good-news-may-june-2003

THE GOSPEL AND SIN ❘ IS THE GOSPEL ENOUGH? ❘ THE GOSPEL AND WORSHIP

MODERN REFORMATION

GOOD NEWS: The Gospel for Christians

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GOOD NEWS: THE GOSPEL FOR CHRISTIANS

13 Gospel-Driven Sanctification Are you a “performance-based” disciple of Christ?

Do you use your good works to atone for your remaining sin? The author points our eyes back to Christ, who promises that the same gospel that saves also sanctifies. by Jerry Bridges

17 On Being Well-Dressed: A New Year’s Dialogue The author’s humorous portrayal of an evangelistic encounter reveals how revolutionary and amazing the Christian message really is. by Korey D. Maas

20 Christ Died for the Sins of Christians, Too Drawing on the riches of the Reformation doctrines of justification and sanctification, the author provides Christians struggling with remaining sin with pastoral comfort. by Rod Rosenbladt Plus: A Reformation History Lesson and Defining Law and Gospel

28 A New Creation Americans are yearning for new identities and have created a culture of self-transformation. The gospel identifies us as being “in Christ.” Can such a promising designation quiet our constant search for significance?

by Michael Horton Plus: The Gospel According to Pelagius

37 Gospel-Ordered Worship COVER PHOTO BY ANTHONY ISE/PHOTO DISC

The author contends that the worship of the gathered church must not only be “about” the gospel, but also be structured according to the gospel. What does a Christian’s worship look like when the gospel is both the message and the method? by Gillis Harp

In This Issue page 2 | Letters page 3 | Ex Auditu page 5 Preaching from the Choir page 8 | Speaking of page 9 | Between the Times page 10 Resource Center page 26 | We Confess page 43 | Free Space page 44 | Reviews page 47 | On My Mind page 52 M AY / J U N E 2 0 0 3 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1

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MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton

It’s Still Good News

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Executive Editor Mark R. Talbot

ometimes in life we are blessed with those “aha!” moments, when something we have heard all our lives finally sinks in, and we understand it, as if for the very first time.

For many Christians, raised in the moralism that dominates much of American

Evangelicalism, one of those “aha!” moments came when they understood that the gospel was important not just for their justification, but also for their sanctification. Many of us experienced a sweet satisfaction when we realized that the gospel wasn’t about us and what we do; it was all about Jesus and what he did (and continues to do for us). The gospel is not just a set of propositional truths that we affirm, it is the great relational truth that God is our Father and he is working out salvation.

Our justification is secure in Christ, our sanctification is being worked out, and we can rest assured that what God promised, he will complete. The pursuit of sanctification—a tremulous, fitful, on-again/off-again experience for most—does not cause God to regard us in any way outside of his pronouncement in Christ. It is, instead, the natural fruit of God’s legal pardon, being worked out in real flesh and blood by challenging and changing our desires, decisions, and beliefs.

This point is so important for the health of the church, the editors of MR are devoting two of our six issues this year to exploring the meaning of the gospel and why Christians must believe the gospel for both their justification as well as their continuing growth in sanctification. In our September/October Next Issue July/August: “Reaching Out in Our Time” If we really are living in a post-Christian era, how should the church respond? Will the traditional ministries of the church still work when faced with the challenges of postmodernism? In this special issue we have called on more than a dozen Christian leaders to help us think through and evaluate the work of the church in contemporary culture. This is the issue you can’t afford to miss!

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issue, for example, we’ll be taking a special indepth look at Paul’s message of grace in the Book of Galatians. In the current issue, the articles are especially concerned with the relationship between the gospel and sanctification. If you’ve ever wondered if there was room at the cross for you, as a Christian, Lutheran theologian Rod Rosenbladt’s article provides pastoral comfort and assurance of God’s love and grace. Is there a formula for our sanctification? Popular author and speaker Jerry Bridges tackles the tough how-to questions with his article.

Reformed theologian and editor-in-chief Michael Horton introduces us to the other side of the tension we live in all our lives: Not only are we still sinners even as Christians, but we are simultaneously members of God’s new creation—even before we experience complete glorification. Historian Gillis Harp draws on his Episcopalian tradition to show us how a gospel-oriented and gospel-ordered worship service is effective in the Christian’s sanctification.

On modernreformation.org, check out the study questions related to Jerry Bridges’s, Michael Horton’s, and Korey Maas’s articles.

In May, we will post a new glossary of terms that are used regularly in the pages of MR. We hope that this resource will help you navigate the sometimes confusing terminology and issues with greater ease.

Stay in touch with us through modref@alliancenet.org. We’re eager to hear how the resources we provide are leading to reformation in your own life and in the life of your church.

Managing Editor Eric Landry Alliance Council Gerald Bray ❘ D. A. Carson Mark Dever ❘ J. Ligon Duncan, III W. Robert Godfrey ❘ John D. Hannah Michael Horton ❘ Rosemary Jensen Ken Jones ❘ John Nunes J. A. O. Preus ❘ Rod Rosenbladt Philip Ryken ❘ R. C. Sproul ❘ Mark R. Talbot Gene E. Veith ❘ Paul F. M. Zahl Department Editors Brian Lee, Ex Auditu Benjamin Sasse, Between the Times D. G. Hart, Reviews Staff ❘ Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Assistant Editor Diana S. Frazier, Contributing Editor Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Celeste McGhee, Proofreader Katherine VanDrunen, Production Assistant Contributing Scholars Charles P. Arand ❘ S. M. Baugh Jonathan Chao ❘ William M. Cwirla Marva J. Dawn ❘ Don Eberly Timothy George ❘ Douglas S. Groothuis Allen C. Guelzo ❘ Carl F. H. Henry Lee Irons ❘ Arthur A. Just Robert Kolb ❘ Donald Matzat Timothy M. Monsma ❘ John W. Montgomery John Muether ❘ Kenneth A. Myers Tom J. Nettles ❘ Leonard R. Payton Lawrence R. Rast ❘ Kim Riddlebarger Rick Ritchie ❘ David P. Scaer Rachel S. Stahle ❘ David VanDrunen Cornelis Van Dam ❘ David F. Wells Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals © 2003 All rights reserved. The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals exists to call the church, amidst our dying culture, to repent of its worldliness, to recover and confess the truth of God’s Word as did the Reformers, and to see that truth embodied in doctrine, worship and life.

For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1716 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 (215) 546-3696 ModRef@AllianceNet.org www.modernreformation.org ISSN-1076-7169

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training future pastors in our denomination, we may be moving closer to that goal.

Rev. Patrick D. Allen First Presbyterian Church Ada, OH

D. G. Hart’s article, “Amateurs All? Christians and Bible Reading” (January/February 2003) was a very insightful essay on “Protestant egalitarianism.”

I can understand the concern over, for example, small group Bible studies that degenerate into everyone sharing their ignorance under the assumption that everyone’s insight carries equal weight; however, Dr. Hart’s example of Christian colleges that attempt to “integrate faith and learning” seemed to be out of place and, in my opinion, does not belong under the category of Protestant egalitarianism. Apparently, Dr. Hart’s implicit assumption is that faculty members do not communicate with each other and are incapable of study in other disciplines outside of their specialty, such as theology and philosophy. While, no doubt, there are some Christian colleges that fall far short of this goal, there are others that take the integration of faith and learning seriously, and have set up internal structures and hiring practices that support this goal. For a fuller treatment of Dr. Hart’s philosophy of education, the reader is directed to his essay, “Christian Scholars, Secular Universities, and the Problem with the Antithesis,” in Christian Scholar’s Review, Vol. XXX:4.

Dan Robinson Epworth, Iowa

As a PC(USA) pastor, I am writing to thank you for including a sermon from Craig Barnes in your recent issue (January/February 2003). I also appreciate your generous tone towards those of us who labor for renewal and revival in the mainline Presbyterian church. Now that Dr. Barnes is

Dr. Barnes’s sermon (January/February 2003) was very encouraging but he was mistaken (in his inference) when he says, “You will notice that what is missing in [Heb. 8:8-12] is any ‘if…then’ language.” True there is no “if…then” clause, but in noting this he errs by concluding that there is therefore no such tacit condition in the re-Newed covenant at all. There are numerous “if…then” clauses in the New Covenant. Consider these: Colossians 1:21-23; Hebrews 6, 10; Revelation 2-3; 1 Cor. 11; and John 15:1-6. Just because I don’t spell out all of my conditions to my son when he heads out the door, “Don’t forget to… and also… and again, and do this…” doesn’t mean I don’t have those exceptions. The apostle Paul graciously reminds and persuades us that our adoption as sons is in no way jeopardized by anything in, outside, or above us when he extols, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39). Although, he could have added, “unless of course, you don’t continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard.” But, then again, that wasn’t his point, was it?

Travis M. Finley Via the Internet

Is Modern Reformation becoming market-driven? I hope not but if the January/February 2003 issue is any indication, we may be seeing the first crack in the wall. Specifically, the article by Carolyn Custis James entitled “Why God Gave Us the Bible” does

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not come up to your high standards of scholarship and authority as her personal stories left me with nothing of substance that I could take to my congregants that wrestle with Bible interpretation.

While acceptable by itself, it did not fit in with the rich content of the rest of the issue. Why was it published then? I discovered the answer when I visited your website and found that you had used the tragic death of a teenager (a snippet from the article) as a “teaser” to get visitors to open your link.

This disappointed me. The use of such an emotional “hook” is what I would expect of the evening news, not a publication that calls us to “repent of [our] worldliness.” If what I suspect is true—that you are trying to woo the female demographic—then please try to be careful when considering women as authors. A woman’s voice does not carry the same authority as a man’s, especially when trying to instruct or persuade other men on spiritual matters. The result, I fear, will be a falling off of subscriptions and one less place for pastors and laymen to find divine assistance in the fight against our culture.

Lee Salzman Amery, WI

For the several years I have subscribed to Modern Reformation, I have enjoyed its sola scriptura bent immensely. This is the first time I have so strictly disagreed with your format and/or choice of content. Your interview with Kay Arthur (January/February 2003) does not appear to support her and her teachings, but neither does it condemn her. The interview itself does lend credence to what she is doing (just by being published)—it would probably have been better if you had not printed it if you were not going to point out her blatant disregard for Scripture. She seemingly has ignored, or maybe misinterpreted, 1 Corinthians 14:34, “Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says, and if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.” Its companion passage in 1 Timothy 2:11-15 does not even allow the liberal “cultural” interpretation that many so-called evangelicals are now adopting—they say it was the “culture of the day” that kept women from teaching men and preaching. I truly pray that this is not an indication of any further straying from the reformation doctrine you have championed so well.

W. A. Hill Calvary Bible College Fairbanks, AK

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First, I want to say that I have had the highest regard for Modern Reformation magazine. In fact, I own every issue and have read the majority of them several times! I actually “cut my reformed teeth” on it. This is only the second time that I have written to this forum but I feel the need to respond to something that Michael Horton wrote in the January/February 2003 issue. On page 15, Dr. Horton wrote, “…they (the Protestant scholastics) were pioneers of biblical scholarship, but they were also the great system writers, organizing the exegetical fruit of the church fathers, the reformers and their own labors into a coherent whole. We have not seen their like since.” Now, it is with that last statement which I vigorously disagree. For we did see the likes of the Protestant scholastics in the twentieth century in the works of Gordon H. Clark.

He was a great biblical scholar, exegete and systematizer of biblical truth. Sadly, few know who he is except for the fact that he and Van Til didn’t see eye to eye. When asked, “who will Christians be reading in 500 years?” R.C. Sproul is reported to have answered with three names, one of which was Gordon H. Clark. Hopefully, the church won’t have to wait 500 years to discover Clark. If the premise of this issue is correct, we need to discover him now.

And by the way, his books are still in print!

Jim Snyder Minot, ND

I cannot be effusive enough about Dr. Horton’s most recent article “Who Needs Systematic Theology When We Have the Bible?”

(January/February 2003). The quality of the article is precisely why I subscribe to the magazine. Like so many other articles that have caused me to grow in my theological understanding, it crystallized some things for me that I had tossed about in my [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 5 1 ]

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Matthew 8:28–34

Conquering the Powers of Darkness

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ith the possible exception of the incident at Belshazzor’s feast, when a finger

The story is so strange that we can end up missing from a man’s hand suddenly appeared and began writing a message on the the point. Just as Jesus encountered and mastered wall (Daniel 5), this is probably the eeriest incident in the Bible. Matthew the storm, so now he is encountering supernatural, gives us the G-rated version, omitting some of the personal evil and conquering creepiest details. But if we look also at Mark 5:1–20 it. Not only does Jesus have and Luke 8:26–39, here’s what seems to have authority over sickness From happened. Jesus and his disciples began their journey (8:1–17), and nature TERRY JOHNSON in the evening, encountered a storm which Jesus (8:23–27), but over calmed, and then continued on what was normally a supernatural evil as well two-hour journey to the east side of the Sea of (8:28–34). The redemptive Galilee. They arrived in darkness in the country of work of Jesus includes both Senior Minister the Gadarenes. Gadara was a city about six miles the natural order (8:1–27) Independent Presbyterian south of the Sea of Galilee in the region of Decapolis, and the supernatural Church Savannah, GA (8:28–34). Our salvation a Gentile area north of Samaria and west of Galilee. requires our being rescued Finding themselves in the midst of a burial ground from the powers of darkness, they are startled by the screams of two madmen.

Suddenly they emerge from behind the tombs and who are personal, real, and evil beyond move towards them, naked, powerful, and disfigured imagination.

Regarding these powers of darkness, there are (Luke 8:27; Mark 5:5). Jesus asks at least one of them his name and he answers, “Legion, for we are many.” two extremes to avoid. The first is making too little of the demonic. Many think of the devil as a cartoonlike This is a terrifying scene.

But the account is also bizarre to the point of character—a toothy red imp with a trident and a being humorous. Demons beg for mercy. Two pointed tail. Others just ignore him all together, thousand pigs race off the end of a cliff (Mark barely believing in his existence, or indeed failing to 5:13). Can you imagine? The townspeople end up believe in his existence. This, by the way, suits him asking Jesus—who ought to be a hero—to leave just fine. Our unbelief leaves us ignorant of his town. At least one of the demoniacs, now “clothed schemes (2 Cor. 2:11) and vulnerable to his attacks. and in his right mind,” goes on to become the first Others make the opposite mistake. They make too evangelist to the Gentiles (Mark 5:19, 20). much of the demonic. They find supernatural evil present everywhere, all the time. There are demons in the car, demons in the dishwasher, demons in the MR offers Ex Auditu as an example of the kind of Christ-centered air-conditioner.

One must contend with the preaching that we believe best glorifies Christ and builds his demons of fat and smoke and drink and laziness. church. We welcome contributions from preachers who share For them there is a demon under every rock. our vision. Send manuscripts [of fewer than 2000 words] to Jesus did pray that the Father would “keep” his modref@alliancenet.org, and we will consider them for publicapeople “from the evil one” (John 15:17), and we tion. can be sure that that prayer is answered. The

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powers of darkness do not have unlimited access to us. Greater is he who is in us than he that is in the world (1 John 4:4).

Yet supernatural, personal evil is a real, malicious, and dangerous force with which we have to deal. We must beware. But let us also be encouraged, because at the hands of Jesus Christ all evil has been defeated.

Beware Scripture identifies three hallmarks of demonic activity. Let us first note the use of deception by the forces of darkness. Mark says that the demoniac “bowed down before Him” (Mark 5:6), and in Matthew they attribute to Jesus the exalted title “Son of God” (v. 29). But neither of these gestures should be interpreted as genuine acts of adoration.

The demons know they are in trouble, so they are trying to ingratiate themselves. But they are not sincere—deception is involved wherever we find demonic activity.

Take the case of these demoniacs themselves.

They didn’t become monsters overnight.

Undoubtedly their problems began quite subtly— like drug addiction—one step at a time. Perhaps it began with a fascination for the occult, and then an experience of the supernatural of some sort, and then a gradual yielding of control, until finally they were trapped in a downward spiral from which they had no power to escape. The Bible says that “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” and his servants as “servants of righteousness” (2 Cor. 11:14). The name Satan means deceiver. He is “the father of lies” (John 8:44). Paul warns of his “schemes” and of the “deception of wickedness” and “deluding influence” (2 Cor. 2:11; 2 Thess.

2:10,11). He comes offering happiness, not the wretched existence described in this text.

Secondly, we must beware of the demonic because it aims at dominance. The demoniac in this story is not his own; he is under the dominion of another. This is what Satan wants, and he is in fact quite successful at it. The goal of today’s “harmless” deceptions—whether it be television shows, silly board games, or the theatrics of rock stars—is tomorrow’s control and domination. Satan may not immediately exploit the foothold which he thus gains, but he is creating an environment of acceptance in which he can do so. Where, may we ask, has he seduced us? Where has he gained his foothold? Is it in the occult? Or is it just in good old-fashioned American hedonism? Either way, as we yield, as we give in, as we submit to his way and sin, we come gradually and surely under his domination. As Peter said, “by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved” (2 Pet. 2:19).

It may be the case that Satan’s tactics are generally

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different today. Perhaps he takes a more subtle and covert approach. Yet if his work is more hidden, then his domination is no less complete. In fact, the Bible says that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). The disobedient are said to be in the snare of the devil “having been held captive by him to do his will” (2 Tim. 2:26). Those who practice sin are said to be “of the devil” (1 John 3:8).

The process of conversion is said to involve being transferred “from the dominion of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18; cf. Col. 1:13, Eph. 2:2).

Finally, the demonic terminates in destruction. The demoniacs provide for us a vivid picture of the goal of pure evil. That goal is destruction. They were “so exceedingly violent” that no one could get near them (v. 28). Day and night they gash themselves (Mark 5:5). The spectacular scene of a whole herd of pigs running off the cliff illustrates the point.

The demonic aims at destroying God’s creation.

The Scriptures say that Satan “has blinded the minds of the unbelieving that they might not see the light of the Glory of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). Morally he blinds. Religiously he blinds. Why? In order to deceive, dominate, and ultimately destroy souls.

Why are there so many religions? Not because there are so many truths. There aren’t. There is one truth. Paul says of the ancient Gentile religions that their sacrifices were offered “to demons, not to God” (1 Cor. 10:20). The devil deceives and thus destroys. He is called the “destroyer” (1 Cor. 10:10), “adversary” (1 Pet. 5:8), “accuser” (Rev. 12:10), “slanderer,” “serpent,” “dragon,” “roaring lion,” “tempter,” “liar,” and “murderer” (John 8:44, etc.).

The demoniacs provide a picture of life apart from God when separation from him is complete. It is a picture of hell on earth or hell itself. It is a world of restlessness and misery. “Constantly night and day” (Mark 5:5) they cry out and gash themselves. Alone, deprived of all good, without community, without communication, isolated, joyless, loveless. Hell will complete their isolation. It is the “outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12). I can remember as a young boy in the barbershop overhearing a man say he would rather go to hell because the company there would be better than in heaven. He didn’t understand hell.

There won’t be any company. Eternity in hell will be spent alone and in darkness. Forever isolated tormented souls will attempt to destroy themselves.

But these attempts will never be successful. Endless, inescapable self-destruction will be their lot.

Be Encouraged Not only should we beware of the demonic, but we should also be encouraged, because Jesus Christ defeats the powers of darkness. He says, “Be gone,” and they are gone! This incident gives us a terrifying

picture of demonic power. But rather than be terrified we ought to be encouraged to flee to Jesus Christ for safety. He encounters a “legion” of demons and defeats them, not with a struggle, but with a word.

Martin Luther had great bouts with depression and such vivid encounters with demonic evil that he is alleged to have thrown his ink well at one. A stain on the wall of his study can still be seen. As he emerged from one of these battles he wrote the hymn Ein’ Feste Burg (“A Mighty Fortress Is our God”). In that hymn he says, And though this world, with devils filled, Should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed, His truth to triumph through us.

The prince of darkness grim; We tremble not for him; His rage we can endure, For lo! his doom is sure; One little word shall fell him.

Growing up in southern California, we learned not to fear the ocean but to respect it. The ocean is powerful and dangerous and thus deserved our respect. But one was not to be crippled by fear.

Likewise, the powers of darkness are not to be handled in a lighthearted, flippant, or superficial way. They have the ability to inflict great damage.

We are to respect their power (cf. Jude 8–10). Yet we are not to fear them. Why? Because Jesus defeated them at the cross. The Bible says Jesus has judged (John 16:11), bound (Mark 3:27), restrained (2 Thess. 2:6,7), rendered powerless (Heb. 2:14), thrown down (Luke 10:18; Rev. 12:9), disarmed and triumphed over (Col. 2:15) the evil forces, and destroyed their works (1 John 3:8).

Where is Satan now? He is under our feet (Rom. 16:20). Satan cannot “touch” a Christian (1 John 5:18). When resisted, he flees (James 4:7)! The victory has been total. Mark tells us of the demonic being seated (resting!) clothed, and in his right mind (v. 15). He is human again. He is a whole healthy individual. The restored demon-possessed men are symbols of the total defeat of Satan at the cross. That defeat will be consummated when Satan, his demons, all the ungodly, and even death itself, are cast into the lake of fire. Yet we enjoy the fruit of it substantially even now.

Some may object that with all the evil in the world, it cannot be that Satan is bound and defeated.

But we must reject the premise that the world is more evil: Satan has been defeated and the proof is the spread of the gospel around the world. He is no longer able to deceive the nations as he once was

(Rev. 20:6). Further, it must be noted that the evil one is not dead, though he is defeated. J. I. Packer likens Satan to Hitler in his bunker. He doesn’t believe in his own defeat, and so continues to direct his diminishing armies. This is why we are told to “be on the alert” (1 Pet. 5:8), and to put on the full armor of God for protection against his fiery darts, schemes, and deceptions (Eph. 6:11ff; 2 Cor. 2:11; 2 Thess. 2:9; Job 1:2). He can still suggest thoughts (Matt. 4:3ff) and inflict disease (Luke 13:16). But he does so as a defeated foe. He can fight us every step of the way, but he cannot stop us. The “gates of hell” cannot prevail against Christ’s church (Matt. 16:18).

We will have the victory, and in having it will usher in a world void of the suffering, malice, hatred, anger, war, hunger, disease, evil, and sin that the evil one has brought into this world.

Conclusions This text reminds us that we should not fear the attacks of the evil one. Only by inviting the powers of darkness into your life and giving them full reign can you snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. As long as we remain in Jesus, they do not have hope. They have been whipped.

But there is one other choice we must avoid— that of the townspeople. Upon hearing report of Christ’s victory, they “entreated Jesus to depart from their region.” For them Jesus is what William Barclay calls “the disturbing Christ.” He has disrupted their lives and cost them their pigs, so they ask him to leave. They are not possessed by demons, just blinded. They don’t want Jesus or anyone disturbing them. His power is a threat to them. “All down the ages the world has been refusing Jesus because it prefers its pigs,” says P. P. Levertoff. This is how many people are even today: not possessed, just blinded; not opposing him with shrieks and self-mutilation, just quietly insisting that he leave them alone. Is that you? I hope not! I hope we are open to sharing in the disturbing victory of Christ.

Let us have a healthy respect for Satan. But let us also claim our victory. Satan is under our feet.

He cannot touch us. Resist, and he must flee.

The Reverend Terry Johnson (M.Div., Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) is senior minister of Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia.

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Surveying the Wondrous Cross

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enturies of hymnody, combined with more recent offerings, have given us

important we are to God. While it’s true that God’s love numerous God-exalting topics to choose from on Sunday morning. But is there motivated him to send his Son to die in my place, the cross any theme we want to make sure we don’t miss when we gather to worship God? points not to the greatness of my worth, but the greatness of Yes. To be truly Christian, corporate worship must my sin. God loves us not because we are lovely, but exalt Jesus Christ and his work on the cross. If “the because he is loving. That’s why grace is so amazing. cross” takes in all that Jesus accomplished through his Therefore, we should look to use songs that not life, death, and resurrection, then it is impossible to only mention the cross, but expound, exalt, and worship God rightly without glorying in the cross. celebrate its biblical significance. Among other Christians tend to default to one of two things, Calvary means forgiveness for sins, the mentalities when worshipping God. First, we assume upholding of God’s righteousness, the satisfying of we can approach God casually, as though he were his wrath, the lavish display of his mercy, our not that different from us. The cross confronts our adoption into God’s family, and his victory over arrogance. Before our conversion we were objects of sin, death, and Satan. We do our congregations a God’s wrath, without hope of reconciliation apart disservice if we fail to feed them these truths each from a sin-bearing substitute. But even as Christians, time we gather to worship God. Finally, it is important that we judge hymns and we must be clothed in the perfect righteousness of contemporary songs by the same standard. Old may our Mediator to stand in God’s presence.

Another tendency is to perceive God as distant not mean better. Newness doesn’t imply “trueness.” due to our guilt and failure. The cross confronts However, songwriters such as Mark Altrogge, Stuart our fears as well. Hebrews 10:19-22 encourages us Townend, Timothy Dudley-Smith, and Steve and Vikki to draw near to God “in full assurance of faith” Cook are providing the church with modern hymns through this new and living way. It is not our that biblically and passionately expound the wonders obedience, our enthusiasm, nor our liturgy that of the cross. May we continue to see an outpouring of brings us near to God. It is the blood of Christ songs that help us celebrate the glorious gospel. which has secured our full access and acceptance.

The chorus of heaven continues to keep the You are beautiful beyond description cross central. The One who receives the adoration Yet God crushed You for my sin of countless throngs is none other than the Lamb In agony and deep affliction who was slain (Rev. 5:6-10). If our Savior’s Cut off that I might enter in redeeming work is the focus of worship for Who can grasp such tender compassion? eternity, how much more should it be on earth?

Who can fathom the mercy so free?

However, not all songs that mention the cross are You are beautiful beyond description created equal. Some take a sentimental approach that Lamb of God who died for me. views Jesus’ death as a tragic story with a happy ending (verse 2 of I Stand in Awe, by Mark Altrogge) that comforts us in our trials. Other hymns treat Jesus’ suffering on the cross simply as an example we should Bob Kauflin received a piano performance degree from Temple emulate, failing to highlight the most important University in 1976. He serves as the Director of Worship aspect, its atoning significance. A few recent worship Development for Sovereign Grace Ministries, and is a worship songs leave the impression that the cross is about how pastor at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD.

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Speaking of...

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’ve been a believer for 12 years and I have a desperate need for the Gospel. You’re never going to get over the Gospel, to move on to something deeper. There isn’t anything deeper.

Derek Webb of the band, Caedmon’s Call, in an interview with INO Records, September 2002

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he Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or—if they think there is not—at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 64

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herefore, when you begin to believe, you learn at the same time that all that is in you is utterly guilty, sinful, and damnable, according to that saying, “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. iii. 23), and also: “There is none righteous, no, not one; they are all gone out of the way; they are together become unprofitable: there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Rom. iii. 10–12). When you have learnt this, you will know that Christ is necessary for you, since He has suffered and risen again for you, that, believing on Him, you might by this faith become another man, all your sins being remitted, and you being justified by the merits of another, namely of Christ alone.

Martin Luther, “Concerning Christian Liberty,” Three Treatises, 255

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hristians feel compelled to appear perfect, so Christian culture accidentally breeds pride. We receive grace and forgiveness then struggle with pride and judgment toward sinners. Righteousness comes from Christ, not us, and the true gospel breeds empathy and humility. Humility speaks to non-Christians. They see that I’m not above reproach. I’m broken and messed up too, but I have the hope of the gospel. They see a messed up person with hope and realize they have a chance too. Humility is the necessary reaction to facing the reality of our state in comparison to Jesus. If more Christians understood the gospel—humility instead of judgment—I don’t think the face of Christianity would be as despicable to the common person.

David Bazan of the band, Pedro the Lion, in an interview with group magazine, September 2000

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Previewing the Fights xpect the religion headlines in the newsweeklies this summer to be dominated— just like last summer and the one before—by controversies over homosexuality at the church-wide assemblies of the mainline Protestant denominations. For although more Americans now claim affiliation with evangelical denominations or independent Protestant congregations (slightly over 25 percent of the population) than with the older mainline Protestant bodies (slightly under 25 percent), the mainstream media simply cannot resist this story.

First, their readers, unlike the populace as a whole, are still disproportionately mainline.

Second, gay ordination controversies allow writers to synthesize disparate happenings in diverse denominations into one story. Third and most

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importantly, they can cover this fight just like their favorite blood sport, politics.

From most journalists’ perspective, this plot, like Capitol Hill, has good guys and bad guys, inclusive progressives and divisive Neanderthals— and, of course, a little sex thrown in for good measure.

Here’s some context for a few of the brewing ecclesiastical fights, both mainline and non: ■ In a decision apparently signaling the end of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) prohibition on gay ordination, Rev. Peter Rogness, Bishop of the Saint Paul (MN) Area Synod of ELCA, has announced the lifting of sanctions against St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church. The sanctions were imposed in June 2001 after the congregation violated the ELCA constitution by calling and installing Anita

34 SUM + of the = TIME

Employees released in recent months by

Focus on the Family, in the

first lay-offs ever at what is

generally considered the most

effective evangelical fund-rais-

ing organization—highlighting just how widespread the current recession is in the religious nonprofit economy.

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Hill, a homosexual woman, as pastor. According to ELCA rules, congregations can install only denominationally approved ministers, and the denominational roster cannot include people involved in same-sex relationships. If Rogness’s decision is allowed to stand at the biennial church-wide assembly in Milwaukee this August, which ELCA observers believe is likely, it will mean that congregations could effectively avoid the church’s ordination standards by simply ignoring the roster of approved pastors.

■ The expectation that the new archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, will eventually come out in support of the ordination of homosexuals is one of the central issues in a messy battle developing among the world’s 70 million Anglicans.

To put a fine point on it, most of the Anglicans in the twothirds world—who now comprise the majority of the communion—are orthodox, while a large percentage of those in North America and Europe are not. The Asians and Africans are quickly tiring of first world deviations from the faith and are beginning to assert themselves. Philip Jenkins, an expert on North/South ecclesiastical tensions, comments, “The liberals basically spent the last forty years saying, ‘Let’s hear the voice of the Third Word.’

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And now they’ve heard it, and they’d like the Third World to shut up for several decades.”

■ As reported in MR earlier this year, the Presbyterian Church (USA) teeters on the brink of a constitutional crisis, and sadly, the problems have worsened dramatically in recent months. Extant “fidelity and chastity” rules prohibit the ordination of practicing homosexuals as well as the blessing of samesex “marriages,” but many presbyteries refuse to enforce these church laws. To deal with the chaos, conservative groups in the denomination this winter fulfilled the stated requirements to call the first emergency national assembly in the PC(USA)’s 214-year history. But denominational officials in Louisville, through questionable bureaucratic maneuvers, avoided actually scheduling the meeting.

For decades, observers have predicted that the more confessional wing of the PC(USA) would eventually leave the denomination, but it now appears that the so-called “progressives” might secede, in practice even if not in name. Expect fireworks at the annual general assembly May 24 in Denver.

■ Since making big waves in the mid-1990s by calling for a boycott of Disney, partly because of a gay marriage-friendly employee benefits plan, the nation’s

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Say What?!

“This will be followed by demands to canonize Stalin.”

— Alexander Dvorkin, an expert on Orthodoxy, assessing the bizarre debate now threatening to divide the Russian Orthodox Church over whether to canonize the brutal sixteenth century dictator Ivan the Terrible.

“It’s a form of Christian terrorism.”

— American Atheists official Larry Darby, protesting the voluntary Bible study Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, a Southern Baptist, holds in his office on Tuesday mornings.

“This is a kind of conscience-flogging. It is intended to bring them some public humiliation.”

— Ohio Judge Michael Cicconetti, explaining why he ordered two 19-yearolds to impersonate Mary and Joseph by wandering through the village in the snow leading a donkey, after the teenagers confessed to having stolen the baby Jesus from a town nativity scene on Christmas Eve.

“[Jesus] was a great teacher, sure, but he was also a real guy’s guy. He would have made an excellent athlete.”

— A discipler with “The Fellowship,” a secretive evangelical organization in Washington, DC, that seeks to influence international leaders to make Jesus their role model, as reported by an undercover writer investigating The Fellowship for Harper’s.

“One of the truths about Islam is that Allah said, Kill [Americans and Jews]. You can use anything—even chemical weapons.”

— Muslim cleric Abdullah el-Faisal, who was sentenced March 7 in London in the first conviction in over a century under a British law barring the solicitation of murder even if a specific victim is not identified.

largest Protestant denomination has largely flown below the radar of national media. This lack of coverage notwithstanding, the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has been busy developing an aggressive evangelistic strategy worthy of serious analysis. With 80 percent of its roughly fifteen million congregants in the South, and recognizing that America’s population growth is occurring primarily in major cities, the SBC is currently building mega-

churches in many northern and western urban centers.

Continuing a trend of recent years, this summer’s convention will be held outside the South (Phoenix, AZ) and in conjunction with an outreach effort to support a church plant. Rev. Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist in Dallas, is expected to be reelected to another one-year term as president.

■ The Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod (LCMS), which holds a Regular Convention triennially, will not meet again until July 2004,

but the delegates currently being selected already know the key issues. A bitter dispute continues to rage in the church about a September 2001 interfaith service at Yankee Stadium called “A Prayer for America,” in which Rev. David Benke, a high-ranking LC-MS cleric participated—allegedly against denominational ordination requirements.

Many in the LC-MS believe that participation in such a service with non-Christian texts and ministers amounted to syncretism and compromised the Christian witness by teaching that “all gods are the same.” But other LC-MS officials, including many at the St. Louis headquarters, have come out in support of Benke, recently initiating a campaign to promote the slogan “It’s OK to Pray,” in articles as well as on t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.

Voting on the 2004 reelection bid of current LC-MS president Gerald Kieschnick, a Benke supporter, will likely turn on the issue, but the implications will be much deeper for this denomination in crisis.

Religious Politics, British Style n a February 2003 interview, the Daily Telegraph asked Archbishop Rowan Williams, new leader of the Church of England, about Prince Charles’s articulated desire not to be named “Defender of the Faith” when he becomes king. The title, first bestowed on Henry VIII

by Pope Leo X in 1521 for his writings against the German reformer Martin Luther, has passed to every British monarch since. For nearly a

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decade, whenever pressed about his qualification to serve as the titular head of the Church of England in light of his marital difficulties, Charles has hinted that an honorific pointing to “the Faith” unhelpfully divides a pluralistic society like the United Kingdom anyway.

He has suggested that he should be called, alternatively, “Defender of Faith.”

What does Williams say in response? The monarchy, the archbishop argues, “has a relationship with the Christian church which he does not have with other faith communions…like it or not.”

And Religious Politics, Papal Style ust before the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v.

Wade in January, the Vatican published a statement demanding that Catholic politicians around the world work harder to reform laws allowing abortion and euthanasia. The 17-page “Doctrinal Notes on Some Questions Regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life” state that Catholic leaders will no longer be allowed to “compromise” on these matters.

The American Life League has since placed a full-page ad in the Washington Times titled “The Deadly Dozen,” featuring the photos and names of the twelve pro-abortion rights Catholics in the U.S. Senate.

In California, a bishop has suggested that Gov. Gray Davis may soon be forced to choose between taking communion and his position on abortion.

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G O O D N E W S | The Gospel for Christians

Gospel-Driven Sanctification arly in my Christian life I heard someone say, “The Bible was not given to increase your knowledge but to guide your conduct.” Later I came to realize that this statement was simplistic at best and erroneous at worst. The Bible is far more than a rulebook to follow. It is primarily the message of God’s saving grace through Jesus Christ, with everything in Scripture before the cross pointing to God’s redemptive work and everything after the cross––including our sanctification––flowing from that work.

There is an element of truth in this statement, however, and the Holy Spirit used it to help me to see that the Bible is not to be read just to gain knowledge. It is, indeed, to be obeyed and practically applied in our daily lives. As James says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22).

With my new insight, I prayed that God would use the Bible to guide my conduct. Then I began diligently to seek to obey it. I had never heard the phrase “the pursuit of holiness,” but that became my primary goal in life. Unfortunately, I made two mistakes. First, I assumed the Bible was something of a rulebook and that all I needed to do was to learn what it says and go do it. I knew nothing of the necessity of depending on the Holy Spirit for his guidance and enablement.

Still worse, I assumed that God’s acceptance of me and his blessing in my life depended on how well I did. I knew I was saved by grace through faith in Christ apart from any works. I had assurance of my salvation and expected to go to heaven when I died. But in my daily life, I thought God’s blessing depended on the practice of certain spiritual disciplines, such as having a daily quiet time and not knowingly committing any sin. I did not think this out but just unconsciously assumed it, given the Christian culture in which I lived. Yet it determined my attitude toward the Christian life.

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Performance-Based Discipleship y story is not unusual. Evangelicals commonly think today that the gospel is only for unbelievers. Once we’re inside the kingdom’s door, we need the gospel only in order to share it with those who are still outside.

Now, as believers, we need to hear the message of discipleship. We need to learn how to live the Christian life and be challenged to go do it. That’s what I believed and practiced in my life and ministry for some time. It is what most Christians seem to believe.

As I see it, the Christian community is largely a performance-based culture today. And the more deeply committed we are to following Jesus, the more deeply ingrained the performance mindset is.

We think we earn God’s blessing or forfeit it by how well we live the Christian life.

Most Christians have a baseline of acceptable performance by which they gauge their acceptance

by God. For many, this baseline is no more than regular church attendance and the avoidance of major sins. Such Christians are often characterized

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ure to witness at every opportunity, and their frequent failures in dealing with sins of the heart. This group of Christians is far more likely to be plagued by a sense of guilt because group members have not met their own expectations. And because they think God’s acceptance of them is based on their performance, they have little joy in their Christian lives. For them, life is like a treadmill on which they keep slipping farther and farther behind. This group needs the gospel, but they don’t realize it is for them. I know, because I was in this group.

The Gospel Is for Believers radually over time, and from a deep sense of need, I came to realize that the gospel is for believers, too. When I finally realized this, every morning I would pray over a Scripture such as Isaiah 53:6,“ All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all,” and then say, “Lord, I have gone astray. I have turned to my own way, but you have laid all my sin on Christ and because of that I approach you and feel accepted by you.”

I came to see that Paul’s …It is the gospel that continues to remind us that our day-to-day acceptance statement in Galatians 2:20, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son with the Father is not based on what we do for God but upon what Christ of God who loved me and gave himself for me,” was did for us…. made in the context of justification (see vv. 15–21). Yet by some degree of self-righteousness. After all, Paul was speaking in the present tense: “The life I they don’t indulge in the major sins we see hap- now live ….” Because of the context, I realized Paul pening around us. Such Christians would not think was not speaking about his sanctification but about they need the gospel anymore. They would say his justification. For Paul, then, justification (being declared righteous by God on the basis of the the gospel is only for sinners.

For committed Christians, the baseline is much righteousness of Christ) was not only a past-tense higher. It includes regular practice of spiritual dis- experience but also a present-day reality.

Paul lived every day by faith in the shed blood ciplines, obedience to God’s Word, and involvement in some form of ministry. Here again, if we and righteousness of Christ. Every day he looked focus on outward behavior, many score fairly well. to Christ alone for his acceptance with the Father.

But these Christians are even more vulnerable to He believed, like Peter (see 1 Pet. 2:4–5), that even self-righteousness, for they can look down their our best deeds––our spiritual sacrifices––are spiritual noses not only at the sinful society around acceptable to God only through Jesus Christ. them but even at other believers who are not as Perhaps no one apart from Jesus himself has ever committed as they are. These Christians don’t been as committed a disciple both in life and minneed the gospel either. For them, Christian growth istry as the Apostle Paul. Yet he did not look to his own performance but to Christ’s “performance” as means more discipline and more commitment.

Then there is a third group. The baseline of this the sole basis of his acceptance with God. So I learned that Christians need to hear the group includes more than the outward performance of disciplines, obedience, and ministry. These gospel all of their lives because it is the gospel that Christians also recognize the need to deal with sins continues to remind us that our day-to-day acceptof the heart like a critical spirit, pride, selfishness, ance with the Father is not based on what we do for envy, resentment, and anxiety. They see their God but upon what Christ did for us in his sinless inconsistency in having their quiet times, their fail- life and sin-bearing death. I began to see that we

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stand before God today as righteous as we ever will be, even in heaven, because he has clothed us with the righteousness of his Son. Therefore, I don’t have to perform to be accepted by God. Now I am free to obey him and serve him because I am already accepted in Christ (see Rom. 8:1). My driving motivation now is not guilt but gratitude.

Yet even when we understand that our acceptance with God is based on Christ’s work, we still naturally tend to drift back into a performance mindset. Consequently, we must continually return to the gospel. To use an expression of the late Jack Miller, we must “preach the gospel to ourselves every day.” For me that means I keep going back to Scriptures such as Isaiah 53:6, Galatians 2:20, and Romans 8:1. It means I frequently repeat the words from an old hymn, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”

No “Easy Believism” ut doesn’t this idea that our acceptance with God is based solely on Christ’s work apart from our performance lead to a type of “easy believism”? In its most basic form, this is the notion that “Since I asked Christ to be my Savior, I am on my way to heaven regardless of how I live. It doesn’t matter if I continue in my sinful lifestyle. God loves and will accept me anyway.”

By a similar way of thinking, the claim that God’s acceptance and blessing are based solely on Christ’s work could be taken to mean that it really doesn’t matter how I live right now. If Jesus has already “performed” in my place, then why go through all the effort and pain of dealing with sin in my life? Why bother with the spiritual disciplines and why expend any physical and emotional energy to serve God during this earthly life if everything depends on Christ?

The Apostle Paul anticipated such “easy believism” in Romans 6:1 when he wrote, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” His response in Romans 6:2, “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” answers the question, “Why bother?”

Paul was not responding with “How could you be so ungrateful as to think such a thing?” No, instead he is saying, in effect, “You don’t understand the gospel. Don’t you realize that you died to sin and if you died to sin, it’s impossible for you to continue to live in it” (see Rom. 6:3–14).

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We Died to Sin ow, however, we come to a big question.

What does Paul mean when he says we died to sin? It’s fairly obvious he doesn’t mean we died to the daily committal of sin. If that

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were true, no honest person could claim to be justified because we all sin daily. None of us truly loves God with our whole being and none of us actually loves our neighbor as ourselves (see Matt.

22:35–40). Nor does it mean we have died in the sense of being no longer responsive to sin’s temptations, as some have taught. If that were true, Peter’s admonition to abstain from the passions of the flesh would be pointless (see 1 Pet. 2:11). So what does Paul mean?

Some Bible commentators believe that Paul means only that we have died to the penalty of sin.

That is, because of our union with Christ, when Christ died to sin’s penalty we also died to sin’s penalty. Well, it certainly means that, but it also means much more. It also means we died to sin’s dominion.

What is the dominion of sin? In Romans 5:21, Paul speaks of sin’s reign. And in Colossians 1:13, he speaks of the domain of darkness. When Adam sinned in the Garden, we all sinned through our legal union with him (see Rom. 5:12–21). That is, because of our identity with Adam we all suffered the consequence of his sin. And a part of that consequence is to be born into this world under the reign or dominion of sin. Paul describes what it means to be under this dominion in Ephesians 2:1–3. He says we were spiritually dead; we followed the ways of the world and the devil; we lived in the passions of our sinful natures and were, by nature, objects of God’s wrath.

This slavery to the dominion of sin then is part of the penalty due to our guilt of sin. Through our union with Christ in his death, however, our guilt both from Adam’s and from our own personal sins was forever dealt with. Having died with Christ to the guilt of sin, we also as a consequence died to the dominion of sin. We cannot continue in sin as a dominant way of life because the reign of sin over us has forever been broken.

This death to the dominion of sin over us is known theologically as definitive sanctification. It refers to the decisive break with, or separation from, sin as a ruling power in a believer’s life. It is a point-in-time event, occurring simultaneously with justification. It is the fundamental change wrought in us by the monergistic action of the Holy Spirit (that is, by the Spirit acting alone without human permission or assistance) when he delivers us from the kingdom of darkness and transfers us into the kingdom of Christ. This definitive break with the dominion of sin occurs in the life of everyone who trusts in Christ as Savior. There is no such thing as justification without definitive sanctification. They both come to us as a result of Christ’s work for us.

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Consider Yourselves Dead to Sin o we are free from both the guilt and the dominion of sin. But what use is this information to us? How can it help us live out a gospel-based pursuit of sanctification? Here Paul’s instructions in Romans 6:11 are helpful: “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

It is important we understand what Paul is saying here because he is not telling us to do something but to believe something. We are to believe that we are dead through Christ to both sin’s penalty and its dominion. But this is not something we make come true by believing it. We simply are dead to sin, whether we believe it or not. But the practical effects of our death to sin can be realized only as we believe it to be true.

The fact is that we are guilty in ourselves, but God no longer charges that guilt against us because it has already been borne by Christ as our substitute. The sentence has been served. The penalty has been paid. We have died to sin, both to its guilt and to its dominion. That is why Paul can write, “Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin” (Rom. 4:8).

But the question arises, “If I’ve died to sin’s dominion, why do I still struggle with sin patterns

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and our struggle, we have died to sin’s guilt. We must believe that however often we fail, there is no condemnation for us (Rom. 8:1).

William Romaine, who was one of the leaders of the eighteenth-century revival in England, wrote, “No sin can be crucified either in heart or life unless it first be pardoned in conscience…. If it be not mortified in its guilt, it cannot be subdued in its power.” What Romaine was saying is that if you do not believe you have died to sin’s guilt, you cannot trust Christ for the strength to subdue its power in your life. So the place to begin in dealing with sin is to believe the gospel when it says you have died to sin’s guilt.

Progressive Sanctification arring against our sinful habits and seeking to put on Christlike character is usually called sanctification. But because the term definitive sanctification is used to describe the point-in-time deliverance from the dominion of sin, it is helpful to speak of Christian growth in holiness as progressive sanctification.

Additionally, the word progressive indicates continual growth in holiness over time. The New Testament writers both assume growth (see 1 Cor. 6:9–11; Eph. 2:19–21; Col. 2:19; 2 Thess. 1:3); and continually urge us to pursue it (see 2 Cor. 7:1; Heb. 12:14; 2 Pet. 3:18). There is no For a growing Christian, desire will always outstrip performance or, at least, place in authentic Christianity for stagnant, self-satisfied, and self-rightperceived performance. eous Christians. Rather we should be seeking to grow in Christlikeness until we die.

This progressive sanctification always involves in my life?” The answer to that question lies in the word struggle. Unbelievers do not struggle our practice of spiritual disciplines, such as reading with sin. They may seek to overcome some bad Scripture, praying, and regularly fellowshipping habit, but they do not see that habit as sin. They with other believers. It also involves putting to do not have a sense of sin against a holy God. death the sinful deeds of the body (see Rom. 8:13) Believers, on the other hand, struggle with sin as and putting on Christlike character (see Col. sin. We see our sinful words, thoughts, and deeds 3:12–14). And very importantly it involves a desas sin against God; and we feel guilty because of perate dependence on Christ for the power to do it. This is where we must continue to go back to these things, for we cannot grow by our own the gospel. To consider ourselves dead to sin is to strength.

So sanctification involves hard work and believe the gospel.

This doesn’t mean that we just believe the dependence on Christ; what I call dependent effort. gospel and live complacently in our sin. And it will always mean we are dissatisfied with our Absolutely not! Go back again to Paul’s words in performance. For a growing Christian, desire will Romans 6:1–2. We died both to sin’s guilt and its always outstrip performance or, at least, perceived dominion. Though sin can wage war against us performance. What is it then that will keep us (hence our struggle), it cannot reign over us. That going in the face of this tension between desire and is also part of the gospel. But the success of our performance? The answer is the gospel. It is the struggle with sin begins with our believing deep assurance in the gospel that we have indeed died to [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 4 2 ] down in our hearts that regardless of our failures

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G O O D N E W S | The Gospel for Christians

On Being WellDressed: A New Year’s Dialogue pril came through the coffeehouse door, bleary-eyed from an obviously late night. She muttered an order, rummaged through her purse for coins, and collapsed on the couch.

“So,” she asked bluntly, “you make any New Year’s resolutions?”

Tony scratched his stubbled chin—he, too, had apparently had a late night—and, not even looking up from his reading, mumbled absentmindedly, “Nah, I never really bother.”

“Ah, right, I forgot.” She continued in good humor, but with more than a hint of sarcasm, “Christians are already perfect.”

He finally brought his eyes up from the book in his lap, and with just a hint of a smile, he took the bait. “No,” he said, “not perfect, just forgiven. Haven’t you been keeping up with the clever bumper stickers?”

“Hah!” she laughed, the caffeine already seeming to take effect. “You told me Lutherans don’t believe in bumper-sticker theology.”

“Touché.” Tony was glad to cede the point. “But seriously,” he continued, “as trite and as cliché as it may be, that particular sticker is correct, at least as far as it goes.”

“Yeah,” she asked skeptically, “and just how far do bumper stickers go?”

“Not far; not far at all.”

The dialogue lulled, but as Tony set down his book and picked up his coffee, a monologue continued in his mind: “Is that popular phrase merely trite? Sure, it’s true; but what do those words really mean: perfection, forgiveness?” Not wanting the opportunity to be lost, he began a new line of thought.

“You know, April,” he said, leaning forward, “on second thought, maybe it’s not necessarily wrong to say that Christians are perfect. I mean, if …”

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She interrupted quickly and energetically, nearly spilling her tea. “Wait, wait, wait! I’m not even a Christian—I don’t buy everything you say about sin, not even most of the stuff you say about sin— but I’m still not naïve enough to think that somebody might be perfect. As a matter of fact, isn’t that precisely why I hear you always bad-mouthing this Wesley character? If you’re perfect then who needs the forgiveness you’re always talking about?”

“Wesley?” he thought; “she really does remember these conversations.” With that in mind, he leaned back and began to weigh his words carefully. “Well,” he said slowly, “if we wanted to put it in bumper sticker language, we might say that Christians are perfect because they’re forgiven.

Obviously we’re not perfect in everything we do, but we are perfect insofar as God sees us.”

“That’s some God you’ve got,” the playful sarcasm returned, “one who misses something any ten year old can see.”

Tony leaned forward again, elbows on his knees. “Actually, it’s just the opposite. He looks at something we can’t see. He’s got a perspective we don’t have. Sure, we can look at Christians and see all the things they do wrong. But when God sees us he sees what Jesus has done right. For example, when the Apostle Paul talks about baptism, he talks about being ‘clothed with Christ’ (Gal. 3:27). It’s as though God pays more attention to the clothing than to the person wearing the clothing.”

“Frankly,” she confessed—a bit too frankly, he thought— “that doesn’t make any sense.”

Pausing, reaching for an analogy, he asked, “Okay, have you seen My Fair Lady?”

“Oh no,” she groaned, setting down her cup and grabbing her head; “not this again. You know I can’t stand Audrey Hepburn movies!”

“What?” he asked incredulously. “No, I didn’t know that. All Hepburn films, even Breakfast at Tiffany’s? What about Roman Holiday? Classics!”

“Classics, schmassics,” she huffed, dismissing the idea. “You like them because she’s thin and beautiful. I dislike them for the same reason. If there’s anything classic about them it’s the classic example of an impossible Hollywood standard of beauty, one that girls inevitably think they have to meet.”

Something flickered in Tony’s mind. Not wanting to lose the train of thought, however, he made a note to return to it. “Well, maybe,” he said instead; “but you have seen it?”

“When I was an impressionable young girl,” she confessed, her voice getting higher. It was a not-sosubtle indication of the irreparable harm she believed it may have caused her.

He couldn’t help laughing as he tipped his coffee cup toward her. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

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“I am, actually; but continue.”

“Okay,” he began, “My Fair Lady. The whole point was to take Eliza Doolittle, this flower girl, this ‘gutter snipe,’ as she was called—dirty clothes, foul smell, grating accent—and somehow to pass her off in high society. Obviously she couldn’t have just walked into that fancy ball and announced, ‘I’m as good as any of you; you have to accept me!’ So Professor Higgins taught her proper manners and pronunciation, had her bathed, and put her in a new dress. The same people who previously wouldn’t have glanced twice at her are suddenly whispering about how charming she is. And yet,” he concluded, “she’s still a flower girl with a drunk for a father.”

April sunk into a slouch on the sofa and, unimpressed with the brief review, asked pointedly, “And?” “And the point of the whole charade is, I think, summed up when one of the characters says, ‘the difference between a lady and a flower girl isn’t how they behave, but how they are treated.’ I doubt very much that the writer intended any biblical allusion, but there is an incredible similarity between that idea and the way Scripture talks about a person coming before God. For example, Jesus tells a parable of a wedding banquet (Matt. 22:1–14). In order to get through the door, the guests have to be wearing certain clothes. If they wear the clothes, they’re in; if they don’t, they’re not. The thing is, in the parable, Jesus specifically says that even ‘sinners’ were allowed to attend. The same is true of Eliza Doolittle. If she’d come to the ball looking the way she normally did, she wouldn’t have been allowed in. The only thing that gets her through the door is the way she’s dressed. It’s no different with us.

In and of ourselves we’re completely unworthy to stand before God; but because we’re ‘wearing Christ,’ so to speak, he does accept us.”

Giving herself time to think this over, April simply said, “Of course, you know that no one would make a movie like that today.”

“Why is that?” he asked.

“Well, all right,” she replied, sitting upright again. “I suppose there is something appealing about the story. And I know it’s not the point, but, still, the idea that a lady who flits around in a ball gown is somehow better than a flower girl? It just seems, I don’t know, classist.”

“Sure,” Tony admitted, “but when we’re talking about God, of course he is better than us. He’s holy; he’s perfect. He is who he is; and because we are who we are—unholy and imperfect—we simply can’t approach him as we are. In fact, something like this is described even in the Old Testament. Moses had to take his shoes off before he approached the burning bush (Exod. 3:5); the Israelite priests had to wear special clothing before they entered the holiest part of the temple (Lev.

16:2–4). God himself was present in both. All of this points forward to the New Testament idea that Jesus covers us with forgiveness, that we’re baptized into Jesus; we’re clothed with him and therefore fit to stand in God’s presence.”

April stared into her cup and let that sink in for a moment. When she looked up, she returned to a previous point. “You still have to admit that it sounds an awful lot like God is being tricked. I mean, people are still sinful, correct? And yet God can’t see that because Jesus hides it? It all sounds more than a bit dishonest. God was duped and that means people can call themselves perfect?”

“I suppose you’re right,” he confessed, thinking this over. “What I should have said actually goes one step further. It’s not simply that Christ hides sin.

He removes it. In fact, he removes it and places it on himself. There’s a very interesting Old Testament passage in which God comes to a prophet who’s dressed in rags. He tells him, ‘Take off your filthy clothes and I will dress you in rich garments.’ After that he goes on to explain that the removal of the dirty clothing represents the removal of sin (Zech. 3:3–5). And I only remember this because of a story written by Walter Wangerin.

He writes about a ragman, a man who goes around town exchanging old rags for new ones. At one point he takes a coat from an old, hunched-over man, and gives the man a new coat. When they exchange coats, the elderly man walks upright again while the ragman becomes hunched over. He keeps doing that sort of thing until the entire town is healed and the ragman himself dies. The story, of course, is better than the summary. But Wangerin is attempting to illustrate what happened on the cross.

Christ took the world’s sin, put it on himself, and clothed us with his own perfection. It’s what the reformers sometimes call the ‘glorious exchange.’

More to the point, it’s what the Bible simply calls the gospel, the good news of forgiveness.”

“Well, I’ll give you this; if it’s true, then it is good news. But,” she winked, “I still can’t help thinking it would be better news if told without all the Audrey Hepburn analogies. You know I’m right about her being a poor role model.”

This reminder caught Tony’s attention.

“Actually, you’re right, and I’m glad you brought it up again.”

“Oh no,” she laughed, “what did I just get myself into?”

“You are right,” he said again, getting excited; “she is a discouraging role model. But why?”

“As I said before, she’s held up as an impossible standard to imitate.” The playful mood that had surfaced just a moment before quickly disappeared. “A whole generation of girls grew up thinking they had

to look like her. Some still do, and they can’t; nobody can! Anyone who seriously thinks she has to make herself that thin, that beautiful, that cheerfully energetic, is doomed to a life of self-loathing, doubt, and depression. And it happens all the time; it’s sickening!”

He reached for his coffee and allowed her a moment to calm down before cautiously suggesting, “You may not realize this, but your grasp of theology really is astounding.”

“I’m not talking about theology,” she flared again, “I’m talking about rotten cinema!”

“I know you are,” he said as calmly as possible; “but, sadly, it sounds like you’re talking about what often passes for Christianity today.”

She drained her cup and set it on the table.

Then, calmly, but still looking irritated, she said, “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Have you ever heard Jesus described as a role model? Or, to come back to where we began, have you ever seen a bumper sticker asking, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’” “Of course I have; they were everywhere a few years ago.” The roll of her eyes and the tone in her voice indicated that she was none too pleased by that fact.

“Then let me ask you very bluntly: if you think Audrey Hepburn is an impossible role model, how do you feel about trying to imitate God incarnate?”

He let that hang in the air a moment before continuing. “Now consider that Audrey never commanded you to be like her; God does demand that you be like him. That’s the essence of the law found in the Bible, God insisting that man be perfect.

Unfortunately, too many people think this law is the essence of Christianity itself, God demanding that we be like Christ. In fact, it’s the gospel that’s the essence of Christianity, God assuring us that, despite our imperfection, he sees none of our faults.

But when the law is the only message people hear, and when they realize it’s impossible to fulfill, they find themselves precisely as you described: doubting and despairing.”

April easily made the connection; she’d heard that sort of preaching before. With a twinge of guilt she realized that her own impression of Christianity hadn’t been far from what Tony described. She’d have to give this some more thought. But even if what he was saying were true, there still remained one big question in her mind.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” she began.

“Go ahead.”

“God demands perfection?”

“True,” he nodded.

“And it’s God himself who sees the Christian as perfect?”

“Right,” he nodded again. [ C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 2 5 ]

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G O O D N E W S | The Gospel for Christians

Christ Died for the

Sins of Christians,Too ny evangelical— indeed, any real Christian— would probably say that life’s key issue is whether someone comes into a saving relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

How one receives that salvation, however, has been the subject of many debates throughout church history, debates that continue today.

At the center of these many debates is an assumption: Every human being born after Adam and Eve is affected (some call this effect total depravity) by the Fall. In order to right the wrong and restore us to a saving relationship with our Creator, Christians affirm that the eternal Son of God assumed to himself a particular human nature in order that he might do the work of being our prophet, priest, and king. He has solved our

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basic problem by standing in our stead and taking our place. That simple story of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is the gospel. And the gospel message is that Christ did all of this for you and me. The word that most evangelicals would use for this work is a biblical word— Christ Jesus has brought us salvation.

My task would be simple if I were merely to answer the question, “How am I to be saved?” For, the answer to this question is simple as well. It is “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved!” (see Acts 16:31 [NKJ]; cf. 1 Tim. 1:16 [NKJ]). Although the doctrine of justification is still under attack in many circles, most evangelicals understand the question of salvation and are able to grasp it in its bare simplicity: Christ died for me. But the more difficult

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thing with which Christians must come to grips is, “What does the gospel matter to my Christian life?”

Or, in other words, “What do I do now? Do I still believe the gospel, or is the rest left up to me?”

An Alien Gospel ne of my favorite stories that illustrates this particular matter deals with a time when the German reformer Martin Luther was translating the Bible into German at the Wartburg castle and could only have contact with his colleague Phillip Melanchthon by courier.

Melanchthon had a different sort of temperament than Luther. Some would call him timid; others of a less generous bent might call him spineless. At one time, while Luther was off in the Wartburg castle translating, Melanchthon had another one of his attacks of timidity. He wrote to Luther, “I woke this morning wondering if I trust Christ enough.”

Luther received such letters from Melanchthon regularly. He had a tendency, a propensity, to navel-gaze and to wonder about the state of his inner faith, and whether it was enough to save.

Finally, in an effort to pull out all the stops and pull Melanchthon out of himself, Luther wrote back and said, “Melanchthon! Go sin bravely! Then go to the cross and bravely confess it! The whole gospel is outside of us.”

This story has been told time and time again by less sympathetic observers than I in an effort to caricature Luther and the Reformation generally as advocates of licentious abandon. These critics assert that if we are not justified by our own moral conformity to the law, but by Christ’s, surely there is nothing keeping us from self-indulgence. This, of course, was the criticism of the gospel that Paul anticipated in Romans 6: “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!” Luther’s pastoral advice was calculated to jar Melanchthon out of morbid introspection. Great sinners know liberation when they have it, but Melanchthon had been a scrupulous, pious Catholic. Luther’s words did not bring him assurance, but only doubts. For his assurance depended not so much on God’s promise to the ungodly as ungodly (see Rom. 4:5), but on his own ability to see growth and improvement in his “Christian walk.” Luther’s frustrated counsel was not an invitation to serve sin, but an attempt to shock Melanchthon into realizing that his only true righteousness was external to him: “The whole gospel is outside of us.”

Melancthon’s experience is common among many Christians I know today. Many of them, such as Melancthon did 400 years ago, are looking for assurance of their salvation in all the wrong places. They tend to think that their standing

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before God—now that they are Christians—is based on their own obedience and their own righteousness. They have forgotten the fundamental fact that the gospel is “outside of us.” It was “outside of us” when we turned to Christ for salvation and it is “outside of us,” now, as we progress in our sanctification.

This “alien” nature of the gospel is a primary theme in the New Testament: Christ’s death was outside of me and for me. It is not primarily something that changes me. After one has been declared righteous by grace through faith, this grace will begin to change us (sanctification).

Nevertheless, its changing us is certainly not what justifies us. In Roman Catholicism, and in some forms of American Evangelicalism (like John Wesley’s work), however, the accent falls on actual moral transformation. In other words, what makes us acceptable to God is not his external declaration of justification, but his internal work of renovation within our hearts and lives. Thus, through the influence of Arminianism and Wesleyanism, the situation in many evangelical churches is almost indistinguishable on these points from medieval Rome. Some of the preaching in Evangelicalism—certainly some of the Sunday school material and some of the addresses by retreat speakers and Christian leaders—tends to reinforce that old intuition that morally good people are the ones who are saved and that those who are not so good are the ones who are lost.

The bellwether test as to where a person stands on this issue is what he or she does with Romans 7, particularly passages such as, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (vv. 19, 24). Often, those who are not grounded in the Reformation say that this was Paul’s experience before he met the Lord. Those of us from a Reformation perspective, however, would probably say there is no better description of the Christian life in the entire Bible than Romans 7. The reformers really believed that the Christian life was a matter of being simul iustus et peccator—simultaneously justified and sinful—and that we would remain in this tension until death.

Any righteousness that we have, even in the Christian life, is a gift to us. It is not the result of our obedience, of our claiming God’s promises, of our “victorious Christian living,” or of our “letting go and letting God.” You might be familiar with some of these ideas if you’ve spent any amount of time in American church circles. But the reformers would not have been especially impressed with these teachings, commonly called “Higher Life”

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teachings. In the early twentieth century, the Princeton Presbyterian theologian B. B. Warfield, had this to say about Lewis Sperry Chafer (a Presbyterian minister whose writings helped pave the way for these ideas to infiltrate American churches): Mr. Chafer makes use of all the jargon of the Higher Life teachers. In him, too, we hear of two kinds of Christians, whom he designates respectively “carnal men” and “spiritual men,” on the basis of a misreading of 1 Cor. 2:9ff; and we are told that the passage from the one to the other is at our option, whenever we care to “claim” the higher degree “by faith.” With him, too, thus, the enjoyment of every blessing is suspended on our “claiming it.” We hear here, too, of “letting” God, and, indeed, we almost hear of “engaging” the Spirit (as we engage, say, a carpenter) to do work for us; and we do explicitly hear of “making it possible for God” to do things—a quite terrible expression. Of course, we hear repeatedly of the duty and efficacy of “yield-

ing”—and the act of “yielding ourselves” is quite in the customary manner discriminated from “consecrating” ourselves.

Gospel-Centered Sanctification id the reformers, then, have any doctrine of sanctification? Of course they did. We are all familiar with the biblical announcements as to what is involved in sanctification: the Word, the Sacraments, prayer, fellowship, sharing the gospel, serving God and neighbor. And the Reformation tradition acknowledges that there are biblical texts that speak of sanctification as complete already. This is not a perfection that is empirical or observable (as Wesley and others would have insisted upon), but a definitive declaration that because we are “in Christ,” we are set apart and reckoned holy by his sacrifice (1 Cor. 1:30; Heb. 10, and so on). Anybody who is in Christ is sanctified, because Christ’s holiness is imputed to the Christian believer, just as Jesus says in John 17:19, “For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.” God sees the believer as holy. That means that Wesley should not have terrified Christian

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hroughout the Middle Ages, the Western church was discussing and debating the nature of justification. The reformers really believed that the popular (and, by the mid-sixteenth century, official) Roman Catholic position was self-salvation.

By “Roman Catholic,” I don’t mean what’s going on at your local Catholic church today. Rather, it is to the medieval position that I refer, the Roman Catholic theology that was represented in the Council of Trent in 1545–1563. What then were the medieval positions on this doctrine?

Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic theologian of the midthirteenth century, had a doctrine of justification, but for him it was just one doctrine among many (Aquinas makes this point in his Summa Theologiae 1–2, q. 113). Somewhere tucked behind, around, and under such subjects as regeneration, predestination, and sanctification was his position on justification. It was a doctrine of justification that involved God loving the sinner insofar as he or she was not a sinner. He did not love the sinner as sinner; how could a holy and just God love a sinner? But he loved sinners insofar as they had the potential to not be sinners.

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Another Catholic theologian, John Duns Scotus (who lived in the early fourteenth century), spoke of the necessity of an absolutely selfless act of contrition (sorrow) and love for God by natural means if a person was to be saved. Think about that for a moment. At least once during your life, you would have to perform an utterly selfless act that had no vested interest for you whatsoever, or you would not be saved. Luther believed that this way of justification prevented God from befriending publicans and sinners, and that if it were true, God was not truly free.

Of course, there were many other views, but the medieval consensus that won out has come to be known by the technical name semi-Pelagianism (from the late fourth- to fifth-century debate between Augustine, defender of grace, and Pelagius, a monk who denied original sin and, therefore, the need for supernatural grace). While the Synod of Orange (A.D. 529) condemned both Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism, the heresy of works-righteousness, erected on the foundation of free will, grew increasingly popular among the masses and even among theologians.

What the reformers said of the position was that it was by necessity a theology of doubt, of fear, and finally of despair of

brethren with texts such as “Without holiness, no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14 [NIV]). The Christian is holy, it is all imputed. What would the reformers have done with texts such as 1 Peter 1:16, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” ([NAS], cf. Lev. 11:44f; 19:2; 20:7)? They would say we are called to be holy. But, some may ask, why should we be called to holiness if we are already perfect in Christ?

That question has been asked before, and Paul’s answer in Romans 6 is because we are saved unto good works, not unto licentiousness. Good works are done out of thankfulness of heart by the believer who has been saved, not by one who is trying to be saved by following the law.

How did the law function in the reformers’ doctrine of sanctification? They believed that the law in the Bible has three uses. First, it is a civil ordinance to keep us from stealing each other’s wives, husbands, and speedboats. The civil use of the law applies to the whole culture. Second, the theological use of the law is to reveal our sin and drive us to despair and terror so that we will seek a savior.

Luther believed that is a primary use of the law in all of Scripture. But the reformers also believed in

a third use of the law, and that is a didactic use, to teach the Christian God’s will for holy living. (For more on this point, see the sidebar, “Defining Law and Gospel.”)

What should the Christian do if he is reading the law and says, “This is not yet true of me: I don’t love God with all my heart, and I certainly don’t love my neighbor as I love myself. In fact, just today I failed to help a poor man on the side of the road who was having car trouble. I must not yet be a Christian.” The answer of the Higher Life movement to the struggling Christian is, “Surrender more!” or, “What are you holding back from the Lord?” The Reformation answer is different: “You hurry back to the second use of the law and flee to Christ where sanctification is truly, completely, and perfectly located.” After this experience, the believer will feel a greater sense of freedom to obey (thus fulfilling the third use of the law), and this is the only way that one will ever feel free to obey.

The most important thing to remember is that the death of Christ was in fact a death even for Christian failure. Christ’s death saves even Christians from sin. There is always room at the

History Lesson ever being saved. One had to be sanctified enough first in order to merit justifying grace, and the essence of justification was a real change within the human heart. Justification, in mainstream Roman Catholic theology, is primarily a real, empirical change in the human heart. Aquinas argued that justification involves a gradual change from unjust to just, thus justified. Grace amounts to an infused power to lead a God-pleasing life, to cooperate with the Spirit, to gradually move oneself from the category of “ungodly” to that of “righteous.” And this would be evident in fewer and fewer sins by the believer. Luther, however, did not agree that the word grace in the Bible means an infused power to live a God-pleasing life, as though grace were a substance. He said rather that grace is the opposite of merit: unmerited favor. We are saved

by God’s graciousness to us. God has decided to be gracious to sinners; we are saved by his graciousness.

Grace is not even a principle. It is an attribute, a disposition, of the living God. He is gracious. To be saved by God’s graciousness is to give up on merit, or to use Luther’s phrase, to “let God be God.” Luther believed that to let God be God is to recognize that it is he who does the saving, and part of what is req-

uisite in that is for us to quit trying to do the saving. The Roman Catholic position was that God and the believer working together can save, whereas the Reformation position insisted that God can save sinners only if they stop trying to save themselves. The cause of God’s graciousness to sinners is not our faith, the reformers insisted; the cause of God’s graciousness to sinners is his graciousness. In other words, we do not leverage the love of God out of heaven. We do not have an Archimedean point for a lever to pry it down toward us. Our openness, our yearning for him, our longing to be part of his gracious plan—none of this justifies; none of these dispositions or desires on our part can pry open the gate of heaven.

If the reformers were correct in interpreting what Paul was getting at in his Epistle to the Romans, 100 percent of our salvation is due to God’s graciousness, and zero percent is due to anything in us. The Reformation’s answer to the question, “Do I contribute anything to my salvation?” is, “Yes, your sin!” The value then of saving faith is only a value in virtue of the object grasped. Faith itself has no virtue; it connects us to the One who is virtuous.

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cross for unbelievers, it seems. But we ought also to be telling people that there is room at the cross for Christians, too.

Too often in evangelical circles, the law only condemns. It comes back to undermine the confidence of the gospel. It can still make threats; it can still condemn. There is wonderful grace for the sinner, and the evangelical is at his best in evangelism. But the question as to whether there is enough grace for the sinful Christian is an open one in many gatherings. I have had people come up to me after I had spoken and tell me, “This is about the last shot I’ve got. My own Christian training is killing me. I can understand how, before I was a Christian, Christ’s death was for me, but I am not at all sure that his death is for me now because I have surrendered so little to him and hold so much back.” That perversion is the result of a faulty understanding of the gospel and of a faulty application of the law.

Instead, there must be a clear and unqualified pronouncement of the assurance of salvation on the basis of the fullness of the atonement of Christ.

In other words, even a Christian can be saved. The other “gospel,” in its various forms (Higher Life, legalism, the “carnal Christian” teaching, and so on) is tearing us to pieces. I must warn you that the answer to this devastating problem is not available on every street corner. It is available only in the Reformation tradition. This is not because that particular tradition has access to information other traditions do not possess. Rather, it is because the same debate that climaxed in that sixteenth-century movement has erupted again and again since in less precise form. In fact, since Christ’s debates with the Pharisees and Paul’s arguments with the legalists, this has been the debate of Christian history. At no time since the apostolic era were these issues so thoroughly discussed and debated as they were in the sixteenth century. To ignore the biblical wisdom, scholarship, and brilliant insights of such giants as the reformers is simply to add to our ignorance the vice of pride and self-sufficiency.

The Reformation position is the real evangelical position.

The only way out is an exposition of the Scriptures that has to do with law and gospel—an exposition of the Scriptures that places Christ at the center of the text for everybody, including the Christian. All of the Bible is about him. All of the Bible is even about him for the Christian!

I used to tell my students at an evangelical Christian college that they had never heard real preaching, with the exception of a few sound evangelistic appeals. Their weekly diet in the congregation was often a moral exhortation to be like

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Defining Law and Gospel

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hen God gives orders and tells us what will happen if we fail to obey those orders perfectly, that is in the category of what the reformers, following the biblical text, called law. When God promises freely, providing for us because of Christ’s righteousness the status he demands of us, this is in the category of gospel. It is good news from start to finish. The Bible includes both, and the reformers were agreed that the Scriptures taught clearly that the law, whether Old or New Testament commands, was not eliminated for the believer (those from a Dispensational background may notice a difference here).

Nevertheless, they insisted that nothing in this category of law could be a means of justification or acceptance before a holy God (for more on this point see Robin Leaver’s Luther on Justification [St. Louis: Concordia, 1975]).

The law comes, not to reform the sinner nor to show him or her the “narrow way” to life, but to crush the sinner’s hopes of escaping God’s wrath through personal effort or even cooperation. All of our righteousness must come from someone else—someone who has fulfilled the law’s demands. Only after we have been stripped of our “filthy rags” of righteousness (Isa. 64:6)—our fig leaves through which we try in vain to hide our guilt and shame—can we be clothed with Christ’s righteousness. First comes the law to proclaim judgment and death, then the gospel to proclaim justification and life. One of the clearest presentations of this motif is found in Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians.

In the sixteenth century, the issue of law and grace was more clearly dealt with than at almost any other time since the apostles. The lines were cut cleanly, and as the great Yale historian Roland Bainton rightly noted in his biography of Martin Luther, Here I Stand, it was the only real issue of the century.

Jesus, or Paul, or Daniel, or some other super saint in the Bible. They were constantly peppered with the question, “What are you doing for Jesus?” The preaching was not, as it should have been, a proclamation of God’s grace to them because of the finished and atoning death of Christ—God’s grace for them as Christians. That emphasis is desperately needed. But the only way we can recover this message is by ceasing to read the Scriptures as a recipe book for Christian living, and instead find within the Scriptures Christ who died for us and who is the answer to our unchristian living. We must have that kind of renewal (a renewal, which not surprisingly, was important to the reformers, as well), and it can only come if we realize that the gospel is for Christians, too.

A friend of mine was walking down a street in Minneapolis one day and was confronted by an evangelical brother who asked, “Brother, are you saved?” Hal rolled his eyes back and said, “Yes.” That didn’t satisfy this brother, so he said, “Well, when were you saved?” Hal said, “About two thousand years ago, about a twenty minutes’ walk from downtown Jerusalem.” This is the gospel message.

It’s just as important for Christians to believe for their sanctification as it is for pagans to believe for their justification; for it is the same message, the same salvation, the same work of God. It’s just as important for the evangelical church today as it was for the reformers in the sixteenth century. Without this simple, but mind-boggling message, there is no hope, not for the sinner nor for the saint. ■ Rod Rosenbladt (Ph.D., University of Strasbourg) is professor of theology at Concordia University in Irvine, CA. Dr. Rosenbladt has contributed to several books including Christ The Lord (Baker, 1992), from which this article was adapted. He is an ordained minister in the Lutheran ChurchMissouri Synod. Dr. Rosenbladt is also a co-host on the White Horse Inn radio program and a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

Copies of this article are available for $1.50 each or ten for $10.00. Call (215) 546-3696 or logon to www.modernreformation.org to order.

On Being Well-Dress by Korey Maas [ C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 1 9 ]

“Well, then,” she paused; “if God is the one who both makes the demand and fulfills the demand, then why doesn’t he do so for everybody? I mean, if God is the one who is doing everything, then why do you believe that not everyone will be in heaven?”

There was no easy way to answer the question.

He swirled the cold coffee left in the bottom of his cup, downed it, and wished he had the change for another. “I tell you what,” he finally began; “if you’re willing to suffer one more illustration from My Fair Lady, I’ll attempt to answer that.”

She stifled a groan and waved him on.

“Do you remember,” he asked, “what happened when Professor Higgins’s servants first tried to transform Eliza from a flower girl to a lady, when they tried to give her a bath and some new clothes?”

“No,” April said honestly.

“They had a devil of a time,” he said, not intending the pun. “She not only refused to give up her filthy clothes, but, thinking she didn’t need a bath, she tried to fight off three or four maids. As they stuffed her in the tub, she kept screaming, ‘I’m a good girl, I am!’ It’s not far from the picture of sinful man’s reaction to God’s grace.”

“In what sense?” she asked.

“In the sense that we have the promise of a better life, of life in Christ and with Christ, and God himself is attempting to fulfill that promise. And yet sometimes we either cling to our old sinful life, or we’re so blinded by thinking we’re actually pretty good people, that we reject the gift being offered. In other words, some people simply refuse to let God fulfill his promise.”

It wasn’t exactly the answer she’d hoped to hear, but in a strangely uncomfortable way it made sense. After some moments of silence, she concluded the conversation by saying, “I’ll admit this much; you’ve given me some things to think about.” Collecting her coat and her bag, April stood to leave. “I’ll do that and let you get back to your book. What are you reading, anyway?”

“It’s a play. By tomorrow morning I have to write an essay explaining why its theme remains so timeless.” Tony turned the slim volume toward her so she could read the title: Pygmalion.

“Hmm,” she murmured, “never heard of it.” And she was out the door. ■ Korey D. Maas (S.T.M., Concordia Seminary) is a doctoral student of Reformation history and theology at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Law and Gospel (Concordia Publishing House, 2003).

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B-LUT-5, $17.00 The Grace of Repentance Sinclair Ferguson Repentance is not the action of a single movement, but a characteristic of a Christian’s entire life. Sinclair Ferguson looks at the biblical definition of repentance, how some modern churches are repeating medieval errors, and the necessity of reformation.

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On Tape From the Alliance Archives The Heart of the Gospel Christians are at-risk from hollow theologies and sham religious experiences. Dr. James M. Boice walks through the central message of the book of Romans and reveals to struggling Christians the glorious theme of God’s grace.

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the importance of the law of God for the Christian life, and for a proper understanding of the gospel of Christ.

LPF-S, 12 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $63.00 The Law and the Gospel: THE WHITE Understanding the Most HORSE INN Important Distinction in the Bible Charles Spurgeon once declared, “There is no point on which men make greater mistakes than on the relation which exists between the law and the gospel.”

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LG-S, 2 TAPES IN AN ALBUM, $13.00 The Alliance Resource Catalog In each issue of Modern Reformation the editors suggest tape and book resources relevant to the topic. For more selections of A L L I A N C E tapes, videos, books, and booklets (some of which are only available through the Alliance) please visit the Alliance website at: www.AllianceNet.org or call 215-5463696 to request a copy of the resource catalog.

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G O O D N E W S | The Gospel for Christians

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aureen O’Hara and Walter Truett Anderson have recently underscored the growing suspicion that the therapeutic industry is in bad shape. Based on her own experience as a San Diego psychotherapist, O’Hara introduces us to a few of her patients. The names have been changed.

Jerry feels overwhelmed, anxious, fragmented and confused. He disagrees with people he used to agree with and aligns himself with people he used to argue with. He questions his sense of reality and frequently asks himself what it all means.

He has had all kinds of therapeutic and growth experiences: Gestalt, rebirthing, Jungian analysis, holotropic breathwork, bioenergentics, the Course in Miracles, twelve-step recovery groups, Zen meditation, Ericksonian hypnosis. He has been to sweat lodges, to the Rajneesh ashram in Poona, to the Wicca festival in Devon. He is in analysis again, this time with a self-psychologist.

Although he is endlessly on the look out for new ideas and experiences, he keeps saying that he wishes he could simplify his life. He talks about buying land in Oregon. He loved Dances With Wolves. Jerry is like so many educated professionals who come in for psychotherapy these days.

But he is not quite the typical client: He is a wellestablished psychotherapist.

There are others. Beverly “comes into therapy torn between two lifestyles and two identities. In the California city where she goes to college, she is a radical feminist; on visits to her Midwestern home town she is a nice, sweet, square, conservative girl. The therapist asks her when she feels most like herself. She says, ‘When I’m on the airplane.’” All these people, O’Hara and Anderson write, “are shoppers in the great marketplace of

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realities that the contemporary Western world has become: here a religion, there an ideology, over there a lifestyle.”

Psychologist Robert Jay Lifton labels this pervasive yearning for ever-new identities “the Protean style,” taken from the Greek myth in which Proteus constantly changed his shape to evade capture. Having multiple personalities used to be called a disorder, says Lifton, but it is now a common characteristic of the postmodern self. At our local mall, Nordstrom’s––a fashionable retail chain––has been running a marketing campaign in recent years with the slogan, “Reinvent Yourself.”

The “passion for rebirth,” says Lifton, is fueled at least in part by a nagging sense of guilt that is never really confronted. Everyone wants to be someone or something else, a new creation—but on their own terms.

This cannot help but invite a vicious and ultimately unsatisfying series of rebirths precisely because they all take place, as Ecclesiastes reminds us, “under the sun” (Eccles. 1:3), without any significance penetrating from outside the web of this world’s natural everyday possibilities. “Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities! All is vanity,” said one who had it all (Eccles. 1:2). Our thirst for perpetual self-transformation is largely generated by the culture of marketing. We see advertisements of people we’d like to be, having lives we’d like to live, seeing themselves and being seen in the way we’d

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Creation like to see ourselves and be seen. And yet the truth is that our bodies are aging; our charisma is fading; our minds are forgetful or too often distracted by the trivial and the urgent. Our souls are so thin that we do not even know what it would be like to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

And all the while, we live amidst the whirl of Vanity Fair, hoping that something new will come into our lives that may change everything. We watch the fireworks, look at each other, and––when we’re honest––then sing “Is That All There Is?” We are like the Beatles’ lyrics “Nowhere man, living in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody.” That’s not who we tend to think we are; it’s not what the evangelists of cool tell us we are, but it is precisely what we know ourselves to be when the lights go on.

It is into this culture of restless change leading nowhere that the gospel’s light comes, proclaiming that something has happened outside us, in history—a divine disruption that really has inaugurated a new world (see Rev. 21:5). The Holy Spirit has been sent by the Father and by the Son who sits victorious at the Father’s right hand so that he can make all things genuinely new from the inside out. Even now, the future consummation is breaking into “this present evil age” (Gal. 1:4), working like leaven in a lump of dough (see Matt. 13:33; Luke 13:21). It does not promise a “better you” or a “new look,” a “new style,” or a “new image,” but a genuinely new creation. And this new creation is God’s work. It is humanity’s only real hope. I will here indicate in broad strokes what Paul has to say about this “new creation” in the book of Romans.

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Two Adams (Romans 5:12–21) fter concluding in Romans 3:9–20 that the whole world stands condemned either by the law written on tablets (as it was for the Old Testament Jews) or by the law written on the conscience (as it was for the Gentiles––that is, for everyone else), Paul announces God’s free justification of sinners in Christ alone through faith alone by grace alone (see Rom. 3:21ff.). This leads to his opening the fifth chapter of Romans with these words: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Here is real peace, real rest, that is not primarily a feeling (and thus some pious goal to be strived for by super-saints) but a real change in status before God—a change in status from stand-

indicted the entire human race. “Through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation …” (Rom. 5:18 [NKJ]). But this union with Adam is not just a matter of law and covenantal order; it also has an organic aspect. Just as a branch of an apple tree is part of that tree and consequently shares that tree’s botanical strengths and weaknesses, so we as Adam’s children not only legally bear his guilt but also organically share his corruption. As his heirs, Adam’s disobedience is not only legally imputed to us but his fallenness is also organically imparted to us. And so the law’s righteous demands not only go unfulfilled by the children of Adam, but also are actively suppressed.

The contrast with those who are “in Christ” could not be greater. Paul elsewhere calls Christ the “last Adam” in order to stress that he (rather than the Just as Thomas Jefferson spoke and acted for all Americans, born and yet unborn, first Adam) is the representative head of all who believe when he drafted the Declaration of Independence, so God at creation appointed (see 1 Cor. 15:45–49). Just as his resurrection is the dawn Adam to speak and act for the entire human race. of the future glorification of our bodies (see 1 Cor. 15:20–22, 35–56; Rom. 6:5), ing guilty before God to standing righteous before so Christ’s vindication before the Father in his trihim—that is the objective possession of even the umphant ascension secures for us our full acceptweakest believer. It is a peace that depends on the ance before God (see 2 Cor. 5:14–21; Eph. 4:7–8). fact that we have already been “reconciled to God “But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if by the death of his Son” (v. 10), justified before many died through one man’s trespass, much more God once and for all through faith in Christ’s work. have the grace of God and the free gift by the It will certainly generate both feelings and actions, grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for but this peace with God that Paul describes rests many” (Rom. 5:15). The verdict of the last day is securely on the work of Christ for us, outside us, in rendered here and now. For us, judgment day is a history. It is not just the cessation of hostilities settled affair. We are legally justified by virtue of between God and us (although it includes this), but Christ’s perfect obedience credited to us (see also 2 Cor. 5:21), and we are organically united to Christ the presence of divine blessing and fellowship.

Immediately after this declaration, Paul launch- in such a way that the most relevant metaphors es into his discussion of the “two Adams” and their drawn throughout the New Testament are those of roles as the representative heads of all humanity. a vine and its branches (see John 15:1–8), a head Each one of us is either “in Adam” (and conse- and the rest of the body (see Eph. 5:23; Col. 1:18; quently spiritually dead; see 1 Cor. 15:22) or “in 2:19), the temple and its constituent “living stones” Christ” (and consequently spiritually alive; see (see 1 Pet. 2:4–5), and so forth. By union through Rom. 6:11). Moreover, our union with Adam or faith with Christ we not only inherit Christ’s legal Christ––our being “in Adam” or “in Christ”––is vindication before the throne of God, we also both federal and organic. By “federal” I mean legal become so vitally connected to him by the mysteand covenantal. Just as Thomas Jefferson spoke rious work of the Spirit that his very life becomes and acted for all Americans, born and yet unborn, the source of the transformation of our own lives when he drafted the Declaration of Independence, (see Rom. 8:9–11; Gal. 2:20). We live because he so God at creation appointed Adam to speak and to lives. We feed on Christ through Word and act for the entire human race. In other words, God Sacrament, as the powers of the age to come break made Adam the legal and covenantal head of the in on this present evil age.

The fact that our union through faith with human race. So when Adam chose to disobey God, he acted not only for himself and his imme- Christ has both federal and organic aspects is diate family, but also for all of his descendents, for extremely important. This is because we can easiall human beings. God’s resulting legal judgment ly separate justification and sanctification––the

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legal verdict and the transformed life––in a way that ends up emphasizing one to the exclusion of the other. On one hand, we can so revel in the blessing of the forgiveness of our sins and our justification before God that we neglect the reality of the new birth that converts us and “turns us around” (as the biblical words for conversion imply). On the other hand, we can be so overcome with the magnitude of our conversion that we cling to it rather than to Christ and fail to see that our sanctification, no less than our justification, has Christ as its source. Too often, “Christian life” programs separate these two aspects of our union with Christ so that believers end up living schizophrenic lives, trusting in the sufficiency of Christ for their justification and yet trying to attain victory over sin from some other source. Jerry Bridges treats this issue marvelously in his article. My purpose here is to flesh out just what Christians can and should expect the normal Christian life to be like.

“Already” (Romans 6) hat is truly marvelous about this section of Paul’s famous epistle is how he links justification and sanctification in terms of our union with Christ. Corresponding to the “two Adams” is death in Adam and life in Christ.

After observing that “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom. 5:20), Paul anticipates the logical reply: “What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?”

(6:1). These questions have gotten a lot of different answers in pastoral counseling, in sermons, and in Christian literature. Sometimes the answer seems to be, “Sure! How marvelously things seem to be arranged: God likes to forgive and I like to sin!” Most Christians, however, reply otherwise.

But how do they answer, more specifically?

Sometimes with threats: “If you do continue to live in sin, you may lose your salvation” or “ … you may lose your rewards” or “… you will become a carnal Christian and fail to live the victorious Christian life.” Yet notice how Paul replies: “By no means!

How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (6:2).

Victory over the tyranny of sin is not some goal to be attained only by super-saints but is already the present possession of every believer who has been “baptized into [Christ’s] death” (6:3). “We were buried . . . with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (6:4).

“We were buried … with him by baptism.” For those of us who have been united with Christ through faith, being baptized into his death is––just like his own death and resurrection––a

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completed event, expressed in this passage by the Greek language’s aorist tense. Just as we have been justified, we have been baptized. Through union with Christ, the Holy Spirit sweeps us into that future world, that resurrection world (see Rom. 6:5–11). Paul is not issuing a command at the beginning of Romans 6; he is making an announcement! Life in Christ by the power of the Spirit is not something to be attained by us but something that has already been “reckoned” to us––and that we are to recognize as already having been reckoned to us because of our union with Christ. Baptism’s decisiveness––done once, never to be repeated––assures us of the decisiveness of this act of rebirth and renewal, toppling Satan’s reign in our lives. Thus, Christian warfare is waged on the basis of Christ’s victory and not on the basis of our attainments. We fight from victory to victory. We can stand in the battle because the war has already been won and the enemy has already been defeated!

Elsewhere Paul writes, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died”––past tense––“and your life is now”––present tense––“hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear”––future tense––“with him in glory” (Col. 3:1–4 [NIV]). Paul then continues: “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature” (Col. 3:5 [NIV]).

And so it is on the basis of what God has done, is doing, and will yet do because of our union with Christ that we obey his commands. This is why Paul now turns in Romans 6 from the “indicative” mood (the mood announcing what has been already accomplished for us) to the “imperative” mood (the mood commanding what we are to do): “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passion…. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:12, 14). Sin cannot rule those who are baptized into Christ by water and the Spirit because in truth they have “passed out of death into life” (1 John 3:14).

The new creation—that is, the kingdom of God—has broken into “this present evil age” from the future (“the age to come”). This two-age scheme (“this present age”/“the age to come”) governs Paul’s thought. We find it already in Jesus’ discourse in places like Luke 18:30 (“in this time”/“in the age to come”); Luke 20:34–35 (“the sons of this age” vs. the sons of “that age”); and Matthew 12:32 (“this age”/”the age to come”). This world of CNN, fashion, entertainment, consumerism, violence, and oppression—the world that we take for grant-

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ed as being the “real world”—is in truth the world that is passing away. It is the vain attempt of rebellious humanity to write its own script, to develop its own plot, and to find some meaning apart from God. We are already living in “these last days” (Heb. 1:2; cf. Acts 2:17; James 5:3; etc.). And in this time between the two advents of our Lord, we experience what theologians have come to distinguish as the “already” and the “not-yet.” The “already” part of our salvation involves our being chosen in Christ, redeemed by him, forgiven, justified, regenerated, and sealed in him by his giving to us the promised Holy Spirit, who is the “down payment” on our final redemption (Eph. 1:4–13). “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). And so we pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). In heaven, our future is already

present in Jesus Christ being seated at his Father’s right hand (see Heb. 1:3), from where “he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:25; cf. Ps. 110:1; Acts 2:33–36), including the last enemy that is to be destroyed, which is death (see 1 Cor. 15:26).

So there are no first-class/second-class (or “victorious” and “carnal”) Christians. There are only those who participate in “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). Thus, the believer is said to participate in “the powers of the age to come” through Word and Sacrament (Heb. 6:5). Of course, looks can be deceiving, especially when we see the signs of death, decay, sin, and evil all around us—and, sadly, in our own lives. And yet, because we have been baptized into Christ (past tense) we can live in the Spirit (present tense) in hope of the glorification that awaits us (future tense). The Spirit unites us to Christ, taking that which belongs to

The Gospel Acco

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elagius was a monk of British origin who was teaching in Rome at the beginning of the fifth century.

When Rome came under barbarian attack in 410, he fled to North Africa, and from there made his way to the East, where his views stirred up controversy in Palestine. He eventually found refuge in Constantinople, though his ultimate fate is unknown. He was condemned at the first council of Ephesus in 431, but it is not certain that he was still alive at that time. Long before that, however, Augustine (354–430) had become aware of Pelagius’s teaching and the unsettling effect that it was having in North Africa. He wrote no fewer than fifteen treatises against it, and was a prominent voice in the condemnation of Pelagius’s views at Carthage in 418.

Unfortunately, virtually all we know about the debates between Pelagius and Augustine comes from these treatises, and we are forced to infer Pelagius’s position from what Augustine says about it. On the other hand, much of the debate between the two men was conducted on a courteous level (particularly during the early stages of the controversy), and there is no reason to suppose that Augustine deliberately misquoted his opponent. Pelagius comes across as a forceful speaker with a great ability to sway his audience, but Augustine scores more highly on substance. It seems most likely that many people were led astray by Pelagius’s oratorical gifts, and that it was only later, when some of his hearers began to reflect more deeply on his teachings, that disquiet arose.

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Both Augustine and Pelagius argued their case from the Bible, and in particular from the Pauline Epistles. They both agreed that God had created mankind with free will, and that it was only by divine grace that anyone could, or would, be saved.

The differences between them lay within these parameters.

Pelagius believed that it was possible for people to do genuinely good things if they wished to, and that God would reward them for their efforts. He insisted that every person faces a real choice between good and evil, since if that were not so, God would have to be regarded as the author of evil, as well as of good, and the human will would have no significance of its own. He did not intend by this to deny the grace of God, since it was that which gave man free will in the first place, and it seems most likely that he regarded the will as created in an unformed, weak state that had to be nurtured by God’s law. The key point is that, just as the gospel can only be received by people old enough to understand it, so sin can be committed only by those who know what they are doing. There is, therefore, no sinfulness inherent in every human being from birth, and no guilt that is passed on from one generation to the next. For Pelagius, the idea that no one could choose to do good without particular divine intervention enabling that choice smacked of injustice and arbitrariness on God’s part, and so he rejected it.

Augustine, on the other hand, insisted that the sin of Adam was so great that it touched every aspect of human nature, and was

him and making it ours day by day. There is a lot of “already” to the salvation God has accomplished for us. The new creation has dawned and we have been incorporated into it. Inward renewal (regeneration) will be followed by outward renewal (bodily resurrection). “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). The resurrection, that “new creation,” begins when we are united to Christ and continues until the whole person is raised at the last day.

“Not Yet” (Romans 7) ut then there is Romans 7 to remind us of the “not yet” part of the equation. Whether we are talking about the individual believer or the kingdom of God more generally, there is a “not yet” that keeps us hoping for a fuller redemption.

As marvelous as justification is, as precious as our

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new birth and sanctification are to us, as remarkable as the gains of Christ’s kingdom may be in the world of sin and death, yet still weakness, despair, frustration, struggle, and even failure are too abundant for us to deny the reality of ongoing setbacks in the strife.

In spite of various attempts to understand Paul to be referring in Romans 7 to something other than his own Christian experience, numerous clues in this chapter—for instance, its being framed in the present tense, in the first-person singular, in the context of the logic of Paul’s argument as it begins in chapter 6 and stretches through the transition into chapter 8—lead us to accept the most obvious interpretation. Here Paul is, I believe, clearly focused on his own experience as a Christian.

After all, while he speaks in the present tense of his being “sold under sin,” he also says about himself what he elsewhere tells us cannot be said of any

ording to Pelagius passed on from one generation to the next. No amount of willing on anyone’s part can produce works that are acceptable to God, because the root problem lies deeper than that. Human beings have been alienated from their Creator in such a way they cannot claim moral neutrality in any sphere. Even if they should do things that other people would generally recognize as good, these things would still be tainted by the basic sinfulness which affects us all.

Augustine believed that God’s grace was needed not to improve or increase human capacities for doing good, but in order to transform the human condition from one of sinfulness to one of obedience. To the Pelagian notion that the will is weak and needs instruction, Augustine answered that the will knows perfectly well what it should be doing but lacks the power to do it.

Pelagius never grasped the Apostle Paul’s frustration on this point, which he expressed so eloquently in Romans 7. Furthermore, argued Augustine, Pelagius had never come to terms with the true horror of death. Even if it were true that some people can advance in the spiritual life and rise higher up the scale of virtue than others, these people must still die—and there is no guarantee that their deaths will be any less painful than anyone else’s. The universality of death, which touches infants as well as adults, can only be explained by the universality of sin, which also touches children. Ignorance of the law is not the same as innocence and children are perfectly capable of sinning without understanding what they are doing. To imagine otherwise, says Augustine, is not

only to fly in the face of obvious facts, it is to make God unjust for bringing death to morally ignorant children when they had done nothing to deserve it.

It is easy to see why Pelagius’s arguments appealed to many people when they first heard them, but it is also not difficult to understand why Augustine won the argument between them. His understanding of human nature and of the justice of God was more logical and more profound than that of Pelagius, for whom sin was a willful act, not a state of being caused by a broken relationship with God. It was also more humane, because those who are saved know that this is because of God’s grace, and does not depend on their own erratically good behavior. A sinner saved by grace has peace with God, whereas a person trying to do the right thing for God’s sake will always be full of anxiety and never have peace. This is the gospel, and it was Augustine, not Pelagius, who expressed it more faithfully in the end.

Gerald Bray (D.Litt., University de Paris-Sorbonne) is Anglican Professor of Divinity at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School. Dr. Bray’s latest book is Personal God (Paternoster, 2001). Dr. Bray is an ordained minister in the Church of England and serves as a member of the Council of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

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unregenerate person, namely, that in his sinning he nevertheless wants to do the good. “I have the desire to do what is right,” he writes in verse 18.

Indeed, he declares, “I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,” even though “I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind” (7:22–23). Someone who is “dead in …trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1) and who consequently “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him” (1 Cor. 2:14) cannot be said to struggle in the way that Paul declares he is struggling here: “I do not understand my own actions” (7:15). Because the things he said in Romans 6 are true, he expects victory over sin. And yet he finds that the war rages on. It is only because he is regenerate that he can have this real struggle against sin. And so the “already” of Romans 6 is somewhat qualified by this “not yet” of Romans 7.

and his sending of the Spirit. In this way, Romans 7 describes the normal Christian life! Every believer is simultaneously in Romans 6, 7, and 8!

Renowned Scottish preacher Alexander Whyte is said to have repeatedly reminded his congregation, “As long as you are under my charge, you will never leave Romans 7.”

While we never leave Romans 7 during this earthly pilgrimage, it is also worth reminding ourselves and others that we also never leave Romans 6. Whatever progress someone is making in the Christian life and no matter how many setbacks he or she suffers, no matter how weak is someone’s faith and repentance, each person who is united to Christ is already dead to sin and alive to righteousness. Paul here is reciting that cycle that Scripture and Christian experience teach only too well: the law accuses us and we die; the gospel raises us and we live; the law guides us in gospel-driven sanctification and yet we find that our forBut look at Christ! This is Paul’s answer to his own disappointment with the quality mer master, sin, is trying desperately—even if finally of his own Christian life. unsuccessfully—to reclaim us. “It ain’t over till it’s over”—and so we are always left hoping for more, for libMost challenges to the claim that Paul is here eration not only from sin’s guilt and tyranny but describing his own Christian experience have been also from its very presence. The “new creation”— motivated by theological difficulties with the that kingdom of God in Christ—has come and has apparent defeat that Paul sets before us. (After all, already swept us into its marvelous light; and yet it what search committee would call a pastor who is present now in weakness and not yet in glory. conceded so much failure in his Christian life?) In the churches of my youth, Romans 7 was typically So Look to Christ and Live in the Spirit said to describe the “carnal Christian” as opposed (Romans 8:1–17) ut look at Christ! This is Paul’s answer to his to the believer who was living in “victory.” own disappointment with the quality of his Someone could be converted and begin to live the own Christian life. He answers his plaintive “victorious Christian life,” but then fall into sin and suffer a setback. As a “backslider,” such a person cry, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” would still be “saved,” but he would be failing to at chapter 7, verse 24, with “Thanks be to God live “the higher life.” But Paul is not presenting us through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:25). This marks with such a time line here. The entire chapter is in the transition in his argument from the “not yet” of the present tense. What the apostle is saying—as present victory over sin and death to the certainty shocking as it seems—is that every believer who is of the hope that awaits us. Look to Christ! He is united to Christ is currently and simultaneously liv- “the firstfruits” of the full harvest (1 Cor. 15:20–23). ing in the “already” of chapter 6 and the “not yet” Paul is in effect saying, “See your head at the of chapter 7. Even as I seek to grow in godliness, Father’s right hand, your captain and brother pride crouches at the door waiting to claim the directing the battle from his seat of victory.” Paul’s prize. Even in my prayers, I can all-too-often iden- introspection in chapter 7 leads to despair but tify with the hymn writer’s words, “Prone to wan- when he looks outside himself to Christ he is once der, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the one I love.” In again able to lift his head. In this section from moments of peak piety I am still a struggling 8:1–17, the apostle reasserts the “already” of chapbeliever; and in moments of great transgression I ter 6, the “already” of the Spirit’s inward activity. am still baptized into Christ’s death and resurrec- Not only is Christ in heaven directing this warfare, tion and thus a citizen of the “new creation” that he has sent his Spirit into our hearts to lead the has dawned with Christ’s victory over sin and death “ground campaign.” And so this section begins by

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announcing again that “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1; cf. 5:1). Paul knows what fans a flickering candle into a dancing flame: it is a fresh glimpse of Christ and the gospel that indicates not only what God has done for our salvation, and what he is even now doing, but also what he will do in the future when he consummates his kingdom.

Here, in Romans 8, Paul does not warn people about becoming “carnal Christians.” He simply repeats the triumphant indicative: “You, however, are not in the flesh [i.e., carnal] but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” (8:9).

“Flesh” and “Spirit” never mean for Paul an opposition between our bodies and souls. Rather, they represent human life under the dominion of sin and death—“in the flesh”—and human life under the dominion of righteousness and life—“in the Spirit.”

Of course, it is the Holy Spirit—and not our human spirits—that is in view. The war between the flesh and the Spirit is cosmic in scope (as we will see), but we see it played out in our own individual lives as those who have been claimed by the Spirit in baptism and who yet await the consummation of the new creation. In the meantime, Paul says, take comfort in the fact that the Holy Spirit already indwells you and liberates you from “the spirit of slavery” that can cause us “to fall back into fear” (8:15). It is by the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit that we cry out “Abba! Father!,” confirming that we have been adopted by God (8:15–17).

The Hope of Glory (8:18–30) ith all of this “already,” we can await the “not yet” in full assurance. Here is how Paul lays this out before us:

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For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we

do not see, we wait for it with patience (8:18–25).

This links the salvation of individuals to the history of redemption. The great hope is not that our souls go to heaven when we die. The separation of soul and body at death is unnatural, part of the curse. Rather, we confess, “I believe . . . in the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.” We cannot speak of “the real ‘me’” apart from our embodiment. This is why Paul links our final adoption to the resurrection of our bodies and not simply to the regeneration of the “inner person.” The ancient Greeks ranked physical reality pretty low on the scale of being. The second-century Gnostics went even further in opposing matter and spirit. Their goal was to escape “the late great planet earth,” to escape their bodies—“the prison-house of the soul”—and the transitory history into which the innocent soul had been thrown. How different is Paul’s description here of the consummation that awaits us! Not only is our salvation incomplete until our bodies and souls are reunited in glorified and unified incorruptibility; it is incomplete until the whole creation shares the new creation with us! Adam was supposed to bring the human family into the everlasting Sabbath that God had promised with the Tree of Life. Instead, his rebellion drew the entire creation under the curse. By contrast, Christ—the second or last Adam—succeeded in this task and is now bringing with him not only “many sons” (males and females are included under that title) but also the whole creation.

Sometimes we are more Gnostic than Christian.

We tend to think of salvation in terms of souls instead of whole persons (“soul-winning,” “saving souls,” etc.) and in terms of individual human beings to the exclusion of the cosmic scope of the redemption that actually awaits us. Salvation, according to Scripture, is not escape from our bodies or from the natural world but the redemption of both. This is why the Christian life should not be seen in purely individualistic and “spiritual” terms but as a foretaste of the glory that awaits us and all creation.

Yet just as Paul tempered our enthusiasm over the announcement that we are forever free from the dominion of sin and death with the reality of his own ongoing struggle, now in chapter 8 he moves from the triumphant indicative of our future life to the reminder that “hope that is seen is not hope…. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (8:25). With both our individual sanctification and our stewardship of creation, we are neither defeatist (because of how much of the future consummation has already bro-

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ken into our present) nor triumphalistic (because we wait patiently for Christ’s return). Romans 6 challenges every form of defeatism; Romans 7 every form of triumphalism; and Romans 8 every form of escapism. We live in the tension of “already” and “not yet” of our redemption.

Christians strive against sin in the power of the Spirit who has baptized us into Christ, and yet we know that there will be weakness and frustration to the end even as we also know that in the end we will wear the conqueror’s crown.

We live for others. Gnostic piety is self-centered and purely introspective; biblical piety is chiefly extroverted. If the shape of final redemption is cosmic and not just individual, so too should be the shape of our hope as we relate to the world as citi-

from death unto life, so that they may proclaim the glories of the one who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. As we finish examining Romans’ eighth chapter, we find that Paul has penned a great doxological summation of all of these great truths about redemption and the new creation. What is left but for us to join him in reciting it?

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died— more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

Who shall separate us from Romans 6 challenges every form of defeatism; Romans 7 every form of the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or triumphalism; and Romans 8 every form of escapism. persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep zens of “the age to come.” It is not by monkish to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are escape from the world and its problems, but by more than conquerors through him who loved humble service to Christ and our neighbor that we us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor anticipate the Second Coming. When asked what angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things he would do if he knew that Jesus were to return the to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor next day, Luther is said to have replied, “I’d plant a anything else in all creation, will be able to septree.” While our feverish activity cannot bring arate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our about the promised consummation, either in relaLord. (Rom. 8:31–39) ■ tion to our own sanctification or to that of the creation more generally, we can—indeed, we must— keep our post wherever God has placed us in our callings as parents, children, employers, employees, Michael Horton (Ph.D., Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and the friends, and neighbors. If it is only the salvation of University of Coventry) is associate professor of apologetics souls that we are promised, planting a tree could and historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary only be regarded as a distraction from a higher call- in California, and chairs the Council of the Alliance of ing. Yet if it is this world that will join us in the tri- Confessing Evangelicals. Dr. Horton’s newest books are A umphant procession into the full consummation of Better Way (Baker, 2002) and Covenant and “the age to come,” our ordinary daily activity can Eschatology (Westminster/John Knox, 2002). become an arena for anticipating that day.

In this article, Michael Horton has quoted from The Fruit of Praise (Romans 8:31–39) Maureen O’Hara and Walter Truett Anderson, t last, the Protean self is chained, required to “Psychotherapy’s Own Identity Crisis” and Robert face itself for what it really is, accepting death Jay Lifton, “The Protean Style,” both in Walter in order to receive new life. At last, it is seen Truett Anderson, ed., The Truth About the Truth: Dethat no more self-invention, self-transformation, self- confusing and Re-constructing the Postmodern World (N.Y.: making, or self-indulging can satisfy creatures who G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995). were made for everlasting communion with God. Once in Adam and then constantly striving for Copies of this article are available for $1.50 each or rebirth according to the pattern of this age, we are ten for $10.00. Call (215) 546-3696 or logon to now in Christ and born again unto a living hope. www.modernreformation.org to order.

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G O O D N E W S | The Gospel for Christians

GospelOrdered Worship utch theologian, Dr. G. van der Leuw, once aptly observed that “whoever takes the little finger of liturgy soon discovers that he has grabbed the whole fist of theology.� Evangelicals appear to have confirmed the truth of this dictum in their rediscovery of worship in recent years. In the past, we have understandably focused on the content of preaching in considering whether our worship was biblical. This article seeks to answer two different theological questions about worship: In what ways do our conceptions of both the gospel and worship affect our corporate worship? And, in what sense should the story of redemption actually shape our worship? Or, to put it differently, how exactly does the gospel constitute the heart of Christian worship and, more specifically, how should it frame the very structure of our corporate worship as well as determine its contents? The Holy Scriptures, the early church, and many of the sixteenth-century Protestant reformers shared a general consensus about how the order and components of Christian worship should reflect the great redemptive events of incarnation, atonement, and resurrection. Much of contemporary Protestant worship has lost or mangled this biblical order and its recovery should be a high priority for those of us committed to a modern reformation.

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Getting the Gospel Straight efore proceeding to examine what constitutes gospel-ordered worship, we need first to clarify our understanding of God’s Good News; for, as theologian David Peterson puts it, “The gospel is the key to New Testament teaching about worship.”

“Essentially the gospel is a declaration of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ,” writes Graeme Goldsworthy, “rather than (as is often implied) what God does in the believer, although we may not separate the two. It is the objective historical facts of the coming of Jesus in the flesh and the God-given interpretation of those facts.”

Goldsworthy hastens to note that when the Apostle Peter delivered his important sermon recorded in Acts 2, “he was quick to divert attention from what God had done in the apostles by giving them the Holy Spirit, and to concentrate on

any kind and a preference for spontaneous or extemporaneous expressions of piety. Accordingly, one should not be surprised to see this subjective dimension highlighted in evangelical worship.

Because of their skewed construction of the gospel, some evangelicals actually end up making their worship man-centered as they seek to be gospelcentered. What an ironic outcome! Their misreading of the gospel is such that when they seek to make it the heart of their worship, the service inevitably becomes highly subjective and individualistic. Frequently, the focus is on the minister (whose extemporaneous prayers naturally reflect his individual skill or creativity), and worship often features personal testimonies of how the gospel has transformed the lives of particular individuals.

Individuals may provide “special music” in the form of an emotive solo. Often, the liturgical climax of the service is the altar call when, significantly, one sees the gospel at work in the lives of individuals who come The word worship literally means ascribing worthiness to the object of worship. forward to commit themselves to Christ.

The concerns of the eighteenth-century Pietists about the arid formalism of nominal the facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth.” Very little Christianity were legitimate. Christianity without “what the Lord has been doing in my life” testimo- a personal commitment to Christ is indeed what ny here! “The facts,” Goldsworthy continues, “are Bishop Ryle called a “useless form of religion.” But those of the incarnation, of the perfect life of Jesus this valid concern for “experiential religion” (to of Nazareth, and of his dying and rising from the employ an eighteenth-century phrase) has warped grave. The interpretation of these facts is that this our understanding of the gospel and consequently took place [in the words of the creed] ‘for us men sidetracked our worship. Indeed, it has kept many and for our salvation.’ In these two simple state- from seeing in what important ways the gospel ments of fact and interpretation we sum up the should shape our corporate worship. breadth and depth of biblical revelation.” The gospel is thus the story of redemption, of God Clarifying the Meaning of Worship he word worship literally means ascribing working in history to redeem his people, a redempworthiness to the object of worship. The tion prefigured in the Old Testament and culmidictionary defines it as “a reverent homage nating in the person and work of Christ recorded in the New Testament. In and through Christ, God or service paid to God” arising from the latter’s dealt definitively with human sin. Christ’s death worthiness or merit. Christians today tend to see and resurrection saved his people from their sins, a this sort of homage as consisting of praise, prayer, perfect redemption that will achieve final consum- and related acts of adoration within the context of a church service. Although the Old Testament mation at his glorious return.

Many evangelicals today focus primarily on the carefully stipulates ritual acts of worship in the tabsubjective dimension of the Good News as it ernacle and subsequently in the Temple, the New relates to themselves as believers. Some contem- Testament transforms this cultic character of worporary errors in the realm of worship are rooted in ship. Indeed, St. Paul (picking up on Old a pietistic (and ultimately subjectivist) understand- Testament passages that upheld obedience as ing of the gospel. Just as their Pietist forbears crit- preferable to worship) exhorts the brethren in a icized the formalism of the state churches, so mod- familiar passage to present their entire lives “as a ern-day evangelicals stress that personal commit- living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” Such ment to Christ is the heart of the gospel. Such an a wholehearted self-offering of obedience Paul approach has bred a suspicion of outward forms of characterizes as “your spiritual worship” (Rom.

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12:1). It is this “total life-response that is the worship of the new covenant,” concludes David Peterson. This is radical stuff and it should rebuke us when we fall into the unscriptural habit of conceiving of worship as only that which we do when seated in a pew of Sunday morning beneath a gothic arch.

Although this radical perspective on worship in the New Testament is a helpful corrective, it should not prompt us to exclude the earlier notion entirely. For Christians under the new covenant there is still a cultus of sorts, though there is now no human priest and the sacrifices offered are strictly the responsive sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving of the redeemed. Although there is now no carefully prescribed Temple ritual, the corporate worship of the body of Christ on the Lord’s Day is not unimportant. Peterson stresses “that the indwelling in and communion of Christ with the church have their point of concentration and special realization in its unity as assembled congregation.” Those of us in the Reformed tradition have sometimes so stressed the “whole-life-service“ aspect of worship (definitely an important point) that we have neglected or dismissed liturgical questions as ephemera or neglected the physical setting of the church’s corporate worship. Indeed, sometimes we seem to identify the ability to conduct corporate worship in the ugliest settings as evidence of being “super-spiritual.” Many ask, as long as there are three hymns and a sermon what’s the difference? But both the early church and the magisterial reformers did not think that the components of corporate worship, or the order of the service, were adiaphora.

Corporate Worship: A Gospel Design ut how should this redemptive “meta-narrative” mold what Christians do when they gather together on the Lord’s Day? We need to return to biblical first principles. Protestants look to Scripture as our supreme authority, while respecting the church’s tradition as an important, albeit fallible, guide to understanding that authority. Reformed Christians may be familiar with the tripartite division of the Heidelberg Catechism into the categories of guilt, grace, and gratitude.

Sinners are convicted of their guilt by the Holy Spirit, they are justified by God graciously crediting Christ’s perfect righteousness to them (which they receive through faith), and they then offer lives of obedience as a sign of their gratitude. One recognizes this “gospel design” in the Bible’s own treatment of worship. There is a clear movement from self-examination and confession to receiving the word of grace and expressing thanks through praise and prayer for others. But there is consider-

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ably more in the biblical models than this bare outline might suggest.

The pattern of Old Testament worship reflects the larger story of redemption highlighting God’s covenant relationship with his chosen people. The Old Testament teaches that God’s people may only approach him through blood sacrifice. One of the few detailed descriptions of Old Testament worship is contained in 2 Chronicles 5–7. It describes a pattern we see repeated elsewhere (see also 1 Chron. 15–16; 28-29; Neh. 8–10): God’s people gather together in one spot; there is animal sacrifice; they enter the Most Holy Place (2 Chron.

5:7–10); they sing praises to God; God’s Word is read aloud and expounded; there is prayer for the entire community; fire comes down from heaven (2 Chron. 7:1–2); responsive singing of praise; peace offering or covenant meal then follows; a benediction ends worship (not explicitly included in this account but evident in others).

The New Testament picture of heavenly worship provided by the Apostle John in Revelation appears to follow a similar pattern, although biblical scholars disagree about how best to understand these difficult passages. In some respects, the order of heavenly worship seems to reflect the order of redemptive history (i.e., worship begins based on the sacrifice of Christ and concludes by partaking of that sacrifice in the wedding supper of the Lamb). One might interpret St. John’s vision this way: First, the heavenly hosts call John to worship (Rev. 4:1–11), no one is deemed worthy to open the scrolls, but the Lamb of God is worthy and thus the worshipers enter God’s presence on these terms (Rev. 5:1–7), and a psalm of praise is sung (Rev. 5:8–14). Then, the Word of God is read and preached (in the Seven Seals, Rev. 6:1–8:5), the covenant community prays and praises God (Rev. 7:9–8:4), and Heaven responds with fire (Rev. 8:5).

Of course, the worship of the Old Testament has been transformed under the new covenant.

There are now no human priests, Christ is our only mediator and advocate. Although God’s covenant people are still only able to enter his presence on the basis of blood sacrifice, it is now on the basis of the single, past, completed sacrifice of Calvary.

The author of Hebrews puts it eloquently in words that helped early Christians understand the basis of worship under the New Covenant: “Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart full of assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience

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and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:19–22). There are, notably, no detailed worship instructions contained in the pages of the New Testament (outside of the heavenly worship recorded by John). Yet Acts 2:42 does speak significantly of the gathering together of the saints for “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” As their counterparts in Heaven, the early Christians had access to God

the wheel when they came to reform the practice of corporate worship. Rather than beginning with a blank sheet of paper, they chose instead to revise the existing liturgical forms. Although they took pains to cleanse the church’s worship of medieval corruptions (especially seeking to expunge thoroughly anything that taught the unbiblical doctrines of transubstantiation or the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass) most reformers maintained the ancient order.

For example, Luther excised from the eucharistic prayer all What may be surprising to many contemporary evangelicals is that most of the of the material that taught eucharistic sacrifice, so much Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century did not seek to reinvent the wheel so that the eucharistic prayer ended abruptly (in the minds when they came to reform the practice of corporate worship. of some commentators) with the immediate communion of the faithful. The Augsburg only through the blood of the spotless Lamb, and Confession rejected the medieval doctrine of Mass sacthey enjoyed spiritual fellowship with their Savior rifice in strong terms: “Concerning these opinions and their brethren by sharing the covenant meal. our teachers have given warning that they depart Observance of the covenant meal appears to have from the Holy Scriptures and diminish the glory of the passion of Christ…. Now if the Mass take away been weekly, i.e., every Lord’s Day. the sins of the living and the dead by the outward A Pattern Preserved: The Early Church and act[,] justification comes of the work of Masses, and the Reformers not of faith, which Scripture does not allow” (Article t is significant that one of the earliest extra-bib- 24). Nevertheless, despite his radicalism in this lical accounts of Christian worship retains this respect, despite Luther’s eagerness to cleanse the general pattern. Note, for instance, the descrip- service of Holy Communion of medieval error, he tion of the church’s worship in Justin Martyr’s First scrupulously retained the traditional order we have Apology (ca. 155): outlined. Melanchthon stressed that he and his fellow “evangelicals” were not seeking to depart from On the day which is called Sunday, all who ancient tradition when it was consonant with Holy live in the cities or in the countryside gather Writ. As the Augsburg Confession puts it: “This worship together in one place. And the memoirs of pleases God; such use of the Sacrament nourishes the apostles or the writings of the prophets true devotion toward God. It does not, therefore, are read as long as there is time. Then, when appear that the Mass is more devoutly celebrated the reader has finished, the president, in a disamong our adversaries than among us” (Article 24). course, admonishes and invites the people to Although the wording of their liturgical handipractice these examples of virtue. Then we all work varied, the leaders of the Reformed tradition stand up together and offer prayers. And as were also concerned to preserve the broad outlines we mentioned before, when we have finished of the ancient order. Martin Bucer at Strasbourg, for the prayer, bread is presented, and wine with example, sought to restore the church’s worship to a water; the president likewise offers up prayers shape and form that he termed “old, true, and eterand thanksgiving according to his ability, and nal.” It was, moreover, Bucer’s liturgical work at the people assent by saying Amen.

Strasbourg that Calvin relied upon heavily. Calvin’s liturgy, as set forth in The Form of Prayers and Manner of The faithful then received communion and the Administering the Sacraments according to the Use of the service ended with an outward directed response: a Ancient Church (1545—the wording of the title here is collection taken for the needy. Again, second-cen- notable), adhered to the traditional order of confestury Christians obviously did not assemble on the sion of sins, metrical psalm, reading from both Lord’s Day without sharing in their covenant meal Testaments, offertory, pastoral prayer/intercessions, together—the very logic of the service called for it. prayer of consecration, communion of faithful, What may be surprising to many contemporary blessing. In an often ignored passage, Calvin offered evangelicals is that most of the Protestant reform- a rationale for this sequence and its components: ers of the sixteenth century did not seek to reinvent

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We begin with confession of our sins, adding verses from the Law and the Gospel [i.e., words of absolution], … and after we are assured that, as Jesus Christ has righteousness and life in Himself, and that, as He lives for the sake of the Father, we are justified in Him and live in the new life through the same Jesus Christ, … we continue with psalms, hymns of praise, the reading of the Gospel, the confession of our faith [i.e., the Apostles’ Creed], and the holy oblations and offerings…. And, … quickened and stirred by the reading and preaching of the Gospel and the confession of our faith, … it follows that we must pray for the salvation of all men…. And, because we receive Jesus Christ truly in this Sacrament, … we worship Him in spirit and in truth; and receive the eucharist with great reverence, concluding the whole mystery with praise and thanksgiving.

Calvin then concluded significantly: “This, therefore, is the whole order and reason for its administration in this manner; and it agrees also with the administration in the ancient Church of the Apostles, martyrs, and holy Fathers.” The Swiss reformer also battled unsuccessfully to return to the apostolic pattern of celebrating the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. The Reformed scholar, Dr. K. Deddens, comments: Did Calvin link up with liturgical customs of the late Middle Ages and with the situation in Strasbourg for the sake of convenience or because he himself was not very inventive?

Neither is the case! We already saw that Calvin consciously wanted to base himself on Holy Scripture. Besides, he also very much stressed the connection with the early church (L’eglise ancienne). Especially when liturgical matters were involved he pointed to the customs of the New Testament church and the first period after Pentecost. Frequently he quoted apostolic fathers and church fathers in order to emphasize his argument. It must also be said that Calvin was absolutely not aiming for a multitude of forms in worship.

But that which had shown itself to be significant in former ages, especially in the early church, had to be taken over. Nor did Calvin’s Scottish student, John Knox, radically depart from this pattern in his otherwise simplified service contained in The Forme of Prayers (1556).

The Model Undermined t is not until the seventeenth century that one sees a substantial movement away from this classic model. Because of their prolonged battle against rigid requirements of conformity to the Book of Common Prayer, some within English Puritan circles came to harbor a deep antipathy to liturgical forms of any sort. Accordingly, when the Westminster Divines drew up the Directory of Public Worship, they introduced an unprecedented degree of freedom into the content and order of the service. Indeed, some have described the Directory as substituting a collection of rubrics for a prayer book. Instead of set forms of the sort Luther, Bucer, and Calvin employed, the Directory prescribed only an order and described the sort of prayers to be offered. The outline implied in the Directory’s lengthy directions appears to have diverged from the ancient order. Some interpreted it as allowing the offertory to precede the sermon and thus derail the crucial guilt, grace, gratitude order. The extent of choice struck some critics as imprudent; Henry Hammond contended that the Directory would not promote church unity “by leaving all to the chance of men’s wills, which can no more be thought likely to concur in one form, than Democritus atoms to have met together into a works of beautiful creatures without any hand of providence to dispose them.” Hammond bemoaned this deadly individualism whereby the devil would “get rid of both his enemies, Religion and Liturgy together.”

Subsequent developments among Presbyterians in America opened the door to further innovation in ways the Westminster Divines did not anticipate. Communion soon came to be administered only quarterly. Later, the Directory was not adopted as a constitutional standard by American Presbyterians but became only an advisory guide.

Accordingly, there arose a tendency to view the component parts of worship as suited to virtually any arrangement, appropriate in any order and some were soon treated as entirely optional. Even confessional Presbyterians were not inclined to take the Directory seriously when its authority was no more than advisory. Next, evangelicals outside of the Reformed or Presbyterian camp drew away from traditional forms during the early nineteenth century and embraced the pragmatic features of the camp meeting and revivalism. Since sentimental hymns and an earnest address seemed to get the job done (i.e., public commitments to Christ), why “mess with success”? Thus the worship of God’s covenant people became primarily an evangelistic endeavor governed by pragmatic considerations.

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A Way Forward n order to make our corporate worship once again gospel-ordered, we need to recover both the biblical components and the biblical pattern followed in the early church and preserved and purified by most of the Protestant reformers.

Minimally, this would involve the following: 1) Ensure that the service begins with an explicit corporate confession of sin and absolution/assurance of pardon. 2) Include substantial readings from both testaments in the main Sunday service. 3) Make sure that the order of service preserves the logical movement from guilt, to grace, to gratitude.

Accordingly, the long pastoral prayer and offertory would follow in its most logical place after the ministry of the Word. And, 4) return to a more frequent and regular administration of the Holy Communion (with weekly observance being the goal). The last of these reforms is among the most effectual ways to make evangelical worship more truly centered on the Evangel. What better way to ensure that the cross is central to our worship than to feast on the sacred emblems of his broken body and poured-out blood? ■

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Gillis Harp (Ph.D., Univesrity of Virginia) is professor of history at Grove City College in Grove City, PA.The author of two books, Dr. Harp’s latest publication is an intellectual biography of Boston preacher Phillips Brook scheduled to be published by Rowan & Littlefield later this year. His work has also appeared in the Journal of the History of Ideas, Church History and the Journal of Ecclesiastical History.

In his article, Professor Harp quoted the following works: Ian Breward’s The Westminster Directory of Public Worship (Grove Books, 1980); K. Deddens’s “A Missing Link in Reformed Liturgy (2): Confession of Sins and Forgiveness of Sins,” Clarion 37 (August 19, 1988): 340; Graeme Goldsworthy’s Gospel and Kingdom: A Christian’s Guide to the Old Testament (Winston Press, 1981); Howard Hageman’s Pulpit and Table: Some Chapters in the History of Worship in the Reformed Churches (John Knox, 1962); William Maxwell’s An Outline of Christian Worship: Its Developments and Forms (Oxford University Press, 1949); David Peterson’s Engaging with God (Eerdmans, 1992); and Bard Thompson’s Liturgies of the Western Church (Meridian, 1961).

Copies of this article are available for $1.50 each or ten for $10.00. Call (215) 546-3696 or logon to www.modernreformation.org to order.

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Gospel-Driven Sanctification by Jerry Bridges [ C O N T I N U E D F R O M PA G E 1 6 ]

the guilt of sin and that there is no condemnation for us in Christ Jesus that will motivate us and keep us going even in the face of this tension.

We must always keep focused on the gospel because it is in the nature of sanctification that as we grow, we see more and more of our sinfulness.

Instead of driving us to discouragement, though, this should drive us to the gospel. It is the gospel believed every day that is the only enduring motivation to pursue progressive sanctification even in those times when we don’t seem to see progress.

That is why I use the expression “gospel-driven sanctification” and that is why we need to “preach the gospel to ourselves every day.” ■

Jerry Bridges is a staff member with the Navigator collegiate ministry group. A prolific and best-selling author, his most recent book is The Gospel for Real Life (Navpress, 2002).

The quotation from William Romaine comes from his The Life, Walk and Triumph of Faith (Cambridge, England: James Clarke and Co. Ltd., 1793), p. 280.

Copies of this article are available for $1.50 each or ten for $10.00. Call (215) 546-3696 or logon to www.modernreformation.org to order.

We Confess…

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hat do you believe concerning the forgiveness

of sins? I believe that God, because of Christ’s satisfaction, will no more remember my sins, nor my sinful nature, against which I have to struggle all my life, but He will graciously grant me the righteousness of Christ, that I may never come into condemnation.

Lord’s Day 21, The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Question 56

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eretofore consciences were plagued with the doctrine of works, they did not hear the consolation from the Gospel. Some persons were driven by conscience into the desert, into monasteries hoping there to merit grace by a monastic life. Some also devised other works whereby to merit grace and make satisfaction for sins. Hence there was very great need to treat of, and renew, this doctrine of faith in Christ, to the end that anxious consciences should not be without consolation but that they might know that grace and forgiveness of sins and justification are apprehended by faith in Christ.

Article XX, The Augsburg Confession (1530), “Of Good Works”

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t is my solemn duty to warn the uninstructed, the profane, the scandalous, and those who secretly and impenitently live in any sin, not to approach the holy table lest they partake unworthily, not discerning the Lord’s body, and so eat and drink condemnation to themselves. Nevertheless, this warning is not designed to keep the humble and contrite from the table of the Lord, as if the supper were for those who might be free from sin. On the contrary, we who are invited to the supper, coming as guilty and polluted sinners and without hope of eternal life apart from the grace of God in Christ, confess our dependence for pardon and cleansing upon the perfect sacrifice of Christ, base our hope of eternal life upon his perfect obedience and righteousness, and humbly resolve to deny ourselves, crucify our old natures, and follow Christ as becomes those who bear his name. Let us therefore, in accordance with the admonition of the apostle Paul, examine our minds and hearts to determine whether such discernment is ours, to the end that we may partake to the glory of God and to our growth in the grace of Christ.

Chapter IV, The Directory for the Public Worship of God (1647), “The Celebration of the Sacraments”

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An Interview with Jerry Walls

Can We Ever Be Holy Enough?

MR: In a recent article in the journal First Things, you defended the notion that Christians need the doctrine of purgatory.

Can you briefly explain why you believe the doctrine of purgatory is necessary for Christians?

JERRY WALLS

Professor of Philosophy of Religion Asbury Theological Seminary

JW: Well, the doctrine of purgatory addresses an issue that any theological system must face, namely, how does God deal with the moral and spiritual imperfection that remains in the lives of most (you would probably say all) believers at the time of death? There are four broad possibilities here. Such believers could go to hell; they could go to heaven with such imperfections intact; God could unilaterally and instantly perfect such believers; or God could continue the process of sanctification until it is complete, with the free cooperation of believers. Both of the latter two options are versions of purgatory. In the former, it just happens very quickly with no cooperation on the part of the believer.

MR: As you explain in the article, your interest in the doctrine of purgatory is partly due to your Wesleyan heritage. Why should Wesleyan pietism find the doctrine of purgatory attractive?

JW: As an evangelical Anglican, Wesley’s soteriology focused on transformation, on how God works in our lives to change us so that we actually become righteous, love him and the like.

This is the understanding of salvation that C. S. Lewis characterized as “mere Christianity,” especially in book four of his work of that title.

Although Wesley resisted the idea of purgatory, perhaps partly because it was so much associated with controversies with the Roman Church in his day, it meshes quite naturally with a transformational soteriology, especially one that emphasizes the importance of our free cooperation for our sanctification. Later evangelical Anglicans like Lewis have recognized this and affirmed a version of purgatory.

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MR: In the article, you imply that Protestants who view salvation as an essentially forensic matter cannot fully appreciate the importance of a holy life as indispensable to salvation. How would you distinguish and relate justification and sanctification?

JW: If the essence of salvation is forgiveness and God will unilaterally and instantly perfect us when we die, whether or not we have made any significant progress in sanctification, then yes, holy living is optional so far as salvation is concerned.

The doctrine of purgatory insists to the contrary that holiness is not optional. Justification is initial sanctification since to trust Christ for salvation is to acknowledge our sin and to begin to see it for what it is. In justification we are forgiven and accepted

by God and enter into a saving relationship with him. But this is just the beginning of what God desires for us. The deeper relationship that God desires with us is depicted in Scripture with familial and nuptial imagery rather than forensic imagery.

Sanctification is the deeper transformation that inevitably occurs as this relationship grows in depth and intimacy. The more we grow in our knowledge of God, the sort of relational knowledge the Bible speaks of when it speaks of knowing God, the more we come to love God and grow into his likeness. As Alister McGrath has shown, it was a Protestant innovation to understand justification as a matter of being declared righteous as opposed to actually being made righteous. While justification can be distinguished from sanctification in terms of systematic theology, there is no justification in the end without sanctification.

MR: What are the means by which you believe Christians

are sanctified either here on earth or in purgatory?

JW: We grow and are completed in sanctification when we fully own the truth about God and about ourselves and allow the Holy Spirit to work this truth fully through our character. The truth about God and ourselves is revealed in Scripture. So one of the central ways we grow in sanctification is by immersing ourselves in Scripture. Of course, God must do the work of sanctification. As Jesus prayed “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). The other traditional means of grace accomplish the same sort of thing. As we engage in worship, and ascribe proper worth to God, we come more clearly to see “the Holy One of Israel” to see “God high and lifted up.” When we see God in this fashion, we, like Isaiah, see ourselves as sinful and unclean in a way we cannot otherwise. It is then that we can truly cry out to God to cleanse and purify us. In the same way, when we see with clarity the love of God as revealed in the incarnation and death of Christ, we are made holy.

Nothing brings into sharper focus both our sinfulness and God’s holy love than the broken body of Christ on the cross. To plead Christ’s atonement is to acknowledge the truth both about ourselves and God. That is part of the reason why faith, properly understood, transforms and sanctifies us. We cannot honestly plead the atonement and simultaneously be willing to remain the same sort of person whose sins led to the death of Christ. To honestly plead the atonement, we must acknowledge the Lordship of Christ and desire to live in a way that expresses proper gratitude for such amazing love. Similar points could be made about prayer, Holy Communion, and other means of grace. These are the means God uses to bestow the grace that sanctifies us and makes us truly holy.

MR: In order for purgatory to be acceptable to many Protestants, several serious objections must be overcome—but chiefly the objection that the doctrine of purgatory implies that our good works are meritorious and that Christ’s imputed righteousness is not entirely sufficient for salvation. How would you begin to answer these concerns?

JW: It is worth noting that my article in First Things was adapted from a longer chapter entitled “Heaven, the Nature of Salvation, and Purgatory” that appears in my book Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (Oxford University Press, 2002). In that chapter I spell out what is involved in a transformational soteriology and show how those who hold this view believe that salvation is by grace through faith. But those who hold a

transformational soteriology emphasize that Christ’s righteousness is not only imputed, it is also imparted. It is imparted righteousness that changes us in such a way that we actually love God and can enjoy being in his presence and take true delight in a relationship with him. A person who is not actually changed in this way cannot enjoy the presence of God, even if he is declared righteous in the legal or forensic sense. Until we are changed in this way, we cannot really experience what salvation is all about, namely, a restored relationship with God in which we take true delight in being in his presence. Being changed in this way is not a matter of works or of our deserving salvation or anything of the sort. Rather, being changed in this way is salvation itself. But we do not have either the will or the power to change ourselves without the help of God. So it is all a matter of grace. God enables, elicits and effects the transformation with our free cooperation. All of this is shown in a powerful and memorable way in C. S. Lewis’s book The Great Divorce. In that book, a group of people from hell are given a bus ride to heaven and allowed to stay. But in their present condition, they do not enjoy heaven, and even find it painful. They are assured, however, that if they are willing to stay, and are appropriately transformed, they will come to love it and be fully at home. Imparted righteousness is what “fits us for heaven” so we can joyfully stay. In Lewis’s book, by the way, those who choose to stay in heaven and undergo transformation are told that they can call the place from which they came “purgatory.” To those who return, it is hell.

MR: If we can be sanctified by good works, either here on earth or in purgatory, what does that tell us about the nature and extent of sin?

JW: If we could be sanctified by good works it would tell us that sin is not nearly as serious a problem as Scripture tells us it is. If sin can be solved by human effort, it is not the deadly matter Paul describes for us. We clearly need the grace of God to regenerate and transform us before we can do any sort of works that will elicit his approval.

But Paul makes clear that such good works are an essential sign of God’s grace in our lives and of true faith (Eph. 2:8–10; Titus 3:4–8).

MR: Protestants have traditionally understood the Bible to teach that our souls are perfected in the painful experience of succumbing to the final enemy of death and our bodies in the Resurrection. This perfection is not the result of our good works, but is worked out by God on the basis of the imputed righteousness of Christ. It seems, according to your view, that

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we need something more than Christ’s righteousness to make us perfect. Is Christ’s righteousness somehow inferior to that righteousness which we, ourselves, must earn, either during this life or in purgatory?

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sanctification can be completed in an instant when we have the faith to receive it. However, sanctification typically involves a longer process leading up to that instant. The essential reason for this is because growth in understanding, JW: I am not aware of any biblical text that clearly acceptance of truth, and the consequent character teaches that our souls are perfected by the painful development are essentially temporal matters. experience of succumbing to death, although this is Given both our finite minds and our freedom in close to the view of Wesley, who believed that embracing truth, character development is very most Christians are entirely sanctified at the much a dynamic thing that occurs over a period of moment of death. Perhaps this can be inferred time. I understand 1 Corinthians 15:50–53 as an from certain biblical texts, and if so, it would be a account of bodily transformation. This text defensible position in my view. Indeed, I think describes how our frail decaying bodies that are fit such inference is inevitable in matters of for this finite age will be changed to be fit for the eschatology, where Scripture does not present us age to come, an age in which we will never die. But with a lot of detail. Here, we cannot but engage in it says nothing of relational or moral perfection.

Luke 23:43 is Christ’s promise to the thief on the cross that he would be with urgatory is a gift of grace to be received with gratitude by all who aspire to him in paradise “today.” I see no reason why paradise could know God as fully as possible. not involve further growth, purging and the like. Indeed, all who love Christ and want to grow closer to him should a certain amount of inference and speculation if we experience as joy any purging that has this effect. are going to say anything substantive. Such Understood as such, purgatory is a gift of grace to speculation must, of course, be constrained by be received with gratitude by all who aspire to what is clear in Scripture. But my point is that know God as fully as possible.

Scripture simply does not settle this matter for us.

The best we can do is to offer what makes best sense, given our overall theology, especially our Jerry Walls (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) has taught soteriology. However, I see no reason in Scripture at Asbury Theological Seminary since 1987. Most recently, to believe that the pain of death has the power to Dr. Walls coauthored C. S. Lewis and Francis sanctify us. Indeed, death is an enemy of God, so Schaeffer: Lessons for a New Century from the it is unlikely that that it can do the work of making Most Influential Apologists of Our Time us holy! Only faith in Christ can sanctify us. The (InterVarsity Press, 1998) and Heaven: The Logic of experience of death may focus our faith and allow Eternal Joy (Oxford, 2002). Dr. Walls is an elder in the us to trust Christ in a deeper way than we United Methodist Church, West Ohio Conference. otherwise could, especially if we know we are facing an imminent death. But death often happens suddenly and without warning, and it is hard to see how it could further our sanctification Correction As a sidebar to Paul Lim's article, "The Unity of in such cases. I hope it is clear from what I have said that I do not believe that we earn the One Church," in the last issue (March/April righteousness or that anything could be superior to 2003), MR incorrectly identified the French reformer Theodore Beza as a "German reformer." the righteousness of Christ.

MR: In your piece you argue that sanctification is essentially a temporal process that cannot be completed in an instant, not even by God. Yet Scripture portrays our transition from imperfection to perfection as taking place in an instant, indeed “in the twinkling of an eye” (see 1 Cor. 15:50–53 and Luke 23:43). How do you respond to verses like these?

JW:

Actually, I very much do believe that

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BOOKS | The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity and

God Is Dead: Secularization in the West

A Secular Christendom?

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eaders of the magazine Books & Culture may have relished the opportunity for an

United States and around the world supposedly falsifies. In intellectual donnybrook when they saw that Philip Jenkins was reviewing a new effect, in these books both scholars perform cheers of a book by Steve Bruce on secularization. After all, Jenkins’s new book, The Next scholarly variety for the competitors in what appears Christendom, whose thesis about the growth of to be a zero-sum contest between religion and Christianity outside the West has been widely unbelief. circulated, practically contradicts Bruce’s argument At the heart of Jenkins’s book is a stunning set of in God Is Dead, a book that defends at length the statistics on the number of Christians worldwide. secularization thesis. But the fireworks never Although western Europe (560 million) and North ignited. Jenkins did disagree with Bruce, both America (260 million) are home to about 37 percent conceding that secularization may explain the of the 2 billion Christians currently living, Latin weaknesses of European Christianity and America (480 million), Africa (360 million), and countering that it fails in the case of the religious Asia (313 million) make up not only well over half vitality of the United States. But he ignored the of the rest of global Christianity, but these areas implications that Bruce’s understanding of account for the fastest growing churches. Jenkins secularization has for interpreting the amazing extrapolates these figures out to the year 2025 and growth and vitality of Pentecostalism and says that “there would be around 2.6 billion charismatic Christianity in South America, Africa, Christians, of whom 633 million would live in Africa, 640 million in Latin America, and 460 and Asia.

Jenkins’s omission is unfortunate if only because million in Asia” with Europe slipping to 555 million.

The Next these two books, The Next Christendom and God Is Dead, Jenkins bases these extrapolations on churches Christendom: address the two most important developments for retaining their percentage of the population, which The Coming of contemporary Christianity and do so from explains the growth of Christianity outside the Global decidedly different scholarly outlooks. Jenkins, who West where birthrates are declining. What is odd Christianity teaches history and religion at Penn State here is that the religion he believes is growing the University, is the most recent contributor of a fastest, charismatic Christianity, relies on

by Philip Jenkins number of studies examining the extraordinary conversion, not on patterns of inheritance, for Oxford University Press, 2002 growth of a highly experiential and subjective form passing on the faith. This should make projections 288 pages (hardcover), $28.00 of Protestantism in parts of the world where either of Christianity’s future growth much less Roman Catholicism or Anglicanism had been predictable. The Spirit blows where he will.

God Is Dead: Secularization in dominant or, as in the case of China, a Christian Nevertheless, Jenkins uses these statistics to show presence was meager. Bruce, a sociologist of that a dramatic reversal is taking place of patterns that the West

by Steve Bruce religion, teaching at the University of Aberdeen, is prevailed prior to the last third of the twentieth one of the most provocative skeptics of century when Christendom conjured up images of Blackwell, 2002 contemporary Christianity, especially in its political western civilization and Caucasians. In 1800, Jenkins 268 pages (paperback), $26.95 manifestations, and his book is a bold apology for an explains, only 1 percent of Protestants lived outside outlook that the recent revival of religion in the the West, and this rose to 10 percent by 1900. In

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2000, non-western churches accounted for two-thirds of all Protestants. Roman Catholic membership statistics reveal similar trends. These figures prompt Jenkins to make the following provocative assertion: “If we want to visualize a ‘typical’ contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela.”

The Next Christendom concerns more than statistics, however. Jenkins also remarks upon the kind of Christianity that is pulling the center of gravity southward and to the East. “If there is a single key area of faith and practice that divides Northern and Southern Christians,” he writes, “it is this matter of spiritual forces and their effects on everyday life.” Whereas the North and the West have domesticated Christianity, healings, spiritual warfare, and communal Christianity are common in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This observation points to a significant factor in the growth of Pentecostalism and charismatic churches throughout the world. Jenkins argues that the “conservative” nature of global Christianity is in part a function of the circumstances that many Asians, Latin Americans, and Africans confront as they endure the economic and physical hardships accompanying moves to the large urban centers.

“In such settings, the most devoted and fundamentalist-oriented religious communities emerge to provide functional alternative arrangements for health, welfare and education.”

For reasons such as these, Jenkins discounts theories that assume the disappearance of religion with the advance of time. How can you talk about the death of Christianity when in places such as Seoul and Nairobi, churches are struggling to build facilities large enough to accommodate the 10,000 members they have added over the last five years?

Steve Bruce, for one, is convinced that the death of Christianity is a worthwhile subject of conversation. God Is Dead is the sociologist’s effort to save the idea of secularization from its academic despisers, many of whom look at statistics such as those tabulated by Jenkins and conclude that social scientists had it wrong to think that religion would disappear as modernity advanced.

With commonsensical calmness, Bruce points out that secularization never required the death of religion.

Human history is too long, and religious influences upon the world’s various cultures are too deep for technology, modern politics, cultural diversity, and global capitalism ever to wipe the religious slate clean. Instead, the basic idea behind secularization is a simple one: “a long-term decline in the power, popularity and prestige of religious beliefs and rituals.” What about the popularity of Christianity throughout the world? Bruce explains that

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charismatic Christianity, which is the kind that appears to be thriving, is precisely the kind of faith that secularization makes plausible. First, it gives “a much higher place to personal experience than to shared doctrines.” Second, the charismatic movement’s claim to “offer access to divine power” is fitting with the narcissistic conception of the self that is typical of secular societies. As such, “The charismatic movement does not refute secularization; it shows how it works.”

Bruce could well be wrong about charismatic Christianity, but his skepticism is a return to the kind of critical outlook the academy used to foster in the study of religion. For that reason, it is a breath of fresh air at a time when many religious scholars appear to ask few questions about the kind of faiths that are flourishing, using the existence of such religious groups to gain the upper hand with fellow academics, many of whom remain skeptical about religion and its importance. The irony is that Bruce’s defense of secularization may be a better guide to global Christianity than Jenkins’s cheerleading the next Christendom. For instance, Jenkins interprets charismatic Christianity as a conservative faith. He even hints that this is the kind of religion that is a repristination of the faith on display in the Bible. Bruce, in contrast, recognizes that the Protestant Reformation, like Judaism and early Christianity before it, planted seeds of secularization.

The reformers distinguished radically between the secret and direct workings of God in salvation and God’s providential control of secondary causes. This bracketing of natural and supernatural affairs was, as Bruce argues, an important initial component of secularization, an argument that implies conservative Protestantism is not as inimical to secular society as many contemporary believers think. It also suggests that the believers who see supernatural occurrences in everyday affairs may not be the orthodox believers that Jenkins alleges.

Perhaps the most important point about modern religion is one that neither Bruce nor Jenkins addresses: It is the possibility of being a good Christian and an engaged participant in secular society. Christ, of course, taught his disciples to be in the world and not of it. And ever since, Christians have been wrestling with the apparent double-mindedness such instruction requires.

These books may help modern Christians wrestle even more thoughtfully.

Dr. D. G. Hart Westminster Theological Seminary in California Escondido, CA

The Mosaic of Christian Belief: Twenty Centuries of Unity and Diversity

by Roger E. Olson InterVarsity Press, 2002 367 pages (hardcover), $30.00 Baylor University professor of theology Roger Olson succeeds in providing “a very basic, relatively comprehensive, nontechnical, nonspeculative one-volume introduction to Christian belief.” Anyone who is looking for a defense of his or her own particular theological tradition or narrow slice of Christian thinking will be dissatisfied with Olson’s “mediating theological perspective.” But those who are looking for an even-handed, highly accessible, thoughtful survey of the main contours of Christian belief will be well-served. Olson seeks to avoid the pitfalls of oversimplification and speculation in his offering of an evangelical and irenic presentation of “the Great Tradition of Christian teaching and belief.” He proposes a “both-and” approach to theology that respects the common bond between Christians of various denominations and traditions, while at the same time respecting their differences. He underscores this theme of unity and diversity with his image of a mosaic that “melds multiformity and rich diversity of colors with harmony and complexity into a pattern that conveys a unified image without sacrificing variety.”

Olson’s “both-and” approach does not necessarily involve an “anything goes” theology. He does not settle for a bland middle-of-the-road approach to theology that dilutes the truth in order to appeal to a broader spectrum of Christians. Nor does he envision a grand synthesis of Christian truth. He repeatedly warns against the growing phenomenon of Christian folk religion as well as modern-day Gnostic versions of “esoteric Christianity.” His concern is “to identify a core of essential Christian beliefs that all mature, capable Christians must affirm in order to be considered truly Christian.”

Olson is confident that the central dogmas and doctrines of the Christian belief are clearly evident in the Bible and affirmed in the great tradition of the Christian Church. It is these beliefs that he seeks to uphold without “flights of speculative fancy,” “subtle scholarly disputes,” and “either-or thinking.” Instead of focusing on “boundary identification” and those secondary beliefs and opinions that divide Christians, Olson chooses to define orthodoxy by its center, those core beliefs and dogmas that make up the gospel of Jesus Christ.

After laying the foundation for what unites Christians through the centuries and across denominations, Olson takes up fourteen key theological issues with an emphasis on the comprehensive meaning of Christian belief. He explores each doctrine in the light of classical orthodoxy, relying on the early church fathers, the confessions, and the reformers to make his case for consensus and unity. Olson has a gift for clear prose, logical thinking, and an ability to get to the heart of his subject quickly. He begins with a concise description of the Christian consensus on a particular belief, which is followed by its heretical alternatives. Then he offers a brief description of the range of interpretations within Christianity and concludes with a unitive Christian view. He regularly reminds the reader that there is much more to a particular doctrine than he has time and space to explore in his concise descriptions.

Olson proposes the possibility of a both-and theological tension in many cases of doctrinal divisions and controversies. “Could it be,” he writes, “that God is both self-limiting (in order to allow creatures room for some self-determination) and sovereign? Could it be that salvation is completely of grace alone even though humans are genuinely free and must decide freely (apart from any determination) for or against it?” Olson is up front with his Arminian perspective (“believing in human persons’ God-given free will”) and true to his intent of treating “Reformed theology (Calvinism) and all other branches of authentic Christian theology with respect and in a spirit of love.”

In a book that is intentionally irenic, Olson’s personal frustration comes through when he writes, “Aggressive, dogmatic Reformed Protestants often go out of their way to insult Arminian Protestants who believe in libertarian free will and who emphasize decision by calling them SemiPelagians and arguing that their synergistic belief in salvation is involving cooperation of the human will with divine grace is covertly Roman Catholic.”

He goes on to acknowledge that “some Arminian Protestants return the favor by treating Reformed theology (Calvinism) as near-heresy if not outright heresy.” Olson sees “open theism” as a viable Christian vision of God’s providence, along with “meticulous providence” and “limited providence.”

He does not consider “open theism” a heresy, as some do who are committed to “meticulous providence,” because it “retains the essentials of a Christian view of divine sovereignty” and has “no hint of process theology’s denial of divine sovereignty and power.”

It is understandable that Olson feels freer to take issue with his own evangelical tradition than

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with other Christian traditions. He is critical of some Protestant groups for having “overreacted to the perceived threat of modernism by developing a doctrine of strict biblical inerrancy,” but he is quiet about papal infallibility. He exposes those who have “become obsessed with detailed speculation about the end times and an overly literalistic interpretation of biblical apocalyptic literature,” but extends considerable latitude to those who venerate the saints and believe in purgatory. At times his criticism raises questions about how he would analyze the weaknesses of another Christian tradition if he were writing from within that tradition. The fact that the Roman Catholic Church “officially considers belief in the existence of a true, invisible, universal church that is not institutionally under the authority of the magisterium (bishops, cardinals, pope) a heresy,” is not as grave a concern for Olson as “the ‘baptizing’ of denominationalism as normative and especially in the identification of a particular denomination with the church universal itself.”

When he encourages the reader not to slam his book shut because he mentions the term orthodoxy it can be assumed that Olson is writing for a broader readership than just the evangelical community. His aim is to take down the barriers generated through speculation and to remove the divisions caused by overemphasizing a particular aspect of the truth at the expense of the whole truth. On the one hand, Olson challenges those whose theology is too opinionated and polemical and, on the other, seeks to provide “a stepping stone out of the swamp of folk religion and onto a more intellectually rigorous path to truth.”

Defined in these terms, Olson’s book is a success.

Dr. Douglas D. Webster First Presbyterian Church San Diego, CA

SHORT NOTICES Bible-Carrying Christians, Conservative Protestants, and Social Power

by David Harrington Watt Oxford University Press, 2001 165 pages (hardcover), $29.95 Watt’s work, the product of more than two years of field research in three Philadelphia churches—a

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nondenominational congregation called Oak Grove Church, the Philadelphia Mennonite Fellowship, and the Philadelphia Church of Christ—proposes to provide “an ethnographic analysis” of the Christians identified in his title.

“Bible-carrying Christians,” the author explains, are those who carry “their own copy of the Bible to church on Sunday morning”—a practice, he confesses, those in his own Episcopal tradition would consider “odd.” Watt aims to assess how conservative Protestant congregations view relationships of social power, and the way in which these churches “shape our understanding of which power relations are suspect and which are not.”

The book provides interesting, even sympathetic vignettes of the life and workings of these congregations. Yet at the same time it disappoints by failing to make good on its comprehensive agenda. Snapshots taken between October 1991 and December 1993 of three small east coast urban congregations hardly make for a complete view of the subject Watt sets out to address. Moreover, one gets the sense that Watt’s intended audience consists of those for whom the practices of Bible-carrying Christians are a strange and exotic phenomena. For many readers of Modern Reformation, much here will seem rather commonplace. Some of it will sadly confirm the excesses and foibles of mainstream American Evangelicalism so brilliantly dissected in David Wells’s recent works.

Yet, given the political and social influence wielded by Bible-carrying Christianity, Watt’s central question is an important one: Which social arrangements and relationships are “naturalized” in such a context? By “naturalized,” Watt means that they “treat something that is actually historically constructed as though it were self-evidently ‘natural’ and therefore beyond questioning.” One need go no further in history than the conservative Protestant churches’ stance on slavery and racial equality to see that Watt here pursues a line of critical analysis that the American churches, in their own self-examinations, have notoriously neglected.

Watt consciously seeks to occupy a “neutral” ethnographic position “between belief and unbelief.” Though his own liberal biases emerge, he deserves commendation for his “attempt to make [himself] a little less parochial.” One only hopes that some of the subjects of his research will manage to muster the same sense of fair-minded decency. (At one particularly cringe-making point, Watt describes his conversation with a Church of Christ “discipler” who tells him, “in a contemptuous tone, ‘It is easy to convert poor people. They are so needy.’”) Yet the difficulty in maintaining his own

neutrality quickly surfaces in the list of categories by which Watt proposes to conduct the analysis; he focuses, he says, on the ways in which these churches “do and do not naturalize the authority of the U.S. state, of modern corporations, of ministers, of men, and of heterosexuals.”

Watt simply assumes that these are the important questions to ask, and that they are all equally important. He furnishes no independent justification for setting these concerns as his index of value. Nor does he attempt to provide criteria for distinguishing what sorts of social relationships are simply carried over from the dominant culture, or tradition, and which are authentically “natural.”

Presumably, in the “value-free” democratic culture championed by Richard Rorty and embraced by so much of the academy with which Watt identifies, nothing is natural; most if not all of the network of human social relationships are the product of historical conditioning. This creates an ironic effect: Watt appears to be genuinely frustrated that the mantra of his own formative years, “question authority,” no longer carries the bite it used to.

Could it be that Bible-carrying Christians actually do question authority, just not the kind Watt does?

Peter J. Richards Doctoral student, Yale University New Haven, CT

Letters

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mind but never had words for. One thing that has bothered me for years is how semi-pelagians will ignore clear verses (inductive stuff) and always claim that “Oh, but the whole of Scripture is clear that...” without offering any Scripture as a presuppositional starting point. As an example, I’ve often heard what I fondly call the “robot” presupposition—since true love requires the ability to reject or accept the offer, God created us with ability to always either choose or reject him or we would be robots. The problem is that this system’s starting point has no basis in Scripture though it is assumed to as it is natural for men to think in terms of autonomous choice. I appreciate the honesty that a Reformed (read Christian) theologian brings to the table acknowledging that we too have systems and that sinful human hearts must be constantly vigilant to ensure both our inductive and deductive study are consistent with Scripture.

Thank you for the article and your continued ministry. What a tremendous blend of both systematic teaching and a church history lesson for the examples. As I deploy to the Middle East in the

next week, I’ll be bringing my Modern Reformation magazines with me.

Rich Leino Maj, USMC

May I add to your software recommendations (January/February 2003), specifically for those with Macintosh computers, the Bible study program Accordance by Oak Tree Software, www.oaksoft.com. It is designed for all levels of study, from casual to scholarly. The most challenging aspect is choosing from the many combinations and permutations of reference works and Bible translations. Fortunately, Oak Tree takes orders the old fashioned way—by telephone—so help is readily available. Examples of reference works that are Accordance compatible include the new ESV Bible, the new NET Bible, the EBC, the NIDOTTE, etc. Accordance is OS X native and of course runs on older Mac systems too.

B. J. Mora Via the Internet

While there is no doubt that the large number of new Bible translations can be confusing, there is also no doubt that the reason given by Modern Reformation in its November/December 2002 issue is wrong [“Sum of the Time”]. You state that the reason is “because Bibles are immensely profitable and publishers are attempting to stimulate sales by rendering old versions obsolete.” This is another version of the popular but wrong “planned obsolescence” argument that Ralph Nader used to give in his jihad against the American automobile industry. If yours (and Nader’s) arguments were true, then Bible publishers would be undermining their own sales, since the present value of a good like a Bible is determined in part by its future value.

If publishers are doing as you say, then they are undermining their own products, which is not likely. A more accurate explanation is that the market for Bibles has become more competitive and that publishers who fail to keep up will fall behind. The vast majority of Bibles are not read by scholars, but by ordinary people who are willing to purchase what is offered on the market. You may not like my argument, but it has more explanatory power than the hoary “planned obsolescence” one given by your editorialist.

William L. Anderson Assistant Professor of Economics Frostburg State University Frostburg, MD

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n my mind today is the mind, a component of my immaterial being, as it

enthusiastical insanity, as as dangerous to vital relates to obedience. In the Lord’s most succinct statement of our Christianity as the Bostonian rationalist Charles Chauncy. responsibility as Christ-followers, he instructed us to “love the Lord our God This brings me to the question that I pondered. If with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all the will is moved somehow through the mind and your mind” (Matt. 22:37), a quotation from heart (the rational and affective faculties), what is Deuteronomy 6:5. In essence, it is required of us the relationship between the two of them? What I that we be intensely devoted to him with the have learned from reading John Owen, the totality of our beings, all our faculties (intellect, seventeenth-century Puritan, and in a more emotions, and will). This may not be a novel nuanced fashion from reading Jonathan Edwards, is concept to many of our readers, but I was reared in that the mind gathers information. The validity a tradition—generic Evangelicalism—that, though and correctness of the information is the gate to not devoid of intelligence, often prioritized the correct decisions. Data is evaluated by the emotional as the informer of the will. Though I conscience, either as aversion or attraction, and is JOHN HANNAH found much that was both stimulating and conveyed to our innermost being, the heart. The beneficial, the notion that I came to as I observed heart and mind in conjunction determine our Distinguished Professor what was taught, how it was taught, and the choice-making, what we call the faculty of will.

The point of this is that the intellectual and the of Historical Theology structure of exhortations consequent was that the Dallas Theological most propitious path to proper behavior is to appeal affective faculties are not adversaries. There is a Seminary to the affective, sometimes directly. In so doing, I complex, ongoing interrelationship between these got the impression that the mind, being more faculties that defy a linear description of their Dallas, TX blighted than other faculties, was not a safe guide. function. The degree that one is capable of correct Further, in my training in quite a variety of schools decisions has a direct relation to the accuracy and both religiously conservative and overtly secular, I depth of knowledge available. Direction in life is never gave serious reflection to the nature of determined by knowledge, but decisions are a fruit decision making as it relates to internal processes. of our total being (not merely the mind).

The relationship of mind and emotion to A practical implication of this insight for me has willingness was the very issue about which to do with the question of Lordship. Can a person Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) was forced to think as know the Lord who has no desire to follow him in factions in his denomination began to undermine obedience? Can a person know him as Savior, but the credibility of the Great Awakening in which he not as Lord? Can a person have a valid intellectual played a prominent role. To define true religion as knowledge of the Lord without an affectionate primarily emotive was a disaster in the making; to attachment? This seems absurd to me. If define it as rational decorum entails the same end. knowledge and heart are a unity of mankind’s Heat without light, he argued, is as poor a immaterial being then decisions are always a fruit of substitute for true religion as light without heat. both. We make decisions as a total person; no one True religion is both heat and light, to use his faculty functions as an opponent of the others. To terms; it is intellectual and emotional. Edwards know God is to love him from the deepest recesses viewed James Davenport, who later confessed to of our being which is the essence of Lordship.

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