Judges: The Canaanization of Israel

From Jason Hood (via Dane Ortlund):

This morning I’m teaching Judges and Ruth in an OT Intro course. Those are perhaps two of the easiest books to teach in the OT (which is why I’ve heard multiple sermon/talk series on both, a rarity for OT!): strong, central, themes that are easily seen, especially once we make the connection to our world and the life of the Christian today:

[T]he central theme of the Book of Judges is the Canaanization of Israel.  Herein lies the key to the relevance of this ancient composition for North American Christianity, for like the Israelites of the settlement period, we have largely forgotten the covenant Lord . . . . Like the ancient Israelites we too are being squeezed into the mold of the pagan world around us.

Evidence of the “Canaanization” of the church are everywhere: our preoccupation with material prosperity, which turns Christianity into a fertility religion;

our syncretistic and aberrant forms of worship; our refusal to obey the Lord’s call to separation from the world;

our divisiveness and competitiveness; our moral compromises, as a result of which Christians and non-Christians are often indistinguishable; our [male] exploitation and abuse [and neglect] of women and children;

our reluctance to answer the Lord’s call to service, and when we finally go, our propensity to displace “Thy kingdom come” with “my kingdom come”; our eagerness to fight the Lord’s battles with the world’s resources and strategies; our willingness to stand up and defend perpetrators of evil instead of justice.  These and many other lessons will be drawn from the leaves of this fascinating book . . .

He goes on to cite what the book teaches regarding the reality of God’s wrath and power of his grace and the constancy of his plan to build himself a people, a light to the world; “the true hero in the book is God and God alone,” even if God is repeatedly using people to show us how he is our hero.

Daniel Block, Judges and Ruth (NAC), 71-2.

Giving and Receiving Criticism in Light of the Cross

My thanks to Justin Taylor for this:

Some notes below from Alfred Poirier’s excellent article “The Cross and Criticism,” first published in The Journal of Biblical Counseling (Spring 1999).

Definition:

I’m using criticism in a broad sense as referring to any judgment made about you by another, which declares that you fall short of a particular standard.

The standard may be God’s or man’s.

The judgment may be true or false.

It may be given gently with a view to correction, or harshly and in a condemnatory fashion.

It may be given by a friend or by an enemy.

But whatever the case, it is a judgment or criticism about you, that you have fallen short of a standard.

Key Point:

A believer is one who identifies with all that God affirms and condemns in Christ’s crucifixion.

In other words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judgment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s justification of me. Both have a radical impact on how we take and give criticism.

Application:

1. Critique yourself.
2. Ask the Lord to give you a desire to be wise instead of a fool.
3. Focus on your crucifixion with Christ.
4. Learn to speak nourishing words to others.

How to give criticism in a godly way:

• I see my brother/sister as one for whom Christ died (1 Cor. 8:11; Heb. 13:1)
• I come as an equal, who also is a sinner (Rom. 3:9, 23).
• I prepare my heart lest I speak out of wrong motives (Prov. 16:2; 15:28; 16:23).
• I examine my own life and confess my sin first (Matt. 7:3-5).
• I am always patient, in it for the long haul (Eph. 4:2; 1 Cor. 13:4).
• My goal is not to condemn by debating points, but to build up through constructive criticism (Eph. 4:29).
• I correct and rebuke my brother gently, in the hope that God will grant him the grace of repentance even as I myself repent only through His grace (2 Tim. 2:24-25).

Doug Wilson: The Inversion of Humility and Arrogance in Post-Modern Evangelicalism

(HT: Ben Davis)

David, Goliath and Representative Warfare

From Nicholas T. Batzig:

It never ceases to amaze me how the various accounts of David’s life stand in a typical relationship to that of Christ, the Son of David. While the Bible explicitly draws out some of the ways that David typified Jesus (Matt. 12), it is in the details of the accounts unfolded in the covenantal history that reveal it so magnificently. One such account is the battle between David and Goliath. Far from merely being an exciting children’s story from which we may teach our little ones how to be courageous in the LORD, the record of this battle comes at the half-way mark in redemptive history–reminding us of the battle promise of Gen. 3:15 and urging us to look forward to the fulfillment of it when our Lord Jesus Christ defeated the evil one at the cross. The points of comparison are striking:

1. The Battle is a representative battle. Two individuals represent their people and face off in battle. Whoever wins this battle wins it for those he represents. (This is the only battle of its kind recorded in Scripture, other than the battle between Christ and the devil.)

2. David is the only one able to face the Philistine. Jesus is the only one able to face the evil one.

3. David is sent by his father to his brothers. Jesus is sent by His Father to His brothers.

4. David’s brother’s reject him, mocking him and accusing him of having evil motives. Jesus’ brothers (both biological and national) reject Him, mocking Him and accusing Him of having evil motives.

5. David is meek and God-fearing, in the face of the battle and his brother’s rejection. Jesus is meek and God-fearing in the face of the battle and his brother’s rejection.

6. David does not trust in human strength, rather he trusts in the name of the LORD. Jesus does not trust in human strength, rather he trust in the name of the LORD.

7. David is not first and foremost concerned about men; he is most concerned that God’s glory has been slighted. So it was with Jesus.

8. David goes forth to war with a Shepherd’s staff and a Shepherd’s bag. Jesus goes forth to war as the Good Shepherd (John 10).

9. David defeats his enemy with his own weapon (i.e. Goliath’s sword). Jesus defeats Satan with his own weapon (i.e. the cross). Jonathan Edwards made this point repeatedly. In one place he suggested: “The devil had been the instrument of Christ’s being put to death. He put it into the heart of Judas to [betray Christ], and he stirred up anger and malice in the chief priests and leaders and elders of the people to offer cruelty to him, so that their cruelty and the cross they used as the instrument of his death was, as it were, the devil’s sword he used in battle against Christ;” and in another, “God preserved [David] from [Goliath], and gave him the victory over him, so that he cut off his head with his own sword and made him therein the deliverer of his people, as Christ slew the spiritual Goliath with his own weapon, the cross, and so delivered his people.”

10. David swore that God would give the Philistine’s flesh to the birds of the air and the beast of the field. Edwards again noted, “As David, when he fought with Goliath, said that he would give the carcasses of the hosts of the Philistines unto the fowls of the air, etc., so Christ, the true David, now calls on the fowls of the air to come to devour the carcasses of the enemies of his church.” [see Revelation 11:7–9]

11. David carried Goliath’s head into Jerusalem in triumph. Edwards carried the parallel out when he wrote, “Christ ascended into heaven in triumph, as it were with the head of Satan in his hand, as David, after he had slain Goliath, went up to Jerusalem with the head of this Philistine in his hand.”

What Does It Mean to Preach the Whole Counsel of God?

From Justin Taylor:

“I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.”

—The Apostle Paul to the Ephesian elders, Acts 20:27

D. A. Carson explains what he meant:

When Paul attests that this is what he proclaimed to the believers in Ephesus, the Ephesian elders to whom he makes this bold asseveration know full well that he had managed this remarkable feat in only two and a half years.

In other words, whatever else Paul did, he certainly did not manage to go through every verse of the Old Testament, line by line, with full-bore explanation. He simply did not have time.

What he must mean is that he taught the burden of the whole of God’s revelation, the balance of things, leaving nothing out that was of primary importance, never ducking the hard bits, helping believers to grasp the whole counsel of God that they themselves would become better equipped to read their Bibles intelligently, comprehensively.

It embraced:

• God’s purposes in the history of redemption (truths to be believed and a God to be worshiped),
• an unpacking of human origin, fall, redemption, and destiny (aworldview that shapes all human understanding and a Saviorwithout whom there is no hope),
• the conduct expected of God’s people (commandments to be obeyed and wisdom to be pursued, both in our individual existence and in the community of the people of God), and
• the pledges of transforming power both in this life and in the life to come (promises to be trusted and hope to be anticipated).

—D. A. Carson, “Challenges for the Twenty-first-century Pulpit,” in Preach the Word: Essays on Expository Preaching: In Honor of R. Kent Hughes, ed. Leland Ryken and Todd Wilson [Crossway, 2007], pp. 177-178; bullets and italics added.

What To Preach To Yourself Everyday

From Tullian Tchividjian:

Because we are so naturally prone to look at ourselves and our performance more than we do to Christ and his performance, we need constant reminders of the gospel.

If we’re supposed to preach the gospel to ourselves everyday—what’s the actual content of that message? What is it exactly that I need to keep reminding myself of?

If God has saved you—if he’s given you the faith to believe, and you’re now a Christian; if you’ve transferred trust from your own accomplishments and abilities to Christ’saccomplishment on behalf of sinners—then here’s the good news. In the phraseology of Colossians 1, it’s simply this: You’ve already been qualified, you’ve already been delivered, you’ve already been transferred, you’ve already been redeemed, you’vealready been forgiven.

It’s been widely accepted that in the original language of Greek, Ephesians 1:3-14 is one long sentence. Paul becomes so overwhelmed by the sheer greatness and immensity and size and sweetness of God’s amazing grace, that he doesn’t even take a breath. He writes in a state of controlled ecstasy. And at the heart of his elation is the idea of “union with Christ.” We have been blessed, he writes, “in Christ with every spiritual blessing” (1:3): we’ve been chosen (v. 4), graced (v. 6), redeemed (v. 7), reconciled (v. 10), destined (v. 11), and sealed forever (v. 13). The everything we need and long for, Paul says, we already possess if we are in Christ. He has already sweepingly secured all that our hearts deeply crave.

We no longer need to rely, therefore, on the position, the prosperity, the promotions, the preeminence, the power, the praise, the passing pleasures, or the popularity that we’ve so desperately pursued for so long.

Day by day, what we must do practically can be experienced only as we come to a deeper understanding of what we are positionally—a deeper understanding of what’s already ours in Christ.

I used to think that growing as a Christian meant I had to somehow go out and obtain the qualities and attitudes I was lacking. To really mature, I needed to find a way to get more joy, more patience, more faithfulness, and so on.

Then I came to the shattering realization that this isn’t what the Bible teaches, and it isn’t the gospel. What the Bible teaches is that we mature as we come to a greater realization of what we already have in Christ. The gospel, in fact, transforms us precisely because it’s not itself a message about our internal transformation, but Christ’s external substitution. We desperately need an Advocate, Mediator, and Friend. But what we need most is a Substitute. Someone who has done for us and secured for us what we could never do and secure for ourselves.

The hard work of Christian growth, therefore, is to think less of me and my performance and more of Jesus and his performance for me. Ironically, when we focus mostly on our need to get better we actually get worse. We become neurotic and self-absorbed. Preoccupation with my effort over God’s effort for me makes me increasingly self-centered and morbidly introspective.

You could state it this way: Sanctification is the daily hard work of going back to the reality of our justification–receiving Christ’s words, “It is finished” into new and deeper parts of our being every day, into our rebellious regions of unbelief.  It’s going back to the certainty of our objectively secured pardon in Christ and hitting the refresh button a thousand times a day. Or, as Martin Luther so aptly put it in his Lectures on Romans, “To progress is always to begin again.” Real spiritual progress,  in other words, requires a daily going backwards.

In her book Because He Loves Me, Elyse Fitzpatrick writes about how important remembrance is in Christian growth:

One reason we don’t grow in ordinary, grateful obedience as we should is that we’ve got amnesia; we’ve forgotten that we are cleansed from our sins. In other words, ongoing failure in sanctification (the slow process of change into Christlikeness) is the direct result of failing to remember God’s love for us in the gospel. If we lack the comfort and assurance that his love and cleansing are meant to supply, our failures will handcuff us to yesterday’s sins, and we won’t have faith or courage to fight against them, or the love for God that’s meant to empower this war. If we fail to remember our justification, redemption, and reconciliation, we’ll struggle in our sanctification.

Christian growth, in other words, does not happen first by behaving better, but believing better–believing in bigger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sinners.

Preach that to yourself everyday and you’ll increasingly experience the scandalous freedom that Jesus paid so dearly to secure for you.

Jonah’s Twist Ending: Lessons from a Small-Hearted Prophet Swallowed by a Big-Bellied Fish

My thanks to Trevin Wax for this excellent summary and application of Jonah:

Jonah is best known for being the prophet who ran from God and was swallowed by a huge fish. But the point of Jonah’s story isn’t a simple morality tale: “Watch out! If you run from God, He’ll get you back… and it won’t be pretty.”

Instead, we see in Jonah’s life the contrast between the self-preserving actions of a prophet and the self-sacrificing actions of our missionary God.

We first meet Jonah in 2 Kings 14. King Jeroboam restored Israel’s border “according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, had spoken through His servant, the prophet Jonah…” (v. 25). Jonah was a son of Israel given a word from God about the distinction between God’s people and the outside world. Jonah’s message was encouraging: “God loves Israel enough to fortify the borders that will defend us from those who would oppress us.”

Next, God told Jonah to go to Nineveh. This time, the message wasn’t an encouraging word for God’s people; it was a message of judgment to wicked Nineveh. The Ninevites had earned a reputation for brutality and terrorism. When it came to Nineveh, prophets weren’t lining up before God, saying, “Pick me! Pick me!”

But God cared enough for Nineveh to warn them about the coming judgment. Jonah was the messenger God chose.

Jonah’s earlier role had been on defense: he built up the borders between God’s people and the world. This time, Jonah was on offense: he was to enter enemy territory and command a very wicked people to repent. No wonder Jonah got on a boat and headed in the opposite direction.

God didn’t leave Jonah in a state of rebellion. He intervened by sending a storm and a fish. Then, God issued the call again, and Jonah obeyed.

In response to Jonah’s preaching, all the Ninevites – from the king to the peasant – fell on their faces in humble repentance. Jonah became the instrument by which God orchestrated one of the greatest revivals in history.

One might expect the narrative to end with Jonah’s triumph. Instead, this book ends with a twist: God’s mercy made Jonah angry.

Slowly but surely, we realize the truth: Jonah hadn’t run away because he was afraid the Ninevites would reject his message. He ran away because He was afraid they would accept it! Jonah couldn’t stomach the thought that God might actually forgive these wretched people.

It’s easy to point the finger at Jonah’s small, unmerciful heart. But the moment we judge Jonah, we judge ourselves. All of us are naturally tribal, focused on ourselves, and our self-preservation. It’s God who breaks through our artificial borders and leads us out into the world with good news.

Jonah ran away from his enemies; Christ ran toward them. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.Our tribal attitudes melt away when constantly exposed to the warm embrace of our missionary God.

All I Have Is Christ

No soft words for deceivers

C.H. Spurgeon:

“Find if you can, beloved, one occasion in which Jesus inculcated doubt or bade men dwell in uncertainty. The apostles of unbelief are everywhere today, and they imagine that they are doing God service by spreading what they call “honest doubt.” This is death to all joy! Poison to all peace!…

“I have not much patience with a certain class of Christians nowadays who will hear anybody preach so long as they can say, “He is very clever, a fine preacher, a man of genius, a born orator.” Is cleverness to make false doctrine palatable? Why, sirs, to me the ability of a man who preaches error is my sorrow rather than my admiration.

“I cannot endure false doctrine, however neatly it may be put before me. Would you have me eat poisoned meat because the dish is of the choicest ware? It makes me indignant when I hear another gospel put before the people with enticing words, by men who would fain make merchandise of souls; and I marvel at those who have soft words for such deceivers.”

(HT: Todd Pruitt)

Edwards on why hell is eternal

“The crime of one being despising and casting contempt on another, is proportionably more or less heinous, as he was under greater or less obligations to obey him. And therefore if there be any being that we are under infinite obligation to love, and honour, and obey, the contrary towards him must be infinitely faulty.

Our obligation to love, honor and obey any being is in proportion to his loveliness, honorableness, and authority. . . . But God is a being infinitely lovely, because he hath infinite excellency and beauty. . . .

So sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and so deserving infinite punishment. . . . The eternity of the punishment of ungodly men renders it infinite . . . and therefore renders it no more than proportionable to the heinousness of what they are guilty of”

“The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners,” The Works of Jonathan Edwards [Banner of Truth], 1:669.

(HT: Sam Storms)

The Expulsive Power of a New Affection

“We know of no other way by which to keep the love of the world out of our heart than to keep in our hearts the love of God—and no other way by which to keep our hearts in the love of God, than by building ourselves on our most holy faith.”

Thomas Chalmers, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection,” based on 1 John 2:15

(HT: John Fonville)

First place belongs to…

Of all God’s benefits given in the covenant of grace, first place belongs to justification, to forgiveness of sins. All joy and peace, all certainty of communion with God, rests on this forgiveness, a benefit no mind can fully comprehend or believe.

–Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4:176

(HT: Dane Ortlund)

David Platt: “Do We Really Believe What We’re Saying?”

A powerful challenge for those critiquing universalism—we must fight not only “intellectual universalism” (taught by “others”) but also “functional universalism” (modeled by many of us):

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Scorning what is holy…

My thanks to Todd Pruitt for this:

“There’s nothing wrong with talking and singing about how the ‘Blood will never lose its power’ and ‘Nothing but the blood will save us.’ Those are powerful metaphors. But we don’t live any longer in a culture in which people offer animal sacrifices to the gods.

“People did live that way for thousands of years, and there are pockets of primitive cultures around the world that do continue to understand sin, guilt, and atonement in those ways. But most of us don’t. What the first Christians did was look around them and put the Jesus story in language their listeners would understand.”

- Rob Bell on the atonement from Love Wins

To strip the atonement of its substitutionary nature, as Rob Bell does, is to strip it of its power. It is to take the “good” out of the good news. It is to rip the heart out of the Gospel and therefore the hope out of human hearts. It is an act of profound cruelty for it robs the sinner of what he truly needs: a guilt-bearing substitute.

This is nothing new. Theological liberals have been diluting and even neutering the gospel for generations. In the 1920′s J. Gresham Machen saw this clearly.

They [liberal preachers] speak with disgust of those who believe ‘that the blood of our Lord, shed in a substitutionary death, placates an alienated Deity and makes possible welcome for the returning sinner.’ Against the doctrine of the Cross they use every weapon of caricature and vilification. Thus they pour out their scorn upon a thing so holy and so precious that in the presence of it the Christian heart melts in gratitude too deep for words. It never seems to occur to modern liberals that in deriding the Christian doctrine of the cross, they are trampling upon human hearts. (Christianity and Liberalism, 120 [pagination may differ])

Through the Spirit and by faith

How do those things belonging to Christ become our own? The answer is that it is accomplished through the Spirit and by faith. We are grafted into Christ by faith and we continue to receive the blessings of that union by faith. The Spirit brings to us everything that belongs to Christ through the instrument of faith.

— Neil H. Williams, “The Theology of Sonship” (Jenkintown, Pa.: World Harvest Mission, 2002), 6

(HT: Of First Importance)

The Necessity of Harsh Words for False Teaching

From Jarred Wilson:

I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!
– Galatians 5:12

How can Paul justify such language? And does this kind of language teach us anything about how to respond to false teaching? Or is it completely an apostolic privilege, off limits to us mere Christians?

Let’s step back and see what Paul is doing. Anyone familiar with Paul’s letter to the Galatians knows it is punctuated with this kind of exclamatory language. The shepherd is perplexed and heartbroken over the Galatians’ apparent departure from the gospel once established, and he is livid, indignant toward the Judaizers who are leading them astray. If this were written today, we would be very tempted to chastize Paul for his tone — and indeed, some do reject Paul’s teachings today for this reason, among others (like alleged misogyny, etc.)

Galatians 5:12 shows us that Paul is being both rational and angry. It is possible to be both. Paul has not lost his temper, as harsh as his call for the heretics to castrate themselves is. (And let’s not say it just sounds harsh. It is harsh.)

Paul’s harsh words here are rational because he’s working from logic previously established: “If you accept circumcision, you must obey the whole law” (Gal. 5:3). Using that logic, then, he’s asking, “Hey, if circumcision justifies you, why not just castrate yourself altogether?”

Paul is being rational, but not coolly rational. Having anathematized the false teachers, repeated several times that they bear the penalty, that they will be accursed, he is hot with the wrath of God owed to teachers of false gospels.

But isn’t he coming across . . . mean? How can this be justified?

First of all, Paul didn’t invent harsh language for false teaching. They stoned such people in the old covenant. Jesus in his mercy only verbally lacerated false teachers, calling them sons of hell, whitewashed tombs, etc.
The Bible never speaks kindly of false teachers.
It suggests to restore those who fall into falsehood gently. But it never suggests treating offenders gently. Indeed, you can see throughout Paul’s letter that he is pleading with the Galatians even while rhetorically punching the Judaizers. His tone when referring to the Judaizers is angry; his tone in referring to the Galatians’ susceptibility is sadness. Galatians 4:8-20 is the most vivid example: you can practically hear his tears.

Here is the bottom line, assuming Galatians is a good test case, kept in the context of all the Scriptures show us about dealing with false teachers: Protecting the sheep from wolves often involves roughly handling wolves.

“Isn’t that unloving? Isn’t that hateful?”
No, in fact, it shows real love for the sheep. It shows real love for Jesus!

Real love stirs active affections, both positive and negative. Because I love my wife, for instance, I give her physical affection. Also, because I love my wife, I will do physical violence to anyone who attacks her.

Do you see how that works?

Because God loves justice he hates sin.
Because God loves the truth, he hates lies.
Because God loves his Son, he hates teaching that demeans his Son, and legalism does that. Heresy does that.

Therefore, because God loves his children, he hates false teaching. And we ought to take the kid gloves off with false teachers, if our love for Christ and his church is real.

There is gospel to be found in this harsh language. Because God loves sinners, he does the harsh thing of sending Christ to suffer violence, to deal harshly with sin by being dealt harshly with by sin, and laying his life down for the sheep.

Christ was cut off, cursed, made sin, made heresy, that we might be brought into the truth. The cross is the ultimate harshness to sin. What a loving thing to do to conquer that sin and rescue sinners.

Hell Hesitant – Changing Attitudes in the UK

From Colin Adams:

In light of the late discussion about Rob Bell’s new book, it is interesting to observe changing views among confessing Christians in the UK.  The Evangelical Alliance surveyed 17,000 people at various Christian festivals in the UK. They compiled the results in a report called 21st century Evangelicals.

Some of the results?

Only 54% of those consulted believe that the Bible, in its original manuscript, is without error. Only 59% believe that homosexual actions are always wrong. 51% think that women should be eligible for all roles within the church. And only 37% still believe that hell is a place where those condemned will suffer eternally. This last topic was the issue on which, the report said, ‘there is the greatest uncertainty’.

The shift away from Scripture is, to say the least, concerning. It seems that any doctrines we 21st century folk are uncomfortable with can be jettisoned from our statements of faith at a moment’s notice. The Bible is being politely, but umistakeably,  ignored.

• Read 21st Century Evangelicals – a snapshot.
• Read Evangelicals Now’s commentary on the report.

The New Evangelical Virtues

My thanks to Tim Challies for this:

I don’t want to keep talking about Rob Bell. Honest. And in this post I am only going to touch on him on the way to something else. I think the uproar about his view on hell has helpfully illustrated what passes as virtue in the evangelical world today. As I have read some of the controversy, reading particularly from those who have taken his side, I have seen evidence of three characteristics that seem to pass as virtues today. In some parts of the Christian world, these are now embraced as Christian virtue: doubt, opaqueness, and an emphasis on asking rather than answering questions.

Doubt

Doubt has become a virtue while boldness and assuredness have become marks of arrogance. The only thing we should be sure of is that we cannot be sure of much of anything. Doubt has become synonymous with humility. And so it was with the people who used to be known by that term emerging. This was a faith devoid of boldness, a faith that emphasized the unknowability of God at the expense of what we can know with confidence. The man who went on television and declared how little he knew in a quiet tone of voice was lauded over the man who spoke confidently of what God has made clear.

But here’s the thing: the Bible tells us that we can believe boldly, knowing what we know, believing and proclaiming what God says is true. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus gives boldness to His people. It is not a rash and arrogant boldness that takes refuge in our own intellectual capacities, but a boldness that what God reveals of himself through Scripture is real and right and true and knowable. It is a confidence that we, simple human beings, can know and understand God. And what we know and understand we can proclaim. Humility is not found in doubting what is true, but in believing that what God says is true is true indeed. And it is found in proclaiming it on that basis. Humility is expressed in obedience.

Opaqueness

Another new virtue is opaqueness, of speaking in ways that are deliberately vague and unclear. By hiding behind language like “we need to avoid those old paradigms” everything that has been settled is re-opened, everything is open for redefinition. Categories are avoided, even when such categories have proven helpful and long-standing. Speaking very clearly and frankly about what has gone wrong in the past is more than acceptable, but the way forward must be vague and obscure. Here is what Greg Boyd says about Rob Bell and his new book: “[G]iven Rob’s poetic/artistic/non-dogmatic style, Love Wins cannot be easily filed into pre-established theological categories (viz. ‘universalism’ vs ‘eternal conscious suffering’ vs. ‘annihilationism,’ etc.).” That is meant as praise. But it could just as easily be critique.

There are many people who have read an entire book by a man like Brian McLaren and have come away with a very strong sense of what he does notbelieve in, but almost no sense of what he does believe, as if this is virtuous.

Opaqueness is not a virtue. Stirring people’s emotions and leading them to doubt without providing reassurance is cruel rather than kind. We are to speak clearly of what God has said and done. Where God has been clear we have the ability to be clear and, therefore, we have the responsibility.

Questions Are In, Answers Are Out

Asking questions is in, answering them in a clear and compelling way is out. Here is how Greg Boyd praises Bell in this regard: “Rob is first and foremost a poet/artist/dramatist who has a fantastic gift for communicating in ways that inspire creativity and provoke thought. Rob is far more comfortable (and far better at) questioning established beliefs and creatively hinting at possible answers than he is at constructing a logically rigorous case defending a definitive conclusion.” As just one example, the strength of the Emerging Church and its draw was far more in asking questions than in answering them. In fact, the New Calvinism and the Emerging Church arose by asking many of the same questions—questions that came out of the Church Growth Movement and the slow erosion of significant, weighty doctrine. Right teaching and right living were being replaced by mindless entertainment and those who became Emergent leaders asked many good questions. But their answers, when they were willing to give them, were lousy.

One might say that asking questions without the ability or willingness to answer them is dangerous, misleading, even irresponsible. Jesus loved to ask tough questions, undermining false faith. But he would always return with truth to shore up the cracked foundations. Many leaders today feel little need to do this. They are content to undermine, to cause doubt, without responding with clear truth. There is no virtue in this.

There are many lessons we can and will continue to draw from all the furor surrounding Love Wins. But these are three small lessons I don’t want to lose along the way.

A Prayer in Times of Controversy

Even as we desire unity, there will be controversy within the church until Christ returns.Here is one wise way to pray when conflicts and divisions arise:

Gracious Father, have mercy on your children in disputes. We are sorry for any root of pride or fear of man or lack of insight that influences our stance in the controversy before us. We confess that we are not pure in ourselves. Even as we strive to persuade one another, we stand in need of a merciful Advocate. We are sinners. We are finite and fallible.

On both sides of the matter at hand, we take refuge together in the glorious gospel of justification by faith alone through grace. We magnify Jesus Christ, our Savior and King for all he has done to make us his own. We are a thankful people even in our conflict. We are broken and humble to think that we would be loved and forgiven and accepted by an infinitely holy God.

Forbid, O Lord, that our spirit in this struggle would be one of hostility or ill will toward anyone. Deliver us from every form of debate that departs from love or diminishes truth. Grant, Father, as Francis Schaeffer pleaded in his last days, that our disagreements would prove to be golden opportunities to show the world how to love—not by avoiding conflicts, but by how we act in them.

Show us, O God, the relationship between doctrine and devotion, between truth and tenderness, between biblical faithfulness and biblical unity, between standing on the truth and standing together. Let none of us be unteachable, or beyond correction. May the outcome of our dispute be clearer vision of your glory and grace and truth and wisdom and power and knowledge.

By your Spirit, grant that the result of all our arguments be deeper humility, more dependence on mercy, sweeter fellowship with Jesus, stronger love in our common life, more radical obedience to the commands of our King, more authentic worship, and a greater readiness and eagerness to lay down our lives to finish the Great Commission.

In all this, Father, our passion is that you would be glorified through Jesus Christ. Amen.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

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