http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15612999/a-meal-for-the-journey
“May these precious seasons make me fruitful.” These words, found in the diary of a certain Isaac Staveley, who worked as a clerk for coal merchants in London during the 1770s, were written after he had celebrated the Lord’s Supper with his church, Eagle Street Baptist Church, in 1771.
In the rest of this diary, Staveley makes it evident that the celebration of the death of the Christ at the Table was a highlight of his Christian life. In the evening of March 3, he recorded that he and fellow members “came around the table of our dear dying Lord to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body, show his death afresh, to claim and recognise our interest therein, to feast on the sacrifice of his offered body as happy members of the same family of faith and love.” How many today view the Table this way?
Packed into these few words, Staveley reveals his conviction that the Lord’s Supper was a place of communion — communion with Christ and with his people. It was a place of spiritual nurture and of witness. And it was a place of rededication, both to Christ and to his church family.1
Unprized Means of Grace
I suspect that Staveley’s words sound strange to the ears of many modern evangelicals, who might think they are reading the diary of a Roman Catholic or High Anglican, not that of a fellow Reformed evangelical from the eighteenth century. Indeed, the oddity of Staveley’s words to the ears of evangelicals today reveals how much we have lost over the last two centuries. We are out of touch with a tradition that highly prized the ordinances as vehicles of spiritual grace.
“We are out of touch with a tradition that highly prized the ordinances as vehicles of spiritual grace.”
It is not simply that we have come to use mainly the word ordinance for the Lord’s Supper and baptism, rather than the word sacrament, whereas many Baptists like Staveley would have been quite comfortable with the latter term in the eighteenth century. Rather, under the impress of the rationalistic mindset of Western culture, we have lost a sense of mystery about the dynamics of the Table.
John Calvin (1509–1564), who stands at the fountainhead of the tradition of which Staveley was a part, was quite content to leave it as a mystery as to how the emblems of bread and wine are employed by the Holy Spirit to make Christ present at the celebration of his Supper. And roughly down until the opening of the nineteenth century, anglophone evangelicals followed in his stead, treasuring the presence of Christ at the Table without feeling pressured to explain exactly how this worked.
Diluting the Wine
How did this understanding of the Lord’s Supper lose its way?
During the nineteenth century, church services became primarily places of evangelism. But the Lord’s Table was not a converting ordinance, and thus great evangelistic preachers like Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) — though not C.H. Spurgeon (1834–1892), it needs to be noted — came to regard the Table as a rite of little import in the Christian life. The emergence of the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church — with men like John Henry Newman (1801–1890) and John Keble (1792–1866), who revived the doctrine of transubstantiation — also served to push evangelicals toward downplaying the importance of the Lord’s Supper.
Finally, the revivalist nature of much of evangelical life in the nineteenth century, shaped as it was by altar-call preachers like Charles Finney (1792–1875), Phoebe Palmer (1807–1874) and D.L. Moody (1837–1899), served as another key factor that led to the loss of a richer view of the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, for some, the altar call became an alternate ordinance/sacrament (in fact, Finney posited it as such, as part of his so-called “new measures”). Rather than the Table being the place where sinners met with God and heard reassuring words about the saving work of Christ that dealt definitively with their sins (making the Table a place of rededication), it was the altar call that came to function as such.
Retrieving the Old Tradition
These events in the nineteenth century reveal how we came to the point where the Table is no longer a significant part of the spiritual life of many evangelical churches. Yet how desperately we need to confess our sins together with God’s people and hear afresh, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). In the busyness of Western culture, and even church life, do we not long for an oasis of quiet, where we can commune with Christ by his Spirit with our brothers and sisters? Indeed, I would say, with Calvin and Spurgeon, that this needs to happen on a weekly basis (but be that as it may).
“Do we not long for an oasis of quiet, where we can commune with Christ by his Spirit with our brothers and sisters?”
One of the richest texts from our past as evangelicals is the Second London Confession of Faith (1677/1688), which was drawn up by the English and Welsh Particular Baptist community and was based on the Presbyterian Westminster Confession (1646) and the Congregationalist Savoy Declaration (1659). This confession not only served as the main confessional text of the Particular Baptists in England, Wales, and Ireland into the nineteenth century, but it was also adopted by the oldest Baptist associations in America, where it became known as the Philadelphia Confession (in the north) and the Charleston Confession (in the south). Indeed, it was the Charleston Confession that was used to draw up the confession of faith — the Abstract of Principles — of the seminary where I serve, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.
In Chapter 30.1 of this Baptist confession, it is stated,
The Supper of the Lord Jesus was instituted by him the same night wherein he was betrayed, to be observed in his churches unto the end of the world, for the perpetual remembrance, and shewing forth the sacrifice of himself in his death, confirmation of the faith of believers in all the benefits thereof, their spiritual nourishment, and growth in him, their further engagement in, and to all duties which they owe unto him; and to be a bond and pledge of their communion with him, and with each other.
Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper for five reasons, according to this paragraph. The Supper serves as a vivid reminder of and witness to the sacrificial death of Christ. Then, participation in the Lord’s Supper enables believers to grasp more firmly all that Christ has done for them through his death on the cross. In this way, the Lord’s Supper is a means of spiritual nourishment and growth. Fourth, the Lord’s Supper serves as a time when believers recommit themselves to Christ. Finally, the Lord’s Supper affirms the indissoluble union that exists, on the one hand, between Christ and believers, and, on the other, between individual believers.
Rich Means of Grace
One cannot come away from reading these paragraphs on the Lord’s Supper without the conviction that those who issued this confession were deeply conscious of the importance of the Lord’s Supper for the Christian life.
The London Baptist preacher Benjamin Keach (1640–1704), who signed this confession, speaks for his fellow Baptists when he states, probably with reference to the Quakers, who had discarded the observance of both baptism and the Lord’s Supper,
Some men boast of the Spirit, and conclude they have the Spirit, and none but they, and yet at the same time cry down and vilify his blessed ordinances and institutions, which he hath left in his Word, carefully to be observed and kept. . . . The Spirit hath its bounds, and always run[s] in its spiritual channel, namely the Word and ordinances.2
In other words, the Spirit uses the Scriptures, the word of God, and baptism and the Lord’s Supper to strengthen his people on their spiritual pilgrimage in this world.
In this hearty appreciation of the Lord’s Supper, these early Baptists were firmly in the mainstream of Puritan thought. The Puritans generally regarded the Supper as a vehicle that the Spirit employed as an efficacious means of grace for the believer. The seventeenth-century Baptists and their heirs in the eighteenth century, like Isaac Staveley, would have judged the memorial view of the Lord’s Supper — the dominant view among today’s evangelicals — as far too mean a perspective on what was for them such a rich means of grace.
Indeed, in seeking to articulate a richer and more biblical view of the Lord’s Table, contemporary evangelicals may do no better than to listen afresh to what is written in chapter 30 of the Second London Confession.
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What Difference Did Pentecost Make? Cues from Christ About the Work of the Spirit
ABSTRACT: The Holy Spirit, according to Jesus, is the best of gifts from the best of Fathers. But how can Christians begin to understand the person and work of the Spirit, including before and after Pentecost? Perhaps the best starting point is the life of Christ both before and after his resurrection. During his earthly ministry, Jesus lived as the perfect Spirit-filled man, the paragon of humanity as God created it to be. Even still, after his resurrection, Jesus received the Spirit in a new way: as the royal inheritance of the ascended King. And in the new covenant, the King has begun to share his spoils with his people.
For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Dan Brendsel (PhD, Wheaton), pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Hinckley, Minnesota, to provide Christological bearings for understanding the person and work of the Spirit.
If you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! (Luke 11:13)
“Teach us to pray,” the disciples ask Jesus (Luke 11:1). It is a terrific request. And Jesus is happy to oblige. First, he tells them what they are to pray (verses 2–4). But Jesus would have his disciples be much more than informed about right content in well-ordered prayer; Jesus would also have his disciples be eager and expectant in prayer. So to instruction on the content of prayer, he adds two encouragements meant to sustain fervent prayer: (1) persistence pays off (verses 5–10), and (2) our heavenly Father gives good gifts (verses 11–13). Jesus’s aim is to inspire committed, fervent prayer, so in the latter instance he speaks of the best “good gift” he can think of to showcase the Father’s astounding kindness and generosity — namely, the Holy Spirit.
Appreciating this best of gifts from the best of fathers is, to say the least, no trivial matter. Faith in the God who lays hold of us in Christ through the power of the Spirit should zealously seek to grow in understanding of this same Spirit. Unfortunately, the task is fraught with difficulty, the way is paved with distractions, and the questions needing to be answered are copious and complicated.
Challenging, Complex Questions
The Spirit is, arguably, the most nebulous member of the Trinity: a Father I have categories for, a Son I can easily envision, but where do I begin to make sense of a Spirit?1 The Spirit is, arguably, the most avoided member of the Trinity, at least at a popular level: I would wager that, outside of Pentecostal traditions, most churchgoers have never sat under a sermon series or Sunday school series exploring the person and work of the Holy Spirit.2 And when Christian reflection on the Holy Spirit’s ministry is pursued, it often happens in the context of controversy (e.g., disagreements about the so-called “charismatic spiritual gifts”), and finds itself, arguably, too ready to allow controversy to dictate the shape and focus of the treatment.
In addition to these realities, complicated biblical-theological questions arise concerning the nature of the Spirit’s work. We speak of the Spirit being “poured out” at Pentecost: does this mean he was somehow absent and inactive beforehand? After all, John 7:39 says that the Spirit was not given until Jesus was “glorified.” What do we make of such a statement? How shall we truthfully articulate the difference that Christ’s work and the event of Pentecost make? What does it mean for Christians to have and enjoy the gift of the Holy Spirit, the very treasure of the kingdom given from the ascended King’s throne? These are challenging questions, but they must be attended to if we would know aright the gift of the Father won for us by Christ.
“Jesus’s life is from beginning to end (to new beginning) saturated with the Spirit.”
Given the challenge and complexity of the matter, it can be constructive to narrow our focus. Rather than trying to tackle all or even several areas of concern, in this essay we will zero in on just one limited but strategic starting point. Specifically, we will consider the Holy Spirit in the life of Christ. We will, in other words, seek out some Christological bearings for pneumatology. This is a strategic point of departure not only because, as we shall see, Jesus’s life is from beginning to end (to new beginning) saturated with the Spirit to the point that the Spirit can be called the very Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9). To know Christ aright is necessarily to know something of the Spirit (and vice versa). But more pointedly, Christological cues in understanding the Spirit’s work in the new age are especially helpful since Christ’s own life and labor exhibits both continuity and discontinuity in the experience of the Spirit, which serves as a paradigm for proper biblical-theological understanding of the work of the Spirit through the ages.
Perfect Spirit-Filled Man
We regularly affirm (in the Western church) that the Spirit proceeds from the Son,3 but we must also say that the Son came into the world in the incarnation by the power of the Spirit. In Luke 1:35, the angel Gabriel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will “come upon her,” and the power of the Most High will “overshadow” her. The result? She will bear one who will be called “the Son of God.” But in Scripture, many figures are called “son of God” (e.g., Israel in Exodus 4:22–23, Israel’s king in Psalm 2:7, angels in Job 1:6, peacemakers in Matthew 5:9). In what sense would Luke have us understand Jesus to be “the Son of God”?4
The meaning is clarified a couple of chapters later at Jesus’s baptism. In Luke 3:21–22, the Spirit is again present and active in Jesus’s life, coming down in the form of a dove upon him, anointing him for his God-given task. The Spirit’s anointing is coupled with a verbal declaration of Jesus’s identity: he is God’s “beloved son” (verse 22). Immediately after this, seemingly out of nowhere, Luke shifts genres from narrative to genealogy (verses 23–38). But the train of thought is clarified when we come to the end of the genealogy: “. . . Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God” (verse 38). Adam was the first son of God in the biblical story line. Jesus is the second; which is to say, he is a second Adam.
Luke 3:22 and 38 (see also 4:3, 9)5 are the most contextually important indicators of what the word to Mary in 1:35 means. To be “son of God” is to be a new Adam. Indeed, the first Adam is the only other human in history who was without a human father, but who instead was breathed into human existence directly by the breath (Spirit) of God (Genesis 2:7). The virgin conception by the power of the Holy Spirit is, therefore, not just a guarantee of Jesus’s divinity. It is also and especially in the biblical narrative a way of underlining Jesus’s true and full humanity as the new Adam who brings with him the beginnings of the new creation.6
Jesus is the quintessential Spirit-filled man, who does everything he does by the power of the Spirit. He was anointed as the new Adam and the Davidic King by the Holy Spirit (Luke 3:21–22; Matthew 3:13–17) and then driven into his holy war with the devil by the Spirit (Mark 1:12–13). Jesus’s public ministry begins by the Spirit’s empowerment (Luke 4:14, 18). He goes about “doing good and healing” in the power of the Spirit (Acts 10:38; also Matthew 12:28). His prayers and affections are drenched with the Spirit (Luke 3:21–22; 10:21–22). He suffered righteously unto death through God’s eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14).7 It was through the power of the Spirit of holiness that Jesus was raised from the dead (Romans 1:4)8 and thus vindicated from the world’s verdict of guilty (1 Timothy 3:16).9 And when the vindicated Son of Man ascends to the right hand of God to take up his rightful throne, he comes “on the clouds,” enwrapped or borne, we might say, by the glory-cloud which is the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:9; cf. Daniel 7:13–14).10 Everything Jesus did, he did in submission to his Father’s will by the power of the Holy Spirit, not so much proving that he is God (which, of course, he is) but demonstrating his true humanity. Jesus is the perfect Spirit-filled man, the fullness of what humans were intended by the Creator to be.
“Everything Jesus did, he did in glad submission to his Father’s will by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
So the one who ascends to his rightful throne in Acts 1 is a human king, the new Adam who has ruled and subdued the way God intended from the beginning, the new and true Davidic king promised to Israel, the ruler and pioneer of a recreated humanity. He has won the great and final victory over his foes. And he has received his prize, the spoils of his victory as conquering and enthroned king.
His Royal Inheritance
What is the prize? The answer is suggested in an astounding, yet easy to miss, statement from the apostle Peter at Pentecost:
Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. (Acts 2:33)
The brevity and syntactical subordination of the participial clause can obscure its glory: Peter leads us, in Sinclair Ferguson’s words, “momentarily behind the events of history to give us a glimpse of a transaction between the Father and the Son-Mediator.”11 Specifically, Peter highlights that the ascended Christ himself first receives the gift of the promised Spirit from the Father, before he pours it out on the church at Pentecost. But we have seen scriptural testimony in abundance that Christ’s life was shot through with the Spirit from the very beginning. So what could it mean that the ascended Christ now “received” the Spirit?
I propose that Christ did not, until after his resurrection (kingly victory) and ascension (kingly enthronement), have the Spirit as the officially bestowed royal inheritance.12 There’s a difference between an anointed king who has not yet been crowned, and a crowned king who has full authority to rule the kingdom. There is a difference between, on the one hand, young David, already anointed by Samuel, who exercises king-like character and duties (e.g., in 1 Samuel 17) but who will not cut down Saul because Saul is the rightfully enthroned king, and on the other hand, mature David, who rules the kingdom as its publicly installed king. To change analogies, there’s a difference between a son who has the rights to the inheritance and who may even benefit from the inheritance ahead of time (e.g., live on the land, receive an allowance), and a son upon whom has finally been bestowed the full inheritance to do with as he pleases.
This is to suggest that the difference of Jesus’s experience of the Spirit pre-resurrection and ascension and post-resurrection and ascension is less spatial (absence vs. presence) and more legal (kingly prize, covenantal inheritance), less quantitative (less vs. more) and more theo-dramatic (the beginning of a new act in the salvation-historical drama, with the launching of new covenantal callings).13 A change in status, and with it a change of epochs, has occurred, which is evidenced by Christ’s ascended reception of the promised Spirit. In this way, Christ’s reception of the Spirit as ascended Lord on the throne is qualitatively different from even what he enjoyed of the Spirit in his Spirit-drenched life before his resurrection and ascension.
Treasure of the Kingdom
One of the first royal acts of this ascended King from his throne is, according to Ephesians 4:7 (quoting Psalm 68:18), to give gifts to his kingdom: “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” The King shares the spoils of his kingly victory with the people he rules; he gives generously to his redeemed. The gifts that Paul has in view are what we call spiritual gifts (Ephesians 4:11), gifts wrought by the “one Spirit” (verse 4) given to Christ’s kingdom. The Holy Spirit, the prize or the inheritance given to the victorious King, is what the King upon his enthronement shares with all his subjects. We might even say that to have the Spirit is to have the kingdom won by the King. For example, Luke’s language in Luke 11:13 and 12:32 veritably equates the Father’s giving of the Holy Spirit with his giving of the kingdom:
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit [ho patēr . . . dōsei pneuma hagion] to those who ask him! (Luke 11:13)
Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom [ho patēr . . . dounai . . . tēn basileian]. (Luke 12:32)
It is sometimes insinuated, or outright asserted, that for new-covenant believers to have the Spirit is to be privy to a power or access to some substance that was, for all practical purposes, unavailable in prior ages. On this line of thinking, because early Christians had access to a power previously unavailable, they were able, for example, to be much bolder and more confident than old-covenant believers, with boldness such as that displayed in the book of Acts. “Peter used to be cowardly, as when he thrice denied the Lord,” so the thinking goes, “but because he got the Spirit at Pentecost, he could courageously take his stand against rulers and authorities.” To simply leave matters there obscures and distorts at least as much as it expresses a slice of truthfulness.
We may suggest a better way forward, taking Christ’s experience of the Spirit before and after his resurrection and ascension as paradigmatic of the continuity and discontinuity of the Spirit’s work in believers before and after Pentecost. Jesus did not get “more” of the Spirit after the ascension, and neither, I argue, do Christians now enjoy “more” of the Spirit than old-covenant believers. But Christ did receive the Spirit in a new way — or better, in a new act of the drama. Again, we must think in legal-covenantal and theo-dramatic terms.
Christians in the Final Act
Kevin Vanhoozer argues that emotions (like courage) should be understood as “covenantal concern-based theodramatic construals.”14 In simplified terms, emotions are a matter of narrative construal (i.e., how we narrate the reality of which we are a part) and of convictions about our covenantal place in that narrative (i.e., our judgments about our location, standing, and role in the drama). On this line of thinking, the emotions surrounding courageous boldness are not owing to bare substances or powers and chemical reactions inside us. Rather, courageously bold Christians are those who construe situations in which they find themselves as fearful yet hopeful for the sons and daughters of the kingdom.
The Christians in Acts could narrate their stories, and the story of reality, in a way no one before them could: theirs was the story in which sin and wrath had finally and decisively been dealt with; the story in which even death had been defeated; the story in which the idols of the world were finally being shown to be the wind and emptiness that they are; the story whose end is a victorious King, glorious in grace, seated on the throne, bestowing the spoils of his kingdom on his people. And because they could narrate the story in a different way, because they were assured of their standing in the kingdom secured in the final act of the drama, they could have a new kind of boldness. It is no accident that in Acts 4:31, the boldness of the early church is precisely a matter of boldness in speaking the word of God, a boldness arising from a biblical narration of the meaning of the events of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection (see Acts 4:24–28).
But at the same time, it was a boldness wrought by the Holy Spirit given in answer to prayer (see again v. 31 as the divine response to vv. 29–30). The heavenly Father gives good gifts to his adopted and supplicating children in Christ. He gives the Spirit who illuminates the meaning of the redemptive work of God in history for them, so that they might narrate the drama afresh. He gives them the Spirit who assures them of their new covenantal status as kingdom citizens. He gives them the Spirit who, in these ways at least, empowers them to live with a boldness in accord with the eschatological act of the drama that Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension inaugurated.
So to have the Holy Spirit indwelling us at “the end of the ages” is not best articulated as a matter of having access to a powerful substance unavailable to prior generations. Far less is the Pentecostal presence of the Holy Spirit a mere inner, ahistorical sensation or feeling. To have the Spirit from the ascended Lord Jesus, to know his indwelling presence and power and fellowship, is to be rooted in a particular chapter in the story. It is to know oneself the covenantal subject of the crucified, risen, and ascended King by virtue of that King’s work on our behalf. It is to rest secure in that King’s victory over all our foes and in the inauguration of his kingdom of justice and peace. To have the Spirit is to have the treasure of the kingdom.
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Trembling Before God on Sunday
Audio Transcript
On Monday we looked at humor. In what ways is a humorous personality a liability? That was APJ 1813. The answer there was that humor can be stewarded well. The key is developing sober-mindedness — an awareness that doesn’t abolish humor, but puts humor in its place and protects things that are greater and more glorious. To be sober-minded, as we saw, is to cultivate a “demeanor that corresponds to the weight of the great things of life.” Which means we must avoid being “obsessed” with humor to the point that we become “incapable of serious moments” and “allergic” to them to the point that we become quick to break serious moments with injected humor. In other words, we must learn to tremble before God. This word is especially relevant to the tone of our Sunday gatherings together.
And that brings us to today. In the presence of God, everything trembles. The earth trembles, according to Psalm 114:7: “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob.” The psalmist trembles in Psalm 119:120: “My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments.” Indeed, the one who trembles at God’s word, that person catches God’s attention, according to what he tells us in Isaiah 66:2: “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” And in the New Testament, Paul calls us in Philippians 2:12 —Christians — to “work out” our salvation “with fear and trembling.”
So why do Christians tremble? Here’s Pastor John to explain, from a 2005 sermon.
Here’s Revelation 19:15: “From his mouth comes a sharp sword [now, this is describing Jesus at his second coming] with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.” Now, that last sentence is exceedingly terrible. “He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.”
Almighty Fury
Just make four observations:
1. God is “Almighty.” We are not dealing here with a mere president of the United States, the mere premier of China. We’re dealing here with the person whose power includes all the power of the political realm, and all the power of the electromagnetic realm, and all the power of the atomic realm, and all the power of the gravitational pull of the biggest stars in the universe, and all the power that upholds the universe by the word of his might. We are dealing here with what’s called Almighty — omnipotence, absolute sovereignty — and he is angry.
2. The second observation is that this Almighty God is about to pour out his wrath. So, he is a God of love (the Bible is clear about that) and he is also a God of justice and holiness and wrath (the Bible is very clear about that). We need to know God as he is, not as we make him up to be.
3. The third observation is that this wrath is full of fury — “the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.” It’s not a cool opposition. It’s not emotionally indifferent. It is a furiously angry wrath.
4. The fourth observation, and it’s the most terrible, is that it is like Christ treading a winepress in which the unbelieving are under his feet, and their blood flows like wine from the winepress.
That’s the image of the beloved apostle John, among others. And my point today is this should produce a certain appropriate emotional response in us.
Favor for the Trembling
Psalm 114:7: “Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob.” Psalm 119:120: “My flesh trembles for fear of you, and I am afraid of your judgments.” That’s a very godly man talking. Isaiah 66:2: “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble [this is God talking] and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” God’s countenance shines with favorable grace upon trembling people.
“God’s countenance shines with favorable grace upon trembling people.”
Or here’s the New Testament testimony that we should all heed. Philippians 2:12: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” To all believers, the Bible says, “Get on the road that leads to life. And if necessary, cut off your hands to stay there; gouge out your eyes to stay there. This is war, all the way to heaven. And as you go, let there be fear and trembling upon this road.”
This is not something you grow out of as you get more mature as a Christian. “Oh, maybe you start afraid, and then later on there’s no fear and trembling.” This is something that immature Christians must necessarily grow into, not something you grow out of.
Our Dread and Sanctuary
To which you should perhaps respond, “But doesn’t the Bible teach, ‘Fear not,’ dozens of places? Doesn’t it say, ‘Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God’ (Isaiah 41:10)? So, what are you saying about the ‘fear not’ passages if you’re calling us to experience normal Christianity as fear and trembling?”
What does “fear not” mean? It means two things:
It means fear God, not man.
It means don’t fear God as your enemy; fear him as one who was your enemy, and who is very great.Let me give you a text for each of those. Fear God, not man: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). This is the way I would put it: “Fear distrusting God; don’t fear displeasing men.” Let it be a terrifying prospect to you to distrust your God, but don’t let it be at all a terrifying prospect to you to displease your enemy who might cut off your head. That’s all they can do: cut off your head. But God, after the head has been cut off, can cast the soul into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear distrusting God. Fear turning away from God.
“Don’t fear God as your enemy; fear him as one who was your enemy, and who is very great.”
Isaiah 8:12 puts it this way — this is a paradoxical verse: “Do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts . . . let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary” (Isaiah 8:12–14).
It’s like when my son Karsten visited Dick Teagan at age six. There was this big German shepherd who met him eye to eye in the doorway at age six. And he was very much afraid. And Dick said, “Don’t be afraid; she’s very friendly.” We sent Karsten to the car to get something we’d forgotten, and he went trotting out to the car, and this dog comes loping up behind him with a deep rumble in her voice. It did not look like this dog was safe. And Dick hollered out to him, “Oh, Karsten, better not run away from her. She doesn’t like people to run away from her.”
And I took mental note: “That’s going into a sermon, because that’s exactly the way God is.” He’s a very friendly God. He just doesn’t like people to run away from him. And he will lope after you with a deep rumble in his voice. And if you don’t heed that rumble and turn and hug his neck, you’re going to be history forever.
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Restore My Soul: In Pursuit of Personal Revival
It all happened so slowly, so silently. Each step seemed so small, and even so reasonable in the moment. You didn’t pack up and run like the prodigal son. But somehow, when you look back, you find yourself farther from God than you thought you were.
Maybe you overheard someone praying with simple, childlike love for Jesus, and you can’t even remember the last time you prayed like that. Maybe months have passed since you have woken up and wanted, really wanted, to read your Bible. Maybe corporate worship has become a mere habit, a hollow sound, a form of words without wonder. Maybe you just committed some sin, or entertained some thought, you couldn’t have imagined a year ago.
Maybe you know exactly how you got here: a subtle worldly compromise, a Christless relationship, a slow but deep neglect, a secret sin unconfessed. Or maybe you struggle to trace the path you walked from there to here. You just know that you are not where you once were.
And now, perhaps, like that son in the far country, you think of your Father. You remember home. You wonder if you could find your way back.
‘He Restores My Soul’
At one time or another, all of us in Christ find ourselves in need of returning to Christ. Maybe we’ve wandered from him only for a few days or a week, or maybe we’ve allowed months or more to pass. Either way, our feet have strayed; our love has waned; our zeal has cooled; our eyes have dimmed. We love Jesus less today than we did yesterday. We need renewal.
Yes, but how? What road will lead us back to our Father’s house, back to the land of our first love? We might begin by remembering a line from David’s most famous psalm:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. (Psalm 23:1–3)
Our Lord Jesus specializes not only in saving the lost, but in restoring the saved. He calls himself shepherd, the good shepherd, and as such he does not rest easy while one of his dear sheep wanders from his fold. And therefore, however far we feel from Jesus, and however unable to see the paths back to him, he knows how to restore our souls. He can bear us on his shoulders and bring us home.
And when he does, he often carries us along four restoring paths.
1. Remember
Remember . . . from where you have fallen. (Revelation 2:5)
Personal revival often begins when we remember how far we have fallen, just how far we have wandered. And by remember, I mean really remember. Ponder the past. Relive former, more spiritually alive times in your life. Feel the sorrow of first love lost.
Do you remember the way you once treasured God’s word in your heart like so much gold and silver? Do you remember how prayer felt sweet as honey on your tongue? Do you remember how you hurried to arrive at corporate worship lest you should miss some song, some part of the sermon? Do you remember telling others about Jesus not from guilt but from the natural overflow of your joy? Do you remember how you once fasted with freedom; gave your time and money with a happy, open hand; killed your sin with radical resolve; and heard the name of Jesus as the most wonderful sound in all the world?
“Our Lord Jesus specializes not only in saving the lost, but in restoring the saved.”
We may feel tempted to run from such remembrance, to pretend all is well for fear of facing how much we’ve lost. But don’t run, and don’t pretend. If there is sorrow here, Jesus has promised to sweeten it. Painful remembrance is often our first step toward home. And if we humble ourselves under the comparison of us then and us now, God pledges to make us the special objects of his reviving love:
Thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” (Isaiah 57:15)
The only spirits God revives are lowly spirits; the only hearts he restores are contrite hearts. And so often, the fruits of lowliness and contrition grow from the soil of honest, unflinching memory.
2. Return
Return, faithless Israel, declares the Lord. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful. (Jeremiah 3:12)
There is, no doubt, a sick kind of remembrance, a kind that leaves us more lost than we were before. Some, forgetting God’s mercy, remember themselves right into a pit of despair. They recall home from the far country, but they don’t dare to hope that their Father is waiting for them, ready for them, scanning the horizon with ring and robe in hand. And indeed, we would have no reason to hope unless God himself told us not only to remember, but to return — unless he said, again and again to his lost children, “Come home.” But he does.
Note how God speaks to his wandering people in Jeremiah 3:12. They have not yet done anything to reform themselves. They are, in his eyes, “faithless Israel,” their faithlessness having driven them far from him. But he will not allow their faithlessness to become a reason for staying far from him. “I will not look on you in anger,” he says, wooing, “for I am merciful.” However far we’ve wandered, we find in God a mercy far deeper than our faithlessness.
He gives only one condition for his welcome: “Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your God” (Jeremiah 3:13). Only confess. Only repent. Only own your sins without excuse and receive the blood of Jesus. And then believe that whatever faithlessness has led you far from God, he still says gladly through Jesus, “Return, O faithless children, declares the Lord; for I am your master; I will take you” (Jeremiah 3:14).
3. Remove
Remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes. (Isaiah 1:16)
True remembrance plus faithful return does something deep in a soul. As with the godly grief the apostle Paul describes, we feel a renewed “indignation . . . fear . . . longing . . . zeal” (2 Corinthians 7:11). Freshly forgiven in Christ, and now no longer wandering, we rise like men and women newly alive, ready to remove whatever we have allowed to take us from God.
Revival brings a kind of holy violence to those it touches. In the Old Testament, we read of revived kings like Josiah taking hammer and torch to the idols throughout Israel (2 Kings 23:4–20). In the New Testament, we read of a more spiritual, but no less real, violence. The saints of Christ still know how to handle hammer and torch, toppling and burning idols of heart and life that have stood all too long.
We should beware at this point of a common danger that threatens the Spirit’s restoring work. Even as we labor to remove idols — habits and hobbies, entertainments and relationships, websites and apps — we can nevertheless fall short of removing all. Like the Israelites who left some enemies in the land, or like the kings who allowed the high places to stand, we can rest satisfied with half-reformations, quasi-revivals, near-renewals.
In all likelihood, such partial measures will only leave us in need of revival again, and probably sooner than we think. Don’t hesitate, then, to smash and burn your once-loved foes. Every swing of the hammer clears more space for Christ. Every piece of scorched ground becomes a garden where the Spirit’s fruit can grow.
4. Restore
Do the works you did at first. (Revelation 2:5)
Ultimately, the work of soul restoration belongs to God. “He restores my soul,” not I. But as he restores us, he also grants us to play a part in the restoration process. Just as King Josiah not only cleared the land of idols but also reinstated the Passover, so we not only remove sins but also restore those holy habits we have long neglected. We “do the works [we] did at first” (Revelation 2:5).
Such restoration has been God’s purpose from the beginnings of his dealings with us. Every painful removal was meant to make way for something better. When God brings personal revival, he inevitably brings with it a closer, holier walk with him, a fellowship with him on his “paths of righteousness” (Psalm 23:3). And oh, how great is our joy!
Then the Bible becomes hallowed ground again. Then the door of our prayer closet becomes a doorway to heaven again. Then sermons become feasts again, and evangelism becomes a privilege again, and offenses become overlookable again, and God’s people become again “the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight” (Psalm 16:3). Then we see that our God is not only the God who saves, but the God who restores — who delights to restore, who restores beyond all that we could ask or imagine.
