Thesis 35
We must discipline our children in accordance with the Bible rather than psychology.
Our tendency is to believe that the devil creates false worldviews for the purpose of fooling unbelievers. But the devil doesn’t score any points on unbelievers. To blind the blind isn’t anything to write home about. Instead the devil creates false worldviews for the sake of seducing those who ought to know better. Darwinism wasn’t invented to mislead the gullible like Darwin. Neither, however, was it created principally to get Christians to believe it. Instead the goal is for Christians to lose confidence in what the Bible has to say. Even when evangelicals reject Darwinism, we still tend to see scientists in lab coats as the really smart ones, while we Christians just fell off the turnip truck.
This is not a problem for believers, however, only in the hard sciences. We confess with our lips that the Bible equips us for every good work, but we still tend to believe that it is scholars with important letters after their names that really know things. The Apostle Paul may be the expert on theology, but the panel of experts hired by the editorial team down at Ladies Better Home Bluebook surely must have the wisdom we need for raising well adjusted children. When the Bible bumps up against these experts, we find ourselves, even as too many of us do about creation, accommodating the Bible to the latest experts. We make the Bible give ground and make room for the experts.
We are told, for instance, by the experts that corporal punishment of children will only teach children to solve their problems through violence. On the other hand, the Bible says with the utmost clarity, “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15). Our calling, as always, is to repent and believe. We are to believe the promises of God, and not the folly of this world.
We are told by the experts that our children need to find their own identity, that the important thing for the parent is to lay before their children as many choices as possible, that they might live authentic lives. On the other hand, the Bible says with the utmost clarity, “Fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Our calling, as always, is to repent and believe. We are to believe the promises of God, and not the folly of this world.
We will cease to be intimidated by the wisdom of the world when we learn to believe what God has told us. He has made foolish the wisdom of the world. The “foolishness” of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. We ought everywhere to believe and obey God rather than men. We must do so first as we raise up our children for His kingdom and or His glory.
Don’t forget that today, at 7:00 eastern we continue our live study, working together through my father’s classic work, The Holiness of God. We will cover this week chapter 2. All are welcome to join us online. If, however, you are in the area, you are welcome to join us in our home. We serve a meal to our guests at 6:00. Do please let us know if you’d like to be here in person for the study or both the meal and the study. We hope to see you here.
San Francisco Giants relief pitcher Sam Coonrod made headlines last week when, for the west coast opener of this year’s abbreviated baseball season, he alone did not kneel during a planned video presentation from Morgan Freeman about the racial strife the nation is going through. Sam explained that he had no desire to offend anyone but that his Christian faith precludes him from kneeling before anyone but Jesus. Such has not and will not satisfy the woke.
Nor is this the first time such has happened. Roughly thirty years ago the Giants baseball club determined to play a game bedecked in a red ribbon that symbolized solidarity with AIDS victims, one Christian, a relief pitcher, Mark Dewey refused, though he eventually wore the ribbon, sideways, so that it looked like the ICHTHUS fish. Such did not satisfy the woke.
Before we boldly take our stand like a bevy of Martin Luthers we would be wise to remember a painful lesson Timothy had to learn. Even after the Jerusalem Council ruled that Gentile believers need not be circumcised, indeed after Paul insisted that the Gentile believer Titus must not be circumcised, Paul encouraged Timothy to be circumcised. Timothy was born of a Jewish mother and Gentile father. His circumcision, please note, wasn’t done for the sake of Jewish believers, but for the sake of Jewish non-believers. Timothy went through this excruciating procedure simply to ensure that the message of Jesus not get lost in a needless offense unbelievers might have taken.
“All things to all men” means something. It is not a craven sell-out to worldliness. It means a deep, God-honoring desire to see the elect brought in. Which ought to inform our thinking. It, in fact, gives us our first principle- in adiaphorous matters, embrace away. Adiaphorous matters are those which do not touch on matters of morality. When Hudson Taylor made the then radical decision to dress as the Chinese he was ministering to dressed, and to style his hair the same way, he didn’t break, nor bend, nor step close to the law of God.
The second principle, however, is this- in matters of clear moral import, have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness. When Daniel was pressured to not pray to the living God he not only didn’t obey those in authority, he didn’t hide his disobedience. Daniel did not know God would deliver him from the lions. He did know what his duty was, and he followed it.
Which leaves us with the messy middle. Consider how narrow the line is between these two comments, “I believe black lives matter” and “I support Black Lives Matter.” All Christians should be eager to affirm the first and reluctant to affirm the second. It is not immoral to affirm that black lives matter because it is not in any way a denial that all lives, blue lives, baby lives matter. In fact, it is a subset of the truth that all lives matter. It is immoral to affirm the latter because the organization Black Lives Matter is anti-Christian.
The solution, it seems to me, is just what Sam Coonrod and Mark Dewey did. They didn’t rant and rave and froth at the mouth. They didn’t cave either. They simply, gently, respectfully affirmed their own convictions. That didn’t keep them from being hated. It just kept them from misrepresenting their heavenly Father. The heat is coming fast. May He give us the courage, the wisdom, the grace to be sure that the only offense we give is the offense of the gospel.
There is a great divide between the city of God and the city of man. The competing armies of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, however, have this much in common- we’re all bad. The defining quality of the gap may in fact be found in how we look at evil. If we were to poll those outside the kingdom of God on the question of evil, most of them would begin thinking through their pet answers to this common question- why do bad things happen to good people? That is, for the world, the problem of “evil” is more about the problem of human suffering. “Evil” is defined in their minds by things like pandemics or what we sometimes call “acts of God.”
Were the same polling to come before God’s people, we would see that we are hearing a different question. What puzzles us isn’t pandemics and famines. We don’t wonder why bad things happen to good people because fundamental to our confession is this truth, that the only time a bad thing ever happened to a good person was when He volunteered for it. To us, the “problem of evil” isn’t destructive acts of God, but the primordial destructive act of man. The question is, how did good people do bad? How did Adam and Eve, created righteous and upright, come to rebel against their Maker? Where there is pain, we who have been redeemed look to our faults. Those outside the camp point their fingers at God.
This explains perhaps why we tend to do better at weathering the storms. When sorrows like sea billows roll we may feel pain, but our universe isn’t turned upside down. We haven’t suddenly found ourselves inexplicably suffering at the cruel hand of the fates. Instead we are at peace, for we know the promise of our God, that all things work together for God for those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. We know that for us, in short, that not only are there no good people, but there are no bad things. And we know that for them, even the bad things redound to the glory of our God.
When Covid hit our shores, however, there was still room for debate, even within the kingdom. Some of us want to declare Covid the clear judgment of God. Other professing Christians take a different tack. Covid, some suggest, is the work of the devil, or his evil henchman, blind chance.
Whichever view we hold, however, we are still taking the world’s view. In both cases, we overlook that which the event calls us to look to- our own sins. God may be judging the world. He may also be judging us. Were we wise we would not like the mariners of Tarshish react to judgment by looking for someone to blame, but would, like Jonah, confess, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me” (Jonah 1:12).
The problem of evil, in short, is the problem of us. And the answer to the problem is the answer to every problem- Repent and believe the gospel. We who have done so, if we have learned anything, must have learned that we must continue to do so all the days of our lives. Martin Luther was right when he affirmed this as the first of his 95 theses: When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said “Repent”, He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. We repent all our lives because repentance is life.
But we do not stop there. We are to believe. We are to believe not only that if we confess our sins that He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, but that He will indeed cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is His promise. And it has the power to overcome all the evil in the world.
The bottom line then is this. While every calamity that comes our way does indeed come from the hand of God (see Isaiah 45:7), the problem of evil is our problem. And Jesus is the solution. As we trust in Him to rescue us from the wrath to come, so we trust in Him that what we experience in the here and now isn’t wrath at all. He merely wishes our dross to remove and our gold to refine. There too we find the answer to our evil. Suffering and hardship exist for His glory. Just like sin. He will be glorified in the judgment of the wicked, and the cleansing of the other wicked, we who have been called according to His purpose.
I have suggested in the past that we ought, when tempted toward pride in our own spiritual maturity, take an honest look at how far we have to go, at the great gap between where we are and where we will be. When, on the other hand, we are assaulted by doubt, we ought to take an honest look at where we started, and where we have come. The truth is that apart from Jesus, the most pious men to have ever walked the planet were immeasurably distant from moral perfection until the moment they died. And the most scandalous sinner who came to Christ at the last possible moment traversed that infinite distance immediately upon his death.
All of this, and a fairly steady diet of science fiction, had led me to tweak this understanding a bit. We can make a difference. Suppose that in a distant galaxy, a kajillion light years away, there is Planet Perfection. Not only is it a perfect planet for human habitation, it is a planet fit only for perfect human habitation. Now suppose you receive two things in the mail, first, citizenship papers to Planet Perfection. In fact, you’ve been adopted by the King of the planet, who just happens, by the way, to rule the whole of the universe.
Also in the mail, however, is your ticket to get there. No, you won’t be doing warp speed on the Enterprise. Even that would take too long. No, you’re going teleportation express. There is a time appointed for you to appear at the teleportation station. Once there you’ll step into the chamber and instantaneously be both transported and transformed, arriving at the same moment perfect on Planet Perfection.
Of course you’re excited. You’re also grateful, and eager to please your new Father. But it will do you precious little good to board a plane, a train or an automobile setting out for the planet. You could, theoretically, get a bit closer, but not so you would notice. What, though, could you do? While in one sense every bit of travel you can muster won’t make much of a difference in how far you have to go, won’t you rejoice in every step toward not the planet but the portal? Wouldn’t you rejoice as you pack your bags? Wouldn’t the journey to the station increase your excitement and anticipation? All you have to do is get to the station, and then in an instant you’ll be a perfect prince on Planet Perfect. And every day you get a day closure to departure.
But there’s more. In the in-between, after you’ve received your paperwork and before you step into the portal, every bit of becoming more what you will be, more what your adoptive Father is, is like already being there on the planet. You are becoming what you will be, living in light of the promise of Planet Perfect.
I have so very far to go. But He already loves me as if I were all the way there. He has already made me His son. I’m packing my bags, and learning the manners of the court. And He is preparing me for that place.
How do I repent? How do I know when I have repented? If repentance is a gift from God, then what is my role? If I think I have repented but then commit the same sin again, does that mean that I did not in fact repent?
The devil’s name gets at his game. He is far less interested in tempting us into peculiarly heinous sins than he is in accusing us. He is the accuser, the slanderer. His great strength lies in his ability to discourage us, to cause us to doubt the very promises of God. One such promise, one that I wrote about in my book Believing God: 12 Biblical Promises Christians Struggle to Accept, is found in I John, “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1:9). This verse is foundational to our hope. We know that we are sinners, and if we forget, Satan is always there to remind us. What we need to remember is that God is in the business of saving sinners.
How do we repent? We enter into the gravity of our sin. We mourn for our rebellion against the true and living God. We do not seek to minimize our sin, nor to rationalize it. We next, however, cry out for forgiveness in Christ. We ask that our Father in heaven might in His grace cover our sin with His blood. And then, we walk away from our mourning, and move into dancing. We celebrate the sure promises of God. We do not prove our former sorrow by wallowing in it, for such is unbelief. We do not parade our sadness as if our sadness could atone for our sins. We rejoice that Christ not only can cover our sin, but has done so.
Then, we endeavor by His grace to put our sin behind us. We seek, as much as is possible, to make right what we have made wrong. And we beseech the God of heaven and earth, that His Spirit might work in us such that we overcome this particular sin.
How do you know when you have repented? When you have done the above. And since, not if, but since repentance is a gift from God, what is your role? All of the above. That God gives you a heart that is able to repent, that He convicts you of your sin doesn’t mean that He repents for you. You repent. And when, not if but when, you commit the same sin again, such does not mean you haven’t repented. It instead means that you need to repent again. As you do so, however, remember that from the moment you embraced the work of Christ for the first time, all your sins, past, present and future, were forgiven once for all. The moment Christ died on Calvary, your sins, past, present and future were atoned for. Remember that in the midst of your repentance your Father in heaven isn’t angry at you, waiting for you to get your repentance right. He is instead loving you as a father, and teaching you how to live a more godly life.
Please remember that the most sincere God-honoring repentance is still tainted with insincerity. Were we wise we would repent often for the anemia of our repentance (as well as for the anemia of our celebration of His forgiveness). Here is where the Devil seeks a toe-hold. The right response is to spit in his face, and to stand under the shadow of the Cross.
My counsel for all those struggling with guilt and repentance is to look to the model. Psalm 51, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and written after David is confronted by Nathan over his sin with Bathsheba, shows us what repentance looks like, as well as reminds us of the joy of our salvation. Study it carefully, and study it often.
