The Gospel Coalition

“Though a man of sorrow, He was even on earth anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows.  Does this seem strange? . . . Shall we wonder that there was divine gladness in the heart of Him who came into this world not by constraint but willingly, not with a burning sense of wrong but with a grateful sense of high privilege, and that He had a blessed consciousness of fellowship with His Father who sent Him during the whole of His pilgrimage through this vale of tears?”

A. B. Bruce, The Humiliation of Christ (Edinburgh, 1905), page 334.

There is a difference between preaching Christ and preaching about Christ.  Preaching Christ is presenting him so clearly and directly that the people experience the sermon this way: “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified” (Galatians 3:1).  Preaching about Christ is presenting ideas related to him.  It’s a good thing to do.  But preaching Christ is more profound, more daring and more helpful.

In Intellectuals, page 31, Paul Johnson wrote of the poet Shelley, “He burned with a fierce love but it was an abstract flame and the poor mortals who came near it were often scorched.  He put ideas before people and his life is a testament to how heartless ideas can be.”  It is not enough for us preachers to burn with a fierce love.  We must burn with a fierce love for Christ the crucified Friend of sinners and for the sinners right there before us who need that Friend.  Ideas about Christ can even be heartless.  But Christ crucified befriends sinners, and they feel it.

Calvin comments on Galatians 3:1, “Let those who want to discharge the ministry of the gospel aright learn not only to speak and declaim but also to penetrate into consciences, so that men may see Christ crucified and that his blood may flow.”  Christ’s blood flowing into the human conscience, setting people free as they sit there listening to the sermon – that is preaching Christ.

One way to test ourselves is to ask, What are the people who hear me preach walking away with?  Have they seen Christ himself during this sermon, or have they only interacted with ideas about Christ?  As a preacher, I cannot make people engage with him.  I wouldn’t want to try.  But I can and must preach in such a way that he stands forth as obvious and available to the people right then and there.

In Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism, Iain Murray draws four lessons from that conflict:

1.  “Genuine evangelical Christianity is never of an exclusive spirit.  Any view of the truth which undermines catholicity has gone astray from Scripture.”  Spurgeon regretfully disagreed with hyper-Calvinists who “made faith in election a part of saving faith and thus either denied the Christianity of all professed Christians who did not so believe or at least treated such profession with much suspicion.”

2.  Spurgeon “wanted to see both divine sovereignty and human responsibility upheld, but when it came to gospel preaching he believed that there needed to be a greater concentration upon responsibility.  The tendency of Hyper-Calvinism was to make sinners want to understand theology before they could believe in Christ.”

3.  “This controversy directs us to our need for profound humility before God.  It reminds us forcefully of questions about which we can only say, ‘Behold, God is great, and we know him not’ (Job 36:26).”  “It is to be feared that sharp contentions between Christians on these issues have too often arisen from a wrong confidence in our powers of reasoning and our assumed ability to draw logical inferences.”  Spurgeon saw “how a system which sought to attribute all to the grace of God had itself too much confidence in the powers of reason.”

4.  “The final conclusion has to be that when Calvinism ceases to be evangelistic, when it becomes more concerned with theory than with the salvation of men and women, when acceptance of doctrines seems to become more important than acceptance of Christ, then it is a system going to seed and it will invariably lose its attractive power.”

Iain H. Murray, Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism (Edinburgh, 1995), pages 110-122.  Italics added.

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. . . . For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. . . . Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is.  Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.”

A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York, 1961), pages 9-10.

In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence,
and his children will have a refuge.
The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life,
that one may turn away from the snares of death.  Proverbs 14:26-27

“Godliness protects the soul by its solidity (26) and its vitality (27).  Both aspects are necessary, since evil not only attacks but attracts us; therefore the man of God must know (and show his family, 26b) something stronger and better.”

Derek Kidner, Proverbs (Downers Grove, 1964), page 110.

“Research suggests that promiscuity is not associated with increased happiness and, in fact, that the number of sexual partners needed to maximize happiness is exactly one. . . . If sex makes us happy then surely, if variety really is the spice of life, having more sexual partners must make us happier.  Well it doesn’t.  People with more sexual partners are less happy than those who have just one.  People who cheat in marriage (10% of the married people in the sample have had sex with more than one person in the previous year) are less happy.  Men who use prostitutes are also less happy.  That is, promiscuous people are less happy.”

HT: Marina Adshade. Italics added.

One man, one woman, united for life in Christ — where the best sex happens.

In his Thoughts on Religious Experience, Archibald Alexander asked why we grow so slowly as Christians.  First, he rounded up the usual suspects: “The influence of worldly relatives and companions, embarking too deeply in business, devoting too much time to amusements, immoderate attachment to a worldly object,” etc.  But then he drilled down further and asked why these things get such a hold on us, “why Christians commonly are of so diminutive a stature and of such feeble strength in their religion.”  He proposed three reasons:

1.  “There is a defect in our belief in the freeness of divine grace.”  Even when the gospel is acknowledged in theory, he wrote, Christians depend on their moods and performances rather than on Christ alone.  Then, in our inevitable failure, we become discouraged, and worldliness creeps in with nothing to counteract it.  “The covenant of grace must be more clearly and repeatedly expounded in all its rich plentitude of mercy, and in all its absolute freeness.”

2.  “Christians do not make their obedience to Christ comprehend every other object of pursuit.”  We compartmentalize our lives, and Jesus becomes a sidebar to the really compelling things of every day, like making money.  “The secular employments and pursuits of the pious should all be consecrated and become a part of their religion.”  That way, our work Monday through Friday is no distraction from Christ but more activity for Christ.

3.  “We make general resolutions of improvement but neglect to extend our efforts to particulars.”  So, how is the sermon tomorrow going to change us tomorrow?  How specifically?  Rather than be satisfied that we haven’t sinned hugely on any given day and therefore we must be doing okay as Christians, we should be strategizing for specific, actionable, new steps of obedience on a daily basis.

Archibald Alexander, Thoughts on Religious Experience (Edinburgh, 1989), pages 165-167.

My beloved Greek professor at Wheaton College from 1969 to 1971, Dr. Gerald Hawthorne, has died.  He will be missed but is also envied, for he is face to face with his Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he trusted, loved and served.

He is pictured here with my son Dane at the latter’s graduation from Wheaton Grad School in May of this year.  I just happened to see Dr. Hawthorne as we were leaving Edman Chapel.  I am so glad our paths crossed.

I have before me now the Greek New Testament I bought in the fall of 1969 for his class.  It has been my constant companion all these years.  I can read it because of Dr. Hawthorne’s patient and delightful instruction.

Dr. Gerald Hawthorne, of blessed memory.

“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.  For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”  1 Timothy 4:1-5

As Francis Schaeffer used to remind us, the devil rarely gives us the luxury of fighting on one front only.  We see a monster over on one side wanting to devour us, and we back away in dread.  But if we’re not paying attention, we can walk right into the jaws of the other monster waiting for us over on the other side.  We often fight on two fronts at once.

Today we fight against materialism, especially the so-called Prosperity Gospel.  But there is also the danger of asceticism, the super-spirituality that denies the goodness of God in all things.  An almost endearingly absurd instance was Simeon the Stylite (c. 390-459), who lived in austerity for 36 years on top of a pillar, elevated above ordinary life.  This “holiness” is attractive, in a way.  It’s serious.  But it’s also fraudulent.  It tells an audacious lie about God and about us.

The truth is, everything created by God is good and is to be received by us gratefully.  This beautiful truth includes marriage and sex and food and mowing the lawn and flying a kite and paying the bills and sharpening a pencil and sitting on the porch in the evening and playing Monopoly with the kids and laughing at hilarious jokes and setting up chairs at church, and so forth.  There is so much divine goodness all around.  To push it away, to be above it, would insult our gracious Creator.

Our very earthly human existence is where true holiness can thrive.  How?  By thanking the Lord for it moment by moment, and by applying the word of God to it moment by moment.  It is written, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

Not ultimate, but good.  Good enough for God.  Good enough for us too.