Repentance and the Power of the Gospel
Repenting of sin to fellow believers affirms the gospel and releases the power of the Spirit in your life and calling. This is a very tangible picture of how Jesus changes our hearts. If you want to experience this, consider what you need to repent of and who you need to repent to.
Have you ever had a distinct experience of the power and presence of God in your life? Scripture promises that the Holy Spirit has been given to us (Isa. 59:21; Luke 11:13; John 14:16–20), and we experience this promise in many ways. Think of a sermon that moved you to great thankfulness or to tears of conviction. Think of a “chance” encounter or text message when a brother or sister in the Lord shared a verse with you at a very specific time in your life. Think of a time of communion around the Lord’s Table or a time of praise when you’ve felt so loved by Christ and so cared for by His people. Maybe you’ve been praying for an issue to change or a mission to fulfill, and God has answered those prayers, perhaps even against all human expectation.
Yes, we are thankful for those and so many other evidences and experiences of our Father’s good grace to His children through Christ’s Spirit.
But I want to challenge you to embrace a biblical calling that, if applied, will lead to a great experience of God’s presence in your life and in the life of your fellowship. This is the call to repent of your sin.
Of course, we repent and follow Jesus when we commit to the Lord in faith. The Greek word metanoia literally means “about turn” (Acts 8:22). We are walking in darkness and in sin. We are convicted by the Spirit of Christ about our lifestyle. We “about turn” and march away from the sinful path and toward the life of righteousness. But this call to repent is more than the start of the Christian walk. It is the whole of our Christian lives. Calvin says: “The exercise of repentance ought to be uninterrupted throughout our whole life.”1
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Why We Long for Revival
It is this aching longing that fuels our recurring (we might say continual) desire to experience revival. But it’s not the mere experience of spiritual refreshment we desire; we long for the Place, the Person, where all the refreshment comes from. We long for what Jesus longs for: that we would be with him where he is, to see his glory.
Most earnest Christians have a deep longing to see and experience a spiritual revival. Many regularly pray for it. But ask a hundred such Christians to describe what they’re longing and praying for, and you’re likely to get dozens of different answers, depending on how their cultural backgrounds, church traditions, theological paradigms, and personal experiences have formed their concept of what a revival is.
Some think of revivals primarily as large-scale historical events that result in many people converting to the Christian faith, leaving notable effects on the wider society (like the early chapters of Acts or the “Great Awakenings”).
Some think of revivals primarily as what happens when Christians in a local church or school experience renewed spiritual vitality and earnestness together (like what took place at Asbury University in early 2023).
Some think of revivals primarily as strategically designed and scheduled events that aim to evangelize unbelievers and/or exhort believers to pursue a deeper life of personal holiness and Christian service (like Billy Graham’s evangelistic crusades).
And some think of revivals primarily as what happens whenever an individual Christian experiences a transformative, renewing encounter with the Holy Spirit.Now, apart from some debates over definitions (like what differentiates revival from renewal), most earnest Christians would agree that when the Holy Spirit moves in power to give new life to unregenerate people and renewed life to regenerate people, the results can look like all those descriptions — and certainly more.
But when earnest Christians long for revival, despite whatever concept and phenomena they associate with that term, they’re not really longing for that concept or those phenomena. If you were to ask those hypothetical hundred Christians to press deeper and describe what they most deeply long for when they long for revival, I believe the nature of their answers would be very similar.
“It’s You”
To illustrate what I mean, let me describe a touching scene that occurs at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third book C.S. Lewis wrote in his seven-part Chronicles of Narnia series. After another wonderful Narnian adventure, just before Aslan sends Lucy and Edmund back to our world, Lucy says,
“Please, Aslan, . . . before we go, will you tell us when we can come back to Narnia again? Please. And oh, do, do, do make it soon.”
“Dearest,” said Aslan very gently, “you and your brother will never come back to Narnia.”
“Oh, Aslan!” said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices.
“You are too old, children,” said Aslan, “and you must begin to come close to your own world now.”
“It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”
“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.
“Are — are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.
“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name.” (247)
If you haven’t read the Narnia books, it’s important to understand that Lucy and Edmund hadn’t enjoyed merely a few childish, holiday-like adventures in Narnia. They, along with their two older siblings, had been Narnian kings and queens for decades. They had fought in fierce battles, and shed their blood and tears for its defense. They had loved and cared for its citizens. And their encounters with the great lion, Aslan, had transformed their lives. Narnia felt more like home to them than any place they’d ever been, and when they weren’t in Narnia, they longed to be there.
So, when Lucy says, “It isn’t Narnia, you know,” she’s saying something profound. There’s a deeper longing inside her than her longing for Narnia. It’s a longing that fuels her longing for Narnia. And she names it for Aslan in two words: “It’s you.”
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Answering Objections to Saddleback’s Removal from the SBC
To be in friendly cooperation, a church must have a faith and practice that is in step with the BF&M [The Baptist Faith & Message]. Contradicting what the BF&M says about female pastors is by definition not “closely identifying” with the BF&M. Indeed, it’s a direct contradiction of the BF&M.
I have seen a variety of responses to the news yesterday that the SBC has found Saddleback Church to be out of step with “the Convention’s adopted statement of faith” and now no longer recognizes them as a “cooperating” church (Art. 3, SBC Constitution). As many of you know, the presenting issue is Saddleback’s recognition of a variety of female pastors, including one of their new lead teaching pastors. Having female pastors contradicts our statement of faith, The Baptist Faith & Message (BF&M), which says, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
As you can imagine, many of the public responses have been negative. On social media, some of the commentary has been incendiary and dismissive and therefore not worthy of serious engagement. Other critics simply do not like what Southern Baptists believe. Still, there are two objections that I thought it might be worth the effort to answer.
The first objection appears in a social media thread that Rick Warren himself “liked” on Twitter. The author shares a series of quotations from around the time that the BF&M was adopted in 2000 and observes how many SBC leaders at the time said that the BF&M would never be used to “coerce” Baptist churches. He quotes from one 2000 Baptist Press article which has compelling comments from both Albert Mohler and Adrian Rogers:
“We don’t have the right, the authority or the power to limit anybody,” Rogers noted. “We would resist that. What we are stating is what we believe mainstream Baptists believe…It is not a creed. It is a statement of what most of us believe.”
Other media questions focused on the new BFM’s stance against women serving as senior pastors.
“We would never presume to tell another church whom they may call as a pastor or tell another person whether or not they may serve as pastor,” Mohler said. “We’re not trying to force our beliefs on someone else.”
The author highlights these remarks and others like them to show that the BF&M was never meant to be “binding on individual SBC congregations” (source). He concludes from this that the BF&M was never intended to be a “parameter for cooperation” (source). Both of these observations are wrong and represent a serious misunderstanding of our polity.
Right now in 2023, I heartily affirm what both Adrian Rogers and Albert Mohler said 23 years ago. The SBC does not have the right or authority to tell any church whom they may call as pastor. The SBC has zero authority to tell a church what they can or cannot do or what they must or must not believe. How a church governs itself or chooses its pastors is not what this dispute is about.
This discussion is about whether the SBC has a right to recognize which churches are in friendly cooperation with the convention. Our polity says that the SBC does have that right. Furthermore, the SBC Constitution defines some parameters for determining which churches are in friendly cooperation. The Constitution says it this way:
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Jesus is Not a Proxy
If Jesus is not God, as John asserts and Jesus himself declares, and if he is not “my Lord and my God” as Thomas exclaims, then we have no hope. We have no gospel. Jesus is able to die in our place and reconcile us to the Father precisely because he is the divine Son of God, worthy to atone for the sins of all who would believe in him.
I usually don’t care to debate the theological opinions I hear on the radio. This is mostly because I believe Christian radio hosts are simply trying to love Jesus, love people, and do some encouraging things in the world. Furthermore, they do not seem to offer their opinions as though they believed they were the official teachers of the church universal.
Every now and then, however, someone says something that causes me to say, “No!” In my head, this is usually followed by a little bit of debate with whoever said what they said. In this hypothetical interaction, I often attempt to offer a bit winsome correction. To be honest, though, this is simply an exercise that helps me get my own head around why I think what I just heard is out of theological bounds.
The other day I was driving down the road and listening to a Christian radio station somewhere in Wisconsin. I do not remember what song had just played and, honestly, I do not recall much of what was going on. However, at one point the host said something along these lines:
“When we spend time with Jesus, by proxy we meet with God.”
When I heard that, I paused. I immediately knew something was off. But I wanted to be sure, so (at the next stop), I looked up the dictionary definition of proxy to see if it meant what I thought it meant. Here are the definitions of proxy via Merriam-Webster.
First, Webster provides the “essential meaning.”A person who is given the power and authority to do something (such as vote) for someone else;
Power or authority that is given to allow a person to act for someone else.Then, a fuller meaning is provided. The problematic language within the “essential meaning” and the “fuller meaning” is simply that a “proxy” acts as a “substitute…for another.” The idea of being a proxy is that the proxy represents and acts for someone else, for someone they are not. For instance, imagine if it were legal to allow your spouse to vote in your place during an election. I might give my wife the right to cast my vote if I’m unable to do so due to sickness, travel, or any other unforeseen circumstance. She acts on my behalf yet she is not me. Or, perhaps, imagine I have given power of attorney to her so that she can sign a document for me. She again acts on my behalf but she, again, is not me. We are not the same person.
If that is the meaning of proxy, then the host of the radio show has said in essence that when you meet with Jesus, you meet with God via someone who acts on God’s behalf but is not God himself. At least this is the implication of the words, even if this was not the intent. He did not say that when you meet with Jesus, you meet with the Father via proxy. There is perhaps a way we could nuance that to make it work, since the Son is not the Father, though they are one in essence. But, even there, the Son and the Father, along with the Spirit, are without division. To meet with the Son is to be with the Father and the Spirit. However we might have parsed out that idea is beside the point. The host said that when you meet with Jesus, you meet with “God via proxy.” That does not work, because to meet with Jesus is to meet with the God of the Cosmos.
The Bible is abundantly clear on the identity of Jesus Christ. He is no mere mortal. Jesus is God of very God, while also being fully human. When we talk of Jesus, we speak of the one in whom perfect deity and complete humanity are joined together without mixture or confusion.
The Gospel of John paints the picture as clear as any portion of the Bible. As soon as John opens his Gospel, the deity of Jesus flies off the page.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)
In the context of John, the Word is a reference to Jesus (John 1:14). John opens by pointing to the creation account in Genesis, letting the reader know that this Jesus, though recently born of a woman, was there when the world was created. He was with God at the start and, in fact, “was God.” Being God, he is the agent of creation and had life in himself. He was, then, the a se Word (from where we get the idea of aseity).