To See the Kingdom

Posted on January 17, 2020 by RC

“Unless a man is born of water and the Spirit he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Jesus spoke this to Nicodemus in John 3. It is, like every text, an important one. Jesus gives us a prerequisite, a sine qua non, a that without which for seeing the kingdom. As such it is quite reasonable that we would seek out an understanding of what this prerequisite is. I’m all in favor of thinking through with biblical care what it means to be born again. Many in the evangelical church make a foundational error here, looking at the rebirth as something we do, rather than something done to us. And the rest of us are quick to try to correct them on that.

What both sides tend to miss, however, is not the thing necessary, but the thing promised. We stop, stroke our beards, get out our lexical tools over “being born again” and skip lightly over “to see the Kingdom.” If we have been born again, if we have been moved from death to life, from darkness to light, we are able to see the kingdom. Which is nothing to yawn at.

What does it mean to see the kingdom? Well, first, and here I think we do just fine, it means being in it. I can see the kingdom of my office because I am in my office as I type. We have to be born again in order to be in, to be a part of the kingdom. True, vital and glorious indeed. Being in the kingdom, however, isn’t all there is to seeing it. We see it when the power of the King is made manifest. We who have been born again are blessed to see the hand of God at work, to see the wind that is the Spirit blow where He wills.

Better still, we are able to see the kingdom in our fellow citizens. The fellowship among the servants of the king, a fellowship that crosses over lines of socio-economic status, nationality, denomination is not just the blessing of the sense of unity, but the blessing of seeing God at work. When we give food to the least of these we not only see Jesus in the least, but we see Jesus in ourselves. We are Jesus, feeding Jesus. We are the kingdom at work.

I don’t know whether our low view of the church has birthed a low view of the kingdom, or a low view of the kingdom has birthed a low view of the church. I do know that both are far more vital than we tend to think. The kingdom isn’t just a waiting room for heaven. The church is not just a social club for those who have a ticket. Both are God at work, manifesting His glory, showing forth His reign, bringing in the elect from the four corners, setting the prisoner free, giving sight to the blind. Would that we would have eyes to see the Kingdom, that we might better glorify the King.

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Lisa and I review The Aeronaughts, M is for Man and Addicted to Mediocrity

Posted on January 17, 2020 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything

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Ask RC- How can I know if I’m saved? 5 Key Principles

Posted on January 16, 2020 by RC

There is no greater personal issue than our relationship with the living God. There are no greater stakes imaginable than the difference between eternal torment and eternal bliss. As such it is no wonder that so many struggle with issues of assurance of salvation. I cannot, of course cover the gamut of the issues in a brief piece, but can give some basic principles that I pray will help.

1. No one is allowed, save the Lamb, to look into the Book of Life, but there is no need to. Too often, especially in Reformed circles, the concern is expressed this way, “How can I know if I’m elect?” As a Reformed theologian let me clearly affirm that all the elect will be saved, and only the elect will be saved. But I will still ask, “Why would you want to know that?” We don’t believe in justification by election. If you stand before the judgment throne and God asks, “Why should I welcome you into My kingdom?” and you reply, “Because my name is in Your book” your name quite likely isn’t in His book. The issue isn’t the secret things of God, but what He has revealed. Jesus saves you.
2. Your obedience is not the bedrock of your assurance. Given the remains of sin within us it can be profoundly difficult to give a clear measure of our own spiritual growth. In fact I have been known to argue that the better we get the worse we seem to ourselves. That is, as we grow in grace we grow in our capacity to see our own sin more deeply. Which the devil delights to use to discourage us. It is Christ’s obedience that secures for us our eternity. Jesus saves you.
3. Your obedience is a part of your assurance. Be careful, especially when trying to help others, not to simply assume that all those struggling with assurance need to be assured. If you are living a lifestyle of unrepentant gross and heinous sin, you would do well to doubt your assurance. The center of the obedience I would call you to look for, however, would be here- believers are those who repent and believe. Jesus saves you.
4. Repenting is neither more nor less than crying out to God in Christ, “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner.” Believing is rejoicing in the faithfulness of His promise, that as we so repent, we go home justified. It is not the depth and power of your repentance that earns God’s favor. None of us repent as deeply as we ought, and so must ever repent for the weakness of our repentance. But Jesus came to save sinners. Jesus saves you.
5. If you fear you have committed the unpardonable sin, you almost certainly haven’t. Those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit do not have the Spirit in them to convict them for blaspheming the Spirit. If you find yourself obsessing over this question, it is almost certain that you obsess over other things and may be suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. If so, when you struggle with this fear, remind yourself a. that the fear is a good sign and b. Jesus died for sinners, including those struggling with OCD. Jesus saves you.
Bonus point- Remember also that you are not called to answer this question alone. The elders of your church are called to judge the credibility of the professions of those under their care. They, of course, can and do err. But if they are concerned for your soul, you ought to be as well. If they are delighted to receive you as a brother, be a brother and receive them back with joy. Jesus saves you.

Bonus Bonus Point- One great theologian ministers to those suffering a lack of assurance by asking these questions- Do you love the Lord with all your heart, mind soul and strength? And when they answer, “no” he asks, “Do you love the Lord as you ought?” And when they answer, “no” he asks, “Do you love Him at all?” He’s a wise man. Jesus saves you.

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Simul Justus et Peccator, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes and I Know a Little Greek (Philosophy)

Posted on January 16, 2020 by RC

Today’s JCE Podcast

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Beating Mr. Bulver, or Suspecting the Man in the Mirror

Posted on January 15, 2020 by RC

That Bulverism is a fallacy (wherein one discredits the conclusions of another on the grounds that said conclusions benefit the concluder) does not mean that it is not also a temptation. Suppose, for instance, I were to make the argument that Roberto Clemente was the greatest all around baseball player in history. You would be committing the Bulverism fallacy if you thought you have proven that Willie Mays is actually the best all round player ever by saying to me, “You just think Roberto is best because you are from Pittsburgh.” The issue isn’t where I was born, or my motives for believing something. The issue is baseball ability. That said, the truth is that I am tempted to skew my assessment of those skills because of loyalty to the city of my birth.

We all suffer the same kinds of temptation. Sometimes it goes by the more scholarly term confirmation bias. You and I, coming from two different perspectives, look at the same evidence (or worse, mere affirmation) and quickly reach differing conclusions based on our differing perspectives. When there is an internet dust-up between congregants and a pastor my default position is to defend the pastor, because I have been a pastor. Those, on the other hand, who have ever been mistreated by a pastor tend to be quick to convict. (So also are pastors who are jealous of the accused pastor quick to convict.) We, because we like ourselves, are given to seeing ourselves as careful, dispassionate and thoughtful. If we better knew ourselves we’d confess to being sloppy, self-interested and thoughtless.

My first suggestion is simply that we slow down. It is much harder to change direction than it is to start in one direction. When we let our own interests start us in one direction it is nigh onto unlikely that the facts will change our minds. The immediacy of the internet, and the shrill cries on both sides of any given issue seem to demand we choose sides quickly. Wisdom, however, calls us to take our time (Proverbs 18:17).

Second, we need to start with a dispassionate assessment of ourselves. We can find such, happily in the Bible. It tells us that our hearts are deceitful above all else (Jeremiah 17:9). This text tells us more than simply that the guy we suspect must be guilty. It tells us that we who are doing the suspecting are guilty. You can’t adopt a skeptical pose toward “people” without being skeptical of yourself. Call it Zeno’s Paradoxical Uncertainty Principle if you like.

Last, all our lost socks are now appearing in that echo chamber that we call Sock Puppet Theater, or, our own peculiar corner of cyberspace. Because we like to have our biased ideas confirmed, we tend to hang out with like-minded people. We may call our favorite sites froo-froo names like The Center for Discernment International, or The National Center for Debunking the Center for Discernment International, but all they really are is meandmine.com versus youandyours.com.

There is a time and a place for strong language. And there is a time and place for caution. We often confuse the two when we are in high dudgeon. Which then puts us in the deep weeds. May God help me to be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

Posted in Biblical Doctrines, cyberspace, Devil's Arsenal, kingdom, Kingdom Notes, RC Sproul JR | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, Francis Schaeffer’s Christian Manifesto and More…

Posted on January 15, 2020 by RC


Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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New Theses, New Reformation

Posted on January 14, 2020 by RC

Thesis 8- We must be a city shining on a hill.

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and the people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). We serve a God of contrasts. He is all light. In Him there is no shadow of turning. But from the beginning and unto the end, God delights to separate, to distinguish. In the creation He separated light from darkness, land from sea. And in the recreation He separates His people, calling them out of the darkness into the light. In accord with His promise in Genesis 3, He drafts the soldiers of His army from the army of His enemy, “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.” Meanwhile, we, fools that we are, seek to bring together what God has torn asunder.

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, reminds us of our calling. He tells us that we are the salt of the earth, that we are the light of the world. Outside the kingdom we find putrescence and darkness. Inside the kingdom we are salt and light. In our zeal to bring those outside inside, however, we have lost sight of this truth. We think that the blind will be made to see if we can simply be more like them. Our minds are so darkened that we think that the darker we are, the more we will shine. The evangelical church has called us to dress like the world, only, we hope, with a little more cloth. We are called to talk like the world, only we hope, with a little less, ironically, “saltiness.” We are called to watch their television programs, only not the ones on late at night on pay TV. We are called to listen to their music, only with nice clean words substituted by our friends in Nashville. We think we are baptizing the world when I’m afraid we are instead taking a bath in worldliness.

It is time for the church to be the church. Jesus says we are a city on a hill. We do not live in the valley of darkness. We are set apart, not merely for our own spiritual safety, but for the sake of the lost. We will win them only when we are not like them. Long before the Sermon on the Mount, God established a city on a hill. He instructed the children of Israel to wipe clean the land of Canaan. He gave them His Word. And He promised them that if they would stop behaving like their neighbors, if they would abide in His Word, then all the nations of the world would be blessed, that the lost would be banging down their doors, to find out their secret.

A life well lived may or may not be the best revenge. It is, however, most assuredly, the best way to proclaim the good news. May God give us the grace to live lives of such beauty, of such joy, of such light, that even the blind might be made to see.

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Presuppositionalism, A Hero, and Sodom, Oh My

Posted on January 14, 2020 by RC

Today’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Ask RC- Why do we find hardship so hard?

Posted on January 13, 2020 by RC

The soft answer is because it is hard. The hard answer is because we are soft. When I feel overwhelmed, and I do, when I feel like there’s just too much tension in my life, I often go back to D-Day. However difficult a situation might be, I’ve never been in that kind of situation. I do not struggle to understand why so many soldiers suffer from PTSD. I do struggle to understand why they all don’t. My hardships may seem more difficult than some other people’s but surely there are others whose hardship is more difficult than mine.

Perhaps, however, what makes it so difficult is the devil’s incessant attacks in the midst of hardship. He does not flee during hard times but attacks, pressing his advantage. He adds insult to injury by insisting that not only are we going through hardship, but that such proves that God is against us. It is one thing to have a health scare, one thing to have month left after the money is gone, but it is a whole other thing to have the Maker of Heaven and Earth see you as His enemy.

Which is why the solution to hardship is rarely to alleviate it. Instead the solution is always to repent and believe the gospel. We repent for, among other things, our ingratitude. So much of our hardship is grounded in a stubborn refusal to be grateful for the overwhelming blessings we already have. We look at the glass as half empty, forgetting not only that it’s half full, but that we are due no glass, no water and we are in no danger of literally dying of thirst. He leads us beside still waters, and we complain that we not on a tropical beach watching waves roll in. He brings us to green pastures and we grumble that it’s been a while since He gave us a sugar cube.

Repenting and believing the gospel go hand in hand. As we repent for our ingratitude we enter into gratitude, remembering that even if we are literally dying of thirst, when we are good and dead we’ll be warmly welcomed into paradise. We answer the devil’s accusations with God’s assurances. Not only does He not see me as His enemy but He tells me I am His son. Not only is He not pouring out His wrath on me, but has already poured out His wrath on His Son.

Which means that every hardship is a gift, the work of God in reshaping us into the glorious image of Jesus. Of course it hurts to have our rough edges sanded off. Hardships don’t come wrapped up as blessings. Often, in fact, they come from others who are intent on hurting you. None of which changes the truth that they are blessings and that they actually help us. Jesus always wins, and He is the one orchestrating all things. We do not simply grin and bear it. We do not either deny the pain. Instead we cry out to the One who loves us, trusting Him and giving thanks.

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Posted on January 13, 2020 by RC

Today’s JCE- Life in the Blender, with Lisa and Expressing Thanks

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