There are two errors to make on this question, and a razor’s edge to walk to answer it correctly. Just as the Bible teaches both divine sovereignty and human responsibility, so it also teaches both that apostasy is real, and that no believer could ever lose his salvation. We must deny neither that apostasy can and does happen, nor that once we find forgiveness in Christ that we can never find ourselves unforgiven.
What then is apostasy? It is not an ontological believer becoming an ontological unbeliever, but a phenomenological believer becoming a phenomenological unbeliever. Clear enough? Ontological and phenomenological are fifty-cent words that have fifty-cent meanings. Ontological means being while phenomenological means as perceived. Clear enough? Let’s try again. Ontological means as the thing really is, while phenomenological means as the thing appears to our senses. When we say the earth rotates on its axis, we are speaking of how the reality is. We are speaking ontologically. When we say the sun rises in the east we are saying as it appears to our eyes. We are speaking phenomenologically.
Apostasy then is when a person who appeared to be a believer to the naked eye, who professed Christ, who was believed to be a believer no longer appears to be a believer to the naked eye. This is consistent with the biblical doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, including this critical text from John:
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us” (I John 2:19).
Notice that John says their status of not belonging didn’t change, but became “manifest” which means seen or known. Apostasy is when our denial of the faith makes evident that we do not have faith, and, that we never actually had it to begin with.
Why then is it such a dreadful thing? It’s not as if apostates have lost something they once had. For this simple reason- it is a dreadful thing for anyone to be outside of the kingdom. How much more so for someone whom we thought to have been in the kingdom? In addition, there are other texts that, at least to some, suggest that an apostate cannot, or perhaps better said, will not be brought to saving faith. See for instance Hebrews 6 and 10. There are differing views on these texts.
What we ought to be confident in are these sure and certain promises of God- “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6) and “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand” (John 10: 27-28). All those in Christ are secure in Him. No power, including our own wills, can snatch us from His pierced hands. Let us then be about the work of making our calling and election sure, knowing it is He that works in us both to will and to do His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).
Does Jesus’s Compassion For the Poor Mean We Should Support the Welfare State?
Absolutely not. First, while we ought to acknowledge that Jesus surely had compassion for some poor, and in turn that this same compassion is part and parcel of the whole of the Old Testament as well, we also have to acknowledge that there are some poor who receive rebuke rather than compassion. The poor, in short, are not a monolithic group. Some are poor because of calamity. Some are poor by choice. Some are poor through oppression. And some are poor due to their own moral failures. It is cold hearted to assume all the poor are lazy. It is foolhardy to assume all the poor are virtuous.
Second, compassion means “to suffer with.” It is neither compassion nor charity to take from one person to give to another. The Welfare State operates on other people’s money. We tax Peter to pay Paul, while Philip gets credit. When Jesus commands us, “Give to the poor” the last thing He is saying is, “Take from others to give to the poor.” I am to give out of what He has entrusted to me. I am more than willing to give away every cent Bill Gates has earned to those I choose. But He hasn’t given me every cent Bill Gates has. I can’t give away what isn’t mine. The notion that the wealth of the citizens of the nation belong to the government of that nation is idolatrous evil, no matter where the government spends the money.
Third, the Welfare State is harmful, not helpful to the poor. It creates disincentives to work and incentives to take from Peter to give to Paul. Both Peter and Paul are disincentivized to work, Peter because he isn’t able to enjoy the fruits of his labor, Paul because he is able to enjoy Peter’s fruit without any labor. Because of sin we are prone to laziness. Work, however, is essential to what we are. Welfare dehumanizes its recipients.
When God established a system of care for the poor of Israel He maintained the dignity of the poor. First, no individual person was entitled to the wealth of another. In order to be able to glean a given field, one first had to get permission from the owner. The owner had a moral obligation, though no legal obligation, to allow gleaning. He was free, however, to choose the participant. Second, gleaning was both hard work for the gleaner and a blessing to the owner. Work, even for the poor, was connected to daily bread.
The notion that the state embraced caring for the poor because the church was falling down on the job is historically inaccurate. The state took over for its own nefarious, political reasons. To encourage the state to step out of its God-appointed calling, the punishment of evil-doers, is not to be more like Jesus but less like Him. That state, in doing so, is in rebellion against the reign of Christ, not a manifestation of that reign. To support it is to support that rebellion.
It is a strange habit, though I am often caught in its grip. Why is it, I wonder, that we find ourselves so often longing for those days of the early church? Where did we begin to confuse the descriptive with the prescriptive, using what was the church once upon a time as a guide to what the church should be in our own day? The source of this foolishness is likely more Rousseau and likely less the Bible. Rousseau was the father of the modern Romantic movement who argued that man is basically good and that it is the debilitating effects of culture that always make things worse. The more primitive we can get, the better off we will be. Buying into that template, we find the early church to be our ideal.
That, however, is not at all how the Bible presents the early church. The New Testament begins with the history of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus told to us in the Gospels. Acts gives us a history of the spread of the good news of Jesus Christ. What follows after, by and large, are sundry writings designed to correct all that was wrong in the churches of the day. Acts shows us Paul establishing churches. Romans through at least Colossians shows us Paul setting those churches straight. He wrote as well to the church at Thessalonica and, I would affirm, even to the Hebrews. Even his epistles to Timothy and Titus focus on weaknesses in the church.
It doesn’t, of course, stop with Paul. Peter deals with failures in the church. James gives some rather stern correctives to the church. John’s epistles deal with problems in the church. The Revelation to Saint John, however, ups the ante. We need to be careful to remember the nature of the calling of the apostles. Our latent distrust of those above us in authority is enough to push us toward this error. Red-letter Bibles make it worse. We tend to see, somehow, the words of Jesus as more authoritative than the words of Paul, Peter, or James. But the authority of the apostles, because it is given by Jesus Himself, is equal to the authority of Jesus Himself. When Paul asks the foolish Galatians who has bewitched them, it is the same as if Jesus Himself were asking the question.
That said, in John’s vision it is in fact Jesus Himself who speaks to the seven churches. His letters therein, not surprisingly, challenge the churches in their sins. Jesus calls them out for their failure to love Him as they ought, for their willingness to tolerate heresy, and for their lukewarm fervor for His kingdom. His chastisements, even though they are directed at churches that have long since passed away (which in itself is a potent lesson for us), sting in our own ears. Or at least they ought. If our response is merely to be concerned for them, we are fools indeed.
If we would understand all the epistles to churches in the whole of the New Testament, we must first understand the wisdom of this bit of Old Testament wisdom literature: “there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9). The churches of the first century were not models of orthodoxy (right doctrine) and orthopraxy (right behavior). Neither, on the other hand, were they beyond the pale. Instead these churches were weak, worldly, and wishy-washy — just like us. Surely the church as a whole has ebbed and flowed over the years. But she has, from the beginning and to our own day, not only been a mixture of wheat and tares but also a body wherein even the wheat often behaves like tares. That is, our problems in the church are not merely that there are unbelievers therein, but the unbelief of the believers therein.
This, friends, ought not to discourage us. We certainly do need to remember God’s judgment as we face up to the bold preaching against our sins that we find in the epistles in the New Testament. But we must likewise remember how these letters begin and end. These are not letters of divorce. They instead implore the churches to repent, to return, and to believe. Paul writes to the saints he loves, not the sinners he is finished with. He begins his letters with love and ends them in the same way. The book of Revelation is much the same. The whole purpose was to encourage the saints to righteousness in a context of hardship. The whole purpose was to remind the saints of their first calling — to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Were we wise we would hear these prophetic utterances as addressed to us. Indeed, were we wise we would welcome the same from our own pastors and elders. We would know that as our sins are challenged from the pulpit, they are challenged that we might grow in grace. We would know that our pastors are piercing our hearts and rocking our consciences precisely because they love us. We would receive rebuke as we ought — as kisses from a friend. That is precisely what they are, kisses, ultimately from the friend we have in Jesus. This is love, that our Savior has not only redeemed us but that He is also daily about the business of purifying us, making us a bride without spot or blemish. It’s a painful process, but it has a glorious end.
As I type I’m on day 4 of quarantine. My precious wife is on day 2. This go around has already proven to be significantly less intense than the first one. Still unpleasant mind you, but not like the first time. It seemed kind of strange to get it again because as an illness it has been less and less in our common conversation. Oh sure, we’ve talked an awful lot about the controlled leaking out of the now being admitted innumerable distortions, lies and half-truths put out by the WHO, the CDC and myriad DRS at the height of the illness. I’m glad for that, and hope for more conversation, or better still, hope for an international tribunal that will bring these men and women to justice. It’s been laughable watching an army of Karens now gently asking for amnesty for their alarmist tyrannies.
During the opening rounds of COVID I was careful to not take a hard stand on the vaccine, one way or the other. I am generally inclined toward suspicion of governments, whoever is in charge. I remember watching President Trump’s first national address on COVID. At the beginning I was frankly quite surprised at how “presidential” he seemed. Then he announced travel restrictions he had absolutely no authority to make. That tripped all my civil liberties alarm bells. The tyranny continued to descend for months, long before the party in power switched, while Christians wrestled with how to understand the intermingling of our responsibilities to be in submission to our employers, our civil authorities and our churches.
My posture was simple. I had nothing to say about the science and statistics. I did, however, have something to say about the ethics. Here (https://rcsprouljr.com/follow-the-ethics/) I wrote this-
We don’t actually know the future. We don’t actually know what outcome would be best. We do know this. Forcing someone against his or her will to have injected into his or her body something they don’t want injected into their body is Mengele level evil. My unpleasant experience of having COVID has zero impact on that moral fact.
Having COVID a second time, this time in a context where the lies of the Forces of Fauci are scurrying for cover, still doesn’t change my perspective. Had the vaccine eradicated COVID overnight, with the only side effect being a cure for baldness, it would still have been wrong for governments to mandate receiving it. Not just wrong, but wicked. The problem with tyranny isn’t that the tyrant always makes the miserable choice but that whatever choice he makes, he takes away the choice of the free man. Whether that tyrant is the President or two parents deciding whether to murder their unborn child. Benevolent dictators may make better choices than fools, but we are all fools if we think the problem with dictators is their choices.
By the time you’re reading this, my battle with COVID will likely have come to an end. My battle with tyranny, on the other hand, will end at my death.
It was likely driven by my own personal spirit of Eyeore. Either that, or I just like being unconventional. Our class was asked what event in the Bible we thought was the most significant of all. Eighty percent picked the crucifixion of Jesus. A smidge less than twenty percent picked the creation. I, alone, picked the fall. My reasoning went like this. Creation, as glorious and astonishing as it is, as needful for the rest of the story, isn’t the story itself. It is the stage on which the story is told. Then, taking the opposite tack I thought that as important as the crucifixion is, it wouldn’t have happened, wouldn’t have been necessary, were it not for the prior fall of mankind. The fall of mankind is the very hinge of history, the reason for history. The world begins with man and God in joyful relationship. The world ends with man and God in joyful relationship. The whole of the in-between revolves around the sin of Adam and Eve.
The fall changed almost everything. The creation, which had enjoyed perfect harmony, now began to groan. Death descended on the animals like a curse. The ground suddenly became stingy, though prodigious in producing thorns and thistles. Man, who had been at peace with the animals, was now at war. Man, who had been at peace with each other, was now at war. Man, who had been at peace with God, was now at war. Virtually every positive became a negative. Death, sickness, danger, pain, decay filled history’s stage, opening a Pandora’s box of Pandora’s boxes.
The only thing left untouched, unchanged, was the untouchable, unchangeable God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit enjoyed an infinite blessedness before creation, before the fall, and indeed after the fall. They had no need to do anything about the fall, about the calamity of Eden. They would have been utterly just to condemn Adam, Eve and all their descendents to an eternity of their wrath. They would have rejoiced to exercise their wrath in just that way.
But they didn’t. Instead they covenanted together. Instead they determined not just to rescue us from Their just wrath, but to recreate all that had been lost. The Father would choose a people from all of humanity. We would become His children, and together, the bride of His Son. The Son would take on flesh and dwell among us. He would live a life of perfect obedience, and then suffer the wrath of the Father that was due to us. He would be vindicated, and would begin the process of recreating the world when He walked out of His tomb. Forty days later He would ascend to His throne and from there would brings all things under subjection. He would send the Spirit who would breathe life into the chosen, indwell and empower them. And as the bride of the second Adam, the church, the second Eve would be a help suitable to Him as He fulfills the dominion mandate.
It is a glorious thing that our sins are forgiven. It is a wondrous truth that we need not fear the wrath of our heavenly Father. It is a stunning reality that we will never suffer anger from on high. And it would be a terrible thing indeed to diminish any of these truths. It would in turn, however, be to miss the full glory of the gospel to stop there. It would be to cheat Jesus of the praise due to Him to stop there. What we need to come to understand is that Jesus changes everything.
My insecurities are grounded in Adam’s fall. The solution is embedded in the coming of Christ. My fears flow out of Adam’s fall. Courage breaks forth from the empty tomb. My temper spews out of Adam’s fall. Peace grows out of His ascension. Whether it is my failure here or discontentment there, always and everywhere the solution is Jesus. Not what I think about Jesus, not how I get close to Jesus, but what Jesus is and what Jesus is doing. When I say “Jesus changes everything” I do not mean that changing our perspective on Him will change our perspective on the world. I mean instead that Jesus is about the business of changing everything.
Jesus changes everything in my life. There is no Jesus-free zone that remains untouched, that will not be remade, or burned away. Every bit of my life, every bit of yours, every bit of our eternities will not merely be stamped, “Property of Jesus” but will be so stamped because they will also be stamped, “Remade by Jesus.”
When we seek to fence Jesus off from a part of lives, to maintain a “No Jesus” zone we are not setting aside a bit of freedom for ourselves. What we are doing instead is inviting another master into our lives. When Jesus is how we get our souls saved, but the American dream is how we make our earthly choices, we are serving two masters. And that is always doomed to failure. When we want Jesus to only change some things, we do not leave the rest the same. Instead we face the endless, wearying complications of syncretism. What we are called to is a simple life. Here we have but one master to please, one Lord to serve, one goal to pursue, and that is that we would be made more like that Lord.
What a glorious blessing that as we seek first His kingdom, as we labor beside Him to see all under His dominion, we know that He will win. His kingdom will cover the earth as water covers the sea. The nations will be discipled. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that He is Lord. Jesus is changing me, which redounds to my blessing. Ultimately, however, He is changing everything for His glory. Ultimately the Father, the Son and the Spirit rejoice over the recreation of all reality. Ultimately they rejoice together in the manifestation of their glory. The stars, the galaxies, the angels, and all the saints will sing that glory, forever and ever. His kingdom is forever. Because Jesus changes everything.
Doing much better, not contagious, but still recovering. God willing we’ll be back next week.
Christians were deeply disheartened recently when a critical culture war battle left religious liberty bleeding out while sexual perversion celebrated, waving its rainbow flag. As if losing this vote were not bad enough, a frightening omen of dark days ahead, the perception has been that the battle was lost precisely because 12 Republican senators defected to the other side. Had these 12 had a sprinkling of understanding of what the Constitution says, had they bothered to read the Bill of Rights and specifically the 10th Amendment, had they the least desire to be in submission to the Word of God, had they any wish to honor the wishes of those who voted them into office, they would have voted differently. So why did they vote as they did?
Because they haven’t a sprinkling of understanding of what the Constitution says, haven’t read the Bill of Rights and specifically the 10th Amendment, have zero desire to be in submission to the Word of God and do not wish to honor the wishes of those who voted them into office. Or, it could be because they are politicians. It could be that they are, just like the rest of those who voted for this bill, self-interested liars who never saw a parade they couldn’t get in front of.
The passing of this bill, while disappointing, is certainly not a surprise to me. The votes of the 12 Republicans, on the other hand isn’t disappointing, because it is just what I would expect of Republican politicians. There are, in my judgment, a precious few statesmen inside the beltway that are fighting the good fight. I’m willing to concede that every one of those is a Republican. What we need to learn is that every Republican is not one of those.
Politically aware Christian conservatives are, of course, aware of the existence of “rinos,” Republicans in name only. These are well-connected, establishment politicians like Liz Cheney. They have no ideological grounding and will embrace whatever position they believe will keep them in power. They question is, which is more rare, Republican statesmen or rinos? Those shocked by this vote likely think the rinos are more rare. Those not shocked are not shocked precisely because we already knew that the Republican party, while less putrescent than the other party, is stinking up the fridge.
That it is abundantly clear that the Republicans will not save us, this doesn’t, of course, open the door for supporting the death party. Instead it means we need to stop waving their flag. The Republicans are not the team of conservative Christians. They are part and parcel of the problem. They are the establishment that will soon be treating we who believe in marriage like those who believe only whites should rule. They are not our friends. We need to watch our backs. They didn’t betray us, nor what they stand for. They were never for us and they stand for nothing.
Jesus changes everything. Political engagement is sound, biblical, necessary. Lesson one, however is this- you can’t win a battle aligned with the enemy. The enemy is not the Democratic party, but politicians who won’t stand for the unborn, who won’t commit to marriage.
There is a tension among God’s people that reflects a delicate balance to which the Bible calls us. Paul, you recall, argued that in his passion for the gospel, he wished to be all things to all men, that by all means some might be saved (1 Cor. 9:22). On the other hand, Jesus tells the disciples that when they brought the good news and were not received, they were to wipe the dust off of their feet as they left town (Luke 9:5). They’re both legitimate perspectives on the lost. Where, we wonder, does earnestly contending for lost souls end and pandering to the lost begin?
The worship wars of our own day are driven by this same tension. There is nothing new under the sun. Do we gather together each Lord’s Day to worship the Lord with the most simple language? Should our music aspire for accessibility above all else? Do we want to dumb everything down so that everyone can get it? Is this how we bring in the lost? Or, should our weekly gatherings instead be times of erudite exposition and sublime aural harmonies? Do we, with the former, through our workaday media, communicate a God who is safe? Do we, with the latter — with our highbrow affectations — communicate a God who is inaccessible?
In the ninth century, when the Latin Mass began to be enforced, I’m confident the same discussions took place. Some, I would expect, argued that the Latin Mass carried with it a gravity that communicated the glory of God, a certain sense of mystery and timelessness. Others, I’m quite sure, pointed out that the people for whom Jesus died could not understand what was being said. How can we say that this body was broken for you if you don’t know what we’re saying?
The Bible is a book that not only is full of wisdom but that in turn calls us to wisdom. Wisdom, more often than not, means balance. Wisdom recognizes that there is a real difference between prudent accessibility and the lowest common denominator. Wisdom can tell the difference between a foreign language and a challenging language. It is able to distinguish between self-serving, highbrow tastes and treating matters of import with all due dignity. It recognizes, for instance, that there is a great yawning space between a pastor preaching in a long dead language and a pastor preaching in a clown suit.
As is so often the case, wisdom is often found when we look away from the question at hand, when we step away from the raging debate and look instead to where we agree. When we gather together for worship, we are gathering together, according to the Bible, as a body. We are likewise gathering together as a bride. We are coming to meet our Lord, who comes to renew covenant with us and to feast with us at His table. Now consider how we approach a wedding.
When we come together for a wedding, no one would suggest that for the sake of the dignity of the event we ought to perform the service in Latin. No one would argue that the pastor’s homily ought to be peppered with obtuse language fit only for the seminary classroom. Neither, however, does any bride dream of a day when a man in stained overalls, smelling of a barnyard, looks down at her and asks her the vows: “Well, do yer or don’t yer?” Instead, when we marry we put on our best clothes. We decorate the setting to befit a time of solemnity and joy. We play our best music. We speak in our most gracious tones, and with our most polished grammar. It is our most important “our.” Nobody, I trust, argues that this leaves people out. No one argues that this is somehow inauthentic. No bride would, if her groom showed up in flip-flops and a t-shirt, argue that she sees the heart and that what’s on the outside doesn’t matter. That is, the wedding ceremony is not to be marked by the world’s best and highest, but by our best and our highest. It is our most important “our.”
Our worship should bring us together, rather than drive us apart. We have, after all, together been called to worship by our Lord. That is why we use at one and the same time a common language in an uncommon way. We speak so that the gravity of the message might be heard. We are not pandering to anyone, and we rejoice in an audience of One. We play music that can reach the hearts of the congregation in a way far more powerful than silly love songs ever could, seeking to reflect the heavenly chorus.
When we come to worship we come in ourselves still unclean. We as a bride are too besmirched and stained to feign haughtiness. We are too conscious of our own sin to be looking down our noses at others. But we come seeking to be made beautiful, confident that our Groom can bring this to pass. We have given up the world, with all its arrogant slovenliness. We have turned up our noses at the world’s studied indifference to beauty. We do indeed speak English, but it is not the English of the court fool. It is the King’s English.
