Neil Postman, in his compelling book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, argues that we have moved as a culture from one wherein the printed word drives us, to one wherein the image drives us. With the advent of the printing press, we became better able to think in abstract terms, to follow arguments, and to reach conclusions. Now, in a world driven by images on screens, we think less and feel more. Now we emote on the basis of images, rather than think on the basis of arguments. We are more likely to be moved, than we are to be persuaded.
As is so often the case, however, what we are called to here is balance. We do not want to be carried away with our emotions, nor by what we see. Neither, on the other hand, do we want to suppress our emotions and live like robots. Our goal is that we would think rightly, that our minds would be renewed, and having had this happen, that we would be changed in our hearts, that we would be transformed.
That same balance is reflected in how the Word reaches us. Far too often in the history of the church theologians have pitted the sacraments against preaching, failing to see their organic connection. The Bible is the Word of God. Jesus is the Word of God. Jesus is the bread and the wine. The bread and the wine is the Word of God. To put it better perhaps, in the worship service we are blessed by the Word preached, as we are blessed by the Word touched, and tasted, at the table.
To push our analogy a step further, we must also remember that the church is the body of Christ, and the bread is the body of Christ. God has not given us just words on a page. He has given us the Word visible in the sacrament, and in the church. Our calling is to seek to see Him in both. We need to see Him in our brothers and sisters in the pew, and when we come to His table.
In both instances we are changed. In both instances we draw near to Him. In both instances we are changed, in our whole being. Jesus told us that the world would know we were His by our love one for another (John 13:35). Given that we are still sinners, how can we rightly love one another? Because we grow in our capacity to see Jesus in one another. He indwells each of us, and He is altogether lovely. We in ourselves are merely dust and rebellion. But Christ in us, that is glory and beauty and all that is lovely.
Our calling is to keep our eyes on the prize. Jesus not only secures our reward, but is our reward. As we look to Him, whether we find Him in the Bible, at the table, or in the pews, we move toward our eternal home. Jesus promised that lo, He is with us always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). We ought then always to see Him with us.
Tonight we continue our look at the monumental, towering book of Romans. All are welcome to our home at 7 est, or you may join us for dinner at 6:15. We will also stream the study at Facebook, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
No, and yes. One of the strange results of efforts made to shoehorn homosexuality into the church is the claim of many at best celibate and at worst actively practicing, that they are “gay Christians.” The latter try to claim their sin is no sin. The former claim their inclination is no sin, but it is a good way to center their identity. We ought to say no to both. Paul is quite clear that those who practice unrepentantly sexual immorality, homosexual acts, as well as the greedy, idolaters, drunkards and more will not inherit the kingdom (I Corinthians 6: 9-10). That excludes the latter group. The former group is excluded by the very next verse as Paul reminds his readers, “Such once were you” (vs. 11). Not, such are you, but were you. You once practiced those sins, but they do not define you now. Your identity is in Christ. You may struggle with this temptation, battle that besetting sin, but if you are in Christ He is your identity. It is how God sees you, and He is the decider.
I understand the temptation. My own webpage has as a header to describe me, “Sinner saved by grace.” When, however, I refer to myself as a sinner I’m not naming my identity. But my propensity. That is, I am one who sins. My identity, however, is in Christ. I battle the besetting sin of temper. But in Christ I am meek. I don’t want to forget what I am in myself, but cannot forget who I am in Christ.
That said, because we do still sin we are often tempted to define ourselves as we are in Christ and others as they are alone. There is a relatively well-known Christian journalist on the internet whose area of expertise is to expose what she deems to be the sins of others. I’ve been covered by this woman, who, nearly every time she refers to me she includes this juicy adjective, “Disgraced.” As in, “Disgraced Former Pastor RC Sproul Jr. Plants a Church” or “Disgraced Former Pastor RC Sproul Jr. Opens Pastoral Training Center” or words to that effect. In some sense, she is quite correct. I have scandals in my past, and sins in my present and future. I have brought shame on my Redeemer and His church. That, however, is not who I am, because I am in Christ.
Some years ago this same journalist published a book in which she openly and honestly gave an account of the, in her words, unhealthy and dangerous, emotionally dysfunctional relationship she had with an adult (19 years old) member of the youth group the journalist served while in her thirties. This is to her credit. Better still, more recently she acknowledged that her account didn’t emphasize sufficiently the power dynamic in the relationship, that she could have done better. That’s honorable. What I’m puzzled by is why she continues to identify those she doesn’t care for by their past sins, but doesn’t do the same to herself. Why is her site not called “The Disgraced Mrs. So and So Report” when she publishes pieces on those she defines in terms of their disgraces?
I’m glad she doesn’t, to tell the truth. Because that’s not who she is in Christ. That she feels comfortable describing her brothers in Christ as “disgraced,” however, is disgraceful. Such too, however, is covered by the blood of Christ. No, we don’t define ourselves by the sins we’ve committed or still struggle against. We also don’t define our brothers and sisters by the sins they’ve committed or still struggle with. Sinners? Yes, in that we sin. Saints, most assuredly because of the beautiful gospel of Jesus Christ.
My favorite theologian of all time was wont to argue that the defining task of the theologian is to make distinctions. That’s what we do. We bring clarity through precision, precision through distinction. The man who may well have been my favorite theologian’s favorite theologian, Francis Turretin, published his three-volume work The Institutes of Elenctic Theology as a sort of systematic theology by contrast. Each point is broken down, compared and contrasted, and examined in light of its opposite.
One could argue that theologians are here following the path of their Maker. We serve a God who delights in distinctions. Reading through the creation account, for instance, we see not only the creation of light, but the separation of light and darkness, not only the creation of land, but the separation of land and sea, and land and sky.
On the other hand, the same God who delights in distinctions warns us against tearing asunder what He has brought together. He is a God who brings people of every tongue and tribe together into a holy nation, a royal priesthood. He makes of many grains one loaf.
Reformed theologians especially are given, at least when dealing with the critical issue of our salvation, to razor-thin distinctions. The links in our chain of the ordo salutis, or “order of salvation,” are strong, unbreakable, but nevertheless rather small. There is good reason for this, but also some danger. Sometimes the wedges we drive between concepts go too deep.
Consider faith and repentance. There is good reason to see these as two distinct things. With one, we look with hope to the provision of God in Christ. With the other, we acknowledge and confess our need for that work. Hypothetically, one could affirm that Jesus died for sinners and miss the glaring truth that the one making the affirmation is a sinner. One could more easily recognize the reality of his sin but know nothing of the provision in Christ. Thus, the two are two, and both equally needful.
On the other hand, one could argue that the two things are actually one, or at the very least that they flow from the same source. Faith is indeed the coming together of understanding, agreement, and trust. But on a more fundamental level, faith is simply this— believing God. Faith is displayed when God speaks and we say, “Amen.”
The devil, of course, knows that God is true. He is quite informed on the sacrifice of Christ. He knows to his very core, from the very longing of his heart by which he misses those who slipped through his fingers, that Jesus came to save sinners. He is also quite well aware of what and who he is—a sinner. All of this knowledge will make his eternity that much more painful.
Faith and repentance, then, might be at their closest when we confess that, as He says, we are sinners, and as we cry out, as He has commanded, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13). God says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), and we say, “Lord, Your judgments are true.” When God says, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Tim. 1:15), we do not merely affirm our agreement, but we sing it with hallelujahs and amens.
For all the important nuances, for all the valuable precision, the simple truth of the matter is we fell in the garden because we failed to believe God. All sin is a failure to believe God. The good news is that we are rescued from our sins by believing Him, both His judgment and His promise. That is, we are gifted with faith and repentance.
Just as we can make theology more complex than it need be, just as we are called, in seeking orthodoxy, to say our amens to what God has revealed about Himself, so we can make the living of our lives in faithfulness, the seeking of orthopraxy, more complex than it need be. Here, too, we are to say our amens about what God has revealed about His promises for us, about His law. He commands that we not worry about what we will eat or wear, and we are called to repent of our fears and believe His promises. He commands us to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and we are called to repent for our pursuit of personal peace and affluence, and to believe His promises.
It is true that God is true and all men are liars. It is true, in turn, that every man is miserly while God is extravagant. Were we wise, we would repent expansively, even as we would believe with both deep conviction and broad expectation. Our sin is simple—we do not believe God, and so do not obey God. The solution is simple—believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household (Acts 16:31). We do not merely believe this once and then nevermore; rather, we believe it both evermore and evermore.
There has been of late a rather embarrassing battle going on on social media between competing tribes of Bible believing Calvinists who come down on different sides of what God commands for civil governments. There are good men on both sides, and men whose rhetoric tends to lack grace on both sides. As noted last week in this space, these two groups will argue about just about everything, including the relative merits of physical fitness.
In this context one young man determined to score points for Team Fitness by noting how good it is that Dr. John MacArthur is still with us, and how much better it would have been if Dr. Sproul were also still with us. A broad brushed medical history was provided for both men, with the clear implication being that Dr. MacArthur wisely pursued fitness while Dr. Sproul, unwisely did not. I will not suggest that the claim was made that Dr. Sproul was foolish, as the author made a valiant effort to make his point without disparaging my father. (And to his credit reached out to apologize and has been happily forgiven.)
My beef isn’t that the author was intentionally unkind or intentionally dishonest. My beef is that such speculations are just that, and they are on their face inappropriate. I’d suggest that those to whom it seems appropriate have a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between what is public and what is private. I understand that my father was a charming man and an engaging teacher. As such many people who did not know him think they did know him. Which is why it feels perfectly natural to opine on his exercise and dietary habits, despite knowing nothing about it.
The truth is that the great bulk of you did not know him. I wish you did because he was a wonderful man. If you didn’t, however, it’s unwise to act as though you did. And if you did, it is unwise to parade that information publicly. One young man, a friend of mine, asked for some time with my father to discuss theological issues. My father was quite surprised, not long after, to find snippets of conversation between the two show up on the young man’s blog, presented as if the conversation were an interview. The point isn’t that the young man played “Gotcha” journalism. One, he wasn’t trying to. Two, nothing my father side was anything he regretted saying. What he was frustrated with was the misleading nature of the invitation to talk.
Public people, like my father, long before they are public, are people. Which means that every biting comment they hear, every trust that is betrayed, every tidbit of speculation stings. Not because public people expect everyone to love them, but because they expect people to treat them with the same respect they would show less public people. “RC was fat and smoked for many years and therefore abandoned his post by dying, unlike John MacArthur. Be like John MacArthur” isn’t how you would treat your personal enemy, let alone your friend. But because my father was a public man, it’s fair game.
I don’t ever want to hide the blessings of my relationship with my father. That’s why I wrote Growing Up (with) RC. Neither, however, do I want my openness to be the occasion for others to take shots at RC Sproul the Public Theologian as if they wouldn’t wound RC Sproul, my father. My father didn’t deserve this, not because he was a great public theologian, but because he is a brother in Christ.
I write this not to scold my brother, but to encourage us all neither to treat public people like they can do no wrong, nor like they are open targets.
I am the Lord, and there is no other; I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity; I, the Lord, do all these things” (Isaiah 6b-7).
It was Millenium Bug season, and many of my friends thought I was sick. They feared for me that my manic concern about the potential for untold hardship at the turn of the new year, 2000, not only was evidence that I suffered from Chicken Little Disease, but that I was giving up my commitment to the Reformed faith. We Reformed folk, if we believe anything, believe in the sovereignty of God. How, these friends worried, could I have even the slightest concern about this grave hardship befalling us, when I supposedly believed in the sovereignty of God? I told them often, “It’s because I believe in the sovereignty of God.” My friends reasoned in this manner- Cultural meltdown is a bad thing. God is in control of the future. Therefore bad things cannot happen. I reasoned this way- Cultural meltdown is a bad thing. God is in control of the future. Therefore “bad” things can happen. The difference in our views was that each of us believed competing unspoken premises. They believed God could not will for bad things to happen. I believe He not only could so will, but likely one day would.
Isaiah the prophet is, if only parenthetically, making the same point. That is, his larger point, which is in point of fact on point, is that God is God. He is the almighty one. To suggest that anything would come to pass that He did not sovereignly orchestrate is an affront to His sublime deity. To get us to more fully grasp this hard truth Isaiah, speaking for God, speaks an even harder truth. That is to say, neither is content to merely affirm that God is sovereign over all things, but both go the extra mile to affirm, yes, that includes the bad stuff too.
The easier version of the problem of evil addresses not the question of how men became sinners, but instead addresses the question of the fruit of that sin- why do bad things happen? Those outside the kingdom are wont to ask why bad things happen to good people. Those inside the kingdom don’t have such a pressing question for we know there are no good people. But we still struggle with the whys of hurricanes, pandemics, and in the case of Isaiah, oppression by foreign powers. Indeed we are so perplexed by the reality of suffering that we find ourselves in a rather bizarre position- trying to get God off the hook. We deny implicitly that we deserve the suffering we experience (which is true enough- we deserve far worse than any suffering we ever experience on this side of the veil) because we feel the need to justify God, to put distance between Him and our suffering lest He be found guilty for treating us unfairly.
My friends, thankfully, didn’t want to go in that direction. They were not willing to negotiate God’s sovereignty. God is sovereign, they rightly affirmed. God is good, they rightly affirmed. God won’t let these United States become a wasteland, they wrongly concluded. My friends’ real problem is that they confused these United States with the kingdom of God and they confused a pleasant and safe life with a good one. It is precisely because we were a wicked nation that worshipped affluence in 1999 that I feared for our safety. Though God spared us an earth-shaking calamity that time, does that mean He always will? Have we as a nation come to repentance? Have we owned our sin and turned from it?
That is not to say that I am now once again breaking out my “The End is Near” sandwich board. I don’t know now any more than I knew then what God was going to do in the near term future. I don’t know if our currency will go the way of the German mark, circa 1923. I don’t know if the ship of state will veer so far to the left that we’ll take on water and sink. I do know this however. If God sends a new and surprising kind of calamity upon us, it will be God who sends it. I know that His goodness and His sovereignty are not hedges against this. For we together stand guilty before Him. The very ground cries out because of the innocent blood.
More important, I know this. Isaiah’s prophecies end with the promise of the fullness of the kingdom. I know that because our God reigns, that if He sends calamity He sends it always for His glory, and for our good. Nothing truly “evil” could ever befall we who are His own. Hardship, yes. Cross bearing, by all means. Even death, of course. All of which are tools in His hand to make us more like Jesus. That, in the end, is not only not a calamity, but is the very height of glory. Fear not. He has already overcome the world.
Tonight we continue our look at the monumental, towering book of Romans. All are welcome to our home at 7 est, or you may join us for dinner at 6:15. We will also stream the study at Facebook, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
