The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright
John Piper
Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester 2008
This is an important book from John Piper in which he outlines and then criticises in detail the teachings regarding justification by New Perspective theologian and Anglican bishop, N. T. Wright.
Piper here is at his very best and writes as a theologian and as a concerned pastor. Point-by-point he criticises Wright not just because Wright's views are different from the Reformed/Protestant tradition (the proponents of Wright's views who dismiss Piper with this kind of remark have totally missed the mark). Piper engages Wright on the texts and the discussion is at the exegetical level for the most part.
The Future of Justification brings into sharper focus just how much the New Perspective on Paul - even in its most evangelical guise under Wright's advocacy - is a serious departure yes from Reformed tradition, but more seriously from the New Testament. Time and time again, Piper demonstrates just how Wright's claims take some of the evidence and treat it as if it was all and then dismisses the texts that don't fit. The truth is that Wright is the one committed to a theological project through which he reads the texts. Claims to be only concerned with the texts fail to convince.
Piper writes with an irenic spirit yet not one that will compromise the gospel. He bends over backwards in fact to put Wright in the best possible light he can. Yet even with this, he still makes many telling criticisms of Wrightian exegesis and theology. I think the power of Piper's "response" is obvious - not least in the fact that Wright felt he had write a reply (though a very indirect and frustrating one) and seems to have modified his view from earlier statements. I think the Wright of Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision (2009) is much closer to Piper than the Wright of What Saint Paul Really Said (1997). Perhaps in time, he will go further get closer to Piper's view yet. One hopes so, for Piper is on the side of Protestant orthodoxy on this issue and Wright, at times, isn't.
This is bound to become a key text in the ongoing theological discussion and dispute between the Old and New Perspectives on Paul.
Saturday, 20 March 2010
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Counted Righteous in Christ
Counted Righteous in Christ
John Piper
Inter-Varsity Press
I have been reading quite a lot about the doctrine of justification recently, mostly as a result of trying to come to grips with the New Perspective on Paul and in particular N. T. Wright's re-writing of Paul's doctrine of justification. By this I mean his re-writing of what has been understood to be Paul's doctrine at least since the time of Augustine onwards (though Wright would say he is going back to what Paul really said as one of his earlier books put it).
The latest book in my reading is Counted Righteous in Christ by John Piper. In this book, Piper deals with only one part of the debate surrounding justification, and in which Piper actually crosses swords not with Wright, but with Robert Gundry. The matter is dispute is quite narrow and exact and it's this: traditionally, evangelicals have said that in justification two things happen (1) our sins are counted, reckoned or imputed to Christ in his death as if they were his and atoned for through his sacrifice and (2) Christ's righteousness or right standing before God as a result of his sinless life of obedience to God is counted, reckoned or imputed to us. Gundry has argued that only point (1) is true and (2) should be abandoned as "unbiblical". Piper's book objects to Gundry's view and argues that (2) is also true and essential for a right understanding of the gospel.
Gundry's view in essence is that it is not Christ's righteousness that is imputed to us by faith, but rather that God imputes our faith in Christ to us as righteousness. Read that sentence again: it is not that Christ is our righteousness, but that our faith is accepted as our own righteousness.
The book is a short one of less than 150 pages and is divided into four chapters. The first two chapters are written from quite a personal, pastoral perspective about why this subject matters and is worth arguing about. The heart of the book is chapter three, which takes up more than half the book is given to exegesis of the key texts in the debate, namely Romans 4, Romans 10:10, Philippians 3:8-9, 2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 1:30, and Romans 5:12-19. The book ends with a concluding chapter where the arguments are drawn together.
Piper concludes his book with these words (p.125):
This is not an easy book, nor a popular book. I suspect that many Christians reading this would scratch their heads and ask "What's this all about? Why is Piper so concerned?" Even so, this is an important book by Piper. The view he defends is the view historically held by the Protestant churches.
The doctrine of imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers is one of the areas where Piper disagrees also with the New Perspective and Tom Wright. But that's another story, and another review.
To me it is the glory of the gospel that I do not need to rely on myself for my righteousness before God, no not even relying as it were on the empty hand of faith. I want to rely on the rock of Christ and his life and work, not on the shifting sands of anything in myself.
John Piper
Inter-Varsity Press
I have been reading quite a lot about the doctrine of justification recently, mostly as a result of trying to come to grips with the New Perspective on Paul and in particular N. T. Wright's re-writing of Paul's doctrine of justification. By this I mean his re-writing of what has been understood to be Paul's doctrine at least since the time of Augustine onwards (though Wright would say he is going back to what Paul really said as one of his earlier books put it).
The latest book in my reading is Counted Righteous in Christ by John Piper. In this book, Piper deals with only one part of the debate surrounding justification, and in which Piper actually crosses swords not with Wright, but with Robert Gundry. The matter is dispute is quite narrow and exact and it's this: traditionally, evangelicals have said that in justification two things happen (1) our sins are counted, reckoned or imputed to Christ in his death as if they were his and atoned for through his sacrifice and (2) Christ's righteousness or right standing before God as a result of his sinless life of obedience to God is counted, reckoned or imputed to us. Gundry has argued that only point (1) is true and (2) should be abandoned as "unbiblical". Piper's book objects to Gundry's view and argues that (2) is also true and essential for a right understanding of the gospel.
Gundry's view in essence is that it is not Christ's righteousness that is imputed to us by faith, but rather that God imputes our faith in Christ to us as righteousness. Read that sentence again: it is not that Christ is our righteousness, but that our faith is accepted as our own righteousness.
The book is a short one of less than 150 pages and is divided into four chapters. The first two chapters are written from quite a personal, pastoral perspective about why this subject matters and is worth arguing about. The heart of the book is chapter three, which takes up more than half the book is given to exegesis of the key texts in the debate, namely Romans 4, Romans 10:10, Philippians 3:8-9, 2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 1:30, and Romans 5:12-19. The book ends with a concluding chapter where the arguments are drawn together.
Piper concludes his book with these words (p.125):
I pray that the "newer" ways of understanding justification, which deny the reality of the imputation of divine righteousness to sinners by faith alone, will not flourish, and that the fullest pastoral help for souls will not be diminished.Piper's main concerns are exegetical and theological, but in this concluding paragraph, we find two other aspects that Piper understands to be wanting in Gundry's view. Piper argues that the older view gives Christ all the glory where Gundry's view says that our righteousness is not down to Christ's work alone, but takes our own faith into account. And secondly, Piper recognises the pastoral problems of saying to sinners that for your righteousness you cannot rely on Christ, you have to rely God's promise to accept your own faith as your righteousness.
This is not an easy book, nor a popular book. I suspect that many Christians reading this would scratch their heads and ask "What's this all about? Why is Piper so concerned?" Even so, this is an important book by Piper. The view he defends is the view historically held by the Protestant churches.
The doctrine of imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers is one of the areas where Piper disagrees also with the New Perspective and Tom Wright. But that's another story, and another review.
To me it is the glory of the gospel that I do not need to rely on myself for my righteousness before God, no not even relying as it were on the empty hand of faith. I want to rely on the rock of Christ and his life and work, not on the shifting sands of anything in myself.
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision
Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision
by Tom Wright
SPCK
This is the latest book by New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright, in which he outlines his unique interpretation of the writings of the apostle Paul as they concern the subject of justification. As is well known, Wright is one of the key figures in the loose grouping of New Testament scholarship known for better or worse as the New Perspective on Paul. Wright is significant not only because he is the most popular, the clearest, and the most evangelical of the main scholars associated with the movement, and therefore the person whose teachings have made the most inroads into evangelicalism in Britain and the United States, but also because in this particular book, Wright confronts his many critics who come from "the Old Perspective" or more accurately, traditional evangelicalism and confessional Reformed theology. In particular, Wright's critic, John Piper who wrote a book critiquing the new perspective and Wright especially called The Future of Justification comes in for some stinging criticism.
Wright's central metaphor in the book is that the Old Perspective is like someone who insists the earth is the centre of the solar system because the sun rises and sets each day, whereas the New Perspective is (naturally in Wright's mind) like the person who realises the deeper truth that the sun is at the centre and the earth revolves around it. Of course this immediately sets up the idea that the Old Perspective is not only outdated and less sophisticated, but also simply untrue. That does more or less poison the well. The fact is that the choice is not between an unsophisticated and demonstrably untrue view of the Bible and a sophisticated and demonstrably true view. The choice is between two sophisticated views, one which has been understood and believed for centuries and which fits the Bible's testimony (I don't accept Wright's assertions otherwise) and one which has been more or less discovered by Wright himself and missed by every generation of theologians from the post-apostolic period till the 1970s. Of course it is possible Wright is correct and everyone else did get it wrong. But just going back to the texts in itself does not guarantee theological correctness. Not if you go back and interpret them in the wrong way!
Time and time again, Wright says that his opponents "don't get it" as if the only problem with his view is that the rest of us are a bit thick. Maybe that's not how he intended to come across, but I'm afraid that is how he comes across at times, and it is not an attractive quality. It compares poorly with Piper's gentleness and graciousness in dealing with Wright.
Despite many shortcomings, I like Wright. I like a lot of what he says. And a lot of what he says is absolutely biblical and solidly evangelical, even Reformed. Just look at his defence of the bodily resurrection of Christ for example, and the way in which the covenant lies at the heart of Wright's theology. There are aspects of his doctrine of justification that are also, it seems to me, entirely in harmony with the Bible, the Reformed confessions and the best of traditional evangelical scholarship and church teaching.
However, there are also massive problems with Wright's views on the subject of justification, and this book only clarifies that the problems are a clear and present danger to the church, rather than allay any such fears.
There are a number of points that should be borne in mind about Wright's teaching in this book (and his others for that matter - the latest book does not shift much ground from what Wright has previously said).
Firstly, much of what Wright says here would find ready agreement from many "old perspective" people. I think it was the New Testament scholar, I. Howard Marshall, who brilliantly summed up the New Perspective as being "right in what it affirms and wrong it what it denies." Amen to that! Wright, somewhat inexplicably, writes as if almost everything he teaches is revolutionary and was never noticed by Old Perspective traditionalist Reformed theologians like John Piper and many others like him. That's just not the case. Almost all of what Wright states about God's covenant and purposes has been said before by Reformed theologians, particularly in Reformed Biblical theology. It is quite clear from where Wright is coming from that he does not even have a rudimentary knowledge of covenant theology, far less a grasp of its historical development from Calvin to the present day. Otherwise he could not write with that "look what I alone have discovered" tone he sometimes displays.
Secondly, there are new insights that we need to hear and correctives we need to heed in Wright's teachings. The problem for us in dealing with the New Perspective is in sifting out the sound teaching - and there is much in Wright's work that is good and true - from the errors that pepper the book. Wright is correct in probably 75% of what he says. Justification is in part a matter of ecclesiology and of telling "who has membership of the covenant people." It does have ramifications for how we do church and how we treat each other as Christian brothers and sisters. But it does so precisely because all Christians are forgiven their sins and declared righteous in God's sight on the same basis - by Christ's work received in faith. Wright is right that in Reformed theology we have too often made salvation an individual and private matter and not fully realised the implications of the gospel in a corporate sense for the whole of creation. We have de-politicised the gospel and in that sense we have truncated the gospel. Wright is on the right track I believe in all these issues. But this is not the stuff that is actually in conflict with the Old Perspective, though sometimes Wright puts it as if rejecting some of what he says that we cannot agree with means we have to reject that which we can accept. Wright's views it seems to me help us gain a better understanding of how the Gospels and Letters in the New Testament fit together. But yet again, we do not need to accept the most controversial parts of Wright's scheme in order to gain the benefits of some of his stresses and clarifications.
Thirdly, Wright has an unfortunate tendency to set up straw men in the sense that he often writes against caricatures of old perspective theology rather than the real thing. Whether this is because he fails to understand what previous generations of Reformed theologians actually taught, or whether he just can't be bothered reading them, is immaterial. The fact is that Wright often shows a shocking lack of familiarity with that Reformed theology has actually believed and taught. To give one example at the very heart of this whole debate, Wright characterises the Old Perspective of teaching that in the doctrine of justification the active obedience of Christ is imputed to believers as righteousness because Christ fulfilling the law so as to store up a "treasury of merit" which can then be granted to believers. As far as I recall, no Reformed theologian has ever taught such a thing. It is rather that in Christ we gain the benefit of his own righteousness as someone who lived without ever having committed a sin. Another example with Wright's bizarre claim that the Old Perspective doesn't have an adequate place for the Holy Spirit. That is simply wrong. As we will see, the difference is that the Old Perspective does not assign the role to the Holy Spirit in justification that Wright gives him (and quite why Wright keeps on writing 'holy spirit' instead of Holy Spirit I don't know, but I found it odd).
Fourthly, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that Wright's view also contain serious errors. The one that stood out above others is Wright's doctrine of two-stage justification, one on the basis of faith in this life and the second on the basis of works at the Last Judgment. Wright's scheme almost says the same thing as Reformed orthodoxy in a different way, but not quite. By making 'the life lived' by believers a part of justification, albeit fencing it with the fact that the works concerned are the Holy Spirit's work, Wright cuts out a key part of the Christian's assurance. Despite his protestations that his scheme is more theo-centric than the Old Perspective (another bit of inaccurate revisionism at best), Wright's scheme actually encourages experiential navel gazing rather than looking to the objective work of Christ for justification. Rather than a two-stage justification, the New Testament talks about justification followed by sanctification. Wright's scheme confuses the two things. Reformed orthodoxy is that we are in the future justified according to works, but not on the basis of works. The difference between those statements is simply whether our works show that we are already justified (which they will) or whether our works are needed in order for us to be justified in the end (which they will not be). In my view he hopelessly confuses justification with sanctification (which is in effect Wright's second stage of justification!).
So, although Wright's book offers us much, in the end, there are significant problems with it that do not make me want to change from the Old Perspective. For every new insight that Wright offers, there are also problems with things he overlooks. An example would be the New Perspective's (and Wright's in particular) inadequate view of sin and the problem it creates for the human race. Many of the problems with the New Perspective stem from this in my view. For instance, if God's plan was to save the world through Israel, how was this to be established? The only way could have been through Christ, the only sinless human being to have lived since the Fall. To my mind, this undermines Wright's insistence on God's plan to save the world through Israel as such, if considered otherwise than through the promised Messiah. The New Testament teaches that only a sinless substitute of infinite merit could achieve the salvation of sinners. Only the Messiah could do it, which is precisely what the New Testament teaches (Acts 4:12).
To conclude, paraphrasing Wright himself, I submit that the Old Perspective can do everything the New Perspective wants to do but by a better route and with much more besides. And in the end, with its emphasis on sin and grace and the salvation of lost sinners, the Old Perspective is actually closer to Paul's vision than Wright's revision.
by Tom Wright
SPCK
This is the latest book by New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright, in which he outlines his unique interpretation of the writings of the apostle Paul as they concern the subject of justification. As is well known, Wright is one of the key figures in the loose grouping of New Testament scholarship known for better or worse as the New Perspective on Paul. Wright is significant not only because he is the most popular, the clearest, and the most evangelical of the main scholars associated with the movement, and therefore the person whose teachings have made the most inroads into evangelicalism in Britain and the United States, but also because in this particular book, Wright confronts his many critics who come from "the Old Perspective" or more accurately, traditional evangelicalism and confessional Reformed theology. In particular, Wright's critic, John Piper who wrote a book critiquing the new perspective and Wright especially called The Future of Justification comes in for some stinging criticism.
Wright's central metaphor in the book is that the Old Perspective is like someone who insists the earth is the centre of the solar system because the sun rises and sets each day, whereas the New Perspective is (naturally in Wright's mind) like the person who realises the deeper truth that the sun is at the centre and the earth revolves around it. Of course this immediately sets up the idea that the Old Perspective is not only outdated and less sophisticated, but also simply untrue. That does more or less poison the well. The fact is that the choice is not between an unsophisticated and demonstrably untrue view of the Bible and a sophisticated and demonstrably true view. The choice is between two sophisticated views, one which has been understood and believed for centuries and which fits the Bible's testimony (I don't accept Wright's assertions otherwise) and one which has been more or less discovered by Wright himself and missed by every generation of theologians from the post-apostolic period till the 1970s. Of course it is possible Wright is correct and everyone else did get it wrong. But just going back to the texts in itself does not guarantee theological correctness. Not if you go back and interpret them in the wrong way!
Time and time again, Wright says that his opponents "don't get it" as if the only problem with his view is that the rest of us are a bit thick. Maybe that's not how he intended to come across, but I'm afraid that is how he comes across at times, and it is not an attractive quality. It compares poorly with Piper's gentleness and graciousness in dealing with Wright.
Despite many shortcomings, I like Wright. I like a lot of what he says. And a lot of what he says is absolutely biblical and solidly evangelical, even Reformed. Just look at his defence of the bodily resurrection of Christ for example, and the way in which the covenant lies at the heart of Wright's theology. There are aspects of his doctrine of justification that are also, it seems to me, entirely in harmony with the Bible, the Reformed confessions and the best of traditional evangelical scholarship and church teaching.
However, there are also massive problems with Wright's views on the subject of justification, and this book only clarifies that the problems are a clear and present danger to the church, rather than allay any such fears.
There are a number of points that should be borne in mind about Wright's teaching in this book (and his others for that matter - the latest book does not shift much ground from what Wright has previously said).
Firstly, much of what Wright says here would find ready agreement from many "old perspective" people. I think it was the New Testament scholar, I. Howard Marshall, who brilliantly summed up the New Perspective as being "right in what it affirms and wrong it what it denies." Amen to that! Wright, somewhat inexplicably, writes as if almost everything he teaches is revolutionary and was never noticed by Old Perspective traditionalist Reformed theologians like John Piper and many others like him. That's just not the case. Almost all of what Wright states about God's covenant and purposes has been said before by Reformed theologians, particularly in Reformed Biblical theology. It is quite clear from where Wright is coming from that he does not even have a rudimentary knowledge of covenant theology, far less a grasp of its historical development from Calvin to the present day. Otherwise he could not write with that "look what I alone have discovered" tone he sometimes displays.
Secondly, there are new insights that we need to hear and correctives we need to heed in Wright's teachings. The problem for us in dealing with the New Perspective is in sifting out the sound teaching - and there is much in Wright's work that is good and true - from the errors that pepper the book. Wright is correct in probably 75% of what he says. Justification is in part a matter of ecclesiology and of telling "who has membership of the covenant people." It does have ramifications for how we do church and how we treat each other as Christian brothers and sisters. But it does so precisely because all Christians are forgiven their sins and declared righteous in God's sight on the same basis - by Christ's work received in faith. Wright is right that in Reformed theology we have too often made salvation an individual and private matter and not fully realised the implications of the gospel in a corporate sense for the whole of creation. We have de-politicised the gospel and in that sense we have truncated the gospel. Wright is on the right track I believe in all these issues. But this is not the stuff that is actually in conflict with the Old Perspective, though sometimes Wright puts it as if rejecting some of what he says that we cannot agree with means we have to reject that which we can accept. Wright's views it seems to me help us gain a better understanding of how the Gospels and Letters in the New Testament fit together. But yet again, we do not need to accept the most controversial parts of Wright's scheme in order to gain the benefits of some of his stresses and clarifications.
Thirdly, Wright has an unfortunate tendency to set up straw men in the sense that he often writes against caricatures of old perspective theology rather than the real thing. Whether this is because he fails to understand what previous generations of Reformed theologians actually taught, or whether he just can't be bothered reading them, is immaterial. The fact is that Wright often shows a shocking lack of familiarity with that Reformed theology has actually believed and taught. To give one example at the very heart of this whole debate, Wright characterises the Old Perspective of teaching that in the doctrine of justification the active obedience of Christ is imputed to believers as righteousness because Christ fulfilling the law so as to store up a "treasury of merit" which can then be granted to believers. As far as I recall, no Reformed theologian has ever taught such a thing. It is rather that in Christ we gain the benefit of his own righteousness as someone who lived without ever having committed a sin. Another example with Wright's bizarre claim that the Old Perspective doesn't have an adequate place for the Holy Spirit. That is simply wrong. As we will see, the difference is that the Old Perspective does not assign the role to the Holy Spirit in justification that Wright gives him (and quite why Wright keeps on writing 'holy spirit' instead of Holy Spirit I don't know, but I found it odd).
Fourthly, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that Wright's view also contain serious errors. The one that stood out above others is Wright's doctrine of two-stage justification, one on the basis of faith in this life and the second on the basis of works at the Last Judgment. Wright's scheme almost says the same thing as Reformed orthodoxy in a different way, but not quite. By making 'the life lived' by believers a part of justification, albeit fencing it with the fact that the works concerned are the Holy Spirit's work, Wright cuts out a key part of the Christian's assurance. Despite his protestations that his scheme is more theo-centric than the Old Perspective (another bit of inaccurate revisionism at best), Wright's scheme actually encourages experiential navel gazing rather than looking to the objective work of Christ for justification. Rather than a two-stage justification, the New Testament talks about justification followed by sanctification. Wright's scheme confuses the two things. Reformed orthodoxy is that we are in the future justified according to works, but not on the basis of works. The difference between those statements is simply whether our works show that we are already justified (which they will) or whether our works are needed in order for us to be justified in the end (which they will not be). In my view he hopelessly confuses justification with sanctification (which is in effect Wright's second stage of justification!).
So, although Wright's book offers us much, in the end, there are significant problems with it that do not make me want to change from the Old Perspective. For every new insight that Wright offers, there are also problems with things he overlooks. An example would be the New Perspective's (and Wright's in particular) inadequate view of sin and the problem it creates for the human race. Many of the problems with the New Perspective stem from this in my view. For instance, if God's plan was to save the world through Israel, how was this to be established? The only way could have been through Christ, the only sinless human being to have lived since the Fall. To my mind, this undermines Wright's insistence on God's plan to save the world through Israel as such, if considered otherwise than through the promised Messiah. The New Testament teaches that only a sinless substitute of infinite merit could achieve the salvation of sinners. Only the Messiah could do it, which is precisely what the New Testament teaches (Acts 4:12).
To conclude, paraphrasing Wright himself, I submit that the Old Perspective can do everything the New Perspective wants to do but by a better route and with much more besides. And in the end, with its emphasis on sin and grace and the salvation of lost sinners, the Old Perspective is actually closer to Paul's vision than Wright's revision.
Monday, 15 February 2010
In the Beginning
In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis
by Henri Blocher
Inter-Varsity Press
This is an excellent and scholarly work on the opening chapters of Genesis by the French Reformed theologian, Henri Blocher.
Although my main interest in reading the book was for Blocher's explanation of the framework hypothesis for Genesis chapter one, the book actually deals with most of Genesis 1-11. This is not a commentary, it is a theological exposition.
Blocher is not afraid to take both scientists and literalists to task for their approaches to creation, though he clearly has some sympathy with creationists, who at least take the Bible seriously.
Blocher is not afraid to see some non-literal elements in Genesis, not only in the creation week of chapter one, but also in the method of creating Eve in Genesis 2 and in the talking snake of Genesis 3. I think it fair to say Blocher does see elements of myth in these first three chapters of the Bible, but only in the sense that they convey historical events in non-historical ways.
I would not be as reluctant as Blocher to take some of the elements in Genesis 2 and 3 literally, but I think he does a good job of showing that believing in the truth and trustworthiness of the Bible is not tied to a strict literalist approach to Genesis.
Blocher is thorough in his explanation of why Genesis One should be read as a non-chronological framework, written with a polemical, didactic and doxological purpose. He notes the recurring patterns of the numbers 3, 7 and 10 for example, the parallelism of the days, and other elements and concludes that neither the original writer or his readers would have taken the narrative in the literal manner adopted by modern day creationists.
This book is thoroughly recommended to anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of the framework view of Genesis One. It is not an easy read however as it deals with a wide range of biblical scholarship including literalists like Morris and Whitcomb, and treating all with respect and openness to their point of view, even if he cannot accept it.
by Henri Blocher
Inter-Varsity Press
This is an excellent and scholarly work on the opening chapters of Genesis by the French Reformed theologian, Henri Blocher.
Although my main interest in reading the book was for Blocher's explanation of the framework hypothesis for Genesis chapter one, the book actually deals with most of Genesis 1-11. This is not a commentary, it is a theological exposition.
Blocher is not afraid to take both scientists and literalists to task for their approaches to creation, though he clearly has some sympathy with creationists, who at least take the Bible seriously.
Blocher is not afraid to see some non-literal elements in Genesis, not only in the creation week of chapter one, but also in the method of creating Eve in Genesis 2 and in the talking snake of Genesis 3. I think it fair to say Blocher does see elements of myth in these first three chapters of the Bible, but only in the sense that they convey historical events in non-historical ways.
I would not be as reluctant as Blocher to take some of the elements in Genesis 2 and 3 literally, but I think he does a good job of showing that believing in the truth and trustworthiness of the Bible is not tied to a strict literalist approach to Genesis.
Blocher is thorough in his explanation of why Genesis One should be read as a non-chronological framework, written with a polemical, didactic and doxological purpose. He notes the recurring patterns of the numbers 3, 7 and 10 for example, the parallelism of the days, and other elements and concludes that neither the original writer or his readers would have taken the narrative in the literal manner adopted by modern day creationists.
This book is thoroughly recommended to anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of the framework view of Genesis One. It is not an easy read however as it deals with a wide range of biblical scholarship including literalists like Morris and Whitcomb, and treating all with respect and openness to their point of view, even if he cannot accept it.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Postmillennialism
Postmillennialism: An Eschatology of Hope
by Keith A. Mathison
P & R Publishing
Most of the books I have read on eschatology have been written from the Reformed amillennial perspective that I agree with. It made a refreshing change to read a book from a different perspective. Postmillennialism by Keith A. Mathison is a well-written, clear and winsome defence of historic, evangelical postmillennialism.
The book is written in six parts. Firstly, Mathison deals with the key question of hermeneutics and establishes a few ground rules, including his conservative, Reformed and covenant theology credentials. Secondly, there is a historical review to show that postmillennialism has long been a respectable choice among Christian theologians. The third and fourth parts are the heart of book and deal in turn with a number of Old and New Testament passages. The discussion of the Psalms, Old Testament prophecies, gospel discourses and the Book of Revelation are essential reading, even if only to disagree with Mathison's exegesis. The fifth part tackles eschatology from a theological standpoint and includes criticisms of both premillennialism and amillennialism. The sixth and final part seeks to answer a number of objections that have been raised against postmillennialism.
Mathison defines postmillennialism not so much with regard to the literalism of the 1000 year period mentioned in Revelation 20. Although his approach allows for this, his position seems to favour the view that the 1000 years represent the whole of the church age from Christ's ascension till his second coming.
You might then ask, isn't that what amillennialists believe? And you would be right. So, what's the difference between Mathison's brand of postmillennialism and amillennialism? The answer is that, according to Mathison, postmillennialism is optimistic and amillennialism is pessimistic about the success of the gospel and Christ's reign on earth between now and the second coming.
Postmillennialists think that most or almost all the world will be Christians by the time Christ comes and it will be a golden age of peace and prosperity. Amillennialists think that though the number of Christians will continue to grow and Christ's kingdom will advance, there is no expectation that it will be as extensive as the postmillennialists claim. We also see in a number of biblical passages that there will also be increased opposition to Christ's kingdom and persecution of Christ's people.
The postmillennialist case hinges really on a system of biblical interpretation known as preterism. Preterism is the teaching that most or all the "negative" prophecies such as Matthew 24 that talk about apostasy, persecution and suffering for God's people relate to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple in AD 70 when Christ is said to have returned to earth in judgment on Israel. Such prophecies were future when written, but happened in our past. Mathison follows this approach consistently throughout the book.
This is a very handy hermeneutic. If a passage doesn't fit with postmillennialisms rosy picture of the future, it is simply dumped in a file labelled "fulfilled in AD 70". The book of Revelation is itself dated by postmillennialists as earlier than AD 70, to accommodate the preterist view, though this view is hotly debated by New Testament scholars.
It must be understood that Mathison is not an extreme preterist. He does understand there still to be some prophecies with a future fulfilment to come, especially Christ's triumphant return to earth.
Amillennialists interpret Scripture differently. We tend to see the persecution and apostasy prophecies as being yet future and the joyful prophecies of peace, prosperity and Christ's reign are either interpreted spiritually, as applying to the Church and Christ's people, or are regarded as prophecies to be fulfilled in the new heaven and earth to come after Christ returns.
Mathison's argument essentially stands or falls with preterism. If you accept that, then postmillennialism is a viable option. If you don't, then there are just too many prophecies at odds with it. For myself, I remain unconvinced.
I also reject the pessimistic label. Our objection to the postmillennialist vision of a golden age of peace prior to the end of this world is not based on lack of faith that God could bring this about, but upon loyalty to Scripture and what God has said will happen in this age. We are not only optimistic, we are certain that the gospel will triumph, indeed is triumphing now, and Christ will reign and does reign now, as king of the world and God's Messiah. We know God's purpose is being fulfilled perfectly in time to achieve his appointed ends. I see no reason for pessimism about any of that!
In the end, this is a good book defending a position I disagree with. That never makes it comfortable reading, but it is not enough to outweigh the arguments in favour of amillennialism. I cannot disagree with the Second Helvetic Confession's view in Chapter XI:
We further condemn Jewish dreams that there will be a golden age on earth before the Day of Judgment, and that the pious, having subdued all their godless enemies, will possess all the kingdoms of the earth. For evangelical truth in Matt., chs. 24 and 25, and Luke, ch. 18, and apostolic teaching in II Thess., ch. 2, and II Tim., chs. 3 and 4, present something quite different.Indeed they do and I cannot accept the preterist view that all those chapters were fulfilled in AD 70.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
Moving Church
I have been in Bridgeton St Francis-in-the-east Church since I was six years old. In the course of the last 30 years I have been involved with so many activities it is hard to remember them all, but they have included:
The main reason was simply the distance involved in travelling from where we live now to Bridgeton.
After spending a bit of time looking for a new fellowship that would suit us both, we've now settled in Sandyford Henderson Memorial Church in the West End of Glasgow. It's been a really welcoming church with excellent biblical teaching from the minister, Peter White, and the elders, and a real commitment to corporate prayer, local outreach and warm fellowship.
I'm hoping to get involved in the life of my new congregation in as many ways as I can once my membership is formally transferred over probably in the next month or so.
Although sad to be leaving so many old friends, it is good that the move was not as a result of any reason within my old church except the distance it is away, and so there is no ill-will involved. Indeed, I am hoping to continue supporting the church in Bridgeton in any ways I can, while making my focus on my new church family in Sandyford.
- Congregational Board member
- Sunday School teacher
- Welcome Team
- Church Pianist
- Choir Leader
- Church Magazine Editor
- Fabric Committee Member
- Worship Planner
- Leading Bible studies
- Leading Worship and Preaching
- Outreach Work
- Elder
The main reason was simply the distance involved in travelling from where we live now to Bridgeton.
After spending a bit of time looking for a new fellowship that would suit us both, we've now settled in Sandyford Henderson Memorial Church in the West End of Glasgow. It's been a really welcoming church with excellent biblical teaching from the minister, Peter White, and the elders, and a real commitment to corporate prayer, local outreach and warm fellowship.
I'm hoping to get involved in the life of my new congregation in as many ways as I can once my membership is formally transferred over probably in the next month or so.
Although sad to be leaving so many old friends, it is good that the move was not as a result of any reason within my old church except the distance it is away, and so there is no ill-will involved. Indeed, I am hoping to continue supporting the church in Bridgeton in any ways I can, while making my focus on my new church family in Sandyford.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Our Covenant God
The following was the sermon at the evening service at Bridgeton on 10 January 2010. It has been lightly edited for internet use. The Bible reading was 1 Kings 8:22-30.
Did you hear about the latest Bible to be released in the shops? It only costs £1.00 and it’s called the New Year’s Resolution Bible. It only has the first three chapters of Genesis in it.
New Year resolutions are promises we make to ourselves, aren’t they? But like the joke suggests, they aren’t promises we tend to stick to all that well. I’m going to suggest a new year’s resolution for you that I hope you will be able to keep, and that’s to grow as a Christian this year. That’s not just a good idea; as Christians, it’s what’s expected of us. 1 Peter 2:2-3 says:
To begin with, just a brief word of background to the passage. One of King David’s unfulfilled dreams was to build a temple for the Lord to honour him and so that David's God didn’t have to 'live in a tent.' When David died, his son, Solomon, was his successor. And at the beginning of Solomon’s reign, there was a period of peace and prosperity in Israel. And Solomon decided that this was the right time to finally build a temple to the Lord in Jerusalem. The temple took seven years to build, although we learn something about Solomon’s attitude from the fact it took 13 years to build his palace in Jerusalem and the palace was nearly double the size of the temple! But that’s an aside. When it was finished, Solomon ordered that the Ark of the Covenant be brought from the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, and be placed in the inner chamber of the new temple, the holy of holies. And as the priests left the Ark there, 1 Kings 8:10-11 says:
At which point, Solomon first addresses the assembled Israelites and tells them that he has built this temple in accordance with his father’s wishes and in accordance with God’s promise to David. He then stood before the altar in the temple and began to pray. And the passage we’re looking at is the first couple of paragraphs really of what is a long and mighty prayer that Solomon spoke that day.
We’re going to have a look at five things this prayer of Solomon’s teaches us about God:
But it’s not just in his name that the passage speaks of God’s faithfulness to his people. The passage is full of the idea. Verse 23 is the key verse in the passage:
Verse 24 also speaks of commitment and faithfulness. Solomon points out that God kept his promises to Solomon’s father, King David. ‘You spoke with your mouth, and with your hand have fulfilled it this day.’
Now when you stop and think about it, God’s faithfulness to his people is actually an amazing thing. It truly is amazing grace. Even a cursory reading of the Old Testament shows that the Israelites were anything but faithful to their God. Scarcely were they delivered from Egypt before they turned their backs on the invisible God to build themselves a golden calf. During their 40 years in the wilderness they continually grumbled and complained and turned away from God. During the time of the judges, the Bible says that ‘everyone did what was right in his own eyes’ and sin was rampant. Later they chose for themselves a human king to be like the other nations, even though God told them that he was their king. And so it went on and on through the time of the prophets and eventual exile in Babylon. God’s covenant people were anything but faithful to God. And the same is just as true of us. Rarely in Christian history has the church lived up to its calling and mission. If it were a matter of merit, how could God be faithful to people like us? People who sin in thought, word and deed every single day?
But thanks be to God that he is faithful, not because of anything in us, but because of his own grace and mercy. And this means God can be trusted and relied on by us all the time. He never plays us false. He never changes. He never gets fed up with us. And that’s really foundational for our relationship with him, isn’t it? All around us might fail and fall away, but God will stand by us, no matter what. He is faithful forever.
The second thing this passage teaches is that Yahweh is a loving God. Indeed, it is from God’s love that his faithfulness and grace to his people flows. He abides with us, because he loves us. Again, verse 23 brings this out:
That’s the kind of God we know and worship, a God of love. In the New Testament, we even find the apostle John teaching that ‘God is love.’ Love is at the very centre of God’s being and personality. Love is the very reason God created the universe, the reason God is working to save the human race, and the reason why he will one day renew the whole universe at the end of the age.
The love of God is like a comforting presence with us all the time. No matter what we go through, we have this knowledge with us: God loves us and wants the best for us. And he’s in control of our lives, even when we’re not, even when bad things are happening to us. As Romans 8:28 says:
The third thing the passage tells us about God is that he is a speaking God. He is a God who communicates with us, a God who reveals himself to human beings. This truth is sprinkled throughout the passage in different verses.
Verse 24, ‘Who have kept with your servant David my father what you declared to him. You spoke with your mouth, and with your hand have fulfilled it this day.’
Verse 25, ‘Keep for your servant David my father what you have promised him, saying…’
Verse 26, ‘Now therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you have spoken…’
As Christians we’re so used to this concept that we can almost take it for granted that God speaks to us. But consider all the pagan gods in the world, all the gods of wood, stone and metal that men worship. They are dumb idols. They do not speak. They do not communicate. Consider all the imaginary gods of other religions. People might think they are hearing from their god, but they aren’t because they are not real. There is only one god – Yahweh, the God of Israel.
So how does God speak to us? Well, I think we have to say that there are several different ways. God can speak to us in any way he chooses. Sometimes, he speaks to us by putting thoughts into our heads. Sometimes, he speaks to us through what other people say to us. Sometimes, he speaks to us through events, through things that happen in our lives. Sometimes, he even speaks to people in visions or dreams. But the most important and authoritative way God reveals himself is through his Word, through his written Word the Bible, and through the eternal Word, Jesus Christ himself. As Hebrews 1 says:
The fourth thing to note from the passage is that God is a listening God. It’s one thing to consider that the sovereign Lord of the universe might communicate with tiny little specks of humanity like us. After all, the 'great' sometimes communicate with ordinary people. Kings issue proclamations. Prime Ministers make speeches. Parliaments pass laws. Judges hand down judgements. These days, every famous person seems to write a blog or have a website to reach their fans. So it’s one thing to consider that God might speak to us.
But it’s simply astonishing that the creator of the universe might actually want to listen to us as well! Yet the passage tells us that it’s true. God listens to us. He hears our prayers and answers them. Solomon speaks to God in this passage and petitions him with requests in the belief that the Lord will hear and answer him. The very fact that he prays at all testifies to this, never mind praying in public before all the people.
Verse 28: ‘Have regard,’ he says (pay attention, listen to), ‘the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house…Listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.’
Does it sometimes feel as if we’re only talking to ourselves or to each other when we pray? Well it isn’t like that you know. God is listening and watching everything that happens in the world of course. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about. All our conversations are known to God. But our prayers are not heard in that way, like divine omniscient CCTV. Our prayers are heard in a special way because they are addressed to him.
Prayer is such a huge subject, I can’t go into it in much detail tonight, but taken together with the other things we know from this passage about God: that he loves us, that he speaks to us, and that he’s faithful to us and to what he’s promised, this should encourage us to pray. When we pray, we are not addressing some cold, remote deity. We are speaking to our heavenly Father, who loves us. God tells us in his Word that he wants us to pray to him and he wants to give us what we ask for in His name. So our prayers are neither falling on deaf ears, nor is he reluctant to give us what we ask for. There’s nothing he likes better. The only time God won’t give us what we ask is when it isn’t the best thing for us. And when we ask for something that isn’t the best for us, we are not really asking for it in his name, because his name is Yahweh, and that means that is the covenant God who always and only does good to his people.
Our fifth and final point is that the LORD is a mighty God. As a modern worship song puts it:
It’s not that the passage says that God is mighty in so many words in this passage, but it’s implicit in the whole passage that God is mighty and awesome. For one thing, Solomon speaks to God in the knowledge that he can carry out what is asked of him. After all, who but an almighty God can organise history so that promises to one king are kept years later after his death? Who but an almighty God can ensure that one of King David’s successors would rule on his throne forever? Solomon was a rich and powerful man, but he recognises that God is ‘way out of his league’. Even the great temple that they had constructed in Jerusalem was like a joke compared to God’s majesty and power. Solomon can scarcely believe that God would dwell in a building at all. ‘But will God indeed dwell on earth?’ he asks. ‘Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!’
God is so big that the vast expanse of space cannot hold him.
I was recently at the planetarium at Glasgow Science Centre. There you see how the night sky would look on a clear night in the dark, away from the city lights. There are hundreds of visible stars, and millions of stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is only one of millions of such galaxies in the universe. Millions of galaxies. Billions of stars. Possibly trillions of planets. And yet all that unimaginable expanse of outer space is not big enough to hold God. In fact He created it by his Word.
That means that God is powerful and mighty enough to deal with anything that happens in the whole of space. All the events on earth, all our lives, are just one infinitesimal part of the universe and God is more than able to answer our prayers to change things on earth.
The passage is all good news for us with five aspects of God to comfort us and lead us through this year: his faithfulness, his love, his Word, his listening ear and his might. There’s only one thing for us to do in response and that’s to have faith in this God. To believe in him and follow him in obedience. That’s what that little phrase at the end of verse 23 means where it talks about ‘your servants who walk before you with all their heart.’
God’s servants are people who have faith in him, and our calling is to walk with him with all our heart. In other words to be committed to him wholeheartedly is God wants from us.
So at the start of 2010, let’s re-dedicate ourselves to our God, because there’s no-one else like him. There’s no-one else who deserves our total commitment, because our covenant God is totally committed to us.
Did you hear about the latest Bible to be released in the shops? It only costs £1.00 and it’s called the New Year’s Resolution Bible. It only has the first three chapters of Genesis in it.
New Year resolutions are promises we make to ourselves, aren’t they? But like the joke suggests, they aren’t promises we tend to stick to all that well. I’m going to suggest a new year’s resolution for you that I hope you will be able to keep, and that’s to grow as a Christian this year. That’s not just a good idea; as Christians, it’s what’s expected of us. 1 Peter 2:2-3 says:
Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.One of the best ways we can grow as Christians is just to spend time getting to know God better through reading a portion of his word regularly. The Bible is full of passages that help us understand better what God is like. And as we get to know him better and love him more, so this shapes our lives, not only in what we believe, but in how we live. This is what Paul teaches in 2 Timothy 3:16-17:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.Our passage tonight is not particularly well-known. But it’s a passage that tells us many important things about God. So let’s look at this passage we have in front of us and see what God has to teach us about himself tonight because if we really grasped and lived in the knowledge of these truths, I think all of us would grow as Christians this year.
To begin with, just a brief word of background to the passage. One of King David’s unfulfilled dreams was to build a temple for the Lord to honour him and so that David's God didn’t have to 'live in a tent.' When David died, his son, Solomon, was his successor. And at the beginning of Solomon’s reign, there was a period of peace and prosperity in Israel. And Solomon decided that this was the right time to finally build a temple to the Lord in Jerusalem. The temple took seven years to build, although we learn something about Solomon’s attitude from the fact it took 13 years to build his palace in Jerusalem and the palace was nearly double the size of the temple! But that’s an aside. When it was finished, Solomon ordered that the Ark of the Covenant be brought from the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, and be placed in the inner chamber of the new temple, the holy of holies. And as the priests left the Ark there, 1 Kings 8:10-11 says:
‘When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the LORD. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled his temple.’Imagine the scene. The new temple has been built – seven years in the making – and now God himself gives the work his seal of approval as it were by actually taking up residence and dwelling in the temple itself, symbolised by the shekinah glory cloud.
At which point, Solomon first addresses the assembled Israelites and tells them that he has built this temple in accordance with his father’s wishes and in accordance with God’s promise to David. He then stood before the altar in the temple and began to pray. And the passage we’re looking at is the first couple of paragraphs really of what is a long and mighty prayer that Solomon spoke that day.
We’re going to have a look at five things this prayer of Solomon’s teaches us about God:
- God is faithful
- God is loving
- God speaks to us
- God listens to us
- God is mighty and can answer prayer.
But it’s not just in his name that the passage speaks of God’s faithfulness to his people. The passage is full of the idea. Verse 23 is the key verse in the passage:
O Yahweh, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven above or in earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants…The covenant relationship that God has with people speaks of faithfulness. A covenant is a solemn promise, a total commitment between two parties. A covenant resembles a marriage, which is a specific kind of covenant. God’s covenant with his people is little different. It’s not a bond between two equals entering into a commitment to love each other and share their lives; it’s a bond between the sovereign king of the universe and unworthy sinners, and so it is often called a covenant of grace. But like a marriage, it is nevertheless a bond of love between God and his people. The covenant of grace is also a sign of his faithfulness and commitment to his people.
Verse 24 also speaks of commitment and faithfulness. Solomon points out that God kept his promises to Solomon’s father, King David. ‘You spoke with your mouth, and with your hand have fulfilled it this day.’
Now when you stop and think about it, God’s faithfulness to his people is actually an amazing thing. It truly is amazing grace. Even a cursory reading of the Old Testament shows that the Israelites were anything but faithful to their God. Scarcely were they delivered from Egypt before they turned their backs on the invisible God to build themselves a golden calf. During their 40 years in the wilderness they continually grumbled and complained and turned away from God. During the time of the judges, the Bible says that ‘everyone did what was right in his own eyes’ and sin was rampant. Later they chose for themselves a human king to be like the other nations, even though God told them that he was their king. And so it went on and on through the time of the prophets and eventual exile in Babylon. God’s covenant people were anything but faithful to God. And the same is just as true of us. Rarely in Christian history has the church lived up to its calling and mission. If it were a matter of merit, how could God be faithful to people like us? People who sin in thought, word and deed every single day?
But thanks be to God that he is faithful, not because of anything in us, but because of his own grace and mercy. And this means God can be trusted and relied on by us all the time. He never plays us false. He never changes. He never gets fed up with us. And that’s really foundational for our relationship with him, isn’t it? All around us might fail and fall away, but God will stand by us, no matter what. He is faithful forever.
The second thing this passage teaches is that Yahweh is a loving God. Indeed, it is from God’s love that his faithfulness and grace to his people flows. He abides with us, because he loves us. Again, verse 23 brings this out:
O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you…keeping covenant and showing steadfast love…The Hebrew word translated ‘steadfast love’ is ‘chesed’ and it’s a very rich word that occurs some 275 times in 27 out of the 39 books of the Old Testament. It is the word used to describe God’s covenant love. It means all of the following: a great, steadfast, unfailing, constant love, mercy, grace and lovingkindness. It the love that God has for his own people, his children and so it is a deep and special love, a love that is sure and steadfast, a love that sought us and saves us.
That’s the kind of God we know and worship, a God of love. In the New Testament, we even find the apostle John teaching that ‘God is love.’ Love is at the very centre of God’s being and personality. Love is the very reason God created the universe, the reason God is working to save the human race, and the reason why he will one day renew the whole universe at the end of the age.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life’ (John 3:16).The challenge for us to somehow catch a glimpse of the greatness of God’s love. It is so great that to glimpse it, to recognise it, is like staring into a blinding light. It is dazzling and awesome and inspiring and life-changing.
The love of God is like a comforting presence with us all the time. No matter what we go through, we have this knowledge with us: God loves us and wants the best for us. And he’s in control of our lives, even when we’re not, even when bad things are happening to us. As Romans 8:28 says:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.That’s why we could sing earlier that he or she ‘who trusts in God unchanging love / builds on the rock that none can move.’
The third thing the passage tells us about God is that he is a speaking God. He is a God who communicates with us, a God who reveals himself to human beings. This truth is sprinkled throughout the passage in different verses.
Verse 24, ‘Who have kept with your servant David my father what you declared to him. You spoke with your mouth, and with your hand have fulfilled it this day.’
Verse 25, ‘Keep for your servant David my father what you have promised him, saying…’
Verse 26, ‘Now therefore, O God of Israel, let your word be confirmed, which you have spoken…’
As Christians we’re so used to this concept that we can almost take it for granted that God speaks to us. But consider all the pagan gods in the world, all the gods of wood, stone and metal that men worship. They are dumb idols. They do not speak. They do not communicate. Consider all the imaginary gods of other religions. People might think they are hearing from their god, but they aren’t because they are not real. There is only one god – Yahweh, the God of Israel.
So how does God speak to us? Well, I think we have to say that there are several different ways. God can speak to us in any way he chooses. Sometimes, he speaks to us by putting thoughts into our heads. Sometimes, he speaks to us through what other people say to us. Sometimes, he speaks to us through events, through things that happen in our lives. Sometimes, he even speaks to people in visions or dreams. But the most important and authoritative way God reveals himself is through his Word, through his written Word the Bible, and through the eternal Word, Jesus Christ himself. As Hebrews 1 says:
In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.The fact that God speaks to us, flows from the fact that he loves us, and leads on to the fact that he is faithful. Do you see what I mean? Because he cares about us, he wants to talk to us. He wants to tell us about himself. He wants to tell us the truth about himself, and about us and about life. He wants to warn us so we won’t make mistakes and do wrong things. He wants to promise us good things to come in order to encourage us. His words to us flow from his loving character. But they also form the basis of his faithfulness. God makes promises. He tells us how things are going to be. And God keeps his word. A promise from God is more certain than seeing something with our own eyes.
The fourth thing to note from the passage is that God is a listening God. It’s one thing to consider that the sovereign Lord of the universe might communicate with tiny little specks of humanity like us. After all, the 'great' sometimes communicate with ordinary people. Kings issue proclamations. Prime Ministers make speeches. Parliaments pass laws. Judges hand down judgements. These days, every famous person seems to write a blog or have a website to reach their fans. So it’s one thing to consider that God might speak to us.
But it’s simply astonishing that the creator of the universe might actually want to listen to us as well! Yet the passage tells us that it’s true. God listens to us. He hears our prayers and answers them. Solomon speaks to God in this passage and petitions him with requests in the belief that the Lord will hear and answer him. The very fact that he prays at all testifies to this, never mind praying in public before all the people.
Verse 28: ‘Have regard,’ he says (pay attention, listen to), ‘the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house…Listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.’
Does it sometimes feel as if we’re only talking to ourselves or to each other when we pray? Well it isn’t like that you know. God is listening and watching everything that happens in the world of course. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about. All our conversations are known to God. But our prayers are not heard in that way, like divine omniscient CCTV. Our prayers are heard in a special way because they are addressed to him.
Prayer is such a huge subject, I can’t go into it in much detail tonight, but taken together with the other things we know from this passage about God: that he loves us, that he speaks to us, and that he’s faithful to us and to what he’s promised, this should encourage us to pray. When we pray, we are not addressing some cold, remote deity. We are speaking to our heavenly Father, who loves us. God tells us in his Word that he wants us to pray to him and he wants to give us what we ask for in His name. So our prayers are neither falling on deaf ears, nor is he reluctant to give us what we ask for. There’s nothing he likes better. The only time God won’t give us what we ask is when it isn’t the best thing for us. And when we ask for something that isn’t the best for us, we are not really asking for it in his name, because his name is Yahweh, and that means that is the covenant God who always and only does good to his people.
Our fifth and final point is that the LORD is a mighty God. As a modern worship song puts it:
Our God is an awesome God,Obviously that’s linked to the fact that God listens to us and wants us to pray. After all, what’s the point of asking God if he can do things in this world if lacks the power or ability to carry it out?
He reigns from heaven above
with wisdom, power and love,
Our God is an awesome God.
It’s not that the passage says that God is mighty in so many words in this passage, but it’s implicit in the whole passage that God is mighty and awesome. For one thing, Solomon speaks to God in the knowledge that he can carry out what is asked of him. After all, who but an almighty God can organise history so that promises to one king are kept years later after his death? Who but an almighty God can ensure that one of King David’s successors would rule on his throne forever? Solomon was a rich and powerful man, but he recognises that God is ‘way out of his league’. Even the great temple that they had constructed in Jerusalem was like a joke compared to God’s majesty and power. Solomon can scarcely believe that God would dwell in a building at all. ‘But will God indeed dwell on earth?’ he asks. ‘Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!’
God is so big that the vast expanse of space cannot hold him.
I was recently at the planetarium at Glasgow Science Centre. There you see how the night sky would look on a clear night in the dark, away from the city lights. There are hundreds of visible stars, and millions of stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way. And the Milky Way is only one of millions of such galaxies in the universe. Millions of galaxies. Billions of stars. Possibly trillions of planets. And yet all that unimaginable expanse of outer space is not big enough to hold God. In fact He created it by his Word.
That means that God is powerful and mighty enough to deal with anything that happens in the whole of space. All the events on earth, all our lives, are just one infinitesimal part of the universe and God is more than able to answer our prayers to change things on earth.
The passage is all good news for us with five aspects of God to comfort us and lead us through this year: his faithfulness, his love, his Word, his listening ear and his might. There’s only one thing for us to do in response and that’s to have faith in this God. To believe in him and follow him in obedience. That’s what that little phrase at the end of verse 23 means where it talks about ‘your servants who walk before you with all their heart.’
God’s servants are people who have faith in him, and our calling is to walk with him with all our heart. In other words to be committed to him wholeheartedly is God wants from us.
So at the start of 2010, let’s re-dedicate ourselves to our God, because there’s no-one else like him. There’s no-one else who deserves our total commitment, because our covenant God is totally committed to us.
Friday, 25 December 2009
Christmas
Merry Christmas to all my readers. It's been a lovely white Christmas in Glasgow this year. And I've had a great day celebrating with my family. Winding down now and relaxing before another day of family visits tomorrow.
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Austerity Christmas
Christmas might still only come ‘but once a year’ but it seems to last longer and longer as shops and other businesses start putting up decorations and Christmas trees around October, some even as early as September! I hear some people put up their Christmas trees so early nowadays that they have to dust them a couple of times before Christmas actually arrives!
The mood seems to be – if my limited perception of the retail market is anything to go by – that people are spending less this year. In the middle of a recession, that’s not surprising. It’s also probably no bad thing. The last thing we need as a society is to plunge ourselves into more unmanageable debt.
I recently heard the phrase ‘austerity gospel’ as a kind of biblical counterpart to the false ‘prosperity gospel’ that goes around. (The prosperity gospel is ‘believe in Jesus and God will bless you with money, possessions, good fortune of every kind’). That got me thinking about the differences between the glitzy Christmas the world pushes more and more each year and the true Christmas – the austerity Christmas of Bethlehem 2000 years ago.
As Christians, we celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas of course with joy and merriment. But that first Christmas was no fairy lights and roast turkey dinner affair. It was as austere as you can get. Strip away the images off the Christmas cards, the idyllic scene of a strangely sanitised warm and welcoming stable, and you are left with raw life.
An unmarried mother forced to make a hazardous journey because of an unpopular poll tax. The birth in a dirty room where animals were housed, with the smell of manure in the air. None of Mary’s female family and friends around to help her. The only people to come and celebrate the birth were shepherds – social outcasts in their society. The wise men (astrologers most likely) come from far distant lands much later to see the child and would have been viewed with deep suspicion by religious Jews. Then the family are forced to become asylum seekers in Egypt, fleeing from the ruthless troops of King Herod. As John wrote in his gospel, ‘He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.’ (John 1:10-11). Those verses are about as austere as anything in the Bible.
The true ‘magic’ of Christmas is that it’s precisely in that way, to that reception, with a mission to save the world that had no time for him, that God’s Son came to earth. And out of those events, Jesus Christ fulfilled his role as God's anointed King and Saviour, all the way to Calvary – to the final rejection and through the mysteries of God's will – to his destiny of victory and triumph, for our good and his Father's glory.
As Paul wrote: ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.’ (2 Corinthians 8:9)
Such is the grace and love of God: he made his own Son nothing that we might have everything.
The mood seems to be – if my limited perception of the retail market is anything to go by – that people are spending less this year. In the middle of a recession, that’s not surprising. It’s also probably no bad thing. The last thing we need as a society is to plunge ourselves into more unmanageable debt.
I recently heard the phrase ‘austerity gospel’ as a kind of biblical counterpart to the false ‘prosperity gospel’ that goes around. (The prosperity gospel is ‘believe in Jesus and God will bless you with money, possessions, good fortune of every kind’). That got me thinking about the differences between the glitzy Christmas the world pushes more and more each year and the true Christmas – the austerity Christmas of Bethlehem 2000 years ago.
As Christians, we celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas of course with joy and merriment. But that first Christmas was no fairy lights and roast turkey dinner affair. It was as austere as you can get. Strip away the images off the Christmas cards, the idyllic scene of a strangely sanitised warm and welcoming stable, and you are left with raw life.
An unmarried mother forced to make a hazardous journey because of an unpopular poll tax. The birth in a dirty room where animals were housed, with the smell of manure in the air. None of Mary’s female family and friends around to help her. The only people to come and celebrate the birth were shepherds – social outcasts in their society. The wise men (astrologers most likely) come from far distant lands much later to see the child and would have been viewed with deep suspicion by religious Jews. Then the family are forced to become asylum seekers in Egypt, fleeing from the ruthless troops of King Herod. As John wrote in his gospel, ‘He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.’ (John 1:10-11). Those verses are about as austere as anything in the Bible.
The true ‘magic’ of Christmas is that it’s precisely in that way, to that reception, with a mission to save the world that had no time for him, that God’s Son came to earth. And out of those events, Jesus Christ fulfilled his role as God's anointed King and Saviour, all the way to Calvary – to the final rejection and through the mysteries of God's will – to his destiny of victory and triumph, for our good and his Father's glory.
As Paul wrote: ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.’ (2 Corinthians 8:9)
Such is the grace and love of God: he made his own Son nothing that we might have everything.
The King of God's Kingdom
The King of God's Kingdom
by David Seccombe
Paternoster Press
David Seccombe's The King of God's Kingdom is a massive tome of over 600 pages, but it was so easy and enjoyable to read that it seemed shorter.
The book's subtitle is "A Solution to the Puzzle of Jesus". Seccombe identifies the "puzzle" in a series of questions at the beginning of the book. Essentially it is what is the relationship between the Jesus of the gospels and his teaching and the Christianity of his followers, the Christ of the letters, and the apostles' teaching. Or to put it another way, how does Jesus' gospel of the Kingdom of God with its historical, social and political implications fit in (if it does) with the apostles' gospel of new birth, salvation by faith, justification and so forth.
Seccombe's solution is not a radical one, but an evangelical one. His conclusion is that Jesus established the Kingdom of God by defeating the powers of this world including sin, death and Satan, but left it to his followers to extend the Kingdom to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). He writes (pp. 601-02):
As surely as the backbone of Satan's power was destroyed, God's kingdom was established in the world and the way was clear for men and women of all nations to be drawn to the fellowship of the crucified but victorious King-Messiah. The task of gathering the new age community Jesus gave to his followers. Having defeated the central rebellious power, he sent them out into lands which were still very much in the power of evil - much as a victorious general might divide his forces, sending them into the far reaches of a newly conquered land to declare his victory, offer amnesty, and a place in the new order to all who would lay down their arms and surrender their allegiance to the king.
The book reads in part like a harmony of the gospels, but it is much more than this. It's main concern is to show how what Jesus did during his life is connected with his life's work (including his death and resurrection) of establishing God's Kingdom on earth.
My only real criticism is that because the author has one foot in the camp of the academy and one foot in the camp of the community of faith, he sometimes overstresses the fact that many scholars do not take the gospel accounts of miracles and even Jesus' teachings at face value. Time after time, he announces that many do not accept this or that before then giving for the most part fairly standard conservative reasons why we should, in the end, accept what the gospels say. This was a weakness. Perhaps he could have dealt with this issue in a preliminary chapter or an appendix.
Despite this, I really enjoyed reading this book and would warmly recommend it.
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