Feast of Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles

For an excellent expose on those causing trouble in the western Church today, read the Epistle of St. Jude. There's nothing new under the sun.

The Humble God

When Christ emptied Himself and became a man (Phil. 2), he did not veil his divinity but revealed it. He showed us the humility of God. As he walked among us He told us that, if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father. How? Certainly, according to Phil. 2, in one sense especially: the Father - indeed, the whole Godhead - is humble.

James & Paul Follow-Up

The following is the body of an e-mail I wrote to a friend about my previous post.

On your first paragraph, I see the challenge to be:

1) to maintain the tension between the poles of truths revealed to us in a "dialectic" form. Rev. Rob Rayburn of Seattle (PCA) has a remarkable series of sermons on this subject:
http://www.faithtacoma.org/sermons/Scripture/Reading.htm
but you are familiar with the idea, for example, the tension between "all of grace" on one side and "human responsibility" on the other regarding salvation. To quote Rayburn:
"I am speaking of the fact that biblical truth is universally presented in dialectical form. By that I mean that the Bible characteristically presents any doctrine in terms of its polarities. The truth concerning any particular subject or theme is taught, now in one place, now in another, in terms of the poles that lie at the opposite ends of the particular continuum."

2) to give credit to each passage of Scripture as it stands, being careful not to try to make it say something it doesn't say, lest one begin to construct a system the Bible will not support. The "analogy of Scripture" is a legitimate idea, based on the doctrine of divine inspiration, but it can become a tool for forcing parts of the Bible to fit one's favorite passages. Humility and good training in Logic goes a long way.

As for your comment about works and salvation, in reference to my article, the issue assumes that our salvation is a complex matter, in the sense of being multi-faceted. Paul champions justification by faith alone in opposition to justification via the works of the law. James champions the place of sanctification in the life of those who "claim" to have believed unto justification. Thus, James does not contradict Paul on justification - justification is still not of works - but he makes us think about the "whole package" of salvation, which has a place for human responsibility. It is all of grace, in the long run: "what hast thou that thou didst not receive?" I Cor. 4:7. But having grace, we are not to presume upon grace (which is the best way of expressing it that I can think of). In other words, the Calvinist (vs. the Arminian, who does indeed make works the ultimate basis of salvation), must be careful to not argue away the N.T. warnings of apostasy, saying, "well, that's only hypothetical because anyone truly elect will not apostasize." It is true; the elect will not be lost - Jesus said so. However, God presents much of what He says about our salvation to our current, time-bound, human experience. That means we must beware of looking at everything from the perspective of the eternal decrees (which are unknown to us) and take seriously God's commands to be faithful.

All of this touches on the issue of assurance of salvation, which you rightly move on to. The issue you raise is a good one, especially in the history of Puritanism. By the way, Max Webber has been debunked on his famous theory. There were Puritans who did indeed get messed up regarding assurance. The problem was not keeping the tension I discussed above. The New England Congregationalists were probably the worst. They came up with the idea that the elect would have a particular experience of conversion, with a set series of events. Thus, if anyone were to be admitted to the Table, they had to be able to recount a particular narrative of their conversion. Only those who could honestly say they had this experience could be assured they were elect. There is much that is preposterous about this, but the main thing is the idea that our assurance is to be based upon our ability to discern the election of God, which, as you say, is something "far from being certain". It's really presumptious.

The Calvinistic consensus on assurance is that our assurance is based primarily upon the simple promises of God in Scripture. We look away from our experience (which can be so varied and misunderstood) to the faithfulness of God in His Word. We thus honour Christ as the all-sufficient Saviour. Secondarily, we recognise such things as those which James says, and that John says in his First Epistle, which point to the idea of "fruit of repentance;" that is, evidence of regeneration. Quite simply, if you see your life being changed by God (and for those of us who have this experience, we can testify that He is doing the work, not us...) then that is additional evidence of the validity of one's faith. However, as has already been noted, since this can be such a subjective exercise, it can be problematic. Here's where people like Cowper and Johnson come in. It helps our assurance, but it cannot be the ground. There is a more objective aspect of this, of course. The Bible points to this in those passages that plainly say that murderers, adulterers, idolators, etc., will not inherit the kingdom. James does too, pointing out various hypocrisies. The subjective troubles are those which the introverted bring upon themselves, seeking to examine their faith. Another good example of subjectivism is Bunyan, in his "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners." You will note that Bunyan gets relief whenever his attention is drawn away from self-examination to the objective promises of the gospel.

The Arminian position, for the sincere and reflective soul, cannot give assurance, because it falls out of balance with the tension of the dialectic, chosing to make our works the determining factor, not the faithful love of God and the faithful duty of the Son to keep all those whom the Father has given to Him. It results in people being preoccupied with how they are doing and tends to develop spiritual pride and all the ills that go along with it - man-centeredness, legalism, strife, etc.

These are, of course, generalities. Calvinists can be rather full of strife as well! But it is not because of the temptations of their doctrine - they are just sinners.

I consent with you the idea of emotional disposition due to background. Such things are real and it underlines all the more how important it is that we understand for ourselves how God nurtures us and consequently nurture our children in the same manner.

Thank you, Lord, for the rain.

James and Paul on Works

Martin Luther was a very intense and sensitive individual. Before he learned that he could be made right with God simply by receiving salvation as a free gift by faith, he was a very miserable person. He believed that he could only be right with God by being morally perfect. Finding this perfection impossible, he despaired. But when studying Paul’s epistles, he learned that we are justified, or made right with God, by faith alone, apart from our works, he was filled with an enthusiasm to see to it that this truth was known by as many as possible and that it was not lost to people again.

Because he was so jealous for the doctrine of justification by faith alone, he didn’t like the epistle of St. James. He called it an epistle of straw and said it should be removed from the canon. Why is that? It is because James seems to contradict the doctrine of justification by faith. In fact, James seems to say that a man is justified by works! You can imagine how that bothered Luther!

Many people have debated whether or not James was contradicting Paul. What are we to make of this? Do they contradict each other? This is very important for us because, whether we are presently as emotional about these matters as Luther or not, we all should be seriously concerned that we understand what the Bible says about how to be right with God. For, there is coming a day of judgment and it is in this life that we determine how we will stand on that day; whether we will be with those who go to heaven or not.

Well, let me see if I can help us to understand what James is saying so that we may have settled minds on the matter. First of all, when we read those epistles of Paul where he is especially concerned to teach us how to be justifed before God, such as Romans and Galatians, we observe that Paul is writing these letters in answer to people who are making our good works too necessary for our salvation. There were people in his time who taught that faith in what Jesus has done for us is not enough to make us just before God. Instead, we must add to our faith good works, and, for them, that meant we must dedicate ourselves to the faithful performance of the religious rites of Judaism. Unless we have these religious works added to our faith, our faith will not be accepted. In other words, faith is insufficient; our good works will determine our destiny.

Paul’s answer to these people is plain. The only good works we need in order to be saved are the works of Jesus on our behalf, in his death and resurrection. The saving benefit of those works is freely offered to us by God and we receive that benefit by faith alone. Our good works do nothing for us to make us right with God. We are justified by faith alone.

When we go to James, however, we have a different audience. In his case, he is writing to people who, instead of making works more important than they should be, they are slighting good works, making them unnessary for anything at all. Let me show you. If you read 2:14-17, notice what he says:

14: What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
15: If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
16: And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?

17: Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.

You see the situation. Here he speaks of someone who says he has Christian faith, but he does not do the Christian thing, the loving thing, to those who are in need. He thinks his good works do not matter; that he can have Christian faith without living a Christian life.

Paul was dealing with people who believed they were safe with God through their righteous works. James is dealing with people who believe they are safe with God having a faith and no works at all. Paul was dealing with works-righteousness; James is dealing with hypocrisy. Someone says they are a Christian but will not live like one. Now that’s a different matter from Paul’s.

Notice also how Paul is dealing with a more quantitative perspective while James is dealing with a qualitative perspective. Paul’s opponent wants to know how many good things he has to have all added up in his life in order to be right with God. James’ opponent wants to think that the quality of his faith doesn’t matter; it can be with works or without. That is why James asks the question in v. 14: “can faith save him”, which is better translated, “can that kind of faith save him,” a faith that ignores living the Christian life. You see the difference.

Well, since we now realise that Paul and James are dealing with two different situations, we can understand how their concerns are going to differ. They are not going to say the exact same things as each other because they are not dealing with the exact same situations.

Let us also notice that the Bible uses the word justification in two different ways. First, there is the one we have been talking about regarding Luther and Paul. This kind of justification is the imputing to us the righteousness that belongs to Jesus in order to make us right with God. It is something put to our account, received by faith alone, which makes us just in God’s sight. The Bible compares it to a garment that we put on, so that when we stand before God on the judgement day, we appear clothed in Christ’s righteousness.

But there is another kind of justification, and it is a justifying in the sense of proving something or someone as true. For example, in Luke 7, Jesus tells the people about how the ministry of John the Baptist was truly from God, and Luke says that the people who heard Jesus justified God (v. 29). In other words, they sided with Jesus in believing God had proved His faithfulness in sending John and that His ways were the right ways. God was the true God and John was truly his servant – not a fake or perhaps a hypocrite. This is what James means by justification; someone is proven to be what they say they are, or what someone else says they are.

This other kind of justification helps us to understand what James says later in the chapter about Abraham. Let’s look at it:

21: Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?

Let me stop here. Do you see how, on the surface, this seems to contradict Paul? Paul writes frequently of how we are not justified by works but James says we are. This is the very kind of apparent conflict we are trying to solve. I proceed.
22: Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?
23: And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.
24: Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.
Now, let’s go back over this remembering the second kind of justification we have referred to; the kind that proves something genuine. When James says, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works”, he means, was not Abraham proven to have true faith by his works. The story he relates about Abraham offering up his son Isaac took place about 30 years after the first time we are told in Genesis that Abraham believed God. You remember the story: after Abraham had left his home in Mesopotamia and journeyed to Canaan, God appeared to him and promised to make him the father of a great number of people. When Abraham believed God’s promise, his faith was accounted to him for righteousness. This is the kind of thing that Paul talks about. But many years later, God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mt. Moriah. You’ll remember that Abraham was about to kill his son when God stopped him; the whole thing was a test of his faith. What kind of faith did Abraham have? Was it the kind that would obey God no matter what God told him to do? When Abraham proved that he did indeed have that kind of faith, God said, “Now I know that you fear God.” In other words, Abraham had proven that his faith was true and so God justifies him in the second sense of the word; he declares him genuine because of his works. Thus, in the second sense of the word, Abraham was justified by his works.

Now that’s what James is talking about and he uses Abraham to prove his point. People who think that they can simply agree to Christian teaching and have a kind of faith in God that goes no farther than that, that does not go on to act on that belief and live a Christian life of obedience to God, James says that that kind of faith is in vain. It’s not the kind of faith that saves anyone. Faith without the works that go along with it, James says, is a dead faith.

Now Paul says the same kind of thing about faith. Speaking to people who have believed in Christ, Paul says in 2 Cor. 6, “We then … beseech you that ye receive not the grace of God in vain,” and then, in ch. 7, he goes on to tell them, “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” Paul expects people who have true Christian faith to live the Christian life- a life of holiness. We are, as the Bible elsewhere says, to bring forth the fruits of repentance.

Christian faith, in the heart of a person, is to bring forth good works and thereby, as James says of Abraham’s faith, it is perfected. Good fruit does not make a fruit tree a good tree. Rather, good fruit proves the tree is a good tree. The fruit is the perfection of the tree’s goodness. With the fruit we see and we taste that the tree is good. The good fruit enables us to justify the tree, to declare it a good tree because it is fulfilling the end for which it was created, to be provide food for man. So it is that if someone simply says they have Christian faith, but there is no fruit of that faith in their lives – if their deeds are not Christian deeds – then their faith is not the real thing. It is not a good Christian faith and they are in trouble. Their faith, says James, is in vain, and if they do not repent and truly believe in Christ, they will be on the wrong side of the Judgment.

Thus we learn that Paul and James are talking about two different aspects of faith; they are not contradicting each other, but complimenting each other. But the most important thing we have to learn is that you and I cannot expect to live hypocritically, professing to be Christians but not living like Christians, and, at the same time, have assurance of eternal life. As James asks, “Can that kind of faith save us?” He then answers, “No. Faith without works is dead”; that kind of faith has no spiritual life and and cannot lay claim to the promises of eternal life. Let us make much of how it is that we are indeed justified by faith alone, apart from works, but not to the extent that we begin to think that our works don’t matter at all. They do not justify us, but if we have no good works, we do not have the kind of faith that justifies. Saving faith is a repenting faith, an obedient faith, a faith that is living and produces good fruit. Thank God for the wonderful promise of eternal life through Christ by faith alone, but may we also seek His grace as believing people that we not presume upon God’s wonderful gift. Let us, relying upon Him alone, prove our faith is true, by keeping on the narrow way that leads to eternal life.

Amen.

So what to preach in 5 minutes?

I had an unusual circumstance this morning; my sermon had to be limited to 5 minutes! So what does an Evangelical Anglican preach in 5 minutes? Well, here it is.

In a few minutes, I will read these comforting words: So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. St. John iii. 16.

The Christian religion is not based on man seeking after God. Rather, it is the belief that God has initiated our relationship with Him by His having compassion on us miserable sinners; upon us who are perishing in our sinful, fallen condition and death. God has loved us. And in so loving, He has acted on our behalf. He has freely provided for us the answer to our sinful, rebellious, fallen condition. That answer is nothing less than His only-begotten Son, Jesus of Nazareth. Two thousand years ago, He gave us His Son in His incarnation, but the incarnation was to the end that His Son might perish in our place; that He might pay the penalty of death on the cross in our stead, as only He, the God-Man, might do.

How should we respond to such a gift? We may personally differ in our initial response to the news of this loving act toward us, but the verse makes plain the response that God intends us to have: that is belief. And the Bible teaches us that this belief is of a particular quality. It is no mere intellectual assent to the claims of Christianity. Nor is it the kind of belief with which we trust God to take care of us in this world. It is a repentant belief. The intended response is to repent toward God – to turn our lives from living for self to living for God – and to believe in Jesus for our eternal needs. In this belief, we put all our hope for forgiveness and acceptance by God in Jesus alone. We are made righteous before God, not by our good works, but by His good works on our behalf.

Dear friend, however you may have responded to the story of Jesus in the past, if you have never personally responded to the giving of God’s Son to you by turning from darkness and living for yourself, toward God, and by placing the whole of your trust in Him alone and what He has done for you as all you need to be forgiven of your sins and to be made right with God forever, you must do so, and I plead with you to do so today. For the Son has been given to us that we not perish. God is love, but He’s also holy and just and perish we will in our rebellion if we refuse so great a salvation, so great a gift from God’s loving heart.

St. Albans CofE Grand Cayman

When a PCA minister on Grand Cayman Island, I became friends with the Rector of St. Alban's Anglican Church, The Rev. Nicholas Sykes, who used to be in the EMC. During the summer, my wife and I visited with Nick and got to see their new building. Nick is a good man and our church prays for him and his parish regularly. I thought I'd share a few pictures via this blog. The first is, of course, Nick and myself. The latter two of their building. Their kneeling pews, Bible box, and brass eagle lecturn (lovely!) are from old churches in England. OK, I'm a bit jealous!

Forgiveness and Growth

The following is a part of the sermon preached by Bishop Ray Sutton at the recent REC Mid-America Diocese meeting. I had to pass it along; I thought it excellent.

All too often parishes think that church growth is in a program. Yes, a program can help. But the key to a growing parish is whether or not its members are forgiving of one another and ultimately the world around them. It's really very simple. If a parish is forgiving, it will be a kind, loving, truly friendly community. If it is bitter, paranoid, insular, mean and critical visitors will come and go. It's almost as though they implicitly realize that true forgiveness cannot be found in this place. If the disciples of Jesus do not forgive as He did, then perhaps He does not live in them. Forgiveness spreads the Word of the Lord. The lack thereof inhibits the central message and mission of Christ and His Church: the absolution. Where forgiveness is, the Gospel will spread!

Thoughts on the Spiritual Life - XXVII - H. C. G. Moule

Manifoldness Continued.

ii. The manifold Grace of God. Here the problem finds a blessed answer. We have studied an extremely complicated lock, and no key in all our store will meet it and move it. But the great Artificer of both circumstances and salvation appears here with His perfect key, His golden key, cast into the very mould of the labyrinthine wards, intended and able to fit them all. Need aboundeth, in its many ramifications. But “grace doth much more abound”; it is the manifold grace of God.

True, beneath its multiplicity grace has a divine simplicity and singleness. For what is grace, when we come to its ultimate description? It is no abstract thing; no mysterious substance, thrown off as it were by God and injected into man. It is the Lord Himself in action. Grace of acceptance – what is it but God, for Christ’s sake, pardoning and welcoming the sinner – “God for us”? Grace of sanctification, of peace and power and holiness, what is it but God working in us to will and to do”; “the Spirit strengthening us in the inner man;” “Christ dwelling in the heart by faith”? What is human kindness but a kind man in action? What is divine grace but the Lord Himself, infinitely kind, acting for, and acting in, the soul?

Thus there is a glorious oneness in the inmost idea of grace. But it is a oneness out of which springs its infinite manifoldness of fitness and application. Personal action, in its very nature, is thus manifold; and grace is divinely personal action. The most refined machine is limited to a rigid narrowness in line and scope of work; it stands utterly devoid of the power to feel and meet new circumstances. The humblest Person is capable, as such, of a boundless versatility, an endless adaptability, compared with the impersonal machine. Grace is manifold, beyond the variations of out utmost need, just because it is the action within the soul and will of Him, not it but Him, who dwells within.

Thus it meets the case, be the case what it may. Never for a moment interfering with our personality, or suspending the work and office of our conscience, it, that is to say the Lord thus present, comes self-adjusted to the trial, to the temptation, of this hour, of this minute. No craft of the enemy is too subtle for that skill. No force of circumstances is too pressing for that power. There is “no temptation with” which He cannot “make a way to escape” – into Himself. There is no labyrinth of so-called conflicting duties out of which He cannot guide into a straight path.

There is abundant skill and power in grace to bring the anxious and the weak to the feet of Jesus Christ, be their antecedent obstacles what they may. There is resource in grace alike for the life of ceaseless energy and intercourse, that it may be lived in God, and for the life of solitude and forced inaction that it may be made occasion for new sacrifices to Him. There is a fit provision for the temptations of the young, buoyant spirit, and for the needs of the melancholy and fearing. It, that is to say He, can so meet the case, that “the weak shall say, I am strong.” It, that is to say He, “gives what He enjoins.”*

It, that is to say He, is adjusted to every need of life. And when the need of death comes, when the “next thing” to do is to step into the valley, to touch the edge of the cold river, grace will be found (ah, let us be sure of it, as life moves on, and the thought of death only gains in mystery as we approach it), grace will be found perfectly adjusted to that hour. And our best preparation for that need will be to welcome this holy manifoldness for the needs of this present, for this waking moment of active or suffering life. We yet shall find, through Him that loved us and abideth in us, that it is “a very simple thing to die.”

So let us thankfully face the multiplicity of circumstances, and of trials. Let us recognize in “the changing scenes of life” fresh occasions for the great Artificer to employ His will, His power. Let us remember that for every one of them there is, somewhere in Him who is with us and in us, the corresponding gift. The subject is endless indeed in its development. Its treatment is coextensive with our life.

* Da quod jubes, et jube quod vis. St. Augustine.