The Jews of Jesus' day needed Jesus as Savior. No doubt. They wanted a Messiah who would deliver them from Rome and usher them right into their kingdom. They were missing the suffering of Christ. They ignored Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. However, it was also true that Jesus was King. He was the King Who would save. So reception of Him was about Him being King. He saved unto service of Him. The Davidic Covenant wouldn't be fulfilled without the New Covenant. Jesus couldn't be their King, because they couldn't obey Him in their sins. But the truth remains that Jesus is that King. They didn't want a suffering King, which was tantamount to a humble King. They wouldn't deny themselves. The kingdom they desired was all about self and they would never follow Jesus as King, confess Him as King, turn from their own personal reign to His reign, without denial of self.
Very closely related to self-denial is possession denial. You weren't trusting in Christ if you were hanging on to your own possessions, i.e., building your own kingdom in the here and now. The earth is the Lord's If God will be King, He will have the possessions too.
The kingdom of Israel would begin in individual hearts with reception of Jesus Christ. But you could not enthrone Him and you simultaneously. Self must be crucified. That is repentance. It isn't a work. As I've written, according to scripture, repentance is granted, as is faith (and even the confession as part of repentant faith, 1 Cor 12:3).
What's unique about Luke 18 next to other tell-tale passages is that you can't explain it away as a sanctification or post-justification passage. Jesus was dealing with an unbeliever in the rich young ruler. It's obviously very important, because it is an account found in three of the gospels. And in each rendition of the same story, Jesus tells him the same thing.
Alright. If Luke 18:18-30 in fact teaches what I'm reporting, then why is there such a difference between that and what other men are saying? I can report what I've heard and read through the years, mirrored in what Lou wrote in the essay he linked in the comment section of part one here.
As I have seen it, the massive difference comes from tradition, methodology, and theology.
Keswick Tradition
The tradition is a Keswick tradition. I could not explain the Keswick influence in one short blogpost. Whole books have been written on it. Passages have been understood different than their actual meaning, according to Keswick tradition. Keswick theology creates two categories of Christians. First, you have the category of Christian who has only received Jesus as Savior, but not as Lord. He is still living in sin and disobedience until he reaches a later point of "dedication." Up to that point, if ever, he is a carnal Christian, living in perpetual disobedience, and yet still saved. Lou talked about one of those in his linked article, who has "accepted Jesus as his personal Savior," but who was not willing to obey a particular biblical command. Second, you have the Christian, who, most often long after he has been saved, surrenders to Jesus as Lord.
The rich young ruler passage is trouble for the Keswick tradition. Jesus had an expectation of the rich young ruler that Jesus would rule His life from the get-go, right from the point of conversion. The rich young ruler knew that right up front.
Methodology
Non-lordship props up a methodology, much of it pragmatism. I've never, ever seen a non-lordship person who was not dependent on a certain amount of pragmatism. What is most pragmatic is that he gets to go to heaven, but he still gets to keep his life for himself in so many words. He knows Jesus has saved him, which gives him a certain license to sin. I recognize that some non-lordship will say, "no," but he is excused in his sin by the idea that lordship comes later. He is expected to live a carnal life until that later dedication experience. Any expectation of perpetual obedience for the believer is considered to be a frontloading of works and having salvation cost something, that is, it isn't a free gift, so it must not be grace.
Another part of the methodology is creating a crisis or an event that will get someone to dedicate himself. Style of preaching very often comes in here, because it often gets very emotional with some scary illustrations to create a feeling that must be the Holy Spirit working. He is pleaded with to make a decision of dedication or rededication that is about the time when Jesus starts becoming lord to him.
The method of Jesus was different. He expected everything right up front, which is the idea of "counting the cost." In other words, Jesus didn't bait and switch, a common strategy in fundamentalism and evangelicalism. The methodology of bait and switch is incompatible with how we see Jesus operate, so those passages, which are many, where Jesus challenges the potential convert with what he can expect if he follows Christ, are turned into "discipleship" texts. For Luke 18:18-30 and these methods to fit together, Jesus is said to be doing something different with the rich young ruler than the verses say He does. Not much is done in making a connection between the words you read in the passage and the strategy Jesus is said to be employing. Jesus is allegedly doing something that looks nothing like what we read in the text.
Theology
Theology also influences someone's take on Luke 18:18-30. He grew up hearing salvation passages preached as "discipleship." He's been explaining them now that way for years. His closest associates do the same. The whole New Testament now must be seen in that light. The Bible isn't the authority for the position. The Bible conforms to the position.
In the theological system that forces an interpretation on huge parts of the New Testament, true repentance is called "works." Belief, which is something more than "accepting Jesus as your personal Savior," is not belief, but is "works." If you have to give up anything, it's works. Believing in Jesus as Lord means Jesus becoming Lord of everything in your life, which is works. You get saved when you accept Jesus as Savior and sometime later to even never, you become a disciple. The requirements for being a disciple are much greater than being saved. A few people can be a disciple, but many, many can be saved without being a disciple. These are not just traditional and methodological, but also theological.
Some of this theological system hatched in certain schools. Dallas Theological Seminary has had a major influence. Almost every evangelical and fundamentalist school has been influenced by Dallas style Keswick theology. Then you've got all the revivalist schools (Hyles, Crown, West Coast, etc.) that have all fed off of the same kind of Sword of the Lord revivalism that has influenced that segment of fundamentalism. All of them accredit each other for taking the same approach.
If you were to take all of what I've described here and then plugged it into the rich young ruler passage, you would have Jesus commanding the typical evangelical or fundamentalist to sell, distribute, come, and follow, and they too would say, "No." However, they're all still saved. The rich young ruler got special treatment that cannot be applied to or repeated by any other single person in the history of mankind. You don't have to leave all and follow to have eternal life in evangelicalism and fundamentalism. The requirement is a minimum of a superficial profession of faith with the idea that maybe in the future it will grow into something more, but not necessarily. When someone makes a profession of faith that is never accompanied by perpetual righteousness, that doesn't mean he's unsaved. You can't judge that without being guilty of teaching salvation by works.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
The Rich Young Ruler: Tell-Tale Passage for Soteriology, Number One, Pt. 2
When Jesus talked to the rich young ruler, as recorded in Luke 18:18-30, what did he think Jesus was talking about? We really don't have to have any doubt about this. Look at what Peter says to Jesus in v. 28: "We have left all and followed thee." Unlike the "certain ruler," Peter and those with him had relinquished their possessions to follow Jesus Christ. When Jesus said in v. 22, "Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me," Peter understood him to be saying, "Leave all and follow me." That's how it reads. And we know this is dealing with salvation, because in v. 26, "they that heard it said, Who then can be saved?"
It's impossible for an unbeliever to sacrifice. He can't do it. Jesus talked about that in His parable of the soils back in Luke 8, when speaking of the rocky soil, He said: "They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away." In time of temptation fall away. In the Matthew account in Matthew 13:6, it reads: "And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away." This hearer doesn't have genuine faith, a legitimate profession, and so he can't sustain any kind of profession when some kind of sacrifice is called for, as represented by the sun scorching. He has no root. Jesus tested the profession of the "certain ruler," and his profession could not sustain the test of Jesus' commands in Luke 18:22. If he really did believe in Jesus Christ, He could give up his stuff, even as Abraham could offer up Isaac by faith.
Men don't have to give up their money to be saved. No. They have to give up everything, their life, to be saved. That is scriptural faith. The money was the one thing, however, that the young ruler couldn't part with, because he was covetous. He was rebelliously covetous. Only less the number of the commands to "follow me" did Jesus command to give up your life, your self (psuche), in order to have eternal life. You can't hang on to your soul (psuche) and expect Jesus to cleanse it for all eternity. For a soul to be converted (Ps 19), to be restored (Ps 23), it must by offered to God by faith. Those who hang on to their soul won't have it cleansed. The ruler had a certain kind of belief in Jesus to come to Him in the first place, but it was not a saving belief, not a substantive, deep enough faith, to sustain the test of his own possessions.
You can't believe in Jesus, plus material things. You can't serve God and mammon. You have to make that choice. And in that choice, the "certain ruler" chose his money. It's impossible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. In the same way, it's impossible for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, when he is trusting in his own riches.
The religious leaders believed that riches were a sign of some kind of good favor with God. To them, someone who was rich was certainly ready for the kingdom. Just the opposite, someone who trusted in his riches couldn't get in. It's actually impossible for anyone to be saved except by the grace of God. It's impossible for a rich man, but it is possible with God (v. 27). "All things are possible with God."
It is worth it to part with riches in order to follow Christ. You are trading something temporal for something eternal, as Jesus makes clear in vv. 29-30. Jesus ends v. 30 with: "and in the world to come life everlasting." This is not talking about some kind of life everlasting. It's life everlasting. You get life everlasting by trading in your life for that life. It is an exchange. That is faith. It is repentance. You leave something for something else. You leave something temporal for something eternal. That's how the exchange comes about.
I have noticed a discomfort that professing Christian leaders have had with the rich young ruler. Because they don't like what it says, they twist it around into something that will conform to what they want it to say. One way they will do this is by making a big deal about the opening question of the young ruler (v. 18): "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" They point out the "do" and say that is what really manifests the problem of the young ruler. "He must have believed in salvation by works." If that was the major issue there, then why didn't Jesus then say, "What do you mean 'do'? You can't 'do' anything to be saved. It's not by works." Of course, it's not by works, but Jesus didn't deal with "do" because that wasn't the problem with the rich young ruler. Sure, you could explain how that it would be a problem. He didn't see his sinfulness, so he thought he was good, which means he was trusting in his works. In that sense, yes. He wouldn't place his faith in Christ because he couldn't turn from his possessions. He was covetous.
I have no problem saying that salvation comes from obedience. It does. It is the obedience of faith. We obey the command to believe in Jesus Christ. That command to believe in Him is akin to a command to love Him and to serve Him. God is seeking for those who will worship Him. The first act of worship is the offering of someone's soul to God. That is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is also loving Him by obeying that commandment. It is serving Him because it is a sacrifice of yourself to Him. Can a person be saved who will not yield his self to God? No. He doesn't believe in the Lord. He isn't poor in spirit. He is hanging on to his own life. He wants his own way. And more.
Another way that men show their discomfort with the account of the rich young ruler is by saying that what Jesus was doing was simply showing him his sinfulness. The passage doesn't say that, "but that's what Jesus was doing, because if not, then He was requiring him to do good works to be saved, and we know Jesus wouldn't do that." It's true Jesus wasn't requiring Him to do good works to be saved. Good works can't save anyone. However, Jesus did in fact call on him to do something. He had to leave all and follow the Lord. To leave is to repent and to follow is to believe.
But what about the "sell and distribute" part? Jesus was God. If the rich young ruler in fact believed Jesus was God, then He would have no problem leaving behind his possessions for the Lord. That would have been to believe in Him. Turning this into a way for him to see his sinfulness, because he was brought to the realization of covetousness with Jesus' command, doesn't fit context. As you keep reading, it doesn't turn out that way. Jesus doesn't give us a tip that would say that's what He was doing. This man was trusting in his riches, so Jesus told him to give them up. In the next chapter, Zacchaeus had the same kind of response to Jesus (19:1-10).
Lou Martuneac in his In Defense of the Gospel, writes:
So much is wrong with this sentence. First, I don't come to this passage with that kind of predisposition. I don't go to any passage with a requirement for the passage before I get there. The passage itself provides whatever the requirement is. Second, the passage reads a cost in salvation. In fact, it is no cost, even as Jesus explains in vv. 29-30, because what you give up isn't worth anything -- it's worthless. This is how faith operates. We give up the temporal for the eternal. You can't believe in Christ plus all the idols on your shelf. You can't both continue in some kind of rebellion against Christ and believe in Him. You're either rebellious or you believe -- not both. The rebellion is described as "hold[ing] the truth in unrighteousness" in Romans 1 In Philippians 3, Paul said he counted everything in the past as loss, even as dung, that he might win Christ. Paul couldn't keep his old life plus believe in Jesus. What kind of cost is it, when you give up this world's goods for eternal life? It is in fact no cost. It is faith, however. This is one of the paradoxes of faith. It costs you nothing, but it costs you everything. Everything outside of Christ just happens to be nothing. Third, the rich young ruler passage is not about the "cost of discipleship," unless you believe that discipleship is the same as salvation (which is a discussion Thomas Ross had here beginning with this post). It is a salvation passage. To make it something other than about salvation is totally to twist it from its context, or, in other words, to come to the passage requiring that it be talking about some after conversion dedication experience (second blessing theology). This is a perversion of the passage. We should be taking an example of evangelism from the life of Jesus.
Here is another sentence from the exegesis of Martuneac (p. 184):
Ask yourself the question. If the man said, "Yes, I will leave all to follow Christ," would he have had the gift of eternal life? Is that how the passage reads? Of course it does. Martuneac creates a straw man. Is giving up your riches the means of eternal life? No. However, his riches were what were keeping him from eternal life, so by giving them up, he would receive eternal life. The riches were an idol to him. He needed to turn from that idol to serve the living God (1 Thess 1:9). So Lou's statement is false. Jesus did condition the gift of eternal life on this man's willingness to give away his riches. That's exactly how the passage reads. Lou might call this salvation by works, but it just isn't so. If repentance is a work, then faith is a work, and salvation is by works. But it isn't. Neither repentance (Acts 11:18) or faith (Philippians 1:29) are works. Turning from your idol of money, turning from your way to Jesus' way (John 14:6), is repentance. "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3, 5).
Martuneac goes on to say later in that paragraph:
What?!?! Where does it say that anywhere in that passage? Nowhere. This is total fabrication out of sheer cloth. Lou contradicts himself. Was it a sin for the rich young ruler not to sell all that he had and distribute it to the poor? You've got to make up your mind here. Is Lou saying that according to his definition of covetousness, that you have to sell all that you have and give it away, or you're covetous? Then we're all living covetous lives, and 1 Corinthians 6:10 says that no one who is covetous "shall inherit the kingdom of God." How could the man be only "realizing he's a sinner," when not selling everything and distributing it is not a sin?
The rich young ruler loved his money more than Christ. He was devoted to his money and not to Jesus. If he had to give up his money, then he wouldn't want to follow Jesus. In other words, he didn't believe in Jesus. If he believed in Jesus, he would give up his money. This is not what Lou is saying. Lou is saying that Jesus was employing a strategy, a technique, by telling this man to do something that Jesus really didn't intend for him to do, then he would find out that he really was a sinner who had not kept the law from his youth up. Covetousness was this man's sin, but in light of his disloyalty to Jesus.
At the end of Jesus' commandments in Luke 18, He didn't say, "I really didn't mean it when I commanded those things. I was just trying to get you to see your sin of covetousness." In other words, Jesus wasn't lying. He did in fact want the man to give up everything in order to follow Him, just like He did with Peter, James, and John, when He called on all them to follow Him. It wasn't just a clever way to get the man to see his sin of covetousness.
These two very different understandings of Luke 18 or the parallel passages on the rich young ruler could not both be true. One of them is perverting the teaching of the passage. This is what makes Jesus' story of the rich young ruler tell-tale for someone's doctrine of salvation.
It's impossible for an unbeliever to sacrifice. He can't do it. Jesus talked about that in His parable of the soils back in Luke 8, when speaking of the rocky soil, He said: "They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away." In time of temptation fall away. In the Matthew account in Matthew 13:6, it reads: "And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away." This hearer doesn't have genuine faith, a legitimate profession, and so he can't sustain any kind of profession when some kind of sacrifice is called for, as represented by the sun scorching. He has no root. Jesus tested the profession of the "certain ruler," and his profession could not sustain the test of Jesus' commands in Luke 18:22. If he really did believe in Jesus Christ, He could give up his stuff, even as Abraham could offer up Isaac by faith.
Men don't have to give up their money to be saved. No. They have to give up everything, their life, to be saved. That is scriptural faith. The money was the one thing, however, that the young ruler couldn't part with, because he was covetous. He was rebelliously covetous. Only less the number of the commands to "follow me" did Jesus command to give up your life, your self (psuche), in order to have eternal life. You can't hang on to your soul (psuche) and expect Jesus to cleanse it for all eternity. For a soul to be converted (Ps 19), to be restored (Ps 23), it must by offered to God by faith. Those who hang on to their soul won't have it cleansed. The ruler had a certain kind of belief in Jesus to come to Him in the first place, but it was not a saving belief, not a substantive, deep enough faith, to sustain the test of his own possessions.
You can't believe in Jesus, plus material things. You can't serve God and mammon. You have to make that choice. And in that choice, the "certain ruler" chose his money. It's impossible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. In the same way, it's impossible for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God, when he is trusting in his own riches.
The religious leaders believed that riches were a sign of some kind of good favor with God. To them, someone who was rich was certainly ready for the kingdom. Just the opposite, someone who trusted in his riches couldn't get in. It's actually impossible for anyone to be saved except by the grace of God. It's impossible for a rich man, but it is possible with God (v. 27). "All things are possible with God."
It is worth it to part with riches in order to follow Christ. You are trading something temporal for something eternal, as Jesus makes clear in vv. 29-30. Jesus ends v. 30 with: "and in the world to come life everlasting." This is not talking about some kind of life everlasting. It's life everlasting. You get life everlasting by trading in your life for that life. It is an exchange. That is faith. It is repentance. You leave something for something else. You leave something temporal for something eternal. That's how the exchange comes about.
I have noticed a discomfort that professing Christian leaders have had with the rich young ruler. Because they don't like what it says, they twist it around into something that will conform to what they want it to say. One way they will do this is by making a big deal about the opening question of the young ruler (v. 18): "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" They point out the "do" and say that is what really manifests the problem of the young ruler. "He must have believed in salvation by works." If that was the major issue there, then why didn't Jesus then say, "What do you mean 'do'? You can't 'do' anything to be saved. It's not by works." Of course, it's not by works, but Jesus didn't deal with "do" because that wasn't the problem with the rich young ruler. Sure, you could explain how that it would be a problem. He didn't see his sinfulness, so he thought he was good, which means he was trusting in his works. In that sense, yes. He wouldn't place his faith in Christ because he couldn't turn from his possessions. He was covetous.
I have no problem saying that salvation comes from obedience. It does. It is the obedience of faith. We obey the command to believe in Jesus Christ. That command to believe in Him is akin to a command to love Him and to serve Him. God is seeking for those who will worship Him. The first act of worship is the offering of someone's soul to God. That is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is also loving Him by obeying that commandment. It is serving Him because it is a sacrifice of yourself to Him. Can a person be saved who will not yield his self to God? No. He doesn't believe in the Lord. He isn't poor in spirit. He is hanging on to his own life. He wants his own way. And more.
Another way that men show their discomfort with the account of the rich young ruler is by saying that what Jesus was doing was simply showing him his sinfulness. The passage doesn't say that, "but that's what Jesus was doing, because if not, then He was requiring him to do good works to be saved, and we know Jesus wouldn't do that." It's true Jesus wasn't requiring Him to do good works to be saved. Good works can't save anyone. However, Jesus did in fact call on him to do something. He had to leave all and follow the Lord. To leave is to repent and to follow is to believe.
But what about the "sell and distribute" part? Jesus was God. If the rich young ruler in fact believed Jesus was God, then He would have no problem leaving behind his possessions for the Lord. That would have been to believe in Him. Turning this into a way for him to see his sinfulness, because he was brought to the realization of covetousness with Jesus' command, doesn't fit context. As you keep reading, it doesn't turn out that way. Jesus doesn't give us a tip that would say that's what He was doing. This man was trusting in his riches, so Jesus told him to give them up. In the next chapter, Zacchaeus had the same kind of response to Jesus (19:1-10).
Lou Martuneac in his In Defense of the Gospel, writes:
The error in the Lordship proponents' interpretation of the passage is this: they come to the passage requiring a costly salvation because they confuse the cost of discipleship with the free gift of salvation through the finished work on the cross.
So much is wrong with this sentence. First, I don't come to this passage with that kind of predisposition. I don't go to any passage with a requirement for the passage before I get there. The passage itself provides whatever the requirement is. Second, the passage reads a cost in salvation. In fact, it is no cost, even as Jesus explains in vv. 29-30, because what you give up isn't worth anything -- it's worthless. This is how faith operates. We give up the temporal for the eternal. You can't believe in Christ plus all the idols on your shelf. You can't both continue in some kind of rebellion against Christ and believe in Him. You're either rebellious or you believe -- not both. The rebellion is described as "hold[ing] the truth in unrighteousness" in Romans 1 In Philippians 3, Paul said he counted everything in the past as loss, even as dung, that he might win Christ. Paul couldn't keep his old life plus believe in Jesus. What kind of cost is it, when you give up this world's goods for eternal life? It is in fact no cost. It is faith, however. This is one of the paradoxes of faith. It costs you nothing, but it costs you everything. Everything outside of Christ just happens to be nothing. Third, the rich young ruler passage is not about the "cost of discipleship," unless you believe that discipleship is the same as salvation (which is a discussion Thomas Ross had here beginning with this post). It is a salvation passage. To make it something other than about salvation is totally to twist it from its context, or, in other words, to come to the passage requiring that it be talking about some after conversion dedication experience (second blessing theology). This is a perversion of the passage. We should be taking an example of evangelism from the life of Jesus.
Here is another sentence from the exegesis of Martuneac (p. 184):
Jesus never conditioned the gift of eternal life on this man's willingness or promise to give away his riches.
Ask yourself the question. If the man said, "Yes, I will leave all to follow Christ," would he have had the gift of eternal life? Is that how the passage reads? Of course it does. Martuneac creates a straw man. Is giving up your riches the means of eternal life? No. However, his riches were what were keeping him from eternal life, so by giving them up, he would receive eternal life. The riches were an idol to him. He needed to turn from that idol to serve the living God (1 Thess 1:9). So Lou's statement is false. Jesus did condition the gift of eternal life on this man's willingness to give away his riches. That's exactly how the passage reads. Lou might call this salvation by works, but it just isn't so. If repentance is a work, then faith is a work, and salvation is by works. But it isn't. Neither repentance (Acts 11:18) or faith (Philippians 1:29) are works. Turning from your idol of money, turning from your way to Jesus' way (John 14:6), is repentance. "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish" (Luke 13:3, 5).
Martuneac goes on to say later in that paragraph:
The Lord brought him to realize that he was a sinner who needed a sacrifice that not even all his riches and good works could buy.
What?!?! Where does it say that anywhere in that passage? Nowhere. This is total fabrication out of sheer cloth. Lou contradicts himself. Was it a sin for the rich young ruler not to sell all that he had and distribute it to the poor? You've got to make up your mind here. Is Lou saying that according to his definition of covetousness, that you have to sell all that you have and give it away, or you're covetous? Then we're all living covetous lives, and 1 Corinthians 6:10 says that no one who is covetous "shall inherit the kingdom of God." How could the man be only "realizing he's a sinner," when not selling everything and distributing it is not a sin?
The rich young ruler loved his money more than Christ. He was devoted to his money and not to Jesus. If he had to give up his money, then he wouldn't want to follow Jesus. In other words, he didn't believe in Jesus. If he believed in Jesus, he would give up his money. This is not what Lou is saying. Lou is saying that Jesus was employing a strategy, a technique, by telling this man to do something that Jesus really didn't intend for him to do, then he would find out that he really was a sinner who had not kept the law from his youth up. Covetousness was this man's sin, but in light of his disloyalty to Jesus.
At the end of Jesus' commandments in Luke 18, He didn't say, "I really didn't mean it when I commanded those things. I was just trying to get you to see your sin of covetousness." In other words, Jesus wasn't lying. He did in fact want the man to give up everything in order to follow Him, just like He did with Peter, James, and John, when He called on all them to follow Him. It wasn't just a clever way to get the man to see his sin of covetousness.
These two very different understandings of Luke 18 or the parallel passages on the rich young ruler could not both be true. One of them is perverting the teaching of the passage. This is what makes Jesus' story of the rich young ruler tell-tale for someone's doctrine of salvation.
Monday, March 18, 2013
The Rich Young Ruler: Tell-Tale Passage for Soteriology, Number One
Your take on a few passages in the New Testament will most likely tell where you fall in the spectrum of belief on the required saving response to the gospel message. I don't believe there is a more important discussion today. Nothing bothers me more than wrong teachings about salvation, some of which are found in professing evangelicalism and fundamentalism. Nothing matters more to an individual than whether he is ready for eternity or not. Being deceived about this is the most damaging thing that could occur to a person, far worse than even genocidal murder on a scale of bad. We don't want to tell someone the wrong thing about salvation. We've got to get this right. We know that Jesus and the Apostles were concerned about responses to the saving message, because that is expressed all over the New Testament. We should be too.
As I considered writing about this, I went back and looked at an email exchange I made with Lou Martuneac in order to purchase his book, In Defense of the Gospel: Biblical Answers to Lordship Salvation. My check was received on August 9, 2011, over a year and a half ago. I did read through it right away, knowing at some point I would talk about it. Now is the time.
Not only have I read Lou's book, but I had already read several of John MacArthur's books: The Gospel According to Jesus, The Gospel According to the Apostles, and Hard to Believe. A long time ago I read Charles Ryrie's So Great Salvation and Zane Hodge's Absolutely Free. For that matter, I've also read Lewis Sperry Chafer's related He That Is Spiritual, and Darrell Bock's 1989 review in BibSac. Furthermore, I waded through what Jack Hyles and Curtis Hutson wrote on the subject. The most help was preaching through the entire New Testament over 25 years and then also exposing specific salvation passages for a year and a half of Sunday mornings several years ago.
My point in starting this series isn't to comment on Lou's book. I will, but this won't be some type of critique. I would rather look at what the Bible says about salvation. Where it applies, I'll bring in In Defense of the Gospel. Lou has a concern about "lordship salvation," and so do I. There hasn't been enough consideration on Lordship in fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Lou seems to think there's too much on it.
From the beginning of Jesus' ministry, He preached, "Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." You see that in Matthew 3:2, 4:17, 10:7, Luke 10:9, 11, 11:20, and 21:31. I asked a Hyles-Anderson College student the following question, as I was going door-to-door, two weeks ago: "When Jesus preached, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," what did He mean? He didn't know. I asked him what it meant to repent, and he said, "Ask forgiveness for sins." You may think I was talking to a theological doofus, but he was actually relatively pretty sharp. When Jesus said that the kingdom was near or nigh, He was saying that the King had arrived and you're going to have to do something about that. What is it that someone does with the true King when He arrives? He receives Him as King. That's what Jesus preached, that He was King, and He needed to be received if you were to be saved. That fits in with Psalm 2, by the way.
From the beginning of Jesus' ministry, He preached, "Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." You see that in Matthew 3:2, 4:17, 10:7, Luke 10:9, 11, 11:20, and 21:31. I asked a Hyles-Anderson College student the following question, as I was going door-to-door, two weeks ago: "When Jesus preached, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," what did He mean? He didn't know. I asked him what it meant to repent, and he said, "Ask forgiveness for sins." You may think I was talking to a theological doofus, but he was actually relatively pretty sharp. When Jesus said that the kingdom was near or nigh, He was saying that the King had arrived and you're going to have to do something about that. What is it that someone does with the true King when He arrives? He receives Him as King. That's what Jesus preached, that He was King, and He needed to be received if you were to be saved. That fits in with Psalm 2, by the way.
I believe a key story in the gospels is "the rich young ruler." We'll focus on the Luke edition in 18:18-30.
The essentially unconverted Jews of Jesus' day thought the kingdom was for them. It was a given. Jesus spent much time to dispel that wrong assumption in His preaching as recorded in the middle section of Luke. The older son, representing religious Israel, was on the outside of the Father's house, and the prodigal younger son on the inside as that parable ended in Luke 15. The rich man paralleled the religious leaders of Israel and he lift up his eyes in Hell in Luke 16. Jesus spoke of the kingdom in brutal terms in Luke 17, ending with many as a feast for carnivorous birds. If we are following along, at the beginning of chapter 18, we would be wanting to be sure that we were in the kingdom, rather than the victims of the slaughter there.
In Luke 18:9, Jesus starts in with example after example, teaching illustration after illustration, to indicate the saving response to the gospel. He gives very little to no teaching on the work of Christ in salvation in them. In the first one, He models the publican, who "would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner." Jesus said He went away justified. Immediately after that example, Jesus deals with children and those becoming like children entering the kingdom of God. Human effort or righteousness couldn't be the means of entrance, because children didn't have enough of those.
At the end of chapter 18, after the "certain ruler," we get the blind man (actually two of them in the parallel gospel accounts), who cried out, calling Jesus continuously "the son of David," and had a similar response as the publican with "Lord, have mercy on me." The beginning of chapter 19 presents Zacchaeus and his response with almost no sense of his doctrinal belief, except that He was going to turn from his old way and follow Jesus, just like the blind man did. Then in Luke 19, Jesus tells still another story to illustrate the right response.
Tucked in the middle of all this is the account of the "certain ruler." From the words of this passage in Luke 18, I'm convinced that this ruler of the synagogue, a very religious man, already believed in Jesus Christ to the degree that many would see as sufficient to be saved if they didn't see later that he obviously wasn't. From the parallel accounts, he ran to Jesus and knelt down before Him. This was all very public. He called Jesus "Good Master." The Pharisees didn't believe anyone was good, but God, which is why Jesus asked the question, "Why callest thou me good?" Then He said, "None is good, save one, that is God." For all that this religious leader had done -- he believed that he had kept all the law from his youth up (v. 21) -- he still was not sure of eternal life.
The Jews believed that life came from God. If they were to have eternal life, it would come from God, because God was the source of all life. For him to come to Jesus to receive life, He thought that Jesus had it. For all that he had done, he still knew he was falling short. He knew there must be more to do to "inherit eternal life." He came to Jesus to find out.
The rich young ruler had two problems, and Jesus dealt with both of them in this passage. His first problem was not understanding His need. His righteousness was not sufficient to save himself. He needed to see the desperate condition he was in if he was going to confront his second problem. Even if he did see his need, that wouldn't assume he was saved. The ruler was obviously covetous. Jesus pinpointed that sin. He was self-righteous. He was proud.
The second problem related to His reception of Jesus Christ. He was confessing that Jesus was God and that He was the source of eternal life. He was confessing that. Confessing it doesn't mean believing it. Jesus challenged that confession. If Jesus was God, He could command. He listed commandments obviously from God that the young ruler said he had kept from his youth. Then Jesus focused on one other commandment, "Thou shalt not covet," one He left out of His original list. He commanded the young ruler: "Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me." There are four commands here, "Sell, distribute, come, and follow." Jesus ends with "follow me." This is exactly what Jesus had said in Luke 9:23-26, what Lou would call a "discipleship passage." Jesus is preaching to a lost Jew -- why would he talk about discipleship with a lost person (hmmm)? What he preached to the lost person in Luke 18 is the same that He preached in Luke 9. This is the response that should be called for in order for someone to be saved.
If you take the name of Jesus out of the equation here, the non-lordship or anti-lordship people would say that this person blew his opportunity with the young ruler. He was frontloading works. He was confusing grace. The young ruler was confessing Jesus was God and could give eternal life. Alright, if you think I'm God, in essence, Jesus was saying, then you will do what I tell you, and here's what I want. And Jesus commands him to sell, distribute, come, and follow. The young ruler wouldn't do that. Why? He wasn't desperate enough. He was too self-righteous. He was proud. He wasn't really convinced of Who Jesus was. He wasn't receiving Jesus as His Lord. What got between him and Jesus, if he was serious about obtaining eternal life, was his stuff. He valued his things, his possessions, more than He did the Lord, heaven, the kingdom of God, the King, or obtaining eternal life.
Jesus was expecting total allegiance to Him as a term of salvation. If the young ruler really did believe Jesus was God, and He believed in God for salvation, then He would do what Jesus told him to do. The young ruler must be willing to do whatever He told Him to do. This is lordship. Someone who will not "follow Jesus," does not believe in Him. He is in rebellion against God. He will not repent even though the King has come and revealed Himself.
In Luke 18 or any of the parallel passages, Jesus says nothing to the young ruler about substitutionary death or sacrificially shed blood. The assumption there is that the man already knew that He could obtain eternal life from Jesus. He wasn't willing, however, to follow Jesus Christ, to do whatever Jesus said. If you are not willing to do that, then you do not in fact believe in Jesus Christ. You don't trust in Him. You are continuing to trust yourself. You are hanging on to your own life (and your own possessions) for your own sake. Your life doesn't belong to Jesus, it belongs to yourself.
All of the above is in the context of what is required to get into the kingdom, to have eternal life. To turn it into a "discipleship" context or a "dedication" context is to rip it from its context, to confuse what is required for salvation. It is to pervert the gospel. It diminishes saving faith to the merely intellectual.
Salvation does come from believing in Jesus Christ. However, He must be the Jesus of the Bible, Who is God and is Lord. That is a clear implication of the young ruler passage in Luke 18. The non-lordship or anti-lordship people shrink or depreciate the identity of Jesus. They make Him more palatable to a worldly audience who wish to keep their lives for themselves, to in essence be saved by a less than scriptural Jesus. Lots of people want Jesus as Savior. The rich young ruler wanted eternal life from Jesus, but they don't want Him as a boss. It's the apostate of 2 Peter 2:1, who denies the Lord who bought him.
Lou gives a whole chapter to the rich young ruler in his book. He doesn't so much exegete the passage, as he attacks John MacArthur's position. Lou explains at the end of the chapter why the man wasn't saved. First, the man thought Jesus was nothing more than "a great and respected teacher" (p. 185). If he thought Jesus was only that, he wouldn't have called him "Good Master," and thought that Jesus, unlike anyone else, could bring him eternal life.
Second, Lou says that "he believed he could by "good things" (works) earn for himself eternal life" (p. 186). That's not true. The rich young ruler believed he had kept all the law since he was a youth and he still didn't think he had obtained eternal life. That's why he came to Jesus. This is eisegesis by Lou. He's just reading into the text.
Third, Lou says "he did not remain with Christ and by faith accept Him as Savior" (p. 186). The text says nothing about that. Nothing. There is nowhere in that text that would have you conclude what Lou says. The man believed in Jesus as Savior, believed that Jesus could provide him the way of eternal life, or in other words, be saved. A plain reading of that text would have one conclude that the young ruler left sorrowful because He didn't want to sell, distribute, come, and follow. He wanted to keep his life for himself, because He didn't believe in Jesus.
The story in Luke 18 provides an example of how Jesus dealt with unbelievers. If they professed to believe in Him in some fashion or to some degree, He challenged that. In this case, Jesus manifested the rebellious heart of the young ruler by commanding him to sell, distribute, come, and follow. Are people saved by selling, distributing, coming, and following? No. But if they won't do those, then they don't believe in Jesus Christ. His willingness to do those would have manifested a true saving faith. And I say "saving faith," not works. Those who won't believe in Jesus Christ as Lord are not saved, just like the rich young ruler wasn't saved.
Don't believe it if someone (like Lou) says that what I just explained is adding works to grace. Salvation is only by grace through faith. However, the faith must be in Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, not a made up one that makes it more convenient for modern, worldly evangelistic methods. You want people to be clear about who Jesus is. If Jesus was in fact the King, which He was, and the rich young ruler believed in Him, He would do whatever He said. He didn't want to do that because He wanted to hang on to His riches. And then Jesus goes on to talk about that after having that experience.
I know this is going to sound rough, but Lou perverts the passage and the words and intentions of Jesus Christ. The man came to Jesus to ask how to obtain eternal life. Do you think that Jesus was telling him what he needed to know or what? Look at the little phrase between "sell, distribute" and "come, follow me." "Thou shalt have treasure in heaven." If he would "sell, distribute, come, and follow," he would have treasure in heaven. That's what Jesus said. Lou would explain away what Jesus said and turn what Jesus said into salvation by works. No. The rich young ruler would never believe in Jesus because he loved his possessions too much. Lou mocks the idea of giving up his possessions to be saved. "No one has to give up his possessions, does he?" Jesus said he did. He has to give up everything. You can't put Jesus on the shelf with all your other Gods -- He must be alone there -- if you believe in Him.
The rich young ruler presents a major problem for those who wish to hijack the salvation explanations of Jesus and turn them into something more convenient to superficial professions of faith.
More to Come
The essentially unconverted Jews of Jesus' day thought the kingdom was for them. It was a given. Jesus spent much time to dispel that wrong assumption in His preaching as recorded in the middle section of Luke. The older son, representing religious Israel, was on the outside of the Father's house, and the prodigal younger son on the inside as that parable ended in Luke 15. The rich man paralleled the religious leaders of Israel and he lift up his eyes in Hell in Luke 16. Jesus spoke of the kingdom in brutal terms in Luke 17, ending with many as a feast for carnivorous birds. If we are following along, at the beginning of chapter 18, we would be wanting to be sure that we were in the kingdom, rather than the victims of the slaughter there.
In Luke 18:9, Jesus starts in with example after example, teaching illustration after illustration, to indicate the saving response to the gospel. He gives very little to no teaching on the work of Christ in salvation in them. In the first one, He models the publican, who "would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner." Jesus said He went away justified. Immediately after that example, Jesus deals with children and those becoming like children entering the kingdom of God. Human effort or righteousness couldn't be the means of entrance, because children didn't have enough of those.
At the end of chapter 18, after the "certain ruler," we get the blind man (actually two of them in the parallel gospel accounts), who cried out, calling Jesus continuously "the son of David," and had a similar response as the publican with "Lord, have mercy on me." The beginning of chapter 19 presents Zacchaeus and his response with almost no sense of his doctrinal belief, except that He was going to turn from his old way and follow Jesus, just like the blind man did. Then in Luke 19, Jesus tells still another story to illustrate the right response.
Tucked in the middle of all this is the account of the "certain ruler." From the words of this passage in Luke 18, I'm convinced that this ruler of the synagogue, a very religious man, already believed in Jesus Christ to the degree that many would see as sufficient to be saved if they didn't see later that he obviously wasn't. From the parallel accounts, he ran to Jesus and knelt down before Him. This was all very public. He called Jesus "Good Master." The Pharisees didn't believe anyone was good, but God, which is why Jesus asked the question, "Why callest thou me good?" Then He said, "None is good, save one, that is God." For all that this religious leader had done -- he believed that he had kept all the law from his youth up (v. 21) -- he still was not sure of eternal life.
The Jews believed that life came from God. If they were to have eternal life, it would come from God, because God was the source of all life. For him to come to Jesus to receive life, He thought that Jesus had it. For all that he had done, he still knew he was falling short. He knew there must be more to do to "inherit eternal life." He came to Jesus to find out.
The rich young ruler had two problems, and Jesus dealt with both of them in this passage. His first problem was not understanding His need. His righteousness was not sufficient to save himself. He needed to see the desperate condition he was in if he was going to confront his second problem. Even if he did see his need, that wouldn't assume he was saved. The ruler was obviously covetous. Jesus pinpointed that sin. He was self-righteous. He was proud.
The second problem related to His reception of Jesus Christ. He was confessing that Jesus was God and that He was the source of eternal life. He was confessing that. Confessing it doesn't mean believing it. Jesus challenged that confession. If Jesus was God, He could command. He listed commandments obviously from God that the young ruler said he had kept from his youth. Then Jesus focused on one other commandment, "Thou shalt not covet," one He left out of His original list. He commanded the young ruler: "Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me." There are four commands here, "Sell, distribute, come, and follow." Jesus ends with "follow me." This is exactly what Jesus had said in Luke 9:23-26, what Lou would call a "discipleship passage." Jesus is preaching to a lost Jew -- why would he talk about discipleship with a lost person (hmmm)? What he preached to the lost person in Luke 18 is the same that He preached in Luke 9. This is the response that should be called for in order for someone to be saved.
If you take the name of Jesus out of the equation here, the non-lordship or anti-lordship people would say that this person blew his opportunity with the young ruler. He was frontloading works. He was confusing grace. The young ruler was confessing Jesus was God and could give eternal life. Alright, if you think I'm God, in essence, Jesus was saying, then you will do what I tell you, and here's what I want. And Jesus commands him to sell, distribute, come, and follow. The young ruler wouldn't do that. Why? He wasn't desperate enough. He was too self-righteous. He was proud. He wasn't really convinced of Who Jesus was. He wasn't receiving Jesus as His Lord. What got between him and Jesus, if he was serious about obtaining eternal life, was his stuff. He valued his things, his possessions, more than He did the Lord, heaven, the kingdom of God, the King, or obtaining eternal life.
Jesus was expecting total allegiance to Him as a term of salvation. If the young ruler really did believe Jesus was God, and He believed in God for salvation, then He would do what Jesus told him to do. The young ruler must be willing to do whatever He told Him to do. This is lordship. Someone who will not "follow Jesus," does not believe in Him. He is in rebellion against God. He will not repent even though the King has come and revealed Himself.
In Luke 18 or any of the parallel passages, Jesus says nothing to the young ruler about substitutionary death or sacrificially shed blood. The assumption there is that the man already knew that He could obtain eternal life from Jesus. He wasn't willing, however, to follow Jesus Christ, to do whatever Jesus said. If you are not willing to do that, then you do not in fact believe in Jesus Christ. You don't trust in Him. You are continuing to trust yourself. You are hanging on to your own life (and your own possessions) for your own sake. Your life doesn't belong to Jesus, it belongs to yourself.
All of the above is in the context of what is required to get into the kingdom, to have eternal life. To turn it into a "discipleship" context or a "dedication" context is to rip it from its context, to confuse what is required for salvation. It is to pervert the gospel. It diminishes saving faith to the merely intellectual.
Salvation does come from believing in Jesus Christ. However, He must be the Jesus of the Bible, Who is God and is Lord. That is a clear implication of the young ruler passage in Luke 18. The non-lordship or anti-lordship people shrink or depreciate the identity of Jesus. They make Him more palatable to a worldly audience who wish to keep their lives for themselves, to in essence be saved by a less than scriptural Jesus. Lots of people want Jesus as Savior. The rich young ruler wanted eternal life from Jesus, but they don't want Him as a boss. It's the apostate of 2 Peter 2:1, who denies the Lord who bought him.
Lou gives a whole chapter to the rich young ruler in his book. He doesn't so much exegete the passage, as he attacks John MacArthur's position. Lou explains at the end of the chapter why the man wasn't saved. First, the man thought Jesus was nothing more than "a great and respected teacher" (p. 185). If he thought Jesus was only that, he wouldn't have called him "Good Master," and thought that Jesus, unlike anyone else, could bring him eternal life.
Second, Lou says that "he believed he could by "good things" (works) earn for himself eternal life" (p. 186). That's not true. The rich young ruler believed he had kept all the law since he was a youth and he still didn't think he had obtained eternal life. That's why he came to Jesus. This is eisegesis by Lou. He's just reading into the text.
Third, Lou says "he did not remain with Christ and by faith accept Him as Savior" (p. 186). The text says nothing about that. Nothing. There is nowhere in that text that would have you conclude what Lou says. The man believed in Jesus as Savior, believed that Jesus could provide him the way of eternal life, or in other words, be saved. A plain reading of that text would have one conclude that the young ruler left sorrowful because He didn't want to sell, distribute, come, and follow. He wanted to keep his life for himself, because He didn't believe in Jesus.
The story in Luke 18 provides an example of how Jesus dealt with unbelievers. If they professed to believe in Him in some fashion or to some degree, He challenged that. In this case, Jesus manifested the rebellious heart of the young ruler by commanding him to sell, distribute, come, and follow. Are people saved by selling, distributing, coming, and following? No. But if they won't do those, then they don't believe in Jesus Christ. His willingness to do those would have manifested a true saving faith. And I say "saving faith," not works. Those who won't believe in Jesus Christ as Lord are not saved, just like the rich young ruler wasn't saved.
Don't believe it if someone (like Lou) says that what I just explained is adding works to grace. Salvation is only by grace through faith. However, the faith must be in Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, not a made up one that makes it more convenient for modern, worldly evangelistic methods. You want people to be clear about who Jesus is. If Jesus was in fact the King, which He was, and the rich young ruler believed in Him, He would do whatever He said. He didn't want to do that because He wanted to hang on to His riches. And then Jesus goes on to talk about that after having that experience.
I know this is going to sound rough, but Lou perverts the passage and the words and intentions of Jesus Christ. The man came to Jesus to ask how to obtain eternal life. Do you think that Jesus was telling him what he needed to know or what? Look at the little phrase between "sell, distribute" and "come, follow me." "Thou shalt have treasure in heaven." If he would "sell, distribute, come, and follow," he would have treasure in heaven. That's what Jesus said. Lou would explain away what Jesus said and turn what Jesus said into salvation by works. No. The rich young ruler would never believe in Jesus because he loved his possessions too much. Lou mocks the idea of giving up his possessions to be saved. "No one has to give up his possessions, does he?" Jesus said he did. He has to give up everything. You can't put Jesus on the shelf with all your other Gods -- He must be alone there -- if you believe in Him.
The rich young ruler presents a major problem for those who wish to hijack the salvation explanations of Jesus and turn them into something more convenient to superficial professions of faith.
More to Come
Friday, March 15, 2013
“The just shall live by faith”— A Study of the Relationship of Faith to Salvation in its Justifying, Sanctifying, and Glorifying Fulness, part 6
In Genesis 15:6, Abraham was counted righteous.
The verb employed[i]
specifies that the patriarch was accounted or reckoned as righteous; the imputation of righteousness, rather
than an infusion of righteousness, is in view. Many texts with the word clearly speak of imputation or
accounting,[ii]
in many others the idea of making, transforming, or infusing is evidently
impossible,[iii]
and no passages with the verb in question clearly speak of any kind of
infusion. When Phinehas’ stand for
Jehovah and against Baalpeor was reckoned to him as righteousness (Psalm
106:31), the Divine act was certainly an accounting of Phinehas’ act as
righteous, rather than infusing goodness into or transforming his act into a
good one. Likewise, when Nehemiah
made men treasurers because they were “counted faithful” (Nehemiah 13:13),[iv]
the accounting did not make the men faithful or infuse faithfulness into them,
but was an accounting that they were indeed faithful men. Thus, Genesis 15:6 speaks of the legal[v]
reckoning of Abraham as righteous.
He was reckoned righteous at the judgment bar of God, rather than in the
eyes of men, or in some other way, for Jehovah was the One who accounted the
patriarch righteous. The opposite
of a man having righteousness accounted to him, as in Genesis 15:6, is to have
iniquity imputed (2 Samuel 19:19).
One who has blood imputed to him is reckoned as being guilty of shedding
blood (Leviticus 17:4), while the benefit of sacrificial offering in expiation is
imputed when received in the proper manner, but not otherwise (Leviticus
7:18); by imputation one is
reckoned as and treated as the possessor of whatever is imputed. Thus, when Abraham was reckoned as
righteous in Genesis 15:6, his being accounted righteous, rather than his
personal acquisition of inward holiness, is in view. Abraham, and all the righteous from the time of the first
announcement of the gospel in Genesis 3:15, acknowledged their need for
gratuiously imputed righteousness, and the Divine provision of such in the
Messiah, through their offering of animal sacrifices, as ordained by God from
the beginning (Genesis 3:20-21; 4:4);
the blessed substitution that merited the imputation of an alien
righteousness, historically accomplished on the cross, not salvation by
personal merit, was manifestly set forth in the sacrifical types. Similarly, David records: “Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity,”[vi]
the man to whom, although sinful in himself, righteousness instead of iniquity
is Divinely imputed, whose “transgression is forgiven, whose
sin is covered.” This man is he who has received David’s
call to all nations to faith in God’s “Son,” for “blessed are all they that put their trust in him” (Psalm 2:12), even
as all are blessed who hope (Psalm 146:5) or trust in Jehovah.[vii] Thus, “faith was reckoned to Abraham
for righteousness” (Romans 4:9)[viii]
in a legal or judicial sense. Genesis 15:6 refers solely to an imputed
righteousness. The outward
righteousness of those imputed righteous, the outward evidential just character
manifested in them, is a consequent that follows from the receipt of imputed
righteousness, and faith, not as a meritorious instrument, but because it
embraces God and receives all freely from Him, is the root of spiritual life in
all the people of God.
The syntax of Psalm 106:31 is
very similar to that of Genesis 15:6 in its account of reckoning. Concerning
Psalm 106:31, John Gill notes:
And that was counted unto him for righteousness,
&c. Not for his justifying
righteousness before God; for all the works of righteousness done by the best
of men cannot justify them before him, much less a single action: but his
executing judgment in the manner he did, or slaying the above two persons, was
esteemed a righteous action by the Lord himself; who upon it caused the plague
to cease, and likewise gave to Phinehas the covenant of an everlasting
priesthood, and to his posterity; whereby the action had eternal honour put
upon it, and was sufficiently secured from the calumny of men; who might condemn
it as a rash action done by a private person, assuming the office of a public
magistrate; and as being a cruel one, not giving the criminals time for
repentance. But all this is set aside by the testimony of God himself,
approving of it; and so it continues to be esteemed, as it is said it should, unto
all generations for evermore:
whenever it is spoken of, it is spoken of with commendation, as a righteous
action, as expressive of true zeal for the Lord of hosts.
Likewise, Keil &
Delitzsch note:
This act of zeal for [Jehovah], which compensated for
Israel’s unfaithfulness, was accounted unto [Phinehas] for righteousness, by
his being rewarded for it with the priesthood unto everlasting ages, Num.
25:10–13. This accounting of a work for righteousness is only apparently
contradictory to Gen. 15:5f.: it was indeed an act which sprang from a
constancy in faith [cf. Psalm 106:24], and one which obtained for him the
acceptation of a righteous man for the sake of this upon which it was based, by
proving him to be such.
Concerning
Psalm 106:31 “we should compare for the expression Genesis 15:6, the only
passage where it occurs, and for the subject, Deuteronomy 6:25; 24:13 . . .
Psalm 24:5. The language does not
refer to the first justification, but to
the second, to the good works of
one already in a state of grace, by which he obtains from God, who recompenses
every one according to his works, a reward of grace, as Phinehas obtained on
the present occasion the priesthood for his family, comp. Numbers 25:13” (Comment
on Psalm 106:31, Commentary on the Psalms, vol. 3., E. W. Hengstenberg).
That is, Phinehas’ act could only be accounted as righteous because
Phinehas’ person had already been accounted righteous through Jehovah’s
gratuitous justification; Phinehas
had Christ as his Mediator, as one who sanctified the iniquity that otherwise
would corrupt even the holiest actions of believers and prevent them from being
acceptable in the sight of Jehovah (Exodus 28:38).
[i]
bvj. The
complete list of references in the Old Testament is: Genesis 15:6; 31:15;
38:15; 50:20; Exodus 31:4; 35:32; Leviticus 7:18; 17:4; 25:27, 31, 50, 52;
27:18, 23; Numbers 18:27, 30; 23:9; Deuteronomy 2:11, 20; Joshua 13:3; Esther
8:3; 9:24–25; 1 Samuel 1:13; 18:25; 2 Samuel 4:2; 14:13–14; 19:19; 1 Kings
10:21; 2 Kings 12:15; 22:7; 2 Chronicles 2:14; 9:20; Nehemiah 6:2, 6; 13:13;
Job 6:26; 13:24; 18:3; 19:11, 15; 33:10; 35:2; 41:27, 29, 32; Psalm 10:2;
21:11; 32:2; 35:4, 20; 36:4; 40:17; 41:7; 44:22; 52:2; 73:16; 77:5; 88:4;
106:31; 119:59; 140:2, 4; 144:3; Proverbs 16:9, 30; 17:28; 24:8; 27:14; Isaiah
2:22; 5:28; 10:7; 13:17; 29:16–17; 32:15; 33:8; 40:15, 17; 53:3–4; Jeremiah
11:19; 18:8, 11, 18; 23:27; 26:3; 29:11; 36:3; 48:2; 49:20, 30; 50:45;
Lamentations 2:8; 4:2; Ezekiel 11:2; 38:10; Daniel 11:24–25; Hosea 7:15; 8:12;
Amos 6:5; Jonah 1:4; Micah 2:1, 3; Nahum 1:9, 11; Zechariah 7:10; 8:17; Malachi
3:16.
[ii]
Genesis
31:15; Leviticus 7:18; 17:4; Numbers 18:27, 30; Numbers 23:9; 2 Samuel 19:19; 2
Kings 12:15; 22:7; Job 13:24; 18:3; 19:11, 15; 33:10; Psalm 32:2; 106:31;
Proverbs 17:28; Isaiah 29:16-17; 32:15; 40:15, 17; Lamentations 4:2.
[iii]
Genesis
38:15; Leviticus 25:27; Deuteronomy 2:11, 20; 1 Samuel 1:13; 18:25; 1 Kings
10:21; 2 Chronicles 9:20; Nehemiah 13:13; Job 13:24; 18:3; 19:11, 15; 33:10;
41:27, 29; Psalm 77:5; 88:4; Proverbs 17:28; Isaiah 13:17; 53:4; Jeremiah 36:3;
Hosea 8:12; Zechariah 7:10; 8:17;
[v]
cf.
Leviticus 7:18; 17:4; 25:31; Numbers 18:27, 30; Joshua 13:3; 2 Samuel 4:2; 2
Samuel 19:19; Psalm 32:2;
[vi]
Psalm
32:2; Romans 4:1-8.
[vii]
Psalm
34:8; 84:12.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
A Modern Perversion of the Temple
This could be a part two to Monday's post that dealt with Shepherd's Conference and Carl Trueman and more.
The Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem to great exaltation, as superficial as it might have been. It was true. He was King. He was Lord. He had a royal agenda. He rejected the religion of the day. That night He stayed in Bethany, fully preparing to come back down to Jerusalem the two miles the next morning to cleanse the temple. The temple had become something other than its intended purpose.
When Jesus was twelve and in the temple, we heard that His purpose was His Father's business, which was in the temple. Jesus didn't come to attempt to disabuse Israel of Roman dominion. However, He did go to the temple to cleanse it. And what was the problem there?
The temple had moved away from its intended purpose, which was worship. No doubt they had a form of worship. They had a form, a kind of shell of God's intention. However, the temple had become a den for those not there to worship. What went on at the temple was called prayer. Everything up to prayer was to get to prayer. All of the sacrifices were to bring people to the point of fellowship with God, but the end was prayer, communion with God.
The way the religious leaders of Jesus' day perverted worship in the temple was not the only way it could be perverted. It was one of the forms that might replace true worship. Elijah met another kind on Mt. Carmel with the religious leaders there allowed in the land. Of course, Moses and Joshua came down from Mt. Sinai and heard and then saw another corrupt form.
The temple today is God's assembly. Paul says the church at Corinth was God's temple: ye are the temple of God. Paul said that the church at Ephesus was the "house of the living God." Can the sacrifices of the New Testament temple become perverted? Sure. Instead of a house of prayer, it becomes a den of entertainment and show and self-gratification and inordinate affection.
We can trace what occurred in history to see how it occurred. We can go back and see how that the temple in Jerusalem became a den of a different kind. We go back to the mid 19th century and praise became a new measure. Popular music, albeit more like carnival or circus music, became the draw of the unbelieving crowd in order to arouse them. Inserted in place of praise was a new measure. Forms were chosen that would attract and stimulate. Whether God was pleased wasn't the consideration. Men were not sinners who needed cleansing so much as they were sinners who needed kindling or instigation, the right bait, and music, a biblical element could suit that purpose.
You can keep following the path of the above technique or strategy and see how it created a new job set. Not moneychanging necessarily, but you'll still find money being changed. The church growth movement brings in the money for the books, the Christian music industry, the hit songs. It's a new kind of priesthood, the invention of an innovative new position to go with a whole new philosophy in the temple of God. It has perverted the temple of God.
And now we have rap and rock and grunge in church. Not only do we have the corruption and perversion, but we've changed the purpose of God's house. You hear the trap set and you have sensual styles and the blues chords. The attraction has changed. And people now think it's the spirit of God. They defend this stuff like a dog fights for the chow left in the bottom of his bowl. Don't touch this music. It's about God, ya know.
The people are now destroyed by this lack of knowledge. They get to the end, the point of the reconciliation, the death on the cross, and the advocacy, the worship, and they miss that for the bowl of pottage. We've turned the temple of God into a den. The defense is similar to what you see at the end of Luke 19, where the religious folk are angry. They want to keep it going. It's profitable. It's successful. Today it's entertaining. It replaces true spiritual worship with a feeling of passion that is very much akin to the arousal someone gets at any rock concert. You put in Christian words, which happens to be blasphemous to God's house and name, and the people think it's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't accept that. He works, but it is more in the way of indignation, like Jesus had.
Have you noticed that Jesus' time in Jerusalem began in His ministry with cleansing the temple and ended with cleansing it? If we are to be transformed by the face of Jesus in the gospels, should the leadership of today's temple not also be cleansing it? What particular den has the temple become today? What corruption has been allowed into the worship?
So here we are. Who will turn over the tables? Who will man the whip?
***************
The Lord Jesus entered Jerusalem to great exaltation, as superficial as it might have been. It was true. He was King. He was Lord. He had a royal agenda. He rejected the religion of the day. That night He stayed in Bethany, fully preparing to come back down to Jerusalem the two miles the next morning to cleanse the temple. The temple had become something other than its intended purpose.
When Jesus was twelve and in the temple, we heard that His purpose was His Father's business, which was in the temple. Jesus didn't come to attempt to disabuse Israel of Roman dominion. However, He did go to the temple to cleanse it. And what was the problem there?
The temple had moved away from its intended purpose, which was worship. No doubt they had a form of worship. They had a form, a kind of shell of God's intention. However, the temple had become a den for those not there to worship. What went on at the temple was called prayer. Everything up to prayer was to get to prayer. All of the sacrifices were to bring people to the point of fellowship with God, but the end was prayer, communion with God.
The way the religious leaders of Jesus' day perverted worship in the temple was not the only way it could be perverted. It was one of the forms that might replace true worship. Elijah met another kind on Mt. Carmel with the religious leaders there allowed in the land. Of course, Moses and Joshua came down from Mt. Sinai and heard and then saw another corrupt form.
The temple today is God's assembly. Paul says the church at Corinth was God's temple: ye are the temple of God. Paul said that the church at Ephesus was the "house of the living God." Can the sacrifices of the New Testament temple become perverted? Sure. Instead of a house of prayer, it becomes a den of entertainment and show and self-gratification and inordinate affection.
We can trace what occurred in history to see how it occurred. We can go back and see how that the temple in Jerusalem became a den of a different kind. We go back to the mid 19th century and praise became a new measure. Popular music, albeit more like carnival or circus music, became the draw of the unbelieving crowd in order to arouse them. Inserted in place of praise was a new measure. Forms were chosen that would attract and stimulate. Whether God was pleased wasn't the consideration. Men were not sinners who needed cleansing so much as they were sinners who needed kindling or instigation, the right bait, and music, a biblical element could suit that purpose.
You can keep following the path of the above technique or strategy and see how it created a new job set. Not moneychanging necessarily, but you'll still find money being changed. The church growth movement brings in the money for the books, the Christian music industry, the hit songs. It's a new kind of priesthood, the invention of an innovative new position to go with a whole new philosophy in the temple of God. It has perverted the temple of God.
And now we have rap and rock and grunge in church. Not only do we have the corruption and perversion, but we've changed the purpose of God's house. You hear the trap set and you have sensual styles and the blues chords. The attraction has changed. And people now think it's the spirit of God. They defend this stuff like a dog fights for the chow left in the bottom of his bowl. Don't touch this music. It's about God, ya know.
The people are now destroyed by this lack of knowledge. They get to the end, the point of the reconciliation, the death on the cross, and the advocacy, the worship, and they miss that for the bowl of pottage. We've turned the temple of God into a den. The defense is similar to what you see at the end of Luke 19, where the religious folk are angry. They want to keep it going. It's profitable. It's successful. Today it's entertaining. It replaces true spiritual worship with a feeling of passion that is very much akin to the arousal someone gets at any rock concert. You put in Christian words, which happens to be blasphemous to God's house and name, and the people think it's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't accept that. He works, but it is more in the way of indignation, like Jesus had.
Have you noticed that Jesus' time in Jerusalem began in His ministry with cleansing the temple and ended with cleansing it? If we are to be transformed by the face of Jesus in the gospels, should the leadership of today's temple not also be cleansing it? What particular den has the temple become today? What corruption has been allowed into the worship?
So here we are. Who will turn over the tables? Who will man the whip?
Monday, March 11, 2013
An Irretrievable Irony
Last week, I watched a little of the live stream of the Shepherd's Conference in Southern California. It was the technically best live streaming I had ever seen, very convenient. I saw very little because of work and schedule, but I did see a little music, some of a panel discussion, and some of an Albert Mohler sermon. I downloaded and listened to Phil Johnson's session, while doing electrical work at our house.
My evaluation of the Grace Community Church (GCC) music, which I've always heard is very conservative and hasn't moved from that and is like a fundamentalist church, is not good. I say that as someone who really wanted to like it. I wasn't trying to research it. It was what came on when I had any time to watch the live stream. What I got to see of it was the rock group that played one morning for several numbers. I'm not kidding that it was a rock group. The rock group led the congregational music. In pictures and on audio, I've seen that group play at a Resolved Conference, where that music was supposed to be exclusively Resolved music, not something that segued to other compartments of GCC. It was peculiar, when they panned the audience of pastors, to see the pastors "rocking" to that music. They were "rocking" like at a rock concert, which shouldn't surprise anyone, since it was rock music. I understand that with certain types of rock music that people "rock" more, but they were definitely "rocking" as part of their "worship."
Without doubt, when "rock" and "worship" come together like they did at the Shepherd's Conference there at GCC, it's akin to, if not synonymous with, the ecstasy of Corinth. They are confusing the Holy Spirit with the affects of the rock music, like the Corinthians were with their ecstasy. Believe me. That swaying is not caused by the Holy Spirit. All that eye-clenching and wagging of the head is not the Holy Spirit. It is not religious affection. It is what Jonathan Edwards called passion. So GCC is a part of this kind of destruction of discernment, while claiming to be almost headquarters for discernment.
Besides when the rock group played the one morning I watched, the regular evening congregational worship under the leadership of the regular song leader at GCC was conservative: organ, piano, and orchestra with no rock beat. The hymns were all old hymns that I saw (and I saw a small percentage). When they added a soloist, and I saw a woman and a man both sing, they also added the rock rhythm and instrumentation, and the sensuality and entertainment/performance aspects. This doesn't have to happen with a solo, but the two they chose, they purposefully included these features.
I want to pause for a moment to anticipate those who will use mockery as their argument here. You can go ahead, but you're wrong. You should think about what I'm saying, because it's right.
I'm going to get to the irony. Just bear with me. Everything so far matters to the discussion.
Most of this is in order, but for a moment, I'm going out of order. Very recently, someone popular with conservative evangelicals, Carl Trueman, produced with Todd Pruitt an online audio called Birth of the Cool, in which he talked about the importance of being "cool" in evangelicalism today. In the initial conversation between the two, they took an excursion into their love of rock and roll music, especially the Rolling Stones. This started their negative assertions about churchmen needing to be cool. In their banter, they talked about the Rolling Stone mega-hit, Satisfaction, which lyrics refer to sexual frustration, and was controversial when it was first sung because of its sexual content. I learned of the Trueman audio from a tweet by Scott Aniol of Religious Affections.
As I watched only the beginning of Albert Mohler's sermon, I wiki'ed Mohler and read his bio. At the beginning of his Shepherd's Conference session, he proclaimed the value of hymn books and the importance of the old hymns. About that time, I got to the bottom of his wiki bio as I listened and there saw a sermon he had preached, entitled, The Nature of True Beauty, so I clicked on it, and stopped watching the Shepherd's Conference, but listened to that instead. He had preached it at the Capital Hill Baptist Church, where Mark Dever is the pastor. I was amazed by what I heard. I believe it. And now I'm ready to talk about irony with you, and what I meant by irretrievable.
Mohler in his sermon in Washington DC inextricably tied together truth, goodness, and beauty. If you deny or violate beauty, you do it to the other two. He was placing beauty, in essence orthopathy, on the same level as truth and goodness. I agree. Relativistic beauty yields relativistic truth and goodness. God is One. You can't give up one without giving up the others. They are indivisible. Attack or corruption of beauty is the same upon truth and goodness. Again, you just can't separate one from the other two.
The irony is found in the GCC emphasis on truth, so much found in John MacArthur's books, especially recently as we've seen truth become an even greater casualty of our culture. The irony is found in a conference that so professes to protect sheep from error that violates or denies objective beauty. Carl Trueman introduces a talk about "cool" with an endorsement of the Rolling Stones and Satisfaction. Scott Aniol tweets it. Dever advocates rap. Talking about the Rolling Stones smacks of "cool." The rock group in the morning of the Shepherd's Conference with its ecstatic disposition and hip appearance: the eye clenching, the Elton John piano style, the sensuality, the soul patches, the swaying. Everything means something, but this screamed out a rejection of objective beauty. By forfeiting beauty, GCC, Trueman, Dever, and unfortunately Mohler, all also forsake truth and goodness. You've got all these people "fighting for truth," that are undermining truth because of their capitulation on beauty.
I believe Mohler preaches about beauty, because it really is what he thinks. I suspect that he doesn't see people as with him on it, being supportive of what he's saying, but maybe he'll be able to get something started, work on this incrementally, perhaps like he's tried to change Southern Seminary from liberal to conservative. Truth and goodness will not come without beauty. The beauty is actually where the biggest violations are, because it relates to the affections. Love must in fact be love in love for God, and God must be God. You can't love God like someone "loves" his girlfriend or even a sirloin steak. The God of the Bible must be worshiped in His beauty and the denial or ignorance or perversion of His beauty is false and bad, as in not true and not good.
You should be able to see the irony here. There is so much of it. The irony is in the protection of sheep by shepherds, the praise of beauty, the decrying of "coolness," and the appeal for truth from people who won't separate the beautiful from the ugly. God is worshiped in the beauty of His holiness. Worship of God separates from the mundane, the kitsch, the crass, the worldly, the common, and the profane. It certainly doesn't make provision for the flesh. It won't "rock." It is sacred. It rings of God. Rock music doesn't do that. Any Christian hoping to disabuse a people from "cool" will not endorse or like the Rolling Stones. It's ludicrous. It says that these are people who are either rebellious or they don't know what they're talking about.
The other option that I can hear from an imagined defender is that no style of music communicates anything inherently moral. That is not a biblical position or a historic Christian position. That's what Mohler was preaching against in his beauty sermon. There is objective beauty and objective ugliness or other non-beautiful qualities in music. It isn't amoral. This attack on beauty is an attack on the truth and goodness. If you don't stand for the one, for beauty, then you don't stand for truth and goodness either. Don't say that you do.
If you are Albert Mohler, then be clear about this. Don't say that truth is on par with goodness and beauty, unless you believe it. And if you believe it, it can't be just lipservice. Do something about it.
How is it an irretrievable irony? You can't retrieve truth and goodness without repenting over beauty. Repentance, complete conversion, is what is needed here. We don't need half measures. We don't need hinting sermons, hopeful to plant some sort of seed. We certainly don't need sarcasm and mockery and marginalizing of the one who is pointing it out, which, it's too bad, is the expectation here. We need total repudiation that doesn't nibble around the edges. Truth and goodness are not retrievable without it.
My evaluation of the Grace Community Church (GCC) music, which I've always heard is very conservative and hasn't moved from that and is like a fundamentalist church, is not good. I say that as someone who really wanted to like it. I wasn't trying to research it. It was what came on when I had any time to watch the live stream. What I got to see of it was the rock group that played one morning for several numbers. I'm not kidding that it was a rock group. The rock group led the congregational music. In pictures and on audio, I've seen that group play at a Resolved Conference, where that music was supposed to be exclusively Resolved music, not something that segued to other compartments of GCC. It was peculiar, when they panned the audience of pastors, to see the pastors "rocking" to that music. They were "rocking" like at a rock concert, which shouldn't surprise anyone, since it was rock music. I understand that with certain types of rock music that people "rock" more, but they were definitely "rocking" as part of their "worship."
Without doubt, when "rock" and "worship" come together like they did at the Shepherd's Conference there at GCC, it's akin to, if not synonymous with, the ecstasy of Corinth. They are confusing the Holy Spirit with the affects of the rock music, like the Corinthians were with their ecstasy. Believe me. That swaying is not caused by the Holy Spirit. All that eye-clenching and wagging of the head is not the Holy Spirit. It is not religious affection. It is what Jonathan Edwards called passion. So GCC is a part of this kind of destruction of discernment, while claiming to be almost headquarters for discernment.
Besides when the rock group played the one morning I watched, the regular evening congregational worship under the leadership of the regular song leader at GCC was conservative: organ, piano, and orchestra with no rock beat. The hymns were all old hymns that I saw (and I saw a small percentage). When they added a soloist, and I saw a woman and a man both sing, they also added the rock rhythm and instrumentation, and the sensuality and entertainment/performance aspects. This doesn't have to happen with a solo, but the two they chose, they purposefully included these features.
I want to pause for a moment to anticipate those who will use mockery as their argument here. You can go ahead, but you're wrong. You should think about what I'm saying, because it's right.
I'm going to get to the irony. Just bear with me. Everything so far matters to the discussion.
Most of this is in order, but for a moment, I'm going out of order. Very recently, someone popular with conservative evangelicals, Carl Trueman, produced with Todd Pruitt an online audio called Birth of the Cool, in which he talked about the importance of being "cool" in evangelicalism today. In the initial conversation between the two, they took an excursion into their love of rock and roll music, especially the Rolling Stones. This started their negative assertions about churchmen needing to be cool. In their banter, they talked about the Rolling Stone mega-hit, Satisfaction, which lyrics refer to sexual frustration, and was controversial when it was first sung because of its sexual content. I learned of the Trueman audio from a tweet by Scott Aniol of Religious Affections.
As I watched only the beginning of Albert Mohler's sermon, I wiki'ed Mohler and read his bio. At the beginning of his Shepherd's Conference session, he proclaimed the value of hymn books and the importance of the old hymns. About that time, I got to the bottom of his wiki bio as I listened and there saw a sermon he had preached, entitled, The Nature of True Beauty, so I clicked on it, and stopped watching the Shepherd's Conference, but listened to that instead. He had preached it at the Capital Hill Baptist Church, where Mark Dever is the pastor. I was amazed by what I heard. I believe it. And now I'm ready to talk about irony with you, and what I meant by irretrievable.
Mohler in his sermon in Washington DC inextricably tied together truth, goodness, and beauty. If you deny or violate beauty, you do it to the other two. He was placing beauty, in essence orthopathy, on the same level as truth and goodness. I agree. Relativistic beauty yields relativistic truth and goodness. God is One. You can't give up one without giving up the others. They are indivisible. Attack or corruption of beauty is the same upon truth and goodness. Again, you just can't separate one from the other two.
The irony is found in the GCC emphasis on truth, so much found in John MacArthur's books, especially recently as we've seen truth become an even greater casualty of our culture. The irony is found in a conference that so professes to protect sheep from error that violates or denies objective beauty. Carl Trueman introduces a talk about "cool" with an endorsement of the Rolling Stones and Satisfaction. Scott Aniol tweets it. Dever advocates rap. Talking about the Rolling Stones smacks of "cool." The rock group in the morning of the Shepherd's Conference with its ecstatic disposition and hip appearance: the eye clenching, the Elton John piano style, the sensuality, the soul patches, the swaying. Everything means something, but this screamed out a rejection of objective beauty. By forfeiting beauty, GCC, Trueman, Dever, and unfortunately Mohler, all also forsake truth and goodness. You've got all these people "fighting for truth," that are undermining truth because of their capitulation on beauty.
I believe Mohler preaches about beauty, because it really is what he thinks. I suspect that he doesn't see people as with him on it, being supportive of what he's saying, but maybe he'll be able to get something started, work on this incrementally, perhaps like he's tried to change Southern Seminary from liberal to conservative. Truth and goodness will not come without beauty. The beauty is actually where the biggest violations are, because it relates to the affections. Love must in fact be love in love for God, and God must be God. You can't love God like someone "loves" his girlfriend or even a sirloin steak. The God of the Bible must be worshiped in His beauty and the denial or ignorance or perversion of His beauty is false and bad, as in not true and not good.
You should be able to see the irony here. There is so much of it. The irony is in the protection of sheep by shepherds, the praise of beauty, the decrying of "coolness," and the appeal for truth from people who won't separate the beautiful from the ugly. God is worshiped in the beauty of His holiness. Worship of God separates from the mundane, the kitsch, the crass, the worldly, the common, and the profane. It certainly doesn't make provision for the flesh. It won't "rock." It is sacred. It rings of God. Rock music doesn't do that. Any Christian hoping to disabuse a people from "cool" will not endorse or like the Rolling Stones. It's ludicrous. It says that these are people who are either rebellious or they don't know what they're talking about.
The other option that I can hear from an imagined defender is that no style of music communicates anything inherently moral. That is not a biblical position or a historic Christian position. That's what Mohler was preaching against in his beauty sermon. There is objective beauty and objective ugliness or other non-beautiful qualities in music. It isn't amoral. This attack on beauty is an attack on the truth and goodness. If you don't stand for the one, for beauty, then you don't stand for truth and goodness either. Don't say that you do.
If you are Albert Mohler, then be clear about this. Don't say that truth is on par with goodness and beauty, unless you believe it. And if you believe it, it can't be just lipservice. Do something about it.
How is it an irretrievable irony? You can't retrieve truth and goodness without repenting over beauty. Repentance, complete conversion, is what is needed here. We don't need half measures. We don't need hinting sermons, hopeful to plant some sort of seed. We certainly don't need sarcasm and mockery and marginalizing of the one who is pointing it out, which, it's too bad, is the expectation here. We need total repudiation that doesn't nibble around the edges. Truth and goodness are not retrievable without it.
Friday, March 08, 2013
Are Calvinism and the TULIP Dangerous Errors?
I am going to continue my series on "The Just Shall Live by Faith," Lord willing. I thought, however, that it would be appropriate to take a one-week break and post the following analysis of Calvinism.
In relation to the points of the TULIP of Calvinism,
Scripture teaches that man is pervasively and awfully depraved in his entire
being before regeneration (Ephesians 2:1-3; Genesis 6:5), and nobody will
exercise saving faith without the enablement of grace (John 6:44; Romans 3:11).
Nevertheless, prevenient grace is given to all men (John 12:32) to enable them
to respond to the gospel positively and receive the gifts of repentance and
faith (2 Timothy 2:25; Philippians 1:29) from the Spirit through the Word
(Romans 10:17) since God is not willing that any perish (2 Peter 3:9; 1 Timothy
2:4). Personal election to
salvation (cf. Romans 16:13) is based upon foreknowledge (1 Peter 1:2), which
is not synonymous with foreordination.
While there is a special sense in which Christ died for “me” (Galatians
2:20), for the congregation of immersed believers (Ephesians 5:25), and for the
elect (Romans 8:32), Scripture plainly states that Christ died for all men (1
John 2:2; 1 Timothy 2:6) including specifically those who are never born again
(2 Peter 2:1). The grace of God is
resistible, not irresistible (Acts 7:51; Matthew 23:37). All believers are eternally secure and
are preserved by the power of God from both hell and the domination of sin
(John 10:27-30), so that no regenerate person ever can be eternally lost
(Romans 8:28-39) or, during his earthly life, totally unchanged and exactly
like the unregenerate (Ephesians 2:10).
John 12:32 affirms that the Lord Jesus draws “all men” to
Himself, employing the same verb for drawing (helko) as that which is employed to state that
nobody can come to Christ without being drawn (John 6:44). The Calvinist contention that John
12:32 should be altered to affirm that Christ draws not “all men,” but “all the
elect,” is purely gratuitous.
There is no exegetical or syntactical basis whatsoever for changing the
“all men” of John 12:32 to “all the elect,” nor does any similar text with pas provide exegetical support for such an
alteration—the Calvinist view of John 12:32 is eisegesis, not exegesis. On the other hand, there are sound exegetical reasons for
supplying “men” with the “all” in John 12:32 and many other texts with the like
syntax—including, it is worthy of note, every related text in John’s gospel
(compare John 1:7 & 9; John 2:24 & 2:25; John 3:26 & 27; John 5:23
& 5:21-22; John 11:48 & 12:19; John 13:35 & 17:21; also Luke 9:23
& 25; Acts 21:28 & 22:15; Romans 16:19 & 1:8; Ephesians 3:9 &
3:5; 1 Thessalonians 3:12 & 5:14-15; 2 Timothy 2:24 & 2 Timothy
2:25-26; 1 Timothy 2:4; Titus 3:2; 1 Peter 2:17 & 2:15; etc.)
Furthermore, there is no evidence in the New Testament or in
extrabiblical Koiné that the noun foreknow (prognosis) or the verb to foreknow (proginosko) mean anything other than precognition. The Calvinist contention that the words really signify predetermine or something of the sort are arbitrary,
and no such meaning for the word appears in the Liddell-Scott Greek lexicon,
since in that work theology is not driving the meaning assigned to these
words. In all the clear instances,
the words simply signify precognition, and no text requires a different
meaning, either in the NT (Acts 2:23; 1 Peter 1:2, prognosis, Acts 26:5; Romans 8:29; 11:2; 1 Peter
1:20 (the perfect tense probably explains the translation in the KJV); 2 Peter
3:17, proginosko, the
LXX (Judith 9:6; 11:19, prognosis, Wisdom 6:13; 8:8; 18:6, proginosko), or elsewhere (cf. (1 Clement 44:2; 2
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 32:4; Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 1:39, 92, 134;
Josephus, Antiquities 8:234, 418; 13:300; 15:373; 17:43; 18:201; Apion 1:232, prognosis, Shepherd of Hermas 31:4; 66:5, Apology
of Justin 1:28, 43, 45, 49, 53; Trypho 1:42, 70, 77, 140–141; Athenagoras,
Resurrection 1:2; Josephus, Antiquities 1:311; 2:86; 4:121; 5:358; 6:54, 348;
7:57; 8:419; 13:175; 16:214; 18:218; War 1:55, 608; 2:159; 3:484; 4:236; 6:8;
Life 1:106; Apion 1:204, 256; Pseudo-Hecateus 6:23; proginosko).
Nor is it valid for the Calvinist to assume that senses of other words,
such as know,
uniformly transfer to the noun and verb foreknow (by such reasoning, baptidzo could be made to signify “to dye” because
the verb derives from bapto, which has this meaning);
rather than making such an assumption, the actual words for foreknow, which are common enough, must themselves
be analyzed. While John 15:16,
isolated from other texts of Scripture, is certainly consistent with an
unconditional personal election to salvation, it does not require such a
doctrine, even if one assumes that election to salvation, rather than the election
of the twelve to their apostolic office, is in view. The syntax “ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,”
while it certainly places the emphasis upon God’s choice of man, does not
require the exclusion of all activity on the part of humanity any more than
Paul’s “the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I
do” (Romans 7:19) means that Paul did no good at all, or the statement that “it
is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you”
(Matthew 10:20; Mark 13:11) excludes human speech entirely.
Romans 9 also provides no support for Calvinism. See the exposition of the passage in
the notes on Romans in the “College Courses” section, subsection “Greek
Courses,” at http://faithsaves.net,
or look at the articles on Romans 9 here on “What is Truth," such as the "Why I am not a Calvinist" series.
Furthermore, while regeneration and faith are temporally
simultaneous, the new birth is logically subsequent to faith (cf. John
3:1-21). Scripture neither teaches
the soteriology of Arminianism nor of TULIP Calvinism.
Furthermore, statements advocating
baptismal regeneration by Calvin and other Calvinists must be unequivocably repudiated and anathematized
(Galatians 1:8-9). Calvin
taught: “God, regenerating
us in baptism, ingrafts us into the fellowship of his Church, and makes us his
by adoption . . . whatever time we are baptized, we are washed and purified . .
. forgiveness . . . at our first regeneration we receive by baptism alone . . .
forgiveness has reference to baptism. . . . In baptism, the Lord promises
forgiveness of sins” (Institutes,
4:17:1, 4:15:3, 4, 15). “We assert
that the whole guilt of sin is taken away in baptism, so that the remains of
sin still existing are not imputed. . . . Nothing is plainer than this
doctrine” (1547 Antidote to the Council of Trent, Reply to the 1st Decree of the 5th Session). Note the
discussion in “Were the Reformers Heretics?” and Heaven Only For theBaptized? by Thomas Ross, in “Paedobaptism and Baptimal Efficacy,”
Rich Lusk, The Federal Vision, ed.
Steve Wilkins & Duane Garner.
(Monroe, LA: Athanasius,
2004), and in “Regeneration: A Crux Interpretum,” David R. Anderson. Journal of the Grace Evangelical
Society 13:2 (Autumn 00) 43-65. Some advocates of Reformed theology
follow Calvin in his error of baptismal regeneration (e. g., “The Bible teaches
us that baptism unites us to Christ,” pg. 55, The Federal Vision; cf. pgs. 89ff., while others reject his doctrine and
attempt to explain his statements away (e. g., James J. Cassidy, “Calvin on
Baptism: Baptismal Regeneration or the Duplex Loquendi Modus? pgs. 534-554 in Resurrection and Eschatology: Theology
in Service of the Church, ed. Lane G.
Tipton & Jeffrey C. Waddington.
Cassidy nonetheless has to admit (pg. 546): “[T]here are some quotations
that make us scratch our heads and wonder whether [Calvin] did not, in fact,
believe in baptismal regeneration”). Baptismal regeneration as the view of the Westminster
Standards is advocated by modern Reformed writers in Reformed Is Not Enough, Doug Wilson (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2002) pgs. 103-104;
Lusk, Federal Vision, pgs. 96-99, etc.
Many
Calvinists also hold the dangerous soteriological error, based on their view
that regeneration preceeds faith, that infants and others may be regenerated,
grow up, and go to heaven, without ever conciously coming to a recognition of
their lost estate and consiously, for the first time, repenting and believing
the gospel. Thus, for instance,
John Murray affirmed: “Baptised
infants are to be received as the children of God and treated accordingly,”
citing the Directory of the Public Worship of God prepared by the Westminster
Assembly, which affirmed: “The
seed and posterity of the faithful, born within the church have, by their
birth, interest in the covenant . . . they are Christians” (pg. 56, Christian
Baptism, John
Murray. (Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1980). Many
others even repudiate the necessity of any kind of experimental religion (cf.
the discussion in “Historic Calvinism and Neo-Calvinism,” William Young. Westminster
Theological Journal 36:1 (Fall 1973)
48-65 & 36:2 (Winter 1974) 156-173, and the related discussion in
“Edwardsean Preparation For Salvation,” John H. Gerstner & Jonathan Neil
Gerstner, Westminster Theological Journal 42:1 (Fall 1979) 5-71).
Thus, while it is true that in exceptional and very unusual situations,
such as a believer who suffers a mental disease and loses his memory of thirty
years of his life, including that portion in which he was converted, when the
Reformed affirmed “against the Anabaptists . . . that believers did not have to
know, and could not always know, the time of their regeneration” (pg. 74, Reformed
Dogmatics, Herman Bavinck, J. Bolt,
& J. Vriend, vol. 4: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation. Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Academic, 2008), they placed themselves on very dangerous ground.
-TDR
Wednesday, March 06, 2013
The "Fundamentalist Practice of Separation"?
I'm glad Fred Butler is even thinking about separation, let alone talking about it. It's rare to have an evangelical say anything about it. They usually are attacking separation (as they are here), but you're thankful for whatever you can get. At the ETS in San Francisco, I asked the panel why no books on separation in the mammoth book display, and they said it was found in other books in the sections on church discipline, indicative of their missing separation chromosome. If you think that church discipline is a synonym for separation, or even ecclesiastical separation, then you don't know what you're talking about.
Fred Butler critiqued my series, Separation 101 (uno, dos, tres, quatro) in a recent post at his blog. First some house-cleaning. One, Fred is older than I thought, and I get why I thought he was young. He got married a little later in years than I, and so it was more of an assumption. I'm older (I'm 50, Fred, but I understand your thinking I'm younger, it's easy to mistake me for early 40s :-D). I think he's 44 or so, so he's ancient. And second, if you're reading him, you might think he's insulting, but don't read too much into that. He's got strong opinions and he wants to be interesting as a writer. I get all that. He's using his serrated edge, to use Douglas Wilson terminology. Third, I actually like Fred. I like Phil Johnson. I like John MacArthur. I like Dan Phillips. I like Frank Turk. I don't care if they don't like me -- I like them. Just because we have differences, doesn't mean I don't like them. Even if they are insulting, I get what they're about. It's part of their shtick. Bear with them. Fred's got some church curmudgeon in him. Then fourth, I'm not a fundamentalist. I could write a whole post about that, but if Fred knew what he was talking about, he would understand that I'm not, but no offense to Fred, because he's out of his league on understanding what fundamentalism is all about. If evangelicals don't know what category to stick someone to the right of them, they go with fundamentalist, because it's an effective pejorative. Other evangelicals do that with MacArthur. They call him a fundamentalist because he's to the right of them. He's technically not one as most anyone would define it, even historically. He doesn't even refer to himself as one usually, even though he's not opposed to someone calling him one. I'd be glad to be challenged on whether I'm a fundamentalist, but I know I'm not one and would be glad to explain it again some other time.
I wished that Fred didn't read past what I wrote. It's a bad habit to do that, and in many ways makes for a waste of time. He writes a lot about the bad discernment of fundamentalism, actually assigning that as a motive or reason we really have for separation. We can't discern, so we just jump right to separation. That cracks me up, like Fred calling separation our cherished doctrine. I guess I'm to assume that Fred doesn't cherish separation, and I would believe that. The angels in heaven cherish it. They don't cry "unity, unity, unity" in the heavenly throne room. Everyone didn't make it on the ark. The broad road doesn't get to join the narrow road. Light and darkness are separated. The tabernacle had an inner court separated from an outer court separated from the holy place separated from the holy of holies. Curtains of various fabrics and skins were cut and sewn and clasped to separate the out from the in. Christians cherish the doctrine of separation. Paul wrote that if you didn't separate, God isn't a Father to you and you aren't sons and daughters to Him. He wrote about separation in every of his epistles, but I picked just two places to use to apply the doctrine, and Fred blasted the two I used, like I couldn't have picked out others. But we'll deal with his arguments. I'm just glad he cared enough. Thanks Fred, for caring -- serious.
Now let's get down to business.
I don't want to spend a lot of time on what he wrote first, because I want to deal mainly with his treatment of the two passages, but let's consider his "personal take" in the order he wrote it. One, I believe MacArthur thinks about the differences between him and Piper and Mahaney, but he doesn't do what the Bible teaches. He writes a book that makes their beliefs look very, very bad, and then he doesn't do what Scripture teaches about men who believe such doctrine. Sure, have discernment. Great. Why is practicing separation against discernment? It isn't. You can have both. Two, separation isn't throwing people under the bus. It is a loving practice for loving God and the offender. Not practicing is a form of sentimentalism that is devaluing the truth. People who don't want to separate have to call it throwing someone under the bus. Piper's false doctrine offends God and affects him and others, and not separating is to practice something that might be more warm and fuzzy, but it isn't love. Not separating pushes someone in front of the bus in bus tragedy metaphor. Three, separation is gracious. God is always gracious and He still separates Himself. Stating your opinion without separation is not more gracious. Grace works toward separation. It is grace to you (gty). Four and five, is a conference fellowship? It is. Fellowship is working together in common ministry (2 Cor 6:14). If a conference isn't ministry, then let's do away with conferences. But if it is ministry, which is its intention, then biblical guidelines for fellowship should enter in here. They may be in two different arenas for Fred's "discernment filter," but he needs to cherish separation more like God does. Six, Fred asks questions about how much agreement people should have. That's a common discussion in fundamentalism, not one so much had in evangelicalism. Fundamentalists can't seem to agree on how much agreement there should be (ironic, huh?). Our book, A Pure Church, answers these types of questions with biblical exegesis.
Which brings us to the exegesis section -- Yes!
The big question here, really, is whether any New Testament passages teach that Christians, or better churches, are to separate from other Christians or churches over doctrine and practice. I used Romans 16:17 and 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15 for this. Fred doesn't seem to be very skilled at applying separation passages, and I would think that almost never hearing about it would be a major reason. We also have 1 Corinthians 5, 1 Timothy 6:1-5, 2 Timothy 2, and others. As well, the principles of Matthew 18:15-17 would apply. But let's look at what he says. Again, Fred, thank you for thinking about these. You're rare in this for an evangelical. Most move along through their lives in blissful ignorance of it.
Fred starts by saying that I take the passages woefully out of context, and later he conspiratorializes that "fundamentalists" do this kind of thing to keep their cherished doctrine intact. That makes me laugh a lot, it's so crazy. "The man" wants you to separate. He's got computer chips in your cornflakes. Don't let "the man" (big brother) control you, take away your liberty. No Fred, it's the opposite here. The passages guide our understanding of separation. We didn't start with a doctrine of separation and then go to passages to attempt to conform them to a predisposed separation manual. Very odd.
This woeful take on separation that we have happens to be like other commentators I read, when they're just being honest with the text, not attempting to read anything into it, perhaps to protect a cherished practice of not separating (i.e., fake unity). Lenski says about Romans 16:17 what I would say (read it here), and actually points out the error of what Fred is doing here, that is, stating "that Paul's words can be applied only to these errors, and that we cannot today apply Paul's admonition unless we are able to point to exact duplicates of these errors." Lenski gives an interesting point in Acts from 15:5, when he talks about "a certain sect of the Pharisees which believed (emphasis his), " former Pharisees, now believers, yet errorists." That's exactly how Romans 16:17 reads. Professing believers, professing orthodox, causing divisions in the church at Rome, away from doctrines that were already established teachings. What are the teachings, for instance, that Piper propagates, a kind of ecstasy like Paul warned about in 1 Corinthians. It's very dangerous. What do you do with it? You mark it an avoid it. Fred says, "No, you only mark and avoid teachers who teach a false gospel. Period." That's not what it says.
Colin G. Kruse in his commentary on Romans says, "These people presented themselves as believers, and in their own minds were probably true believers, but in Paul's eyes 'they were not serving our Lord Jesus Christ'." Is Piper a believer? I'm not arguing that one way or another. I'm not saying "yes" or "no," because it's irrelevant. Is he serving Jesus Christ with his Charismatic teaching? That's how Kruse and Lenski handle it. The people who divide from church doctrine aren't serving the Lord Jesus Christ, even if they profess to be saved (and actually are saved), which is why Titus 3:10-11 say to separate from them. The point is, of course, to keep the church from their false doctrine. It says though, "mark and avoid." It doesn't say, "Write a book or have a private conversation in which we agree to disagree, and then promote through a conference or chapel invitation." If you are serious enough about a doctrine to write a book about it, and hit that doctrine with a scathing rebuke, why is it not serious enough to separate from? And when scripture teaches that separation is the thing you're actually supposed to do?
Paul uses the word skandalia ("offenses"), which is used of Christians as recent as Romans 14. Christians cause other Christians to stumble. Albert Barnes writes: "some bold Gentile convert, might deride the scrupulous feelings of the Jew, and might thus lead him into sin in regard to what his conscience really forbade."
Paul uses the word skandalia ("offenses"), which is used of Christians as recent as Romans 14. Christians cause other Christians to stumble. Albert Barnes writes: "some bold Gentile convert, might deride the scrupulous feelings of the Jew, and might thus lead him into sin in regard to what his conscience really forbade."
For the sake of argument, let's grant Romans 16:17 to Fred. And then we go to 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15. Fred, squirms out of this one by saying that this "not working" practice was akin to a freaky Harold Camping holy huddle 'till the rapture, investing in blow guns and survival gear. That really doesn't fly. Sure, Paul gets into specifics, but he argues for the specific from the general. Spurgeon, concerning 2 Thessalonians 3:6 writes:
It's obvious that it isn't just the idle found in the command to disassociate here, but the disorderly and any who do not abide by Paul's epistle (see vv. 6, 14, 15). And it should apply to more than church discipline. Consider the following BibSac article from 1895:
My Separation 101 posts were to begin exploring the doctrine of separation, its teaching and practice. I used Piper and MacArthur as an illustration, because they're obvious to many. As to ecclesiastical separation, with the exception of church discipline, who has MacArthur and his church separated from? When have they ever encouraged separation?
True unity is based on the truth. Unity is meaningless without separation. The fellowship of unity is the light, the truth, the teachings of God's Word. The false, fake unity gets along by minimizing or reducing doctrine to a low common denominator (reductionism). Scripture doesn't present unity that way.
We're not concocting artificial qualifications. These are teachings MacArthur himself by his own standard has said are very, very serious. We're talking about biblical qualifications.
The point isn't whether MacArthur has compromised 40 years of ministry by having Piper and Mahaney. The point is whether the Bible teaches separation and then what separation is. There are too many passages that teach separation just to explain them all away. None of us are beyond learning from John MacArthur and neither is MacArthur and Fred Butler beyond learning from someone else.
Separation isn't a fundamentalist practice. It's a biblical and historical Christian one. Michael Sattler wrote in 1527 in the Schleitheim Confession:
Paul had been to Thessalonica, and had given oral teaching, and now he commits to the book what he had spoken; but he bids them take care not to associate with those who wilfully broke the ordinances of the church which he had taught them. There are some brethren with whom it is ill for us to associate, lest they do us hurt, and it is ill for them that we associate with them, lest we seem to assist them in their evil deeds.
It's obvious that it isn't just the idle found in the command to disassociate here, but the disorderly and any who do not abide by Paul's epistle (see vv. 6, 14, 15). And it should apply to more than church discipline. Consider the following BibSac article from 1895:
Baptists should read their own proof-texts a little more carefully,—2 Thess. iii. 6, 14, for example. These texts are used by them as authority for the maintenance of church discipline. But if they authorize withdrawal from one professed disciple because of his disobedience, they equally authorize withdrawal from all who disobey. Note the language: ‘Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every’ —member of the local church? No,—‘from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us.’ The same comprehensiveness of statement is found in the fourteenth verse: ‘If any man obey not,’ etc. Why should not these commands apply to ‘brethren’ outside the church, as well as within its membership? Baptists should certainly feel constrained to a consistent withdrawal of church fellowship from the disobedient, which means abstinence from all church unions with them.
My Separation 101 posts were to begin exploring the doctrine of separation, its teaching and practice. I used Piper and MacArthur as an illustration, because they're obvious to many. As to ecclesiastical separation, with the exception of church discipline, who has MacArthur and his church separated from? When have they ever encouraged separation?
True unity is based on the truth. Unity is meaningless without separation. The fellowship of unity is the light, the truth, the teachings of God's Word. The false, fake unity gets along by minimizing or reducing doctrine to a low common denominator (reductionism). Scripture doesn't present unity that way.
We're not concocting artificial qualifications. These are teachings MacArthur himself by his own standard has said are very, very serious. We're talking about biblical qualifications.
The point isn't whether MacArthur has compromised 40 years of ministry by having Piper and Mahaney. The point is whether the Bible teaches separation and then what separation is. There are too many passages that teach separation just to explain them all away. None of us are beyond learning from John MacArthur and neither is MacArthur and Fred Butler beyond learning from someone else.
Separation isn't a fundamentalist practice. It's a biblical and historical Christian one. Michael Sattler wrote in 1527 in the Schleitheim Confession:
The community of Christians shall have no association with those who remain in disobedience and a spirit of rebellion against God. There can be no fellowship with the wicked in the world; there can be no participation in works, church services, meetings and civil affairs of those who live in contradiction to the commands of God (Catholics and Protestants). All evil must be resisted including their weapons of force such as the sword and armor.
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