It is a disheartening reality that we who affirm the doctrine of total depravity often don’t believe we are totally depraved. It’s true enough that there are institutions and individuals who flat deny the doctrine. Then there are those who both affirm and deny. There is a great, yawning gap between these two concepts, “All men everywhere in their natural state are at enmity of God and are inclined only away from God, having all parts of their humanity impacted by sin” and “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” The former is an accurate description of a sound and biblical doctrine. The latter is a needful cry from all of us.
This same disconnect, I fear, infects our understanding of the gospel. Again there are plenty of institutions and individuals who simply deny the gospel. Then there are those who both affirm and deny it. Because there is a great, yawning gap between these two concepts, “Jesus lived a perfect life and died an atoning death, both of which are imputed to those who, by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, rest in that finished work alone” and “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” The former is an accurate description of a sound and biblical doctrine. The latter is a needful cry from all of us.
The sad thing is that so many churches make just that mistake. They are careful to be careful, even zealous to be zealous in defense of what the Bible teaches. That’s a good thing. Who could be opposed to that? That mindset, however, absent a heart broken by the reality of our personal sins, absent a joyful response to His victory over our sin and the grave, absent a living confidence that we are the beloved children of our heavenly Father, misses the heart of the gospel.
Without this one may have a church that teaches and defends the gospel, but not have one that preaches the gospel. One may have a church that is training lips to confess the truth but teaching hearts to trust in their superior understanding of His provision rather than in His provision. One may have a church with its guns aimed at the faulty teaching of those not present rather than at the faults and sins resident in the hearts and minds of the congregation.
Your church is preaching the gospel if you walk out the door each Lord’s Day rejoicing to have been redeemed, rescued. Your church is preaching the gospel if you walk about the door each Lord’s Day more eager to tell unbelievers the good news than you are to argue the finer points with other believers. You are in a gospel church when you walk in the door crying out, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner” and go home justified and joyful.
Never trade secondary distinctives, music styles, preferred programs or demographics for the one thing that matters, the faithful preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It is not, I would argue, only those outside the kingdom that are prone to grumble against God over His sovereign exercise of His will. Paul, in Romans 9, suggests that those clay vessels that God has prepared for destruction are tempted to say to their Maker, “Why have You made me thus?” That is, doesn’t it seem unfair for God to ordain my sins and then judge me for them? (Of course the objection itself would never even be raised if the simple answer were, “Well, it’s your free-will that’s to blame.”)
It’s not my intention here to try to answer that question Rather it is to point out that even believers, all clay in the Potter’s hand, grumble against Him say, “Why have You made me thus?” Why would any believer grumble that God has made of them a vessel of mercy? They wouldn’t, and don’t. Our complaint isn’t “Why are You turning me into this?” but “Why are You turning me into this this way?” We love the idea of becoming vessels fit for glory. What we hate is being molded and shaped, squeezed and fired. We want to go where He’s taking us but don’t much care for the route He has chosen.
Imagine, if you will, that God were passive, leaving the decision to be a vessel fit for destruction or for glory with the clay. How many people would choose glory? 0. Now remember that God has determined, through no merit in the clay, which bits of clay will be prepared for destruction and which prepared for glory. Remember that you were chosen for the latter. How many people would reach glory if God were to let us choose the route? 0. Did we not, when we first confessed our sin, cry out for His mercy, acknowledge His Lordship, give up the reins? Did we not vow that we would trust Him, that we wanted Him to have His way rather than give us ours?
We’ve all had our share of hardships. I’m not suggesting they aren’t hard. I am suggesting, however, that such is very much the point. He does not walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death because that’s where He found us. He walks with us because that’s where He led us. All for the purpose of remolding us into the image of His Son. When He takes me, an ugly, dirty lump of clay, and as He begins to apply pressure, squeezing me, as He pours water over me to soften me in His hands, when He forms me and fires me, the whole time He is looking at the ideal, the model, the paradigm, His beloved Son. He isn’t, in short, merely remaking us, but is remaking us into the image of Christ Jesus.
The very glory He is preparing us for came to pass because He pressed and squeezed and fired the model 2000 years ago. Lord, burn out of us that dross that leads us to grumble that You make us through Your means, for Your glory because of Your Son.
While it may be true that there are two kinds of people in the world, (those who like to divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t), there are in turn myriad places to draw these dividing lines. God Himself in Genesis 3 speaks of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. As history moves forward toward the coming of the second Adam, the world is divided into Jews and Gentiles, who are, in fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, ultimately brought together by the work of Christ, leaving us at the end of the story with two kinds of barnyard animals: sheep and goats.
Sometimes, I’m afraid, we draw with crooked lines. J. D. Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia and a professing Christian, wrote an incisive and insightful book a decade or so back called Culture Wars. He argued therein that the world is divided into two kinds of people, the progressives and the orthodox. The progressives, whether they were raw secularists, new age devotees, non-observant Jews or mainline Protestants, agreed on one thing, that God had not spoken. They denied together that there was any transcendent truth. The orthodox, on the other hand, again whether Muslim or Christian, Mormon or Christian Scientist, agreed that God had indeed spoken. They agreed that there was a transcendent source of truth and morality. They just couldn’t agree on what that source was.
It’s a perfectly appropriate way to divide the world, as long as you realize that there are plenty of goats still on our side. Co-belligerancy in the culture wars may be a good thing, an appropriate battle strategy. Wisdom requires, however, that we remember that it comes with a peculiar temptation. It is all too easy to delight in what unites us, and diminish what divides us. It is all too easy to forget that our allies in the battle are our enemies in the war. That temptation is particularly grave when the barbarians are at the gate, when all the world is crumbling down around us.
Charles Colson has argued that we have entered into a new dark age. But this time it’s different. The barbarians are no longer at the gate. Instead they sit upon thrones within. They aren’t marauding hordes, but polished assassins. What does a collapsing civilization look like? Because we are worldly we think it is found in the thundering hoof beats of Ghengis Khan and his army. We think it comes by way of Viking longboats, landing on our shores. We think we see civilization ebbing as the Roman army pulls back from the frontiers to defend the core. The truth of the matter, as the barbarian Pogo understood, is that we have met the enemy, and we are it. Here is the sign not of the coming destruction of civilization, but the current destruction: millions of dead babies, killed by medical professionals, hired by mothers, all enjoying the sanction and safety of the state. Judgment is here, and we are judged all the more that we do not know it.
Saint Augustine rightly drew the line. He wrote, in the dusk of the Roman Empire, of two cities. Some were citizens of man’s city. But by God’s grace, some looked for a city whose builder and maker was God. What separated these two cities, and the citizens therein, however, wasn’t what we think. Man’s city wasn’t simply that place that would not acknowledge God. The city of God isn’t that place where everyone is a theist. Instead Augustine’s explanation of these two cities reflected another important part of Augustine’s work, his battle with the heretic Pelagius. The battle between Augustine and Pelagius was the same battle that rages between the two cities. What separates the citizens of these two cities is the same thing that separated the two men praying in the temple. One prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get” (Luke 18:12). The other prayed, “God be merciful to me, a sinner” (v. 13). There are, as such, two kinds of people in this world, those who know they are sinners, and those who think otherwise. This is the great divide.
The culture wars call us to forget this distinction — to exchange it for another. This is why we keep finding ourselves embracing assorted power-grabbing schemes. Our neighbors hope in princes, and we hope with them. We are yoked with the unrepentant, which means we will always receive judgment. The penitent in Jesus’ parable, on the other hand, wasn’t a mere pietist. His prayer wasn’t merely private. He wasn’t so heavenly minded that he was no earthly good. Instead, this is the very power for the battle. We will not change the world by drawing perfect lines. We will only change the world by confessing that all we ever do is draw crooked lines. It is repentance that will bring down the walls of Jericho, that will establish the walls of Jerusalem. I tell you the truth, the penitent went out from the temple justified. Still more, he went out a soldier of the king. As Jesus ended this parable He reminded us of the weapons of His warfare: “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
We are a people of unclean lips, and we dwell in a land of unclean lips. What separates us from them is simply repentance. Our exaltation, after all, is simply to rule with Christ. It is His kingdom we seek, His glory that we pursue. And all these things will be added unto us.
You have heard it said, and rightly so, that it’s rather important to define our terms. Here is a case in point. There are at least three ways we use the phrase “celebrate Christmas.” The first is as the celebration Mass of the birth of Christ, that is, as Rome has celebrated it for centuries. Our fathers objected to this, and rightly so. If by celebrating Christmas we mean attending Roman Catholic mass, most assuredly we should not.
A second definition would be more broadly cultural. Here what we mean by “celebrating Christmas” is decorations, Santa, the Grinch, eggnog, Rudolph, chestnuts roasting on open fires, Frosty, bells on bob tails, Charlie Brown, Texas death matches over the last Tickle-Me-Elmo, second mortgages for the latest game consol, Die Hard and everything Americans equate with the holiday. This may not be such a good idea either. I’m not saying all or even any of these things are sinful, but they can become a distraction from where our hearts ought to be.
What though, if we mean something else by “celebrating Christmas?” What if we ask the question this way- is it wrong to remember the incarnation? Is it a sin to devote some time to rejoicing over the coming of the Messiah? Can we share a celebration feast with our loved ones, even giving them gifts? Can we sing of that little town of Bethlehem? Can we preach on the glorious gospel truth that God took on flesh and dwelt among us?
Some would argue that doing this third thing wraps us up in doing the first or the second. Some suggest that God has already given us one glorious holiday, that comes not once a year, but fifty-two times a year. Some believe that we are not only entering into the sin of our modern culture, and entering into Romish heresy, but that we are entering into the pagan holy day of Saturnalia. I’m sympathetic to these concerns. But I answer them this way- We do not re-crucify Christ at Christmas, nor do we re-advent Him. But we do remember our fathers’ longing, and we do long for His return. We do not have to buy ourselves into debt, or tell stories to our children about a jolly old elf. But we do feast, and bless our children because we are His blessed children.
That He has given us 52 holidays a year does not mean that we cannot rejoice over His grace on Monday, and Tuesday, or any day- even December 25. That others before us celebrated the same day as us, for wicked reasons cannot mean that we cannot do what we will do in eternity for godly reasons- rejoice over the coming of the Messiah. That others tell their children stories about Santa is no reason for us to not tell true stories to our children about Jesus, and to laugh with joy as we do so. May Christians celebrate Christmas? “One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks. For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” (Romans 14:5).
That there is a deep and profound chasm that separates believing in the total depravity of man and our own understanding of the depth and scope of our own sin is a potent sign of the depth and scope of our own sin. “Total depravity” is a true and sound biblical doctrine about how the fall has impacted mankind. We are sinful in every part of our being and utterly unable, precisely because we are unwilling, to embrace the work of Christ on our behalf unless He changes us first. Because we are totally depraved, however, we see this as a doctrine about man, rather than an actual self-description. We distinguish between the problems of “man” and our own problems. It is safe to speak ill of man, but dangerous and sad business to look too closely into our own hearts of darkness. So instead we think ourselves as partaking in a general sense of this depravity thing, but see it manifest in our own lives in nice, clean ways. We have a high view of God’s holiness, of His law, and so confess with all due piety that we are sinners indeed, rebels against the living God, in a nice, clean, abstract sort of way.
The living God, however, has a far more accurate and potent picture of what we are. We are whores. We are shameless, self-degrading, crass and crude. We throw ourselves at strangers, selling our dignity for cash. Worse still, after He has redeemed us, washed us, even married us, we go back for more. We turn tricks before the all-seeing eyes of a Husband who suffered hell for us. Again He comes and washes us. He holds us. He confesses His love for us. He promises He will never leave us. He makes us new again.
But because we are still proud, we parade around in the beautiful gown with which He has covered us, suggesting that it surely had a few spots, a wrinkle or two on it before He found us. But they were nice, respectable spots and wrinkles. What we should be confessing that it was once stained through with our whoredom. The joy of the Lord is not that He took we who were mostly clean and made us wholly clean. The joy of the Lord isn’t that because He worked in us no one needs to know our former shame. The joy of the Lord is that while we were out walking the streets He came for us. While others paid to pollute us, He paid to redeem us.
Our Father told us a story so that we would know what we are. He gave us a prophet, Hosea. And we, sinners that we are, instead of confessing to being Gomer, thought He was telling us to be more like Hosea. “Oh,” we humbly confess, “we should be so much more compassionate towards the really bad people. Please forgive us for not being more loving toward the unseemly ones of this world.” The truth is He is confessing that we are the unseemly ones. That’s what we are, the people Jesus died for and married, the people adopted and loved of the Father, the people indwelt and being cleansed by the Spirit- God in three persons, consorting with such as we.
