Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 10

Nobility and Envy

Acts 17:1-15

Introduction

After the Fall, there are really only two kinds of community in the world: the fellowship of nobility and the fellowship of envy. Cain envied his brother, murdered him, and was exiled and built a city; Seth was the father of noble generations who found grace in the eyes of the Lord. 

The word “noble” literally means “good generation” (high-born). In a fallen world, the truly “high born” are the “reborn,” those born from above. Envy is the gangrene of bitter zeal. It is murderously destructive, while claiming to be concerned about truth and justice. Paul and Silas found examples of both nobility and envy in Thessalonica and Berea.

The Text: “Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures…” (Acts 17:1-15)

Summary of the Text

Departing Philippi, Paul and Silas went west and came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue, and Paul preached for three weeks, explaining from the Old Testament that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead, and that Jesus was therefore the Messiah (Acts 17:1-3). Some believed and joined Paul and Silas, but the Jews that did not believe became envious and stirred up a mob against their apparent host, a man named Jason, accusing them of creating disorder through their allegiance to another king (Acts 17:4-9). 

Paul and Silas slipped out of town that night and came to Berea, where there was another synagogue, and the Bereans were more noble and willing to study the Scriptures, many believing (Acts 17:10-12). But when the Jews of Thessalonica heard that Paul and Silas were preaching in Berea, they came and stirred up trouble there also, so that Paul left for Athens (Acts 17:13-15). 

The Messiah of the Old Testament

Paul’s primary tactic in preaching the gospel is by reading and explaining the Old Testament Scriptures and demonstrating that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah (Acts 17:2-3, 11). Christianity, like Judaism, is a religion of the book: the written word. This is a glorious testimony to the kind of God we serve: He is a God who has revealed Himself plainly and He does not change. He has spoken and His Word is true. And He is glorified in demonstrating His faithfulness (and consistency) over time (history and study). “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4). Jesus repeatedly appealed to the Scriptures for His authority (e.g. Lk. 4:21, 24:27), and the apostles did also (Acts 8:35, Rom. 1:2, 1 Cor. 15:3-4, 2 Tim. 3:15-16).

What Scriptures would Paul have appealed to? Notice that the particular argument was over whether the Messiah needed to suffer and rise from the dead (Acts 17:3). Favorite texts of the apostles were: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22, cf. Ps. 110). “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Is. 53:4-12). 

Envy & True Nobility

It is the preaching of Christ from those Scriptures that contrasts the Thessalonians and the Bereans. In one place, as some people believe, envy takes over and turns into a mob (Acts 17:5) and in the other place, we have true nobility that searches the Scriptures hungry for the truth (Acts 17:11). There’s nothing quite so galling to envious people but to point out how some people are better than them, but Luke will not be bullied: the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonian mob (Acts 17:11). But people are easily bullied and manipulated by the envious: what God has given (or not given) “hurts” the envious. The envious are often “concerned” about the “trouble” being caused by the more noble. The tenth commandment requires complete contentment and joy in our condition and estate, as well as our neighbors’. 

There were some noble-minded who believed and “joined” Paul and Silas and formed the first Christian church in Thessalonica (triggering the envy) (Acts 17:4), whom Paul wrote shortly after (1 Thessalonians). Paul was still concerned to address that toxic atmosphere when he described their conversion as becoming “followers of us, and of the Lord” (1 Thess. 1:6). And not stopping there, Paul underlined the genuine ties (mother/father) that were formed between them (1 Thess. 2:7, 11) and noted that they had become followers of the churches in Judea, suffering similar things as them (1 Thess. 2:14). The envious hate the fellowship of nobility and try to spoil it by dividing us or making us feel bad. But the fellowship of nobility is based on the apostolic commitment of pleasing God and not man (1 Thess. 2:4), and the Thessalonian believers demonstrated that they understood this by the fact that they received the gospel as the Word of God and not man (1 Thess. 2:13).

Applications

True nobility is content with all truth. Envy is selective and hates truth that gets in the way of its plans or narrative. Truth includes differences in gifts, abilities, wealth, happiness, hardships, and success. Nobility studies the truth in search of true wisdom; envy sorts the truth in search of its own demands. Nobility is patient and gracious, but envy seethes with bitterness, “zealously” resenting what seems to be injustice in the world, what seems “unfair.” James says this is where our fights and quarrels come from: our bitter envy (Js. 4:1:1-2).

All human cultures and communities function on the basis of imitation and similarity: the question is only whether it is noble imitation or envious imitation. Noble imitation joins others seeking to please God and not man, seeking the truth grounded in the Scriptures, content in the generosity of God. Envious imitation idolizes others and self: obsessing over others (even their faults) and obsessing over how you feel or what you have, which will ultimately become murderous because these idols are finite and cannot deliver (and if there is a god, he is apparently a tightfisted miser). In envious cultures, this idolatrous rage builds like an electrical charge until individuals blowup at their spouse/families or whole communities can erupt in mob violence. 

This is why Christ had to suffer. Envy says, if I can’t have it my way, then nobody should. Envy resents others having what seems better. So God sent the very best thing He had into the world knowing exactly what the envious would do to Him, determining to save them by it. “He was wounded for our transgressions… by His stripes we are healed.”

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Real Roman Trouble

Acts 16:16-40

Introduction

In 42 B.C. in the fields of Philippi in Macedonia, Greece, the armies of Brutus and Cassius collided with the armies of Mark Anthony and Octavian, and the latter soundly defeated the former. Octavian would become the emperor of the Roman Empire, taking the name Caesar Augustus and eventually lavish a great deal of prominence on the colony of Philippi as the site of that historic battle – many of the generals from the war would retire here. And the city became a “little Rome.”

Around 80 years later, in that same city, Paul and Silas began proclaiming the reign of another King, the Lord Jesus Christ, and a new way of being Roman. And as is the case wherever this gospel goes, it caused trouble – trouble that sets prisoners free (slaves of sin, slaves of demons, slaves of tyranny/injustice). 

The Text: “And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brough her masters much gain by soothsaying…” (Acts 16:16-40

Summary of the Text

After a possessed slave girl followed Paul around in Philippi for many days, crying out that they were servants of the Most High God, Paul commanded the demon to leave her, and when it did, this ruined her soothsaying abilities, and Paul and Silas were brought up on charges to the magistrates (Acts 16:16-21). With some mob pressure in the background, the magistrates stripped and beat Paul and Silas and imprisoned them (Acts 16:22-24). For all its pretended prestige, Rome clearly has a justice problem (mob pressure, no due process). At midnight, while Paul and Silas were singing praises to God, a great earthquake broke open the prison, but the prisoners remained and Paul saved the jailer’s life, preached the gospel to him, and he and his whole family were baptized immediately (Acts 16:25-34). The next day, the magistrates asked Paul and Silas to leave town quietly, but appealing to their Roman citizenship, they requested an official release and visited Lydia and the fledgling church before leaving (Acts 16:35-40). 

Principalities & Powers

Literally, it says that the girl had the “spirit of a python,” which refers to the Greek god Apollo and his shrine at Delphi. This may be a general description of the kind of soothsaying she was doing, or it may mean that she was from that shrine or received her power from there. Regardless, she made her masters money and after Paul commanded the demon to leave her, she no longer could (Acts 16:19). What do we make of this? 

In 1 Corinthians 8, Paul says that idols are nothing and there is only one God, but then he goes on to say that pagan sacrifices are offered to devils and we must not have any fellowship with them (1 Cor. 10:20-21). Likewise, the phrase “principalities and powers” sometimes refers to human authorities (Tit. 3:1) and clearly at other times refers to spiritual beings (Eph. 6:12). And Daniel referred to spiritual beings ruling Persia and Greece (Dan. 10:13, 20). Putting this together, we should say that there are more material explanations for some things than we realize, but there are also sometimes spiritual forces at work. Superstition, illusions, science, and fear can do a lot, and sometimes the spirit of Samuel gets called up from the dead (1 Sam. 28, cf. Dt. 18:11). C.S. Lewis pictures this well in the Last Battle. But in the resurrection and ascension, Christ has triumphed over all principalities and powers in heaven and on earth (Eph. 1:20-21, Col. 2:15). 

Earthquakes & Baptisms

While Luke seems to describe the earthquake as a simple providence, worship is described in the Bible as an earth-shaking reality (e.g. Ps. 29). Regardless, Paul and Silas singing followed by an earthquake is a fitting picture of what the gospel is doing in Philippi: ‘exceedingly troubling the city’ – but it’s troubling the real trouble, like Elijah with Ahab (Acts 16:20). This is what the gospel does: it shakes heaven and earth, so that “those things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Heb. 12:27). It is shaking Philippi so that only the true Philippi may remain. The gospel addresses the spiritual realities at the core of human life and society, and in so doing, transforms all of human life (business and commerce, entertainment and arts, politics and law, education and recreation) into what it was created to be. We see a microcosm of this principle in the salvation offer Paul gives the jailer in the middle of the night: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31). This covenantal mindset presses outward: We might add: and thy business, thy neighborhood, thy hobbies, thy city, and thy nation. 

Citizens of Rome & Heaven

This episode contrasts rival visions of what it means to be “Roman.” The masters of the slave girl protest Paul’s disruption of their customary way of “being Romans” (Acts 16:21), but Paul is actually embodying a new way of “being Roman” in Jesus Christ and requires the Philippian magistrates to at least partially acknowledge that (Acts 16:37-39). Later, when Paul writes the Philippians, he exhorts them to reckon their citizenship according to the gospel of Christ (Phil. 1:27) and as primarily rooted in heaven (Phil. 3:20). Being an imperial colony, they would have understood that this didn’t mean they were not loyal or patriotic citizens of Rome, but rather the true form of that citizenship was being impressed upon them from Heaven. By preaching and casting out demons and baptizing, Paul was teaching the citizens of Philippi how to be true Romans. 

I believe this is fundamentally why we have faced more trouble in Moscow than many places do. We are in a struggle over what the true Moscow is. Pagans do not mind religions that merely want to exist in the corners. We are here to see Moscow become what Jesus died and rose again for it to become: which means some things must go entirely and some things will be transformed – not by force but by grace. 

Applications

In the Ascension, we celebrate Christ seated at the right hand of the Father, far above all principalities and powers, and we set our affections on Him there so that we will be truly affective here in this world, in our city and nation (Col. 3:1-4). This is how we learn to be true Americans, true men, true women, true husbands and wives, businessmen and members of our various tribes. Christ restores our humanity.

We ought to fight the temptation to see demons behind every tree, and this includes the need for governing our thoughts to think about those things that are good, true, noble, and lovely: fight anxiety with joy (Phil. 4:8). But we should also pay close attention to the warnings in Scripture about where the Devil likes to creep in: do not let the sun go down on your wrath (Eph. 4:26-27); spouses, do not deprive one another sexually (1 Cor. 7:5); women, watch out for idle chatter (1 Tim. 5:13-15), and men, watch out for pride (1 Tim. 3:6). 

In a world gone mad, sanity is trouble. We are gospel-trouble makers, not out of spite or a desire for chaos. We are here to establish the worship of the Triune God, set prisoners free, teach true justice, and establish the customs of Christ in the marketplace, home, and governments for human flourishing. 

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In Defense of White People

Introduction
Well, apparently it has come to this. My mentions are R.I.P. as they say. Here I am writing a defense of white people. I guess I thought this went without saying, but white people are simply amazing. They can sunburn like the dickens. And that doesn’t stop them from going right back outside and getting sunburned again. I speak from personal experience. 

We also used to paint our faces blue and dance around trees and rocks and rape and pillage villages, until Christ saved us. We’ve done a lot of great things and a lot of terrible things. Alfred the Great and John Knox, George Washington and Stonewall Jackson were some of the high points, but Adolph Hitler and Margaret Sanger were definitely some of our low points. Also, I would like to apologize on behalf of white people everywhere for Vanilla Ice. He was White Boy Summer before it was even a thing, but definitely when it was still lame. But Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty and Johnny Cash have almost made up for it. 

I’m also thankful for my white privilege. I’m told this includes things like not being pulled over by cops as often in major metropolitan areas, and fewer fourth amendment frisks by the TSA. Although, the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if I start getting pulled over and frisked more, but enough about the FBI, which incidentally, is apparently run by a bunch of leprous white guys. The greatest privileges I enjoy I got from my parents and grandparents, who turns out, were all white. My dad has been faithful to my mom for 46 years and counting. My grandpa, armed with an eighth-grade education, enlisted in the Marines as a 15 year old (lying about his age), and after a stint in the South Pacific in World War II and a knee injury that may have saved his life, stayed married to my grandma for 70-some years, while working on oil rigs in Louisiana, Texas, and Alaska. Both sets of grandparents handed down the same enormous blessing, including a work ethic, emotional stability, and moderate middle class wealth that comes with it. But none of this was due to the amount of pigment in their skin, it was all God’s grace. What do I have that I did not receive? The same thing goes for our Western civilization and America in particular, all predominantly white, and pervasively impacted by the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

And because sinners sin, there have been people who hate this for a long time, most recently targeting this pervasively white Christian civilization with their DEI totalitolerance and affirmative oppression. And this is evil, unjust, and should be resisted by every lawful means available to us. Did you catch that? I’m saying that’s bad, they should stop, and we should do whatever we can to stop it. I’m told that Martin Luther didn’t really say this, but like everyone says Martin Luther said, “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him.” And that includes the current war on white Christian heterosexual men. 

Crazyland
Going back to Adam, that father of every skin hue, we have plunged into sin, and that means hating one another and being hated for virtually any excuse imaginable. Sin is a temporary insanity such that all attempts to explain it ultimately fail. Sin is crazy. And the proliferation of sin is crazyland. It doesn’t make sense. It imagines there is no God, pretends to be God, and then does abominations like adultery, slave trading, murdering babies, and anti-white discrimination. And sometimes we defend it by prostrating obsequiously in front of a giant painted rock or piece of carved wood. Sometimes we write fat books attempting to lecture the Almighty and our fellow man with the deep thoughts that occurred to us while we were loading our diapers with the same.  

But this doesn’t mean we don’t notice patterns. Our Adamic crazy tends to fall into very predictable ruts. There’s the caveman tyrannical-god motif. This was the plan of the builders of Babel: “Me Grub build big city be god,” and it has emerged many more times in the history of the world. But this barbaric machismo has lost its charm ever since Christ came into the world. There are still some pathetic attempts at it, but Christ’s resurrection has left the grasping for naked power seeming a little gauche except for five year-old boys on the playground and a few based bros on X. 

Ever since Jesus rose from the dead, the heroic story arc now consists in overcoming weakness and suffering before enjoying victory. Those who trust in Jesus join Him in this heroic narrative arc, both cosmically, as they hope in resurrected life after their own literal death, but also in miniature ways, as they embrace the suffering of obedience to Christ (taking up His cross) and experiencing miniature resurrections in this life, beginning with conversion itself but also the blessings that often follow simple obedience: the struggle to find, keep, and accomplish good work and the blessing of paychecks; the struggle to find and woo a good woman and the blessing of her companionship, respect, children, and home. 

And this is something that has changed about the nature of the world. When Christ rose from the dead, something fundamentally changed. The head of the serpent was mortally wounded, and his direct imperial and tyrannical power to deceive and destroy was weakened (although certainly not obliterated). But this means that the more effective means of grasping for power now imitates true power, which is at the right hand of the Father. And He walks with a limp. He rules with scars in His hands and feet and side. 

So there’s still that old Adamic nature, full of hate and animosity and malice, but the trend, ever since the resurrection, is toward what we may call “messianic appropriation.” While the occasional Nietzsche has attempted to defy this gravity, everyone feels it. Christ is at the right hand of the Father, and He got there by humbling Himself and taking on the form of a servant, obedient even to the most shameful and excruciating death of the Cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him. Christ conquered by getting low. 

This is where we get the idea of “playing the victim” and various attempts to weaponize weakness and victimhood. These are faux-messianic moves, pretending to get low: occupying buildings and requesting gluten-free handouts; going on hunger strikes and then announcing to the world that you’re feeling a little woozy. It’s Christo-Larping, play acting like Christ, soccer-flopping for control, throwing fits in the toy aisle until you get what you demand. 

These motifs have particular power in more or less Christian civilizations. Karl Marx popularized perhaps the most systematic and virulent form of this theory in his adaptation of Hegelian dialectic, refined and revised in various critical theories of the last century, claiming that human history is nothing but oppressors and oppressed, driven by a primordial envy and angst. The goal is a judo move of manipulation, trying to trick resurrection power out of an emotional fit. And they can succeed by two possible outcomes: one way is for you to give in and give them what they demand (but beware: they’ll be back for more tomorrow) or the other way they succeed is by getting you to react like them with your own emotional outburst, throwing your own right wing tantrum, which amounts to joining the mob. And if you get so sick and tired of their fits that you punch one of them (or worse), all the better since now they have a real shiner to complain about instead of the fake one they’ve been donning with makeup. You’ve handed them a real victim status, which is one of the main currencies in crazyland.   

The point here is not to try to explain what is going on in the heads of mobs. Many mobs form like the one in Ephesus with people chanting mantras for hours, about which they know not: some people shouting one thing, others shouting another, because hey, who doesn’t like a good mob catharsis?

Which is what we’re witnessing. We live in God’s world where envy and hatred are like an electrical charge that build and collect in societies searching for a scapegoat. Beginning with Cain, envy and hatred have always required blood. As Rene Girard has described in exquisite detail, Christ is the only perfect victim and therefore He is the only sacrifice where that electrical charge goes to actually die. 

So why do Leftists hate white people? Because white people are the majority race in the West (the oppressors), because they are the majority recipients of Christian blessings (authority, wealth, influence), and because angry people are always looking for an excuse to punch something. But neo-Marxist impulses aiming to destroy Christianity are driving the whole thing. It may be many layers up, but there are people watching this whole thing from the shadows waiting for the right pitch of cacophony (weakness) in which a totalitarian statist solution (salvation) will be widely welcomed in order to restore the “peace.” 

Conclusion: In Defense of Christian Nationalism 
Apparently, some folks on the right think that by identifying the central target of this hatred as Christ and Christian Civilization we are in some way lessening the need to fight or resist. That may be a temptation of others, but I’m a Christian Nationalist and I love my heritage and I’m determined to fight for it. But what made the Christian West and Christian America particularly glorious and worth fighting for was Christ Himself with us. He gave us a good land flowing with milk and honey, thousands of miles of navigable waterways, seaports, arable land, timber, oil fields, and prolific fish and game. He gave us laws of true justice, common law, due process, representative and limited government. He gave us creativity and industry and generous and adventurous hearts. He gave us fathers and mothers who loved and sacrificed in particular places, laboring to build chapels and cathedrals, composing motets and hymns, raising children, overcoming odds, resisting tyranny, defending their homelands, kneeling in prayer at bedsides. He gave us apple pies and mashed potatoes and barbecue and cold beer. And yes, God gave Rock and Roll to you.  

Yes, we are being targeted by many for our skin color, but we must not get distracted. They should stop that, and we should use every lawful means to make them stop. But while we can and must be deeply grateful for our particular families, cultures, traditions, and nations, our gratitude needs to be ordered rightly, and not by the prejudice of our enemies. One wit on Twitter said that you can’t “cure white guilt by pathologizing white pride,” but a whole lot depends on what we mean by “white pride.” God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. There’s a kind of white pride that’s a drunk tick, swollen on the blood of 65 million babies. And that kind of pride absolutely needs to be pathologized.

Susannah Roberts pointed out on X, “it’s not happening>it’s happening & it’s good” can be a right wing path too, & it’s currently happening with white Christian nationalism among ppl who 18 months ago wd have been appalled “how dare you call us white nationalists”>”we must develop white ethnic consciousness.” And she’s not wrong. 

Our enemies have been accusing us of being “white nationalists” and a bunch of us have been denying that vehemently because “white” is not what binds us together. White skin is not the point of integration. A bunch of us have been white, and we aren’t sorry about that at all. We’re thankful, and we love that gift of God. But it would be a massive blunder to think that our enemies are trying to help us find our point of unity. It isn’t skin pigmentation, but they would love for us to think so. This doesn’t mean their hatred doesn’t matter. It just means we shouldn’t take our marching orders from our enemies. They hate our white skin, our white heritage, our white culture. Got it. But if most of us convert to Islam or become liberal sops tomorrow, this culture war will burn out in about five minutes. The culture war is a clash of, well, cultures. And cultures are built on a “cult” – on a way of worship and ordering lives over generations in particular places according to that worship. Henry Van Til said that culture is religion externalized, and as it happened, the Christian religion got externalized in a bunch of white folks in the West, for which we are very grateful and unashamed. But that means that the center of our culture is not the whiteness; the center is Christ. We’re grateful for families; we’re grateful for all the gifts and the fact that the gifts have come down to us in a particular hue and pigmentation. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow. 

But if we start talking and acting like there’s something intrinsic in us that warrants those gifts, we know what God will do. And He will have every right to do it. I would very much like my white kids to be able to continue enjoying God’s blessings, and that means recognizing that they are all gifts of grace, completely undeserved, and therefore fundamentally have nothing do with anything that I am or have, and certainly therefore, nothing to do with the color of my skin, and I say all of this in defense of white people. 

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Justice and Joy

The world is constantly trying to press us into its mold through those who openly hate Christ but also through those who love Christ but are still heavily influenced by the world. One of the central goals is to stir up strife, hatred, and bitterness. 

James says that the center of our fighting is bitter envy. We lust and do not have and hate others who seem to have what we think we deserve or least what we think they don’t deserve. This happens with particular people: friends, siblings, coworkers, neighbors, and it is intentionally stirred up by emphasizing material differences in unbiblical ways: enmity between the sexes, different nationalities and political conflicts (Ukraine and Russia, Palestinians and Jews), ethnicities and skin color, envy over possessions or income levels. 

The problem is not with the differences themselves, the problem is with the malice and envy. The problem is bitterness and resentment. James says that if we want something we should just ask our Father. Some of the things we want, our Father would give us if we just ask. But there are other things, that we would not get because our intentions are evil. Our Heavenly Father gives life and health and many extravagant gifts to everyone in this world; He causes the rain to fall and the sun to shine for the good and the evil. He gives wicked men million dollar yachts. He gives evil women beauty and wealth. But He withholds no good thing from His own beloved children.

We are required to judge all things with biblical justice, and we are required to do it with peace and joy in our hearts. Not only that, we are to be filled with thanksgiving and compassion. God is slow to anger, abounding in mercy, not desiring that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. 

And you know this because You are here. You are here at the table of the Father, and you know that you don’t deserve it. None of us deserve to be here. We are only here because Christ was crucified for sinners like us. That is what this bread and wine mean: Christ crucified for sinners like us.

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The Wisdom of God

Acts 16:1-15

Introduction
The wisdom of God is foolishness to man – the center of this is the Cross — and we must understand deep in our bones that one of the central missions of God in the history of the world is to destroy the wisdom of man (1 Cor. 1:19). This doesn’t mean that we cannot truly grow in God’s wisdom, but it means that we must be incredibly skeptical of human wisdom. The goal of the history of the world is that no flesh would glory in His presence but all would glory in Him (1 Cor. 1:29-31). 

This wisdom is on display in Paul’s circumcision of Timothy, and in his obedience to the Holy Spirit leading him to the Philippian riverside to preach to a few Jewish women. You are practicing this heavenly wisdom when you sacrifice to provide a Christian education for your children, when you confess sin that nobody knows about, when you address sin instead of sweeping it under the carpet, tithing, joyful family worship, your commitment to do/believe whatever the Bible says. 

The Text: “Then came he to Derbe and Lystra: and behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman, which was a Jewess, and believed; but his father was a Greek…” (Acts 16:1-5)

Summary of the Text
After parting ways with Barnabas, Paul and Silas began visiting the cities from the first missionary journey, coming first to Derbe, where Paul and Barnabas had ended that first trip, where Paul recovered after being stoned in Lystra (Acts 16:1, 14:20-21). This time in Derbe, Paul recruited Timothy to join them, whose mother was a believing Jew but whose father was a Gentile, and so Paul had Timothy circumcised to prevent giving offence (Acts 16:2-3). 

Together, they visited and encouraged the churches in Phrygia, delivering the decision of the Jerusalem council, before heading north and then west to the coast by the leading of the Spirit (Acts 16:4-7). There in Troas, Paul saw a vision of a man from Macedonia calling for help, and Luke apparently joined them, as they sailed to northern Greece and came to the chief imperial city Philippi (Acts 16:8-12). On the Sabbath, since there were apparently not enough Jewish men to form a synagogue, they went down to the river side where Jewish women gathered for prayers, and God opened the heart of a woman named Lydia to believe the gospel, she and her household were baptized, and she invited the missionaries to lodge with her (Acts 16:13-15).

Circumcising Timothy
At first, this might seem confusing for Paul to circumcise Timothy, but this is a glorious illustration of gospel wisdom. Remember, prior to this, Paul had worked closely with Titus, a Greek, and had specifically resisted the implication that he needed to be circumcised (Gal. 2:3). And now, the Jerusalem Council has just explicitly ruled that circumcision is not necessary for Christians (Acts 15), and he’s reporting that to the churches and then the first thing Paul does is circumcise Timothy (Acts 16:3). A reasonable person might ask: What is up with that? The answer is in Galatians: “For brethren, ye have been called to liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another” (Gal. 5:13). Paul was willing to sacrifice his freedom to avoid giving offense in order to help build up new Christians into maturity (cf. Rom. 15:2, 1 Cor. 8:1). But when people began demanding circumcision, Paul drew a fierce line, and called that a “yoke of bondage,” and being in one of his more winsome moods, wrote that he wished those who made that kind of trouble would castrate themselves (Gal. 5:1-3, 12). 

But this decision with Timothy really is remarkable. This goes against everything in our flesh. And no doubt, a bunch of the “based bros” would have snickered amongst themselves and said things like “Ok, boomer,” as though Paul was losing his edge. But far from it: this was Paul demonstrating that he understood the wisdom of the gospel: Christ crucified. And underline this point: he didn’t have to do it. Circumcision was no little, painless thing but Paul was willing, happy even, to lay down freedom/comfort for the sake of the gospel (avoiding offense). But at the point where a preference/wisdom turned into a mandate, that confused the gospel, and Paul absolutely refused. This wisdom applies to drinking alcohol, dietary preferences, educational methods, health care decisions, and liturgical details, but don’t confuse matters of freedom/wisdom with the Spirit’s clear Word in the Bible. One way to check this is by asking: who gets the glory? 

The God Who Closes Doors and Opens Hearts
The Holy Spirit is cited several times in this passage: not allowing them to go further into Asia or Bithynia (Acts 16:6-7) and He is implied in the vision of the man from Macedonia (Acts 16:9). John Calvin points out that it might have felt like a significant let down to have ended up in Philippi after such a fruitful ministry in Asia Minor and for there to be no synagogue to preach in, only a group of Jewish women gathering for prayer at a river side. But undaunted, they preach the gospel, and the Lord opened Lydia’s heart (Acts 16:14). We are not apostles and we are not ordinarily led with the same kind of direct instructions or visions, but we do have the Spirit’s authoritative word in the Bible and we have witnessed the same powerful miracle every time someone comes to faith in Christ. Unless God opens hearts, all our attempts are futile. It really is incredible that the Lord of Universe is so dedicated to using human means: the Spirit directs Paul and Paul preaches, and God opens hearts. But the reason is so that we will understand more profoundly His wisdom and His glory, and our foolishness and weakness.  

Applications
So much here is about wisdom: when to defer, when to change course, when to stand firm, and following the Spirit. We need wisdom, and James says that we should ask since God gives wisdom generously to those who ask in faith (Js. 1:5-6). Later, James contrasts the meekness of wisdom from above with the carnal wisdom that is full of bitter envying (Js. 3:13-17). So this is the fruit of the kind of wisdom you actually have versus what you might think you have. 

Wisdom is not esoteric mysticism. It is not irrational or pure luck. Wisdom is the skill or art of living well in obedience to God for the edification of His people (cf. Ex. 35:30-36:2). Obedience to God is obedience to His Word/the Bible: the wise man hears and obeys and builds his house on the rock for the glory in God. The fool hears and disobeyed and builds his house on the sand. Edification means “building up.” God gave His Spirit of wisdom to Bezalel for the construction of the tabernacle, and the Spirit has now been poured out for the construction of the Church (1 Cor. 3). Edification is not doing whatever seems best to us or even what anyone prefers. Edification is assisting others to grow in holiness. If we can give up some of our freedom to help others become more like Christ, we should be glad to. However, if deferring would be disobedient to Christ or assisting others in moving further away from Christ, we must do all in our power to refuse.

We are artisans working on God’s house, for the salvation of the world, which seems kind of silly if you think about it, but this is God’s way, His wisdom. And the principle means that God is using is the preaching of Christ crucified for sinners.

Photo by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash

Worship is Surrender

The central thing we do is worship, but it’s important to underline what we mean. Worship is not in the first instance praise; worship is surrender. The word often translated “worship” literally means to bow down or kneel, and it is often coupled with other words that mean the same thing: “Oh come, let us worship [bow down] and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker” (Ps. 95:6). Worship acknowledges the holiness of God and trembles before Him: “Exalt the Lord our God, and worship [bow down] at His holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy” (Ps. 99:9). 

Worship means coming into the presence of the King of the Universe at His summons and laying everything that we are before Him: “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service/worship. And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:1-2). In Christian worship, the King of the Universe summons His servants to appear before Him. We are beloved servants, but we are servants nevertheless. He has purchased us with His blood. All that we are, body and soul, belongs to Him. Our money is His, our time is His, our house is His, our children are His, our marriage is His, our work is His. This is what it means to call Him “Lord/Master.” We gather to hear His authoritative Word with reverence and godly fear, and we are sent out to obey. 

This is why worship is central. We are servants of the Lord Jesus. We are under orders. He rescued us from sin and death and Hell, and He is worthy. We are here this morning to acknowledge that. We are here to bow down before Him. We are here to say that we are completely at His service. So this is the Call to Worship. We’re about to kneel down in just a moment to confess our sins: do not just go through that motion. Kneel before Your Maker. Surrender everything to Him in true humility and say, like Isaiah, “here I am, send me.” 

Worship is central because Christ is the center of the universe. And either we truly bow before Him and seek to obey Him, or else we are traitors, hypocrites, or rebels, and that affects everything.

Photo by Ismael Paramo on Unsplash

Anti-White Hatred, the Jews, and Eisenhower Prune Juice

Introduction
So I posted on X yesterday: “Remember: anti-white rhetoric is actually anti-Christian. Don’t take the bait. If white people are Marxists they are allies. If you’re a black Christian, you’ve been colonized. This conflict is not about skin color. It’s about religion and culture. That’s why they also hate Jews.”

And then all the puppies came out to play. I should say many of them were very based puppies, but it has been a little yappy in my mentions over the last 24 hours. At the same time, several reasonable folks asked very reasonable questions, and I’ve been trying to answer them here and there, but it seemed to me to deserve a more thorough response. 

Judeo-Christian Peaceniks
First, my friend Joel Webbon commented that he was following me until the last sentence. How does hatred of Jews figure into hatred of Christ and Christianity? Jews aren’t Christians, and we’re not collapsing important differences between us, are we? 

And of course the answer is “no.” I don’t have any interest in the liberal project of blending monotheistic religions together into some kind of Eisenhower prune juice. That clearly hasn’t worked; it’s just given Western Civilization a bad case of the secular runs. “Judeo-Christian” has often seemed to want to soften differences, and pretend that Jews and Christians are just another version of Baptists and Presbyterians. So, no, count me out of the Judeo-Christian peacenik movement. 

But there is something peculiar about the Jewish people, and that peculiarity is well-attested in Scripture, and succinctly summarized by the apostle as: They are enemies as regards the gospel, but beloved for the sake of the patriarchs (Rom. 11:28). And we really do need to hold these things together. In so far as they have rejected Jesus the Messiah, they are more culpable and will receive a greater judgment because they have the Old Testament, which is all about Jesus Christ. And precisely because this is so, God has also determined by His good and holy counsel to keep His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not only in His fulfillment of those promises in the salvation of the Gentiles, but also in the salvation of the ethnic Jewish people. Like a wayward, prodigal and disinherited son blowing his inheritance on hookers and meth, there is much to be condemned and plenty of fodder for Hell. And yet, he is still a son and so much loved. Both of these things can be true and are. 

Closely related is the fact that next to Christians, Jews have been and continue to be some of the most highly functioning people in the history of the world. They often excel at higher rates than other cultures, and let us hasten to add, including excelling in both evil and good. So, you can give 15 examples of foul and heinous Jews, and I can flip it around and give you 15 more examples of Nobel Peace Prize winners, cancer research doctors, scientists, and relatively faithful husbands and fathers. And I would argue that this comes with the spiritual territory of that severed covenant status: enemies of the gospel, beloved for the sake of the fathers. They cannot shake that historic covenant reality. And to the extent that many still read and hear the Torah read, they above many other cultures, are constantly being exposed to the glory of Christ. Paul says that every time the Old Testament is read, the glory of Christ is shining on them, but their minds have been blinded and there is a veil over their faces so that they cannot and will not see Jesus (2 Cor. 3). Nevertheless, there is more common grace available to those who are exposed to the Old Testament than for other cultures. I think this is a massive reality. A monotheistic culture that has some reverence for the Ten Commandments and the Old Testament, warts, perversions, blindness, and all, is a culture that has more light than others, light that will result in more heinous evil in some cases and more astonishing good in others. This will result in hatred for the evil certainly and hatred and envy for all the good.   

So back to my original point: why do Leftists hate Jews? Well, what do Marixists hate? They hate private property, marriage, private education, free markets, children, and the natural hierarchies that accompany these things embedded in the created order by our Creator. Why do Leftists hate Jews? Because to the extent that Jews pattern their lives off of Old Testament norms, they are embracing the goodness of those creational norms that Marxists hate. In other words, Leftists hate God, and the way He made the world, that has been reestablished for all time in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can call the first major iteration of this new world Western Culture or Christendom, if you like, and for the last two thousand years, despite serious differences between us and periodic animosity, Jews have often been included in the outskirts of that project, economically, politically, educationally, and culturally. Despite their rejection of Christ, the Old Testament is still full of the aroma of His ways. And Leftists hate that, and yes, a bunch of Leftists are angry Jews.

Pastoring People through Anti-Whiteness
This was also related to my point about skin color. And we really do need to keep this straight in our minds. The hatred of “whiteness” is not really, fundamentally about the skin color. Yes, I am well aware that many are openly saying they hate whites, and I’m sure a great deal of animosity has come to fixate on that superficial feature – just as it has in the history of our country from whites toward blacks. I’m not denying that, but I am denying that we should simply take what people say at face value. For example, why do men sodomize one another? Ask them, and they will tell you because they are attracted to men, they love men, they are gay, etc. But the Bible says that the real reason they do that to one another is because they have rejected God and refused to give Him thanks (Rom. 1:21). There is a theological and spiritual reality driving it all. 

One reasonable question came from Josh Daws who wondered if my point was helpful given the fact that people really are being fired or not hired because they won’t meet DEI quotas. Don’t we need to address this white-hatred head on, and help pastor people through it? And yes, absolutely, and that’s exactly why I wrote what I did. The Bible teaches us to think this way. I’ve already cited Romans 1: Why are people full of malice, envy, murder, covenant breakers, and without natural affections (Rom. 1:29-31)? Because they refuse to glorify God and give Him thanks, and their foolish hearts were darkened – professing themselves to be experts in colonization and white fragility, they became drooling academic fools (Rom. 1:21-22). Pastoring people through this dark and cataclysmic moment in our nation’s history means teaching this point. Why do people fornicate and hate? Because they hate God, His Christ, His people, and the cultures we build. The hatred may fixate on the cultural artifacts, but like Amnon coming to hate his half-sister, the reason for the disgust in her physical features had everything to do with his sin and guilt, not merely because he suddenly came to prefer blondes to brunettes, even if he always did after that. 

Elsewhere, Paul teaches pastors to do the same: “And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will” (2 Tim. 2:24-26). Why do people fight the truth? Because they have willfully suppressed truth in unrighteousness and been ensnared by the devil. Some of those very enemies opposing Paul and Timothy were unbelieving Jews. This is why we must oppose such enemies with firmness and compassion. But it’s important to underline these spiritual and theological realities because if we allow our collisions with unbelief to be reduced to physical features and materialism, we are being seduced into Nietzschean mud wrestling. This is no pietistic retreatism, this is simply full-orbed Christian masculinity. There is a time for peace and a time for war. There is a time for sharp words, and there is a time for soft words. There is a time for appeals to Caesar, and there are times to ignore the warrant out for our arrest and go into hiding. But our struggle is not fundamentally against flesh and blood.  

Everything to Do With Christianity
One final, question came from my friend Andrew Isker. Part of his objection I’ve already answered above, and I don’t have any problem agreeing that “white” is often being used synonymously for Christian. I would just hasten to add that as pastors, we must keep pressing our people, discipling our Christian followers to see through the racial façade. Nevertheless, Andrew brought up the current Gaza campus protests and says they have nothing to do with Christianity. I understand that many of the protestors may themselves be Jewish, and yes, many see the modern nation-state of Israel as more European colonialism that has displaced brown people. Yes, I get that, and no doubt that is what many would say. But it is a significant pastoral mistake to then conclude and agree with them (despite their claims to the contrary) that this has nothing to do with Christianity.  

Despite all the humanistic hubris that has crept into modern European nation-states, and I think we would agree, it is of obscene Jabba-the-Hutt proportions, the roots of the European nations were laid by the Protestant Reformation. It was the magisterial Reformers, Calvin and Luther, Cranmer and Knox who poured their lives out not only for theological reformation and spiritual renewal but for the political ramifications of those glorious theological truths. Their writings are repeatedly directed to the kings and princes of Europe. Whatever one’s appraisal of the establishment of the modern Israeli state, the ancient Christian instincts of Christendom and the crusades were certainly part of that move. And in the same way that ancient Israel became a whore with all the gods of the nations, modern Israel and America have been busy doing the same. But the overarching order is still recognizably the bombed out remains of a Christian cathedral. Muslims hate Jews and Christians with equal vehemence because to them, we are equally problematic in our rejection of Muhammad’s wet dreams. And we can say this, while recognizing that we have many Palestinian Christian brothers and many Israeli enemies.    

Conclusion: Equal Weights and Measures
At the heart of my concern is actually true justice. Lady Justice is blind. Because I’m a Christian Nationalist, I’m committed to equal weights and measures. This is a thoroughly biblical principle, rooted in Old Testament law, reaffirmed emphatically by our Lord. With the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And what do I mean? 

If you allow skin color to become the center of the problem, you are insisting on injustice. If someone tells you a crowd of people broke into a building, and then asks you, what should justice do? If you need to know what color the mob’s skin was, you’ve joined the mob. If you need to know what the religion was of those who own the building, you’ve joined the mob. Which incidentally, is why it was glorious for Rory Wilson to stand against the mob. Justice for all means blind justice for all. The same measure that you measure others with, will be measured back to you. As Christians, we are required to insist that the same measure be used for white supremacists, Big Eva Christians, kinists, Jews, sodomites, based brothers, BLM, and Gaza protestors (but I repeat myself). This is true for judicial proceedings, but this is also true for our personal interactions. 

Our enemies want everything to be reduced to physical characteristics and materialism because that gives them a feeling of power and control. They can manipulate, at least a little, their physical circumstances. It also gives them feelings of inevitability and fatalism. But these are the weapons they try to use to fend off the truth, and the truth of the gospel in particular. They want to explain their sin in terms of inevitability and victimhood. I couldn’t help it, white people are oppressors. I couldn’t help it, black people are lazy. I couldn’t help it, Jews are sharks. 

But the gospel cuts through all of this. The gospel offers in the first instance the dignity of guilt. No, you are a human being made in God’s image with the power of moral choice whatever your circumstances, and you have sinned against your Maker and your fellow image bearers. Whatever the physical and material factors (and there can be many), none of them set aside our fundamental moral culpability. And it is that spiritual reality that Christ came to deal with. Christ died for sin. But if the problem is genes and blood and skin pigmentation, there is at least a plausible deniability structure. And what we need for that kind of problem is vaccines, surgeries, lockdowns, and ultimately, some kind of gulags. So our job as Christians is to continually bat away those excuses, and press home the point. No, the reason you hate white people is because you hate God, His Christ, and every cultural artifact that reminds you of Him.  

The reason we insist on this is because Jesus is Lord. This is not some kind of reversion to a post-World War II secular consensus. This is one of the great foundation stones of Christendom. 

Photo by Rami Gzon on Unsplash

Chester & Esther

“There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid” (Prov. 30:18-19).

In Hebrew, the word “wonderful” is the word “phale,” and it can also mean miraculous. In Genesis 18, when God promises to give Sarah a child in her old age and she is doubtful, He asks, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” Is anything too miraculous? The same word is used to describe the plagues that God sent on Egypt: “And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go” (Ex. 3:20). “Who is like unto thee, O LORD, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (Ex. 15:11)

And the Psalmist sings: “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well” (Ps. 139:14). Wonder is a sense of amazement and fear, awe and curiosity – something that seems impossible, something that carries with it some secret, some magic. And often wonder is a sort of collision of unexpected realities. An eagle in the air. A serpent on a rock. A ship in the midst of the sea. A man and a maiden. Moses saw a bush on fire. Jacob wrestled with an angel. Job talked with God in a storm. Jesus walked on water and rose from the dead. Wonder makes you ask, “What is this? How is this possible? Who is this? How do you do that?”

It’s commonplace in our modern culture to insist that you must be true to yourself, and that of course means that you must know yourself. And so popular films often exhort heroes to look deep inside, to follow your heart. 

But the Bible consistently tells us something very different. It’s actually in looking outside of yourself that you find out who are and what you are for. It wasn’t until Moses met God in the burning bush that He knew what his mission was. Job didn’t understand what was going on in his life until He met God in the whirlwind, and then realized that it was all too wonderful for him to fully grasp. Isaiah was commissioned after being granted a vision of God high and lifted up, where even the angels veil their faces because God is too wonderful. When the angel appeared to Manoah and his wife, Manoah asked, what his name was – and the angel of the Lord said, it was Wonderful. It was a secret, something they couldn’t fully understand. 

Our problem is not that we don’t know ourselves. Our fundamental problem is that we don’t know God. And we can’t really know ourselves unless or until we know God. In His Light, we see light. John Calvin famously said that one true glance at ourselves, and we are immediately turned to God. The gifts of life and thought and beauty ought to immediately strike us as, well, gifts, glories, wonders, streams that must have some magical source. And even our faults and sins point us to God, since we realize there is something wrong with us. And to say that there is something wrong, assumes that there is something right in this universe, an ultimate standard, ultimate virtue, goodness, and harmony. 

So wonder comes in the collisions of different, unexpected realities. Wonder springs from a realization of gift and grace and glory, of the impossibility of existence, lungs that breathe, hearts that beat, eyes that see, mouths that taste and talk, lips that kiss – all of creation radiating glory, beauty, and we have eyes to see it, mouths to taste it, and a Holy God giving it, filling it with His Wonder. And at the center of it all, is the God-Man Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, and the prophet said, He will be called Wonderful. He was fearfully and wonderfully knit together, fully God and fully man, filled with the Spirit, come for His wayward Bride. He is the eagle in the air, come to crush the serpent on the rock, riding the ship of the world through the seas of sin and death. 

Chester, my charge to you today is to love and lead your wife in this Wonder. You must do this by being continually amazed at the wonder of Christ, His death and resurrection and His world. But one particular piece of His grace to you is Esther, and so cultivate a deep wonder in her glory and beauty and wisdom. But like all wonderful things, there is a particular glory in the juxtaposition, and her glory really shines as you lead her in obedience to Christ. Our world wants an individualistic, autonomous glory, but that really doesn’t exist. You can’t peer deep down inside and find yourself. Glory reflects. Glory shines. And God is giving Esther to be your glory, your crown. And this really is wonderful. 

Esther, my charge to you is to likewise seek this wonder, but you are to do it in your respect and submission to Chester. The world is constantly trying to convince you to find your own glory all by yourself, but that is lie. There is no solo-glory for any creature. There is only reflected glory, and that is what makes us stop and stare. You already reflect the glory of your Maker, but today, you are also being assigned the task of crowning your husband. Delight in his delight in you. Let him lead you, and as you do, this will be a wonderful gift to you. And together you will be a real wonder to the watching world, like a city coming down out of Heaven, the wonder of God with His people and all things made new. 

In the Name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.  

Photo by Pete Nuij on Unsplash

Paedocommunion Mashed Potatoes & the CREC

Introduction
Well, there’s been a little bruhaha on the interwebs concerning my denomination, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches and our common practice of paedocommunion – welcoming young, baptized children to the Lord’s Supper.

The impetus for this I think is two fold, and they are actually related. The first reason is simply the fact that God is blessing the CREC. We are a small denomination punching far above our weight class. I think we are currently around 130 congregations, including 10-15 international churches, and we are having an outsized impact on our culture through classical Christian education, Psalm singing and biblical worship, a growing literature and media presence, and political and cultural engagement. For example, Canon Press published The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe, and one of the founders of our denomination, Douglas Wilson, was interviewed by Tucker Carlson recently, and word is getting out that there is an association of evangelical churches that almost universally stood up against the COVID mandates and continues to stand up against the woke, DEI zeitgeist.

And in the midst of all of that undeserved blessing, we have had more folks joining us and with this growth, some of our commitments and practices have needed clarification. One of those is our widespread practice of communing young, baptized children. Traditional presbyterian and Reformed churches have baptized infants of at least one believing parent, but the majority have argued that communion should only be received by those who have demonstrated evangelical faith and repentance after being examined by the elders of a local church. This practice of “credocommunion” has widely varied, with some elders admitting very young professions of faith (3-5 years old), while others have insisted on older teenagers, with the majority probably averaging somewhere in the 9-12 year old range. 

What the CREC?
Something you should know about the origins of the CREC is that it was started by three independent churches who had been coming to Reformed/Calvinistic convictions, with some elders embracing infant baptism (sometimes referred to as “presbyterian”) and others remaining credobaptist (waiting until someone professes faith before baptism). The elders of these three churches determined not to divide over that difference on baptism, and therefore found themselves a poor fit for any existing denominations. The traditional presbyterians wouldn’t take them because they had baptist elders, and the Reformed baptists wouldn’t take them because they had presbyterian elders. So in an effort to pursue unity, the three independent churches united to form the CREC, with a sacramental cooperation agreement, and our constitution for many years read thusly: 

“All members in good standing in a local CREC congregation must be received by any other CREC church regardless of confessional differences between the churches. All CREC churches will handle problems arising from differences in how membership is reckoned from church to church (e.g. individual vs. household) with all charity and good faith, seeking to include one another’s members.

In the transfer of members from one CREC church to another, differences arising from issues such as membership, paedo-baptism, and paedo-communion, must be handled with pastoral sensitivity. Receiving churches do not have to adopt or practice such variations, but they should do all within their power to accommodate them.”

Thus, for many years (25 in fact), the CREC has allowed for local churches to teach and practice their confessional commitments with this strong language of accommodating transfers and receiving one another’s members regardless of differences. The cash value of this has been a strong consensus to receive one another’s members with their baptismal and communicant status intact. So, you can be a Reformed Baptist in the CREC and teach the necessity of credobaptism, but if you join the CREC, you are committed to receiving a transfer of membership of a presbyterian family and accept any infant baptisms that have been previously performed. Likewise, a credocommunion church would be free to teach and ordinarily practice their confessional convictions, but in joining the CREC, they agreed to receive transfer members from other churches that may have admitted younger children to the table than they ordinarily would. On the flip side, paedobaptist, paedocommunion churches agreed to receive Baptist and credocommunion families into membership and allow them to ask for baptism and admission to the table according to their conscience. 

While on the surface, it can feel like the baptists and credocommunion churches have to flex more, the fact is elders convinced of paedobaptism and paedocommunion are still flexing by welcoming families into membership with different convictions as well. And in some ways, the Reformed baptists and paedocommunionists understand one another better since we all believe that baptism and communion basically go together; we just disagree on timing. 

Now, the reason for the hubbub is that some questions were raised over the exact details of this arrangement, and so at our triennial council last Fall 2023, some of the language was revised to make explicit that by “receiving members in good standing,” our expectation was that this would include the governmental actions of fellow CREC churches, specifically with regard to baptism and communion. 

There really is a tight rope walk here of honoring the authority and responsibility of local churches to fence and admit to the table, but by the same token, and for the same reason, honoring the authority and responsibility of other churches in the same denomination doing the same. It is not true that the CREC is seeking to undermine the authority of local elders. We believe that the keys of the kingdom are given to the elders of the local church, and what they bind on earth is bound in heaven. It is elders who admit members into the visible church through baptism, and it is elders who admit to the table, not fathers, not mothers, not personal vibes or feelings. This is a great and terrible responsibility that Christ has entrusted to elders. But for that very reason, if what one local body of elders binds on earth, by baptizing or communing or excommunicating, is bound in heaven, what sense does it make for another body of elders to reject that, except on very serious grounds? To reverse or ignore the decision of another duly ordained body of elders seems to us to be a very serious matter. Our sense is that we must do all in our power to honor those governmental actions that Christ Himself has said that He will honor in Heaven. Otherwise, are we not dishonoring Christ by dismissing the true authority He has granted to other elders in His Church?

A Closing Note on Including the Kids
Welcoming very young covenant/baptized children to the Lord’s table who are able to otherwise participate in worship has been admittedly a minority position in the history of the Protestant church. For this reason, I believe those of us convinced by Scripture that we ought to practice it ought to be extremely patient and accommodating with those who are unconvinced. This includes cheerfully submitting to elders who request that our children profess faith before communing. And if one of my people were thinking about visiting or transferring to a church that did not practice paedocommunion, that would be (and has been) my counsel. There’s nothing quite so unbecoming as being divisive about communion. And it really doesn’t help your case to say that they started it first. 

We do not believe that the grace of the sacraments is a magical juice, but rather the same Spirit who feeds us through the meal, feeds us the same Christ through the Word and prayers and fellowship. This doesn’t mean communion doesn’t matter; it just means it isn’t the most important thing. There is a grave danger in what might be called sacramentalism, thinking that the grace of the sacraments is so unique that children who are not communed until five or six years old are described as being “starved” or something. Children, who are otherwise received as full participants in the church, are being fed Christ in the Word and prayers and fellowship. They are not being spiritually starved. It’s more like they’re getting steak and salad, but no mashed potatoes.

Nevertheless, there are two things that remain a great mystery to me biblically speaking: First, given the scriptural warnings about prayers and worship offered in hypocrisy or ignorance and God’s fierce warnings that He will judge and destroy those who do not pray in faith and with understanding (e.g. Is. 1, 1 Cor. 14), why are young children so often allowed (required?) to join us in the rest of the worship service, listening to sermons, praying, and singing to God? The concern among most credocommunionists is to honor 1 Cor. 11, and the requirement that those who participate in the Lord’s Supper be able to examine themselves and discern the Lord’s Body. I fully affirm this requirement, but I also think that it should be understood in the same vein as many other requirements in Scripture for coming to the Lord. As is often the case, the primary audience is adults (e.g. repent and believe, don’t get drunk at the Lord’s Supper, no going to prostitutes, etc.), but this does not exclude young children learning faith and obedience according to their maturity and capacity. 

If we teach young, baptized children to pray and sing to God (who do not fully understand what they are doing and do not have a mature faith), why do we not welcome them to the table? In other words, if there is not some super-special grace in the sacrament, but the same Christ is communicated by the Holy Spirit in the Word and in the prayers, and all must participate by faith and receive those blessings by faith, why not welcome young baptized children to the same Christ in the Lord’s Supper? Won’t God hold your little ones to account for any “Amen” they didn’t fully understand? He will not hold guiltless those who take His name in vain. But of course, I believe that young children should be taught to pray and say “Amen,” believing, as I do, that Christ receives little ones according to their capacity and maturity to know Him and believe in Him. 

Finally, one of the key texts for demonstrating the continuity of the covenants is 1 Cor. 10, in which Paul argues that all of Israel was baptized in the cloud and in the sea and all ate spiritual food and drink, and the Rock that was with them was Christ, but they were destroyed in the wilderness because of unbelief. The apostle says that those things were written for us in the New Covenant, that we might not sin like them but believe. Notice that at the very least, old covenant Israel practiced paedocommunion. All of Israel, young and old, ate spiritual food and drink. All of Israel, young and old, partook of Christ in the wilderness. And Paul says that what they had, we have in the New Covenant. All of Israel was baptized, just like us, and all of Israel ate a communion meal in the wilderness, just like us. But the point he presses is not: “so some of you really ought to stop taking communion,” but rather, the warning is to not continue in any hard-hearted unbelief, pride, idolatry, or sexual sin. 

“Let him who thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). The exhortation is not to keep anyone from baptism or communion until they make some kind of public ritual profession of faith or pass an exam. The exhortation is to repent of all sin, from the youngest to the oldest. And if you can discipline your young child, then you believe they are capable of repenting. And if they are capable of repenting then they are capable of believing. And if they are capable of believing, then they are worthy partakers of Christ.

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Three Cheers for Purity Culture

Introduction
One of our increasingly pagan culture’s new favorite punching bags is so-called “purity culture.” Apparently some folks believe that before Joshua Harris published his book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” that evangelicals believed in impurity. And weren’t those the golden days of yore? But tthe thing to keep front and center is simply the point that Christianity is the target with these attacks. Christianity is a purity culture: Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). It’s one of the beatitudes. And Hebrews makes much the same point: “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). 

Sexual Fraud
Jesus taught specifically that part of what He meant by purity was sexual purity: “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and notthat thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell” (Mt. 5:27-30). Adultery begins in the heart with lust, and it would be better to take drastic measures to fight it there before it destroys your life and drags you down to Hell. 

A quick search on X brought up one so-called “sexual educator,” who boasts of being the creator of the “purity dropout program,” who wrote recently, “I’m going to go ahead and say it bc so many people raised in purity culture worry about this: I personally don’t think it’s disrespectful to have private sexual fantasies about people you know. As long as they remain your private thoughts, they are no one else’s business.” Thank you very much for speaking so plainly, ma’am, but Jesus would beg to differ. Jesus says that the end of that road is Hell.  

Likewise, Paul famously wrote, “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things” (Phil. 4:8). And elsewhere: “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor; not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God: that no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. For God hath not called us unto uncleanness, but unto holiness” (1 Thess. 4:3-7). 

So this is purity and holiness: abstaining from all fornication, every form of sexual immorality. And the reason given is that sexual immorality is a form of fraud that God will judge. Sexual sin is a form of theft. This is why the Bible also admonishes husbands and wives not to deprive one another sexually, calling that another form of fraud (1 Cor. 7:5). You can steal from your brother by taking what is not rightfully yours, and you can steal from your brother by withholding what is rightfully owed. 

The Center of Biblical Purity Culture
Now a quick skim of some of what is called purity culture includes, apparently, things like purity rings, purity vows, and purity balls, none of which I know much about. And these seem to me to be traditions of men that may or may not do any good. If they’ve helped you, I do not object, but there’s nothing about them specifically in the Bible, so certainly not required. But to the extent that human traditions often tend to get in the way of the simplicity of God’s word, I would insist that we already have all that we need. Christ has given us His mark of our purity, His sign of our allegiance to Him, and the basis for our Christian fellowship: baptism. In some ways, I would generally discourage these extrabiblical traditions for a similar reason to why I discourage tattoos: you are already permanently marked with the name of Christ in your baptism. 

“Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22). Take note: the efficacy of baptism is not merely in having gone through the ceremony. The ceremony is objective before God and makes claims on you (whether or not you meant it at the time). But what it objectively means calls you to subjectively, internally embrace and believe, similar to the objectivity of a wedding ceremony and the exchange of rings. You must internally embrace what has objectively been declared. So in baptism, We are not saved by merely having our bodies cleansed by water, but rather, we are saved by having a clean conscience toward God which is only possible by evangelical faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus (1 Pet. 3:21). And that is what your baptism proclaims.

So Christian baptism is the center of true, biblical purity culture. It is the sign and the seal of our purity in Christ. This purity is both accomplished and final through the gifts of regeneration and justification, and it is an ongoing work of the Spirit in the process of sanctification. Because Christ died for all who believe, all who believe in Him are fully and completely cleansed of all their sins, past, present, and future. Full stop. Faith receives this absolute absolution, and there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1). Did you catch that? There is not a single charge that can be brought against God’s elect (Rom. 8:33). It is God who justifies, and if God justifies, there is not a single hint of impurity that can condemn (Rom. 8:34). This is because Christ Himself intercedes for His people. He stands before the Father for every single one of His people. And who can separate us from His love? This is the center of Christian purity culture. We are pure and holy because Christ is pure and holy. We are accepted because Christ is accepted. We are justified because Jesus is risen from the dead. 

Yet Scripture also teaches that this justification, this definitive sanctification is the necessary beginning of truly becoming holy. God declares sinners righteous. God doesn’t declare good people righteous. Christ came for prostitutes and tax collectors. Christ came for pimps and abortion doctors and sodomites and the trans-confused. Christ came for church kids getting handsy in the backseat of the car. Christ came for elders with porn problems. But He didn’t merely come to forgive them. He came to deliver them. He came to cleanse them and to give them His Spirit so that they would walk out of the jail cells of their sins and the sins of their fathers and walk in the Light as He is in the Light. By His death, we are enabled to die to our sin, and by His resurrection, we are raised to newness of life. 

Grace and Law 
With all obedience in the Christian life, there is always the temptation to take what is meant to be grace and turn it into a law-work. This is what Paul came righteously unglued about in Galatians. Beginning by grace, will you now continue by the law? Paul asked, and he answered his own question by saying, Hell no. But the point isn’t that Christians therefore stop caring about obedience and holiness. No, the point is that everything depends upon the engine driving the action. Christians are supposed to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, but only because God is at work in them willing and doing according to His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13). We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, for good works, which He prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:10). 

So with all Christian holiness, from working hard to support our families to serving the poor to evangelism and sexual purity, there is a way of turning the grace of obedience into a whip that really is satanic. But the problem is not the obedience; the problem is human hearts. Having grown up in the Christian church, I’ve witnessed a number of instances of children growing up in Christian homes who cannot wait to leave the church when they turn 18. But it wasn’t “purity culture” that drove them away, it was fear and harshness and hypocrisy.  

“There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness” (Prov. 30:12). Pharisees are people who cleanse the outside of the cup but on the inside its full of mold and bits of sewage. And in that state, Pharisees often travel land and sea, from homeschool conventions to courtship conferences, to make their kids twice the sons of Hell than themselves. But the problem in those cases was impurity in the heart and hypocrisy in the home. You cannot give what you do not have. And some parents have tried to hoist purity on their kids with impure hearts. The solution is not to give up on purity. The solution is to actually get clean. But you cannot get this by law. You cannot get this by merely trying harder or coming up with new rules. You cannot make up for your failures. You can only get true obedience by grace. But if these parents who have unclean hearts would simply confess their sins and be truly cleansed on the inside, they would be forgiven and then the work of teaching purity would become a complete relief rather than such a burden. 

In other cases, as with Joshua Harris, the problem doesn’t seem to have been hypocrisy and harshness so much as a failure to protect from pride. There are particular warnings about ordaining a man who is too young, lest he be puffed up with pride and fall into the condemnation of the devil (1 Tim. 3:6), as well as not ordaining too hastily, and the warning is tied to purity: “Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure” (1 Tim. 5:22). And the same thing applies generally to families and churches that are actually walking in true purity. The central motif in that community needs to be gratitude. Purity is a glorious gift of God, and there is no room for boasting. What do you have that you did not receive? God puts down the proud but lifts up the humble.

Conclusion
The last thing to note is that sinners sin. And this is about as profound as saying that politicians lie. But what I mean is that you can find in every Christian community real failures. You can find pastors and elders who have sinned grievously, you can find fathers and mothers who have sinned grievously, and you can find sons and daughters who have sinned grievously. That isn’t really a shock. We are Christians. We believe in original sin, and we believe in the enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. But those who hate Christ want to weaponize these real failures against the Church and against God’s people. They say, “See?! That’s what your purity culture gets you! Tone it down. Drop all that abstinence before marriage business. A little bit of lust is normal.” 

Those who hate Christ want His people to quiet down and stop talking about purity, blaming our love and celebration of purity for the heartbreaking failures of some. But this is fundamentally because they hate purity. And they hate purity because they hate Christ. They know their own sins, their own uncleanness, their own filth, and they hate the light of Christ that exposes their works of darkness. And in their pride they refuse His grace. They refuse His purity. And ironically, many of the fiercest modern critics of purity culture launch their attacks in the name of protecting women, in the name of fighting sexual abuse. But all they are doing is encouraging more grooming. 

So we will not stop. We will not stop because Christ is our purity. Christ is our holiness. We have no purity or holiness apart from Christ, but we have Christ, and we have been made whole. We love chastity, and we love the marriage bed because it points to the perfect and faithful love of Christ for His Bride the Church, whom Christ is cleansing from every spot and wrinkle. So sure, maybe a little less on the purity rings, and a little more on the gift of baptism. Maybe a little less on purity balls and a little more on the glory of Christian weddings and the potency of building faithful families. 

So three cheers for purity culture. Three cheers for the purity of Christ. And three cheers for the purity of Christ’s bride. For the few instances of real horrific failure and sin (and there are some gnarly ones), there are many millions of Christians who grew up in faithful Christian families and churches – not perfect families or churches – but communities honestly trusting in Christ, confessing sins, forgiving one another, holding one another accountable, and honoring the marriage bed. I think God is at work, and I think the lines are being drawn, and the modern attacks on purity are driven by a great fear that the resistance is actually quite formidable.  

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