under the Together for the Gospel banner, has hit some rocky terrain. And this unpleasant terrain can’t be pinned on simple assertions, “Oh, they have sold doctrinal purity for a political end,” from the one side, or “They have chugged the pietism punch” from the other. No, we’re dealing with a whole new flavor of division soup. Sure, there are those who have made shady deals for political clout, and sure, some folks have been sipping pietism like it is the nectar of the gods. But our present division is messier than that.

Some might want to slap a “Made in Politics” label on our current divisions, saying that our fractured nation’s squabbles have infiltrated our Christian camaraderie. So, the fix is to boot the political mess and get back to the basics: systematic theology, gospel preaching, ecclesiology, and whatnot. This, they say, will lead us back to the golden days. Those who advance this sentiment are likely to argue that we should forget that some evangelical bigwigs marched in BLM parades while the world went up in flames. Perhaps the memory of those sulfur-scented COVID times will fade away. Well, no, they won’t. 

Let me hasten to say that I am eager for the unity that we once had. But, we cannot slap a Band-Aid on our troubles and heal our wound lightly. We have to get down to the pesky doctrinal blunders that have been lurking around our reformed and evangelical world like uninvited party guests. They have been with us for quite a spell, causing us to trip over our own shoelaces when it comes to things like critical race theory, bizarre Trump infatuations, and bowing down to the CDC during the Corona circus.

We could point to several doctrinal shortcomings that left us in our present pickle. But let me go to the central one. The heart of the matter has been our Christless Christianity. That is a risky statement to make. It is an attempt to move the Overton window which may be a push too far for some. I understand your hesitation. We used to boast that our unity was built on Jesus. But I’m here to put a pin in that balloon.

We were indeed unified in the gospel in a sense. Everyone would have said that the good news involved Jesus dying and rising. Conversion? We had that underfoot. Testimonies about God finding us in the far country and bringing us home? They were our bread and butter. We must say amen to all of that. 

But—and this point is like smelling salts to clear away the fog—our unity missed Christ born of the Virgin Mary. Yes, Him. Our unity was not firmly grounded in that little detail. It was near about a disembodied faith as if Charles Taylor himself dropped by and gave it the “excaranated” seal of approval. Sure, we could go on about Christ’s divinity, and every Reformed leader would attest to His humanity. But the telos of that humanity? Well, that was like a whisper in a windstorm—hard to find.

I am not advocating for some doctoral dissertation here. I’m not insisting that the common evangelical must become Bavinck or Aquinas in order to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. I’m just waving my arms and shouting from the rooftops: we have reduced the humanity of Christ to the truth that He went to the cross as our substitute and will come back for an encore. That, of course, is essential. But there is more that has been revealed.

Does our faith really say Jesus popped by Earth just to ferry souls up to the pearly gates? No, not even close. He is more than a celestial Uber driver. He is the Second Adam, dishing out life to us flesh-and-bone creatures. He came not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved, the whole kit and caboodle. That includes our present political circus.

We were not ready for the challenges that came upon us in political fashion, which were not merely political challenges. It is not as if we lost the political challenges, but we kept all of the souls of our people clean and ordered. No, the challenges came upon us in a particular manner, under a particular guise. And these challenges ravaged the church of Christ. We were vulnerable to these attacks because we bought into a great dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical, the heavenly and the earthly, the corporate and the individual, the inner and the outer. And here is the kicker; we bought into all of these dichotomies because we had previously bought into a great dichotomy between the divinity of Christ and His humanity. We did not see the implications and applications of the truth that the Son of God took upon Himself human form.

Said another way, many Christians are not sure why Christ did not have to die once for each individual. Our outlook has become so atomized that we are left thinking that this arrangement would fit, even though we shrink back from the notion. But why? Why did one death work for so many individuals? Well, because Christ took upon our nature and stood in our place as our head and representative. He did what the first Adam failed to do. He insists that the telos of the salvation he has provided for us include that original mission, to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and have dominion. But filling the earth with a bunch of physical creatures who will then fill the earth with the rule of God sounds a whole lot like Mere Christendom. And while our fading-in-influence evangelical leaders know we have deadly cracks in our society’s foundation, they still want to warn you about all of those “Christ is Lord” signs that Canon Press keeps putting up across the nation.

But back to this much-needed recovery and renewal of our unity. We need more than a patch-up job. We need to grow up, to embrace the faith of our forefathers. The faith once for all delivered to the saints is not just about flicking the Gospel switch and getting zapped by heavenly electricity. The Gospel isn’t an abstract idea; it’s a person. And that person is not just about a ticket to heaven. He’s about recreating the whole world.

If Kuyper was right, and he was, then the bride of Christ must announce what the Second Adam has said, “Every square inch is mine.” And that includes the land trod by the rich men north of Richmond.

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The Belly Goddess

Martyn Lloyd Jones once said that most of our problems in life come from the fact that we listen to ourselves rather than talk to ourselves. I will add that we listen to a certain part of ourselves: our belly. I do not mean our physical appetite exactly. I mean the belly that the Bible talks about as the seat of our feelings, or our emotions. We set up this belly-goddess-of-our-emotions as prophet, priest, and king. 

Whatever our emotions tell us, whatever prophecies they utter, we assume they must be infallible. They must be mediating some all-important mystical truth to us. It couldn’t simply be that we had some bad chicken. 

Then we treat our emotions as some priestly offering. We say, “I offer my feelings to the Father as a living and holy sacrifice.” But that text in Romans 12 says that we are to offer up “our bodies” as sacrifices. 

In the end, we discover that our belly-emotions have fulfilled all three mediatorial offices of Christ as they become our king. Wherever the belly leads, we go. And she keeps the people of her dominion on a short leash, so they never know the great lands of maturity.

Emotions are not themselves sinful. They are not to be altogether avoided. But when they begin to instruct you, when you sit at their feet and start to take notes as if they are an all-wise rabbi, or when your life begins to center itself around your emotions like Israel’s worship did the sacrificial altar, or when you become the loyal subject of your emotions, then your worshipping your belly, and she’s a tyrannical little goddess. 

You were not made to serve your belly. Your belly was made to serve you. You were not made to fight for some well-balanced emotional well-being. You were meant to fight your enemies with your belly.

The only way to do that is to trust Christ. The man who believes on Him, out of his belly will flow rivers of living water.

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A Solution for Our Secular Age

In another world, some very naughty dwarves tumbled through a stable door. But the inside of this cowshed was anything but ordinary. Within was a lush and open land canopied by a deep blue sky. Breezes fresh enough to make an old man young blew where they wished, making the thick leaves of the countless shiny fruit trees dance. The dwarves, however—though in this garden world—could not see, smell, or taste it. A girl named Lucy, a boy named Eustace, and a king named Tirian approached them—

“Look out!” said one of [the Dwarfs] in a surly voice. “Mind where you’re going. Don’t walk into our faces!”

“All right!” said Eustace indignantly. “We’re not blind. We’ve got eyes in our heads.”

“They must be darn good ones if you can see in here,”” said the same Dwarf whose name was Diggle.

“In where?” asked Edmund.

“Why you bone-head, in here of course,” said Diggle. “In this pitch-black, poky, smelly little hole of a stable.”

“Are you blind?” said Tirian.

“Ain’t we all blind in the dark!” said Diggle.

“But it isn’t dark, you poor stupid Dwarfs,” said Lucy. “Can’t you see? Look up! Look round! Can’t you see the sky and the trees and the flowers? Can’t you see me?”

“How in the name of all Humbug can I see what ain’t there? And how can I see you any more than you can see me in this pitch darkness?” (C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle).

We are all dwarves now. We have lost our ability to see what is there.

Many years ago now, there was a very popular song by the very popular evangelical artist Michael W. Smith. Mr. Smith was looking for a reason, roaming through the night to find his place in this world. It was a real struggle. But hindsight clarifies that Mr. Smith did not have it so bad after all. He at least had a world in which to be lost. He had a night in which to roam. The youth of the 90s may have felt a little out of place. But the generation growing up today does not have a place in which they can get out of sorts. You could still get turned around in Mr. Smith’s day because there was an ordered cosmos in which to do so. Modern man, on the other hand, does not know what it means to be lost. He has not only become disenchanted with the world. But he has come to believe the world itself is disenchanted, and a disenchanted world is no world at all.

Many Christians have resolved themselves to this disenchanted world, this voided cosmos. They have grown accustomed to living in the dark. They have read C. S. Lewis. They are ready to go to Narnia when the good Lord calls them home. But they have forgotten that Narnia is here. We live in a land of wizards and flaming heavenly horses:

“And when they shall say unto you, ‘Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter’ . . . To the law and to the testimony” (Isaiah 8:19).

“And Elisha prayed, and said, ‘LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see.’ And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha” (2 Kings 17).

But these are not our instincts. Americans went through COVID hanging on every word from the CDC. But, it is fair to say, that angels killing people by means of a virus was not at the forefront of their minds. The notion that the celestials have anything to do with a virus seems absurd to modern man. But, you don’t have to go to Greek Mythology to hear about angelic destruction by means of sickness—

So the Lord sent pestilence upon Israel: and there fell of Israel seventy thousand men. And God sent an angel unto Jerusalem to destroy it: and as he was destroying, the Lord beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand. And the angel of the Lord stood by the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite” (1 Chronicles 21:14-15).

Someone is going to call foul right about now—”This guy recommends praying instead of taking your vitamin C.” That sort of knee-jerk reaction is a common instinct in our disenchanted world. We have forgotten that one can believe in cherubim and molecules. Things used to be different.

In his tome, A Secular Age, Charles Taylor wrote of the enchanted world, “the world of spirits, demons, oral forces which our predecessors acknowledged” (Secular Age, 29). We used to live in a world of solids and gods. And, of course, we still do. But, like the dwarves, we are oblivious. Taylor reminisced of this enchanted world, “in which spiritual forces impinged on porous agents, in which the social was grounded in the sacred and secular time in higher times, a society moreover in which the play of structure and anti-structure was held in equilibrium; and this human drama unfolded within a cosmos” (Secular Age, 61) But, “all this has been dismantled and replaced by something quite different in the transformation we after roughly call disenchantment” (Secular Age, 61)

Put simply, the Christian faith is supernatural. To be a Christian is to believe in angels and demons, heaven and hell, the spirit and the body, the underworld and resurrection, the Godman. If the supernatural fabric is incinerated, then there will be no Christianity left.

You don’t have to be the keenest cultural analyst to see that we are on the verge of an old-school holy war. From one vantage point, it is fair to say our disenchantment is wobbling. We contract women’s wombs and leave the leftover embryos in the freezer. In our times, a man given to homosexual acts can ponder extracting his sister’s eggs in an attempt to fertilize them through artificial reproductive technology. He can do this, mind you, to the ever-so-gentle golf applause of mainstream thought and culture. The people who remember what life was like say, three weeks ago, are rightly getting suspicious that something more than science is going on here.

We are at that point in Lewis’ That Hiddeous Strength when Frost breaks it to Mark Studdock that something otherworldly is communicating through Alcasan’s disembodied head. As Christiana Hale put it, “The materialistic and reductionistic philosophy that began by exalting reason and objective science as the only path to ultimate answers has degenerated into necromancy and dark magic. The philosophy that led Weston to reject the claims of human feeling and emotion in favor of unmoving, objective science and hard facts is now driving men to reanimate decapitated heads, level small villages, and take orders from dark spirits whose natures are far beyond what their hard ‘science’ can explain” (Deeper Heaven).

So I say that we are just on the cusp of such a revelation. There are many Mark’s in our world today who are starting to grasp that there is a relationship between all of those LGBTQ signs and the underworld and all of those steeples around town and the third heaven. That development means that the time is ripe for a solution to our secular age. And this solution, on the one hand, is nothing other than the faith once for all delivered to the saints. But there is a certain dimension of that faith that needs to be emphasized in our times. It comes out in Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

When Christians live by faith they evidence unseen things. They make secular man terribly uncomfortable, or they make him the happiest of men. When Christians live by faith, it is not only that the show unrighteous men how to live uprightly. That is a very good thing, of course. But more is going on. By faith, Christians manifest the unseen kingdom on earth. And that kind of enchantment is just what secular man with his “immanent frame,” as Charles Taylor would put it, so desperately needs.

It is a potent thing when the unseen things are evidenced by faith. Some occurs when the saints live by faith that is not altogether different than what happened to the downstairs residents at St. Anne’s when Jove descended to visit Ransom and Merlin upstairs: “In the kitchen his coming was felt. No one afterwards knew how it happened but somehow the kettle was put on, the hot toddy was brewed. Arthur—the only musician among them—was bidden to get out his fiddle. The chairs were pushed back, the floor cleared. They danced. What they danced no once could remember. It was some round dance, no modern shuffling: it involved beating the floor, clapping of hands, leaping high. And no one while it lasted thought himself or his fellows ridiculous” (C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength).

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Fervent in Spirit

Amid a string of rapid-fire exhortations in Romans 12, the Apostle Paul says to be fervent in spirit. This particular command is wedged between two others. Just before, Paul said not to be slothful in business. Just after, he said to serve the Lord. So this fervent spirit isn’t simply some emotional buzz that never moves the feet and hands. It motivates us to get down to business. Neither does this fervent spirit simply make a man busy. The business you are to be up to, driven by a fervent spirit, is the business of serving the Lord.

It is not hard to see that if we would fulfill this command, we need something foreign or alien. Our own hands can’t stir our spirit. We can’t see our spirit or touch our it. What, are we to grab our spirit like a top and spin it to get it whirling? What’s more, our own spirit can’t stir our spirit. It is our own spirit that must be stirred in the first place. If we are going to obey this command it is quite plain that we must be visited. We are left praying like Augustine when he said, “Command what you will, God; and grant what you command.”

Our Father loves to hear and answer that prayer. Our God is a rushing wind. He is the Great Visitor. His Word, the One who visited Mary, is living and active. That is why you must be active. You must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. If you find yourself a bit worn out, perhaps in need of a rest. That’s more than OK. Rest in Christ. Trust Him. You’ll find your youth renewed like the eagle’s. And that youthful vitality will run all the way down to your soul.

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Doug Wilson, Phil Johnson, and the Regeneration Ruckus

There was a bit of a stir recently online when Doug Wilson posted the following quote with the title “Discuss Among Yourselves”—

“What is regeneration? That is an existential and experimental reality. God takes away a heart of stone and replaces it with a heart of flesh. Now, when does regeneration occur? According to the traditionalordo . . . regeneration is first, then repentance, then faith, then justification. Imputation arrives with justification. what is the righteousness that this new heart has, both experientially and practically? It is an infused righteousness. Regeneration is not imputed, right? Regeneration is a change of heart, from an unrighteous heart that hates God to a righteous (but still imperfect) heart that loves Him, repents of sin, and believes in Him . . . At the end of the day, this means . . . infused righteousness as the instrument of imputed righteousness.” (The Auburn Avenue Chronicles, pp. 60-61)

Phil Johnson replied to Doug, “I know you formally affirm the Confession. But IMO the paragraph you put up for discussion affirms precisely what the WCF denies–namely, that “infused righteousness” is instrumental in justification.”

Doug replied that he is not affirming that infused righteousness is instrumental in justification but rather highlighting a tension: “Phil, no. I am highlighting a tension between the WCF on infused/imputed and the traditional stopwatch ordo as developed by Perkins. In stopwatch world, regeneration > repentance > faith > justification.”

Phil insisted upon the important difference between infused grace and infused righteousness: “It’s a serious mistake to suggest that righteousness is “infused” at all. Leading Reformers DID speak of “infused grace.” But _grace_ and _righteousness_ are not synonyms.”

Doug agreed, but insisted that there is still a point here that signals a tension that warrants discussion amongst ourselves: “And Phil, I think we agree. A righteousness-fluid is not poured into me. But my new heart, unlike the old one, is righteous. And it was put into me.”

By way of summarizing the matter, Doug raises the question, “According to the commonly held ordo salutis, how is it that we get a righteous heart (regeneration) before we get the righteousness of Christ (justification)?”

Many may believe the question is answered by the simple affirmation that this “order” is not chronological but logical, “We do not affirm that regeneration precedes justification temporally, but only logically.” That is all very well and good. But does it truly resolve the tension? The question still remains, “How is it that we receive a righteous heart logically prior to the imputed righteousness of Christ via justification?”

I will not shake a stick at the man who says, “I don’t know, but I am not worried about it. I accept it because it is revealed, and ‘the secret things belong to God and the things revealed belong to us’ (Deuteronomy 29:29). While I’m at it, let me say with David, ‘Neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me’ (Psalm 131:1)”. If that is your inclination, I will simply say amen, all is well, and let’s go have some lunch. But there are others who can be righteously concerned with the question. This particular question is not some irrelevant theological musing or guilty of the “curiosity” that Augustine warns us about.

Indeed, the Reformed have had a good bit to say about it. And, at least for me, I find great help from Herman Bavinck’s covenantal resolution to the matter. I am downright suspicious that a covenantal resolution to the matter is what Doug was up to when he posted his “Discuss Among Yourselves” quote in the first place. One final note before quoting a whole heap of Bavinck. The quotes that follow may indeed raise many questions. The covenantal background Bavinck provides is quite foreign, not only to our American evangelical context. But it is foreign to much of our Reformed and Evangelical context, which has very strong Credobaptist assumptions even among a good bit of the Presbyterians. An old Scottish Presbyterian, a top-shelf theologian, once told me in a deep and compelling Scottish accent, “Oh, Jared, the American Presbyterians have lost their heritage.” 

Yes, I know Bavinck is not a Scotsman or an American. But, he is quite helpful and we have a good bit of recovery work to do. So here is some Bavinck to that end:

The Covenant of Grace Precedes the Order of Salvation

One of Bavinck’s main points is that the covenant of grace is not an item to be placed along others within the order of salvation, but rather prior to the order of salvation and the ground of it: “The true and genuinely Reformed idea [is] that the covenant of grace does not first arise as a result of the order of salvation but precedes it and is its foundation and starting point. While it is true that the believer first, by faith, becomes aware that he or she belongs to the covenant of grace and to the number of the elect, the epistemological ground is distinct from the ontological ground” (emphasis mine) (Reformed Dogmatics: Volume 3, pg. 524)

Now, there are different conceptions of the covenant of grace within our reformed and evangelical context, so I imagine many can get behind this simple assertion that the covenant of grace precedes the ordo. But a controversy is already starting to broil with Bavinck saying that the true believer by faith “becomes aware that he or she belongs to the covenant of grace.” He distinguishes between the “epistemological ground” (by faith we become aware that we belong to the covenant of grace) and the ontological ground (the reality that we belong to the covenant of grace).

Covenantal Benefits

A closely related point is that the benefits of grace are covenantal benefits. They are not benefits that fall out of the sky to the individual. They are benefits acquired by Christ in a covenantal way: “On the Christian position there can be no doubt that all the benefits of grace have been completely and solely acquired by Christ; hence, they are included in his person and lie prepared for his church in him. Nothing needs to be added to them from the side of humankind, for all is finished. And since these benefits are all covenant benefits, were acquired in the way of the covenant, and are distributed in the same covenantal way, there is no participation in those benefits except by communion with the person of Christ, who acquired and applies them as the mediator of the covenant” (emphasis mine) (Ibid, 591).

Here a resolution to Doug’s rightly acknowledged tension begins to arise. Bavinck says, “there is no participation in those benefits except by communion with the person of Christ.” In other words, we do not come to participate in the benefits of grace (regeneration being one of those benefits) apart from “communion with the person of Christ.” Along these lines, Bavinck explicity states that the covenant of grace precedes regeneration, “The covenant of grace precedes and is the foundation and starting point for the work of salvation. Regeneration, faith, and conversion are not preparations for but the benefits of covenantal fellowship of believers with God in Christ imparted to us by the Holy Spirit” (Ibid, 487).

That last line may sound upside down to some. When I as a preacher announce good news to the lost, am I not offering the covenantal terms to those who are outside and strangers to that covenant? Well, yes, that much is true. But there is more here, and that more is signaled by Bavinck. When I do that preaching, I am not simply offering covenantal terms to the lost, and the lost man is not simply responding by his free will (the Arminian position here). “But, I’m not an Arminian, I’m a good Calvinist,” you say. OK, then let’s go this way. When I do that preaching, I am not simply offering covenantal terms to the lost, and the lost man is not simply responding by the sovereign grace of God that strikes him like a lightning bolt from the sky. No, God strikes him from within the covenant, not from outside the covenant. As both the Westminster and 2nd London Baptist Confessions state: “Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe” (emphasis mine) (WCF 7.3).

The Lutheran Center of Gravity

Bavinck contrasts the Reformed Covenantal understanding with the Lutheran understanding, which in part captures the problem plaguing our 21st-century reformed and evangelical community. That problem is seen in that many view regeneration as a preparatory function and neglect that it is a benefit of the covenant of grace. The whole misguided approach moves the center of gravity from Christ to man. Bavinck writes,

“More precisely, [for the Lutheran] the center of gravity in the order of salvation is located in faith and justification. Calling, contrition, and regeneration only have a preparatory function. Actually they are not yet benefits of the covenant of grace; they, as it were, still operate apart from Christ and serve to lead the sinner to Christ. Only when people believe and by that faith embrace the righteousness of Christ does God accept them in Christ, forgive their sins, make them free from the law, adopt them as his children, incorporate them into fellowship with Christ, and so on. Everything depends on faith, specifically, on the act of believing. If a person exerts this power of faith, that person has everything and has it all at once: peace, comfort, life, and blessedness. But if that person neglects to exert it, everything becomes shaky, uncertain, amissible. The whole focus, therefore, is on keeping that faith. But just as Lutheran believers fail to understand the work of grace as arising from God’s eternal election and covenant, so they also fail to relate it to nature, the world, and humanity” (emphasis mine) (Ibid, 522).

Now Bavinck is just poking us in the eye. He says, “Only when people believe and by that faith embrace the righteousness of Christ does God accept them in Christ, forgive their sins . . . incorporate them into fellowship with Christ, and so on. Everything depends on faith.” The evangelicals among us say, “You better believe it, Bavinck, and you better tread lightly . . . you’re walking on holy ground.” 

“But,” says Bavinck

But, while Bavinck resonates with our evangelical spirit, he would caution us in the other direction. “I’m trying to explain the covenant here,” he says, “and it is really important. If you lose this covenant, you will lose the gospel you love and the faith alone by which man is justified.” Here’s the direct quote from Bavinck: 

“Now if the righteousness of Christ is acquired and applied not in the way of a covenant but realistically, then in the case of Christ it consists in the fact that he assumed our nature, and in that case the satisfaction and salvation accrues to all humans, for Christ assumed the nature of them all. Or it consists in the fact that everyone first acquires this physical and realistic unity with Christ only by regeneration or faith, and then it is impossible to see how Christ could make satisfaction in advance for those with whom he does not become one until they believe in him; then regeneration and faith run the risk of losing their ethical character, the focus is shifted from Christ to the Christian, and the benefits of the covenant are realized only after and by faith” (emphasis mine) (Ibid, 103).

These last words from Bavinck are important. If the righteousness of Christ is not acquired and applied in the way of a covenant, then “the benefits of the covenant are realized only after and by faith.” Without covenant, “everyone first acquires this “physical and realistic unity with Christ only by regeneration or faith.” In that case “it is impossible to see how Christ could make satisfaction in advance” for such people. Bavinck insists that by covenant, the saints have a “realistic unity” with Christ that precedes active regeneration and faith. Here it is important to distinguish between the benefits of the covenant (such as regeneration and justification) being “realized” and the benefits of the covenant being “appropriated” to a man. Bavinck insists that the benefits of the covenant are realized in Christ first, not in us. 

The Imputation of Christ to His Church Objectively Realized in Time in the Person of Christ

Bavinck writes, “The covenant of grace, the mystical union, the imputation of Christ to his church and of the church to Christ, all of which are rooted in eternity, are first of all objectively realized in time in the person of Christ, who was crucified, buried, raised, and glorified for and with his church” (emphasis mine) (Ibid, 591).

While regeneration and justification are objectively realized in Christ’s person, along with our mystical union with Him and His imputation to us, active faith is still essential for the appropriation of regeneration and justification. We can make a distinction between these two dimensions of our salvation, but we should not separate them—”Yet, just as earlier we made a distinction between the decree and its fulfillment, so here we must distinguish between the acquisition and the application of salvation. Kaftan is admittedly correct when he remarks that the doctrines of objective and subjective salvation may not be split up. But . . . that distinction is something very different from separation” (emphasis mine) (Ibid, 591).

Summing It Up

In summary, if you do not have salvation (i.e., regeneration, justification, faith, etc.) in covenant, and if you do not have the realization of Christ imputed to His church by means of that covenant in the person of Christ, then you indeed have a problem with justification (and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness) following logically after regeneration. But, Bavinck demonstrates that these things are precisely what we have: salvation in covenant and the realization of Christ imputed to His church by means of that covenant in the person of Christ. 

To put it another way, regeneration is found in Christ in the first place; it is objectively realized in Christ to whom we have been bound by the covenant of grace, which itself was realized in the person of Christ and established in eternity. A mystical union binds Christ and His church prior to active faith,which is not a preparation for entrance into the covenant of grace but a benefit that flows from it.

The Imputation of Christ Precedes Regeneration

In Bavinck’s own words,

“Regeneration, faith, and conversion are not preparations that occur apart from Christ and the covenant of grace nor conditions that a person has to meet in toto or in part in his or her own strength to be incorporated in that covenant. Rather, they are benefits that already flow from the covenant of grace, the mystical union, the granting of Christ’s person. The Holy Spirit, who is the author of these benefits, was acquired by Christ for his own. Hence the imputation of Christ precedes the gift of the Spirit, and regeneration, faith, and conversion do not first lead us to Christ but are taken from Christ by the Holy Spirit and imparted to his own” (emphasis mine) (Ibid, 525).

Now we see where the line is drawn. My sense is that this statement from Bavinck, “the imputation of Christ precedes the gift of the Spirit, and regeneration,” would split a room, with the majority disagreeing with him. And my suspicion is that the reason for said disagreement is that we do not have the same covenantal understanding and instincts that Bavinck possesses. Here he is one final time on the matter:

“The bestowal of Christ on the church, therefore, also in this sense precedes the church’s acceptance of Christ by faith. How else could we receive the Holy Spirit, the grace of regeneration, and the gift of faith, all of which after all were acquired by Christ and are his possession? It is therefore not the case that we first repent or are reborn by the Holy Spirit and receive faith without Christ, in order then to go with them to Christ, to accept his righteousness, and are thus justified by Christ. But just as all the benefits of grace come to us from the good pleasure of the Father, so they now proceed from the fullness of Christ” (emphasis mine) (Ibid, 591).

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On the Sexual Superiority of Women

There was a bit of a ruckus online in the wake of Canon Press republishing George Gilder’s book Men and Marriage. It has taken me a minute to get up to speed on just what people are upset about. I’m suspicious that the flak is one part folks spending too much energy on Twitter, one part folks upset who don’t read broadly, and one part young men who don’t yet have a lot of time in the game yet being a little quick on the trigger. Regarding this last group, I should add that I am thirty-eight years old, which means I am young enough to be called a young man by the grayheads; and I am old enough to have seven children, teenagers, and tall tales about what an athlete I was back when I played college ball.

As a quick aside, I think I upset some within this group with a recent post in which I discouraged the excessive sharing of workout pics while calling your fellow gym mate a “king.” I am suspicious that there is some overlap between the group that was upset with me about that recent post, and the group that is upset with Canon for publishing George Gilder. I’m still getting my bearings. But I was told recently that there is a zealous young cohort that is even bringing back having nothing for breakfast but cigarettes and coffee. If my intel is solid, I will just say that I am impressed. And I encourage you to keep that kind of thing up as long as it keeps working for you. While I cannot swing the cigarettes for breakfast, and I can’t get on board with all the workout pictures, as far as I am aware, I’m with you on all of the important things. I am on team. 

I bring up this younger generation because that is where I think much of the heat is coming from on the Gilder book. This kerfluffle does not seem to be all smoke. There is something worth getting nailed down here. Before attempting to get it nailed down, I recommend the following three links to pieces from Scott Yenor, Doug Wilson, and Toby Sumpter. They are all quite good on the Gilder shakeup. 

Now for that item I think we need to nail down, namely the sexual superiority of women. Much of the concern arose from the following quote from Gilder: 

“The difference between the sexes gives the woman the superior position in most sexual encounters. The man may push and posture, but the woman must decide. He is driven; she must set the terms and conditions, goals and destinations of the journey. Her faculty of great natural restraint and selectivity makes the woman the sexual judge and executive, finally appraising the offerings of men, favoring one and rejecting another, and telling them what they must do to be saved or chosen. Managing the sexual nature of a healthy society, women impose the disciplines, make the choices, and summon the male efforts that support it.”

It is not surprising to me that a generation of men who are fed up with feminism balk at this quote. We have all had enough of Disney’s depiction of a numb-skull father being disrespected by his daughter, who lives under his yoke of bondage as she looks for liberty in all of the wrong places. But I do think that there may be something in the water if this quote has you so hot under the collar that you can’t see the truth in it. 

Put simply, woman is more glorious than man. Paul says, “Man is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man” (1 Corinthians 11:7). We do not need biblical revelation for this point. Just look at the two creatures standing side by side. This is not a difficult observation. Man has his strength, woman her beauty.

“But,” you ask, “Gilder sure seems to put the lady in charge of sexual matters.” OK, I will bite. In the first place, I wouldn’t have said it just like Gilder did. In the second place, don’t take all the fun out of the world. The husband is the head of his wife, yes. And this certainly applies to sex. Wives submit themselves to their own husbands, and this certainly applies to sex. And the Bible also says that a wife has the right to control her husband’s body. That’s right, the right to control. And that power—to control your own body—is a power that you do not have: “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife (1 Corinthians 7:4). So you have power over her body, and she does not have power over her own body. At the same time, she has power over your body, and you do not have power over your own body. This is the point where you are to laugh like a good Chestertonian and say something like, “The foolishness of God confounds the wisdom of this age.”

Here’s another thing. If a young man finds himself dumbstruck by the beauty of a lady, and in order to take her as a wife he must get the nod from her father (the way to go of course), then his interest in the fair lady does him all sorts of good. He really shapes up, which is a good thing for society. That basic principle is what Gilder is driving at in the quote above.

If I might throw a bit more salt into this soup that may now be at a rolling boil, Solomon tells us that the woman’s sexual glory is “more terrible than an army with banners” (Song of Solomon 6:4, 10). Habakkuk uses this same language to talk about the armies of the Chaldeans who were dreadful with “horses swifter than leopards” and “more fierce than evening wolves” (Habakkuk 1:8). Now, I’m not recommending that you tell your wife she is more fierce than an evening wolf. Use the Solomonic poetry at your own risk.

But I am saying that you should appreciate what Gilder is driving at: Women are sexually superior to us. That’s why many of us have gone to stealing them, and then we have fought wars over them. Read your Herodotus, man. That is why the angels once came down and tried to steal the women from us—and yes, that is another story to be told at another time. 

For now, the sexual superiority of women is why, when men act as they ought, they go to war to protect women and the children that crop up in their wombs. I have taught the principle of male leadership many times. Men who understand that God simply wired a patriarchal world are not thrown off by acknowledging the ways in which women are superior. In fact, acknowledging that very thing can motivate many men to marry one of these creatures and become her head. We need to see more of that kind of thing so go ahead and go get a copy of Gilder’s book: Men and Marriage at dadsareback.com.

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They Shall Plant Vineyards and Eat the Fruit

If you want to know how much trouble we can get into for disbelieving very good news from the LORD, then look no farther than Zacharias, John the Baptist’s father. The angel Gabriel told him that his barren wife, Elizabeth, would have a child even in her old age. His son would be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from the womb, and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. Zacharias, surely overwhelmed at such a prospect, responded with something like, “Are you sure? Because my wife is very old.” For his unbelief, he was not able to speak until after John’s birth.

We shouldn’t think, “Oh, that naughty Zacharias, we wouldn’t do that.” He was a priest. He was called a righteous man. And he was burning incense in the temple, much like we are now when this whole affair took place. The tidings from Gabriel weren’t just medium-grade glad. They were cosmic glad. So are ours today from Isaiah’s prophecy. 

Summary of the Text: Isaiah 65:17-25

God declares that he will create new heavens and a new earth (v. 17). He will create Jerusalem, rejoice in her, and banish her tears (v. 18-19). The child shall die at a hundred years old in this new creation, and sinners will be cursed (v. 20). But His chosen people will work and enjoy the labor of their hands (v. 21-22). The fruit they produce will not spoil because they are the seed of the blessed of the LORD, and their children with them (v. 23). In this new creation, God will answer their requests before they even have the prayer meeting (v. 24). In this new heavens and new earth, peace reigns on the holy mountain of the LORD; the serpent eats the dust (v. 25).

I Create Jerusalem 

Many saints are quite familiar with the truth that God makes us new. He washes us. He replaces our heart of stone with a heart of flesh. In this, we rejoice and will continue to rejoice. But Isaiah tells us that God not only makes us new, but He also makes our surroundings new. He makes above us and below us new. He also makes a New Jerusalem.

Some want to push these new surroundings and the promises associated with them out to the end of the world at Jesus’ final coming. But we have sinners being accursed in this new heavens and new earth. We also have death. That signals to us that the new heavens and new earth which God creates have already come upon us with the first advent of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When Jesus came to earth, He came to cut a new covenant. The blood of that new covenant is like new wine. Christ said new wine requires new wineskins. Due to fermentation, old wineskins will burst if you put new wine in them. The old age could never handle what Christ came to do. He has come to save us, yes. And so look at yourself in the mirror and rejoice. And He has come to save the whole world. So take a look around and rejoice at just how widespread the glad tidings are.

Planting Vineyards, Eating Fruit

In this new age, the promise is that we will build houses and inhabit them, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. This is a potent promise, an AR-15 promise. So we really should make sure we know how to operate this one.

We are not permitted to take this promise and test God. “Ah, God said I will plant and eat the fruit, so I will plant in winter and reap in spring.” That is not faith talking. And faith is always the way the promises of God are appropriated.

Also, we may not mistake God for a cosmic vending machine. God’s promises are not fulfilled robotically. And they are not fulfilled impersonally. The promises we trust are not random road signs that we spot without knowing who hammered them into the ground. We trust the words of our Father.

With that said, He has told us that we will reap what we sow. We should labor with that confidence. “You will not be blessed in your doing,” is a lie. “Maybe you will be and maybe you won’t be but you just need to work anyway” is a more subtle form of the lie. You are not to simply work. You are to work in faith. And God has said that the fruit of your hands will not be eaten by your enemies. 

And Their Offspring With Them

In this new Jerusalem that God creates, He blesses His elect and their children. This is one of the clearest and most invigorating promises in a book full of promises—”they [mine elect] are the seed of the blessed of the LORD, and their offspring with them” (v. 23). 

There are two basic ditches to parenting. On one side, you abdicate your responsibility to train them, letting them run wild without instruction, correction, and parental intercession through prayer. On the other side, you attempt to assume the responsibility of teaching and discipline, but you do so as worried as a squirrel in a nutless world facing the encroachment of a long winter.

Both of these ditches are marked by the same lack of faith. Has God really said that your children are with you as seed of the blessed of the LORD? Why yes, yes He has.

Before They Call

In this new creation in which we find ourselves, God meets our needs before we ask. Where were you when the LORD came to you? In the grave. What were you asking Him for when you were six feet under in your sins? Nothing. The same sovereign grace that met us back then, keeps meeting us in this new heavens and new earth. The Christ who gave you life keeps giving you life. The Christ who saved you keeps saving you. Your job is to grow to expect this without ever getting quite used to it. Look around, you are chest deep in the blessings of God. When you are standing there in the days to come neck deep in the blessings of God, go ahead and ask Him, “Lord what I have done to deserve this? I didn’t even ask for this much” His reply will be, “Be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create” (Isaiah 65:18).

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Manhood Is Made, Not Born: A George Gilder “Men and Marriage” Favorite

Canon Press is doing a George Gilder documentary and republishing his classic, Men and Marriage. In honor of this delightful occasion, here is one of my favorites from Gilder’s Men and Marriage with a few thoughts scattered in the wake—”Throughout the literature of feminism there runs a puzzled complaint: ‘Why can’t men be men and just relax?’ The reason is that, unlike femininity, relaxed masculinity is at bottom empty, a limp nullity. While the female body is full of internal potentiality, the male is internally barren (from the Old French bar, meaning man). Manhood at the most basic level can be validated and expressed only in action . . . In all its specific expressions, manhood is made, not born.” (Gilder, Men and Marriage)

This is simply some good old horse sense. This is three yards and a cloud of dust teaching on masculinity that can only be lost on our lazy, inflated, on the dole generation. Ask your grandfather if he is still around. Men are made to work. We work, or we die. 

The guild of soft evangelicals may fear I’m going Jesus and John Wayne on them. My first reply is: we can use a good bit more of Jesus and John Wayne. My second reply is that there is nothing superficial or machismo to this point about manhood being expressed in action. Men are made to act and lead in a way that is distinct from women. This purpose is baked throughout man’s nature and it runs all the way down to his soul. 

The command God gave our father Adam in the garden was to work it and keep it. This command was not contrary to his nature. He delighted to do that which God commanded. His constitution was suited to the job assignment of leadership and carrying the primacy of responsibility. Things are a bit different with the female. I am not saying that women are not hard workers. Anyone who has even glanced at Proverbs 31 knows the flurry of goods that flows from the fingertips of a woman who fears the LORD. She is suited for work like the man. But God fashioned the fairer sex as a helper. This quality is seasoned throughout her nature, and this too runs all the way down to her soul. She was made to be planted. She was made soil. And in her grows fruit that will live on forever. As Gilder said, her very body is full of internal potentiality.

The man, however, is not the one who is planted, but the one who plants. He can and does help of course. You could list several examples of men not always being in the captain’s seat. But that does not discard the point that to lead is of men’s nature, and to help is of women’s nature. Things have gone topsy turvy and the men have either grown limp or frozen up unsure of how to operate in this feminized society. As Wodehouse once put it, the men have stiffened from head to foot like somebody in the Middle Ages on whom the local wizard had cast a spell.

Earlier generations shake their heads in laughter at just how confused we have become. This point regarding the natural distinction between male and female was nothing extraordinary to them. Here is C. S. Lewis for example, 

“‘There are no servants here,’ said Mother Dimble, ‘and we all do the work. The women do it one day and the men the next. What? No, it’s a very sensible arrangement. The Director’s idea is that men and women can’t do housework together without quarreling. There’s something in it. Of course, it doesn’t do to look at the cups too closely on the men’s day, but on the whole we get along pretty well.’ ‘But why should they quarrel?’ asked Jane. ‘Different methods, my dear. Men can’t help in a job, you know. The can be induced to do it: not to help while you’re doing it. At least, it makes them grumpy.'”

Lewis has a way of getting moderns to swallow down his historic Christian ideas. But my bet is several people will still choke on this one. They will say, “Do you mean to tell me that a man is not to help out around the house?” But you who ask this question have seen just what Clive describes. 

The present structure of our society is cockeyed. The various waves of feminism have washed over us such that we don’t realize just how far we have strayed. Gilder rightly says manhood is made, not born. But how do you build men in a culture where everyone gets a medal? How do you raise up men to be godly rulers when their political and military opponents wear skirts? We live in a society where women have assumed power and authority that simply was not designed for their taking. This is not a knock to the women. As it was in the garden, so it is today, “The degree to which women take power seems to depend on the extent to which the men are absent.” (George Gilder, Men and Marriage)

So a message to the men: It is time to rebuild. A good place to start would be Gilder’s Men and Marriage. Get your copy at dadsareback.com

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