There are at least two ways, one most of us are on guard against, the other we’re oblivious to. One of the defining qualities of the gnostic worldview is that it sees that which is material as bad, inherently inferior to that which is spiritual. This mindset may have had deep roots in the older fundamentalism that has all but passed away, the kind that opposed alcohol, cards, movies, dancing, seemingly seeing the evil in those things rather than in our hearts.
Gnosticism spread rapidly across the middle east and beyond in the second century. Why? It certainly didn’t come equipped with a coherent, rational theology complete with a solid apologetic. The truth is when someone explains gnostic theology it’s kind of hard not to giggle. And it probably was then too. So why the appeal? That’s the second part of the worldview that besets us to this day.
Gnosticism didn’t spread through the bold proclamation of its silly doctrines. It spread through the appeal of getting into the inner circle. Their methodology was much like what you see in Freemasonry. You are initiated slowly into the group. With each step more of the secret knowledge is revealed to you. As long as you continue to “progress” you are brought further and further in to the secrets, into the inner circle. In short, it appealed to human pride, to our gnawing desire to be among the elite who know the secrets the great unwashed don’t know.
Here the actual content matters not at all. All that matters is that I know it and others don’t. That, not the wisdom, sophistication, insight of what I believe, is what makes me feel special, set apart. And I can bring you in simply by presenting what I know as a secret that I don’t share with many, that you have to earn the right to hear.
To be sure we’re not as crass as either the original gnostics nor the Freemasons. We have no secret handshake. But we do drop the right names to prove we’re in the fraternity. We do display the right books to show we’re in the know. We do tell the knowing jokes that serve as a secret wink to prove we’re on board. We have well worn paths where people get saved among this group, progress to the next group that has a more robust theology, mature to the point that they are talking about Turretin while smoking fine cigars and from there they look for the next new thing, which may very well claim to be the secret lost old thing.
The antidote is humility. It comes from remembering that all that we have truly learned we’ve learned because we were fools and He rescued us. We are not where we are because we’re better, smarter, more insightful than the next guy. We are where we are because He found us dead at the bottom of the sea and has been leading us. We are where we are because even after He raised us from the dead we wander off and He finds us once again. We not only have no secrets, we keep no secrets, confessing what is obvious to all, that we are wretched sinners saved by the grace that was put on display at Calvary for all to see.
The kingdom of God is at war. The promise from the beginning was that the seed of the woman, our King, would come and crush the head of the seed of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). Jesus’ first step out of the tomb at Gethsemane crushed that ancient and wily serpent’s head, and from that time forward we, the bride of Christ, created to be a help suitable for our Husband in His dominion calling, have been engaged in what historians call a “mopping up” operation. The enemy has been defeated, but he doesn’t yet have the sense to give up.
That our Lord has secured the victory ought to encourage, and empower us. That the serpent hasn’t yet given up ought in turn to put us on our guard. That the battles yet rage, despite the glorious truth that the war has been won, ought to inspire us to discern the times. If we were wise we would seek not only to predict how and where the serpent might attack, but would think strategically about where we might attack. Consider, for instance, those culture warriors who aspire to do the work of “pre-evangelism.”
Evangelism, of course, is the proclaiming of the good news of Jesus Christ. It is sowing seed, casting forth the Word of God about the victory of the Son of God. Pre-evangelism is an attempt to make ears more ready to hear, eyes more ready to see. To borrow from the parable of the sower, pre-evangelism is an attempt to till the ground, to make rocky soil more fertile, that the seed might take root and flourish. Often pre-evangelism takes the form of “worldview” studies. Here we spend less time and energy declaring the truth about Jesus, and more time and energy defending the truthfulness of truth. In a modern age we proclaim that Jesus is the truth, against the truth claims of other religions, or Darwinism, or some other form of naturalism. In a postmodern age we cannot argue for the truthfulness of the Christian faith until we first establish that truth is even real, that it can be known, and that it transcends that which is merely “true for me” or “true for you.”
Sometimes “pre-evangelism” takes the form of artistic expressions of sundry forms. Here we may, instead of affirming the glory of Jesus, seek to depict the gloom and vanity of a life lived under the sun. We may tell stories of redemption that, while not exactly telling the story of Jesus, are signposts toward His story. We may simply affirm the dignity of man, as we bear the image of God. Here again we are tilling the ground, preparing it for when the seed is cast, prayerfully hoping our labors might be used to bring in the elect from the four corners of the globe, and that His reign might be made manifest.
These sundry forms of “pre-evangelism” have advantages and disadvantages. They certainly can be effective for some. They can, however, sometimes create exactly the wrong kind of soil. That is, when we simply assault the foolishness of the world, and leave out the heart of the matter, we might be making more “converts” who will wilt under the pressure of the sun. Worse still sometimes we may miss out on the real issue. That is, we may be so focused on the “pre” that we miss the evangelism. It is far easier to talk around the gospel than it is to say to our family, our friends, the broader world, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”
What we often find, however, is that when our strategies work, even just a little, it’s usually because we have stumbled onto something God has already commanded. That is, there is a form of “pre-evangelism” that God calls us all to, that will work, and has worked far more effectively than our worldview wonkery or our high concept cultural artifacts. It is, in the end, the kingdom itself that brings in the lost. That is, we live faithful lives in covenant community, we, a royal priesthood, a holy nation (I Peter 2), are a light shining upon a hill. This light does indeed condemn the darkness (a victory we ought to celebrate, even as we likewise rejoice when the elect are brought in) but it is also a beacon.
If we were smart we would know that the lost are rarely brought in by how smart we are. Instead it is our love, one for another, that invites them in. This is what Jesus told the disciples (John 13:35), that it is in and through our love for each other that all men will know that we are His disciples. Our witness then, in the end, isn’t about our clever arguments. It isn’t about our subtle works of art. Our witness shines through by our love for each other. This is both pre-evangelism and evangelism. That is, it softens the heart, even as it intrigues the mind as pre-evangelism. But, it is evidence of the redeeming power of Jesus Christ; it is the reality of the coming of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Once again, in the upside down economy of our Lord, the more we love one another within the kingdom, the more we bring in those who were outside the kingdom. We seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things are added to us.
The wisdom of this question, I would argue, is that it gets at the real horror of hell. A lake of fire is a frightening thought indeed. The greater dread, however, is the duration of hell, that it never ends. This, I suspect, is what tempts some to try to tweak the church’s historic view on hell, including everyone from John Stott to Rob Bell. Is it possible to posit a truly terrifying, painful hell that only lasts a time? Can we affirm the just judgment of God, and still hope that it will one day come to an end?
Well yes you can posit it, but in so doing you would expose a lack of understanding of the scope of the evil of our sin, and a lack of understanding of the nature of God’s judgment. Sin, the church has argued, must be punished infinitely because we sin against an infinitely holy God. The problem with taking a cookie out of the cookie jar isn’t the cookie, nor the calories. Rather it is the shaking of our fist at the God of heaven and earth. When we commit even the smallest sin we are committing what one great theologian called “cosmic treason.” When we steal the cookie we are declaring to the God who made us, who sustains us, who daily pours out His grace on us, “I WILL NOT HAVE YOU RULE OVER ME.” Thus we stand infinitely guilty, and no amount of intensity to the sinner’s pain can trump the eternity of the sinner’s guilt. As painful as it may be to admit, anything less than eternal punishment would not be just, given the depth of our depravity in rebelling against our Maker.
If, however, that still does not satisfy ones sense of justice, if we still find God less than honorable to punish the earthly sins of men with an eternity in hell, consider this. Men do not cease to sin when they die. That is, the souls in hell are still unregenerate, still captive to their sin. Indeed they are all worse than they were when they were on earth. Hell lacks the common grace of God, the restraining grace of God. It is true that even the sinners below confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, but they do so with clenched teeth, seething with rage. It is true that their knees are bowed, but only because our Lord has broken them with a rod of iron. They hate God and curse Him for eternity.
Indeed one could argue that the deepest horror of hell is not that the pain will be so intense, nor that it will endure forever, but that we will ever become less and less what we were made to be. Without His grace we will continually devolve, and continually earn His continuing wrath. We, like hell, spiral ever downward into deeper and deeper darkness, deeper and deeper evil.
Hell is too dreadful a place to think on for too long. If you are comfortable with it, if the thought of it does not make you squirm, likely you don’t understand it. Sin, however, is still more dreadful, despite how comfortable we are with it. Hell is forever.
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.
