Jared C. Wilson's Blog, page 68

Conference Media

Audio and video from the 2013 Gospel Coalition Conference is now uploaded and ready to enjoy.

Also, the audio from the recent Men and Women of Wisdom Conference in Hingham, Mass. featuring Ray and Jani Ortlund and myself is now up.

What to Do When Met with a Beggar

C.S. Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham tells the story of Lewis and a friend walking along the street one day when a beggar approached them asking for money. Lewis’s friend kept walking, but Lewis stopped and emptied his wallet, giving the beggar its contents. After rejoining his friend, he was chastised. “You shouldn’t have done that, Jack. He’ll only spend it all on drink.” Lewis replied, “Well, that’s what I was going to do.”

The situation is a common one and ages old. We are no more faced with beggars today than the disciples were in the first century. In urban settings or rural, the specific approach and contexts may differ, but the neediness and the opportunities do not. What is your response when a stranger asks for money?

You are walking down the street or pulling out of the grocery store parking lot and you are confronted by a haggard figure, perhaps holding a sign, perhaps telling a familiar story about being homeless or hungry or needing to travel to a certain location or having a car out of gas. The stories can be eerily similar. I’ve heard the “I’m trying to get to _______ but don’t have money for gas” story quite a bit. I have offered before to go to the gas station and put gas in their car. Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they don’t. I have offered to get food instead of giving them cash for food. Sometimes they agree. Sometimes they don’t.

Let’s make the options simple for the sake of the gist of the argument. A hand is outstretched before you. Do you put money in it or do you decline?

Most of us at that point begin to measure up the man (or woman) before us. Do they look honest? Do they look authentically down and out? Do they look like an alcoholic or drug addict? Then the street smarts kick in. They will probably just spend it on alcohol. I am probably just supporting their drug habit. If they put just as much energy into finding a job as begging for money, they wouldn’t be in this situation. If they weren’t so lazy, they wouldn’t have to suffer this indignity. By giving them money I’m just enabling them, not actually helping them.

The street smarts — based on assumptions and presumptions, not actual knowledge of the person — are thinly veiled justifications for not helping. They help us feel better about saying no.

What does Jesus say?

The Sermon on the Mount is so impractical. So inefficient. If you were designing a religious system for maximum ease and self-actualization, this would not be it. The whole thing seems designed to make its adherents “get taken” left and right. Somebody asks for my coat, and I give them my shirt too? Somebody asks for a mile, and I go with them two? Somebody hits me, and I offer them my other cheek? This isn’t only not street smart, it isn’t even common sense. Jesus is asking us to put ourselves in some very vulnerable positions. And in Matthew 5:42, he says:

Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

Immediately we begin thinking of all sorts of loopholes and footnoted caveats to explain that this doesn’t mean exactly what it says. And maybe some of those caveats are right. For instance, if you know someone’s going to waste money on an addiction, not just suspect they are, it’s probably wiser to give them another form of help — a meal, loving counsel, a friendship. We only ought to take care that our refusal to give what is being asked is based on facts, not imagination, and is not the “plausible argument” we’re using to justify our disobedience to a pretty clear command that comes with no asterisks. “Give to the one who begs from you.”

Is Jesus smart? Does Jesus know the way the world actually is? Can he be trusted in this moment to give us sound counsel?

Here’s what I think Jesus wants us to do, and our response to a beggar gives us the opportunity to do it:

1) Hold our money loosely. I think that’s what Lewis was getting at in the exchange with his friend. He was comparing the beggar’s suspected frivolity with his own known frivolity. Only in the economy of self-justification is my spending $3 on a coffee or even a beer deemed more virtuous than, by presumption, a beggar’s doing the same.

2) Trust him with people’s sins. Maybe that person will squander what you give them. It’s not our job to manage the expected sins of others. It’s our job to be faithful to God, obedient to his commands. So the better hedging of the bets here is to give out of obedience and trust the beggar’s financial management to the only God who judges the living and the dead. Let us give, and let us let the Lord sort it out.

In one of his Letters to an American Lady, from which we get another version of the “spend it all on drink” story, Lewis writes these other pertinent words on giving to beggars:

It will not bother me in the hour of death to reflect that I have been “had for a sucker” by any number of impostors; but it would be a torment to know that one had refused even one person in need.

No, it’s not street smart or common sense to give to those who ask of you, but it is wise. Very, very wise. It is wise to obey Matthew 5:42 with as few loopholes as you can attach to it because doing so says you obey God, not your suspicions, and you hold your money loosely because God is your God, not money. What you do with your money bears witness to what you worship.

I was had for a sucker last week. I felt pretty sure I was even before I knew I was. I was not surprised later to find out I’d been had. I had reminded myself of Matthew 5:42 in deciding to give the money out, and I reminded myself of Matthew 5:42 after I realized it was a mistake. I should have helped in one of a variety of other ways. Only God has 20/20 foresight. But it wasn’t just Matthew 5:42 and the Sermon on the Mount’s kingdom ethos in general that got me. It was this:

I picture myself as I truly was, apart from Christ, in the light of God’s holiness. Unclean, undesirable, unjustified. A beggar. Jesus could have taken one look at me and come up with infinite excuses not to help. In fact, because he is God, with the omniscience of being God, he didn’t have to presume or predict — he knew that throughout my life, even after salvation, I would waste his grace like the prodigal moron. And yet, unhesitatingly, eagerly, with all the love of him who is Love, he gave me no mere pittance, but lavished on me the immeasurable riches of his kindness and mercy, united me to himself in spirit, and guaranteed for me the inheritance owed himself. Try being stingy and common-sensible with that reality crowding out your brain.

Knowing the Bible: Romans

Video intros to the first slate of study guides in Crossway’s new Knowing the Bible series have been added to their website. I was honored to have contributed the installment on Paul’s letter to the Romans. Below is some of my rambling about the roaring ocean waves of grace in that great epistle.

John Piper and Mark Driscoll Talked Me Off the Bridge

Via The Lookout:

On March 11 2005, Kevin Berthia wanted to take his life. He had climbed over the railing of the Golden Gate Bridge and was prepared to take a fatal jump into the San Francisco Bay when he heard a voice calling out to him from above.

It wasn’t the voice of a spiritual presence, but rather that of California Highway Patrol (CHP) Officer Kevin Briggs. The two talked for 60 life-changing minutes before Berthia decided to climb back up the bridge and give life another chance.

Eight years later, the pair reunited as part of an emotional ceremony honoring Briggs and other members of the CHP whose job is to verbally persuade suicidal men and women from jumping off that bridge.

“It was phenomenal,” Berthia, 30, told Yahoo News about his reunion with Briggs at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention public service ceremony.

May I be vulnerable with you for a moment? I anticipate some pushback if only because of those names you see up there in the title, but this is part of my story, part of my gospel wakefulness, and it is a part I will never deny or disavow.

I have met John Piper just once, a couple of years ago, when I was in Minneapolis to record some material with Desiring God Ministries in promotion of my book Gospel Wakefulness. On the way to what would be a brief visit to his home, I clutched in my hand a copy of my book to give him. I was told I ought to sign it, because he’d like that. I don’t remember what exactly I wrote inside that front cover but I know it included this line: “God used you to save my life.”

That is not an exaggeration. I don’t mean that Piper’s work was instrumental in my conversion. I professed saving faith in Christ as a child, before I’d ever heard of the man. I mean he saved my life. In my twenties, mired in the rotten fruit of my sin — the wreckage of my marriage, the dead-endings of my aspirations, and the bottoming out of my spirit — I spent a lot of hours feeling nothing and contemplating taking my own life. I dare not describe all of that to you, but I was in a bad way. We had a church but the teaching we received there was in the order of “seizing the day” based on inner potential. I had none of the latter so I could not manage the former. What kept me alive?

I was clinging to the hem of Christ’s garment then, sleeping in our guest bedroom, by which I mean living in the guest bedroom and spending plenty of nights face down on the carpet groaning. I was picking up the crumbs where I could find them. Two sources of bread. The podcasts of the aforementioned Pastors Mark and John. I was getting a vision of a very big Jesus with a very big grace for sinners from them. And the Spirit used their preaching in those days to work a gospel renaissance in my life, a miracle really. My wife can attest to that.

I read the story of this fellow talked off the bridge by a friend he didn’t know he had, recently reuniting to thank him, and I think of the strange places we find ourselves in life. I think of sitting down with Pastor John for those few minutes, his thumbing through my book and looking up the Wikipedia entry for Middletown Springs, Vermont on his Macbook. I know I’m not supposed to be a respecter of persons but I can be an admirer of them, and I can certainly be a “thanksgiver” of and for them.

Providence does make strange friendships. A black man in despair and a white cop. Two animated preachers (one a bit on the scream-o side) and a neurotic, depressed, “stuttering wimp” (to quote a girl’s appraisal of me in the 4th grade — still remember that, don’t you know). The God of the Universe and sinners.

Don’t stop preaching the gospel. And if you don’t preach the gospel, start. Then don’t stop. You don’t know whose life you are saving. Not you, really, but God.

God is in his gospel faithfully proclaimed doing his thing, talking people off bridges. Me? I’ll never forget. So I’ll never stop.

When the Real King Emerges, Things Stand Differently

“[I]f a king be reigning somewhere,but stays in his own house and does not let himself be seen, it often happens that some insubordinate fellows, taking advantage of his retirement, will have themselves proclaimed in his stead; and each of them, being invested with the semblance of kingship, misleads the simple who, because they cannot enter the palace and see the real king, are led astray by just hearing a king named. When the real king emerges, however, and appears to view, things stand differently. The insubordinate impostors are shown up by his presence, and men, seeing the real king, forsake those who previously misled them. In the same way the demons used formerly to impose on men, investing themselves with the honor due to God. But since the Word of God has been manifested in a body, and has made known to us His own Father, the fraud of the demons is stopped and made to disappear; and men, turning their eyes to the true God, Word of the Father, forsake the idols and come to know the true God.

“Now this is proof that Christ is God, the Word and Power of God. For whereas human things cease and the fact of Christ remains, it is clear to all that the things which cease are temporary, but that He Who remains is God and very Son of God, the sole-begotten Word.”

– Athanasius, On the Incarnation

Puny Gods

For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.

– 1 Chronicles 16:6

“For I know that the Lord is great,

and that our Lord is above all gods.

Whatever the Lord pleases, he does,

in heaven and on earth,

in the seas and all deeps.

He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth,

who makes lightnings for the rain

and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.”

– Psalm 135:5-7

The Wisdom of the Gospel, Authority, and Marital Sexuality

What follows is the manuscript for a talk titled “The Gospel and Marital Sexuality” that I presented at the Men and Women of Wisdom Conference last weekend in Hingham, Massachusetts. The audio of the talk will be released shortly, I am told. I want to stress that this is my preaching manuscript, not a transcript of all I said, so there will be some differences. There is of course a bit more fleshing out in the preaching audio than in what I pre-composed for my reference’s sake. But since I’ve received some requests for the manuscript, I present it below — after the jump, as they say — for anyone’s interest and, I hope, their blessing.

THE GOSPEL AND MARITAL SEXUALITY

1 Corinthians 7:1-5

My aim in this talk is to explicate how the wisdom of the gospel differs from “ordinary knowledge,” and how that distinction is important to a complementarian vision of sexuality.

By “complementarian” I mean the view that God created men and women as equals in personhood but as distinct in roles that reveal complementary truths about Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 7:1-5

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

2 weeks ago as Belgian Catholic Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard was speaking to a university group in Brussels on the topic of freedom of expression and blasphemy, a group of topless feminist protestors invaded the space, with slogans scrawled across their torsos, and began taunting the man and dousing him with water. They had the water in little bottles shaped like the Virgin Mary. They meant ostensibly to protest the Catholic Church’s stances on homosexuality, and they targeted Archbishop Leonard in particular b/c he has been fairly outspoken about the issue, most recently confirming for a Belgian newspaper that a Christian praxis for homosexuals should involve celibacy.

The scene was a very stark and disturbing one, and very powerful. Several newspapers ran photos, obscuring the protestors’ breasts of course. But what you see is four very obviously angry women in various states of screaming, dousing this man, who is seated, with water, while the man himself sat quietly, hands folded, eyes closed, praying. I don’t know anything else beyond this incident about Archbishop Leonard, but the image reminded me of the mental image of our Lord enduring, absorbing the taunts of his tormentors without saying a word.

Now, what were these nice ladies protesting? The Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality, yes, but something else, more fundamental. I think we see in this scene an isolated at this point extreme but an everyday occurrence for most of the post-Christendom west, and in the spiritual sense, a battle you and I wage every day of our lives. We see the fundamental protest in the slogans “Get the government out of the bedroom” and “My body; my choice” and – as I see from many on Twitter and Facebook on almost daily basis now – “Don’t judge.”

It is, I believe, a rejection of authority. We all want, in our flesh, life without restraint. “You’re not the boss of me.”

I was reminded of this last week as our adult Bible study class was taking in the latest installment in the DVD curriculum for Tim Keller’s “The Reason for God.” In each episode Keller sits down with a small group of skeptics and doubters of the Christian faith, a good representation of both religious and secular pluralists in America, and has a conversation about their objections to and challenges for Christian truth claims. In our session last week the subject of rules came up. Who makes these rules? Some God I’ve never seen? Some old book that has no relevance today? And something interesting happened. Eventually most of the participants in the conversation admitted, quite freely – not begrudgingly – that rules were good! Rules were good for society and for families and so on. And so they liked and appreciated and valued intrinsic rules, rules that were mutually agreed upon by people in society, arising from shared interest and the need to survive as a species and flourish as a culture. What they didn’t like was the idea of some external source, like a God for instance, telling them what to do. A rejection of authority.

We can’t help but see external authority as stifling, discouraging, disempowering. And I think largely, even in church cultures, we have trouble with authority not simply because often people in authority are authoritarian or simply poor leaders but because we have no vision of the gospel that helps us see authority as a blessing. And I think that in the area of complementarianism and egalitarianism, one glaring weakness of much of egalitarian arguments is the failure to grapple with biblical authority. Which is why you see so much egalitarianism in the progressive Christian world coming alongside affirmation of gay marriage, the rejection of the inerrancy of Scripture, the muddling of male and female in home and church leadership, etc. At root, it is a resentment of authority that might keep us from doing what we want.

But seeing authority through the eyes of the gospel – now, that would be wisdom.

Proverbs 29:18

Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.

A verse much misused. Some pastors use it to beholden others to their big ideas for ministry strategy.

The reality is not so flexible: Without a word from God, people will do what is right in their own eyes. But it is a blessing – a balm to life – to live God’s way.

Turning to 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 now, I think we see 4 levels of authority that the wisdom of the gospel helps us see as blessings in the area of marriage in general and sex in particular. Briefly, the four levels of authority are these:

1. The Church, and more specifically our elders

2. The institution of marriage itself (and by extension, the family unit)

3. Our spouse

4. The Lord God

These are obviously not in order of importance, but they are the order I see them reflected in the passage at hand.

4 layers of authority – the church, marriage institution (and the family unit), our spouse, and God – that don’t just give us rules for sex but provide safety, nourishment, encouragement, and the flourishing of families.

1 Corinthians 7:1-5

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”

Quoting their question. A Gnostic overreaction to the avoidance of fornication and sexual defilement.

The question Paul appears to be addressing demonstrates their interest in an imbalanced approach to authority that stifles the spirit of the laws against sex outside of the marriage covenant. They are in danger of “falling off the horse on the other side.” And we have seen this over-reach of authority — authority that stifles — throughout church history’s treatment of even sex within marriage:

Clement of Alexandria was said to have said you could only have sex at night, and you can’t enjoy it. Origen considered sex so sinful he castrated himself.

In the middle ages, the Church forbade sex between married couples up to 252 days of the year, leaving just 83 when it was permitted, assuming the woman was not menstruating, pregnant, or had just given birth. But you could still couldn’t enjoy it.

Is that God’s design? Is that the design behind Genesis 2:25 – “The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed”?

That’s not where Paul goes at all.

But the Corinthians have, surprisingly, done a good thing here BECAUSE THEY ASKED HIM.

Here is that first tier of God-given authority that is helpful for marital sexuality. They recognized Paul’s apostleship, his authority, the inspiration of the Spirit in his writing, and so they put the question before him.

We live in a day when even the evangelical church is suffering the erosion of the influence of church authority. As more and more communities of faith cease serving as communities and have become little more than spiritual entertainment complexes for religious consumers, the idea of an elder exercising authority is completely foreign. “Authority is for your grandfather’s church. We just want you to rock out and get some life coaching.”

I recall when a church in our past made the necessary but tragic choice of dismissing the lead pastor. The elders stood before the congregation and one of them shared with heavy heart the reasons for the pastor’s firing. On a fairly grand scale, the reaction was quite telling. It sounded like this: “We have elders?” And “Who are these elders?” “Can they do this?” The church had made it a point to push the authority of elders into the background of church life, so it should have been no surprise that many reared up at this decisive moment to say in essence, “You’re not the boss of me.”

But the Lord has designed the church to work a certain way. There are perhaps several valid expressions of that design church to church and denomination to denomination, but each will express under the conviction and guidance of the Spirit-breathed Word of God the idea of authority and submission in the church. And this is a GOOD thing!

Biblical authority in a church is so much helpful than the free-for-all that passes for religious experience. It can be refuge for Christians in distress, actually.

As an example: When a Christian woman is suffering from verbal abuse from her husband to the point of feeling weary and withered, on the verge of despair and depression – she feels she cannot take it to the law b/c there is no law against it – and she doesn’t want to pull the nuclear option of separation and divorce b/c she feels that is wrong. She wants another recourse, a *help* for her that will be a challenge to her husband. She needs help and her husband needs correction and discipline, where does she go? In a biblically functioning church, to the elders. And in a biblically functioning church, the elders will handle the situation with grace and respect but also authority.

But even in the larger sense, the church community itself – centered on the gospel – provides implicit authority – safeguards – for not just marital sexuality but all expressions of sexuality. How many young people struggling with lust and pornography, temptations to premarital sex, same-sex attraction, and the like might feel free to confront their struggles honestly and humbly if they could only feel connected to a gracious, non-shaming, but solid and helpful community in their church? But we do not provide these parameters, these safe spaces, and instead simply become a scheduled space for all the independents to be alone together once in a while. It is no wonder the core doctrines of the orthodox faith are in decline even among today’s professing evangelicals.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as more and more self-professing Christians have become consumeristic about church, they’ve become consumeristic about their marriages. There is a worship of self going on there.

And the gospel delivers us from that. Converting us from self to other, community

So the Corinthians say, “Paul, we’ve heard b/c of immorality it’s good just to not have sex at all. Help us out. What do you say?” with the willingness of heart to say “Whatever you say.”

Paul responds:

2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

Gives us the framework for sexual intimacy, the boundaries

Previous chapter, he says “flee sexual immorality” – connotes an abundance of things

Marriage is the context for sinless sex.

2nd tier of authority: The Marriage Institution itself.

Gen. 2:24 – “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

“one flesh” – this is covenant talk

Establishing covenant of marriage from the get-go, as the enduring picture of God’s love for his people, and Christ’s union with the church.

The Laws then give us parameters: Laws against adultery but also divorce. Instructions about sexual behavior but also lustful thoughts.

Why? Because God is a cosmic killjoy?

No, because first of all marriage is meant to be a picture of the gospel, and b/c the gospel is glorious and eternal, marriage is meant to be weighty and permanent.

We make marriage about us, God says it’s primarily about Christ.

We see this in the way we’ve turned marriage into a sentimental, romantic relationship rather than a covenantal union that provides space for sentiment and romance. The way we treat each other as fulfillers of US, using each other to achieve our own marital dreams and aspirations.

Even in the way we have come to distinguish family from marriage.

In the area of same-sex parents and unmarried parents: “Anybody makes a family.”

In the area of divorce: “The kids will be all right. Kids are resilient.”

In the area of marital aspirations: “Kids? Who wants kids?”

It’s a touchy subject, but can there be much doubt that when we divorced sex even philosophically from the prospect of procreation – and more generally, the flourishing of a family – we implicitly acknowledged that our sex is self-worship?

I’m not a quiver-full advocate – we have 2 children, not 10 – and I am not against the use of all methods of family planning – and you’ll notice that Paul says nothing here about procreation, which he well likely should have if sex is primarily for having children (and neither does the Song of Solomon emphasize procreation). But marital sex is inextricably tied to the flourishing of whole families, which of course includes the creation mandate of being fruitful and multiplying.

The marriage institution and its covenant and the family unit and its flourishing are good, helpful guides – coverings — for marital sexuality. When married couples have a sex life WITH EACH OTHER (certainly not with another person, but also not with their own minds, as in with a computer in the darkness of the study, and not with romance novels or soap operas or tabloid magazines), in other words, they are honoring their one-fleshed-ness AND investing in the radiant joy of their families. Ever seen married couples who have lived like platonic roommates over a length of time? Look at their kids. Do they often look happy? They may not know their parents aren’t enjoying romance, of course, but they do. There is something about moms and dads being in love with each other that makes kids feel safe, secure, happy, loved themselves.

And the shift now is from the marriage covenant in general to YOUR marriage covenant in particular:

3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Here is explicit authority talk. As it pertains to our bodies, the third tier of authority over us is our spouse.

Notice 2 things in those 2 verses:

1. The burden of responsibility is on the giver of rights, not the assumer of them. In other words, Paul is telling married persons to make it their responsibility to give to their spouses their conjugal rights, not make sure their spouses are giving them theirs.

It’s a subtle point but an important one. What happens in a marriage when two people are always concerned about what they each “deserve”?

Paul says, “you each serve the other,” as if each has authority over the other. What a beautiful romantic picture of Romans 12:10 – “Outdo one another showing honor.” – And 10,000 foot view of Paul’s words elsewhere about wives submitting and husbands serving. Distinct roles but complementary roles and mutuality of sacrifice. It is no wonder that he prefaces his important words on marriage in Ephesians 5 about submission and authority with the phrase, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

Gary Thomas in Sacred Marriage says that marriage exists not primarily to make us happy but to make us holy. Of course the happiness comes with the holiness, but we have to aim for the right one first. And if joy comes through Christlikeness, as the Scriptures promise, there can be nothing more joyful than giving my wife authority over my body as an act of sacrifice and service to her.

The key of course is mutuality here. If I have authority over her body but she does not have authority over mine, we don’t have the beautiful stalemate of Romans 12:10 and a picture of the complementary truths in the multifaceted person of the glorious Christ but instead a legalistic relationship, a harmful one – for her and eventually even for me.

2. The second thing we notice in these verses is the plural – “rights.” The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband

“Rights” implies a variety of desires – AND NON-DESIRES. This means I am giving my wife the right to have sex with me. But I also give her the right to say “Not tonight, honey. It’s been a long day and I’m really tired. I want to love you that way, but let’s try for tomorrow night.”

It means I am giving my wife the right to be sick or otherwise distressed or just flat-out disinterested without pressure from me to “give me MY rights.”

This view of authority and conjugal rights is vitally important for a Christ-like marriage, especially in marriages when a spouse may be dealing with trauma from abuse, recovery from illnesses, or just completely unable to enjoy intercourse (perhaps even ever) due to a disability or other preventative condition. We all know that sex is not marriage; so let’s all remember that marriage isn’t sex.

Giving our spouse the conjugal right to not have sex with us is a picture of authority that embodies the wisdom of the gospel because it seeks the good of the other not chiefly the pleasure of itself. Because that’s not love, is it?

So the grace-driven way to look at this passage is not that we have authority over our spouse’s body but that they have authority over ours. Without the grace of God motivating us and empowering us, in fact, this sort of stalemate of rights and desires becomes the recipe for disaster.

Why would God make us so different? Why, when it comes to sex, did he make women slow cookers and men microwaves?

So that only his grace could be trusted to help us overcome our selfishness and tend to the design of the other.

Only freedom in Christ creates the freedom to give up seeking my rights and set about seeking justice for yours. If I am hidden with Christ in God, I have nothing left to hide and if I’m secured in Christ, I have nothing left to protect. I consider myself dead, in fact, and live only in Christ, so I can pursue my wife’s good and her pleasure and her flourishing – and she mine – only because God has set us free in Christ from sin and shame. “I AM my beloved’s, and she is mine.”

And this of course is true for a holistic view of marital sexuality, not just what’s going on between the sheets. Why do I work out? When I work out, why do I work out? Not b/c I want to look great. I gave up on that a long time ago. But mostly b/c I know it honors my wife’s desire that I steward my body and be around a while for her and our children. She has authority over my body and so I go to the gym b/c my body is not mine to waste. It’s hers. And I want her to see I’m honoring her with it.

But before my body is hers – and before hers is mine – before mine is mine and hers is hers, we are, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism,

“Not our own, but belong–body and soul, in life and in death, to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all our sins with his precious blood, and has set us free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over us in such a way that not a hair can fall from our heads without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for our salvation. Because we belong to him, Christ, by His Holy Spirit, assures us of eternal life and makes us whole-heartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.”

Who has given us these authorities. Who has gifted to us the helpful coverings of the church, the covenant of marriage, and our marriage partners? The covenantal creator, God.

God is the primary and final authority over marital sexuality.

This is how Paul reflects the authority of God over marital sexuality:

5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

He has put marital sex right on the spiritual plane. He has given it a spiritual import. This is weighty business. This is spiritual warfare!

I don’t remember reading this in the Peretti novels!

This may make a great new come-on for your spouse, btw. You can say with a wink, “Baby, you feel like thwarting the devil tonight?”

This is of paramount importance to the complementarian view, as well, that God has placed sex within the sphere of spiritual defense – filled in its abstinence by prayer (not by taking up kickboxing or pottery) and used in its presence as an escape from temptation – as a way of placing himself right there in the bedroom with us. Sex was God’s idea. The multi-functional body parts were God’s idea. The nerve endings were God’s idea. The reason this is important for the complementarian viewpoint is b/c it reminds us that there is authority and submission in the bedroom as a reflection of our submission together to the authority of God.

Complementarians screw this up when they assume that marital sex ought to be tuned to the sexual appetites of the husband b/c he is the leader of the home and his wife is supposed to submit to him. But egalitarians screw this up when they assume that if both parties consent to something, that is the end of the matter.

1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God”

This means that it is possible to have consensual sex in marriage that dishonors God and each other. Even married couples can have sex in an ungodly manner. The marriage covenant does not sanctify every appetite. And not even does consent baptize every sexual act.

Mutual consent is a minimum, of course. But there is a God and neither husband nor wife is him.

And so just because a husband and wife may agree to use pornography in their sexual foreplay or agree to add bondage to their sexual repertoire or assume that any orifice constitutes a sexual opportunity does not mean these acts are consistent with sex that honors God, let alone that honors each other.

It would be just like Satan to tarnish even the great freedom of expression we have in the marital bedroom. Think of the ways many read Song of Solomon for instance as if it was a sex manual. As if sex was just about body parts. Like it’s supposed to be read like Ikea furniture instructions.

No, it’s POETRY. Romantic, sexually sensual poetry, yes, but poetry. When Adam first saw Eve he did not blurt out some blunt sexual blather, he sang a song.

That’s an instinct, really, not an “obedience.” It was a “praise” response to the beheld beauty.

In Proverbs 5:19, the young man is told to always rejoice in the wife of his youth, to let her breasts fill him with delight at all times. This means that the “easy” joy of the newlywed disposition is to be pursued, cultivated, felt throughout married life. But delight gets harder to come by through years of familiarity and conflict. As delight gets scarcer, the wisdom of the gospel must fill the space.

How does the gospel give us this wisdom? How does the gospel help me to delight in my wife 17 years into our marriage in the way I delighted in her 17 minutes into it? How does the gospel help me to cultivate the instinctual response of enjoying her breasts now (and into the future) as I did then? It happens this way:

When I see myself in the light of God’s holiness, I see how unworthy and unattractive I really am. And then I see that God despite his perfect perfection and my rebellious imperfection loves me totally and eternally, to the point of giving himself up for me in the sending of his Son to die for me. That now, though I am an undeserving sinner, I am an eternally justified saint. That in fact, God rejoices over me. That I, who deserve the condemnation of death and hell, am the apple of his eye.

Knowing all of that and more, then, with what right do I have to look at my wife with anything but approval and delight? It would be an affront to the gospel, a fist shaken at God to not delight in my wife at all times. And the beauty is that this instinct becomes more natural because it is supernatural, something that the Spirit develops in us the more we pursue marveling at the gospel of Jesus Christ. The more we stare with care at the glory of Christ, the more like him we will become.

And so in all the fun that sex is – or rather, can be – let us remember that it is making love, not simply making orgasms. Marital sex is expression of love for and service to each other in a reflection of the care and forethought and patience and joy Christ has given his bride.

I think one reason marriage is given as a covering for sex is so that we will remember that marriage is more important than sex. We often forget that. The culture has completely forgotten that. Let’s remember it in the church.

We see the rotten fruit of casting off authority in our culture. We are seeing more and more a reflection of the ruthless degradation rampant in the book of Judges, where we are told more than once that this is the result of “Every man doing what is right in his own eyes.” That sort of living is foolishness. The declaration that “Only God can judge me” is foolishness, especially since so many who say that go on living as if God won’t.

But wisdom means embracing the authority of God, and all that that authority means.

Our sex is so awkward, really. It is a great grace that God has given it to us but a great grace that we can be so bad at something that is still so helpful for the building up of our marriages, the health of our families, the endurance and stability of the marital institution in society, the joy even of our churches, and the glory of Christ Jesus. IF we will put a stake in the heart of our self-sovereignty and embrace the gracious yoke of God’s sovereign authority.

5 Things the Ascension Means

Today is Ascension Day, traditionally marked on the 40th day after Easter Sunday. The doctrine of Christ’s ascension has many implications. Here are just five.

1. Jesus is really alive.

The reality of Christ’s ascension, inextricable from the resurrection event, tells us that he did not raise from the dead only later to die again like Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, Eutychus, or Tabitha. Jesus’ body will not be found because he took its glorified tangibility to heaven.

2. Heaven is thicker than earth.

We tend to think of heaven as the ethereal place of disembodied spirits. And in a way it is. But Elijah is there. And Enoch. And so is the risen, glorified, incarnate Christ. Jesus is there, taking up material space. He is touchable, present. Clearly, heaven is not less real than earth but more. It is a thicker reality than our four-dimensional space, more vibrant, more colorful, more real.

3. God’s plan for human dominion of earth is being realized.

The first Adam and his helper Eve were charged with filling the earth and subduing it. They screwed it up. But God’s plans cannot be thwarted. Man will reflect God’s glory in dominion over creation. In the Incarnation, then, God sends his only Son to right the course, reverse the curse, and begin the restoration of all things. The second Adam does the job, and even in his glorification, the incarnational “miracle of addition” (see below) persists, fulfilling God’s plan for man to reflect divine glory in dominion over creation. The God-Man, who is the radiance of the glory of God, rules over the earth and is even now subduing his enemies. “The ascension means that a human being rules the universe” (Tim Keller). Just as God planned.

4. The Incarnation is an enduring miracle.

The Incarnation was a humbling of God’s Son, but not a lessening of him. As I’ve argued in Gospel Deeps, the Son maintained his omnipresence even in his Incarnation. (Historical theologians have traditionally called this perspective the extra calvinisticum.) But what the ascension means is that Jesus Christ forever remains the Christ who is Jesus. He did not revert back to intangibility. But his ascended incarnational state then is not an eternal limitation but a part of his ongoing efforts to fill all things. He takes up more space in the heavens and the earth now, not less. The Incarnation is a miracle with no expiration date.

5. The ascension is gospel for sinners!

Why? Because if, among the many things the gospel means, it means we are united with Christ through faith, it also means that where he is we will be also. It means we will go to heaven in spirit, and heaven will come to us in body. The ascension is the full fruition of the promise of Christ’s resurrection being the firstfruits of our own. The ascension means the gospel is better news than we even thought, gooder than good! Because it holds out the promise, the blessed hope, not just of life after death, but as N.T. Wright says, life after life after death. What a gracious God we have!

A 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12-Shaped Life

Pastor Matt Kruse of 7 Mile Road Church near Boston reflects on turning 40 and being spectacularly unspectacular for the kingdom:

I am thankful for men and women who leave a global, historical mark for Jesus.

But for most of us, life will be a lot less spectacular.

And we should be good with that. Wait, thrilled is a better word.

Question: Instead of obsessing about changing the world, what if we just gave ourselves to living in glad obedience to Jesus in the trenches of an ordinary life?

For me, this means:

loving a particular wife (the one I vowed to love, in all of her awesomeness and sinfulness)

raising two sons and two daughters to know and fear and love God with all they’ve got

loving my neighbors as they are given to me in different seasons of life

plying a trade as well as I can (which happens to be, in my case, for some reason, planting a church-planting church that I hope will result in the next 10 years with seeing 1500 Bostonians believing the gospel together, which I am excited about, and which I don’t think betrays the thrust of this post: I am not saying don’t be ambitious about what the Spirit might do through you; I am saying don’t miss the glory of a well-lived, simple life.)

working hard to be a faithful witness to the grace and glory of Jesus in greater Boston for however many years he gives me.

In other words, Matthew Kruse’s “ceiling,” even if I hit it, will not make for a very sexy Wikipedia page.

What it will make for is some small number of people who were not ignored by me on the way to some unattainable pipe dream, but instead loved and compelled to believe and revel in Jesus and His Gospel. I need to be content with that.

Go read the whole thing.

Traditionalism is Winning

So reasons Time Magazine’s Mary Eberstadt in a piece titled “In Battle Over Christianity, Orthodoxy is Winning”. A selection:

The sexual revolution has accomplished what even the fractious Reformation could not. It has divided Protestantism so deeply that traditionalist Anglicans now have more in common with traditionalist Lutherans or even Roman Catholics, say, than with the reformers in their own denominations. And as the proliferation of stricter Anglican churches of Africa go to show, this traditionalism has gone global.

A second fact embedded in this story also has worldwide repercussions. That traditionalist breakaway congregation in Virginia is larger than the one on the legally winning side — as in, much. Membership on the “losing” side, by one estimate, includes some 2,000 souls, as opposed to some 174 in the congregation moving in. And though exact numbers may not always be available, the larger trend is clear: this numerical division between traditionalists and reformers is also seen around the world. It’s the stricter Christian churches that typically have stronger and more vibrant congregations — as has been documented at least since Dean M. Kelley’s 1996 book, Why Conservative Churches Are Growing.

So, for example, the reform-minded Church of England has closed over 1,000 churches since 1980, with some later becoming discos, spas and mosques. The traditionalist Anglican churches of the Global South, on the other hand, are packed to overflowing and still growing fast. Within the Catholic Church, similarly, the most vibrant renewal movements — Comunione e Liberazione, Opus Dei, Juventutem — are also the most orthodox. Meanwhile, African missionaries from both Protestant and Catholic churches are being dispatched to the West in record numbers — in effect, re-evangelizing the very peoples who carried the cross to men and women of the subcontinent in the first place.

One explanation for the resiliency of religious traditionalism in an age of secularization is demographic. As Jonathan Last shows in his recent book What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, if enough people over time decide not to be fruitful and multiply, eventually their churches will disappear. That’s because secular people have far fewer children than do believers. The flip side of that observation is equally suggestive. In the future, it is the believers of all faiths whose children will appear disproportionately in an otherwise increasingly childless world, as political scientist Eric Kaufmann showed in his 2011 book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

As changing views on gay marriage, among others, go to show, secularization marches on. Traditionalists may be on the losing end of historic real estate, at least for now, as well as booed out of the public square for their views on sex. Down the road, though, they still look to possess something else critical — a growing congregation without which every church, after all, is just a bed and breakfast waiting to happen.

There perhaps is grounds for optimism in this historical and cultural logic, but traditionalist Christians in the West have two other great reasons for some reasoned sobriety about the cultural downgrade: 1) a global perspective, in the now, which shows enormous gain for traditionalist Christianity in Asia and Africa, 2) an eschatologically “gospeled” perspective, in the now and for the future, that Christ’s kingdom has come, is coming, and will come.

(HT: Challies)