The Cosmic Temple

Nearly everyone I know that has attended American schools has learned to write a five paragraph essay with the following instruction from a teacher: in the introduction you tell them what you are going to tell them, then in the body you tell them, and in the conclusion you tell them what you told them.

In broad outline, this can be used to think about what we find in the Bible, which begins in the opening chapters of Genesis with a temple and concludes in the final chapters of Revelation with the same. In between, Scripture relates the story of God's special, temple presence among his people. In the Old Testament, this takes the form of the Garden of Eden, altars built by the patriarchs in commemoration of special encounters with God, the tabernacle, and the building and rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple. In the New Testament, it takes the form of Jesus, the temple that would be rebuilt in three days, and the church, which is also described as a temple filled with the Spirit and built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ as the chief cornerstone.

Thus, the Bible can be read as a book about God's temple, by which he is present among his people. This is the story as it starts "in the beginning."

The temple account begins in Genesis 1, where God is described as the wise and powerful designer and builder of a cosmic temple. He is so wise and so powerful that he constructs this temple universe ex nihilo -- out of nothing. Nonetheless, like a builder, God clears space and then fills it. There is an apparent literary structure in the text that magnifies God's wisdom in accomplishing this. On day 1, he creates the heavens and the earth, which he fills with the sun and the moon on day 4. On day 2, he divides the firmament, then fills the sky with birds and the water with sea creatures on day 5. On day 3, he called forth dry land, which he fills with land animals and mankind on day 6. Having constructed and filled his temple, he rests on the 7th day.

The reader might wonder why I have described creation as a temple. Its description as a place of God's rest, a theme captured in other Old Testament passages about the Jerusalem temple (see, as one example, Psalm 132:7-8), is one clue. However, there is much more evidence than that. I will want to hold some of this material for later, but much of the best information to help us understand God's intention in creation, as outlined in Genesis 1, comes from looking at the design for the Jerusalem temple itself.

The temple in Jerusalem was built with a three section design that was intended to provide a miniature replication of the cosmos. The outer court, with great basins representing the seas and other figures representing oxen and vegetation, represented the physical earth. The holy place, an enclosed dark area with lampstands providing points of light, represented the visible heavens. The holy of holies contained the great cherubim standing guard over the altar and represented the invisible heavens where God dwelt.

That the temple was created as a depiction of the cosmos in miniature tells us that the cosmos itself was created as a temple of God. Nonetheless, the Jerusalem temple was not the first microcosm of the cosmic temple. The first is described in Genesis 2 and named the Garden of Eden. I will talk about that next time.

The Temple of Hope

I want to spend some time writing a series of posts on a subject that I came across a few years ago and that thoroughly reoriented my way of reading and understanding Scripture. I am writing in the hope that this study will have similar value for others.

Much of the writing of the prophet Ezekiel is dark, with the writer expounding and demonstrating in various ways the judgment that was descending upon Judah and other nations. That is not to say that Ezekiel's prophecies are without hope. In fact, the final nine chapters of the book are full of hope, though the long passage has been difficult to understand for both Jewish and Christian readers. Chapters 40 through 48 describe a vision of a massive end times temple.

The enormous scale of the temple structure that Ezekiel describes makes it impossible to recreate in the geographical confines of Jerusalem. The Temple Institute, a Jewish organization committed to and making preparations to rebuild the ancient temple, acknowledges the difficulty:

"Many aspects of the Temple described by Ezekiel are difficult to comprehend, since that vision contains elements of prophetic insight which, in our generation, we do not have the spiritual or intellectual capacity to understand. For example, according to the prophecy of Ezekiel, the structure of the Third Temple will necessitate vast topographical changes in the environs of the Jerusalem. This Temple will differ drastically in size from its predecessors. According to Ezekiel's measurements, the new Temple will be so large that it will occupy the entire area of the city of Jerusalem."

In spite of these difficulties, many Christians look toward a future literal building of this temple. They typically place the construction of it in a future millennium following the return of Christ, presumably accompanied by an altered geography of Israel that will make the structure possible. This interpretation is problematic for a number of reasons that I will outline in a future post, and I will also offer in the future an explanation as to why I believe that Ezekiel's temple vision is to be understood symbolically.

For now, though, I want to respond to one important objection to a spiritual or symbolic understanding of Ezekiel's vision, for this response provides a key to the study that I am about to commence. That objection is this:

If Ezekiel is not envisioning something that God will literally bring to pass, why does the Bible provide so much detail (nine chapters worth!) of this future temple?

The answer: Ezekiel's lengthy exposition is appropriate and a valuable gift to us from God because it illuminates a theme that dominates the Bible from the first page to the last. That is to say, the entire Bible is about God's temple presence among his people. It is the subject of Genesis 1 (I realize that I will need to explain that), and it is the subject of Revelation 22. What God uses to introduce and conclude the Bible is also a key subject of the entire body of Scripture, both Old Testament and New.

Once you understand that, it opens the door to understanding the progress of scriptural revelation in exciting ways. Understanding this theme will reorient the way that the Bible is read.

My next post will address the first chapter of Genesis, which describes God building his cosmological temple.

Book Review: “Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul,” by Chad Bird

Tales of fallen ministers have become all too common in our day, and nearly everyone reading this will have been affected personally in some way. Perhaps you know someone who has betrayed his calling or your church has been harmed by such a person. Perhaps you, yourself, are the person who fell into scandalous sin.

Chad Bird fell into the last of those categories. A rising star who joined his alma mater’s seminary faculty at age 31, Bird forfeited it all five years later as the result of marital infidelity. The moral failure resulted in the loss of his family, his teaching position, his ministry credentials, and his sense of psychological and spiritual well being. This book, which is both painful and hopeful, chronicles his journey.

A reader looking for titillating details about Bird’s moral failures will be disappointed. That is not to say that the author skirts those realities. However, he gives enough information so that the reader knows of the author’s failures both before and after his fall from ministry while focusing on what God has taught him over the course of the last decade. He describes a stew of conflicting thoughts and attitudes that will confound anyone who has not walked with someone that has had this experience. Bird can describe himself as so sinful that he knows that God will not forgive him, yet express anger at God for abandoning him. He can be angry at himself for betraying those closest to him while also being angry at his isolation. He can lament his wickedness that got him to this point and hide behind masks suggesting he is really better than what he has received.

Bird does not sugar coat his life, and the feelings expressed are often raw, as when he asks, “Where in the Hell are you, God,” or recounts his teenage daughter tearfully asking why he had cheated on her mother. While all of the discussion is poignant and helpful, a couple of the chapters stood out. Bird effectively writes about how the Psalms provocatively show how pained people honestly cry out to God. Pointing out that churches, just like our biblical forebears, are composed of disappointing people, Bird calls upon us to embrace the church as the right place for us when we recognize we also are disappointing. His commentary on the father’s initiating love in the parable of the prodigal son is moving and encourages hope.

While the book does offer hope through the various topics, it is not arranged chronologically. This is helpful, as the author did not seem to want to give the impression of a steady upward glide (“’The victorious Christian life’ is, quite frankly, a fairytale version of a life no one actually lives.”). Nonetheless a couple of themes emerge through the various topics. One regards the need to give up one’s sense of control of his own destiny and instead learn to look to God in dependence. The other is that God is found outside of ourselves in Christ, not by looking inward.

The church has struggled to know how to minister to those who have fallen. There aren’t that many resources available to those who have fallen into this type of sin. This book can serve both functions.

A New Year's Day Read

Last night, I began reading Rosaria Butterfield's The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, and I finished the page turner today. Ms. Butterfield's story has gotten a great deal of attention since its publication five years ago, as it recounts her conversion (she prefers the term "impact," as in a "train wreck") to Christianity in 1999. Until that time, she was a lesbian activist and women's studies professor in Syracuse, New York. Being claimed by Christ turned her world upside down. In addition to telling of her own conversion, Ms. Butterfield, both in this book and in other forums, has been forthright in drawing attention to the way that various modes of Christian public and private moralizing, including insulting language toward those with whom we have moral disagreements, is unhelpful to the Christian cause.

These are themes that I care deeply about, and I appreciated the way that the author addresses them here..

Having said all of that, I found the most moving parts of the book to be the concluding chapters, which summarize events after Ms. Butterfield's conversion, and that center on family life as the wife of a Presbyterian minister. She and her husband have adopted four children ranging in age from new born to teenager, and they have been foster parents for a number of others, as well. Her passion for adoption and fostering children, with all of the hopes and heartaches entailed, was inspiring, and I wish that this aspect of her story would get more attention. I heartily recommend it to others.

This was a great read.

A Christian Nation?

When populist Christians declare that America is -- or once was and needs to be again -- a Christian nation, what do they mean? Christians and secularists often engage in debates about this subject without ever defining terms, which is unfortunate since doing so might alter the character of the debate.

Theoretically, those using "Christian nation" language could be doing nothing more than making a sociological statement, which would in itself be noncontroversial, since hardly anyone would deny that Protestant Christianity, more than any other religion, institutional or otherwise, has had a prevailing influence in the United States and most other western cultures. Even those who are not  Christians of necessity must deal in some degree with Christian terminology and norms in order to participate in American culture. It is part of the air that we breathe.

Nonetheless, when those on the religious right speak of a "Christian nation," they are talking about more than sociology. They mean to say that Christianity is normative to what the United States is, and that departure from that norm is a betrayal of national values. Perhaps even more significantly, they would often say, departure from that norm potentially forfeits divine blessings.

Yet, it remains to further ask about the evidence of such a departure and, perhaps more notably, what would a return to being a Christian nation look like?

Do people that talk this way mean that Americans in mass will begin to worship the triune God of Christian teaching, and be justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone?

No, they don't seem to mean that. Rather, people who talk like this seem to have in mind moral reform: if we "returned to God" by "turning from their wicked ways," then people would stop having sex with people other than their spouses, would stop drinking too much or at all, would not go to vile movies, would be less vulgar in their speech, and so forth. While all of these things may be good developments to some degree or another, what those promoting this vision of "Christian America" have in mind is not really distinctive Christianity; it is moralism. They are not looking for belief in the death and resurrection of Christ, but for moral improvement of the nation.

Thus, it is of more than passing interest that those pressing the idea of a Christian nation set off on the wrong foot by misunderstanding what the word "Christian" means. If they reoriented toward a proper definition of "Christian," they might understand that the matter of bringing about Christian commitments is not something a nation can do exercising the power of the sword, but it is something only a church can do through the preaching of the Gospel.

In a different context, the Apostle Paul warned those who exchanged the Christian Gospel for concerns about law keeping in order to establish a basis for entry into God's kingdom that they had "fallen from grace." Those calling for America to be restored to its status as a Christian nation believe that they are saying something about the status of the nation, but, in fact, they are revealing more about the state of the church. It is the church, not the nation, that has lost track of the basic meaning of terms, and it is the church that needs to hear the Gospel again in order to be called out of its apostasy to the good news of Christ.

The Reformation Project: Theses 36-54

36. God is pleased with His people because of Christ.  In this regard, our good works do not add to His pleasure in us, which is already complete.  Christian growth and grace occurs in response to God’s work in regeneration, is guided by God’s Word, and is motivated by love and gratitude for God’s grace.

37.Our destiny, as individuals and as the Church, is not under our control.  God alone orders our steps.

38. Churches that by either false emphases or by shrouding the Gospel mislead people into thinking that “God helps those who help themselves” teach a message that is completely opposite the biblical message that “Christ died for the ungodly.”

39. That faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen emphasizes that faith is our empty handed trust in the provision that God freely and completely provides.  Faith is neither a technique of positive thinking nor a weapon by which we force the hand of our sovereign Lord.

40. Encouraging Christians to live simply in order to set aside provisions to support the work of the church and to fulfill the second great commandment is admirable, but it should never be confused with the notion that such giving will guarantee a return of greater material comforts and blessings.  Those who encourage the neglect of family responsibilities on the basis of such supposed guarantees commit great evil in the name of Christ.

41. The notion that the expected ideal Christian life is one of prosperity and material ease is so inconsistent with both the teaching and the examples of Christ, the prophets, the Apostles, and others among the saints as recorded in Scripture, that this way of thinking is utterly irreconcilable to Christian teaching.

42. The term “Christian” is not categorically something that applies to nations.  There is no biblical basis for using the term in this way nor for suggesting that the United States has some unique role in God’s redemptive plan, through which He is creating a people of every people and tongue and nation.

43. God’s means for the church to bring about changed lives and social structures is Gospel proclamation.  The death, burial, and resurrection, as opposed to methods for creating political solutions to social problems or for seeking psychological well-being, form the foundation of the Christian’s hope.

44. Those who claim to speak or who are viewed as speaking for the church should take care not to commit the church, as a matter of orthopraxis, to political positions upon which the Bible does not make a clear declaration.

45. Biblical warnings about the human propensity for self-centeredness and self-promotion should give pause to those who would use the Gospel message as a method for building self-esteem.  That we love self too much, not too little, is frequently the Bible’s message to us.

46. When God created all things, He pronounced His creation good, and since the Fall, creation has groaned while awaiting its final redemption. Consistent with God’s plan for redeeming not only lost humanity, but the creation realm, as well, the goal of the Christian is not escape from the material, but the subjection of all things to Christ.

47. While the image of God in man has been defaced by the Fall, God in His goodness continues to shower His common grace on all.  The contributions in arts and culture of all of those utilizing those creation gifts must not escape the attention and appreciation of believers, who long to bring every thought captive to the Lordship of Christ. 

48. The notion that some people are better used by God due to their spiritual superiority is dangerous to those individuals and the Church and is an affront to the Gospel of Christ. The kind of priesthood of celebrity that has emerged in much of the church needs to be greatly resisted.

49. Neither the charisma nor the perceived spiritual goodness of Christian leaders should inspire a level of trust among Christians that precludes the need for proper accountability with regard to financial and moral concerns within the body of Christ.

50. The demonstrated failure of age based divisions in church structures as an effective means of keeping children, teens, and young adults in the Church must be faced in order for the Church to return to the Bible’s covenantal based pattern of family oriented worship as normative in the body of Christ.

51. Christians who share a common faith in the ecumenical creeds and the doctrine of justification by faith alone should endeavor to find common cause in those things while in no way disavowing other beliefs which cause them to differ.

52. Regardless of one’s eschatological viewpoint, neither the prospect of Christ’s return nor the hope of heaven should preclude one from thinking hard and acting wisely with regard to the issues confronted in this life.

53. Believing that the growth of the church and the spread of the Gospel are dependent on the power of God above all else should compel us to pray first of all, rather than to regard prayer as an afterthought once we have prepared our clever plans.

54.The notion that we are the real actors in a spiritual drama, with God intervening only upon our asking, pervades too much of the way that the Christian life is discussed.  This resembles a deism punctuated by occasional miracles more than it resembles Christian faith.

The Reformation Project: Theses 31-35

31. Building genuine, respectful relationships with unbelievers consistent with the second great commandment can result in opportunities to evangelize our neighbors and is far superior to programs that create artificial and manipulative relationships as the basis for sharing the Gospel.

32. The miraculous healings of Jesus and the Apostles verified the authenticity of Jesus as Messiah and should not be regarded as any indication that physical healing is part of what is offered through Christ’s atonement other than in an eschatological sense.

33. Jesus’ statements about the necessity of the new birth and the teaching of Paul that those apart from Christ are dead in trespasses and sins reveal the necessity of the Spirit’s role in regeneration for anyone to be saved.  While God uses human means to accomplish His purposes, only the work of the Holy Spirit brings the dead to life.

34. The notion that we are the real actors in a spiritual drama, with God intervening only upon our asking, pervades too much of the way that the Christian life is discussed.  This resembles a deism punctuated by occasional miracles more than it resembles Christian faith.

35. Just as our justification is entirely a work of God’s grace, so also our sanctification is entirely a work of the Spirit of God.  While God’s liberated children observe His commands out of

The Reformation Project: Theses 21-30

21. The presence or absence of excitement or other emotions provides no evidence regarding whether a work of the Spirit of God is taking place.

22. In whatever style of worship churches employ, they must always use the Bible as their guide.

23. The use or non-use of liturgical forms neither quenches nor indicates the movement of the Spirit of God.  The clearest evidence of the Spirit’s presence and work is the clear proclamation of Jesus as Lord.

24. While joy and celebration are certainly one aspect of the Christian life and Christian ministry, the Bible confronts us realistically with God’s presence and providence through every type of circumstance of life.  The notion that all worship leads to celebration should be shunned along with superficial forms of praise and gladness, even if a Christian can maintain joy in the Lord in hard circumstances.

25. In preaching the Word of God, the minister has a responsibility not only to expound biblical truth faithfully, but also to model the proper manner of reading and interpreting Scripture.

26. Rightly dividing the Word of Truth requires a proper understanding of the Covenant of Works and of the Covenant of Grace, as found in Scripture, seeing Christ as the ultimate fulfillment of both.

27. Preaching and teaching the Bible requires expounding its themes in proper context.  The Bible must never be used as a kind of book of quotations used to provide ancillary support to the things that we wish to talk about.

28. Belief in the authoritativeness and accuracy of Scripture does not require viewing it as a technical manual on every subject that it addresses. 

29. The bumper sticker maxim that “Jesus is the answer” is not true unless the correct questions are being asked.  The minister has an obligation to point his listeners toward concerns for which the church has unique importance, principally the proclamation of the Gospel.

30. Worship services and sermons that focus most of their attention on what we are doing, and that have as their goals to get congregants to do something, rather than to believe something, are inherently legalistic, even if such legalism takes a softer form than that sometimes promoted in churches of a prior generation. 

The Reformation Project: Theses 16-20

16. Because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, those delivering the Christian message must not do so in a way that tends to bring believers back under a burden of condemnation.

17. While those engaged in the “worship wars” have focused on matters of style, the far deeper concern relates to the increasing lack of biblical substance in corporate Christian worship, whether traditional or contemporary.

18. Any discussion of both the content and style of Christian worship must take as its beginning point the will of God regarding these matters as revealed in Scripture.

19. Worship needs to center on God and to glorify Him, not focus on ourselves or our experience.

20. The clearest evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence and activity is that Christ is glorified and proclaimed as Lord.

The Reformation Project: Thesis 15

15. "He is not righteous who does much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ."

This thesis is in quotation marks, as it is directly pulled from Martin Luther's Heidelberg Disputation. Those theses, published two years after the more famous 95 Theses were nailed to the Castle Church door at Wittenberg, represent a maturing of Luther's Protestant convictions.  As others have noted, the Heidelberg Disputation furthered Luther's break with the medieval church by setting forth a relentlessly cross centered understanding of Christianity, of justification, and of the Christian life. Put another way, it was a theology of the cross, in contrast to the Roman church's theology of glory.

It is also liberating, because the person who believes much in Christ believes in work that is done. The one who does much, instead of believing, never can be sure that he has ever done enough.

Do Christians understand the liberty and rest that is found in cross centered Christianity? American Christians are known not for their relentless cross centeredness, but for their relentless activism. Yet, Paul said that the one that has been justified by faith (past completed action) has (present possession) peace with God.

This is the result of preaching that is cross centered.

Table of Contents for The Reformation Project

The Reformation Project: Thesis 14

14.   That the world is passing away along with its lusts while the Word of God abides forever means that God’s Word is proclaimed in contrast to the dying world and should not be attached to it.

Is the mission of the church to proclaim law and gospel in order to give people a leg up in this life, or is it to do so in order to prepare them for the world to come?

Of course, the Bible has much to say about how we are to live in this world, but thinking about that in the context of the redemptive work of Christ is crucial. We live in this world as people who belong to the next. That is not to say that we are to take on a mentality of escapism, but it does mean that the verities that we live by in this life while inhabiting the kingdoms of this world reflect the reality that we hold a dual citizenship as emissaries of the kingdom of God's dear son.

Further, we should distinguish between the work of individual Christians and the mission of the church. While Christians will use their individual gifts and interests in pursuit of a whole range of vocations and hobbies, the church's focus is on proclamation of the mission of Christ.

Thus, while the Bible has much to say about living in this world, we should not take that as a means for finding our best life now or increasing our attachment with what is passing away, nor should we engage in a bait and switch with unbelievers by acting as though the keys we offer relate to a dying kingdom. The church's message is much too practical to stay focused on a world that is passing away. We speak of law and gospel, sin and grace, guilt and forgiveness, in order to deal with matters of ultimate, eternal importance.

Table of Contents for the Reformation Project

The Reformation Project: Thesis 13

13. Christian efforts to make God seem relevant to unbelievers must never take a form that promotes irreverence or trivializes matters of supreme importance.  There is no relevance to be found in a trite approach to God.

One of the churches I wrote about in the first section of this study featured as the sermon the preparation of a smoothie in the style of a Food Network program. At another, the minister began his sermon with 15 minutes of jokes.

While it was not a part of this study, I also have seen a large local church create a brochure in which celebrities replaced the apostles in a mock up of Leonardo's Last Supper. The brochure announced a sermon series in which the minister would explain what Jesus would have to say to these famous people.

In another recent trend, some churches are now preceding their "worship experiences" with their praise bands playing rock music -- secular music with no pretense of relevance to worship -- in order to draw a crowd.

The church exists to proclaim the Lord of Glory, the Creator of all things, the Redeemer of the world. One may ask if these techniques give due glory to the one who is being proclaimed.

Table of Contents for The Reformation Project

The Reformation Project: Thesis 12

12. Substituting or confusing marketing for Gospel proclamation inevitably leads to syncretism.

By the term "syncretism" this thesis suggests that bringing a marketing orientation to the mindset of the church results in the amalgamation of the religion of the church with that of the culture it is trying to reach. Thus, the result is a weakening of Christian teaching and practice. The intention is that the church shape the culture; the result may be in  reverse.

Anyone that has worked in business knows the old saying that the customer is king, but that is an approach to church that Christians can never agree to and remain faithful to their true king. Early Christians preferred persecution and even death before they were willing to say that Caesar was Lord, and with equal conviction today we must say to the various ecclesiastical versions of Madison Avenue that Christ is Lord of His church.

Of course, some will respond that Christians have a responsibility to understand the people to whom they are proclaiming the message of Christianity, and that is true, but it does not really get at the direction in which many would lead the church. In the name of marketing, it is common, nearly pervasive, nowadays to allow the tastes and beliefs of the unbelieving culture around us to dictate the purpose and elements of worship, the questions with which the church will deal, the church's mission, and the definition of missional success. This gives away a lot, and it is an approach that is inconsistent with Christian teaching on human nature and salvation, as well as the church.

Marketing approaches at best have a good intention of bringing Christianity to the culture, a project that is perceived as more easy in Dallas than in Dubai. Or, is it? Though different in many respects, the cultural values of both Dubai and Dallas conflict with the verities of Christianity. Often, we fail to notice the way our marketing has brought changes to the church not consistent with Christian teaching.

Table of Contents for the Reformation Project

The Reformation Project: Thesis 11

11. The effort to proclaim the Gospel persuasively is not the same thing as a marketing program.

Churches go to great efforts to put butts in seats.

Not all of that is illegitimate. Certainly, efforts to gain the attention of unbelievers so that they will hear the gospel proclaimed is desirable so long as those efforts are consistent with what is required of us in Scripture.

However, it must always be recognized that faith in Christ is not equivalent to faith in our church brand, much less faith in the array of benefits offered by the local church.

In fact, any faith result produced by marketing efforts ought to be questioned, as scripturally saving faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God, and, as such, it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone that believes. It is the power of the Spirit, not our planning, that brings to life those that are dead in trespasses and sins.

It is important that our attention to branding not overwhelm any gospel proclamation so that the latter cannot be heard due to the cacophony of the former.

The Reformation Project: Thesis 10

10. The Gospel, being the power of God that leads to salvation for everyone that believes, is substantively more consequential and effectively more powerful than marketing programs and all other manner of human cleverness.

It is not difficult to understand why thoughtful Christians want to do a better job of messaging. All of us have had the experience of lamenting that too many Christians and churches of stating their cause in a way that puts the cause of Christ in a bad light. Why can't we put our best foot forward so that unbelievers don't associate the term "evangelical with Westboro Baptist, Pat Robertson, or Jerry Falwell, Jr.

Why don't outsiders even know that those three aren't even evangelicals?

There is nothing wrong with wising to gain a hearing for the gospel in the larger culture. However, church marketing efforts in recent decades have gone well beyond that, exposing a Christian tendency to trust in our own cleverness than in the power of the gospel.

To marketers, the customer is king, but in the church Christ is king. His ambassadors should be gracious and loving, but we don't have the authority as Christ's ambassadors to alter the message to soft sell it to an audience that is dead in their trespasses and sins, nor can we defer to the subjects that our neighbors deem relevant when our King has stated clearly the nature of His central message. And, why when we want to? When we recognize the direness of the human condition, we should see that only the power of the Spirit can bring the dead to life.

Table of Contents for the Reformation Project.

The Reformation Project: Thesis 9

9. Given that Jesus’ message and manner of teaching sometimes resulted in people turning away from him (see, for example, John 6), one should not take numerical success or failure as any kind of evidence of faithfulness to God or the blessing of God.

There are many churches that reject the prosperity gospel (if you obey God, he will make you healthy, wealthy, and wise) that nonetheless believe it in a different form. They believe that their numerical growth proves -- more or less -- that God is blessing. God must be doing something, they argue, look at all of these people. Churches that are declining, on the other hand, must be cold and dead. God is not blessing them.

I heard a lot of this growing up, when this way of thinking was used to contrast the differing directions of liberal and more conservative denominations and churches. Liberal decline, it was said, was evidence that they had abandoned the gospel. Conservative growth proves divine blessing.

The fact that conservative denominations have plateaued (even as liberal ones have seen accelerated decline) has perhaps chastened this perspective, though it remains a part of individual churches and ministries. It also continues in a different form: we have plateaued due to lack of faithfulness -- if we got busy again with the Lord's work, we would have great growth.

I suppose that it should also be mentioned that some people will take decline as proof of faithfulness -- we are declining because we don't go along with the culture. This also may be narrow thinking.

Even while we hope for God's blessing on our work, we should recognize that growth might be longed for, but it in and of itself doesn't prove God's blessing. In some cases, at least, faithfulness to Christ might result in a period of decline, not the opposite. So it was with the ministry of Jesus in John 6. His refusal to give material bread while proclaiming himself the bread of life did not go over well with the crowd. That crowd abandoned him.

Jesus asked the core group of disciples if they would also go away. The answer indicated possible discomfort with what Jesus had taught, but with no doubt as to where they must remain: "where would we go? You have the words of life."

So He does. Our task is to faithfully proclaim that word, praying that God will bless that proclamation with souls that will receive it.

Table of Contents for the Reformation Project

The Reformation Project: Thesis 8

8. Justification is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for the glory of God alone. The only thing that we contribute to our justification is our sins.

The first statement in this thesis is a classic statement regarding four of the five solas ("alones") of the Protestant Reformation. Understanding the meaning of justification is of vital importance to understanding what Christianity is about; yet, surveys have indicated that a sizable percentage even of active churchgoers lack familiarity with the term.

Is that important? Many modern churches attempt to minimize religious lingo, and there is a sense in which they have a point. Over the years, churches have developed ways of speaking that don't make sense to outsiders -- and one might argue that in at least some cases are unbiblical. It seems proper that in some instances that language that lacks meaning to hearers should be discarded.

But, churches cannot lose all of their religious terminology without losing their Christian identity. One might illustrate this way. Several years ago, I lived in Nashville when an NHL team -- the Predators -- came to town. I had seen a few hockey games on television, but I did not really understand much in the way of strategy -- players coming on and off the ice seemed chaotic -- and many of the rules were a mystery. What is icing? Why did they call offsides?

The NHL did not change its rules and terms to help southerners unfamiliar with the game to figure it out. In my case, I was able to attend a presentation by the team's radio announcers -- hockey evangelists? -- who showed highlights while explaining rules and the ins and outs of what was happening during the game. I even learned about the ethics of brawling!

Then, the game made sense. I have since attended many games, both in Nashville and since moving to Dallas, and I enjoy the sport.

Terms like justification are key words to Christianity: you don't understand the game if you don't get this. For the health of the church, the content of the above thesis must be taught.

According to the standards of my church, justification is " an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone." Thinking through those phrases will call to mind the joyful benefits of having been justified.

For more of this series of posts, see the Table of Contents

Table of Contents

The Reformation Project: Thesis 7

7. Christianity at its root narrates the story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation.  That narrative constitutes the message of the church. A church that speaks often of other subjects and speaks only occasionally of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation is guilty of hiding the central message of Christ behind a shroud of peripheral subjects.

In both politics and business, experts will talk about the importance of staying on message. One may recall that in the 1990's presidential candidate Bill Clinton operated with a constant reminder from campaign staff: "It's the economy, stupid." As a general rule, candidates or businesses that lose sight of their central message do so at the risk of their viability. This is not to say that they don't care about anything else, but it is to say, as an old mentor of mine used to claim, that they need to keep the main thing the main thing.

Of course, churches and ministries don't always share the same values as businesses, not to mention politicians, but in this instance the parallels would seem to be instructive. Many ministers will quote Paul's statement about preaching "the whole counsel of God," as well as the need to instruct Christians in all things needed for life and godliness. True enough, but the church that loses site of its central message sets out on a course that will lead to faithlessness.

In truth, the Bible does not relate our story, but God's story, telling how he is operating in human history to accomplish his purposes, and at the heart of those purposes is his determination to redeem a people out of fallen humanity for himself. Every other subject that is a legitimate matter for the church's interest arises out of those themes.

Do non-Christians understand the church's message in this way? Probably not, as I am not sure that even many active church members can articulate this. The church will teach about many things, but all of the spokes flow out of the hub of creation, fall, redemption and consummation.

See here for a Table of Contents for this study.

The Reformation Project: Thesis 6

6. Christian proclamation must take proper notice of the distinction between Law and Gospel in the Scripture, and must proclaim both in their proper relationship to one another.

This is a fundamental distinction in Scripture, but one that I fear is completely passed over in many churches and not understood even by many life long church members and attenders.

Generally, the distinction is this: Law is what is found in Scripture when God requires something of us. Gospel is what we find when God makes promises with no condition other than that we take him at his word.

To get more specific, as many readers have no doubt heard, the word gospel means simply "good news." The good news in question is the announcement, as we find in I Corinthians 15, that Christ has died for our sins, was buried, and rose from the dead on the third day, all in accordance with the promises of scripture.

Notice the character of the gospel as an announcement. It is news that we receive, not something that we do. I often hear people say that they want to "live the gospel," but this confuses categories. Certainly, a Christian will want to live his life in the light of gospel promises, understanding life as an expression of gratitude for what we have received by grace. However, we do not live the gospel. The gospel is not something we do. It is the announcement of what God has done for us in Christ.

In drawing these distinctions, I am not suggesting that the church should proclaim the gospel instead of the law. Rather, the church must proclaim both. The law points us to our need for Christ. To preach the gospel without the law results in people seeing no need for Christ. To preach law without gospel leaves people with a knowledge of their guilt and without hope. The church must proclaim them together.

When these are properly distinguished and declared together, those who hear can realize the grand truth that the terrifying chasm between a holy God and sinful men has been addressed in the Gospel, through which sinners have been reconciled to God in the death of Christ.

A Table of Contents for this "Reformation Project" can be found here.

The Reformation Project: Thesis 5

5. Christianity is about what God does about our sins. If there is no teaching regarding sin – its origins, its reality, its universality, its guilt, its results, and its punishment – there is no reason for Christianity. 

When discussing the widespread disappearance of the subject of sin from American pulpits, it is easy to turn to the example of Joel Osteen, who has openly declared his refusal to address the subject in his messages, as he doesn't want to drag people down. However, beyond Osteen it is not difficult to recognize the change that has taken place in American pulpits, both evangelical and liberal, in recent decades. Among some, the subject of sin is removed in favor of psychological categories. The notion of sin is often soft-pedaled, and a variety of euphemisms have been adopted. Whereas Scripture declares people to be "dead in their trespasses and sins," ungodly," and even "wicked," modern pulpiteers that bother to address the subject at all are more likely to say that we are "messy" or "broken."

In many ways this is a reaction against another inappropriate way of preaching about sin in present and past generations. Ministers may have ranted against various public sins, generating shame among the guilty while offering no gospel hope. Certainly, that is not the alternative one would look for.

But, it needs to be recognized that soft pedaling sin does the disservice of diminishing one's sense of the love and grace of God. To say that we are messy or broken calls for certain kinds of solutions that may emphasize self-improvement; to recognize that we are dead in trespasses and sins calls for a more radical answer that only can be brought about by one who brings the dead to life.

Perhaps the most amazing verses in the Bible inform us that God justifies the wicked and that God demonstrated his love for us by dying for us while we were yet sinners. Indeed, that is remarkable love and amazing grace. If we don't know enough to recognize our status as sinners and our condition as wicked, we will never understand the greatness of God's love in our behalf. 

Does not the church need to rediscover a robust doctrine of sin?