What is the three-fold use of the law?

Posted on July 24, 2023 by RC

God’s law serves at least three purposes, which Calvin wisely expressed. He affirmed that the law first serves as a mirror for us. It reveals the perfect character of God, and in so doing, it exposes our sin. This might be called the schoolmaster function. The law instructs us in our need for God’s grace. It reveals His perfection, and our failure to measure up. It reveals our need for Christ.

The second use is often called the civil use of the law. Here Calvin argued that those outside the kingdom are restrained by the revelation of the law. It doesn’t change the heart of the unregenerate, but it can create a sense of fear. As the civil law reflects God’s revealed law, and with it, civil sanctions, it restrains the wicked.

The third use of the law is likely the most controversial. Calvin argued that the law reveals to us that which is pleasing to God. That is, it tells us what to do. As we obey it we please Him. Some fear that in embracing this third use we muddy up the first use. If we argue with respect to the law, “This you must do” are we not at least obscuring the truth that “This you cannot do”?

My fear, however, operates in the other direction. If we obscure the third use of the law we obscure the first use of the law. That is, if we are not called and required to follow the commands of God, our failure to do so doesn’t mean we are at enmity with God. The schoolmaster cannot tell us of our need for atonement if we have not failed to do what we are called to do. Secondly, however, without the third use of the law we end up worse off than the heathen. We don’t know what to do. We are left without direction. If we are not called to do what the law of God says, how will we decide what to do?

Some will say, “Let love decide.” Great answer. Trouble is, the Great Commandment, which calls us to love God and our neighbor, is that which binds up all the law and the prophets (Matthew 22:40). Which means that “love” is not a new, indistinct, culturally conditioned law, but is instead the law of God. We are not left with what we think love means, by abandoning the law, but are left with what love actually means by keeping the law.

The third use of the law, however, has this other benefit. We could see it as the other side of the second use coin, or as an extension of the third use. The law tells us how to have a good life. It tells us how to be blessed. It tells us how to do what we were made to do. To put it more poetically, the law is the gateway to joy. This is less because, especially for believers, God sends thunderbolts down on us when we disobey Him, or rose petals on us when we obey. It is more because the law is good in itself. Obedience is blessing long before obedience brings blessing. We were made for this.

David certainly needed the law to convict him, to point him to his need for Christ. But he sang, “Oh how I love your law” (Psalm 119:97) for the joy that it brings. God’s law is not a list of pleasures we are not allowed to have, a list of delights we are not allowed to touch. It is instead pleasure and delight. Having been, while yet unbelievers, restrained, having been at our conversion convicted, having been in our walk instructed, may we be in our hearts, as we will be in eternity, ever joyful.

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Pleasures Forevermore

Posted on July 21, 2023 by RC


“Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”

So the wisdom of Agur, found in Proverbs 30, reminds us. Though sin knows no tax brackets — the poor can be greedy and the rich envious — peculiar circumstances tend to produce peculiar temptations. Agur fears that should God lead him into poverty, he might be tempted to steal and thus profane the name of God. He fears in turn that should God lead him into great riches, he might forget God. He asks God to protect him, through His providence, from both temptations.

Many of us, oddly, are in both categories, at least in some sense. In a culture driven by dissatisfaction, we can all at least feel poor. The Joneses stay always ahead of us, pushing us onward. A rocky economy feeds our economic insecurities, and we are tempted, if not to steal, at least to cut some moral corners. Virtue and integrity can be expensive, and we can always buy them back when better times come. On the other hand, we are not the 99 percent but are in the 99th percentile. That is, by world historical standards, compared to all the people who ever lived on this planet, even if we are among the most poor in America, each of us is in the top one percent in terms of comforts, luxury, ease and wealth. Our poor are wealthier than kings of old. There is no shame in being poor. There is no guilt in being wealthy. There is, however, shame in stealing and guilt in failing to give thanks.

A God-centered life, then, is not found in feeding a constant craving for more, better, newer. Neither, however, is it found in embracing an ascetic aesthetic, eschewing the good gifts of God. He is the giver of every good gift, both contentment in abasement and a shiny new car. He is not impressed with our piety if we accept the former but turn up our nose at the latter, thinking ourselves too pure for such crass blessings.

The issue, then, isn’t the size of our bank accounts or the square footage of our homes. The issue is the perspective of our hearts. A God-centered life is one that gives thanks in all His providences. It was one of the wealthiest men of ancient antiquity who spoke these wisest of words: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

The issue isn’t in what we have but in what we want. What do we long for? What do we daydream about? How do we measure ourselves and the success or failure of our efforts? Who do we look up to, and what is it about them that we admire? The broader culture is obsessed with the rich and the famous. Tabloids at the grocery store, tabloid television, Internet gossip sites — these all feed our insatiable desire to know what they are like, how they live.

The evangelical world, as is so often the case, has its own version of the cultural phenomenon. We have rock-star preachers, Lollapalooza-like conferences and concerts, and, as well, Internet sites complete with all the latest gossip on who is hot, who is not, and the reasons why.

We, however, are in the world but are not to be of the world. We are called to aspire for not just something better but the one needful thing. We are called, in living a God-centered life, to seek God’s kingdom, to pursue God’s righteousness.

We are blessed to be shown the way to the one thing that will satisfy. A God-centered life, in the end, isn’t self-denying. It, instead, is how we find ourselves. Jesus said we would find our lives in losing them. Augustine said our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. And John Piper reminds us that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. The glory of the contentment, the blessing of the car, is not found in the contentment nor in the car, but in the Giver of these good gifts.

Our calling is to look through every good gift to the One giving it. He is the goodness in which the gifts live and move and have their being. He gives Himself. This is the path of life. Our end is that we would be in His presence, that we would rejoice to be there. His promise is not only that we will find pleasures at His right hand, but that we will find them forevermore (Ps. 16).

Whether grasping for more or turning up our noses at what He has given, we miss Him. The Lord blesses us and He keeps us. The Lord makes His face to shine upon us and He is gracious to us. The Lord lifts up His countenance upon us and gives us peace, now and forevermore (Num. 6:24–26).

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The Cross and the Crown, or, Jesus Changes Everything

Posted on July 20, 2023 by RC

Chattel slavery. Suttee, the practice of burning widows at their husband’s funeral. Racism. Sex trafficking. Child exposure. Hunger. Disease. Abortion.

It’s a woefully partial list. These are just a few of the social evils that Christians have fought against over the centuries, driven by their Christian faith. There are some that even left-leaning unbelievers have been co-belligerents against, and others where they have been on the other side. Others that might be on the list, income inequality, property rights, affirmative action, racial color-blindness sadly have Christians fighting on differing sides. When that happens, rest assured that soon enough some Christians will complain that those on the other side have forgotten the gospel, and gotten political.

I know of one fellow who was speaking at a local gathering of professing believers who suggested that Jesus had come to bring good news to the poor. He said Jesus wanted to see captives set free and the oppressed enjoying liberty. That fellow, of course, was Jesus. He announced this as He first began His public ministry (Luke 4:18). He did not see such ministry as a distraction to His ministry but as its nature. Now we can spiritualize these conditions. We were the poor in spirit who are enriched by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We were captive to our sin who have been set at liberty. Oui and amen as the French are wont to say.

We can also denude the spiritual emphasis and become full time social gospel evangelists, thinking the point of Jesus coming is to establish the gospel according to Marx. We can think we’re doing the work of the ministry when we make the poor poorer and tighten the captives chains. Mais non, as I wish the French would say.

Or we can understand that Jesus is Lord over all things. That His gospel is not just about the redeeming of our souls but the remaking of His world. That He came to bring good news to the poor, and to set captives free. Just as there is no square inch of reality that He does not declare as His own, so there is no discussion, no realm, no sphere, no political debate that He will allow Himself to be excluded from. No, that He will allow Himself to not be the center of. “All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things and in Him all things consist” (Col. 1:17). Every unborn child, every tax-payer, every citizen of every nation, every institution, every political structure is created through Him and for Him.

Any honorable effort to make visible the reign of Jesus over all things is not a distraction from the gospel but a manifestation of the gospel. Those who would argue otherwise at best have an anemic and truncated gospel, at worst seek to deny His rightful authority.

The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. History is littered with professing believers who wrapped up their own ambitions in the name of Jesus and fought with sword and spear. The problem, each time, was the ambitions and the sword and spear, not the name of Jesus, nor His ambitions. Jesus is Lord.

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Sacred Marriage, 9th Commandment; Ordaining Women & More

Posted on July 19, 2023 by RC

This Week’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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Faux Pearls

Posted on July 18, 2023 by RC

Maslow was wrong. Well, he was right before he was wrong. It is true enough that we all have a hierarchy of needs. Some things are more important than others. Trouble is, he didn’t know what the most important things were. Foundational in his system are those things necessary for survival, things like food and water. King David had a different, a better perspective. He said that the Lord was His Shepherd, and he shall not want (Psalm 23:1). David, at this point, has no green grass, and no still water. To be sure God does provide these things, but before He does, David already has everything he needs, the Lord for His Shepherd. Survival is still up in the air, but David has already finished with his worrying. He has what he needs.

One of the most foundational principles in the modern marketing of the church is the notion that we need to tap into not Maslow’s needs, but “felt needs.” This language leaves open the question of what is truly needful, and calls us instead to make our pitch for what our target audience believes their needs to be. Is our target market afflicted with fear? Offer them peace. Is our market suffering from ennui? Offer them excitement, adrenaline.

We serve a big God. He does indeed give us not just peace, but the peace that passes understanding. We serve also a thrilling God. He is no tame lion. So why wouldn’t we meet the lost at their point of need with all the riches our God has to offer in Christ Jesus? Because our greatest need is to stop worshipping ourselves. When we market Jesus, telling people that He will provide for them this or that, when we list the bullet point benefits awaiting those who will walk the aisle we do not meet people where they are, but leave them where they are. Their problem, which is my problem, is self-worship. If the glory of God is that He allows me to better serve myself, I am still worshipping myself. When He becomes a means, I remain the end. Jesus didn’t tell us to count His benefits. He told us to consider the cost, and to take up the cross.

I don’t need to survive. I need to die. I need to do the will of my Father in heaven. That must be my meat and my drink. I need His life, His death, His Spirit, His Word, His fruit, His resurrection, His promise, His obedience. I need Him. And I need to come to understand that every other desire, no matter how pious, is the pathway to death.

The glory of God isn’t that He so potently serves me. The glory of God is that in His grace He teaches me to serve Him, working in me to do and to will His good pleasure. Every good gift, every drop of still water, every blade of green grass, is designed to show us Him. They are just the shimmering reflection of the one true gift, the one needful thing, the Pearl of Great Price.

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What is kidney stone pain like?

Posted on July 17, 2023 by RC

The most frequent comparison is to child birth. Having only experienced one of the two kinds of pain I can’t speak to that. Ladies, however, who have been through both have attested either that they are on par, or that passing a kidney stone is worse. Either way it is important to remember not just the relative pain, but the relative reward. I have passed over a dozen stones, and not once did anyone send a gift or put on a shower. No one ever noted that a stone had my cheekbones. In short, there is no reward. One cannot even boast about beating the stone. Like Apollo Creed at the end of Rocky, we just cry out that there won’t be a rematch. Sadly, I’ve had more rematches than Rocky has had sequels.

Of course I’m not unique or alone. Some people go through their lives with zero stones. Some have one. Then there are those like me, with quarries for kidneys. I don’t recall ever having an x-ray that came back negative for stones. They are always there. The only question is when they will make a break for it. Stones in a kidney are an annoyance. Stones on the exit ramp are a car crash.

Which brings us to the real pain. Many assume, based on a lack of anatomical understanding, that the difficult part is when the stone leaves the body. Not at all. That pain is minimal, a mere irritant. The hardship is when the stone leaves the kidney and heads for the bladder. In between it travels through and obstructs that which typically carries urine to the bladder. You have a jagged, hard stone moving through a narrow passageway of soft tissue which tissue squeezes down on the stone, with pressure behind it from the blocked urine. It is kryptonite, a perfect storm of agony. This is why kidney stone is my leading candidate for what Paul described as the “thorn in his side.”

Some side dishes that go with this pain stew are infections and the accompanying fever. There is nausea caused by the backup plus nausea caused by the extreme pain. There is also the embarrassment of the moaning, screaming, crying over the pain.

The good news is that it also comes with dessert, the very thing our Lord served Paul. He told Paul He would not remove the thorn because it taught Paul of his weakness, of his dependance on His grace. That, not the absence of pain, is what I need above all else. The stones, though they may be made of calcium oxalate, are precious stones, a gift from my Father who loves me. The Lord taketh away. The Lord giveth. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

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Smart is Not a Fruit

Posted on July 14, 2023 by RC

Leave it to Reformed people to miss the point. When Paul describes the body of Christ as a body, part of which includes hands, ears, and so forth, we are quick to mark our territory — we are the brain of the church. We are the ones who are so rightly careful about our theology. The great minds of the church have been Reformed, and one could certainly argue that the greatest mind, theological or otherwise, ever to grace our North American shores was one Jonathan Edwards.

There is no question the man had a towering intellect. We would be wise to sit at his feet and learn from him. Edwards on the will is unanswerable genius. Edwards on the Trinity will make your head spin. Edwards was a titanic mind whose brilliance was overshadowed only by his earnest and passionate heart. Should we embrace the theological wisdom of Edwards? Of course, by all means. It would be better still, however, if we would just taste of his soul’s devotion.

We do not, of course, increase the fervor of our emotions by dimming the capacity of our brains. Neither, however, will we ever bear the fruit of the Spirit if the seed of the Word is planted only in the rocky soil of our brains rather than the fertile soil of the heart. We surely must know Him to love Him. We surely must study Him to know Him. But no one has studied Him more thoroughly than the Devil, and it hasn’t done him a bit of good.

Some years ago the first class I taught at Reformation Bible College had a rather pretentious name: ST101 Theological Prolegomena. This highbrow title translates roughly into “Introduction to Systematic Theology.” It is the study we do before we begin our study.Historically, such a class would begin, logically enough, with the doctrine of revelation, exploring how God reveals Himself in His Word and nature. It would consider issues of the canon and various theories of inspiration. We would, eventually, get to those important issues. In another semester, we turned our attention to what we call “theology proper,” the actual study of God’s nature and His tributes. Despite the subject matter of that future class, we began this first class with a classic work, The Holiness of God.

My fear, as I looked out at that first class, was that we would fall into the trap that has captured so many Reformed people. I feared that even with the glorious truths of Scripture, we might end up tickling ears. I would be guilty of ear tickling if, in my teaching, I encouraged the students to conclude, “What a smart person I am,” rather than, “What a glorious gospel has rescued such a wretched sinner as me.” I wanted, through studying this book together, for us all to look to the mirror of His character and glory so that we would never lose sight of just how vile we are. I wanted us to understand something of the scope of His transcendence lest we should ever be tempted to conclude that our studies had reached into the heavens like the Tower of Babel. I feared for my students precisely because I remembered what I was like as a student. What a clever Devil we battle with, who can turn our study of sound theology into an occasion for pride.

We will not begin to get better until we embrace this obvious truth: smart is not one of the fruits of the Spirit. Of course we are to love God with all our minds. But we are to love God with all our minds, not merely understand Him. When our knowledge cannot traverse the distance from our heads down to our hearts, we are suffering from spiritual constipation. We will not begin to get better until we come to embrace this obvious truth: we come into the kingdom not as scholars or students, but as children. We will not, in short, get better unless and until we learn to stop pursuing academic respectability and start seeking the kingdom of God and His righteousness. We are to put behind us all our earthly worries. We are to stop seeking those things that the Gentiles seek.

The fruit of love, in the end, is the fruit of the Spirit. Love begets love. Love bears joy. Love bestows peace. Patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control: all these break forth like the great bunches of grapes the twelve Israelite spies found in the Promised Land. None of these, however, come forth from the barren soil of our intellectual curiosity, far less the scorched earth of intellectual pride.

Edwards was a great man of God. He was so, however, because he aspired to be a man of God rather than a great man. That his descendants were senators and governors, professors and college presidents, meant not a thing to him. That they would humbly follow the carpenter’s Son from Galilee — that was what he hoped, prayed, and worked for. That is the fruit of charity.

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Pilgrims to the Promised Land

Posted on July 13, 2023 by RC

I doubt there are many believers who don’t want to go. I believe there are fewer still who have gone and aren’t glad they did. I doubt as well, however, that those who haven’t gone know well enough what they are missing. My goal isn’t to shame anyone, but below are 5 reasons why you should make it a priority to tour the Promised Land.

1. It will help you remember that the Bible is true. Because its stories are long ago and far away it is too easy for us to see the Bible like a collection of religious stories. Going to Israel helps diminish the “far away” part. The point of walking where they walked, of drinking water from the same stream Gideon’s men drank water from isn’t to have some kind of mystical experience but to have a profoundly down to earth experience. Gideon was a regular man, called to extraordinary service, just like us.

2. It will help you understand the Bible. It has been said that the two biggest problems we have in seeking to understand the Bible is that we come to it as 21st century westerners and second, that we don’t come to it as 1st century Jews. The foundation of good hermeneutics is here- if we would understand the message of a given text, we first must understand what the original author was seeking teach his original audience. We don’t live in the geography of the middle east. We don’t work in an agrarian economy. The original audience did, as did the original authors. When you go and sit in the entranceway to a millenia old sheepfold you better understand why Jesus said that He is the door, that the sheep know His voice.

3. It will help you understand His providence. The people and places that make up the true story of the Bible are not there by accident. God didn’t choose the land for His people by accident. He didn’t send them first to Jericho randomly. Seeing the geography helps us grasp His reasoning, to get more of the big picture of history.

4. It will help you better appreciate the gospel. The depth and reality of His suffering for us comes to life when we walk the via dolorosa. The beauty of the resurrection shines at the traditional site of His tomb. Grasping the innerworkings of the scribes, the Pharisees, the Romans and the disciples manifests the beauty of God’s tapestry of grace.

5. It will help you better appreciate the universal need of the gospel. Visiting Israel is not a trip you take to meet with all your spiritual kin. Instead you see there, among the living, the myriad paths of the walking dead. Whether it is pious Jews chanting at the wailing wall, superstitious Roman Catholics rubbing their saint charms on the rock of the annunciation, dedicated Muslims heeding their call to prayer, or the vapid scurrying about of the hardened secularists, you will be surrounded, just like at home, by people who need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Both earth and heaven are full of believers who never saw the land of Israel. Going there won’t save anyone. But if you can go, you will be glad you did.

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Sacred Marriage; Prophetic Voting; Calling His Name & More

Posted on July 12, 2023 by RC

This week’s Jesus Changes Everything Podcast

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What About Me and My Weeds?

Posted on July 11, 2023 by RC

Jesus’ message about the one with the log in his eye trying to help the one with the speck in his eye isn’t just about measuring different sized irritants in our eyes or different sized sins in our hearts. Its message isn’t simply, “Be sure to rebuke only those who are less godly than you are.” Rather it reminds us of the importance of giving our attention to our own weaknesses before we worry about the supposed weaknesses we see in others.

CS Lewis made a similar point in his Screwtape Letters. Therein he had Screwtape, the senior demon encourage Wormwood, the junior demon to encourage his “patient” to cultivate an amorphous and powerless love for distant abstractions while disdaining a love for his annoying neighbor in the pew beside him. We do the same with sin. We find it so much easier to raise up our moral outrage against people and sins that are far from us. It’s a rather handy distraction from ourselves and the sins that are in us. Angry Greta can hate with the heat of a thousand suns those nameless capitalists that are fiddling while Gaia burns, and in so doing pay no attention to the large sinner footprint she is laying down on her way to eternal warming. Shame on her.

We should not be surprised when unbelievers do this. But aiming close, we find we have much the same problem. I too find it easy to rage against the sins of people I’ve never met, and in so doing construct a delusion that they are worse than I am. The good news, on the other hand, is that there is so much more I can do about my own sins and failures than I can do about geo-politics in Hong Kong, or internal intrigue in the Kremlin, however brutal things may be. Whether it is a log or a splinter, by looking into that mirror which is the Word of God, I can, with the help of the Holy Spirit, take it out. Not so I can then give my attention to the sins of others, but that I can turn my attention to the other sins of mine. There isn’t one mere speck, nor one mere log in there. There’s enough stacked wood for a New England winter in my eye.

When you and I determine to debate over the relative merits of him, whomever he may be, whichever side I may take, we have both taken ourselves out of the one arena where we can do the most good- worrying about our own sins. Yes, of course there’s a time and a place to warn of wolves, to mark the divisive man. That time, however, isn’t in the midst of our battle with our own wolves, nor when we are being the divisive man. Let us pick up the prophet’s mantle, and prophesy against our own failures. And God will have mercy.

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