Justin Taylor's Blog, page 4

How Are We Doing on This, Evangelicals?

Which are you more likely to hear an evangelical talk about on social media these days—the culture wars or the glorious privilege of communion and fellowship with the triune God?

J. I. Packer lamented over 30 years ago that evangelicals talk together about almost everything except this great reality, and he reminded us that this was not true for the Puritans.

When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience of God.

Modern Christian books and magazines contain much about Christian doctrine, Christian standards, problems of Christian conduct, techniques of Christian service—but little about the inner realities of fellowship with God.

Our sermons contain much sound doctrine—but little relating to the converse between the soul and the Savior.

We do not spend much time, alone or together, in dwelling on the wonder of the fact that God and sinners have communion at all; no, we just take that for granted, and give our minds to other matters.

Thus we make it plain that communion with God is a small thing to us.

But how different were the Puritans! The whole aim of their “practical and experimental” preaching and writing was to explore the reaches of the doctrine and practice of man’s communion with God.

Fellow evangelicals: how are we doing on this?

Perhaps it is time to give this a read and make Packer’s observation passé.

 

What Is Christianity? What Is a Christian?

Christianity is both a doctrine and a life, and . . .

[T]he object of true faith is both a proposition and a person. . . .

Christianity, objectively considered, is the testimony of God concerning his son, it is the whole revelation of truth contained in the Scriptures, concerning the redemption of man through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Subjectively considered, it is the life of Christ in the soul, or, that form of spiritual life which has its origin in Christ, is determined by the revelation concerning his person and work, which is due to the indwelling of his Spirit.

—Charles Hodge, “What Is Christianity?” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 33, no. 1 (1860): 119.

A Christian is one

who recognizes Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, as God manifested in the flesh, loving us and dying for our redemption;

and who is so affected by a sense of the love of this incarnate God as to be constrained to make

the will of Christ the rule of his obedience, and

the glory of Christ the great end for which he lives.

—Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (1863), 133.

An Interview with Paul on What’s Wrong with Us

Interacting with the Apostle Paul through Romans 1:

What do all of us know?

We know God himself.We know God’s decree.We know God’s judgment—that those who practice sinful things deserve death.

What is our responsibility?

We are without excuse.

How clear is the evidence for God’s knowability?

What can be known about God is plain.

Who showed us the evidence for God?

God himself has shown us what can be known about him.

What is it about God that every one of us knows?

We have clearly perceived God’s invisible attributes (= his eternal power and divine nature).

Where do we see God’s invisible attributes?

In the things that God has made.

What do we fail to do in response?

We fail to honor God as God.We fail to give thanks to God.We fail to acknowledge God.

What do we do instead of honoring and thanking God?

We suppress the truth.

How?

By our unrighteousness.

What do we claim about our thinking?

We claim to be wise.

What are we in reality?

We are fools.

What happened to our minds?

We became futile in our thinking.

What happened to our hearts?

Our foolish hearts were darkened.

What is the result?

We exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling

mortal manbirdsanimalscreeping things

We exchanged the truth of God for a lie.

What did we do with created things?

We worshiped the creature rather than the Creator.We served the creature rather than the Creator.

What is the result of this idolatry?

God gave us up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity.

What kind of impurity?

The dishonoring of our bodies among ourselves.

How did we become entangled in dishonorable passions?

God gave us up to dishonorable passions.

Which dishonorable passions did women commit?

Women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.

Which dishonorable passions did men commit?

The men gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

What does God do to us for failing to acknowledge him?

God gave us up to a debased mind.

To do what?

To do what ought not to be done.

What are we filled with?

All manner of

unrighteousnessevilcovetousnessmalice

We are full of

envymurderstrifedeceitmaliciousness

What are we?

We are

gossipsslanderershaters of Godinsolenthaughtyboastfulinventors of evildisobedient to parentsfoolishfaithlessheartlessruthless

What do we know?

God’s decree.

What is God’s decree?

Those who practice such sinful things deserve to die.

What do we do?

We do these sinful things.We give approval to those who practice these sinful things.

What does God do in response?

God reveals his wrath from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

Is there any hope?

The gospel.

What is the gospel?

The power of God for salvation.

For who?

To everyone who believes—to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

What is revealed in the gospel?

The righteousness of God, from faith to faith.

As Habakkuk 2:4 says, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Romans 1:16–32

16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

The Disciples Didn’t Bail on Jesus Because of Judas

Matt Chandler with a word:

I wanna acknowledge church-hurt betrayal is a real thing, but that is the most self-righteous pronouncement I think a person can say.

Are you serious?

Like, the disciples don’t bail on Jesus because of Judas. They got their eyes on Jesus. They’re blown away by Jesus. They’re not looking around going, “Oh man, all these people were following him, and look at, they’re inconsistent. You’re inconsistent. I’m inconsistent. This is the only community there is that celebrates the fact that we’re all in process.

Like, nobody’s there yet. Like to demand that you get grace and nobody else does is self righteousness. And to punt on Jesus, because some Christian you know isn’t up to your standards, is a dangerous place to stand before a living God. . . .

It’s one of those kind of generational moments where everywhere you look somebody’s dogging the church.

Gosh, she’s always been a mess. Church has always been a mess. They’re just social media now.

But accountability isn’t abuse and calling people to holiness isn’t controlling. It’s the Book. We’re losing a ton of people that are looking at the brokenness of the church like it’s brand new. No, gosh. Would you feel comfortable her if it wasn’t?

I’m not talking about toxic, abusive wickedness. There is something like that that needs to be exposed and people need to be removed and people, but man, I mean, I’ve been president of Acts29 for over a decade, man. It’s like 700 guys. They love Jesus. And then they’re doing the best they can. They’re not in this for money or power, just trying to love God’s people, and the sheep bite, man. But we don’t, we don’t talk about that. “The sheep don’t bite. They’re all just, you know, abused by power hungry people.” It’s ridiculous.

 

A Ukrainian Pastor’s One-Word Answer on What He Is Learning in These Days of War

Sergey Nakul, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Kyiv, Ukraine, is a faithful man who has decided to stay and minister in the midst of war. The video above is an example of the kind of updates he is offering. You can see more videos and receive his updates here.

Augustine vs. Aquinas

Peter Kreeft:

As the essential comparison in ancient philosophy is between Plato and Aristotle, the essential comparison in medieval philosophy is between Augustine and Aquinas.

It is not so much a contrast doctrinally between a Christian Platonism and a Christian Aristotelianism as a contrast personally between two different sets of remarkable talents and temperaments.

Augustine speaks from the depths, Aquinas from the heights.

Augustine’s insight is into man existential, Aquinas’s is into man essential.

Augustine is the master of metaphor, Aquinas of concepts.

Augustine’s head and heart are in a rich, stormy marriage; Aquinas’s heart and head are in perfect, quiet unity.

Augustine has less practical confidence in human reason than Aquinas does because he knew from experience how wounded and self-deceptive it could be, while Aquinas was born, lived, and died in the light. This gives Augustine a richness and a passion but also a one-sidedness and a straining that contrasts with Aquinas’s ease and balance.

It is the playboy who wanted to do without God and grace, and who experienced the weakness of nature and natural reason, who shows us our own deepest needs, sufferings, and failures. It is the perfected saint who shows us the essential nature of God, ourselves, and our philosophical cosmos as clearly as anyone ever has.

Yet their teaching is essentially the same both in principle and in practice.

The common principle is that grace and faith must precede and perfect nature and reason, but when it does, nature and reason are indeed perfected, not diminished.

The common practice is that both enable our thought to be one with our prayer.

—Peter Kreeft, Socrates’ Children: The 100 Greatest Philosophers, Volume II: Medieval Philosophers (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2019), 81–82.

 

Have You Ever Considered How Statistically Unlikely It Is that Jesus Changed the Course of History?

In his very thought-provoking book, Person of Interest, J. Warner Wallace asks a very good question: “Why, then, did Jesus have more impact than anyone else?”

Jesus was born in a tiny, irrelevant town in the Roman Empire and raised in another small village.

He had to walk from one place to the next, and as an adult he never traveled more than two hundred miles from the town where he was born.

He had none of the resources people use today to make an impact: no social media platform, no podcast audience, no clever videos, and no website. He didn’t even have the resources people used in the first century to make an impact: he never held a political office, never ruled a nation, never led an army, and never authored a book.

His family was insignificant. The locals suspected he was an illegitimate son, his mother was a poor peasant woman, and his father couldn’t afford much.

Jesus didn’t receive an expensive education, never married, never had children, never owned a home of his own, and didn’t possess much more than the clothes on his back.

As an adult, his own brother was suspicious of his ministry, a work that ended after just three short years.

Public opinion turned against him, most of his followers abandoned him, one disciple betrayed him, and another denied him. He was rejected by the religious, hunted by the powerful, mocked and unjustly persecuted by his enemies.

He suffered an unfair trial, was publicly humiliated, brutally beaten, and unduly executed in the most horrific way.

Even then, the few followers who remained had to borrow a grave to bury him.

Yet this is the man who changed history, inaugurated the Common Era and forever transformed the most important and revered aspects of human culture.

How is it possible that a single man—a man like Jesus—could have this impact?

You can read his answer here.

 

An Earnest Plea to Slow the Evangelical Twitter Wars and to Drop the Tribal Performance Art

Erick Erickson with a word:

We’re seeing a realignment within evangelicalism right now with some, derisively called “Big Eva” spending way, way, way too much time lecturing evangelicals on their faults. I tread carefully here because I have friends in this camp who I love dearly, but can y’all just give it a rest a bit? Maybe spend a few weeks going after the Wokes instead of the constant chastisement against a whole bunch of people who have been nothing but chastised by the media and cultural elite over the past four or five years? Female friends in this camp, can you speak up against the normalization of transgenderism and girls becoming boys and boys getting into girls’ sports?

Can y’all just go maybe one week without speaking into the house and maybe preach out of the house? Show the grace you expect to be shown whether it is shown to you or not.

Concurrently, can those of you who blast Big Eva maybe recognize they aren’t the enemy and instead of spending all your time attacking the prominent evangelicals you feel like have wounded you or the faith, actually try exercising some grace? Maybe recognize your treatment of them over political disagreements might just have played a role in their current views and attitudes. I mean, are you guys not aware of the truly vile stuff directed their way over the past four years merely for publicly opting out of a lot of insane stuff? Maybe all of you should chat instead of subtweet.

I love you all and I’m really finding all this infighting and tribalism tiresome. To be clear, I firmly view a lot of it as tribal performance art for people, including a lot of Christians, who have defined their identities based on their online personas. I know a lot of people think they’re just holding each other to account, but I’ve never known someone to be effective at accountability by coming off with disdain for the person they want to hold accountable.

Y’all, this may come as a shock to each of you, but Russell Moore, Rick Warren, David French, Tim Keller, John MacArthur, Douglas Wilson, Owen Strachan, and Voddie Baucham are all going to be in the House of the Lord one day and if you don’t think so, maybe you need to search your heart and see what’s wrong. You may not realize this, but God is still sovereign even without your mean tweets and the Holy Spirit still moves among us even without your 10,000 word think pieces.

Maybe pray for each other more than you subtweet and write about each other. It’s wearing me out just as a spectator and I know I am not alone. I’m really not trying to sound condescending to any of y’all in any part of this divide, but it really is wearing me out feeling like I’m in the middle of a family feud where both sides act like the other half of the family is from South Alabama and hates sweet tea. I, by the way, I, Erick Erickson, am the one who despises sweet tea.

Maybe, and I say this lovingly, maybe a whole lot of Christians are so busy defining themselves and others as Big Eva, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Non-Denominational, Calvinist, Neo-Calvinist, Post-Calvinist Neo-Evangelical and more, and against each other that they’ve forgotten they’re to be defined by Christian love. Maybe we’ve gotten so busy lecturing each other on our faults or disloyalties we’ve forgotten the whole loving your neighbor and Great Commission stuff. And maybe those in positions of leadership need to realize there are others they’re inspiring to tribalism, not to the trials of the Christian life. Maybe instead of picking sides, pick Jesus.

It’s hard for the world to know us by our love for one another when we’re all so busy hating on each other in order to build our credentials. The fight is with the world, not each other.

Carry on, but can y’all all take a time out against each other? Please?

Read the whole thing.

Jesus Was Not Pharisaical to the Pharisees

Tim Keller, commenting on Jesus’s parable of the lost sons, when the father entreats the older brother:

[Jesus] is addressing the religious leaders who are going to hand him over to the Roman authorities to be executed. Yet in the story the elder brother gets not a harsh condemnation but a loving plea to turn from his anger and self-righteousness. Jesus is pleading in love with his deadliest enemies.

He is not a Pharisee about Pharisees; he is not self-righteous about self-righteousness. Nor should we be. He not only loves the wild-living, free-spirited people, but also hardened religious people.

Friedrich Nietzsche—obviously operating from an opposing worldview than Keller—offered a similar warning in 1886 about becoming what you critique:

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

The Spectrum of Early Beliefs about How Christians Should Relate to the Law of Moses

The following chart is adapted from a chart in the ESV Study Bible, which was itself adapted from a section by D. A. Carson in the book Love in Hard Places. I found it to be very helpful to see the spectrum of beliefs represented during the first century that are mentioned or presupposed int he book of Acts and in the writings of Paul.

IdentityBeliefsExamplesGentile (professing) ChristiansThe law has absolutely no claim on their lives.Presupposed in Rom. 6:1, 16.Jewish and Gentile ChristiansChristians are not under the law covenant even though they are certainly not free from God’s demands. Kosher food laws could be observed and circumcision practiced as pastoral wisdom dictated.Paul (see 1 Cor. 9:19–23.)Jewish ChristiansThey understood and accepted Paul’s position, but their personal “comfort zone” was to be observant Jews, at least most of the time. Circumcision and kosher food laws are not necessary for salvation or maturity, and they shouldn’t be imposed on Gentile believers.Jewish ChristiansJewish Christians should observe the traditions of the Mosaic code, even if it was acceptable for Gentile believers not to see themselves as under its stipulations.Certain men from James? (Gal. 2:12a)Jewish ChristiansJewish Christians should observe the Mosaic code, and Gentile believers can come to Christ through faith alone. However, the really spiritual should want to obey the Mosaic law code (even if it wasn’t strictly necessary for salvation).Jewish (professing) ChristiansThe new covenant was a renewal of the old covenant. Jesus is the Messiah, but his life, death, and resurrection restored God’s people to faithfulness to the Mosaic covenant. Therefore, if Gentiles want to come to the Messiah, they must first become Jews (and be circumcised, observe kosher and Sabbath laws, etc.). )“Judaizers” (see Acts 15:1–35; Titus 1:10.)Devout, non-Christian JewsChristians are mistaken about the identity of Jesus, and the Jewish boundaries should not be opened to the Gentiles.The circumcised (Rom. 4:12a ; see Acts 21:27–23:11)