Ask RC- What about those who never hear the gospel?

Posted on June 14, 2019 by RC

My friends at Social Church invited me on their podcast to consider what happens to those who never hear the gospel. Have a listen-

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The Simple Gospel

Posted on June 13, 2019 by RC

 

In wrestling they call it “the reversal.” You score big points when you not only escape the clutches of your opponent, but suddenly have him in your clutches. Here is how the devil does this to us as it relates to how we have peace with God. At the time of the Reformation our fathers spent a great deal of time and energy trying to get a handle of this question of how we have peace with God. Out of this came the solas of the Reformation, nuggets of recovered wisdom that slowly grew into a great mass of doctrine. Rome fired back, and we returned that fire. Sundry compromises were suggested, and we haggled, rightly I would add, over why those wouldn’t work. We built our competing empires, and fussed at one another. Yet every generation brings its Rodney Kings who wonder why we can’t all just get along.

So the debate goes like this- Cranky Reformed folk man the barricades in defense of their learned tomes. We make our stand, as we ought, on imputation, on sola fide, on penal, substitutionary atonement. Happy ecumenists, on the other hand, want a more “simple” gospel. They want to leave behind the tired old sixteenth century arguments in favor of something plain and unadorned. Have you caught the reversal yet? Rome, and her kissing cousin, eastern Orthodoxy, created a ladder like system to get into heaven, complete with lists of sundry saints to help you along the way, liturgies to appease the wrath of the Father, penances to pay and refining fire beyond the grave, all designed to make us good enough for God. The Reformation, on the other hand, threw over these man-made, man-driven systems in defense of a simple gospel- repent and believe.

Our heritage isn’t complex, weighty, pharisaical burdens. Our patron saint is the tax collector who entered the temple, beat his breast and prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” It is precisely the commitment we who are Reformed have to the simplicity of the gospel that requires us to draw lines in the sand against any system built upon self-righteousness, against any “gospel” that adds burdens to the good news. As one friend wisely put it, Jesus + Nothing= Everything. What we miss is this, Jesus + Anything= Nothing.

Recovering our heritage then requires two things. First, as we rightly defend sola fide, we must do so without destroying sola fide. If our explanations and defenses, no matter how zealous, do not lead us back to God, be merciful to me, a sinner, then we are on the deadly road to Rome, no matter how loudly we denounce Rome. And second, our commitment to the simplicity of the gospel must keep us from embracing the complexities of the anti-gospels. Our commitment to simplicity cannot allow an ecumenism that includes complex systems. Or to put it another way, we must repent and believe.

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My Father’s Forgiveness

Posted on June 13, 2019 by RC


Today the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette published an interview with me in which I was able to speak about my book, Growing Up (with) RC, my sin, God’s grace, my Father, our Elder brother. Click here to check it out.

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Getting Grace

Posted on June 12, 2019 by RC

Call it a dog whistle, a secret handshake, a shibboleth- it matters not. We all have our ways of communicating which tribe we belong to, all without offending, or even informing, those outside the club. You’re having lunch at work with various forms of professing Christians, all engaged in friendly discussion. The guy from accounting says, “Well, as Machen said, ‘There’s Christianity and then there’s liberalism’” you, if you are Reformed as I am, would have found a friend.

So far- no harm no foul. What happens though when the next guy mentions his firm conviction that volume 8 of the Left Behind series is by far the most faithful to what the Bible says about the end times? Now if I were to ask you, “Did Jesus die for dispensationalists?” you would swiftly affirm that such is true, as would your Machen quoting friend. The problem is that when your dispensational friend spoke his mind you and Machen Boy caught each other’s eyes, despite the heavy rolling all four eyes were going through. Those rolling eyes silently communicated this message- you and I are a higher order of Christian than this poor rube who embraces such a flawed eschatology. Why, he probably thinks he got his eschatology from the book of Revelations.

Now I believe in the sovereignty of God. I believe in the 5 points of Calvinism. My disagreements with the Westminster Standards could fit on a postage stamp. Were I ever a Methodist, my homeboys would have been Martin Lloyd Jones and George Whitefield. That commitment, however, requires that I recognize that I am not justified by being a Calvinist, but by the grace of God, that I am no less depraved than my dispensational brethren, that theological logic ought to burn like fire, and that, in agreement with Whitefield, I don’t think I’ll see that old perfectionist Arminian John Wesley in heaven, because he will be so much closer to the throne of grace than I will be.

I’m Reformed, Reformed enough to know that my closest friends within the kingdom are not those who cheerfully enter the boxing ring to fight in defense of Calvin, but those who woefully enter their prayer closets to cry out for the defense of Christ. I hope this tribe, the ones who get grace, doesn’t have a secret handshake. The moment we pat ourselves on the back as being the crew that “gets grace” is the moment that we demonstrate that we don’t get grace. Thankfully, however, even when we don’t get grace, we do receive it. Just like our cranky brethren, our dispensational brethren, our Wesleyan brethren. Instead I pray we learn to recognize each other this way, by our joy in having received grace, and our swiftness in showing it others.

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Bible Study Facebook Live June 10, 2019

Posted on June 11, 2019 by RC

Had some technical difficulties, and had to restart twice. The top one is the beginning, the bottom one the end, which means the middle one is, well, the middle one. Hope you enjoy, and join us next week when we consider the works of the flesh.

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Sin, In Heaven?

Posted on June 10, 2019 by RC

If “The Fall” was caused by just one sin from the very first humans and all humans since have sinned, what are our chances of remaining sinless in heaven? I assume we would still have our gift of free will, so surely someone would sin?

There is no chance whatsoever that we will, once we are in heaven, fall again into sin, for at least two important reasons. First, God has so promised. The picture we are given of the eternal blessing we receive in Christ includes our being utterly pure, white, without spot or blemish. That we will stay in this state will at least come to pass on the basis of God’s promise. Remember when God stood with Joshua looking out at the city of Jericho and its rather substantial wall. God said, “See, I have delivered the city into your hands.” God’s Word is so certain that what He has spoken, though it has not yet come to pass, that it can be spoken of as in the past tense. I call this tense, “God’s prophetic past.”

Secondly, and perhaps ironically, it is precisely our free will which will be the means by which God’s promise is brought to pass. All moral beings, men, angels and even God Himself are free to choose. All of them, however, in their freedom, always choose according to their nature. God, for instance, could sin, if He so desired. But He does not so desire, for He is altogether good. He is “free” to do evil in one sense, but not free in another sense. No one forces Him to do good, but He will always and only do good.

When we enter into our reward, we will be fully and finally sanctified. That is, we will be fully and finally holy. There will be no more sin, no more desire for sin in us. We will have no more sin nature in us; we will be altogether good. We, like God Himself, will be free to do evil, were we so to desire, but we would never so desire because we will be altogether good. This is one of the greatest promises of eternity, that the struggle within ourselves between the old and the new man, between the Spirit and the flesh will be over. We will be at peace; we will enter into rest. Our warfare will have ended.

It is good and right for us to mourn the fall, to look deeply into all the destruction wrought by our parents’ first sin. But we must in turn look forward to the fullness of the promises of God. We will walk with Him in the garden again, unashamed and at peace. This is what Jesus has brought to pass for us, His beloved bride. We will be what we were made to be, and will stay so forevermore.

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The Power of the Glory

Posted on June 7, 2019 by RC

You want to know what your problem is? You don’t love Jesus enough. I know this not because I know you, but because I know me. I’ve got the same problem. Wherever there is a sin problem, underneath it all, is this problem. Husbands don’t love their wives as Jesus loves the church, because husbands don’t love Jesus enough. Children disobey their parents, because they don’t love Jesus enough. Pastors soft pedal the Bible because they don’t love Jesus enough. And people hop from one church to another because they don’t love Jesus enough. Politicians grow power hungry because they don’t love Jesus enough. Rich people suffer from greed, because they don’t love Jesus enough. Middle class people suffer from greed, because they don’t love Jesus enough. Poor people suffer from greed, because they don’t love Jesus enough. Find a sin and you will find there a heart that doesn’t love Jesus enough. Find Jesus and you will find the solution to our problem. Which is just what Jesus has promised will happen.

It is a good thing that evangelical Christians have wakened from their pietistic slumbers. It is good and proper that we should be about the business of making manifest the reign of Christ over all things. That He is Lord has effects that stray rather far from our hearts. We fight the culture wars because they are simply a manifestation of the war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. But the serpent is more crafty than any of the beasts of the field. He took the biblical wisdom that argued that we ought to tend to our souls, and turned it into world-denying piety. And now he takes the biblical wisdom that argues that we must push for the crown rights of King Jesus, and turned it into worldliness, and a denial of the call to piety. Jesus on the other hand calls us to seek first two things, the kingdom of God, and His righteousness.

How can we seek two different things first? We do so when we realize that the weapons of our warfare, that the very engine of changing the world, is changing ourselves. The reign of Christ will be manifest in the political, social, artistic, cultural realms only insofar and only through the manifestation of the reign of Christ within His people. We will only make known the great gospel truth that this is our Father’s world, as we live as pilgrims, recognizing that this world isn’t our home, that we are just passing through.

It is because we are worldly that we embrace the culture’s engines of change. We think that we will change ourselves and the world only as we write more books, make more movies, elect more politicians, produce more widgets, and add more programs to our churches. We think sanctification is a doctrine to be studied, rather than a calling to be pursued. In truth it is neither. We do not pursue a calling, but a person. Sanctification isn’t merely the means by which we become more holy, but is the means by which we become more like Jesus. Just as He, the Son of God, is the express image of the glory of the Father, so we, the Bride of Christ, are the image of our eternal Husband. We glorify Him by becoming more like Him.

This is the promise of God, the end of our sanctification, our glorification, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (I John 3:2). Do you see the connection? We don’t know what we shall be, but we do know we will be like Him. How will we be like Him? What means brings this to pass? We shall see Him as He is. This is the glory of our King, not that He labors faithfully to change us, not that He changes us by the Word of His power, but that He changes us by the power of His glory. Seeing Him makes us like Him.

Which brings us back to our troubles. Our sanctification is long and laborious simply because we do not seek His face. We do not long for His presence. We do not seek to behold His glory, because we are insufficiently impressed. It is the pomp and the power, the dazzle and the sizzle, the bright lights and the baubles of the world around us that have captured our hearts. We don’t find His glory glorious enough, and so we are not yet like Him. We do indeed see through a glass darkly, a glass darkened by our love affair with the world. If we loved Him we would seek Him. If we sought Him we would find Him. If we found Him we would see Him. And if we saw Him we would be like Him. And this, John tells us, believing this, will purify us, “And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (v. 3). So may it be said of us.

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Talking Growing Up (with) RC with my friends at Social Church

Posted on June 6, 2019 by RC

My dear friends at Social Church spoke with my about my latest book, about growing up with my beloved father.

 

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Gravitake

Posted on June 5, 2019 by RC

The generalist and the specialist both have their challenges. The specialist can learn more and more about less and less until eventually he knows everything about nothing. The generalist, on the other hand, in learning less and less about more and more can end up knowing nothing about everything. Only on the world wide web, however, can we all be specialists in everything.

Some would argue that the internet didn’t really hit its stride until broadband became virtually ubiquitous. It wasn’t, however, the ability to bring more information in that proved to be the tipping point. I’d argue it was the ease of platform building through social media that fueled the explosion. It wasn’t the size of the hose from which we sought to drink but each of us having our own hose with which to spray. With Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and whatever the newest thing is, we all get to have a take. Which quickly devolves into something even worse, that we all have to have a take.

The issue of the day is the prayer heard ‘round the world, David Platt praying for and over the President when the latter dropped in on Sunday’s service. If that’s not compelling enough conversation for you, we can talk about Pastor Platt’s message to his congregation, some of whom apparently were hurt by what happened. Should the prayer have happened? Should it have happened differently? Should the message to the congregation have been given? Should it have been given differently? My take is not to have a take, except to wonder how in the world it is that we’re all talking about this?

The President is, without question, a deeply sinful man. Now before you MAGA hat wearers get your knickers in a twist, let’s remember that you, and I, and all of us are deeply sinful. Before you SJW’s cheer me on for pointing out the obvious about the President’s character, remember that you too are deeply, and obviously sinful. Pastor Platt, though I don’t know him, and though I have strong feelings in opposite directions about his book Radical, is by all accounts a decent pastor who, by the way, is also a deeply sinful man. The former asked the latter to pray for him, and the latter obliged. Not only is this bit of news not in the least controversial, it’s not even a bit of news. It is nothing that should concern any of us. That it is is what concerns me.

We have become outrage junkies, on every side of every aisle. The left is outraged at evil, orange man making political hay in a church. The right is outraged at the left for being outraged. Both have shot up, taken their daily fix that will keep them calmly agitated until tomorrow. And we will all then head back into the fetid waters of the world wide swamp looking for our connection to get another hit.

“Godliness with contentment is great gain” is not just about money. “Living in peace with all men” does not dissipate when we enter cyberspace. Pastor Platt, no doubt you have sins far worse than whatever your critics, ironically from both sides, are throwing at you. But I suspect, based on what I heard in your prayer, that you know Jesus is the solution. Remember He loves you. Remember that’s all that matters. God bless you sir.

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Bible Study Facebook Live June 4th, 2019

Posted on June 3, 2019 by RC

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