Christ Church

Conservative and Progressive

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Introduction

This is Ascension Sunday, which means that we are going to be reminded of the absolute authority of the Lord Jesus Christ in every realm. Because we are currently in a political season, and we are in this season in a time that is politically swollen, we need to come to the Scriptures as the only foundation upon which we may build our political identities. This is the task, and it is harder than it looks.

The Texts

“Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:9-11).

“If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (Matt. 7:12; cf. Matt. 22:40).

Summary of the Texts

Because of Christ’s great obedience, even to the point of death on a cross, God has highly exalted Him. He has a name above every name (Phil. 2:9). The point of having such an exalted name is that every knee should bow (in obedience), and this includes creatures in heaven, on earth, and under the earth (v. 10). It certainly does not exempt anyone. The universal confession follows—every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord. Again, the lordship of Christ entails obedience. As a result of this, God the Father is glorified. We do not oppose love for Christ and obedience to Christ, as though piety and law were at odds. If we love Jesus, then we will do what He says (John 14:15). But it is not enough to affirm the need for this in the abstract. What does He say? In His Sermon on the Mount, He gives us His authoritative summary of the entire Old Testament. Do unto others (Matt. 7:12). In another place, He says that love for God and neighbor sum up the whole Old Testament as well (Matt. 22:40). If we look at this carefully, we see that the Golden Rule is another way of expressing the duties of love. Jesus said that He did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17). This is how.

Definitions: Conservative and Progressive

Remember that no virtue can be found in a transitive verb. Everything hinges on the direct object. Did you know that loving (agape loving) was a great sin (1 John 2:15)? Did you know that we are called to a life of hatred (Prov. 8:13)? Stop loving and start hating. That’s what the Bible says . . . Everything hinges on what you love and what you hate, and why. Right? The same thing is true of the verbs related to our common political terms conservative and progressive.

What are you conserving? Joseph Smith’s polygamist directives in the mountains of Utah? The old prerogatives of the Politburo? The work of the Holy Spirit in human culture over the last two thousand years? What? And what are you progressing toward? The Marxist vision of the final state? An Islamic vision of sharia law? Isaiah’s vision of the feast on the mountain (Is. 25:6)? What? You have to decide where you are going before exulting in the fact that you are making really good time.

Where We Are Right Now

This means that as Christians we should want to conserve those elements of our culture that are the goods of common grace, or which developed as a result of the progress of the gospel in the world. That is what we are conservative about. Knowing what these are requires the pursuit of wisdom, and all that entails. As Christians, we should want to progress toward the scriptural vision of the good life, every man under his own fig tree—not somebody else’s fig tree that you bought at auction because his property taxes were in arrears. We progress toward the time when human society is shaped by the fact that every knee is bent, and every tongue has confessed who Jesus actually is. What we conserve, and what we progress toward, are both defined, entirely and completely by the Bible.

But what would “they” call it? You are on national television, and are given a chance to spell out what you would keep and what you would work for. When you are done, what do they call you? How do they define you? An ultramontane fundamentalist theocratic conservative redneck tinfoil-hatter would be at the kind end of their descriptions. There is no way they would call you any kind of their kind of progressive. So how do we self- identify?

Cashing This Out

The apostle Paul calls us to not be babies in our understanding. He says we are to be like little children when it comes to malice, but that we should be mature and adult in our understanding of the world (1 Cor. 14:20). So then . . . we are not allowed to rubber stamp whatever political program appeals to us with the name of Jesus. We must do what we do politically in His name, and that which we do must be entirely in line with what He says.

But don’t be a child. Would you like to get free money from the government? Then why not vote for free money from the government for everybody else? The brief answer is that it isn’t free. Do unto others, but complete the sentence. If I would like to get free money, then I should support the giving of free money to others. But I emphatically would not want to get money that was stolen in order to give it to me. Why don’t I want that? Because I am a Christian. Therefore I may not support it in other cases. What many point to as an application of the Golden Rule in politics is actually the most egregious violation of it. We are disobeying Jesus in the name of Jesus.

Limited Government, Great Glory

In Scripture, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of coercion a government uses and the glory that government has.

“The God of Israel said, The Rock of Israel spake to me, he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; As the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain” (2 Sam. 23:3-4).

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Easter 2012: The Father of all the Living (Father Hunger 4)

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Introduction

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a glorious sermon that was preached by God the Father. When the Father said that He was well-pleased with the Son at His baptism that declaration was not all the Father had to say. In the resurrection, He now declares the entire truth, holding back nothing. In the gospels, Jesus told the demons to keep their knowledge of who He was to themselves, but now we are told to tell every last creature about it. Why the change? Now that the Father has declared His message fully, we may do so also. Not only may we do so, we must do so.

The Text

“And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead . . .” (Rom. 1:4).

Summary of the Text

For many Christian apologists, the resurrection is something which needs to be proved. But in the Scriptures, the resurrection is itself a proof. For example, God has proven that Jesus will judge the whole world, and He proven this by raising Him from the dead (Acts 17:31). In our text here, the resurrection is God’s declaration of Christ’s identity—He is declared to be the Son of God by this great event. But this declaration is not a mere datum in theology. The power that raised Jesus from the grave is a power that attends the ongoing declaration of Christ’s person and work. “And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:19-20). The power at work in the resurrection is not a power or authority that was cordoned off in the first century. Neither is it a power limited to Christ’s grave site. Christ’s life is everlasting and eternal, as is the declaration of that life. This includes the potency of His life in us, and particularly in the ways we echo the great declaration of the Father. We are privileged to declare the gospel in and through everything, but particularly through fatherhood.

Life and Power

The resurrection means that Jesus has life—the kind of life that rose from death. And this means in its turn that this is a potent life. All life is potent, actually, but we take things for granted so easily that it requires a drastic elevation of life from non-life to enable us to see it clearly. God the Father gave life to the Son, such that He would see the travail of His soul and be satisfied (Is. 53:11), and even though He was bruised in death, He would be able to see His seed flourishing (Is. 53:10). Jesus has life and power, but He also models for us how this is to be obtained. Life is given to those who have died, and power is given to those who have died in humility. There is no by-passing the cross in order to obtain the crown more readily. The grave is a place of corruption, but for those who have risen, it may be considered a detox center, now left behind.

Fruitful Intent

So the resurrection shows us what God the Father is up to. The barren woman is the New Jerusalem, the Christian Church, the bride of Christ (Gal. 4:26-27). And we Christians are the children of promise. This is talking about us.

Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; Break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: For more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: Spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; And thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited” (Is. 54:1-3).

Couple this with the charge that Paul gives to Christian fathers (Eph. 6:4). We are to bring our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And why? The answer is because we and they are the children of promise.

The Barrenness Bane

Christian men should love fruitfulness. Godly men should honor and glorify their wives. The glory of an apple tree is the fruit of it. The glory of a man is his wife, and an important part of this glory is the grace she has been given—the grace of fruitfulness. A man cannot just “declare” himself a father. If fatherhood is a crown, a woman must be the one to place it there.

A man by himself is barren. A man with another man is barren. A man who pays for abortions is barren. A man who is an eco-freak is barren. A man who impregnates and then leaves (in various ways) is barren. Barren souls, barren minds, barren hearts are all reflections of an anti-gospel. Fruitfulness is a blessing (Gen. 9:1,7; Lev. 26:9; Dt. 28:2-6; Ps. 127; Ps. 128). But this is not an automatic blessing for lazy fathers. A son who sleeps through harvest is an embarrassment to his parents (Prov. 10:5). Having five sons doing that is not an improvement. And so when I said a moment ago that a Christian man should love fruitfulness, it should be noted that this is not the same thing as being opinionated about it.

Just as fatherhood is a gift of grace, so widespread cultural barrenness (instigated and led by rebellious men who ought to be fathers), is a judgment from God. It is not just something for which there will be later judgment, self- inflicted barrenness is itself a judgment on men (Rom. 1:18, 26; Prov. 22:14; Eze. 20:26).

Humble Potency

The call is therefore for Christian fathers who will sacrificially die. This is not because God wants you dead and gone, but rather because God wants you really alive. When we say as Christians (as we often do) that we are to die to ourselves, this is just another way of saying that we are to die to death. And when you die to death, the result in God’s blessing in life.

And when you die, you are not establishing the gospel (as Jesus did when He died). When husbands are told to give up their lives for their wives, this is not a reduplication of that atonement. But it is a sermon preached about that atonement, and not only so, it is a powerful sermon. And so fathers, teach with authority, and not as the scribes.

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State of the Church 2012

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

Our duties toward God and man are concrete duties. All of our duties are attached to names, and faces, and places. We have no duties in isolation; all duties occur in the context of relationships. But in order to love as we ought in each particular instance of a relationship we need to understand how important abstract generalizations are. God gives us generalities, not so that we might hide in them, but so that we will know what to do when the particular time comes (as it always does). The proof is in the pudding, which is particular and concrete. But the recipe for the pudding need not be particular—in fact it really shouldn’t be.

The Text

“Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.  And ye shall not swear by my name falsely, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD. Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning. Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD. Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour. Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD” (Lev. 19:11-18).

Summary of the Text

This passage contains the commandment that Jesus identified as the second greatest commandment in all of Scripture (Matt. 22:39). I began at verse 11 because it is important for us to see what kind of neighborhood this commandment lives in. When we discover that the greatest commandment comes from a passage on covenant education of children, we gain a great deal (Dt. 6:4-9). So also we see here what love for our neighbor is supposed to look like.

Reject every form of fraud and ungodly deceit (v. 11). Honor the name of God (v. 12). Stop it with the sharp-edged business practices (v. 13). Do not abuse the handicapped (v. 14). Judge every case on the merits; pay no attention whatever to the wealth or poverty of the disputants (v. 15). Don’t be a tale-bearer; don’t jeopardize your neighbor’s life (v. 16). Don’t hate your brother by refusing to tell him what he clearly needs to hear (v. 17). Don’t take vengeance; don’t bear a grudge. So love your neighbor as yourself (v. 18).

Abstractions

If I were to ask you all to think about the idea of dog, all of you could summon up that idea up in your mind. And if you found yourself imagining your own pet, I could ask you to make it more general and nebulous. You could do that as well, and the result would be no dog in particular, but still recognizably canine.

If the house next door to you sells, before the new owner moves in, you can do the same thing to your new “neighbor.” You can know your neighbor before you know him. This ability to think in abstractions is a gift of God. In the passage from Leviticus, a number of general principles are stated, without any local color added. Blind man is more specific than man, but we are not yet talking about an individual.

Neighborism

If you think like a Christian about culture and society, it will not be long before you are accused of holding to some sort of “individualism,” and with that abstraction dismissed with a sneer. But the Christian form of this is not individualism at all. If we must label it, let us call it neighborism. We must be committed to the rights of our neighbor, and we must be committed to them before we know his name, before we know his identity. If a collectivist taunts us with being dedicated to the bloodless abstraction called “the rights of the individual,” and we don’t even know his name, let us answer by saying that we are actually motivated by “love of our neighbor,” even though we might not know his name either. When the scribe asked Jesus for the name of his neighbor, he was trying to justify himself.

What Love Looks Like

The law of God gives shape to love. The law of God teaches us what love is supposed to look like before we get into the details. The law of God cuts up the pie for us before we know which piece we are going to get. And when we let God define love for us, we are frequently surprised . . . but not always.

In this passage, we see that love means not tripping a blind man. We like to think we would have guessed that. But we also see that we must decide against that same blind man in a dispute if the facts demand it. We might not have guessed that. And paying a 30-day note after 60 days is out, even if it is industry standard. And to refuse to speak frankly to your brother about his fault is a way of hating him (Gal. 6:1).

Moving Constantly Back and Forth

If you live in the particular only, you remember Smith, but you don’t remember “your neighbor.” You have become narrow and provincial. But if you live in the abstraction, you fall prey to the observation that Linus once made—that he loved mankind; it was people he couldn’t stand. The obedient life moves constantly back and forth. The adept cook moves back and forth between the recipe and the pudding.

Life Together

As you consider our culture, our nation, our society, and all the lunatic follies that beset us in it, it is tempting to despair, thinking that there is nothing really that we can do. You find yourself asking, “Where are we going, and why are we in this hand-basket?” In that situation, what sort of resolutions should you make for 2012?

The resolution should in fact be this: live in koinonia-community. Love one another. Love the neighbors you know, and love the neighbor whose van is not yet unloaded. Talk about our community—it is not bragging. We didn’t do anything except get in the way. Ask God to have His Spirit get us out of the way. If we want reformation-fire to spread, it doesn’t much matter where it first ignites. Why not here?

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Politics of Christmas

Christ Church on

Introduction

The carnal, unbelieving mind always understands political rule in a particular way. The names may change—Pharaoh, Caesar, pope, or president-for-life—but the underlying realities are always the same. These realities have to do with tyranny and coercion, and the imposition of a right-handed power, the kind of power that is necessarily suspicious of biblical liberty. This is a carnal political power that breaks the two greatest commandments—it does not love God, and it refuses to love its neighbor. This is what denial of human rights amounts to—a refusal to love.

The Texts

“When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matt. 2:3).

“Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared” (Matt. 2:7).

“Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men” (Matt. 2:16).

Summary of the Texts

Jesus taught us that the children of this age are often more shrewd than the children of light are. They are often more aware of the ramification of what we say we believe than we are. When Herod heard of a king of the Jews, and of a star in the east, and of the wise men’s intent to worship Him, he was troubled (v. 3). And given his position and disposition, this was an entirely predictable and natural response. He was not imagining things. Second, Herod took the news that the magi brought seriously. He investigated their time line (v. 7), and he did so diligently. The birth of Jesus was a threat to him, and to his kind of rule, and he knew it very well. The seriousness with which he took these omens can be measured by what he was willing to do about it—which was to have the young boys in Bethlehem and the surrounding areas slain (v. 16).

From the Very Start

From the very beginning, the life of Jesus presented a potent threat to the status quo. This threat was not the result of Herod’s paranoia—Herod knew what many Christians do not. The birth of this child was intended to mean that the old way of ruling mankind was doomed. The transition from the old way of rule to the new way of rule was not going to be simple or easy, but it was going to happen. Of the increase of the Lord’s government there would be no end. But whatever it meant, Herod knew that he was against it.

Our Political Sins

But there are all kinds of workarounds that we have come up with, workarounds that enable timid Christians to rush in to assuage Herod’s fears. “There is no need to panic, no need to kill anybody, no need to do that.” But when we try to allay Herod’s fears by telling him, in effect, that Christ’s kingdom is an ethereal, spiritual, floaty-kind-of-thing, the problem is that we are bearing false witness.

Jesus came into the world to save us from our sins, and our political sins are not exempted from this salvation. Why would our political sins (which frequently have been among our foulest sins) be excluded? Jesus came as a Savior of our race. If that race was beset with seventeen different terminal diseases, why would Jesus come down only to heal two of them? And why would he leave the very worst of them untouched?

Too many Christians need to be reminded not to rob Christ of the greatness of His offered salvation.

A Bookended Life

When Jesus was born into this world, the attention of the existing rulers was drawn to that fact. The political leaders were told about it. A star appeared in the sky, and respected wise men cam on a long journey and they brought their news straight to the court. And when Jesus was condemned to die, He was condemned by the Roman governor, at the insistence of a mob stirred up by the national parliament of the Jews. The life of Jesus, from beginning to end, was a public life. He was born in poverty, but not in obscurity. Given the physical circumstances, it would have been obscure if the God of heaven had not made a point of leaving the rulers without excuse.

A New Way of Being Human

We have said many times before that Jesus came to show us a new way of being human. But this is not a lesson that we must learn “down in our hearts,” and nowhere else. No, humanity is what it is in the recesses of our hearts, and it is what it is in the public square. Mankind is what it is both within and without. It is what it is inside and outside.

If it is true that Jesus was born into this world to show us a new way of being human, this must necessarily include what we do in every place in which we find ourselves. This includes when we are alone, when we are in bed, when we are at the dinner table with our families, when we are out around town, and so forth. Of course it includes every aspect of our lives.

But it also includes every aspect of everyone’s life—from the lowest hired hand up to the CEO of the corporation, from the most obscure citizen up to the greatest political dignitaries. God wants all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, from the king on down. The transformation that Jesus has inaugurated is no partial thing.

A Political Act

And so your celebrations are all to be conducted in the name of Jesus, of course. He is the reason for the season. But more than this, He is the Lord of the season. He is the Lord of the season because He is the Lord of the earth. He did not come down here, He was not born on this earth, in order to work out a power-sharing arrangement with Caesar.

Let your Christmas celebrations be joyful therefore. But in order for it to be the right kind of joy, those celebrations should be one of the most political things that you do. It should be the sort of thing that carnal kings worry about.

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Theology of Christmas Gifts

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Introduction

One of the most obvious features of our Christmas celebrations is the gift giving. How are we to understand this as Christians? What are the pitfalls? Are all the pitfalls obvious? Because our lives are to be lives of grace, and because charis means grace or gift, this is something we have to understand throughout the course of our lives, and not just at Christmas. But it has to be said that the mechinery of our consumer racket does throw the question into high relief for us at this time of year.

The Text

“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh” (Mt. 2:11).

Summary of the Text

The first Chritmas gifts were given by the magi to the young child Jesus. This happened sometime within the Lord’s first two years of life. Because three kinds of treasures are mentioned—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—it is often inferred that there were three wise men. There may have been, but we don’t know. What we do know is that the gifts were very costly.

Some Background

Gentile wise men from the East sought out Jesus and they worshiped Him. The established rulers in Israel did not —in fact, Herod played the role here of a treacherous Pharaoh, going on to kill the young boys in the region of Bethlehem. We know what gold is, but what are frankincense and myrrh? They are both aromatic resins, harvested from different kinds of trees. Frankincense was often burned for its smell, and hence the smoke could signify prayer, ascending to God. Myrrh was used in burials (John 19:39), and Jesus was offered some mixed with wine on the cross, which He refused (Mark 15:23). It was associated with death. From the context of the magi’s visit, and the association with gold, we may infer that these were high end gifts. All three of these gifts were very expensive —in these verses, Matthew calls the gifts treasures.

No Either/Or

The relationship between God and your neighbor is not an either/or relationship. When it becomes that, it is the result of a sinful kind of dualism.

In any context where grace is necessary and called for, you can of course sin . . . · Through being a grump and begrudging the giving of gifts at all (John 12:5). · You can also sin by giving to your neighbor instead of to God (Rev. 11:10);
· By giving to God instead of to your neighbor (Mark 7:11).

The way through, the real alternative, is to give to God by means of giving to your neighbor (Esther 9:22). Your neighbor bears the image of God. How can you give to God, who dwells in the highest heaven? You reach up by reaching down, or by reaching across. No gift given here in the right way goes missing in the final tally (Matt. 10:42). With every form of unrighteous mammon, you have the opportunity to extend grace to your fellow creatures, in the hope that they will receive you into glory (Luke 16:9). But every gift given here in the wrong spirit is just thrown into the bottomless pit, that ultimate rat hole (Luke 12:34; Jas. 5:3).

We see our relationship to God mirrored in our relationship to our neighbor. The state of the one reveals the state of the other. “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32). When the two great commandments are discussed, we are told that the second great commandment is “like unto” the first (Mark 12:31). The Scriptures are explicit on this point. “No man hath seen God at any time. IF we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). “If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4:20).

What This Does Not Mean

This does not mean that we are to charge about aimlessly, buying and giving gifts willy-nilly. The grace of God is not stupid, so don’t give pointless gifts just to have done something. The grace of God was freely given, so don’t let a racket run by unscrupulous merchants extort money from you that you don’t have. At the same time, merchants are a form of grace to you. How does God get that daily bread to you (Matt. 6:11)? So don’t identify crowds with a racket. Crowds do provide an opportunity for pickpockets, but Jesus loved crows and He fed them. He gave them gifts (Matt. 14:21).

Cold Water & the Unspeakable Gift

The best gift we can give on another at Christmas time is the best gift we can be giving to one another all the time —and that is the gift of gospel-saturated grace. Gospel means good news, and as I mentioned earlier how God keeps a track of cold water gifts, we should always connect this with gospel. What has God given? Let us give the same way, and in the same spirit. “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country” (Prov. 25:25).

The Son of God from Heaven is the gospel from a far country. He is the gospel Himself; He is the good news. And we know that His contagious form of life has taken hold of us when we start gracing each other the same way that He graced us. Notice how the great vertical gift and horizontal gifts must be understood together.

“For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God; Whiles by the experiment of this ministration they glorify God for your professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto them, and unto all men; And by their prayer for you, which long after you for the exceeding grace of God in you. Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.”

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