I, though if pushed against a wall will come in as a dichotomist, have no special quarrel with trichotomists. I believe we are bodies and souls. But I get why some say we’re bodies, souls and spirits. There are times, in fact, when I find myself dipping my toes in the trichotomist waters. It happens when I consider my sins. There are at least three different planes in which we can find ourselves sinning. We can, and do sin with our bodies, with both the things we do and the things we have left undone. We can and do sin with our thoughts, with both the things we think and the things we have left unthought. We are called to guard our thought lives not just because sin can leak into our bodies but because even when our thoughts stay sealed away we can be in sin. We also, however, can and do sin with our feelings, with both the things we feel and the things we have left unfelt.
At least since the rise of Rousseau’s romanticism we have taken it as self-evident that feelings are things that happen to us, rather than things that come from us. As such, they need no justification. They simply are. This self-evident truth, however, is false. Feelings are things that come from us, not things that happen to us. “I can’t help how I feel” is a thought sin trying to cover a feeling sin. All our attempts to cover our sin inevitably fail before the omniscient eye of our Maker. He knows that we do not, despite His clear command, love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. He is all too aware that we do not, despite His clear command, love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
The inimitable Dr. Jay Adams understood this principle. He found himself counseling a couple struggling in their marriage. The husband explained that he didn’t feel like he loved his wife anymore. The man, frustrated, explained that he had been trying, but that he just found her too annoying. Dr. Adams suggested that he might try moving next door. “A trial separation?” the man asked. “Do you think that would help?” “I don’t know,” Dr. Adams replied. “I do know that God calls you to love your neighbor.” The man turned beet red and through clenched teeth explained, “Look, I’m trying to be polite here, to not be cruel. I don’t love my wife. I don’t like her. I wouldn’t love her or like her if she were my neighbor. The hard truth is I can’t stand the woman.” “Would you say,” Dr. Adams asked, “that you are enmity with her?” “YES!” the man shouted, “Now you understand.” Dr. Adams concluded, “I understand that the Bible commands us to love our enemies.”
How though do we learn to regain some measure of control over our wayward feelings? We repent and believe the gospel. We confess our ugly, unjust, ungrateful, unloving feelings. And we rejoice in the beautiful, unearned, immeasurably lovely grace of God in Christ. We preach to ourselves the gospel. Be careful little ones, what you do. Of course. Be careful little ones, what you think. By all means. But also friend, be careful little ones what you feel.
It doesn’t happen often, but it had happened. A book written for businessmen had jumped a fence and become something of a universal bestseller. Like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People before it, and Good to Great after it, people were talking about this book, including in the office where I worked. As I passed by the receptionist’s desk, she had it open, reading during her lunch. “What do you think?” she asked innocently enough. “Well,” I answered, “there may well be some good wisdom in that book. If there is, however, that wisdom isn’t unique to that book. And if there is anything unique about that book, I suspect it isn’t wisdom.”
Because the Bible equips us for every good work, the truth is that we already have all that we need. Our best teachers then are not those bringing us new truths, but those bringing us old truths. While the world may celebrate creativity, the creation of previously unknown ideas, the church celebrates fidelity, the propagation of previously revealed ideas.
Jesus Himself, while noted for the authority with which He spoke, was always quick to remind His audience that He didn’t speak His own words but the words His Father gave to Him (John 12:49). Even the notion that we must be born again in order to enter into His kingdom is something Jesus assumes the Pharisee Nicodemus must already know about (John 3:10). Jesus is about the business of reminding His own of what they have forgotten.
The same, of course, is true about His call to us that we should pursue His kingdom, and His righteousness. This is not some sort of course correction. The message of Jesus is not, “Well, the prophets did their best, but they steered you wrong. That’s why I have come, to tell you to stop listening to them, and start listening to me.” The pursuit of His kingdom, and His righteousness was always God’s call on our lives. Adam and Eve, as they left the garden, were called to pursue His kingdom, and His righteousness. Noah, and his family as they walked out of the ark, were called to pursue His kingdom and His righteousness. Abraham, by faith was called righteous and was called to seek that city whose builder and maker is God.
Because we are 21st century westerners, we think of that which is old as passé, outdated, and that which is new as improved. The truth is we are called to move forward. We should be enjoying in the church generational sanctification, as we stand on the shoulders of those who stood on the shoulders of those who stood on the shoulders. But we get better not by getting newer, but by getting older. We are Reformers, not revolutionaries.
I am reminded of this every time I am blessed to sing All People That on Earth Do Dwell, the “Old 100th.” We sing the same song the people of God have sung for 3,000 years. To be sure, we don’t know what tune David composed. And we sing an English translation rather than in Hebrew. But we are going back to the wisdom of God revealed to our fathers in the days of David. We too are called to make a joyful shout to the Lord, indeed we are the “all you lands” that were called to so shout. We too are called to serve the Lord with gladness, to enter His gates with gladness, to be thankful to Him and to bless His name. We are the sheep of His pasture precisely because He is merciful.
The Psalm ends with this reminder of why all our reforming is a returning- “And His truth endures to all generations.” We are not modernists trying to climb an intellectual tower of Babel. We are not evolving toward wisdom. We are instead always reforming because we are always returning, back to our Father, back to the Word, back to our primordial paradise.
In eternity it will be the same. There we will never have to unlearn, for we will be without sin. But we will continually learn more and more, know more and more, the glory of our heavenly Father. We will move further up and further in, growing into all that He will reveal. He is wisdom, precisely because He is the Ancient of Days. And to the everlasting glory of His name, we rejoice in knowing that we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
Immanuel Kant, though a rather bright fellow, built an imaginary wall. He taught that there are two worlds, the noumenal and the phenomenal. The latter was that world which could be experienced by our senses, what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell. The former was where the actual thing-in-itself dwelt. God Himself, being spirit, resides exclusively in the noumenal realm, since the wall between the two worlds is unable to be scaled. According to Kant, you can’t get from the phenomenal world to the noumenal. Paul, inspired by the far brighter, indeed omniscient Holy Spirit, disagrees, arguing in Romans 1 that we know the unseen God by the things we see. But, being sinners, we suppress that truth in unrighteousness.
The unbelief of the unbeliever, according to Paul, flows out of their own belief. That is, knowing they stand guilty before a holy God, and not being too copacetic about so knowing, they posit a universe with no god, and more important still, no holiness, no guilt, no law that they fail to measure up to. Trouble is, because they yet bear the image of God they are utterly unable to leave law behind. They deny the existence of a transcendent law-giver, and a transcendent law, but can’t keep themselves from scolding the rest of us. A naturalistic, or phenomenal world, is one in which we may be able to learn a thing or two about what is. But it is impossible to move from is to ought. Nothing of what is can tell us what ought to be.
Which doesn’t stop them from trying. Those of us who affirm a transcendent law-giver are regularly pilloried for being judgmental, insensitive, hypocritical, haters. Suppose that is precisely what we are. Why, I can’t help but wonder, do these folks think we ought to change? I mean, it is what it is. They may privilege latitudinarianism, sensitivity, consistency and love, but who died and made them the royal court? Abolish the law that makes homosexuality, abortion, fornication and drunkenness sin, and you have no law left to make insensitivity a sin. If there is no law you can’t even complain if those of us who believe there is a law impose it on you with all the swagger and gentility of the Nazis. Well, you can complain, but it places not the least obligation on us to stop doing so. They’re just appealing to a law they deny exists.
I regularly challenge my students this way- when one of your friends comes around with their moral relativism, their denial of a transcendent standard of right and wrong, see how long it takes for them to affirm such a standard. How soon will they be telling someone what ought to be done, hating on some person or behavior? They can’t help themselves. Even the motive to persuade us that they are correct is grounded in an ought rather than an is- that we ought to believe what’s true.
Here though is one final ought. I’ve written this not so we can laugh at the folly of unbelievers. Rather my desire is that we would have pity on them, stuck in their own is-ness. We ought not to laugh, but to seek to help these image bearers to see that they and their worldview fell off a great wall, and that only the King’s Man can put them back together again.
First, a disciple is just a student. It’s neither a magic nor an unusual word, but a simple one. We rightly distinguish between the twelve before the ascension of Christ and the twelve after, referring to the former as disciples and the latter as apostles. While a disciple is a student, an apostle is a messenger, sent by and with the authority of the Master. (Which is one important reason we must never fall into that temptation of pitting Jesus’ teaching against that of the apostles. “Oh, Jesus never talked about THAT. Only Paul did” is grievous error, and a denial of the authority of Jesus.) The disciple learns what the Master says. The apostle proclaims it.
Students have teachers, as do disciples. These, teachers, are among the gifts Christ gives to the church (). Disciples also, however, have curricula. Jesus calls us in the Great Commission not just to make disciples, but defines for us what our students are to be taught, “teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you” (). A disciple, in the context of the Great Commission is one who is being taught to observe all that Christ commanded.
Who are these disciples? They are the nations. The Greek word translated nations in is ethnos, from which we get our word ethnic. Some argue that Jesus is here commanding and affirming the catholicity of the church. That is, the disciples are charged to disciple men all over the planet, from every tongue and tribe. Others would argue, however, that, without excluding the call to disciple individuals from across the world, the text includes a call to disciple the “nations.” That is, we are to instruct and see to it that the institutions of the world, governments, cultures, educational institutions, that these all be taught to observe all that Christ commands.
Either way, when we divide the Great Commission, when we push apart soul winning from discipleship, when we find the latter to be beside the point, a distraction, we are failing as students of all that He commanded. Jesus is bringing all things under subjection, including every bit of ignorance and rebellion that still resides in me. Jesus is seeing to it that every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. Jesus changes everything.
As His students, then, we should be learning His commands. As students we should be obeying His commands, that we teach others to obey His commands. As students we should be learning to become teachers. As students we should be learning to speak His Words, to become apostles, sent messengers from the One who is the Word. As students we should eschew that lie from the serpent that doctrine divides, that a faith unsullied by study is more holy and pure than one marked by study. As students we need to learn that He has commanded us to not just be hearers of His Word, but doers. As students we need to hunger and thirst for His righteousness. As His students we need to seek first His kingdom.
Even in the midst of these strange times, our days still carry the rhythm of the normal. We may be hiding behind masks, but the blossoms of Spring are still breaking out, naked and unashamed. Our days may be empty, but they nevertheless grow longer as darkness sneaks through the door just at its widening curfew. In addition, despite the shutout of March Madness, the closing down of the NBA and NHL and uncertainty over if and when the boys of Summer might come out to play, we still had what has always been the most significant Spring day in sports, the NFL draft.
There is, however, a discordant note this year. No, not the spectacle of having the draft spectacle come to us from the basements of sundry head coaches and football bureaucrats. The discordant note for me comes not in the draft picks being phoned in, but in the absence of the post draft phone call with my father. I have paid attention to the draft all along the way. I have my tentative opinions (positive ones as it turns out) about the players the Steeler brass chose. What I don’t have is my father insisting on hearing my tentative opinions and his even more earnest insistence that he be given a chance to share his opinions with me. It’s what we did, every, single, year.
If there was a great battle being fought in the evangelical world, a tussle over gender neutral Bibles, a schism brewing over how we see Roman Catholicism he would talk with me about it. He would in fact go over these issues with me first, whenever we would get together. Not because these issues were what was most pressing on him, but so we could get over it, and move on to the Steeler talk. Those theological issues were real and important, like eating your vegetables is real and important. The Steeler talk was the dessert, and he wasn’t a man given to missing dessert.
In my book, Growing Up (with) RC, one of my goals was to give those who knew my father as a man in a pulpit a glimpse of the man in his easy chair. Despite rumors to the contrary, no skeletons were released from any closet. In fact, the only jangling you’ll hear coming from that closet are just some misshapen hangers bumping into each other. I have, for decades now, been saying to all who would listen, all those who “loved” him and now miss him, “You don’t understand. He’s a dad. A good dad. A great dad. He’s my dad.”
Now He is a dad far off, distant, beyond. The good news, however, is the good news. The same news that he defended and proclaimed is, most important of all, the good news he rested in, the good news he preached to me all his days, the good news that will, one day, reunite us. I love the Steelers. So did my dad. Better still, we loved each other. But best of all, we are loved by our elder brother, Jesus the Messiah. Give thanks.
