In a few hours I will have the privilege of teaching a Bible study on the character of God. It is my aim in this four week study to communicate something of the glory of God while not taking the usual route of listing and unpacking sundry attributes. I want to consider His character in terms of His relationships. Our God, the living God, the triune God is not just a God who relates, but that He relates is essential to what He is. It is not an accident, an add-on, any more than being triune is incidental to His being.
Our failure along these lines is, in my judgment, just one more proof that we who are given to thinking through evangelical theology have quite a few Enlightenment snares still besetting us. We think that what defines us is what we are capable of, that we are a string of abilities. And so we think of God in the same way. Even the Westminster Shorter Catechism shows its Enlightenment chains when asking, “What is God?” What? Seriously? Wouldn’t you think the better question, the more biblical question would be, “Who is God?”
We do this whichever person of the Trinity we’re talking about. We describe the Father in terms of His power, His knowledge and His presence. We describe the Son in terms of His ontology, jumping quickly to the vexing mysteries of the incarnation. And when it comes to the Holy Spirit it seems we can’t get through ten minutes of talking about Him before we’re arguing about sign gifts. All of which makes us miss the truly shocking reality of the Spirit- that He indwells us.
It is a right application of the omnipresence of God to remember that wherever we go, God is already there. David himself said so in Psalm 139. God’s presence, however, isn’t merely a function of His ubiquity, His transcendence over all things, but of His indwelling, His immanence. To put it another way, God is not just with us universally, but is with us, believers, personally. Can you believe that? I don’t need to fear that my prayers never get past the ceiling. God is with me in my bed. I don’t need to look to the hills hoping He will come to me. He has never and will never leave me. The folly that thinks, like Adam and Eve in the garden, I can hide from God, is defeated because wherever I go, there He is.
It is good to remember that the Holy Spirit is not just a force. It is better to remember that He is a full-fledged person of the godhead. It is best, however, to remember that He is God not just with us, but in us. But wait, there’s more. He is not just in us, but there He cleanses us, guides us, instructs us, comforts us, strengthens us and fully, and immutably loves us. He is not just in us, but for us. All from within. Praise His name. He is the Spirit of the Living God.
What would you do, my father once wisely asked, if Jesus Christ Himself were to speak to you and make this promise- “I promise that nothing bad will ever happen to you again.”? Can you imagine? What would that do for your love for Him? What would it do to your joy? How established would your peace, your patience be if you heard Jesus promise this to you? How might the fruit of the Spirit flourish and bloom all about you? As much as I would like to dig more deeply into this promise (you can read more about it in my book Believing God) my point in this brief piece is that He has indeed so promised. Jesus tells you this in His letter to the church at Rome.
What, you don’t remember what Jesus said in that letter? This might help. Jesus also said, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel by God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures…” Jesus finished this particular epistle this way, “Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret since the world began but now has made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures has been made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith—to God, alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever, Amen.” In between, of course, He promised that all things work together for good to those who love God, who have been called according to His purpose.
In our defense of the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture we are careful, as we should be, to guard against crass forms of inspiration. We deny that Moses, David, Jeremiah, Luke, Paul, that all the writers of the Bible left their personalities, convictions and styles at the door when recording holy writ. They were no mere human recording mechanisms taking dictation. We speak well when we say David wrote this Psalm, or Isaiah spoke this prophecy. We then rightly hedge in the other side when we affirm that God is the author of all of His Word, that the Bible is the very vox Dei. All well and good.
That doesn’t mean, however, that we have escaped the subtle temptation to treat the red letters in our Bibles as the really important stuff. We would never consciously think such a thought, let alone speak such a sentiment. We would, however, because we are fools, fall into such a trap. How do we escape? We remember that the Bible is Jesus’ Word twice over, that every bit of black on white is red twice.
First, of course, the apostles who wrote for us the New Testament (and those who wrote the Old, though that is a rather longer walk to cover) were sent forth by Christ as His spokesmen, as His emissaries, as His apostles. The one who is sent speaks with all the authority of the one who sends him. If Paul says that all things work together for good, then Jesus says all things work together for good. It’s that simple.
The second point, however, ought to clinch the deal. This Jesus who sent Paul to speak to us, also sent the Spirit to speak through him. The Holy Spirit, who is of course with the first and second person of the Trinity, the same in substance, equal in power and glory, nevertheless proceeds from the Father and from the Son. God the Spirit, in breathing out all the Bible, is joyfully doing so at the command of Jesus. Jesus sent them both.
By all means, hear the voice of Paul. By all means hear the whisper of the Spirit. But, by necessity, hear the gentle words of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is all His Word, and it is all for you. As such our Bibles should be black and white and read all over, hearing the voice of the Master.
Tonight, 7 eastern, we begin a new 4 week study, Lord, Show Me Your Glory, on the character of God. All are welcome here in our home, or you can tune in on FB Live at RC-Lisa Sproul.
We are all given to projection with our heroes. That is, we see those who have done well, who have made an impact, and assume the person’s effectiveness flowed out of some quality we admire or think we have. Spike Lee used to insist that what made Michael Jordan Michael Jordan was the shoes. It is tempting, therefore, especially among those of us who have a passion for the study of theology to assume that what animated Luther was his brilliant theological mind. Read through his destruction of Erasmus in The Bondage of the Will and you can tell Luther wasn’t one to back down from a theological battle. Nor was he apt to lose one.
That, in turn, might make us believe the power came from his valor. Luther giving his “Here I stand” speech is surely a picture of courage in action. It’s a quality I admire, that I covet, and that Luther had in spades. He was a man with a brilliant mind and with a stout heart.
My position, however, is that Luther’s greatness flowed not from his riches of mental clarity or his boundless bravery. Instead it flowed from his poverty, more specifically, his poverty of spirit. Luther was used of God to do great things precisely because Luther knew just how small, and how sinful he was. We know that Luther went into the monastery to seek to work off his guilt. We know that he was to monkery what Paul was to Judaism. And he learned, just as Paul learned, that all he could amass through his labors was a bigger pile of judgment. Luther was the man who could not look up, who beat his breast, who cried out, “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner.” Because of that he was the man who went home justified and from there was used to change the world. He did not change the world to earn God’s favor. Rather, having not earned but secured by faith God’s favor, he went forth with the message of the gospel.
Which should remind us of the true affront of Rome. The problem with Rome isn’t merely that they claim for themselves an authority equal to the Word of God. It isn’t merely that they have a deficient view of how it is that a man might find favor with God. Their problem is that in making themselves rather than Jesus the mediators between God and men they leave us holding the bag, having to earn our salvation, an endeavor damned to failure. Luther hung on to the gospel that the church had cast away because he understood that without it there was no way of salvation.
It is not theological precision that wins the crown. It is not boldness that seizes eternity. It is instead brokenness. Our failure is the way to gain His victory, our weakness the way to be rescued by His strength. Our poverty is that by which we are given His riches. Luther heard Jesus, and believed Him, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
