Don’t forget that today, at 7:00 eastern we continue our live study, working together through my father’s classic work, The Holiness of God. We will cover this week (after postponing last week due to a funeral) chapter 5. All are welcome to join us online. We’ll be on Facebook Live, at RC-Lisa Sproul. If, however, you are in the area, you are welcome to join us in our home. We serve a meal to our guests at 6:00. Do please let us know if you’d like to be here in person for the study or both the meal and the study. We hope to see you here.
While I’m perfectly willing to affirm that various and sundry state agencies have well exceeded the bounds of their authority in the wake of COVID, it has been for some time my contention that Christians would do well to spend less time accusing the heathen and more time pleading with our Father for forgiveness. Every bit of government overreach is wrong, wicked, presumptuous, provocative, idolatrous and iniquitous. What they meant for evil, however, God has meant for good. It is certainly possible to object to the one while giving thanks for the other. It is, however, more probable that when we are grumbling against God’s ministers of justice we are also grumbling against God. When the Babylonians invade you unsheathe your sword. But you also get on your knees in prayer, repenting.
If the closing/dividing/masking/cyber-izing of our churches is a judgment from God, what is it He is judging? Chances are, given the long history we have recorded for us in His Word, that our problems are the same problems our fathers had before us. We, and by we I don’t mean we Americans but we Christians, are inveterate syncretists. We blend together the worship of the living God with the worship of the gods of our neighbors. We reshape Yahweh into the image of Baal.
God-to-me is the name of the god of the broader culture. He, or she, is loving, tender, kind, encouraging and wants us to be happy. His law can safely be reduced down to two great commandments- Do what thou wilt and You gotta be nice. Which is why it shouldn’t surprise us that the God who is preached, at the bleating demand of the sheep, from our pulpits is much the same. Either we speak not of sin at all, or, if we’re bold and heroic we do speak about sin, the sins the church down the street is guilty of.
So what do we repent of? Worldliness. Seeking to serve the living God and the god of personal peace and affluence. Spiritual pride. Our inability to blush. Our refusal to feel His hand of judgment on us, no matter how obvious He makes it. Indifference to the plight of the most marginalized demographic in the world, the unborn. A prideful unwillingness to identify with our brothers and sisters when their shame is made public. An arrogance that presumes to know the state of the souls of others who profess the name of Christ, if they aren’t as politically astute as we are, or as boldly defiant as we are, aren’t as alert to Gramsci’s game plan as we are.
We repent of our lack of faith. First, we fail to believe that He is at work in the here and the now, looking at pandemics and power grabs as mere human plots rather than our God working out His plan. Second, for failing to thank Him for these hardships, because we fail to recognize that when He brings hardship to His people He does so out of love, to drive us deeper into His arms. Our Father loves us. He holds the heart of the king in his hand, and of the governor, and of the mayor. He holds the outcome of the election in His hand. How can we doubt the one who took the one true tragedy, the one great horror of an innocent man coming under judgment, and revealed it not just to be good news, but to have been His plan all along? Forgive us O Lord, our lack of faith. Hear our cry, and deliver us from us.
It is a sure sign of the fall that we so egregiously miss what we lost. Jesus calls us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness precisely because our priorities are all out of line. Even that for which we long, that we’ve got to get back to the garden, we long for in the wrong way. Eden, to be sure, was Edenic. It was a garden paradise. There were no weeds crowding their way in there. No bugs buzzed in ears, nor stung arms and legs. Adam and Eve had no need to fear that prowling lions would consume humble lambs, nor that cyclones would tear up their garden by the roots. Eden was a place of joyful, fulfilling work. Adam would never feel the pressure of too many deadlines. His laptop would never go on the fritz. Neither had he any reason to fear an industrial accident. And then Adam and Eve had each other. This was a love relationship that would stagger us in its glory, that would blow us away in its intensity, that would in turn calm us in its beauty.
And all of the above did not amount to a hill of beans compared to the real blessing. All of the above are but shadows of a far greater glory, icing on a far richer cake. The glory of the garden was this- they walked with God. What we lost was not just beholding, but entering into the very glory of God. That is to say, it would have been enough just to have been allowed the privilege of watching Him walk by. That would have shrunk every other blessing down to size. But He did not merely walk by. He walked with. Adam and Eve drew near to Him. To get just a glimpse of what this must have been like, recall to mind how C.S. Lewis portrayed the joyful Aslan playfully wrestling with the Pevensie children. This, not luscious fruit and tropical breezes, is what we lost.
This loss, in turn, is what we are seeking so desperately to forget. We are haunted by Eden. Which may help us to understand the peculiar way in which our modern culture practices its folly. We are told by Paul in Romans 1 that all men know that God exists, but we suppress that truth in unrighteousness. Supposing ourselves to be wise we become fools and exchange the glory of the Creator for mere creatures. Our idolatry isn’t merely embracing the wrong religion. It is rejecting what we know that we might bow down to what we have made.
In Paul’s day it seemed that on every street corner there was a temple to this goddess, and a statue to that god. Modern Americans are different. Or are we? We do not self-consciously bow down to gods of our own making. But if one were to step back enough, to set aside the normalcy of our idolatry, we might find it in the strangest places. I suspect that archeologists in future millennia, when they dig up our civilization will suggest that we worshipped a nearly ubiquitous god named “Starbucks.” They would, of course, be missing the point. Starbucks is not our god, but a mere aid to our worship. We carry around cups of our drug of choice that will keep us awake and alert enough to attend to our gods- that we can distract our minds, and our hearts with our smart phones, streaming services, our podcasts, our constant and perpetual influx of meaningless data. We are all aflutter taking in media of one sort or another so that we will not hear the deafening echo of our emptiness, so that we won’t feel the gnawing lack where we once walked with God.
The strangest thing of all, however, is not the frantic forgetfulness of those yet on the outside. No, the truly strange thing is that Jesus has for us restored paradise. We walk with God but will not listen because our earphones are piping us the latest new band. We will not see His glory because our eyes are captured by whatever is making the rounds today on Youtube. We will not even hold His palm scarred hand because we’re busy checking our retweets. That is, we who walk in paradise, are too busy dancing with the devil to notice.
The kingdom is here, and the kingdom is now. We need not, in one sense, seek it. For it has sought and found us. To seek what has already been found we do not work harder. Instead we stop. We listen, We see. We smell. We enter into the glory of His presence. Instead we rejoice and give thanks that we are already seated with Him in the heavenly places. There is no cell service up there. Be still, and know that He is God.
In that stillness you will hear first the heavenly choirs of angels, as they cry out, “Holy, holy holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” Then you will hear the Master’s voice. Even now, even here on this side of the veil you will hear Him say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter into your reward.” And you will rejoice that He is that exceedingly great reward. He walks with you now in the cool of the evening. For lo, He is with us always.
Sometimes the same thing needs to be said, over and over. I try, hard as it is, to not repeat myself across the various media I use. If I tweet something I likely won’t talk about the same issue on my podcast. If I write a blog piece along a certain line, I likely won’t record an Ask RC on the same theme. And so I fail again.
I have a long history of being doctrinaire. I have over the decades built a reputation as something of an ideological pugilist. Those thousand hills holding our heavenly Father’s cattle could each hold an ideology I’m willing to die for. Not a one of them, however, is worthy to be compared with this one- Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of which I am chief.
Which is why I have to, once again, take a stand against those I am typically more inclined to stand with. As I noted in a piece earlier this week, I have never voted for a Democrat. I can’t imagine a scenario in which I would ever do so. In like manner, on racial issues I’m more than willing to take on the judgment and condemnation of the woke for the stand I take- I believe the better day is that day when a man is judged by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. Radical hard right conviction, that one, I know.
When, however, my friends on these secondary issues start spouting off about how those on the other side of these secondary issues are beyond the reach of God’s grace, well, let’s just say I don’t much care for it. “No Christian could ever…” “To embrace theistic evolution is the same as being an atheist…” “Believing in government handouts is Marxist and all Marxists are not Christians.” Seriously? When did the young, rude and Reformed suddenly embrace Wesleyan perfectionism? Do all believers receive a second work of grace when they invite Von Mises, or Thomas Sowell or Alex Jones into their hearts?
Voting Democrat, embracing theistic evolution, asking the state to rob Peter to pay Paul, or any intersection thereof is sinful, rebellion, foolishness, unbiblical, nonsensical, and just plain dumb. Yet all three together are not worthy to be compared with the folly that says, “Those who do or believe these things have not been covered by the blood of Christ.” To say such is sinful, rebellion, foolishness, unbiblical on steroids.
It is a good thing to be sound on the issues, to apply the Word of God to the controversies of our day, and to do so rightly. It is a good thing to, in our prophetic office, call sin sin. It is a good thing to contend for the faith. It is, however, a better thing to remember that the faith proclaims this- Jesus died for our sins, those in our past, those that yet hold on to us, and those we will commit in the future. He died for our behavioral sins, our ideological sins, our sins of concupiscence, and, thankfully, all the sins that flow out of our foolish pride. Friends, let us fight the battles before us with vigor. Let us not, however, surrender the war in doing so.
Pietism is a view that looks at the broader world as a matter of utter insignificance, because it focuses exclusively on making the individual soul better. Radically individualistic and deeply Gnostic the movement eschews political involvement, denigrates the exercise of dominion and sometimes adds to the law of God. This, of course, ought never to be confused with piety, which is a good thing. Piety is godliness of character, a zeal to grow in grace and wisdom, to bear much of the fruit of the Spirit. Because these two are often confused it is not at all unusual for those more lax in the pursuit of holiness to accuse those more zealous with pietism. In like manner it is not unusual for some who are passionate about pressing the crown rights of King Jesus, who long to see His reign acknowledged, to look down on the pursuit of personal piety as a distraction.
Our calling, of course, is to labor to manifest the reign of Christ over all things, including our own souls. And we are to do so in concentric circles. That is, my first obligation is to pursue holiness myself. Next I am to labor to see that my children grow in grace. Next are those under my pastoral care, directly or indirectly. Finally I am to labor to see all institutions brought under His dominion. We ought all to recognize how tightly bound together these things are. The world, the church, my family will all get better as I get better. I haven’t abandoned them in seeking greater piety, but am instead serving them. In like manner, purifying the world, the church, my family in turn redounds to my own righteousness. No one can go wrong working to see the glory, the beauty of Christ’s authority more broadly recognized.
That said, here are some examples where piety ends and pietism begins. It is not at all unusual to hear some well meaning Christians argue that we ought not to seek to make abortion illegal, because, we are told, “It’s a heart matter.” We are told instead that we need only labor to win souls, and the abortion issue will take care of itself. The same, of course, could be said about murder. Murder is illegal, and people still do it. So why push to see murderers prosecuted? Isn’t soul winning so much more important? Well, the Lord we claim to worship established the state as in instrument of justice. He gives them the sword to punish evil-doers. Which means He calls them to protect the unborn. It is impiety to abandon them by abandoning our prophetic calling to the world. Of course we should be seeking to see souls brought in. As we should be seeking to see justice for the unborn.
Which brings us to our second example. There are those who argue that the sole function of the church is Word and Sacrament. The Bible, we are told, doesn’t speak directly to political issues. The church should not be speaking out against homosexual behavior. The church should not speak for the unborn. Culture is just culture, a human reality more than a spiritual reality. There is therefore no such thing as bringing plumbing, poetry or politics under the Lordship of Christ. This is pietism. It may be willing to affirm the Lordship of Christ over all things, but not in such a way that you could tell Jesus reigns. The Word calls us to make known His reign, to destroy the works of the devil and his diabolical troops. And the sacraments enlist and feed His army
Pietism is an ugly word, and we may be guilty of overusing it. One problem, however, is that pietism is an ugly reality. Piety calls us to call it out, in the name of our risen and reigning Savior.
There was once a great man who managed to upset the religious leaders of his day. They were screaming for his blood because he had both bypassed their own power structure, and had gained a large popular following. He had taught those under his influence that the traditions they had received were wrong, distortions of the Word, and called them to something far older, something far more biblical. And the world was being turned upside down. Those in authority accused the man of heresy, demanding that he cease and desist. And then, the most amazing thing happened. The history tells us that “…while He was being accused by the chief priests and elders, He answered nothing. Then Pilate said to Him, ‘Do you hear how many things they testify against You?’ But He answered Him not a word, so that the governor marveled greatly” (Matthew 27:12-14.)
Jesus gave no dramatic speech. He did not thrust His chin out, confess that He could not recant because His conscience was captive, turn on His heels and walk off. Instead He went like a lamb to the slaughter. He submitted Himself to the scribes and Pharisees, to the Roman empire, and more important, the Emperor Beyond the Sea.
Luther did the right thing, standing on the Word at Worms. And we, too often, do all the wrong things in his name. We think that the glory of that story is that he stood his ground, that he was courageous, immovable, a rock. And so we go in search of the same opportunities. We boldly stand, and walk out of our churches because this possible inference of that potential trajectory of the other postulation in the pastor’s off-the-cuff remark might impinge on an important doctrine. We boldly defy the American empire, refusing to tell their census taker how many toilets are in our house. We boldly dishonor our parents, because we think them to be not quite as honorable as we are.
Luther is a hero not because he was bold, but because he was meek, not because of his stance, but because of where he stood. I suspect that great speech at Worms was delivered not with bravado, but as a plea, that he whimpered rather than thundered. Luther is a hero because he was willing to be slaughtered for the sake of the Lamb. It was not because he stood, but because he knelt, in submission to the Word.
It is a good thing to want to do great things for the kingdom. It is a better thing to understand that the better thing is almost certainly to submit to those in authority over you. The greatest thing Jesus ever did was not His miracles. It was not the proclamation of His message. It was not even the walking out of the tomb alive. The greatest thing Jesus ever did was to say, at the greatest possible cost, “Yes, Father.” May His grace and power teach me to do the same. May those in authority over me marvel.
