Time was when the answer to that question would be grounded in a faulty eschatology. Dispensationalism for decades taught a diminished understanding of the great commission. They saw it strictly as evangelism, that our calling was to drag as many people on to the lifeboat as we could before everything sinks to the bottom of the sea. Strangely, over the past forty years we’ve seen great swaths of dispensational people and institutions taking an interest in matters of culture, of government. Suddenly my friends seemed to wake up to our calling to not just evangelize but to disciple the nations, teaching them to obey whatsoever Jesus commanded.
Dispensationalism has essentially discarded its fundamentalist roots and joined the broader ranks of evangelicalism. That’s good news and bad news. The good news is now, as noted above, they are interested in the here and now, as they should be. The bad news, however, is that they have lost the great strength of fundamentalism, a gaping yawn of indifference to our standing in the broader culture. Forty years ago they didn’t care about the world, which is bad, and didn’t care what the world thought of them, which is good. Now they care about the world, which is good, and care what the world thinks of them, which is bad.
This failure of indifference is critical because it gives the world the only thing they have to hang over our head. It leaves them with the one weapon we most fear- rejection, loss of reputation. When we enter into a discussion about the raging sexual confusion in the broader culture our opponents throw insults instead of arguments. And we, because we are so hurt by the insults, flee for our lives. Anything, including absolute cultural capitulation is better than being thought of as a rube, a hayseed, a knuckle dragging evolutionary dead-end. If we don’t roll over, they taunt us a second time.
Jesus, the Bible tells us, hungered and thirsted for righteousness. His meat and His drink was to do the will of His Father. He left behind every bit of His visible majesty, His manifest glory, that He might not just change, but utterly remake the world. His opponents hated Him. They spat on Him. They conspired against Him, lied about Him, had Him beaten and put to death, surrounded by thieves and mockery. None of this phased Him. It was the pouring out of the wrath of the Father that led Jesus to cry out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
Now He is victorious. Now He reigns over heaven and earth. Every power and every dominion is under His absolute rule. Now He is worshipped and adored by billions. All because He was willing to be hated. He wins because He fears God and no man. We lose because we fear man and not God. We will not see victory until we see that He has already overcome the world. We will not spare our reputations until we recognize they’ve already been lost. We will not live in the new world until we grasp that we have already died. We will not storm the gates of hell until we learn their weapon against is powerless, for He has already told us we are His children.
Thesis 11– We must practice hospitality.
It is my habit, when I grow unduly discouraged with the church, to read through I Corinthians. Reading through the long list of serious problems that Paul had to address there, and suddenly the contemporary church shines by comparison. There is drunkenness at the Lord’s Table, bitter divisions, theological squabbling and gross sexual immorality. Paul addresses that sexual immorality by suggesting that what is going on inside the Corinthian church is worse that anything the heathen would accept. Then he takes a parenthetical aside on the Christian’s response to the sexual practices of those outside the kingdom, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler” (I Corinthians 5:9-11). As shocking as Paul’s wisdom is here, it gets even more shocking. How, we might wonder, ought we to treat those who practice these sins, if they name the name of Christ? We are not to even eat with such a one, Paul tells us. Should they be shunned? Should they be stoned? Should they be turned over to the state? No. We should not eat with them.
As if this were not enough to show us of the importance of hospitality, it shows up again from the pen of Paul, in another unexpected place. He tells us that, as we might expect, elders in the church should be sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, not a drunkard, not a lover of money. But Paul also tells us that an elder should be hospitable. This ought not to surprise us because the concept of table fellowship is central to the Christian faith. When we come to the Lord’s Table we are receiving God’s assurance that we are at peace with Him. When we welcome others to our own tables, we are communicating much the same thing.
“Community” is one of those buzzwords that we know is critically important, but that is not only hard to define, but hard to find. People want to know what the secret is. The secret is that the secret is not a secret. The people of God are knit together in love at the table, both the table of the Lord, and the tables in their homes.
We have lost the blessings of hospitality because we’re too busy pursuing the good life. We rush from one activity to another, gulping down our meals. We wave to our pew neighbor at church as we race out the door to get to our tee time. We try desperately to fill the emptiness of our lives, making faux friends over the internet, or sharing nothing more meaningful than a favorite football team. The good life is sharing the blessings of God with those whom we love. Hospitality, of course, is far broader than sharing a meal. But it is not less than this. Perhaps we should start with some baby steps. Stop reading, and go invite someone to dinner. They may think you’re weird, which is your first clue that you’re on the right track.
Yes, and no. First to the no. Theologians, who like to make distinctions, distinguish between God’s communicable attributes and His incommunicable attributes. The former are those which He can and does share with us, though of course in lesser degrees. God, for instance, knows things and we know things. He, however, knows all things and knows them exhaustively and we do not. The latter refer to those qualities that are His alone. God, for instance, is immutable, while we are not. He cannot change, and we do in fact change. If ever there were an incommunicable attribute, however, it would be this- God is self-existent and eternal. We assuredly are not. God alone is self-existent and eternal, and all other things are dependent upon Him. Are we then creators in this sense? Of course not. I’m confident as well that your pastor would agree.
We are, however, God’s vice-regents, the stewards of His creation. And in calling us to exercise dominion over the creation, to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, He is calling us to reflect His glory, to be images of what He has done in the creation. As we bring all things under subjection, by His power and for His glory, as we the church act as a helper to our husband, the Second Adam in His call to bring all things under subjection, we enter into His work with Him. In this sense it would be fitting to say that we are “co-creators with God.” I suspect that your pastor had something like this in mind.
That said, there are at least two different groups that are terribly confused on this issue. Prosperity preachers have been known to teach what has come to be known as the “little-gods” doctrine. These folks, many of whom glut our airwaves, suggest that just as dogs have puppies and cats have kittens, so God begets little gods. This ancient heresy is explained and answered well in a fine book titled The Agony of Deceit, edited by my friend Dr. Michael Horton.
The second group is the eastern Orthodox church with its doctrine of theosis. Here salvation is less about our being declared just by the finished work of Christ on our behalf, and being adopted into God’s family, and more about how God’s grace is poured into us, making us partake more fully in the divine nature. You can read more about theosis in any dictionary of theology.
It is important for us to keep always before us, not just touching on creation, both the similarities and differences between us and God. The classic doctrine of our being made in the imago dei gets it right. We affirm the imputed dignity of man when we remember that we are made in the image of God. We escape the temptation of the Serpent when we remember that we are made in the image of God. We are neither cosmic accidents, nor gods. We are men, made in His likeness, for His glory. I trust, once again, that your pastor understands this as well. Always listen as a Berean, but always listen with a judgment of charity.
There is, in a rather small subsection of the Reformed world, a rather curious conviction. Some otherwise sound folks take the true and sound notion that because God knows those whom He has not chosen, because it is a great sin against Him to not give thanks to Him, that it is wrong to speak of Him being gracious to those who were not chosen. Every time He sends them the rain, and they fail to give thanks, all that happens for those not chosen is that the thermostat in hell goes up higher still. These folks are right-He does send the rain, knowing they will not give thanks. He will heat up hell all the hotter because of it. But, contra this peculiar view, the rain is in fact grace. In fact, if it’s not grace the very conclusion we have reached, that they will receive greater judgment for their lack of thanksgiving, makes no sense. If God is in fact not being gracious toward them, why should they give thanks? You can’t have it both ways. You can deny that God is giving the reprobate unmerited (or demerited) favor, or you can affirm the reprobate has a duty to give thanks. But you can’t do both.
There is, on the other hand, in the whole of the Reformed world, a curious lack of conviction. That is somehow we have come to forget that we too are the recipients of His grace, that we receive so much better than what we deserve, and that we have a solemn duty to joyfully give thanks. One of the ways this broader failure manifests itself is in what some might call the objection to “worm theology.” “Worm theology” is that pejorative term given to those of us who are eager to affirm the biblical reality of two things- first, we are by nature children of wrath. We are born the enemies of God. We are totally depraved. We would, in our natural state, if we could, commit deicide. Second, when we are given new hearts, and we embrace the work of Christ, as we grow in grace, moving toward our glorification, we have sin yet remaining in us.
It is true, gloriously true, that when we embrace the work of Christ on our behalf we have peace with God. The Spirit indwells us. We are made knew, and are deemed righteous by the Father who adopts us as His own children. We are promised eternal joy at His right hand, and that one day all the remnants of our sin will be washed away. We are promised that every sin, past, present, future, has already been covered by the blood of Christ. We become saints, beloved of Christ. None of which changes the truth that until our deaths, our glorifications, we still sin, often in the most grievous ways. We are still, in ourselves, worthy of His just wrath, of His displeasure.
The challenge is to keep all these truths in their proper places. Where we are in danger of doubting His tender love for us, we must needs remember that He moves us from grace to grace, that all His promises are yea and amen, that He allows us to be called His children. When, however, we are in danger of believing we deserve all the good that we receive, we need to remember our true nature, what we are apart from His grace. We should never despair of what we are because we are already His, and are being remade. We should never demand what we haven’t been given, because are still sinners, and are always already living in the very lap of His grace.
I have noticed in recent years a great upsurge in objections to the objective truth to what we are. Anytime I speak of the believer as a sinner, let alone a miserable sinner, I can always count on someone to come along behind and chasten me for forgetting how God sees us. They will, happily, often do so by reminding me of the great truths of the gospel. But one thing the gospel doesn’t do is make our sin disappear on this side of the veil. It doesn’t make us incapable of committing this sin or that (with the exception of blaspheming the Holy Spirit). If we define “sinner” simply as “one who sins” then it doesn’t cause us to cease being sinners. And it certainly doesn’t mean that we are removed from our calling to recognize and give thanks for His mercy.
When we get ahead of ourselves, when we start to think not that we are deemed fine fellows by our Maker due to the life and death of His Son for us, but think instead that are fine fellows in ourselves, we lose sight of the marvel of mercy. We forget not only to give thanks for the redemption of our souls, but for the preservation of our bodies. We forget not only to give thanks for the goodness in our lives in all the things that give us pleasure, but for the goodness in our lives in all the things that give us pain. In short, when we miss the sin, we miss the mercy. When we forget what we are due, we forget all that we have been given.
We forget we are sinners, we forget to give thanks for His mercy precisely because we are still sinners. We preach this truth not to beat us down, but that we would look up. Jesus told us that the man who beat his breast, crying, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner” went to his home justified (Luke 18:13). He went home then joyful, thankful. He did not, however, from that moment forward never again beat his breast. He did not, from that moment forward, never again cry out to God, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” But each time he returned to pray, he prayed the same prayer, and went home with the same joy. If we would remember the joy of our salvation, we must needs remember the sorrow of our damnation.
The devil, who is more crafty than any beast of the field, doesn’t particularly care whether we believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. Indeed it is conceivable that he might be more frightened of person A who denies the inerrancy of Scripture than person B who affirms it. The power of the Bible isn’t that it is a book that is true. The power is in the truth of what is in the Bible. The power is in the truths, not the truthfulness.
Imagine person A never heard of inerrancy, and so can’t affirm it. Suppose person A was badly taught, and came to believe that the Bible taught geocentrism. And suppose person A believes geocentrism is wrong. Now suppose person A reads the account of Adam and Eve, and comes to believe that his first parents fell from the estate wherein they were created, that God promised to deliver them from death through the promised Seed of the woman. Suppose he believes that God’s deliverance, not just of Adam and Eve but of Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David all demonstrate God’s faithfulness to deliver His people, and point to the coming Deliverer. Suppose person A believes he can best love God and neighbor by submitting Himself to the law of God. Suppose he sees himself in the Psalms, even as he sees Jesus in the Psalms. Suppose he believes that Paul’s commands to husbands and wives are true and come from the very breath of God. Suppose he believes that Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead. Suppose he believes that true religion is in visiting widows and orphans in their trouble, and so labors to do so.
Now imagine person B, a champion of inerrancy. Suppose, however, that person B was also badly taught, and came to believe that the Bible’s account of the creation is poetic- true in a mythic sense, but not actual history. Suppose he believes a devastating local flood took place in the days of Noah. Suppose he finds the accounts of the patriarchs true accounts of interesting people who lived in a distant land in a distant time, but which have little to do with us. Suppose he believes that the law of God given in the Old Testament was for a different era, for a different people. Suppose he believes the Old Testament tells the story about one people of God, who are different from the Gentile people of God. Suppose he believes that Paul’s commands are culturally conditioned, true in the sense that that is what he called them to do in their context, but would wish differently in our context. Suppose he believes that because Jesus is love that judgment is not something we need to fear. Suppose he believes that visiting widows and orphans in their trouble is just law designed to show our failure and drive us to Christ. Suppose he considers actually calling believers to visit widow and orphans in their trouble to be incipient legalism.
Please don’t misunderstand. Inerrancy is both true and vitally important. It is a grave thing indeed to doubt the Word of God. But is it not a graver thing still to affirm that it is God’s Word, and still dismiss it? Or parts of it? Isn’t it possible that we have been manning the barricades on inerrancy while the devil has been undermining the content of the Bible, finding ways to slip through our defenses?
The Bible is not God’s Word because it is true. It is true because it is God’s Word. Which means we need to know, indeed to believe what it says. It tells us who we are, who God is, how we relate, and what will happen. And that’s just in the first three chapters. The devil-horned, snarling theological liberals have relevantized themselves into irrelevancy. But beware the smiling, friendly, cunning theological liberals. They are the dangerous and seductive ones. And they may just be sitting in the pew next to you.
