Light of the World, Come
The light of Christ radically changes our lives, without a doubt. But there’s more: it also equips us to help those still in the dark catacombs of rebellion in which we once walked. As the prophet Isaiah says, “I will appoint you to be a covenant for the people and a light to the nations, in order to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, and those sitting in darkness from the prison house” (Isaiah 42:6–7).
Unless you’re a cat burglar, a cave bat, or a deep-sea creature, you no doubt function far better in the light than in the dark. We were made to live in the light, both in a literal and spiritual sense.
The Bible often presents darkness symbolically as—at its worst—evil and walking in rebellion against God, or—at minimum—as a less-than-ideal spiritual situation. Things have been this way since the opening verses of Scripture, where Genesis 1:2 says, “Now the earth was formless and empty, [and] darkness covered the surface of the watery depths.” This was not how God was going to leave things.
To remedy the situation, God could have said many things. What He did not say was, “Let there be TikTok,” “pickleball,” or “a venti iced chai tea latte with two pumps of brown sugar, one pump of vanilla, and some sweet cold foam cream topped with caramel drizzle.” Instead, He said, “Let there be light” (v.3). The result? “God saw that the light was good” (v.4). Before populating the earth with His image-bearers, God filled the bleak void with His light.
Throughout Scripture, the light versus darkness motif continues to appear.
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Freedom from the Tyranny of “Success”
Faithfulness is obedience—obedience to God’s commands, calling, and gifting—and obedience is success. That means that you may not be the most gifted teacher, you’re the right teacher for your church at this moment. Even though you may not be the greatest evangelist in the world, but you’re the person to share the gospel with your neighbor. And although you may not have much to offer by the world’s standards, but what you do have, you give joyfully.
Some time ago, a friend shared an announcement that he was writing a book for a well-respected publisher. I was, of course, excited—but I was also a little jealous. It was foolish and unnecessary, of course, but it was there. When I should have been fully celebrating my friend’s good fortune, I was wondering why I wasn’t experiencing the same.1
I know I’m not alone in this. All of us have moments where we don’t respond to God’s blessings to others in the way we would want or expect, whether His blessings to an individual, to an organization, or a church. We start to play comparison games, even if only in our heads. We start to wonder why this person or that church is more successful than us.
And there’s the problem: Success.
What does that even mean? What does success look like, especially in the context of ministry?
False Measures of Success
There are two primary ways we define success as Christians, especially when it comes to ministry:“Orthodoxy.” Success in this sense is defined by our right beliefs. That if we’re consistently proclaiming and teaching truth, then we’re being successful.
Fruitfulness. Perhaps it’s because of how 1980s business culture affected overall leadership culture, but the most common way we measure success is by the numbers: attendance, giving, baptisms, professions of faith, and so forth.But here’s the problem: it’s possible to be orthodox in word, but convey that truth in a way that undermines it. To be arrogant and belligerent, and mistake people being repulsed by your behavior as their rejection of the Lord. And I know, because I’ve been that guy on occasion, a “jerk for Jesus” wielding my Mighty Theological Hammer of Justice™, ready to smash any and all apparent heresies that might lure away an unsuspecting believer. (It’s not a good look.)
Unfortunately, fruitfulness also falls short as well, at least in the way that we define it.
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No Mere Exemplar: Christ as the Object of Christian Faith in Chapter 5 of Christianity and Liberalism (Part 1)
The true joy of embracing the truth far exceeds the comfort derived from the accolades of men, both in this age and in the age to come. It is for this reason that Machen spoke, taught, and wrote with such clarity in defense of orthodoxy for the love and glory of Jesus, the only legitimate object of saving faith. Like Machen in the twentieth century and like Peter in the first century, may Christians today confess with sincere faith that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt 16:16) contending earnestly for “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
In Matthew 16:13–17 Jesus asked his closest followers two questions of enduring significance. (1) “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (v. 13) and (2) “Who do you say that I am?” (v. 15). The first of these questions was answered with a variety of opinions from mistaken but admiring crowds. “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (v. 14). Of course, there were others answering the question in Jesus’s own day who were not so admiring. Many accused him of blasphemy (Matt. 9:3), demon possession (John 7:20), and even of occultic demon manipulation (Matt. 12:24). Whether generally friendly or openly hostile, the variety of public opinions about Jesus of Nazareth all fell woefully short of the truth. Each opinion was the product of the reasoning faculties of Jesus’s contemporaries aided by the faulty presuppositions of their experience and worldview and not the result of divine revelation. When the Lord Jesus himself pressed the question personally to the disciples, it was Peter who spoke the truth about Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (v. 16). This answer, the true confession, was not the result of Peter’s reasoning faculties nor the natural outworking of his presuppositions. The truth of this conclusion was grounded in the fact that it was divinely revealed: “Blessed are you, Simon bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father who is in heaven” (v. 17).
In his enduringly relevant classic, Christianity and Liberalism, J. Gresham Machen argues convincingly that the theological commitments of liberalism amount to a fundamentally different religion than Christianity.[1] Nowhere is this fact more clearly illustrated than in the comparison between liberalism’s doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ as compared to that of orthodox Christianity. As the Enlightenment ran its course in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, some philosophers and biblical scholars had taken an openly hostile view of Jesus, regarding him as a false prophet with a deluded mind or an egotistical agenda (e. g., H. S. Reimarus and L. Feuerbach).
Others, however, though fully committed to enlightenment methods and ideas, attempted to maintain a reverent view of Jesus. Friedrich Schleiermacher, for example, had argued that Jesus was the chief exemplar of a pure and unfettered God-consciousness, the experiential feeling of absolute dependence.[2] For American liberal theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, Jesus was both the greatest preacher and the most prolific actor with respect to radical social action, ushering in the kingdom of God by breaking the chains of systemic social sins and liberating those oppressed by the systems.[3] This was the species of enlightenment ideology embraced by the liberalism of Machen’s day.
Like those who hailed Jesus as John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets, liberal preachers and theologians wished to maintain some reverence for Jesus as an exemplary figure, even as the first and quintessential Christian, but their rejection of the authority of divine revelation inevitably resulted in their failure to believe and confess the truth about Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Therefore, just as the religion of liberalism is altogether different than Christianity, so the Jesus revered by liberalism is an altogether different figure than the Jesus of the true Christian faith.
Machen’s treatment of the person of Christ is the subject of Chapter five of Christianity and Liberalism. Before considering the gospel message of salvation in Chapter six, Machen says, “We must consider the Person upon whom the message is based. And in their attitude toward Jesus, liberalism and Christianity are sharply opposed.”[4] Over the course of some thirty pages, Machen states, re-states, and defends the thesis that true Christianity regards Jesus of Nazareth as the object of faith while liberalism can, at best, regard him as the example of faith:
The modern liberal preacher reverences Jesus; he has the name of Jesus forever on his lips; he speaks of Jesus as the supreme revelation of God; he enters, or tries to enter, into the religious life of Jesus. But he does not stand in a religious relation to Jesus. Jesus for him is an example for faith, not the object of faith. The modern liberal tries to have faith in God like the faith which he supposes Jesus had in God; but he does not have faith in Jesus.[5]
In the remainder of Part 1 of this essay, I will summarize Machen’s trenchant critique of the liberal view of the person of Christ in four parts to set his argument forward as an example of the kind of courage, clarity, and winsomeness needed to “contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Part 2 of the essay will offer a summary of a few of the ideological challenges facing orthodox Christology today followed by a reminder from Machen of the unchanging truths of orthodox Christology, which function as the right answer to falsehood in every age.
1. The Jesus of History is the Christ of Faith
Machen’s critique of liberal Christology’s belief in Christ as a mere exemplar of Christian faith can be broken down into four distinct themes. First, liberal Christology is based entirely on a historical-critical methodology that posits a sharp dichotomy between the Christ of orthodox Christian faith and the Jesus of history. This dichotomy is usually traced back to the German scholar H. S. Reimarus, who sought to use the methods of historical-critical research to separate fact from fiction in the accounts of the actions and words of Jesus found in the canonical gospels. This undertaking, eagerly embraced by other enlightenment thinkers, would later come to be called “The Quest of the Historical Jesus.”[6] Fundamental to the quest was the philosophical argument that an ancient historical record cannot be trusted as fact since the truth of what is being claimed cannot be demonstrated in the present. If historical truth itself cannot be demonstrated, then nothing can be demonstrated from historical truths. Nothing universally binding, and certainly nothing supernatural, can be based in the claims of history, however true those claims may be. This idea is what G. E. Lessing called the “ugly broad ditch” that could not be crossed.[7]
Machen rehearses the claim of Lessing’s “ugly broad ditch,” observing that, “for modern liberalism, a supernatural person is never historical.” He notes that, for liberals, “The problem could be solved only by the separation of the natural from the supernatural in the New Testament account of Jesus, in order that what is supernatural might be rejected and what is natural might be retained.”[8]
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Expository Preaching
Jesus tells the disciples, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God” (v. 10). In other words, the message of the gospel that Jesus preached is “the secrets of the kingdom” that must be revealed. It is the light that ignites the lamp of our lives. And that light must not be hidden but must shine so that others may see it too.
“Getting the Most Out of Expositional Preaching”
When I was a teenager, I often failed to do what my parents asked of me in a timely and adequate manner. At the root of my problem, they had often to point out, was the fact that I “just didn’t listen.” In many ways, a failure to listen lies at the root of most of our struggles to grow as Christians. We hear partially. We hear what pleases us and edit out the rest. We mishear. We ignore. We reinterpret what we hear. It’s not simply that we have failed to understand what God is saying to us. It’s that we have preferred not to listen.
Jesus’s famous parable of the sower in Luke 8 outlines various responses to the Word of God. Given how famous the parable is, the passage that follows is often overlooked, yet it has much to say to us about how we listen to God in the preaching of his Word. First, Jesus imagines a ridiculous scenario: lighting a lamp and then putting it under a jar or a bed. This, of course, defeats the purpose of lighting it. It makes no sense. Instead, the lamp goes “on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light” (v. 16). That’s why we light lamps. In the context of the chapter, read alongside the parable of the sower, Jesus is saying that those who have received the Word in faith are like lamps that have been lit. Their purpose is to shine the light of the Word in such a way that others might be drawn to it and welcomed in.
Jesus reinforces that point with this principle: “Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light” (v. 17). To understand what is being said here, we should not miss how Jesus uses the same language to talk about his own message. He tells the disciples, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God” (v. 10). In other words, the message of the gospel that Jesus preached is “the secrets of the kingdom” that must be revealed. It is the light that ignites the lamp of our lives. And that light must not be hidden but must shine so that others may see it too.
Well, so what? What difference should Jesus’s teaching about the Word here really make? Jesus drives home the implications: “Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away” (v. 18). This verse serves as a conclusion for the whole section of Luke 8, beginning with the parable of the sower, that deals with the way the Word of God works. Verse 18 tells us that the key issue, the vital factor, must be how we hear the Word.
Hebrews 2:1 makes a similar point. The author urges his readers to “pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” When it comes to the way we listen to preaching, the stakes are far higher than we may at first imagine. Hebrews 2:1 warns us of spiritual drift. Luke 8:18 goes even further and warns of eternal consequences if we “have not” when, through the preaching of the Word, every opportunity to “have” has been afforded us. So what does it mean to take care how we hear? How shall we “pay much closer attention to what we have heard”? These are the questions we hope to answer in this chapter. Put more directly, we need to know how we can get the most from expositional preaching.
The Westminster Larger Catechism offers some important help. It asks, “What is required of those that hear the word preached?” and answers, “It is required of those that hear the word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer; examine what they hear by the scriptures; receive the truth with faith, love, meekness, and readiness of mind, as the word of God; meditate, and confer of it; hide it in their hearts, and bring forth the fruit of it in their lives.”
This is an excerpt from the chapter, “Getting the Most Out of Expositional Preaching” from David Strain’s book, “Expository Preaching,” part of the Blessings of the Faith series. Pick up a copy of “Expository Preaching” for more insight into the importance and benefits of this approach to the Word of God. Used with permission.