ABSTRACT: Even if old-earth views are within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, Scripture offers several reasons for believing God created the earth relatively recently — within thousands of years rather than millions or billions. Genesis 1 portrays creation in terms of a literal workweek, the New Testament associates early human history with “the beginning,” the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 are without gaps, humanity appears in Scripture as the head of creation, and the Bible regularly associates animal death and suffering with the fall. Though none of these arguments proves conclusive, together they offer a compelling case for a young creation.

We asked professors Wayne Grudem and Jason DeRouchie to offer arguments for their respective old-earth and young-earth views, and then respond to each other. Access the full set of articles and responses on the “How Old Is the Earth?” series page.

At stake in the question of the earth’s age is faithful exegesis of the biblical text aligned with a faithful interpretation of the scientific data. Because no one but God was present at the beginning, and because the Bible is God’s inerrant word, Scripture holds highest authority in answering questions of time and space. Scripture’s teaching on a subject must bear guiding weight in assessing all matters related to the created sphere.

Let us be clear: God’s role as creator, his purpose for creation, and the historicity of Adam and Eve as the first parents are non-negotiable for Christian belief. Furthermore, evolutionary creationism (i.e., theistic evolution) of any form is unwarranted biblically. Nevertheless, while there is much at stake, the age of the earth is not among the central doctrines that should divide. Conservative Christianity has remained broad enough for both young-earth and old-earth creationism (akin somewhat to credo- versus paedo-baptism or varying millennial views). I remain a convinced young-earth creationist because of the overwhelming biblical data. However, there is no single silver-bullet biblical or scientific argument for my position, and old-earth creationists can craft legitimate, thoughtful responses to each of my claims. The weight of my case is cumulative, and I question whether every argument I make can be legitimately falsified.

Humanity in the First Week

Argument 1: Genesis 1:1–2:3 places the creation of humanity within the first week of creation. The most natural reading of the Bible’s introduction points to a young earth.

“The most natural reading of the Bible’s introduction points to a young earth.”

The use of Hebrew yôm (meaning day) with the refrain “there was evening and there was morning” (Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31), along with the mention of light and darkness, day and night, and the one-week structure strongly, suggests that the communicator of this revelation was portraying the equivalent of 24-hour calendar days, even though the sun is not created until day four (Genesis 1:14–19). Mankind is here portrayed as being created on day six of God’s first workweek. The day-age theory (wherein God created all of physical creation out of nothing in a chronological progression of ages spanning an indefinite period of time) does not seem to fit this context. And the gap theory (which posits a very long span between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2) does not appear to be allowed by the Hebrew text.

While later meditations on creation (e.g., Psalm 104) never refer to the “days,” the fact that Yahweh built Israel’s 6+1 pattern of life upon the pattern of the creation week (Exodus 20:11) seems best understood only if Israel was already aware of the 6+1 pattern of the creation week (see Exodus 16:23–29; compare Genesis 7:4, 10; 8:10, 12) and viewed it as an actual as opposed to figurative or analogical reality. Specifically, Israel’s call to keep the Sabbath is grounded in God’s original workweek, which is difficult to read analogically (Exodus 20:10–11): “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.”

In the Beginning

Argument 2: The New Testament closely associates the history of Genesis 2–4 with the beginning of the world. Old-earth models require either that mankind’s creation be separated from the “beginning” by millions or even billions of years, or that the Genesis 1:1 “beginning” stretched out for a period of time massively longer than all the time that has followed. The former discounts the New Testament link between the “beginning” of Genesis 1:1 and the creation of mankind in 1:26–28, and the latter forces a strange use of the term of “beginning,” wherein what happens in the ninth inning is still the “beginning.”

In the New Testament, we read that Jesus saw the institution of marriage as being closely linked to the beginning of creation (Mark 10:6; cf. Matthew 19:4, 8; see Genesis 2:21–25). He declared that Satan’s murderous activity (not just his tendencies) through his deception of Eve was closely associated with the beginning of creation (John 8:44). He linked this murderous, sinful activity with the promise that the offspring of the woman would stand in friction with the serpent and his offspring (1 John 3:8; cf. Genesis 3:1–6, 15). He saw the first human experience of tribulation as being located near the beginning of creation (likely referring to Cain’s killing of Abel) (Mark 13:19; cf. Matthew 24:21; see Genesis 4:8). He placed the martyrdom of Abel near the foundation of the world (Luke 11:49–50; cf. Matthew 23:35; see Genesis 4:8).

The writer of Hebrews also considered the “foundation of the world” to be the conclusion of the sixth day, placed humanity’s rebellion (for which Jesus suffered) very near this time, and contrasted this foundation with the “end of the ages” realized in the work of Christ (Hebrews 4:3–4; 9:25–26).

Linear Genealogies

Argument 3: The linear genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 point to a recent humanity. While some biblical genealogies are clearly selective (e.g., Matthew 1:1; 1:2–17), the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 are so specific that they resist a selective reading and thus require that humanity has existed for a relatively short time.

The linear genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11 are unique in all of Scripture with respect to the age detail they provide (see, e.g., Genesis 5:3–11). Even if “son” at times means grandson or great-grandson (as can happen in Scripture), the specificity of the ages counters the likelihood of gaps. Moreover, a number of the seemingly “father-son/grandson/great-grandson” relationships are shown elsewhere to be just that — e.g., Adam with Seth (Genesis 4:25), Noah with Ham, Shem, and Japheth (6:10), Terah with Abraham (11:31).

A solid explanation for the presence of specific ages in these genealogies is the messianic and missiological purposes of Genesis. Moses seems to have gone out of his way to show that God preserved the line of hope in every generation from Adam to Noah, from Shem to Terah, and from Abraham to Israel. The specified years all highlight the faithfulness of God to preserve his line hoping in the offspring promise of Genesis 3:15. As such, leaving out generations would have gone against the apparent purpose.

Adding the ages in the genealogies points to humanity being around 6,000 years old.

Climax of Creation

Argument 4: Adam’s high role as head of the first creation and mankind’s station as the climax of creation and image of God both support a young earth. It makes less sense to think that God allowed the bulk of creation to exist for millennia without its overseers.

“It makes less sense to think that God allowed the bulk of creation to exist for millennia without its overseers.”

Genesis 1:1–2:3 associates all major “rulers” of the first creation with humanity. The luminaries separate day and night and establish the earth’s calendar (Genesis 1:14), but they also serve as “signs” for humans that stress the surety of God’s promises (Genesis 15:5; Jeremiah 33:22). Humans are called to “fill the earth and subdue it” and to “have dominion over the fish . . . birds . . . and every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28).

Humans are the climax of creation and sole representatives of God on the earth, with some being chosen “in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him, having been predestined in love for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ . . . to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:4–6). Only on the sixth day is the definite article “the” added to the day-ending formula (“a first day, a second day, a third day, . . . the sixth day”). Day six gets the most literary space and includes the longest speeches. Only at the end of day six does God declare creation “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Only at day six does God declare something he makes to be “in his image,” giving humanity oversight in the world. Scripture portrays the first man, Adam, as representative covenantal head over the first creation (Genesis 2:15; Romans 5:18–19; 1 Cor. 15:45).

In addition, God’s oversight, provision, and protection of animals (Psalms 104:14, 21, 24, 27; 145:14–16; 147:9; Matthew 6:26; Luke 12:24) is significantly manifest through mankind (Genesis 1:28; 2:15; Psalm 8:6–8[7–9]).

Animal Suffering and Death

Argument 5: Scripture usually portrays the suffering and death of living creatures, including animals, as part of the curse, so millions of years of animal death and suffering pre-fall seems unlikely. God initially curses the world on account of human sin, so death and suffering in land animals and birds most likely resulted from mankind’s fall and were not present before it, as all old-earth models require.

“Scripture usually portrays the suffering and death of living creatures, including animals, as part of the curse.”

The principal consequence of humanity’s garden rebellion was human death both physically and spiritually (Genesis 2:17; 3:16–19; Romans 5:12). Humanity’s sin in the garden brought negative consequences not only on humanity, however, but also to the created world at large: God cursed the animals (Genesis 3:14). God cursed the ground (Genesis 3:17–19). God subjected the whole world to futility (Romans 8:20–21).

Scripture regularly associates animal death with curse and animal life with blessing. Both realities suggest that death and suffering in land animals and birds would have resulted from the fall and not been present before it.

First, the fact that the serpent is cursed “more than/above” (= Hebrew min of comparison) all livestock and beasts of the field implies that the land animals were indeed impacted directly and negatively by humanity’s fall (Genesis 3:14; cf. 3:1).

Second, the curse on the ground (Genesis 3:17) shapes the backdrop to Noah’s birth (5:29), and the judgment curse of the flood includes the death of all beasts, birds, and creeping things (7:21–23), save those on the ark, which were set apart to preserve non-human land creatures after the flood (6:19–20; 7:3).

Third, eight of the ten judgment plagues on Egypt included animals becoming pests to humans or the mass suffering and death of livestock in a way that negatively impacted human existence (Exodus 8–12).

Fourth, the penal substitutionary blood of the Passover lamb alone secured the lives of Israel’s firstborn among both humans and beasts (Exodus 12:12–13).

Fifth, under the blessings of the Mosaic (old) covenant, mankind would live in safety from animal predation (Leviticus 26:6) and cattle and herds would flourish and increase (Deuteronomy 7:13–14; 28:4, 11). In contrast, under curse, humans would stand in fear of animal predation (Leviticus 26:22), cattle and herds would languish (Deuteronomy 28:18), and dead human flesh would be the food of beast and bird (28:26). These realities are all affirmed in the prophets (e.g., Jeremiah 7:20; 12:4, Haggai 1:9–11, Malachi 3:9– 12; 4:6).

Sixth, in the context of his wars of judgment, Yahweh called Israel to slaughter everything that breathes, including the animals (Deuteronomy 13:15; 20:16; 1 Samuel 15:3).

Seventh, the Preacher in Ecclesiastes associates the death of animals with that of humans (Ecclesiastes 3:19–20) and unhesitatingly connects the reality of both deaths with the curse at the fall: “All are from the dust, and to dust all return” (see Genesis 3:19–20). This link strongly points to the death of both animals and humans as beginning at the same time.

Old-earth creationists struggle to clarify what actually changes in the non-human world at the curse, for they believe an extended period (even millions of years) of animal suffering and death already existed pre-fall. In contrast, Scripture points to God’s curse of the world as a decisive turning point and then commonly associates animal death with curse.

Eating Meat and the Curse’s End

Argument 6: The limiting of animal death in the eternal state as a restoring of Eden suggests that all terrestrial death began after the fall. Specifically, because eating meat likely symbolizes Jesus’s victory over the curse, the limiting of animal death in the eternal state to redeemed humanity’s consuming of meat likely signals the restoring of Eden rather than an escalation beyond it and suggests that all terrestrial death began after the fall and that, therefore, the earth is young.

Scripture explicitly connects sin, suffering, and death in all its forms only to the fall (Genesis 3:14–15; Romans 1:24, 26, 28; 8:18–23). It also highlights Christ’s death and resurrection as the only solution to the problem of human rebellion and its consequences, which appears to include all earthly evil, both natural evils like cancer and car accidents and moral evils directly related to rebellion against God. Specifically, the Bible teaches that Christ’s work was designed to restore all things (Acts 3:21), to unite all things (Ephesians 1:10), to reconcile all things to God (Colossians 1:17), to do away with death, tears, and pain (Isaiah 25:8; Revelation 21:4), and to eradicate the curse and all that is unclean (Revelation 21:27; 22:3).

This eternal redemptive reality is portrayed both as restoring the garden of Eden (pre-fall) and as escalating beyond it by completing what the first Adam failed to secure. This new/re-creation will bear elements that are similar to the original creation pre-fall (Ezekiel 36:35; Isaiah 51:3; Romans 8:20–21; Revelation 2:7; 22:1–5, 14, 19), but it will be absent of any past or potential influence of evil or curse (Revelation 21:27; 22:3), save the sustained reminder of the former rebellion of the elect in order to sustain their awe of the saving work of King Jesus. Examples of such reminders will include lament over sin (Ezekiel 36:31), the presence of salt in the bogs around the once-Dead Sea (47:11; cf. Genesis 13:10; 19:24–26), the presence of transformed multiple tongues rather than a single language (Zephaniah 3:9; Revelation 5:9; 7:9; cf. Genesis 11:6–9), and the visual identification of Christ as both sacrificial and conquering Lamb (Revelation 5:5–6, 12–13; 7:10, 14; 17:14; 19:9; 21:22–23; 22:1, 3).

In such a context of restoration, reconciliation, and eradication, it is important to recognize that predatory activity among the animal kingdom will cease and that death will be present only in relation to humans eating meat. In the present fallen age, animals’ predatory activity is part of God’s revealed purposes (Psalm 104:21; Job 38:39–41), so long as it does not threaten humans (Psalm 104:23; Deuteronomy 7:22; Judges 14:5; 2 Kings 17:25) or domesticated animals (1 Samuel 17:34–35; Isaiah 31:4; Amos 3:12). Only after mankind’s fall and the global curse did humans become a target for animal predatory activity and did God grant people permission to consume animal meat, partly in order to cause the animals to fear them (Genesis 9:2–3; cf. 1:30). In this cursed world, eating meat affirms mankind’s call to reflect, resemble, and represent God by exerting dominion (1:26, 28; cf. Psalm 8:6–8[7–9]), and it also testifies to God’s curse-overcoming power.

Specifically, from the earliest days after God exiled humanity from the garden, humans distinguished clean animals from unclean ones (Genesis 7:2–3, 8). After God allowed humans to consume animal flesh, he allowed his people to eat only the clean (Leviticus 20:25–26). Scripture treats as unclean all animals that in some way symbolically look like the serpent in the garden — whether due to their crafty, predatory, killing instincts (Genesis 3:1–5 with 2:17; cf. John 8:44; 10:10) or due to their dust-eating association with death and waste (Genesis 3:14). And it is because Christ overcomes the evil one at the cross (Ephesians 2:16; Colossians 2:15; cf. Luke 10:18; John 12:31; Revelation 12:9) that all foods are now clean (Mark 7:19; Acts 10:10–15, 28; Romans 14:14, 20; 1 Timothy 4:4). That makes the eating of all foods a testimony of Christ’s curse-overcoming power.

In view of the full redemptive work of Christ, the restored new creation and new covenant will extend to the beasts, birds, and creeping things, resulting in global safety (Hosea 2:18; Isaiah 35:9), as the once-predatory animals (perhaps a picture of hostile nations) become vegetarian and dwell peacefully alongside lamb and the child king, so that no creature need fear them (Isaiah 11:6–9; 65:25; cf. 9:6–7). In that day of consummation, God will put down all enemy oppression, abolish all human disease, suffering, and death, and make an end of the curse (Isaiah 25; 65:17–25; Revelation 21:3–5; 22:3).
In the new heavens and new earth, humans will never fear predators, and terrestrial creatures will not be the diet of one another. These realities are part of Christ’s fixing what went wrong at the fall and help identify the return to the pre-fall state rather than an escalation beyond it.

Furthermore, as a sustained testimony that Christ has fully overcome the curse, humans will continue to eat animals in the new heavens and new earth (e.g., Isaiah 25:6, 8; Ezekiel 47:9–10; Matthew 22:2–4; Luke 22:15–18, 29–30; Revelation 19:7, 9; 21:1, 4, 10; cf. Luke 24:41–43; John 21:12–13). Because God allowed humans to eat meat only post-fall, and because eating that meat testifies to Christ’s curse-overcoming victory, which culminates in Jesus’s triumph over the unclean serpent at the cross, the restriction in the eternal state of animal death to redeemed humanity’s meat-consumption points to the absence of animal death before the fall and, therefore, to a young earth.

Conclusion: Young Earth

The biblical data supports the belief that the earth is young. We see this (1) in the way Scripture portrays creation as a literal work week, (2) in the way the New Testament links the early history of mankind with the beginning, (3) in the unlikelihood that there are time gaps in the linear genealogies of Genesis, (4) in the way the Bible consistently portrays humanity as head of terrestrial creation, (5) in the fact Scripture regularly associates animal death and suffering with curse and makes it unlikely that such was happening before the fall, and (6) in the way human meat consumption in the eternal state testifies to Jesus’s curse-overcoming work.

The Kingdom has come, but society is not uprooted. This is the mystery of the Kingdom.

I was converted at a young age and grew up in church. I heard expositional preaching and cut my teeth on Sunday School flannelgraphs, Vacation Bible School, and “Sword Drills” at Christian summer camp. At the encouragement of my grandmother, I read the Bible cover to cover as a teen. Later, I attended a Christian college, where I minored in Bible. So, by the time I hit my twenties, I knew lots of verses, could give you summaries of Bible books, and was very familiar with the message of salvation.

But never had I heard anything quite like what I encountered in a particular paragraph I read while preparing for ministry.

When Jesus Became Scandalous

I don’t remember how I came to be reading George Ladd’s A Theology of the New Testament, and I never read the entire volume, but these sentences (and the chapter of which they’re a part, “The Mystery of the Kingdom”) fired my imagination and permanently altered my understanding of God, the Bible, history, and my own life:

The coming of the Kingdom, as predicted in the Old Testament and in Jewish apocalyptic literature, would bring about the end of the age and inaugurate the Age to Come, disrupting human society by the destruction of the unrighteous. Jesus affirms that in the midst of the present age, while society continues with its intermixture of the good and the bad, before the coming of the Son of Man and the glorious manifestation of the Kingdom of God, the powers of that future age have entered into the world to create “sons of the kingdom,” those who enjoy its power and blessings. The Kingdom has come, but society is not uprooted. This is the mystery of the Kingdom. (94)

Until that moment in my life, I had read the Bible as a more or less static record of God’s revealed truth. I knew many important biblical facts, but had little sense of a larger story line, of a dynamically unfolding plan, of a developing work of salvation through time. Ladd began to put those pieces together, to excite me with a sense of the dynamism and progress of God’s redemptive work.

Before reading that paragraph, I hadn’t ever considered the ways in which Jesus’s ministry might be surprising or scandalous. Sure, it was extraordinary that he performed miracles and challenged the religious leaders. But having grown up hearing about those miracles and confrontations, they were familiar to me. Ladd opened my eyes to the mystery of the kingdom.

Through Ladd’s eyes, I now saw Jesus’s declaration that the kingdom of God had already come (but was not fully consummated) as the scandalous surprise it would have been to Jesus’s contemporaries. To liken the mighty end-time kingdom of God to a tiny, hidden mustard seed? Unthinkable! I had never truly understood the Matthew 13 parables of the dragnet, the mustard seed, or the leaven. Ladd’s teaching of the already–not yet kingdom unlocked them for me. Now 23 years later, I can still remember the excitement and satisfaction of awakened understanding.

Far Bigger Than Me

More than that, the teaching of the inaugurated-but-not-consummated kingdom helped me appreciate more fully the truly epoch-making significance of Jesus’s first coming. His life, death, and resurrection had inaugurated nothing less than a new age. He had brought to initial fulfillment the end-time promises of God, securing the future new creation.

To that point in my life, I had read the Bible almost exclusively as an account of something that mattered on a personal basis. Jesus came to save souls. Jesus’s work was between Jesus and me. To come alive to the cosmic significance of Jesus’s ministry, to the newness that Jesus brought in the redemptive-historical work of God, to Jesus as the climax of God’s plan for all things — all this exalted Jesus more highly in my mind and heart.

For me, the intellectual stimulus of Ladd’s inaugurated eschatology was deep and enduring. It prepared me to discover the richness of biblical theology in seminary, and subsequently to pursue a doctorate focusing on Jesus’s fulfillment of God’s end-time promises.

Making Sense of Me

Beyond a deepened understanding and appreciation of the New Testament and God’s redemptive work and the centrality of Christ, Ladd’s words helped me to understand my own life more clearly. I could look at Ladd’s famous diagram of the overlap of the ages (the lines of the “Present Age” and the “Age to Come” overlapping between the first and second comings of Christ) and see exactly where I lived. I could imagine, like a map at the mall, a marker located in that overlap saying, “You Are Here.” And this made sense of my life.

It explained God’s justification of me and the Holy Spirit’s ongoing transformation of my heart. These miraculous events were possible because the last days had already begun through the work of Christ. It also explained my agonizing struggles with sin. Why did part of me want to access sexual images with my dial-up modem, while another part of me desperately wanted to be free from those images? Welcome to the overlap. It explained the sadness of suffering that had touched my life. Why was my father in a wheelchair, despite my many prayers for his healing? Why was anxiety a sometimes-paralyzing reality for me? Welcome to the overlap.

“The already–not yet of the kingdom guarded me from both over-optimism and despair. It offered hope in hard times.”

The already–not yet of the kingdom didn’t answer every question, but it provided a powerful framework for understanding my sin and my sanctification. It guarded me from both over-optimism and despair. It offered hope in hard times.

Purpose of My Life

Two years after my discovery of Ladd, I was a student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. On a bright and blustery day, I sat by the Atlantic Ocean, on the rocks at Magnolia, and read these words in Richard Hays’s The Moral Vision of the New Testament:

The church community is God’s eschatological beachhead, the place where the power of God has invaded the world. All Paul’s ethical judgments are worked out in this context. . . . To live faithfully in the time between the times is to walk a tightrope of moral discernment, claiming neither too much nor too little for God’s transforming power within the community of faith. (27)

This paragraph became as seminal and shaping for me as Ladd’s had been earlier, because it offered me a life purpose. I already knew I wanted to be a pastor. Understanding the church as God’s “eschatological beachhead,” the focus of God’s end-time power rushing into the present, made that calling even more significant and urgent.

“The ‘when’ of our lives is meant to shape the how of our everyday living.”

Hays confirmed my developing conviction that ethics and eschatology are meant to go together, that the when of our lives (life in the already–not yet kingdom) is meant to shape the how of our everyday living. To help God’s people understand the in-between nature of their existence (the power of God is already available to them through the dawning of the last days, yet the consummated new creation is still future), to help them grasp the practical, ethical, daily significance of this reality — that seemed to me a good use of my life.

I wrote on a page in the back of Hays’s book, “[This is the] purpose of my life.”

Sharing the Life-Changing Mystery

In the years since, I’ve sought to live out that life purpose. I’ve sought to help people understand the book of Revelation, with its earnest encouragement of suffering believers through gorgeous portrayals of our final future.

I eventually wrote a short book to help ordinary Christians understand the exciting and frustrating tension of being simultaneously restless and patient for the future new creation because of our assurance that it is superbly good and securely ours. In my teaching of seminary students, inaugurated eschatology has been a repeated theme. Throughout fourteen years of pastoral ministry, I’ve aimed to help the people of my church understand the story line of the Bible, the cosmic significance of Christ’s work, and the utterly practical implications of a future new creation that’s ours because of what Christ has already accomplished for us.

I rejoice to be a son of the kingdom, to savor already in part the power and blessings that Jesus secured. I’m grateful to have glimpsed more of the purposes of God. And by his grace, I hope to help others rejoice in Christ as the all-satisfying climax of all the plans of God.

Edited Notes

Let’s start with Isaiah 55:1–3:

Come, everyone who thirsts,     come to the waters;and he who has no money,     come, buy and eat!Come, buy wine and milk     without money and without price.Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,     and your labor for that which does not satisfy?Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,     and delight yourselves in rich food.Incline your ear, and come to me;     hear, that your soul may live;and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,     my steadfast, sure love for David.

How do you drink God? How do you feed on God? It happens through his appointed means. What means? Here’s one taste in Acts 2:42:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Listen to what J.C. Ryle says on God’s means of grace:

The “means of grace” are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church, wherein one hears the Word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper. I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification. I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them. They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul and strengthens the work which He has begun in the inward man. . . . Our God is a God who works by means, and He will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them.

End of the Means

Here’s a summary of the means, which are God’s matrix of grace for the survival and thriving of our souls.

Hear his voice (in his word).
Have his ear (in prayer).
Belong to his body (in covenant fellowship).

And what’s the end of these means? Knowing and enjoying Jesus.

This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. (Philippians 3:7–8)

J.I. Packer said, “The more strongly one desires an end, the more carefully and diligently one will use the means to it” (Honouring the People of God, 274).

What We Have in Common

Now, what is fellowship?

The Greek word is koinōnia: the commonality. It’s what we have in common, or what we share. In the world, fellowship involves some mission, with every fellow having skin in the game. In the church, our fellowship begins with God himself. There are vertical and horizontal aspects to Christian fellowship.

God, his Son, his cross, his grace are our commonalities. That’s what we share in. We share in Jesus, which is so much more significant than sharing the same college, colors, mascot, and fight song.

Here’s a question for you: Does your heart thrill more to see someone at the mall or in an airport wearing a cross or the name of Jesus, or to see someone wearing the name of your college football team? God himself is what we have in common in this fellowship called the church. The tie that binds our hearts is Jesus and his blood. We are sinners, saved by the grace of Jesus Christ. How imponderable would it be for us to not love each other (far more than fellow football fans!).

Consider what we share — what we have in common (koinōnia):

Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:9); Father and Son (1 John 1:3, 6)
His body and blood (1 Corinthians 10:16)
The Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 13:13; Philippians 2:1)
Each other (1 John 1:7)
Our energy, attention, and goods (Hebrews 13:16)
Gospel mission (Galatians 2:9; Philippians 1:5), including finances (Romans 15:26; 2 Corinthians 8:4, 9:13)

Christian fellowship is not watching a game together as much as huddling together on the field to run the next play. The fellowship of the saints, and the thickness of communal life, is often implicit in the New Testament, but we’ll see a few texts that make it explicit.

“Be God’s voice to your brother, and hear God’s voice in your brother’s.”

We live in different times socially than they did two thousand years ago. They lived much more communally. Relationships were naturally far thicker. It was taken for granted that fellow humans were vital for life and spiritual life, vital for survival, health, thriving, and flourishing. The New Testament letters were written to churches (fellowships) to receive and practice together. But today we live in times of “expressive individualism.” Our social fabric is quickly thinning, as Robert Putnam famously observed 25 years ago in the book Bowling Alone. The texture of modern life is making fellowship harder, not easier. And our technology typically works against it.

But considering fellowship as a means of God’s grace means that life, health, and persistence in Christian faith is a community project. Our hearts harden and our faith fails as we distance ourselves from the fellowship of Christ’s people. But when we lean in, God makes us means of his grace to each other in the covenant fellowship of the local church.

Four Aspects of Our Call to Fellowship

Let’s focus on one main text tonight, and through it we will draw in others. Hebrews 10:23–25 says,

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Verse 23 is for context and footing. Regarding context, the writer of Hebrews is exhorting his readers to hold fast to Jesus and not waver, drift, or fall away to other things. And regarding the footing, the point is that God is faithful. He’s the decisive Actor. He’s the backstop. We pursue these four aspects of our call, leaning on him as the one who is faithful. And the link is Hebrews 10:24–25. How does God hold us? Through each other.

1. Get to know each other.

The first part of verse 24 says, “Let us consider . . . one another to . . .” There is actually no how in the original. Literally, it says, “Let us consider one another . . .” The object and focus of our consideration is each other — our fellows in Christ. To consider (katanoeō) means to contemplate, notice, ponder, or think hard. In other words, get to know people. Say hi, ask for their name, work, address, and testimony. Get curious about each other, as humans and Christians. Learn people’s strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. Cultivate friendships.

This is first a call to seek relationships and community. Pursue uncomfortably thick relationships and inconvenient community. Then, we are called to a deep considerateness (not a shallow considerateness). Get to know each other as family in Christ. Note the familial language in the church in 1 Timothy 5:1–2:

Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.

2. Learn to push each other.

Hebrews 10:24 says we should “stir up one another to love and good works.” Stir up means to provoke, but this a provoking to love and good deeds (not anger and hatred). So, knowing your brother or sister, provoke him or her to love and good deeds.

We should be pushing each other toward love. John 13:34–35 says,

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Love one another in two senses. First, in love for your brother, provoke him to love and deeds that help others. We provoke the heart and the hands, but the heart first and most importantly. Second, from that, the fellowship as a whole becomes the recipient and catalyst of love and good deeds.

In learning to push each other and open ourselves up to being pushed, it will be countercultural today. Instead of just informing, we are also seeking counsel. We offer counsel and ask for counsel. Christian fellowship is a two-way street.

3. Major on the magic of words.

The first part of Hebrews 10:25 says, “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another . . .”

There are two parts here, the negative and the positive: first, not neglecting, and second, encouraging (parakaleō). It also mentions the assembly, but we’ll come back to that.

How do we not neglect meeting together? Just showing up really can be half the battle at times, especially when church life is not based on family of origin, living in the same neighborhood, having the same job, or participating in the same hobbies, but having the same Jesus, the same Spirit, and the same God. If we don’t show up, if we neglect the fellowship, we can’t cultivate regularity of relationship and get to know each other and push each other as individuals and not just general humanity.

And then we use helping words for their joy and everlasting good in Christ in the ups and downs of life. Christian fellowship is word-centered fellowship. I say “helping words” because that word for “encouraging” in Hebrews 10:25 is the same one for “exhorting” in the sister passage, Hebrews 3:12–13:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort [parakaleō] one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

How Helping Words Work

First, note the stakes. He says people can “fall away from the living God.” Eternity is at stake.

Second, the word today is a call for regular vigilance and attentiveness — both daily and weekly.

Third, we are our brothers’ keepers. The many watch out for any so that none may perish. Take action against the incrementalism of unbelief.

Fourth, observe the power of our words in Christian persistence. We “exhort” to treat an “evil, unbelieving heart.” Preempt hardening. Put grace into the heart through the earhole. Note the centrality of words in fellowship and Christianity. We don’t coerce behavior from the outside; we aim to change hearts on the inside. How? Through words.

Fifth, be God’s voice to your brother, and hear God’s voice in your brother’s.

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. (Ephesians 4:29)

We receive grace and give grace:

Grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. . . . He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:7, 11–16)

Fellowship, as an irreplaceable means of grace in the Christian life, offers us two priceless joys: receiving God’s grace through the helping words of others and giving his grace to others through our own.

Place of Corporate Worship

What about “the assembly”? Here’s a word about corporate worship. Like no other single habit, corporate worship combines all three essential principles of God’s ongoing supply of grace for the Christian life: God’s word, prayer, and fellowship.

We hear from God in the pastor’s call to worship, in the reading of Scripture, in the faithful preaching of the gospel, in the words of institution at the Table, and in the commission to be lights and his witnesses in the world.
We respond to God in prayer, in confession, in singing, in thanksgiving, in recitation, in petitions, and in receiving the elements in faith.
And in corporate worship, we do it all together.

Before and after the gathering, we flood each other with helping words in the context of spiritual conversation. Here are some questions we might ask each other in those precious moments over coffee before the service or as we engage with each other afterward:

How can I pray for you?
Has God been teaching you anything in particular this week?
How did the sermon land on your heart?
How do you see God at work in our church right now?

Push past small talk to spiritual conversation about the soul, the Spirit, and Christ’s grace.

4. Hold even faster as you mature.

Listen to the last part of Hebrews 10:25: “and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

“All the more” means increasing, not decreasing. As the end draws near, let it be all the more. As you age, let it be all the more. There’s no “all the less” in the Christian life; it’s all the more. And this gets harder as you age. We can experience the “friendship dip” of middle age. My charge to myself and to my peers and older is this: Don’t let it go. Don’t let it slip. Thick, deep Christian fellowship doesn’t just happen overnight. You’ll awake one day to realize you don’t have it, and it will take weeks and months, maybe years, to build it. Hold onto it; it’s precious!

Do this “as you see the Day approaching.” That’s the day when the church will be spotless, without wrinkle or blemish.

Listen to statement 5 of your EPC Essentials:

The true Church is composed of all persons who through saving faith in Jesus Christ and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit are united together in the body of Christ. The Church finds her visible yet imperfect expression in local congregations where the Word of God is preached in its purity and the sacraments are administered in their integrity, where scriptural discipline is practiced, and where loving fellowship is maintained. For her perfecting she awaits the return of her Lord.

“Maintained” means it’s not automatic. It takes initiative and effort. Sometimes you just show up even when you “don’t feel like it.” Make the fellowship a habit.

Where does “her perfecting” come from? Ephesians 5:25–27 says,

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

And brothers and sisters, on that Day, we will go out with joy together! “You” in plural in Isaiah 55:12–13:

You shall go out in joy     and be led forth in peace;the mountains and the hills before you     shall break forth into singing,     and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;     instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;and it shall make a name for the Lord,     an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

The fellowship is a vital means of God’s grace, a vital means of our joy together in him, and therefore a means of his glory in us.