I was not, as a kid, a particularly gifted athlete. I enjoyed sports, however, and so my hours were determined by the seasons: football, basketball, baseball. I realized early on that my gifts were limited, while my desire to compete was boundless. My solution- will. I determined to will myself to victory, to be the dog in the fight with the most fight in the dog. The Rocky movies resonated with me. I would take a punch, and come back for more.
That same perspective survived my childhood, and is still with me. But it has matured. I went against Goliaths on the gridiron, faced Apollyon staring me down from the pitcher’s mound, but before the hand of God I have been humbled. My will wilts before His. As one wise theologian was wont to say, “You have free will. God has free will. Whose will is more free?”
God’s revealed will is found for us in the Bible. He commands, and we are to obey. He forbids, and we are to abstain. His hidden will, however, is unhidden through circumstance. He not only commands what He will, but brings to pass what He will. Pharaoh’s army defied God’s revealed will in chasing after God’s people. But the tumbling walls of the Red Sea defied Pharaoh’s defiance. God won.
He always wins. When the Son of Glory hung in shame upon the cross, He won, just as much as He won when the Son walked into a garden, the firstborn of the new creation. When circumstances are not going the way we wish, when providence frowns upon us, there is no shadow on Him. Not because He is disconnected, not even because the light will defeat the darkness, but because these are His ordained means.
History, whether as narrowly conceived as how my day is going, or as broadly considered as the rise and fall of nations through all time, is God ultimately moving all the pieces on the chessboard. How such relates to evil is a great mystery. We must never besmirch His character. Neither, however, may we negotiate away His ultimate absolute control over all things.
We are called to pray both as Jesus taught us, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done” which reminds us of our duty to submit to His revealed will, but also as Jesus prayed, “Nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done.” It is here that we remember and rest in His sovereignty, remembering that nothing comes to pass that He does not ordain (Lamentations 3:37).
God brought famine in the land, and Elimelech fled to Moab. Elimelech and his sons went the way of all flesh, leaving behind three widows. Dark providences indeed. But Boaz spied the young woman as she gleaned. But Boaz awoke from his slumber on the threshing room floor. But Boaz and Ruth begat a son, who begat a son who begat a son, whose “son” and Lord would be both the Son of David, and the Son of God. Do not lose heart in the dark providences. He brought us from death to life. He will do the same with our lives, in His timing.
All are welcome for part 4 of this study. Tonight we consider Boaz as a type of Christ.
Thesis 93 We must always reform.
The Reformation was chock full of shorthand slogans. The five solas of the Reformation came to light under the banner of Post Tenebras Lux, after darkness light. The five points of Calvinism, blossomed long after Calvin’s death and in response to the five points of the Remonstrants. There is, however, one more, the runt of the litter, semper reformanda, always reforming. It’s a perfectly wonderful slogan and a valuable principle. It has, however, often been hijacked.
What we don’t mean in affirming the call of the church to always reform is that it needs to reform away from the Reformation, or worse still, away from the Word of God. Sadly, for centuries those who would lead the church into error and heresy have defended their novel ideas with this phrase. It’s time we took it back.
We need a new reformation. And if God should in His grace grant us one, we will, in the midst of it, need a new reformation. We should be, this side of eternity, always reforming because this side of eternity, each of us and all of us together fall short of the mark. It is a shameful reality that individually and corporately we are too easily satisfied. Many of us make a long journey to come to embrace those great slogans of the Reformation, and then make the mistake of thinking it is all we need. It is a good thing to know, embrace and defend these slogans. It is a better thing to know, embrace and rest in Jesus.
What does Reformation look like? I have for years, in this project, tried to offer up my own suggestions. Like Luther before me I have presented this list as items for debate and discussion, believing that getting these ironed out will bode well for the well-being of the church. The truth is, however, that we could have all our theological ducks in a row, all our orthopraxy worked out, and still be in desperate need of Reformation. We need to have our hearts re-formed, from the inside out, such that we know more fully the depth, scope and horror of our own sin. This is a reforming that lasts a lifetime.
We must also have our hearts re-formed, from the inside out, such that we know more fully the depth, scope and beauty of our Lord’s redemption of us. This is a reforming that lasts a lifetime. We must have our hearts re-formed, from the inside out, such that we know more fully the depth, scope and immutability of the Father’s love for us, His forever children. This Reformation will go on forever. As we forever move further up and further in we will grow in our capacity to receive His immeasurable love.
We, by His grace, pray for Reformation now knowing we are being re-formed for eternity. He has gone to prepare a place for us. He sent His Spirit to prepare us for that place.
Of all the silly notions that run rampant in our thoughtless, sentimental times, this one may well take the cake. That’s the “Boy howdy is this a silly idea” cake mind you. It is beautifully true and truly beautiful that He does indeed love us. He delights to be in relationship with us. All of which is rather a long way from He needs us lest He be lonely. Let me suggest two reasons, one a bit ethereal and abstract, the other more obvious.
God is all sufficient. That, of course, is not language we typically use. It’s a fancy way of saying He not only doesn’t need anything, but He can’t need anything. That is, God did not work hard to get Himself to the place where all His needs are met. No, when there was God and nothing else He was already without any needs. It’s not as though He had some odd sense of dis-ease, pondered it for a while and then determined to make man, to see if that would scratch His itch. He had no itch, and never will have an itch. God did not create man to fill an empty place in Him but to make known His absolute fullness.
Second, not only was God not alone prior to the creation but God’s essence is “not aloneness.” That God is trinitarian is not accidental. Please don’t misunderstand. By “not accidental” I don’t mean that it happened on purpose. In fact, it didn’t happen, because it has always been. What I mean by “not accidental” is that the tri-unity of God is essential to what He is. If I weighted forty pounds less and were three inches taller I would not have changed my essential being. If my hair were thick and the hue of a red, red rose, I’d still be me. God’s trinitarian nature isn’t like that. Make Him one being in three roles and He would be something and someone completely different from what and who He is.
Which is why there was no loneliness prior to the creation. There was no aloneness. God the Father enjoyed perfect, infinite union with the Son and the Spirit. The Son enjoyed perfect, infinite union with the Father and the Spirit. The Spirit enjoyed perfect, infinite union with the Father and the Son. No person of the Trinity could ever say of another, “I feel like I just don’t know you.” Nor could any person of the Trinity experience a moment of loneliness.
No, God has never been lonely. His motive for creating the world, and mankind is the same as His ultimate motive for all that He does, to make manifest His own glory. That is done in part in and through His genuine love for us, the sacrifice Jesus made to restore our relationship with Him. He is not in the least aloof and indifferent toward us. Neither, however, has He ever sat by His phone waiting for us to call.
The simplicity of God is a doctrine that provides a rather useful fence. The perfections of God are, of course, worthy of our excitement. Their infinity is, of course, staggering. But the simplicity of God is that place where these infinite perfections show themselves to be one where the glorious colors come together in a blinding white. Whatever else we delightfully affirm about God, we must affirm that He is one.
It is the very point of the doctrine of simplicity, however, that we don’t diminish one attribute when we remember another. We have misunderstood simplicity if, as we wax rhapsodic over the love of God, we throw a wet blanket over the party by remembering, “Well, He is also a God of wrath, after all.” The wrath of God doesn’t restrain the love of God, nor does the love of God restrain His wrath. Rather, in a profound way, they are one and the same thing.
There are some fairly obvious ways that we see this. In Psalm 2 we see the wrath of God coming for a specific reason, because the kings of the earth will not kiss the Son. The love of the Son is what provokes the wrath of the Father. We see much the same thing on the road to Damascus, as Jesus accuses Saul, “Why dost thou persecute Me?” Christ’s loving union with the Bride brings wrath on Saul. And in turn, that wrath brings forth love as Saul becomes Paul, a part of the Bride.
Love is universally loved. We who belong to the King rightly celebrate His love for us. But those outside the camp do not stay outside the camp because of a self-conscious rejection of love. Those who think the lost are lost because they have trouble accepting love have been accepting too many foolish bromides from pop psychologists. The very creatures that the lost create, in their rejection of the Creator, are characterized by love. One can safely finish the idolater’s sentence, when he begins, “Well, my god is a god of … .” It’s love, every time. Have you ever heard someone object, when we tell them to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus, “Well, I’m repulsed by your God that forgives the repentant. My god is a god of raging, irrational fury.” No. Everyone loves love.
But while love is not diminished by wrath, a love that excludes wrath is not a biblical love. The love clamored for by the lost is a wrathless love. But the love they crave is just unknown. While there is, rightly understood, a universal love of God that includes even those who will be damned, this love is a simple love, one that includes all that God is. There is no wrathless love that comes from God.
The Bible tells us that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. We find there what some theologians call “common grace.” God acts kindly to all men living. We all need to remember this. When we, or others, in trying to describe their particular anguish describe their situation as “a living hell,” they do not understand the patient love of God. Any suffering experienced on this earth, save for the passion of Christ, is a suffering mitigated by His love, a suffering that is less severe than what is due, a suffering less severe than hell. But even the most wicked among us do not live their earthly lives exclusively in agony. Some unbelieving mothers genuinely rejoice when blessed with a child. Sometimes unbelievers win the Super Bowl and are genuinely happy about it. Even the heathen in the remotest, most desolate part of the world sometimes sit down to a favorite meal and feel real joy in eating it. Common love is common, love, and real.
Common love, or the universal love of God, however, cannot be separated from common wrath. Because God is one, a simple being, you cannot wrap your arms around His love and miss the wrath. The Lord our God, the Lord is One. For the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness, including the unrighteousness of ingratitude. The common love of God is connected with the common wrath of God right here, where Paul tells us of all natural men, “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him …” (Rom. 1:21a). Though the lost will receive the loving gifts of God, they will neither honor Him nor thank Him, and so they will earn His eternal wrath.
God’s love is not only inseparable from His wrath, but it is equally bound together with His sovereignty. That is, when God sends the rain to the unjust, He does so knowing that the unjust will not honor Him. But this doesn’t frustrate God. First, He planned it that way. And second, He planned it that way because of one more connection between love and wrath — God loves His wrath. He delights to manifest the infinite perfection of His wrath just as much as His love, because they are one thing.
This, in turn, must inform how we look at the world around us. The problem with the broader culture, that place where they love love, isn’t that they’ve embraced part of the truth, and that our job as sound Christians is to teach them the hard parts. Rather we have to understand that the love they love is no more love than the god they worship is God. They are wrong on all counts. And unless they embrace the true and living God, the God of love that is wrath, of wrath that is love, of both that are manifest sovereignly, they will perish. Biblical love requires that we tell the world that their love of their love will earn them only His wrath.
There is a reason our heart sometimes has its reasons that reason knows not of. We are not disembodied minds. We are not often motivated by something as sterile as the conclusion to a syllogism. Neither are those outside the kingdom. We are demonstrating our own worldliness when we think that what the world needs is to learn how to think like us. Because they bear the image of God, even in their sin they want things to make sense, to live in a world of truth and coherency. Because they bear the image of God, even in their sin they want things to be just, to live in a world of law and fairness.
Because they bear the image of God, however, even in their sin they want to take in and be taken in by beauty, to live in a world both stirring and sublime. Because we are being remade into the image of our risen Husband, we are called to live, as individuals and in community, lives marked by truth, goodness and beauty. Which is just another way of saying we are to be a city on a hill.
Consider the experience of Ruth. When her husband, brother-in-law and father-in-law were all dead, it made perfect sense for her mother-in-law to tell Ruth and Orpah to go back to their own mothers and find a new husband. Orpah saw the sense in it herself. The syllogism led to that decision. The beauty of Naomi, and the promised beauty of the people of God in the Promised Land led Ruth to a better answer. Why does Ruth insist to her mother-in-law, “Whither thou goest I will go?” Because she had experienced grace and beauty in Naomi, and likely in Elimilech, Chilion and Mahlon. Why does Ruth insist, “Your people will be my people?” Because she learned from Naomi that she came from a land where widows were protected and provided for, where they were safe. Why does Ruth cry out, “Your God will be my God?” Because she knew that He was responsible for the first two things. It was His law that made Israel a welcoming land, and His grace that made Naomi a warm blessing.
Jesus said, “By this will all know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). The proof is not in the pudding but the bonding. As we bicker with each other, snipe and snark, we lie about our Redeemer. As we are knit together inside the kingdom, as we love one another well, the very glory of the trinity shines forth. As we carry one anothers’ burdens, as we delight in one another, as we live out the one anothers in our daily lives we offer life to the walking dead all about us.
We are called to commemorate, communicate, cultivate the love of Christ within the church, knowing such He uses to call into His communion those yet outside the kingdom. May He find His bride beautiful.
