I was blessed, over the years, to teach a number of the Great Works courses at Reformation Bible College. It is my contention that we ought to cover the great books of western civilization not so we can prepare our students to join in what some call the “great conversation” that back and forth over the centuries that seeks to answer the most foundational questions of our nature, purpose and end. Instead I want to prepare them for the “great confrontation.” I teach in light of the antithesis, the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent that began in Eden and ends with the end of history. I want my students to understand the culture they are living in, the ideological water they are swimming in, so that they might both guard their hearts and press the crown rights of King Jesus.
One of the best shortcuts to understanding a given culture is to ask this question- in this culture, what does a person have to be or to do to be considered a hero? Such tells us a great deal. In ancient Greece you became a hero by courage and victory in battle. During the Renaissance you became a hero by dint of deep and wide study. In our day you become a hero by becoming the best in your field.
The high virtues of the Christian hero, by contrast, have precious little to do with accomplishment. Indeed I would argue that the first and highest standard of the Christian hero is a passion for repentance. The hero is the one who knows from top to bottom that he is not a hero. The hero moves through his days not only aware of his moral failures, but of his dependence on the grace of God in all its manifestations. He must know, increasingly, how weak and needy He is.
Second, the Christian, or the true hero is about the business not of making a name for himself, but of lifting others up and magnifying the name of Christ. Which is why real heroes are so hard to find.
Third, the Christian hero forgives. It is likely much less difficult to do a good deed for another than it is to forgive an evil deed done to us. The former flows easily from a high view of the self- I can do this giving thing for you, because I have so much to give.” The latter flows more from a low view of the self- “ I can forgive this wrong done to me because I know my need for forgiveness for the wrongs I’ve done to others.”
The temptation that began in the garden has not yet left us. We are always eager to become more than we are. The solution then and now is the same, to recognize our need for the work of the one true hero, Jesus. May we learn to imitate those who imitate Him.
How important it is to not allow our grasp of man’s total depravity to cause us to miss the remnants of the image of God in us. We are plenty bad. Sin touches every part of our being, and makes us utterly unable to do anything in ourselves, by ourselves pleasing to God, including coming to faith on our own. We do not, however, run in precisely the opposite direction of where we should be running. Romans 1, wherein Paul’s chief goal is to explain the universal guilt of man, for instance, tells us not that man, made to worship God, in his sin merely refuses to worship God, but rather says we worship the creature rather than the Creator. Because we’re fallen we won’t worship God. Because we bear His image, however, we will worship. Even at Babel they didn’t merely turn their back on the dominion mandate but rather twisted it. They built the tower because of God’s image. They built it for their own glory because of their depravity.
The same principle, that many of our desires (to work, to worship) are good and proper but because of sin, misdirected, applies to our desire to be loved. We are relational beings, just like our Father in heaven. It is not good, He told us, for man to be alone. Wanting to be loved isn’t a shame, weakness, a failure. Looking for love in all the wrong places, however, is a shame, weakness, a failure.
When we are men pleasers, ear ticklers, when we seek the approval of the world we are seeking love where we ought not, and missing the love that we have. When we commit adultery, indulge in pornography, escape into fantasy we seek love where we ought not, and miss the love that we have. When we gossip, slander, bear tales, we are seeking love where we ought not, and missing the love that we have. When we use social media to present our lives as one glamorous success after another, we look for love where we ought not and miss the love that we have.
The answer to our longing, the one thing that will satisfy our hunger is the Father who sent His Son to dwell with us, to be our Husband, and to feed us. If I am in Christ, I am His beloved, and I am in turn beloved of the Father. The Spirit is ever with me, encouraging me. If I am in Christ I have all that I could ever ask or hope for. In my sin I’m like the beloved son of the wealthiest man the world has ever known, going to the seedy part of town to pick through dumpsters, seeking to fill my belly. A feast is laid out for me at home, my Father’s table heavy laden with the choicest delicacies, and I’m looking for a pizza crust in a trash can.
My shame is not that I am hungry, for I was made to eat. My shame is missing what my Father has given me. My weakness is not that I want, but that I don’t recognize that I have. My failure isn’t that I long to be loved, but that I fail to believe I am infinitely loved. He is my beginning- I bear His image. And He is my end- I will be with Him always.
Thesis 18 -We must practice true and undefiled religion.
Christians are notorious retreatists. We would, in all the wrong circumstances, rather switch than fight. In the early part of the twentieth century those inside the church who had jettisoned the evangel, the good news, took up instead what came to be known as the “social gospel.” Mainline denominations determined that the kingdom would come only as the church set about the business of righting social wrongs. What we needed was not repentance and faith in Christ but more soup kitchens and job training programs. Those who believed the Bible stood on the fundamentals, arguing that the church is called to gospel ministry. They left caring for the poor to the theological liberals, who later handed this calling over to the state.
It’s a good thing to believe the Bible. It’s a great thing to understand that the Bible calls all men everywhere to repent. It is wisdom to recognize that social programs are not the key to building the kingdom. It is a bad thing, however, to lose sight of true religion. James tells us, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world” (1:27). Care for the poor within our midst isn’t something for liberal churches to do. It’s something for believers to do.
The evangelical church is that church which believes the whole of the Bible. We do not give up on God’s promises because prosperity hucksters promise what God has not. We do not give up honoring Mary because Rome idolizes her. We don’t give up the Holy Spirit because some say He’s making them bark in the aisles. And we certainly don’t give up caring for widows and orphans because mainline “believers” claim to care about them. Only those who actually are known by Jesus are able to give in His name. And all those who are known by Jesus are called to do just that.
James, you may remember, for a time was a burr under the saddle of Luther. He found James’ insistence that faith without works is dead troubling until, happily, he didn’t find it troubling any more. He, eventually, by God’s grace, bowed before James’ wisdom. Do we do the same? Do we turn up our noses at caring for widows and orphans as a social justice driven downgrade, a distraction? Do we think true religion is caring for the uninitiated and uneducated in their ignorance? Do we think that true religion is attracting the millennial and the upwardly mobile?
Or worse, is our religion, as Francis Schaeffer suggested, the worship of personal peace and affluence? We may soon find out. As our economic house of cards meets its reckoning, will evangelicals risk their lives to care for others, or will we risk others’ lives to care for ourselves?
Reformation comes when we reform our lives in submission to God’s world. Not reflecting the world, not reacting against our enemies, not regurgitating the media, but reforming our lives.
The story is told of the older woman who was blessed to have Martin Luther as her pastor. One Sunday, however, she determined to express her displeasure, “Why, Dr. Luther,” she asked, “do you seem to preach the same sermon every week?” Luther is said to have replied, “I preach the same gospel every week because every week we forget.” I raise this point because I am well aware that not long ago I published a brief piece asking essentially this same question. My answer there was to encourage a level of thoughtfulness that we find too easy to forget. My answer here is that we likewise forget the gospel, and that, above all, is what we are to do in these strange days, remember the gospel.
When our days are ordinary we find it all too easy to forget the gospel. We’ve already been regenerated. We’ve already embraced Christ in faith. We’ve already been forgiven, adopted, indwelt. So we turn our attention to ordinary things. When our days are extraordinary, as they are right now, we find it all too easy to forget the gospel. We turn our attention to whatever the extraordinary thing is. I venture to guess that the great majority of American evangelicals have, in the past few weeks, spent far more time reading up on the Coronavirus than reading our Bibles.
The great danger we are in, however, is not a house of cards economy crashing down all around us. The great danger we are in is not the prospect of a painful death. No, the great danger we are in, in ourselves, is falling under the wrath of the living God. If, however, we are not in ourselves, but in Him, if we are in union with the One who already received the wrath of the Father, then our great danger is no more. Now our great danger is dishonoring our gracious Father who redeemed us by failing to rejoice and to give thanks.
Of course we are not only free but commanded to bring our cares before Him. I’m not scolding us for acknowledging the hardness and the strangeness of these days. Instead I’m encouraging us to remember that everything that Coronavirus can take away are all things we would gladly give up in order to have the Pearl of Great Price. And Him we already have. He tells us to be of good cheer, because He has already overcome the world. That means we’re supposed to both believe He has overcome the world, and rejoice because of it.
What are we supposed to do in these strange days? The same thing we are to do in ordinary days. We are to repent and to believe the gospel. And in believing we are to give thanks and rejoice. We are, in isolation, in an overcrowded hospital, in the line at a soup kitchen, in His good hands. So let us raise our hands and sing His praise.
