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The Glory of Manhood (King’s Cross Church)

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INTRODUCTION

Sinful humanity is at war with God but they cannot actually reach Him, so they hate His image in human beings and seek to destroy it. This is what abortion and transgenderism are all about, but that impulse begins much earlier, in refusing to give thanks to God our Creator, which includes His infinite wisdom in making us male and female (Rom. 1:21). Today we look particularly at the glory of men, and the Bible teaches that the glory of men is their strength. That strength is for sacrificial love and leadership in homes, churches, and the broader world.

THE TEXT

“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

It’s striking that Paul gives this charge to the entire church at Corinth, made up of men and women. There are four imperatives, but arguably, two of them are subsumed under one of them. Being watchful and standing firm in the faith is how the Corinthians must “act like men.” And the final command, explains what that requires: “be strong.” It takes strength to remain watchful through the night, over the course of many days or many years. It takes strength to standfast in the faith, trusting and obeying God and not wavering even when it hurts, when it is hard. This is the duty of all Christians, but it is the particular glory of men to lead in this.

THE GLORY OF MEN

“The glory of young men is their strength” (Prov. 20:29). “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (1 Jn. 2:14, cf. Ps. 19:4-5). Glory is what makes someone shine. This can certainly include appearance, but in men it primarily points to action. The Bible does not mind pointing out when men are “handsome” (Gen. 39:6, 1 Sam. 9:2, 16:12), but the glory of men is not their appearance. It is their strength. It is what they do with the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength that God has given them. And this requires courage. C.S. Lewis says that courage is not merely one of the virtues, but it is every virtue at its testing point. So biblical masculine strength is the commitment to virtue to the pain, to the suffering, to the death. Biblical manhood is constantly watchful and steadfast in the faith, and courage holds the line, standing fast, when everything seems to be falling apart, when it doesn’t look like it’s working. This masculine courage fundamentally trusts in Christ, who is the Resurrection and the Life. He will raise us from this moment or else He will raise us from the dead.

THE SHAME OF SOFT MEN

Effeminacy is softness in men, particularly at the very places where we are called to be hard and strong and courageous. This is sometimes as simple as cowardice and fear (Dt. 20:8, Jdg. 7:3), but that trembling, especially in the face of battle, the Bible describes as acting like a woman (Is. 19:16, Jer. 48:41, 49:22, 51:30). This softness can also be a confusion of glory, seeking the glory of a woman through inordinate care and concern for appearances and luxury (Dt. 22:5, Mt. 11:8, Lk. 7:25). The woman is the glory of man, and this glory is in her beauty and beautiful way of cultivating life (Gen. 2:23, 1 Cor. 11:7). This is why it is right and proper for a woman to have longer hair, and it is shameful for men to do so (1 Cor. 11:14-15). And this softness in men is not at all unrelated to homosexuality (1 Cor. 6:9). And so we must practice strength and courage as men and teach it to our boys.

While we certainly do have a plague of sexual rebellion and confusion in the world, driven by many soft men in the Church, we should not miss the fact that men can often hide their softness in veneers of sacrificial strength. But God calls men to use their strength obediently, and this means taking responsibility and choosing the obedient sacrifice. God created Adam first, so that he could be cut open first. Man was made first so that he might bleed first. Men love courage and heroism, and so they do not usually embrace pure cowardice openly or immediately. Instead, a man will choose a disobedient sacrifice and decorate it with suffering (which sometimes includes tattoos and piercings), but this is just cowardice masquerading as courage. So a man may go hunting or work on the car instead of pursuing his wife, disciplining his children, or starting a new business, school, or church. And by the same token, sometimes a man needs to go hunting or learn to work on his car and get out of the office. The point is responsible obedience.

DO NOT GIVE YOUR STRENGTH TO WOMEN

“Give not thy strength to women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings” (Prov. 31:3). Lemuel’s mother is particularly warning the king against sexual immorality. Think of the story of Samson and Delilah. Samson literally gave his strength to a woman in exchange for sex. But this is what all sexual sin is: an offer of fake respect in exchange for empty pleasure. Real respect is shown in commitment, loyalty, obedience, encouragement, praise, and service. A wife swears to honor and obey you in the Lord, which makes you a stronger man. But “by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread” (Prov. 6:26). “For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her” (Prov. 7:26).

In 1 Kings, there are a number of chapters dedicated to the building of the Temple, many details describing the massive building project, where the materials came from, how it was constructed and so on. And then in 1 Kings 11 it describes how Solomon took hundreds of wives and concubines, how they turned Solomon’s heart away from the Lord, and how Solomon built high places and shrines for all of their gods (1 Kings 11:4-8). It’s mentioned almost in passing, but you really need to think about the contrast between building the Temple to the true and living God and then building hundreds of worthless, pagan shrines. Think about all that wasted energy, thought, money, materials, plus all the harm it caused Israel. What are you building? And do not despair if you have been building the wrong things. Christ died to take away the sins of men.

CONCLUSION: DO HARD THINGS

The glory of men is their strength. Men were made to do hard things. Men were made to bear heavy loads. When men work out physically, they get stronger. When men push themselves to do more, they generally get better at it. It’s trendy in our world, even our Christian world to warn one another about burnout and over-doing it, but where in the Bible are we warned about that? The Bible certainly instructs us to take a weekly Sabbath, a day of rest, but beyond that, it says we are to be known for hard, diligent work, and it warns us against sloth, laziness, and cowardice over and over. David fell into sexual sin in the springtime when kings were supposed to go out to battle. So where is the battle that God is calling you to? Is it dealing with a sin in your life? Is it leading your wife or family more intentionally? Is it starting some new venture, a new project? Does it look hard? Will it require suffering? Might you mess up along the way? You were made for this. This is your glory in Christ.

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Grace & Sweat

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INTRODUCTION

I am fond of saying that grace has a backbone, but I think it is time to explain what I mean by that. The context of these remarks is the general and current ongoing discussion about the worrisome trajectories of all those incipient legalists and antinomians out there. The incipient legalists are the ones the incipient antinomians are worried about, and vice versa.

THE TEXT

“Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of hisgood pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

We see that for the apostle Paul, obedience is not a bad word. It does not have negative connotations for him. The Philippians were beloved by him, and he commends them for their obedience (v. 12). This was not just when Paul was present, but also when he was not with them. In particular, he tells them (in his absence) to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling (v. 12). How would it be possible for them to do this? God is the one who is at work within them, willing and doing in accordance with His good pleasure (v. 13). This means that the Philippians were to work out what God was working in. The labors of both parties, added up, did not come to 100%. God did everything in them. They did everything that was the result of what God did in them. Salvation is all of grace—even the work.

But what is the relationship of the grace of God to the (seemingly unrelated) world of hard moral effort? If the grace of God is in all and through all, and beneath us all, then why do we still have to sweat bullets? Are those who sweat bullets abandoning the grace of God? Are those who rejoice in free forgiveness forsaking the demands of discipleship? But not all conditions are meritorious.

RECONCILED FRIENDS

Spurgeon once said, when asked how he reconciled divine sovereignty with human responsibility, that he did not even try—he never sought to reconcile friends. If we think about it rightly, from the vantage of those jealous for moral probity, we will never try to reconcile grace with works—that would be like trying to reconcile an apple tree with its apples. And, if we think about it rightly, from the vantage of those jealous for the wildness of grace, we will never try to reconcile grace with merit, for the two are mortal enemies and cannot be reconciled.

But those who insist that apple trees must always produce apples will make the friends of free grace nervous, not because they have anything against apples, but rather because they know the human propensity for manufacturing shiny plastic apples, with the little hooks that make it easy to hang them, like so many Christmas tree ornaments, on our doctrinal and liturgical bramble bushes. But on the other hand, those who insist that true grace always messes up the categories of the ecclesiastical fussers make the friends of true moral order nervous—because there are, after all, numerous warnings (from people like Jesus and Paul, who should have a place in these particular discussions, after all) about those who “live this way” not inheriting the kingdom. Kind of cold, according to some people, but the wedding banquet is the kind of event you can get thrown out of.

RIGHTLY RELATED

So what is the relationship of grace to hard, moral effort? Well, hard, moral effort is a grace. It is not every grace, but it is a true grace. It is a gift of God, lest any should boast. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, and this is a description of someone being saved by grace through faith, and not by works (Eph. 2:8-10). This is the meaning of our text—“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” We are called to work out what God works in, and absolutely nothing else. If we don’t work out that salvation (as evidenced by the fruit of it), then that is clear evidence that God is not working anything in.

If we work out some pressboard imitation (a salvation that has the look of real wood!), then that shows that God is not working anything in there either. Moralism is just a three-dollar flashlight to light the pathway to Hell with. And of course, if we are guilty of the opposite error, if our lives are manifesting a lineup of dirty deeds done dirt cheap, the only real sin we are avoiding is that of hypocrisy. Overt immorality is the fifty-dollar flashlight. 

ALL GRACE, ALL THE TIME

This is why we need a little more of “in Him we live and move and have our being.” Actually, we need a lot more of it. The answer to the grace/works dilemma is high octane Calvinism, and by this, I don’t mean the formulaic kind. If God is the one Paul preached—the one of whom it can be said “of him, and through him, and to him, are all things”—then where in the universe are you going to hide your pitiful merit? If He is Almighty God, and He starts to transform your tawdry little life into something resembling Jesus, who are you to tell Him that He is now wavering on the brink of dangerous legalisms?

The bottom line is that we cannot balance our notions of grace with works or our notions of works with grace. We need to get off that particular teeter totter. We have to balance absolutely everything in our lives with God Himself, who is the font of everlasting grace—real grace. Real grace is the context of everything. If we preach the supremacy of God in Christ, and the absolute lordship of that bleeding Christ, and the efficacious work of the Spirit in us who raised Jesus from the dead, then a number of other things will resolve themselves in a multitude of wonderful ways.

In Jesus, we are the new humanity. Is Jesus grace or works? Jesus lives in the garden of God’s everlasting favor, and we are in Him. In Christ, there are no prohibited trees. Outside Him, they are all prohibited. That means there is only one real question to answer, and it does not involve any grace/works ratios. The question is more basic than that, and has to do with the new birth.

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The Pursuit of Piety

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Collegiate Reformed Fellowship is the campus ministry of Christ Church and Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho. Our goal is to teach and exhort young men and women to serve, to witness, to stand fast, and to mature in their Christian Faith. We desire to see students get established in a godly lifestyle and a trajectory toward maturity. We also desire to proclaim the Christian worldview to the university population and the surrounding communities. CRF is not an independent ministry. All our activities are supplemental to the teaching and shepherding ministry of CC & TRC. Students involved with CRF are regularly reminded that the most important student ministry takes place at Lord’s Day worship.

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Confession of Sin & Forgiveness

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INTRODUCTION

One very common problem that Christians have in their Christian lives is the problem of spiritual clutter. Many Christians don’t know what to do with various unresolved sins and problems, and so they do nothing. Over time these problems accumulate, and before long there is a real mess.

You have seen this phenomenon in various places, have you not? It happens in closets, it happens in your junk drawer, it happens in your home’s designated fright room, it happens at the back of your garage, it happens when your garden fills up with weeds, and so on. Why wouldn’t it happen in your spiritual life? It certainly will if you let it.

“Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).

So one of the first things that Christians should learn is this. They need to learn to deal with the sin . . . of not really dealing with sin. If we are told to lay aside every weight, then it would be a sin not to. If we are told to deal with the sin that “so easily besets” us, then it would be a sin not to.

ON NOT KIDDING YOURSELF

So the first thing to realize is that confession of sin is an ongoing necessity. I described the problem as being one of spiritual clutter, but the thing about clutter is that you get used to it as it accumulates. You begin by thinking that perhaps your life is “a little untidy,” and then move on to excuse the fact that it looks like a bomb went off in your conscience, and by the end of the process your conscience looks and smells like a closet at the crazy cat lady’s house.

So ongoing and regular confession of sin is a necessity for everyone. What must you do if you want a garden filled with weeds? What you need to do is absolutely . . . nothing. Just let it ride.

We know that sin can accumulate in this way because of the way Scripture speaks of it. If we just go on in our own fashion, we will get used to how disheveled we are. But if we look into the looking glass of Scripture, we will there see our true condition. We don’t learn that true condition by means of morbid introspection—we learn our true condition through faithful and submissive Bible reading.

As James puts it:

“But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed” (James 1:25).

No one should ever simply assume that he is “doing fine” simply because the roof hasn’t fallen in yet.

“If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” (Psalm 130:3).

Scripture tells us our true condition.

“If they sin against thee, (for there is no man which sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them . . .” (2 Chronicles 6:36; Job 4:18-19)

And the apostle John sums it up.

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us . . . If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:8, 10).

Suppose someone is learning how to do maintenance on his car, and he is told to change his air filter every 12 to 15,000 miles. Suppose he were to raise the earnest question of whether he still would have to do this if the filter hadn’t gotten dirty. The problem with this young man is that he doesn’t know what kind of a world he is living in.

WHAT TO DO

The way to deal with the effects of such accumulated guilt through sinning is by means of confession.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

This is a glorious promise, so let us take a moment to consider it carefully. In this verse, we are described a certain way, and then we are to do something. In addition, God is described as being a certain way, and then He does something.

We are described as sinful (we cannot confess sins unless we actually have some). So we are described as sinful, and what we are told to do is confess. God is described as being faithful and just, and what He does is forgive our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We are sinful, and He is righteous. We do the confessing, and He does the cleansing.

So what is it to “to confess”? The Greek word that is rendered here as confess is homologeo, a very interesting compound word. The first part, homo, is the Greek for same. The logeo is a verb that means to speak. Consequently, homologeo means “to speak the same thing,” or putting it another way, to acknowledge.

If Scripture calls it a lie, and you call it mild prevarication, that is not confession. If Scripture calls it adultery, and you call it infatuation, that is not confession. If Scripture calls it theft, and you call it requisitioning, that is not confession. The reason it is not confession is that it is dishonest.

So the central issue in confession of sin is honesty.

“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: But whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).

A paraphrase of this therefore would be that people who are dishonest about the way they are living are people who will not flourish, who will not prosper. The alternative is what is promised to the honest—honest confession and honest forsaking results in mercy. This mercy means that God is blessing that man.

THE BLESSING OF FORGIVENESS

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile” (Psalm 32:1–2).

Forgiven transgression is the blessing of God. To have sin covered is the blessing of God. To not have iniquity imputed to you when it easily could have been imputed to you is the blessing of God.

But not that descriptor—“in whose spirit there is no guile.” Honesty before God is the ticket. And even there, remember that if God were to mark iniquities in our confessions no one could stand.

“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:1–2).

This is why, at the end of the day, all our sins must be confessed in Jesus’ name.

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Psalm 133: Together in Unity

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INTRODUCTION

Christian unity is a dangerous subject because, believe it or not, it is one of the ironic things we are divided over. What is the nature of true unity? Why should we care? Are denominations really a form of disobedience? Have we really torn apart the seamless robe of Christ?

THE TEXT

“A Song of degrees of David. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: That went down to the skirts of his garments; As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: For there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore” (Psalm 133:1-3).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Again, this is another psalm of ascents—one of the psalms that would be sung as pilgrims approached the Temple. Something can be good without being pleasant, but when both good and pleasant come together, it is a true blessing (v. 1). That blessing comes when brethren can dwell together in unity (v. 1). In the economy of Israel, all priests were anointed, but only the high priest was anointed on the head. This unity is like that precious oil that is placed on Aaron’s head, runs down to his beard, and from there to the hem of his garments (v. 2). Clearly a large amount of oil was used—even if you follow the ESV reading, which has the oil running down to the collar. In a change of metaphor, we read that Mount Hermon is famous for dew, descending on the mountains of Zion (v. 3). As Zion proper is about 250 miles south of Hermon, we should note the plural mountains, and take Zion as a generic name for Israel. How will this blessing of unity come? It will be the result of a command from Jehovah Himself (v. 3)—that command summoning life forevermore. This dew waters the ground, and makes it truly fruitful. That is the command of God, the blessing of God. This is His purpose and intention.

“He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, And fill the face of the world with fruit” (Isaiah 27:6).

TWO KINDS OF UNITY

As this psalm has praised this particular grace from God in the strongest possible terms, we need to be careful not to distort our understanding of that grace. According to Scripture, there are two kinds of unity that God gives to us. We need to be careful not to muddle them up because if we do, the unfortunate result will be . . . disunity.

The first kind is given to all Christians everywhere in the Person of the Holy Spirit. “Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3).

Notice that we already have this unity, which is why we are told to preserve it. We need to be eager in this preservation, laboring at it. The word for unity is the same as that used a few verses down (henotes). The word for bond can mean fetter, or sinew, or that which binds. And the Holy Spirit is the one who ties of the knot of peace. Every Christian has this unity already, and the one charge we have is to pursue a way of life that does not disrupt it.

The second kind of unity is institutional unity. Paul is thinking eschatologically, and is looking forward to the time when the bride of Christ, the Church, is without any spot or wrinkle or any such blemish (Eph. 5:27). God will accomplish this through the governmental gifts that He has provided to the Church—apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor/teachers. “Till we all come in the unity [henotes] of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).

This is the unity of maturity, and we are not supposed to have it yet.

And no end of trouble is caused by people who think that we are supposed to have it, and on the basis of this opinion disrupt their fellowship with saints who differ. It is like the old joke about two ministers who were talking, and one said to the other, “Well, we both serve God, I suppose—you in your way, and I in His.” Because we try to seize an institutional unity we are not supposed to enjoy yet, we wind up disrupting the bond of peace that we really do have.

SIN AS BARRIER

Sin means we are falling short of a standard that we ought not to be falling short of. Sin means we are not doing what we were instructed to do, and obedience is always something that should be in our hands in the present.

Remember that the basic building block of this broader church unity is the family, and the husband and the father is responsible to set the tone for his family. Fathers, you do not have the luxury of being distant, or angry, or sullen, or quiet, or disengaged, or surly. You do not get to flop, or otherwise disrupt a unity that has already been given to you.

The household is a wonderful place for learning the basic steps of this particular dance. In fact, there is no better place. And when you learn that wisdom in the home, you will be equipped to navigate the challenges that will arise with regard to extended family, or neighbors, or companions in business, or fellow church members.

IMMATURITY AS BARRIER

Immaturity means that we are right where we are supposed to be. A three-year-old is not in sin being three-years-old. Now if a ten-year-old started acting like a three-year-old this would actually not be immaturity—it would be sin. Remember that God is very easy to please, but very hard to satisfy. When it comes to the unity of the Church today, God is very easy to please, and hard to satisfy.

And the reason this is true—the only reason, remember—is because the Father was pleased with Christ. Not only so, but the Father is satisfied in Christ. And Christ is our unity. One Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph. 4:5).

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