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Category: Theology Page 12 of 67
The whole point of worship is looking outside ourselves to another, namely Christ. When you’re caught up in the grandeur of the Grand Canyon, you’re caught up to something outside yourself, its particular heights and depths, its colors, its sheer size. You’re not thinking about yourself or what you’re going to get out of it as a means to an end, emotionally speaking. You’re simply caught up in that object in itself. Now the effect of being caught up to an object so beautiful is emotion. Standing on the top of Long’s Peak causes me to weep, not because I went there for the emotional high, so to speak, but because it is awesome in itself. Emotion and the experience of it is the result though, not the end. Emotion happens naturally because the object of your focus is so incredible.
So it is with worship of God, particularly in a worship service, but even more generally in our daily lives. To the degree we’re enraptured by, or caught up in, the truth (doctrine) of who Christ is and what He’s done on our behalf, and to the extent we encounter Jesus himself in prayer in our daily lives is the extent to which we’ll be rightly emotive in our response at our worship services, I’m convinced. Music aids in that, but it is not an end unto itself (as most of us know), nor is it primary in kindling those emotions. Now music can be extremely encouraging of that goal when good or distracting if it’s bad and therefore should be done with excellence, absolutely. But my concern for the church is larger than the production of things: people can seem unresponsive in worship services because we’re not caught up in the excitement of the truth of the drama of the gospel and encountering the person of Christ in our lives. When we sing “God is good,” yes that’s absolutely true. But how is God good? What is it that makes Him so amazing and good? The job of the pastor and worship leader is to create these categories of thought as it pertains to the gospel. Being caught up in who He is and what He’s done, explained in a literary manner, with awesome music and a sermon centered on the Person of Christ? That’s a recipe for worship that’s honoring to the Lord, that looks outside ourselves to Another. There’s joy there, there’s excellence in music, which translates into some form of a response, which could be sitting down and weeping, or standing with arms lifted, or in some cases not showing emotion and yet exploding with joy inwardly.
This is where the hymns come in, as an example, particularly the more theological hymns. Sure, there are some dreadfully bad hymns, both musically and lyrically. But why are the hymns so great? Let’s take In Christ Alone, a modern hymn. The whole song, verse by verse, is a progressive explanation of the gospel, with a final crescendo of exuberance in our hearts at what God has done. That sings, that produces joy. Love Constrained to Obedience is about Christ fulfilling the law on our behalf, turning our duty into joyful choice now, something we desire to do out of love for the One who saved us. How Deep the Father’s Love is about the depth of His love, literally the theological nature of it, what composes it, its characteristics, its properties. Revelation Song is deeply theological and really just quoting Scripture to a great degree. Before the Throne of God is all about imputed righteousness, how Christ is our advocate, our high priest, how the Father sees us as He sees His own Son! When we think on these things in depth and combine that with the experience of prayer in our lives, it produces a something that wells up within us of love to God and sets our hearts ablaze with joy … and thus a response.
What I desire to see more of in my own life, as well as the larger church, is that we’re all becoming more gospel-centric, meaning marinading ourselves, our teaching and our music in these truths. Let every sermon point there as an application for the motivation unto obedience and worship, as opposed to being motivated by law. Let every song drip it. How does Christ fulfill the law for us? How is His obedience transferred to our account? Why is that amazing? How does that truth apply Wednesday afternoon? How can we take that application into our music? How does Jesus’s blood appease God’s wrath? Resurrection? On and on. These are themes that cause us to well up with joy. And joy is the end goal of the gospel. Joy in the face of Christ, seen in Scripture, experienced through the Spirit.
Something that has been a challenge for me in the past year is coming to the realization that though I’ve studied some theology (though by no means anywhere close to what I should or what others have studied) my character is lacking and not matching up with what I’m taking in. I briefly went through Scripture recently and thought of the places it talks about character or the characteristics of a believer and considered how lacking I am in these areas. I know there are others, but this is the list I came up with to pray over and meditate on.
Beatitudes Matt 5:2-12:
– Poor in Spirit
– Mourning
– Meek
– Hunger/Thirst for Righteousness
– Merciful
– Pure in Heart
– Peacemaker
– Persecuted for Righteousness’ sake
– Reviled/persecuted for the name of Christ
Fruit of the Spirit – Galatians 5:22-23:
– Love
– Joy
– Peace
– Patience
– Kindness
– Goodness
– Faithfulness
– Gentleness
– Self-control
Love is… – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
– Patient
– Kind
– not boastful
– not envious
– not arrogant
– not rude
– not insisting on its own way
– not irritable
– not resentful
– not rejoicing in wrongdoing
– rejoicing with the truth
– bearing all things
– believing all things (obviously not to be understood in the relativistic sense)
– hoping all things
– enduring all things
– never ending
Interestingly enough, Tim Challies posted this blog today that coincides with all of this: http://www.challies.com/articles/im-better-than-you
Going to make this quick. This continues to be a growing problem: people either positively posting Osteen’s material as if there aren’t serious theological issues at stake or flabbergasted anyone would criticize the man. Show’s precisely how far gone mainstream evangelicalism is in the realm of discernment. What’s the problem with Joel Osteen and others of his “American positivism,” self-made, will-it-into-existence Christianity? Michael Horton embodies it here:
- Doesn’t God Want Us to be Happy?
- Joel Osteen and the Glory Story
- What Ever Happened to Sin?
- Suffering and a Theology of Glory
- Are You in God’s Story?
Penal substitution is under fire, has been for quite some time. But not just from the PCUSA. HT @Mheerema.
The Alabama Baptist (Bob Terry): “Why Disagree About the Words of a Hymn?” http://www.thealabamabaptist.org/print-edition-article-detail.php?id_art=28401&pricat_art=10
Some popular theologies do hold that Jesus’ suffering appeased God’s wrath. That is not how I understand the Bible and that is why I do not sing the phrase “the wrath of God was satisfied” even though I love the song “In Christ Alone.”
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One well-known Baptist theologian said it clearly: “Reconciliation is not the appeasement of God. It is God’s own work in restoring man to proper relationship with Himself.”
In response:
- J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism, Ch. 6, pg. 110 in PDF: http://reformedaudio.org/audio/machen/Machen%20-%20Christianity%20&%20Liberalism.pdf
- Albert Mohler’s talk at T4G 2008 (MP3) – Why Do They Hate It So? The Doctrine of Substitution: http://media.t4g.org/t4g2008/audio/t4g2008-session6-mohler.mp3
- Pierced for our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution – http://www.amazon.com/Pierced-Our-Transgressions-Rediscovering-Substitution/dp/1433501082
On the myth that morality can’t be legislated. This is all I will say about the decisions today:
“Aristotle said, ‘Law rests upon the necessary foundation of morality.’ Therefore, if your law does not reflect a moral rationale, then your law is an illicit law. Some people say you cannot legislate morality. If Aristotle is right, then morality is the only thing you can legislate. If power is simply used to secure the benefits of a select few rather than the common good, this is an illicit use of law.”
http://old.westerfunk.net/archives/theology/President%20Speech%20-%20Greg%20Koukl/
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_g2bh.pdf
Moral Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Midair from Veritas [3] on Vimeo.
Legalism is quite a charge. When someone is imposing a legalistic vision upon others, they are saying that unless they do certain things, they are out of God’s salvific favor. Christ + something = justification. So when a person is charged with this, it is serious business. You’re stating that they are preaching a false gospel. Galatians is a case study.
Many times, however, believers who are like-minded on many core, essential things, yet butt heads, sometimes vigorously, over what Christians should or shouldn’t be doing as a result of their salvation, lay this charge of legalism against the other. In all fairness, legalism is probably not always the right term to use. You can usually discern what they’re trying to get at when using the term, overstated though it may be, but legalism is a high charge and doesn’t necessarily fit. The problem though is that there is some truth to the charge, but not exactly in the same way. It needs some redefining.
Whereas legalism puts the “offending” persons’ relation to God in question, legalism light puts the offending persons’ relation to the community in question. In other words, if you don’t do X, well, this isn’t the place for you. Or, since we’re with these people now, doing X, we can’t hang out together. It may not be so overt, just implicit in action. I have a hard time seeing how this squares with what I’ve been reading from Paul on unity among believers in 1 Cor 1:10-17 and 1 Cor 3:1-15.
I sincerely believe this particular euphemistic phrase and others like it were born out of an earnest desire to show that in the eyes of God, our sin is sin. It’s an empathetic gesture from one sinner (though saved by Jesus’s work) toward another sinner who doesn’t know the Lord to say, “Hey, I’m like you and I’m not leaving myself out of this equation.” It’s a way to gain common ground with another person so they might hear the gospel. And in some sense it’s true: we’re all leveled before the judgment seat of God’s holy stare and it only takes the committing of one sin. We’re all culpable and liable to judgment. No question. Part of me does wonder how much of this is the evangelical spirit desiring to eschew the rough edges of truth because they are offensive. The doctrine of hell and eternal punishment is not a popular concept in our culture, let alone that God would be sovereign in the dispensing of His mercy in light of that. But regardless, let’s just say for arguments’ sake the motive is good.
The problem is this just simply isn’t true, at least on its face, which is likely how most people hear it; they probably don’t think further about it within our tweet-size discourse in the West. Different sins have different judgments. We don’t necessarily know what they all are or how they are met out. But Jesus makes it clear to Pilate: “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.” (John 19:11). Some may object and say, yeah, well, that was the Jewish Sanhedrin and they were betraying Jesus. But the principle is still the same and applies throughout. Some punishments receive greater weight, even in the law. Some sins deserve greater judgment than others and therefore some sins are indeed worse than others.
Update: To her credit, Rachel Held Evans has come out and apologized for jumping the gun and assuming the worst about John Piper’s motives. I still maintain this brand of evangelicalism is on the Downgrade, but it’s good to see her admit a wrong committed and seek reconciliation (based on a number of tweets to that effect). http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/forgive-me
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I fail to see how Rachel Held Evans theology (and others like her) escapes this assessment of liberal theology in the 19th and 20th centuries by H. Richard Niebuhr:
“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.” – H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America.
The “universal acid” (Mohler) of skepticism and doubt eventually swallows up every doctrine of Scripture. Just ask Shelby Spong or Marcus Borg, they’ll tell you what they think. “Did God actually say ______?” (Gen. 3:1). This is the fundamental root of all sin, a doubting that God would actually speak clear truth in love toward us. What could be more loving than God giving us His words, preserved through centuries for our salvation? Maybe giving His own Son to suffer in our stead? Then again, penal substitutionary atonement is probably interpreted as “divine child abuse” (Chalke) to her. (Mohler)
For the postmodern, everything having to do with Scripture is vague or unclear and left to interpretation and therefore any interpretation is a go, or at the least entertainable, even though multiple ecumenical church councils over many centuries may have denied it, since that was merely their interpretation. But don’t worry, Rachel Held Evans and crew are here in their vast knowledge and research to rescue you from… Christianity, with its archaic, repressive doctrines and symbols that need a liberal, feminist, egalitarian, postmodern, 21st century makeover. James White is right to say that every generation must fight its own version of the Downgrade Controversy. This is ours and it’s here.
Interesting how the explanation of why Piper tweeted what he did and his response to what can only be described as cynical, hyper-emotional, unthinking criticism didn’t seem to make the presses though. But so goes Rachel Held Evans. Whatever fits the meme that Reformed people or conservative evangelicals in general are bad people, I guess. Smear the character, don’t actually engage the argument or the position. Sounds like far-leftist politics is invading the theological world. Eh, whatever gets blog hits right? Celebrity leftist evangelicalism at it’s finest, letting the Xian PR machine take over. Boy did this get her some traffic.
Also interesting to note is that Evans cites a sermon by open theist Greg Boyd after updating her blog post. Explains much. “Escaping the Twilight Zone God”
Evans represents a brand of evangelicalism that sits atop shaky ground; building a house on the sand. It’s been a long time coming and looks to be giving way. In my absolute frustration at what I read from her and other likeminded individuals is utter sadness. Once emergent theology started blending more with average evangelical churches, it was only a matter of time and tilt of the slope. Unfortunately it won’t end well.
Douglas Wilson gives Rachel Held Evans a well-deserved response for such sloppiness and avoiding the glaring problem that remains: http://dougwils.com/s16-theology/rachel-held-evans-denies-the-cat.html. Don’t miss it.
If your overarching (or inadvertent) goal is to be liked by the world as a believer, you will inevitably have to pare off the rough edges of truth, as Spurgeon called it, and do massive editing to make the message more acceptable.
The gospel is an offense, in particular, that blood would be required by God for the forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9:22) and at that, His own Sons’ blood. This doctrine, penal substitutionary atonement, has been called “divine child abuse” from some within evangelicalism (Steve Chalke in particular, though many seem to agree with his assessment). This heart-truth of the gospel is absolute sacrilege to the secular mind.
There’s no way around it: what we believe about the truth of God’s Word, and actually, the fact we believe it speaks truth at all into the world, is itself an offense, let alone the doctrines contained within that it speaks to.