Tonight we continue exploring the greatest commandment. We will unpack both the command to love the Lord our God with all that we are and our neighbor as ourselves. All are welcome in our home at 6:15 eastern for dinner, and for the study itself at 7:00. The study will be live-streamed on Facebook Live, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
There are any number of answers to this question that are both distinct and all perfectly fitting. The answer generally comes down to how one defines the church. The answers run the gamut from Genesis 1 to Acts 2. We can define the church as that body of people called to worship the living God. If so we confess it was created with the creation of Adam and Eve.
Genesis 3 would also be a fitting answer. We can define the church as the people of God redeemed by the work of Christ. If we affirm that God in His grace redeemed our first parents, then once there were people, sin, and forgiveness, we have the church.
We could also choose Genesis 4. There we’re told that “then men began to call upon the name of the Lord.” This seems to suggest that this was the beginning of God’s people gathering together to worship Him in prayer. Which isn’t at all a bad definition of what the church is.
Don’t worry. We’re not going to make an argument for most of the chapters of Genesis. But we still could argue that it began with Noah and his family. They offered the first post-flood sacrifices at the end of Genesis 8. We could choose God calling Abraham out from Ur. Or Him establishing the sacrament of circumcision as the sign of the covenant.
Other Old Testament options include the Mosaic covenant at Mount Sinai in Exodus. There God’s people covenanted to be His people. Or when they first gathered in the tabernacle, or under Solomon, in the Temple.
Acts 2, the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, surely must be the best option in the New Testament. If the church is those who have been redeemed by Christ and indwelt by the Spirit, after the work of Christ, that’s where it would be. Those who are especially eager to emphasize distinctions between the people of God in the Old and New Testaments tend to pitch their tabernacle here.
Those of us more inclined to emphasize the continuity of the Old and New (remembering that both sides affirm continuity and contrast) are more comfortable defining the church as the people of God. The church consists of those redeemed by the work of Christ (whether it was yet to come, to them still future, or has already come) indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and gathered together in covenant to worship the living God. This, of course, rules out the slur of “replacement theology.” Affirming the essential unity of God’s people throughout time in no way suggests the replacement of Israel by the church. Rather, all those blessed with faith are the children of Abraham (Gal. 3: 7-9).
There remain assorted distinctions that have their place. The visible and invisible church are not co-extensive. The church militant and the church triumphant are one church, but in different places, with different callings and even different natures. Every distinction, however, takes place in the context of the unity of the body. The church is the people of God, by the grace of God, living for the glory of God.
This is the thirty-fourth installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more. Remember also that we at Sovereign Grace Fellowship meet this Sunday March 9 at 10:30 AM at our new location, at our beautiful farm at 112811 Garman Road, Spencerville, IN. Please come join us.
“By this,” Jesus said, “all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Here Jesus gives us an apologetic we’ve lost sight of. One of the blessings that come with God’s people loving one another is those not God’s people are better able to recognize God’s people. It shows His glory. We, on the other hand, would rather argue worldviews, amass compelling evidence, make bold prophetic statements. What God would rather have us do is to love one another. God would rather we do the hard thing, for that is where the power is.
The common bumper sticker makes a salient point. The watching world affirms that what makes Christians so reprehensible is our hypocrisy. They see us sin, while believing we believe that we don’t sin. And they hate us for it. The sticker, then, answers the objection: “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.”
We’re not perfect. We are forgiven. But the forgiveness we have from the Father works itself out when we in turn forgive others. How many times does Jesus remind us of this connection? We who have been forgiven much manifest that truth in forgiving others. Perhaps that ought to be our bumper sticker: “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiving.” I’m afraid the world around us may find that too hard to swallow. They know us all too well.
We’re accustomed to thinking of worldliness in the narrowest of contexts, if we
think of it at all. We think it a synonym for pleasure, as if the devil has cornered that market. Our problem, however, isn’t that we go to movies or dance like the world, but that we think like the world. We and they think, where every human interaction is a battle, a zero-sum game that you either win or lose. We suspect, rather than trust, one another. We are intent on protecting our interests. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and no one likes to be eaten.
“Love suffers long, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, and bears all things. If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2b–3).
Love is the antithesis of the grasping paranoia that marks the world. Love, in short, is the very fruit of our own deaths. As we die to self, we are no longer interested in keeping score, feel no need to protect our own interests. When our brothers wrong us us, we find forgiving easy, for who can harm a dead man? We let our lives shine before men, and show them that we are His.
A very wise man once said, “Never ask God for justice. He might just give it to you.” What defines us is that we are a people who have been given grace. We were not only given the grace of forgiveness, but were given the grace of repentance. As we keep our sins ever before us, we will see His forgiveness ever before us. And we won’t have opportunity to see the speck in our brother’s eye.
A day will come by God’s grace when His church won’t be known for hypocrisy. Our reputation won’t be built around the things we’re against. All will know that we are His by our love one for another. That love will show itself the same way God’s love for us is shown, in our zeal to forgive one another. Every man, as he passes by a church, will know that this is the place where you will find forgiveness. Not only from our Father, but from our brothers and sisters as well. We hasten that day as His will is done on earth as it is in heaven, as we love and forgive like only His children can do.
There are likely hundreds of illustrations used to help people wrap their minds around the mind-numbing numbers reflected in the size of the federal government, its colossal budgets and its staggering debts. You know the ones- stack enough dollar bills to finance the budget and it will reach the moon. That kind of thing. As helpful as these are, I’m afraid they’re not personal enough.
So let’s try this. Let’s assume, to make the math easier for me, that you earn an average of $100,000 a year. That you work fifty years and that you net out a 20% annual income tax bill. Over your lifetime in this scenario you will pay $1,000,000 in income tax. Horrifying isn’t it? Just you, all by yourself, giving a million dollars to the federal government.
But wait. There’s more. It’s all well and good to imagine what you’d do, with your own money. But the feds have been taking it all along. Imagine still more if those taxes you paid were invested wisely and safely. (Keep in mind income taxes are just a portion of your taxes. Not included are FICA or state or local or excise or gas or any other taxes.)
But wait. There’s less. That million dollars you paid in income tax, for the whole of your life, paid for what exactly? We recently learned FEMA spent $59 million, in one day, on hotels in New York City for illegal immigrants. That means that you and 58 of your closest friends have worked your whole lives for that one check on that one day. Or, you would have to work 58 more lifetimes, just to cover that check, just to pay that one hotel bill.
Or maybe you want your lifetime of taxes to pay for something more American. Those taxes that sting so deeply, for your whole life, would pay for 1/882,000 of this year’s interest bill on the national debt. You and 881,999 of your closest friends will work your entire lives to pay the taxes to cover this year’s interest on the national debt. Or you would have to live 882,000 lifetimes just to pay this year’s interest on the national debt.
You would need another 175,000 friends working their entire lives to raise the taxes to pay the Ukraine “bill” just for 2024. You’d need 19 friends to work their entire lives to pay the taxes to pay for the US government’s creation of Sesame Street for Arabs. What I haven’t listed is the cost of any legitimate, biblical and/or Constitutional expenses of the federal government, far less that accumulated debt.
Do not, in these giddy early days of DOGE, lose sight of the ball. The goal is not to stop the plundering that creates multimillionaires of wage earning oligarchs like Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren. The goal is not for the government to be more efficient at the things it does that it shouldn’t be doing. The goal is not for the government to find better things to spend this money on. The goal for us is to be free, to whip Leviathan back into its cage. As the wise Milton Friedman said, “It’s always the spending.”
We have been led, by both parties, beyond freedom and dignity. This crisis is trillions of times more serious than we think. It is compelling proof of the madness of the heirs of King George. We are broker than broke, more broken than broken. May the Lord hear our cries.
Lisa and I begin a new series on the sins of the tongue. I explain why the proposed DOGE checks aren’t such a good idea. We explore Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams, Jesus greatest miracle in the life of the paralytic, and give thanks for the God of our fathers. Check it out. Share with friends. The more the merrier.
Most every night I gather my precious wife and our two still-at-home sons for prayer before bed. Many nights I pray in thanksgiving for God’s very specific grace in all four of our lives, that He puts the lonely in families (Psalm 68:6). We are a family that has faced more alone-ness than most. But He brought us together.
Not everyone, however, has been given this gift just yet. No one, however, inside the church, should ever feel utterly bereft of family. The church is called to be a family to the family-less. Which can be rather tough to do when the church spends more time studying its demographics than it does the ministry of the Lord. It is virtually a given that any given church must narrow its target audience if it wants to have any success. Some adopt the manners and mores of millenials. Others stake a claim on couples with young children.
Even churches, however, that are blessed with a broad demographic tend to divide the body once everyone’s inside. The singles and career meet over there, while the young marrieds hold baby showers for each other, and the golden agers meet every other Wednesday at Denny’s.
Though it doesn’t do so often, the Bible does speak of demographic groups. We are told this, for instance, about young men in the church, that they should be taught by the older men. Not coincidentally, the older women are to be busy about the work of teaching the younger women. When demographics come up in the Bible, God is calling us to come together, not to divide.
It should not be, however, merely different age groups, but also different circumstances. The value of an older widow isn’t just in teaching a women’s Bible study. Perhaps she could be an unofficial grandmother to a young family far from home. That way she not only blesses the younger ones but is blessed in return. The value of a younger man isn’t just in learning from an older man. Perhaps he could help an older couple with some heavy lifting around the house, becoming an unofficial son to the older couple.
I’m not, please understand, suggesting yet another program, a kind of Christian version of Big Brothers. Rather I’m suggesting that our lives should organically reflect the truth of what God has done for us. I’m suggesting that Reformation comes when we live lives in community, when we are one, when we are the body. Who, I am wondering, was at your table Resurrection Sunday? And worse, who ate alone? What better time to open your family to new “members” than when we feast in celebration of our risen elder Brother bringing us into the very family of God?
Don’t know any singles? Then fix that first. Look for them. Greet them. Get to know them. If you are single, you can fix it too. Look for families. Greet them. Get to know them. It’s not magic. It’s not work. It’s life. Let’s share it.
Tonight we continue exploring the greatest commandment. We will unpack both the command to love the Lord our God with all that we are and our neighbor as ourselves. All are welcome in our home at 6:15 eastern for dinner, and for the study itself at 7:00. The study will be live-streamed on Facebook Live, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
I understand that it’s a tough issue. It’s disconcerting that the Holy Spirit inspired a prayer asking God to dash his enemies’ heads against the rocks. That thought is just what we find in what are called “imprecatory Psalms.” These are Psalms wherein one man beseeches God to destroy other men, and even children.
C.S. Lewis had one of his major trips over this issue, going so far as to call these texts “sinful.” Others have taken these texts as license to virtually cast evil spells on others they disapprove of. How do we embrace these Psalms for what they are, the Word of God, without embracing an ethic that would be repugnant to Jesus?
By understanding the nature of the gospel. Specifically, we must come to understand the cauldron of violence inherent in the gospel. How easily we misunderstand what God has done for us. We see ourselves like little children, lost, and alone, but basically good. Jesus came here to find us, take us by the hand and lead us to heaven. We think Jesus is the Great Hero and we the damsel in distress.
The truth is we are by nature the enemies of God, little dragons taking instruction from the Great Dragon. We are not the damsel in distress but the evil witch. And Jesus does not take our hand to lead us. No He takes His hand, plunges it into our chest and rips out our hearts. Before giving us new ones.
Our salvation is less moving from being lost to being found, more moving from being His dead enemies to being His living brothers and sisters. It begins with destruction, violent, earth-shattering destruction. If that’s not enough violence, remember that our salvation is built on the violence that scourged our Lord, that it pleased the Father to bruise Him, that by His stripes we are healed.
Which helps us understand precisely how and why we not only can but should pray imprecatory prayers on God’s enemies. First, our God is the God who lifts up the lowly and brings down the mighty. The Day of the Lord is darkness for some, glorious deliverance for others. But second, our God is the God who brings down the mighty, sometimes that He might lift them up. He destroys that He might rebuild, kills that He might give life.
When I pray against him who daily seeks my harm, against him who spurns His grace, who rails against the body of Christ, I do so asking that God would destroy him. Should He determine to destroy him through crucifying him with Christ, and raising him with Him, I have gained a brother, mercy has been made known and justice has been served. Should He determine to destroy him in the fire that never dies, justice has been served. Should I complain if God chooses the former, I show myself to fail to understand my own need for His grace.
God’s judgment is a beautiful thing, not something anyone needs to be ashamed of. His mercy is a sublime thing, not something anyone ought to be proud of. Pray for His judgment, and pray in thanksgiving should His judgment pass over your foes. Pray always knowing such once were we.
This is the thirty-third installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more. Remember also that we at Sovereign Grace Fellowship meet this Sunday March 2 at 10:30 AM at our new location, at our beautiful farm at 112811 Garman Road, Spencerville, IN. Please come join us.
