Augustine’s Christmas Sermons
As Augustine explained, Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh so that our sinful flesh might be cleansed and purified. This shows that it is not the flesh itself at fault, but the sin that corrupts it. That sin must die so that we might live. Thus, Augustine affirmed the created goodness of the body, and with it, the goodness of Creation. He also reminded his listeners that Jesus was born without sin so that we who have sin might be reborn through faith.
From the earliest days of the Church, Christian theologians have marveled at the paradoxes found in the incarnation. Among the earliest expressions of this marveling comes from St. Augustine, the most influential theologian in Western Christianity.
Augustine was born in 354 in Thagaste, a Roman city in modern Algeria. A brilliant thinker, he initially rejected Christianity as an intellectually empty faith, despite the faithfulness of his mother. After wandering through various pagan philosophies, the equally brilliant St. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, showed him how Christianity was superior to pagan philosophies. Augustine became a Christian, and eventually returned to Hippo, where he was elected bishop.
Augustine was an expert orator. He had been a teacher of rhetoric in Milan when he met Ambrose. As a Christian, he used his intellectual abilities and communication skills to address both the pressing theological issues and conflicts facing the Church in the late fourth and early fifth centuries as well as the challenges brought by opponents of Christianity. He also employed his impressive skills in his preaching. In his many years as bishop at Hippo, Augustine preached many Christmas sermons that discussed various aspects of the incarnation. One of his most striking sermons addresses the many paradoxes involved in God taking on human flesh. For example, in what is known as Sermon 184, which Augustine delivered sometime before A.D. 396, he pointed out the paradox of God’s sovereignty with the vulnerability of becoming a child:
The one who holds the world in being was lying in a manger; he was simultaneously speechless infant and Word.
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The Motion of God
Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, June 4, 2023
If we chase after experiences we won’t find them, but that if we look to worship God in spirit and truth, we will have dramatic and dynamic encounters with God by his Spirit that will change us, change our churches, change our towns and cities, shake the foundations of the earth, challenge the powers successfully, and occasionally be just a little bit strange.In my last post in this series filling out my ‘eucharismatic’ manifesto, I argued that the church exists to worship God, and therefore our primary purpose is worshipping God.
However, if you’ve been following along, you might think that this is an odd first step when I have argued that the church is defined by her encounters with God, which seems to shift the focus to us. That’s not right, church isn’t about us, it’s about God.
Except, I’m a Reformed Charismatic; Calvinistic in my understanding of salvation (and more). Which means I want to argue an important point that affects what happens on Sundays, but also everything else in the entire cosmos. It’s this: God always moves first.
When I repent what I discover is that in the counsels of the Almighty God, he first chose me and elected me to life, the Spirit regenerating my heart so that I can respond in faith to his call and repent. When God calls, he makes what he calls for happen.
When I move towards God and meet him, I will always find that he has moved first. God’s kindness is gratuitous, it overflows, what we call grace or gift is how God always works with his people.
It’s because of the Lord’s gracious posture towards us, his movement, that we can speak of the gathered Church as a series of encounters with God, or even of the Church itself as the mystery of the bride encountering the husband, the son encountering the father, the army encountering the general, the Temple bricks encountering the divine presence of Yahweh filling the holy of holies.
When we gather to worship God, he will have graciously ‘presenced’ himself with us. And before you cry that ‘God is everywhere’ and so can’t be especially present, you’re going to need to go and look at the holy of holies again.
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Teaching Our Children about Forgiveness
Family is wonderful. It can also, at times, be volatile. Establish a regular rhythm of prayer together as a family. This can be as easy as praying at mealtimes. This regular rhythm, even if it is only at one meal a day, gives us an opportunity to go before the Lord whenever inevitable tensions arise. When a fight has just broken out, Jesus calls us to be reconciled. One way to clear the air is to ask for help in prayer. Something about the ordinariness of a mealtime prayer of thanksgiving makes such requests surprising but, most importantly, ordinary.
Parents are parables. Our lives tell stories to our children. The great gospel story that we hope our lives will tell is one of forgiveness. God forgives us in Christ, and a living witness of God’s forgiveness is a heart of forgiveness in us—a heart that not only receives, but gives. We must begin teaching our children about forgiveness with the gospel, but we must also become parables of forgiveness for them with our lives.
One of the most striking parables about forgiveness is told in the negative: the parable of the unforgiving servant. In the parable, a servant who owes much is forgiven much, only to turn around and demand from another the relatively little that was owed to him (see Matt. 18:21–35). This parable stresses how incongruous it is for the forgiven not to forgive, but the fact that Jesus stresses such an incongruity implicitly teaches us that we first become forgivers by being forgiven. That is why we teach forgiveness to our children by starting with the good news that we are forgiven because of the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ.
The Heidelberg Catechism in its exposition of the Apostles’ Creed helps us understand the extent of our forgiveness in the gospel:What do you believe concerning “the forgiveness of sins”?A. I believe that God,because of Christ’s satisfaction,will no longer rememberany of my sinsor my sinful naturewhich I need to struggle against all my life.Rather, by his graceGod grants me the righteousness of Christthat I may never come into judgment. (Q&A 56)
As outlined here, our forgiveness is lavish—secured in Christ and forever. The next lesson for our children is that if this is our forgiveness in the gospel, then so it should be when it comes to our forgiveness of others.
We teach our children that their forgiveness of others should look like their own:Our forgiveness should be because of Christ, in honor of Him, just as God forgives us “because of Christ’s satisfaction.”
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The Biggest PCA News You Never Heard
Between November and March, Sauls’ views changed in a way that made him incompatible with the PCA: He became (or revealed himself to be) an ecclesial egalitarian, meaning he believes that all of the roles and offices in the church are open to men and women. When the face of a denomination changes his views in such a dramatic way (think Rick Warren and the SBC) it is, as they say, kind of a big deal. But it is not something readers of ByFaith ever read about: There has been no reporting on the May presbytery meeting where he was removed (as far as we can tell) from the presbytery’s rolls—as much for his intention to join another denomination as for his new views.
YOU MIGHT HAVE HEARD that one of the Presbyterian Church in America’s most notable ministers got in trouble, was suspended by his presbytery, went through a lengthy discipline process, eventually resigned his church, and two days later was restored as a member in good standing by his presbytery. You might have heard that much and no more, because as far as the PCA’s denominational organ ByFaith1 is concerned that was the end of the story.
ByFaith is in a tough spot. They have to balance the varied roles of “internal” (for the PCA) messaging system, outward-facing…well, face of the PCA, news bureau, and public relations organ. They do a pretty good job covering the annual General Assembly but often opt out of controversial issues. And because of the broadness of the PCA they sometimes promote figures who later become problematic or leave—loudly or quietly. An old puff piece on the “ministry” that factored heavily into pastor Greg Johnson and his historic church leaving the PCA under duress, for instance, lives on.
The innovative is often favored over the boring, but controversy is sometimes handled with kid gloves or passed over in silence. Such (so far) has been the case with news about departed celebrity pastor and prolific author Scott Sauls whose visage, byline, and opinions have been all over the pages of ByFaith for years. It appears that he wrote more ByFaith articles in the last decade than any other PCA pastor, and he was Tim Keller’s golden boy understudy2—arguably the face of the PCA, the exemplar of pastoral piety and practice.HE IS PCA NO MORE. But you might not know that. You probably don’t know it because the facts of his departure were not covered by ByFaith.
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