Not Worthy to Be Compared- Here to Eternity

Posted on August 29, 2024 by RC

We all know we are called to walk by faith and not by sight (II Cor. 5:7). What we often don’t know is how terrible we are at it. We tend to think of it as the ability to believe the future promises of God. That’s surely a part of it. But so is our calling to believe the present promises of God. The Bible doesn’t tell us that we will be seated with Christ in the heavenly places but that we are so seated (Eph 6:2). It doesn’t teach us that we will be beloved of the Father but that we are beloved of the Father (I John 3:1).

That said, we are called to now have the faith to recognize that the life we see now is a drop in the bucket compared to the life we will have forever. C.S. Lewis, at least twice, unpacked this glorious truth. First, at the end of the seven Chronicles of Narnia, as the Pevensie children enter into eternity Lewis describes all that they have experienced as merely the first paragraph of a story that has no end. Second, Lewis described not the unseen world, but this world as the “Shadowlands.”

While our lives are real now, they will be both more alive and more real then. As Lewis illustrates in The Great Divorce, it is as if eternity has a greater density than the merely temporal. We are living in the wispy world of shadows, on our way to the true and eternal Mount Zion.

To grasp this isn’t to succumb to the folly of Gnosticism. It doesn’t undo His declaration that His creation is good (Gen. 1:31). We don’t despise these days of small beginnings (Zech. 4:10) but give thanks. Indeed we invest our lives here knowing that right now counts forever, that all that we do by His grace and for His glory will prove not to be wood, hay and stubble. Rather it will last into eternity. It is to remember that forever counts right now.

This is just the beginning. He who has begun a good work in us will carry it through to the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6). The whole creation groans, and it will when the labor comes to an end, be just as incorruptible as we will be. It too will take on immortality. Heaven and earth will embrace as time and eternity kiss.

Walking by faith means, in part, living today in light of eternity. It means walking, plowing in hope. It means suffering with endurance. It means joy in the mourning. It means being anchored, now and forever, in the never-ending glorious truth that He is able and He is for us. Rejoice, for even should He tarry for a thousand generations, the end is near.

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Summer Re-run of Jesus Changes Everything

Posted on August 28, 2024 by RC

I’m still working on putting together new podcasts. In the meantime here’s one from last year that I think many of you may have missed. Gardening, Reformed turf wars and more. Give a listen and hear what you’ve been missing.

An Oldie But a Goodie JCE podcast

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Believers’ Loving Response to Sexual Confusion

Posted on August 27, 2024 by RC

I suspect one of the reasons that the opposition to sodomy that was once the default position of all professing Christians is in such retreat says more than we suspect. We’re now being encouraged to be silent on the issue, for the sake of the gospel, to nuance the issue for the sake of our witness, to rethink Paul for the sake of our credibility. And all this is wrapped up on the one all consuming law of evangelicalism- you have to be nice. We have found that hating the sin and loving the sinner just doesn’t work anymore because sodomites define themselves by their sin.

Some have argued that we need to resurrect the ick factor. I not too long ago foolishly thought the ick factor would prove to be a stalwart ally to us, only to see it fleeing the battlefield before a shot was even fired. As Al Mohler once said, the trouble with the ick factor is that it can be changed. We have the capacity to change what makes us go “eww,” and so broadly speaking the culture has.

The ick factor wilted in large part because it was hidden. For years now we have seen a parade of homosexual characters, actors, pundits all putting their orientation on display but never their behavior. We have come to think that homosexuality is all about being clever, biting, witty and sophisticated. Instead homosexuality is all about sexual confusion. I would argue that we ought to force ourselves to consider the sexual acts of these broken not to up our ick, but to, ironically, up our compassion.

The problem with sodomy isn’t that it’s a delightful, pleasurable thing that is bad because God is uptight and is opposed to it. Nor is the problem that it still makes some of us go “ick.” While it is true that God opposes sexual perversion the immediate problem is that it is a repugnant, destructive thing for those engaged in it.

If we love the sinner we cannot simply look past the sin. Indeed it is because we love the sinner that we call them to turn from their destructive behavior. It is compassion for those who destroy their bodies through misuse that calls us to call them to cease from doing so. It is compassion that proclaims forgiveness in Christ for those who repent and rest in Him.

The permissive “love” that the world offers is no more loving than if we “loved” those who cut themselves and others by looking the other way. We love those who starve themselves and others by calling them to repent. It is no more loving to “accept” this confusion than it would be to accept the confusion of those who think themselves an animal trapped in a human’s body. We are to expose such deeds (Eph. 5:11).

Love calls those caught up in destructive sin (which is, of course, every last one of us) to repent, to turn from that sin and turn to Christ. But if the sexually confused will not turn to Christ, we still call them to turn from that sin, to cease from destroying themselves. Love means understanding that homo-sex isn’t just an odd adaptation of the normal, but a manifestation of the love of death (Prov. 8:36).

Love calls we who love Christ to be willing to be hated by both those caught up in the sin of homo-sex and those caught up in its apologetical propaganda. Loving the sinner means taking on the “sin” of what they call, in defense of their perversion, hate. Let us love the sexually confused, even as they hate us as haters.

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Should we take up an offering during worship?

Posted on August 26, 2024 by RC

It was likely the most surreal thing I’ve ever witnessed at a worship service. Not surprisingly it happened on a Sunday morning at the Orlando Convention Center. My esteemed father was scheduled to preach at this service in conjunction with the annual Christian Booksellers Association convention. Back in those days CBA was a huge deal, with more than 5,000 souls in attendance representing book and music publishers, authors and artists and Christian bookstore owners.

I don’t remember what big name sang the offertory, but it was a big name. Just before my father got up to speak, however, a gentleman in a nice suit went up the microphone to let us all know, “This worship service is being brought to you by the W@#R Music Group.” (I honestly don’t remember which music company it was and if I did I’d likely leave it out to protect the guilty.) A corporate sponsor for a worship service? What?

My concern, however, is less with what happened 30 years ago and more with the perspective I fear may be behind it. Too often we look at the presentation of our tithes and offerings as some sort of commercial time out- that portion of the service where we tend to the necessary business of financing the work of the church. It’s sort of like a smoking break- necessary for some, a bit of an intrusion, and not a little unseemly.

I have these suspicions in part because of how I hear some churches explain their reasoning for removing the giving of tithes and offerings from their liturgy. We’re told they don’t want the unbelievers in the meeting to feel uncomfortable or pressured, and they don’t want them believing we care too much about money. But, they reason, the necessary chore of meeting the financial needs of the church can be met by a collection box near the narthex, or via texting or this app or that.

I honestly have no strong quarrel with differing views of how tithes and offerings are collected. Nor am I particularly concerned with the practical side, wanting to make sure the church has the money it needs. Instead I fear what we lose when we remove this aspect of worship from our liturgies.

That is, the giving of tithes and offerings isn’t a business transaction, but an act of worship. We are responding, in God’s presence, to God. We are handing these tokens back to Him as a way of acknowledging not that the bills must be paid, but that all that we are and all that we have are His.

In the same way that we set aside the Lord’s Day not to say to God, “We love you so much we’re willing to give you a whole day” but instead to say, “We give you this day to remember that all our days are Yours” so we do not say, “One tenth of our income is Yours, but instead, “I have been bought with a price. All that I have received is from Your hand, and You have made me but Your steward. I, and all I have, belong to You alone.”

Might this make unbelievers uncomfortable? Perhaps. So ought the preaching of the gospel. Might it make them feel pressured to give? Perhaps. So ought the preaching of the gospel make them feel pressured to repent. Might it make them not want to come back? Perhaps. So might the preaching of the gospel make them not want to come back. We are there, remember, not for W@#R Music Group, not for the lost, not for ourselves, but for Him. Our liturgies ought to reflect such.


This is the ninth installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more. Remember also that we are having a grand re-opening of Sovereign Grace Fellowship Sunday at 10:30 AM at our new location, 12811 Garman Road, Spencerville, IN. Please come join us.

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Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound, Given To All Around

Posted on August 23, 2024 by RC

Perhaps the most subtle verbal sleights of hand are acts of equivocation. We commit equivocation when we use one word, but with two different meanings. We make the change so quickly we miss the palmed meaning, and are made fools. Consider this classic illustration— God is love. Love is blind. Ray Charles is blind. Therefore Ray Charles is God. Something isn’t right there, and what it is, is shifting meanings.

When dealing with pronouns we face the toughest temptation. Antecedents get lost in a sea of pronouns, and soon enough we not only don’t know what he said but don’t know who he is. And where confusion abounds, there you will find the devil. It is one of his favorite weapons.

Consider for a moment the wisdom in the Bible about loving one another. Love is indeed a dominant theme in the Bible. The Bible is so full of injunctions to love that we in turn have great difficulty reconciling that teaching with this: “Oh Lord, dash their heads against the rocks.” The Bible contains sundry summons to love. It includes also what we call imprecatory psalms, wherein the psalmist calls down God’s judgment on His enemies.

Read through Moses’ celebration of the deliverance of the people and the destruction of Pharaoh’s army, and you probably won’t feel the love. How do these things cohere? Lest you think the solution is a division between the old and new covenants, give a read to Paul in thundering against the Judaizers in Galatians.

God commands of us a love toward those outside the kingdom, (that is, we are called to love our enemy). That matches a kind of love God Himself has for His enemies (the love of benevolence). By the same token, we are called to love discriminatingly. We have different kinds of loves for different kinds of people. I love my wife one way, and I love my neighbor an entirely different way. We miss this, because our enemy has confused us on the pronouns. The Bible’s call that “we” love “one another” isn’t ultimately about man’s call to love man. The “we” isn’t human beings, but the redeemed.

Wolves in the church began this sleight of hand when they first spoke of the “universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man.” The evangelical church, as with so many from this particular pit of hell, eventually accepted this “wisdom.”

It operates under the assumption that God has a duty to treat all people exactly the same way, an assumption that the Bible explicitly denies: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” (Rom. 9:15). There is no getting around the fact that God did not treat Esau as He treated Jacob, and this before either had been born. And He does not treat the seed of the serpent the same way He treats us, the seed of the woman.

Why not? What accounts for the difference? The answer is simple enough — our union with Christ. Pardon the confusing pronouns, but while we love Him because He first loved us, He first loved us because He first loved Him. We are in ourselves, just like the seed of the serpent, merely dust and rebellion. But in Christ we are altogether lovely. It is not for mere pity that He loves us, but for His Son.

But what of His love for the lost? If they are not in union with Christ, why would they be loved at all? How do we account for what the theologians call this “love of benevolence”? Why He brings the rains upon the fields of the unjust isn’t union with Christ, but the image of God. There is, in short, something lovely about the lost, the very remnants of the image of pure loveliness. What God loves in the reprobate isn’t the reprobate, isn’t the Son, but is Himself, something indeed worthy of His love.

And we who are in union with Christ not only bear that same image, but are called to polish it, to improve upon it, to labor with the Holy Spirit that we might more and more reflect His glory. Which in turn means that we too ought to love the lost, for the very same reason.

We love one another with a holy love, because we are together in union with Christ. But we love outside the circle of the kingdom because they yet maintain the fragments of the image of God. In their depravity, they do everything they can to smash that mirror to ever tinier pieces. Their degeneration is nothing more than leaving that image behind. At their death, they reach the opposite of glorification, utter horror. They become nothing but dust and rebellion, enveloped in eternal flame.

But not here and not now. Ironically, He shows them kindness due to His love for us. If He released the restraints, we would find ourselves living in a living hell. But by His grace toward us, He restrains them, and He kindly showers them with His beneficent love. In His grace toward us, He teaches us our pronouns. Like Him we too must love His sheep as His sheep, and love the goats for the image of the Shepherd.

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Hearts, Heads and Hands, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes

Posted on August 22, 2024 by RC

Much ink has been spilled over the centuries over what constituent parts make up man. Not a man, but man. It took us until the 21st century to get confused over what a man is. What man is, on the other hand, we still haven’t nailed down. Are we bodies and souls? Bodies, souls and spirits? Hearts, minds, souls and strengths? I’m comfortably in the first camp- we are bodies and souls. I don’t, however, wish to go to war over the issue with anyone who differs.

However many parts we may think we are, however many parts we actually are, all of us and every part of us recognizes our calling to commit all of us and every part of us to the living God. When God commands us to love Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength He’s not suggesting that we can keep our spirit to ourselves. He demands of us all of us.

Paul spills a great deal of ink in his first letter to the church at Corinth on the parts of the body. He is not describing man, but the church, how we are one body made of different parts. He is impressing on us that we no one part of the body of Christ can thrive without all the other parts. Eyes ought not to boast over ears, nor ought feet bemoan not being hands.

Fools that we are, I fear we take Paul’s wisdom and use it to justify our failure to serve the Lord with all that we are. Those who love the study of theology consider themselves to be loving God with their minds. Those less inclined to study theology consider those more inclined to be captive to “head knowledge,” or to be “puffed up.” Those with a passion for the lost see themselves as wise (Prov. 11:30) while those given to service think they alone practice pure and undefiled religion (James 1:27).

Sound doctrine matters. But it is not by itself sufficient. Seeking those still dead in their sins matters. But it is not by itself sufficient. Serving those in need matters. But it is not by itself sufficient. And no one person can excuse failure on one of these callings on the grounds of success on another. A swelled brain won’t make up for an atrophied heart, nor a heart filled with passion for a lazy hand.

Try this experiment. Quickly, without giving it a thought, which one are you? If the answer doesn’t come to mind, it might be that you are none of these. If it does come to mind it’s likely you need to strengthen the others. Don’t reject the strength you have, but strengthen the things that remain. You will be stretched and you will grow. More important, the body will be served and its Head, our Lord, will be glorified.

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No JCE podcast today.

Posted on August 21, 2024 by RC

Sorry friends but as I am still recovering from cryptosporidium, I have no podcast to share today. God willing we’ll have one next week, and we will continue to post blog pieces as well. Thank you for understanding.

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Dominion- Reigning for the Glory of Our King

Posted on August 20, 2024 by RC

I’m not in the habit of citing Karl Barth favorably, but when you’re right you’re right. Counter-intuitively, but insightfully Barth considers the sin of sloth to be on par with the sin of pride. We are prone to it, and our embrace of it is profoundly destructive. It is our habit, when speaking of the imago dei, the image of God in man, to see it principally in terms of our capabilities. We are like God, we bear His image because He thinks and we think; He feels and we feel; He wills and we will. It’s all true, of course, but there is so much more. We reflect His image not just in our capabilities, but in our calling.

The first command of God, the one Eve was made a helper suitable to Adam for, is what we call “the dominion mandate.” They were to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it, to rule over the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and everything that creeps upon the ground (Genesis 1:28). Lest you think the fall set this command aside note two things. First, one of the curses Eve was given was pain in child-bearing. The call to be fruitful abides. Adam received thorns and thistles that would multiply. The call to exercise dominion abides. Secondly, the same command is to Noah after departing the ark.

That command, the dominion mandate (sometimes called the cultural mandate) is still with us, and we, because we are given to sloth, are prone to falling down on the job. Reformation demands that we pick up the calling we have never lost.

The first Reformation, in fact, understood this. In the Middle Ages Roman Catholicism had come to divide reality into the sacred and the secular, seeing the first as good and the second not so good. If you wanted to be godly you needed to work, live, operate in the sacred realm alone. The Reformers understood that the reign of Jesus is over all things. Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Prime Minister, theologian, publisher followed in that pattern when he said “There is not one square inch in all of reality over which Jesus does not cry, ‘MINE!’”

Jesus is succeeding where the first Adam failed, bringing all things under subjection. Under His reign every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. And Jesus, the last Adam, has been given a help suitable to Him, the last Eve, the church. Of course we are to proclaim the good news to all men, to be witnesses of His work on the cross. We are also, however, to make known the beauty, the glory and the power of His reign over all things, ruling with Him, under the Father. We are indeed to make disciples of the nations, which means in part, teaching them to obey all that He has commanded.

Reformation is not for the faint of heart, for the slothful of spirit. We are kings and queens with the King of Kings. May we rule well.

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What’s missing from the contemporary church?

Posted on August 19, 2024 by RC

Sinlessness. That is, the weaknesses that plague the contemporary church aren’t, in the end, all that different from the weaknesses that plagued the historical church. The more things change and all that, after all. It is said that one Lord’s Day a parishioner asked Martin Luther, “Brother Luther, why do you preach the same message every Lord’s day?” To which he responded, “Because every week we forget.”

I’m not prepared to say that in the western world the church is at its lowest point. I am prepared to say that it’s not in good shape, just like normal. I would also suggest that what is missing is what is usually missing- a deep, heart, mind, soul and strength grasp of this message: I am in myself a vile sinner at war with a holy, omnipotent God. Jesus came and lived a perfect life in my place, then received the wrath of God in my place. Now, because the Spirit gave me faith, I am forgiven, beloved, adopted, secure.

That message is not new. It’s not especially insightful. Nor is it complicated. It’s not appealing to those outside the kingdom. It’s not especially appealing to those inside the kingdom. It is not the fullness of the message. It is, however, the center of the message, and the most needful thing to be proclaimed, believed and lived out in the church of Jesus Christ. It is the health of the church.

Everything in the contemporary church that shouldn’t be there would be quickly driven out by this simple message. The most potent weapon against our problem of sinfulness is believing this simple message. Programs, celebrity, entertainment, worldliness, compromise, these are the things we glom on to because we are not, as we should be, convinced of our own sinfulness, persuaded of Jesus’ payment for all our sins, comforted by the sure knowledge that our heavenly Father loves us infinitely, immutably, and by name. We have feel-good, white-washed, motivational messages because we feel bad, are ignorant of ourselves and are unmotivated to get back on the world’s hamster wheel.

As we come to a deeper grasp of our need and His perfect provision we are better able to stand on the Word, for we don’t need the world’s approval. We are better equipped to walk in the way, for we know where we are going. We are better driven, for we know our calling to run to the battle. We are at peace, for we know that we rest in the Son.

What the church needs in our day is what the church has always needed and will need until He returns. We need the gospel. We need to repent and believe. We need to teach our children that their need is the same, that our grandchildren will be fed the same truth. No branding, no marketing, telling not selling. It needs sheep that demand the message and under-shepherds who proclaim the message even when the sheep demand something else.

This is the eighth installment of an ongoing series of pieces here on the nature and calling of the church. Stay tuned for more.

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Theological Socialism and God’s Good Grace

Posted on August 16, 2024 by RC

Karl Marx himself recognized that a free economy created a great deal of stuff. Productivity wasn’t the problem, according to Marx, in the capitalist economy. Instead, the problem was the distribution of the wealth that was created. Which is what gave rise to this pithy bit of wisdom- “Capitalism provides different sized portions of the donut. Socialism provides equal portions of the hole.”

There is a simple question that can reveal whether your heart wants prosperity, or equality- Would you rather live in a world where everyone makes $5000 a year, or would you rather live in a world where the poorest people earn $100,000 a year, but the wealthiest earn $10,000,000 a year? Too many choose the former.

Egalitarianism runs deep in our culture. We have taken the wise notion of our fathers, that all men are created equal and twisted it beyond recognition. They, in so claiming, were arguing that the law was to be blind to issues of background and wealth, that justice was indeed for all. The camel nudged its nose into the tent when we began to clamor instead for “equal opportunity.” When this didn’t achieve the results desired we slipped to handicapping the race such that everyone will finish the same. Now we want an equal ending.

Which may explain why it is that Americans Christians seem to have such a difficult time with the doctrine of election, especially as it is expressed in the doctrine of limited atonement. We tend to treat the grace of God the way our school teachers used to treat our treats — we were only allowed to eat them if we had enough for everyone. If God should show kindness toward one human, we reason, He is duty bound to do the same for everyone. Praise God that our king transcends these cultural quirks. Praise God He is not subject to the folly of His subjects.

John Owen, in what is perhaps his greatest work, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, goes to great pains to help us see the fulfillment of God’s divine prerogative, that He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. Because we are all sinners, God owes us all only His just condemnation. But God, who is rich in mercy, has condescended to shower His mercy upon those whom He has chosen, for His good pleasure. To some He shows this mercy; to others He manifests justice.

It is not, however, simply the American spirit of egalitarianism that gets in our way. We are a strange bunch, who want at the same time to live in that place where we all receive blue ribbons, but we also want to earn what we have. We are at the same time a bootstrap people. You don’t conquer a continent, after all, by sitting around waiting for your fair share of the donut hole. This pushes us to sundry forms of Pelagian theology wherein we claw our own way to heaven.

These paradoxes are reconciled then when we see that we want God to treat us all the same not because that is our only chance, but so that when we do win the race, we can brag that we did it on our own. It is not ultimately a desire to make God look good in the eyes of socialists that makes us push Him to treat us all the same. Instead it is a desire to make ourselves look good. We want the credit.

While The Death of Death in the Death of Christ dealt a death blow the notion that God treats us all exactly the same, it is the death of Christ that puts to death any notion that we can do it on our own. The death of Christ does not make it possible for all of us to be saved, but certain for none of us. His death doesn’t move us closer to the finish line, and those who are good will finish. No, He died because we are dead in ourselves. Put a dead man just one inch from the finish line, and he will never finish.

Instead, by His death we were made alive. As one wise wag put it, man doesn’t bring the final push to salvation. He doesn’t bring self-generated faith to the party. He doesn’t add his paltry works to the equation. No, what man contributes to his salvation is the need for salvation. We bring the sin that needs to be covered. Let, therefore, no man boast.

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