God created man to first work, not to worship.  Work was the beginning of his worship. Work must not be viewed as a utilitarian instrument (for example, a means to give more to the church), but work itself is a holy ministry toward others in that work is producing goods and services that provide for the needs, comfort, and joy of others.  Again, in my opinion, if the first half of the 4th commandment (working six days) received as much attention as the second half (resting one day), then the kingdom of God would be greatly advanced.

David Bahnsen in his latest book Full-Time: Work and The Meaning of Life challenges a few theological presuppositions prominent in the modern evangelical and reformed world regarding the relationship between faith and work. This also includes an interesting chapter on the rather new concept (over the course of history) of retirement.
David is the son of the late Dr. Greg Bahnsen, well known in reformed circles as a scholar, and who is often associated with the theological views of Theonomy.  After David’s father died at a young age, David tells the reader in the book that he lost his best friend while just a young college student. This was a very difficult time in his life, and maybe the most helpful therapy, besides his faith, in dealing with his loss was work.  And work he did!
David is today the founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Investment Officer of the Bahnsen Group, a private wealth management firm managing over $4.5 billion in client assets.  For those familiar with the financial world, he is a regular guest on several national media outlets such as Fox Business, CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox News.
Because of his love for Christ’s Church, especially as it is expressed in the reformed faith, he deals with some suspect theological assumptions that come from modern pulpits (often unawares) regarding the place of work and retirement in the life of every Christian.
David is very balanced in his book.  By balanced I mean he is always predicting potential objections to his statements and qualifying them so as not to be misinterpreted as one who is rushing off into some extreme view.  I call this the “However Rule.”  I have written enough to know that some of the most important terms in writing are words like however, but, or on the other hand.
Readers can quickly draw errant deductions from a written statement, and a good writer will know when and how to neutralize those false deductions. He will then add qualifying statements.  In other words [yes, I am a writer too], David is very balanced in the book, qualifying his stated views where there might be a temptation to mis-understand him.
So, what are some of the errant suppositions about work that are so prevalent today in the reformed and evangelical world?  I think in answering these questions, it should be noted that he begins in the Book of Genesis and not in the New Testament.  He has what some have termed a Creational Worldview (see Creational Worldview – An Introduction by P. Andrew Sandlin). Let me cover just a few of his themes in the book.

The Prodigal Son in the Basement Playing Video Games

He offers several reasons for this phenomenon including the societal characteristics of a decline in family values, and an increase in both loneliness and isolation. Later, he looks at the labor-participation rate today as compared to that of many years ago.  The conclusion is heart-shattering.
In my own opinion, I believe what the modern church may be missing is that work with purpose may be the best medicine to prevent depression. It may be the best antidote, far exceeding anti-depressants and therapy.  Certainly, work is not the answer to every problem, but we need to reevaluate its critical importance in the arena of mental health. I think the modern church has relegated work to a material necessity which is juxtaposed to what is considered the higher realm of true spirituality. This is contradictory to the purpose of the creation of man in Genesis which was to work in a material world.

Work is Not the Curse in Genesis

After the Fall, childbearing for the woman became very difficult, however, children were not the curse of God but the pain in labor was the curse.  Children are a blessing.  Likewise, after the Fall work became accompanied by the sweat of the brow, thorns, and thistles.  However, work itself was not a curse, but rather the sweat, the thorns, and the thistles were the curse.  Work was given to provide man with purpose, identity, and dignity.  Redemption in Christ restores that purpose given before the Fall.
God created man to first work, not to worship.  Work was the beginning of his worship. Work must not be viewed as a utilitarian instrument (for example, a means to give more to the church), but work itself is a holy ministry toward others in that work is producing goods and services that provide for the needs, comfort, and joy of others.  Again, in my opinion, if the first half of the 4th commandment (working six days) received as much attention as the second half (resting one day), then the kingdom of God would be greatly advanced.

What About the Clergy Work Ethic?

I will not say much about this theme.  Indeed, most pastors are hard-working men, but in some circles, slackness is becoming a problem. The change in church structure often leaves men preaching almost half the time during the week as compared to their ministerial forefathers. The larger the church the greater the temptation.  The title of this chapter in his book is “Pouting Pulpits & Part-time Pastors.”

The Retirement Disaster

David calls retirement a 30-year vacation. For some of us who could not retire until age 65, it could be viewed more as 10-year to15-year vacation. Yes, people do need to slow down as they get older, but to stop working can be a bad as death itself. I could never stop working.  I think I work as much today (in my late 70’s) as I ever did.
Many years ago, there were no retirement plans.  You retire when you died.  Today, work is for the purpose of “getting to the point you do not have to work.” Although the modern world has created many blessings that allow us to live longer and heathier, the loss of older men in the workforce is also the loss of wisdom and mentorship in the workforce.  David believes this is a great loss.

The Problem with the Virtual (Home) Workplace

Although this topic is included as an appendix in the Book, David’s views on working from home as opposed to going to the office are interesting.  He is against it.  You may not agree with him on this, but he makes several good points.
In conclusion, I have only covered a few parts of the main points in his Book. I have not even touched on his excellent analysis of how successful Chirstian men deal with the envy of others, or how a Christian man of wealth may be tempted to wallow in guilt because of his success.  My goal is to just give you enough bait to catch your attention.
To get the rest of the story, I do highly recommend this book.  It would be an excellent source for a Bible Study, especially for men.  Our view of work is very important since we do so much of it.  The book contains much wisdom which David himself has gained over the years as he went from working in a movie theatre at 15 years of age to a multi-billion-dollar financial advisor.  Being raised in the home of a preacher and scholar who was shunned by so many of his own colleagues teaches a son a great deal too. You need to buy the book and work at reading it.
Larry E. Ball is a retired minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is now a CPA. He lives in Kingsport, Tenn.
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…that for the PCA to allow its ministers to teach their own doctrine alongside of its official doctrine would be to lay the groundwork of its own destruction as a confessional denomination, the assertion of multiple doctrines serving to engender confusion and to allow the official position on many matters to be crowded out by the alternatives. For now, it is enough to see that this is another dubious attempt to shift the blame for the denomination’s present troubles away from that faction which is anxious to keep in step with the culture and to lay it at the feet of others who dare object to the said faction’s methods and desires.

Dr. David Cassidy, pastor of Spanish River Presbyterian in Florida, recently wrote an essay, “PCA at the Crossroads”, in which he denies there are any problems with disunity in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) save those caused by some people raising false alarms about “theological declension.” He denies that there are any progressives in the PCA and regards any suggestions to the contrary as slanderous. He exults in the PCA’s diversity of practice and asserts that good faith subscription is essential to the denomination’s continued effectiveness. In his first section he says:
Looking back, men like Kennedy Smartt, Frank Barker, Francis Schaeffer, James Kennedy . . . and many others were not only deeply Reformed but also broadly evangelical, and resistant to fundamentalist impulses.
Lay aside the dubious name dropping and note that claim that such men were “resistant to fundamentalist impulses.” Fundamentalism is a bête noire of progressives, and disparaging it is nearly the first thing that Cassidy does – yet he assures us that neither he nor anyone else in the PCA is progressive, this progressive rhetoric notwithstanding.
Regarding progressivism, Cassidy writes:
Using that word about fellow PCA ministers is an abuse of the language and little more than Humpty Dumpty verbicide.
And then continues, after a mistaken literary allusion:
This is all part of a wider project to redefine what “conservative” and “subscription” mean in order to reset the boundaries of what is allowable in PCA.
Note that Cassidy does what he accuses others of doing by redefining a word for polemic use. He thinks it unfair for others to call his faction progressives, but he is glad to intimate his opponents have “fundamentalist impulses.”
What Cassidy objects to is progressive being used in an absolute sense to describe both people who deny orthodox teaching as well as people like him. I concur that it is improper to use progressive to refer to a contemporary school of heterodoxy, and that it is further unfair, having done so, to then also use it to refer to PCA pastors such as Cassidy. The proper term for “Progressive Christianity” is heresy, there being nothing either progressive or truly Christian about it, the terms for its proponents, such things as false teachers or apostates. I do not accuse Cassidy of being that, which would indeed be slanderous. But I do say that he is a progressive in another sense.
Here’s why. Rather than describing one’s doctrine, comparative terms like conservative and progressive are best used to describe one’s disposition or impulses as they relate to those of others. A conservative is one who wants to do things now as they have been done in the past. That may be good or bad, depending on what he wishes to conserve. A progressive is one who wishes to keep abreast of change, and who wishes to alter things in order to influence the people with whom he deals. That may be good or bad, depending upon what is influencing him, whom he wishes to influence, and what changes he wants to make to do so. And, of course, one may be both, conservative about some matters and progressive about others, and each to a greater or lesser extent. Now I say that Cassidy and many others are progressive because their disposition is to look at society and to ponder whether our present practices might be hindering us from reaching its various constituent groups. I do not doubt his sincerity or good intentions, but I do say he is taking his cues from society at large and from his contemplations upon the PCA’s relation to it rather than from scripture alone.
Regarding Cassidy’s progressivism, one sees it in what he emphasizes. Contemporary society is obsessed with race, and he mentions it multiple times. He decries “the fertile soil of criticism for all who seek to address the very valid issue of how we bring the unchanging Gospel to an increasingly hostile secularized society and how we address racism in the Church.” In such a phrase he suggests that addressing racism is as urgently needed as evangelism – as if racism in the church is anywhere near as prevalent or severe as the rampant unbelief of our wider society. He further says that:
Racism has been a sinful reality in the church for years and it is an insufficient response to simply decry critical theory without adequately listening to and addressing the real concerns of minority communities in the church.
And again, caricaturing a hypothetical strict subscription PCA:
It could disparage other ethnicities and insist that anyone pointing out that such a practice is problematic is probably a Marxist.
Elsewhere he says he was “shocked” and “deeply grieved” when someone issued “a disdainful critique of ‘Korean Style Praying’ as being unbiblical.” Disdain is arrogant condescension, and if that is a fair description of what happened, such a tone was indeed wrong; but I do not concur that “these kinds of comments … must be rejected” with the vehemence he displays, for I can certainly see why someone would regard such a style of prayer as unscriptural in light of I Corinthians 14:26-40. Cassidy tacitly assumes the propriety of such prayer, and with it the impropriety of criticizing it in whatever manner (“maybe we should all be at the feet of our Korean brothers and sisters to learn how to pray”).
As for Cassidy’s deep concern with race matters as shown in such examples, I ask: is it a coincidence that a matter that weighs so heavily with Cassidy is also one with which our society is obsessed? Is it a coincidence that the anonymous agency heads’ “Statement on Heinous Killings” appeared in the middle of the George Floyd upheaval and that it used the language of many unbelieving political activists? I think not. Such a preoccupation with a contemporary social/political issue is a result of trying to keep abreast of cultural developments and looking to them to set one’s agenda and form one’s thinking – in short, the progressive temperament in action.
I said earlier that Cassidy does what he accuses others of doing in the case of polemic claims, and he does so in another matter as well. He accuses others of attempting “to redefine what ‘conservative’ and ‘subscription’ mean in order to reset the boundaries of what is allowable in the PCA,” and says this about the alleged attempt:
It is always done in nameless ways because naming names would open the door to the refutation of the false claims and remove the weapon of fear from the arsenal of those who want to stir people up and lead them deeper into a “Truly Reformed” cul-de-sac, something the PCA was never designed to be.
At no point in his 2,800-word essay does Cassidy name a single opponent, nor does he name the faction which he opposes: the closest he gets is implying somewhat his opponents’ position (strict subscription), and, in the statement above, their self-conception (“Truly Reformed”) – and yet he says it is his opponents who don’t name names. But note further that this man who accuses unnamed others of conspiring to redefine the meaning of subscription actually does that very thing himself. He writes:
Some argue for the right of Presbyteries to forbid a man to teach an exception that they’ve already judged to be an allowable exception. In my view, this is de facto strict subscription and it not only dangerously exalts the standards to the place where a minister’s conscience is needlessly bound by the action of Presbytery but also wrongly exalts the authority of Presbytery over the denomination as a whole.
Nothing in the Book of Church Order (BCO) either regards a minister as having any right to teach his exceptions or denies a presbytery the authority to forbid teaching exceptions. Past attempts to establish the right to teach exceptions, such as New Jersey Presbytery’s Overture 6 at the 31st General Assembly, have not been adopted. What Cassidy seeks to recast as “de facto strict subscription” is really good faith subscription as it is actually provided for by the BCO (21-4).
When he regards this as dangerously “exalting the standards” and binding consciences he is proceeding from a theory of polity that is not Presbyterian but Independent. Everyone who is in the PCA is bound by its government. One who regards his own conscience as a higher teaching authority than the presbytery or the denomination is doing the very thing that Presbyterian government – including an authoritative confession which one must subscribe – is intended to guard against. It is of the essence of the Presbyterian system that each individual presbyter is subordinate to the presbytery as a whole, and that what authority is in the church is distributed among a plurality of elders but may only be exercised by the relevant body of which they are a part (session, presbytery, general assembly) acting in unison as a corporate entity. When a man accepts ordination he swears to “approve of the form of government and discipline” of the PCA and to “promise subjection to [his] brethren” (21-5, Qs. 3-4). Inherent in doing so is surrendering somewhat his own freedom, including that of conscience, in the interest of good order and peace in service to the church.
Judging by what Cassidy says elsewhere (“I suspect the Westminster Divines themselves and our forefathers in the Reformation would be appalled… by this practice”), he might say this leaves us in the position of Rome by making the church instead of Christ (speaking through Scripture) the sole lord of the conscience. It is not so. No one is either obligated or entitled to ministry in the PCA, and by accepting ordination he freely accepts its conditions, including what is entailed in submitting to the discipline and government of the church as expressed in its courts and standards.[1] Unlike with Rome, one is free to go elsewhere anytime he wishes, and there are many other denominations in which Cassidy could labor whose views of polity align more nearly with his own. Also, he retains the right to lobby the church courts for a change that would make his exception into an accepted article, or which would otherwise allow it to be taught. There are means of redress for his complaint, and he has simply to use them rather than to rely upon arguments that proceed upon un-Presbyterian theories of polity.
Time will fail to consider more fully his other arguments, other elements of Presbyterian doctrine touching upon the relation of conscience to church government and the role of the church as the mediating agency through which Christ confers teaching authority and by which he governs its use, as well as the question of what the “good faith” in good faith subscription should entail (BCO 21.4e; 21-5, Q.2.). It would fail also to note that a denomination is only as good as its ministers and that a house divided against itself cannot stand (Matt. 12:25): i.e., that for the PCA to allow its ministers to teach their own doctrine alongside of its official doctrine would be to lay the groundwork of its own destruction as a confessional denomination, the assertion of multiple doctrines serving to engender confusion and to allow the official position on many matters to be crowded out by the alternatives. For now, it is enough to see that this is another dubious attempt to shift the blame for the denomination’s present troubles away from that faction which is anxious to keep in step with the culture and to lay it at the feet of others who dare object to the said faction’s methods and desires.
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.

[1] This is so only in secondary or minor matters. A church that would require heresy to be taught or that would restrict the gospel is ipso facto a false church and has no authority, each minister being then bound to follow his conscience as guided by scripture rather than the direction of the apostate church.

When God opens our eyes, and ears, we encounter his majesty. We hang on his words, as some did when he taught in the temple (Luke 19:48), and we testify in awe, with those officers who confessed, “No one ever spoke like this man!” (John 7:46).

Lightning can be majestic. That is, from a safe distance. Or from a secure shelter that frees us from the threat of electrocution, and allows us to enjoy the spectacular show.
The concept of majesty first brings to mind great sights, like distant lightning. Whether it’s a scenic vista of purple mountain majesties, the skyline of a great city, the dazzling beauty of gold or precious jewels, or the grandeur of a royal palace and its decorum, we typically associate the noun majesty, and its adjective majestic, with stunning glimpses, panoramas, and sights.
Majesty captures a greatness, power, and glory that is both impressive and attractive. And as with lightning, what is majestic from a safe distance can be terrifying when right overhead, without shelter. And so it is when the living God showcases his majesty at the Red Sea—his enemies panic with fear (Exodus 14:24), while his people, whom he rescues, know themselves safe and praise his majesty:
In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries;you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble…Who is like you, majestic in holiness,awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?Exodus 15:7, 11
Yet when Scripture mentions the majesty of God, the reference is not exclusively to the visible. Thunder, not only lightning, also may strike us as majestic, when we don’t find ourselves exposed and at risk. And so, as Scripture testifies, God’s voice is majestic.
His words ring out with divine greatness, and tangible goodness, in the ears of his people. His speech is both authoritative and appealing, imposing and attractive. His voice both cuts us to the heart, and makes our hearts thrill. His words wound us in our sin, and we welcome it in the Spirit. God’s majestic words, spoken and written, surprise and delight his people, even as his enemies cower at his thunderings. Their fear is terror; ours is reverent awe and joy.
His lightnings enthrall his saints. As does the thunder of his words.
Greatness of His Word
Consider, first, the greatness of “his majestic voice” (Isaiah 30:30).
No voice speaks with such authority—or anywhere even remotely close to such authority—as the voice of the living God. His words, unlike any other words, are utterly authoritative, and on every possible subject he chooses to address. Like no other mind and mouth, his words are not limited to an area of expertise. His expertise, as God, is all things, without exception.
But the greatness of his word includes not only his right to speak on any given subject (and every subject), but also his ability to speak to the most important subjects and do so extensively, and perfectly, and have the final say. He not only takes up far-reaching, bottomless, eternal, truly great topics, but he never speaks above his head, or out of his depths, as even the world’s greatest minds do when they come to the topics that matter most.
God never speculates. He never overreaches or overextends his knowledge. He never over-speaks. As God, he may publicly address any subject matter he chooses, and with unassailable authority, and he does so perfectly, every time, in all he chooses to say and not say.
In Scripture, he does give us an extensive word, but not an exhaustive one. He chooses to limit his spoken revelation to a first covenant and then a new one, 66 books, and 30,000 verses across the span of a millennium and a half. However, he chooses not (yet) to speak to every possible subject in his created world and beyond, but to speak with both clarity and repetition, despite the trends and undulations of every generation, to the realities that are most timeless and essential. And in doing so, he cues his people in on the subjects and proportions of his focus that prove most important in every time and season.
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