From dust we came, and to dust we will return (unless our Lord returns first). But this dust will be resurrected, reconstituted when Christ comes again in glory. On that day of reunion—of body and soul, earth and heaven, men and angels—when all things are at last visibly made subject to the second man, Jesus Christ, then believers will live forever in fully and finally sanctified bodies.

Holiness begins and ends with a crisis. In regeneration, we were definitively sanctified (past tense). Our whole Christian life involves progress in sanctification. But that process will be brought to perfection in two further critical moments: the moment of our death and the hour of the final resurrection (see Westminster Confession of Faith 32.1, 3).
Christians have already been sanctified; we have already “died to sin.” Sin’s dominion is broken (Rom. 6:2, 14). But we are not yet free from sin’s presence or its influence. The Christian life is a battle all the way home.
But one day—or more precisely, on two days—that will all change. When believers die, they are immediately “with Christ” (Phil. 1:23) and are, in William Cowper’s words, “saved to sin no more.” What a mixture of relief and joy that moment will bring.
Paul adds that it will be “far better” than anything we have known here. We have never known a moment when that has been true here. But then we will be free from the down-drag of sin, breathing in—and then breathing out again—the pure, perfectly sanctified air of glory. What must it be like when perfect holiness and total love for God the Father, Son, and Spirit—and for our fellow believers—are both natural and easy? Yes, actually easy—and as natural as breathing.

Yet there is more to come. Our bodies are not merely temporary housing for the soul. No, our bodies also are who and what God made us to be out of the dust of the earth. From dust we came, and to dust we will return (unless our Lord returns first). But this dust will be resurrected, reconstituted when Christ comes again in glory.

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The question “Who am I?” has thrust itself to the forefront of my attention at three periods of my own life.
Period One
When I left high school, a Christian teacher gave me a farewell present of Die­trich Bonhoeffer’s famous book The Cost of Discipleship. Among the additional pieces it included was his poignant poem “Who Am I?” It is deeply self-reflective, probing, and honest: Is he really the person whom others admire for his poise and dignity when he himself experiences hidden struggles?
Am I then really that which other men tell of?Or am I only what I myself know of myself?Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressingMy throat, yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,tossing in expectation of great events,powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance. . . .
There is something honestly biblical and Christian about such self-probing. The Apostle Paul knew this contrast between the internal and external realities of life. Bonhoeffer’s final resolution is, like Paul’s (1 Cor. 4:1–5), altogether healthy: “Whoever I am, Thou knowest O God, I am thine.”
Period Two
I encountered the same words “Who am I?” a couple of decades later, in the discovery that they were the most commonly used title for poems written by high-school students. The question was not so much self-consistency but the quest for maturity. There was nothing surprising about this—nor necessarily unhealthy. The teenage years are times of personal growth in self-knowledge: What are my gifts and aspirations? What kind of character am I becoming? What do I want to do with my life? What, and who, will be really important to me? All these are questions that our experiences invite us to ask, think through, and answer. They are part of the process of healthy maturation.
Period Three
But when the question “Who am I?” is asked today, although the words remain the same, the tone and the nuance have changed dramatically. By and large, the question today is not one of mature self-examination or an expression of personal growth but a question of self-invention. Frequently it has become genderized and sexualized. Now the refrains sung by the siren voices of the world sing to young sailors beginning their journey on the sea of life are:
You can be anything you want; you alone choose your identity.
While you alone must choose, we will tell you what your choices are and define the field of discussion—although, of course, you can choose to be and self-identity as you please; there is total self-autonomy.
And fundamental in your choice is the question of your decision about the gender and sexuality you will choose for yourself. That will almost entirely define you and dominate your thinking.
And among other things, we are informing you, dogmatically, that answering this question will involve your considering the possibility that you have been born in the wrong body.
In addition, by way of warning, be aware that to regard our parameters as misguided or erroneous or, worse, to deny their validity is to commit sin. It is a transgressing of our norms that we will seek to silence. Breaching them will require your re-education by our people and expose you to marginalization and perhaps complete exclusion.
While it is not yet said quite so universally and boldly, our societies have been moving in the direction of silencing the biblical view of human nature. We need to understand that inevitably when there is no place for God in our thoughts, a right understanding of man as made in His image will also be rejected. Nietzsche-like, would-be thought leaders implicitly cry out, “If there is a god, how can I bear not to be that god?” and—in fulfillment of Romans 1:32—will urge others to share their distortions to make them seem “normal” and eventually normative. (“Equality” was never the goal.)

The Scriptures use a series of descriptions to identify the Spirit. He is the Spirit of glory, truth, holiness, sonship—and much more (Rom. 1:4; Rom. 8:15; 1 Peter 4:14; 1 John 4:6). We should notice particularly how our Lord Jesus introduces the Spirit in Jesus’ Farewell Discourse in John 13–17. In essence, Jesus tells His disciples that the Spirit will be to them everything that He Himself has been during the course of His ministry. For while the Son and the Spirit are personally distinct, they are economically entwined.

Modern Bible translations are in the news these days, sometimes for controversial reasons. But one universal benefit of them is that the Holy Spirit is no longer referred to as “it.” Curiously a chief culprit here is the much-loved King James Version (for example, Romans 8:26: “the Spirit itself”).
In fact, pneuma (the Greek word for “spirit” or “wind”) is a neuter gender noun and therefore attracted a neuter pronoun, “it.” Still, John 14:26 and 15:26, which refer to the Spirit by the masculine pronoun “he” (ekeinos), left older Bible readers in no doubt about his personal nature: “he” not “it.” Whatever it means for human spirits, created as the image of God to be personal is rooted in the very being of their Creator. God is a personal being in a unified, uncreated, eternal, tri-personal manner—we in a created mono-personal manner. We are the tiny reflection; He is the great and glorious original. But what does Scripture mean when it speaks of God as Father, Son, and Spirit?
The Old Testament word for spirit, ruach, is onomatopoetic. That is, its meaning is echoed in its sound: wind in motion, sometimes storm-wind.
It lies on the surface of the Bible that the Holy Spirit is both divine and personal, as Acts 5:3–4 indicates. The Spirit can be lied to (a personal characteristic); to do so involves lying to God Himself (He is fully divine).
Yet there is something about this name (“Spirit”) that suggests the mysterious and elusive. Jesus Himself said that the pneuma blows where it wills, but we cannot tell where it comes from or goes to, and so it is with the pneuma of God (John 3:8). Are we not, therefore, treading on dangerous ground if we enquire further about the identity of the Spirit, especially when our Lord stressed that the Spirit does not glorify Himself (John 16:13–14)?
We cannot truly worship One we do not know, or experience “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:14) if He remains faceless. But how can we know Him when even His name lacks the personal atmosphere of either “Father” or “Son”?
Meditation on two aspects of the Bible’s teaching helps us here. Firstly, the Scriptures use a series of descriptions to identify the Spirit. He is the Spirit of glory, truth, holiness, sonship—and much more (Rom. 1:4; Rom. 8:15; 1 Peter 4:14; 1 John 4:6).
We should notice particularly how our Lord Jesus introduces the Spirit in Jesus’ Farewell Discourse in John 13–17. In essence, Jesus tells His disciples that the Spirit will be to them everything that He Himself has been during the course of His ministry. For while the Son and the Spirit are personally distinct, they are economically entwined. Jesus is Teacher, Guide, and Counselor; Jesus goes to prepare a home for His disciples (John 14:2).
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Moses ascended the earthly mountain of God and came down with the law written on tablets of stone. But later, he expressed a longing that all the Lord’s people might have the Spirit (Num. 11:29). The law of Moses could command but it could not empower. By contrast, Jesus ascended the heavenly mountain of God and came down in the Spirit to write His law on our hearts.

At a PGA Tour tournament in October 2015, Ben Crane disqualified himself after completing his second round. He did so at considerable financial cost. No matter—Crane believed the personal cost of not doing it would be greater (encouraged by a devotional article he had read that morning by Davis Love III, the distinguished former Ryder Cup captain).
Crane realized he had broken one of the more recondite rules of golf. If I followed the story rightly, while in a hazard looking for his ball, he leaned his club on a stone. He abandoned the ball, took the requisite penalty for doing so, played on, and finished his round. He would have made the Friday night cut comfortably; a very successful weekend financially beckoned. Then Ben Crane thought: “Should I have included a penalty for grounding my club in a hazard?” Sure enough (Rule 13.4a). So he disqualified himself.
Crane has been widely praised for his action. No avalanche of spiteful or demeaning attacks on cyberspace or hate mail for being narrow-minded. All honor to him. Intriguingly, no one seems to have said or written, “Ben Crane is such a legalist.”
How odd it is to see so much praise for his detailed attention to the rules of golf, and yet the opposite when it comes to the rules of life, the (much more straightforward) law of God, even in the church.
There is a problem somewhere.
The Problem
Neither Jesus nor Paul had a problem with the law. Paul wrote that his gospel of grace upholds and establishes the law (Rom. 3:31)—even God’s laws in their negative form, since the “grace of God . . . teaches us to say ‘No’” (Titus 2:11–12, NIV). And remember Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:17–19? Our attitude to the law is a litmus test of our relationship to the kingdom of God.
So what is the problem? The real problem is that we do not understand grace. If we did, we would also realize why John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace,” could write, “Ignorance of the nature and design of the law is at the bottom of most religious mistakes.”
There is a deep issue here. In Scripture, the person who understands grace loves law. (Incidentally, mere polemics against antinomianism can never produce this.)
Think again of Ben Crane. Why keep the complex rules of golf? Because you love the game. Something similar, but greater, is true of the believer. Love the Lord, and we will love His law—because it is His. All is rooted in this beautiful biblical simplicity.
Think of it in terms of three men and the three “stages” or “epochs” they represent: Adam, Moses, and Jesus.
Adam
At creation, God gave commandments. They expressed His will. And since He is a good, wise, loving, and generous God, His commandments are always for our best. He wants to be a Father to us.
As soon as God created man and woman as His image (Gen. 1:26–28—a hugely significant statement), He gave them statutes to follow (v. 29). The context here makes clear the rationale: He is Lord; they are His image. He made them to reflect Him. He is the cosmic Overlord, and they are the earthly under-lords. His goal is their mutual enjoyment of one another and creation in a communion of life (1:26–2:3). So, He has given them a start—a garden in Eden (2:7). He wants them to extend that garden to the ends of the earth, and to enjoy it as miniature creators, images imitating the great original Creator (1:28–29).
God’s creation commands then had in view our reflecting His image and glory. His image-bearers are made to be like Him. In one form or another, all divine commands have this principle enshrined in them: “You are my image and likeness. Be like me!” This is reflected in His command: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev. 19:2).
Implied here is that God’s image-bearers are created, hardwired as it were, to reflect Him. Yes, there are external laws given to them, but those laws simply provide specific applications of the “laws” inbuilt in the divine image, laws that are already on the conscience.
It was instinctive then for Adam and Eve to imitate God, to be like Him, because they were created as His image and likeness—just as little Seth would instinctively behave like his father, Adam, because he was “in his likeness, after his image” (Gen. 5:3). Like father, like son.
But then came the fall: sin, lack of conformity to God’s revealed law, and distortion of the image resulted in malfunctions of the inner human instincts. The mirror image turned away from the gaze and the life of God, and since then all people (except Christ) have shared in this condition. The Lord remains the same. His design for His image remains the same. But the image is marred. The under-lord who was created to turn the dust into a garden has become dust himself:
By the sweat of your faceyou shall eat bread,till you return to the ground,for out of it you were taken;for you are dust,and to dust you shall return. (Gen. 3:19)
We remain the image of God, and the laws that govern how we live best are unchanged. But now we are haggard and spent, twisted within, off center, distorted, carrying the aroma of death. Once chief operating officers, we are now vagrants who survive only by stealing from the Owner of the company (Yahweh and Son) who provided for us so generously. The law within functions still, but unreliably at best, not because the law is faulty but because we are.
For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. (Rom. 2:14–15; see also 7:7–25)
But God wants His portrait—His image—back.
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Living according to conscience, then, is not a matter of “being faithful to my best self” or “following conscience per se.” It is a matter of conscience’s being informed, shaped, and trained by God’s Word and becoming increasingly sensitive to its assessments. To say that “God alone is Lord of the conscience” is to affirm that God’s Word is paramount in shaping this dimension of our self-consciousness. My Christian responsibility, therefore, is to immerse myself in the doctrines, patterns, and precepts of the Word of God.

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also. —Westminster Confession of Faith 20.2
This is no ivory-tower statement. Many of the delegates to the Westminster Assembly were working pastors and all too familiar with “the real world.” In fact, as they were writing in the 1640s, the real world was caught up in a terrible civil war, behind which lay the very issues that chapter 20 of the confession was written to address: liberty of conscience. A glance at my “seventeenth century” bookshelves reveals such learned works as A.S.P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty; William Haller, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution; and Christopher Hill, Liberty against the Law. The titles say it all. Like the issue of law and love, the topic of Christian liberty, its nature and its implications, its extent and its limitations, is perennially significant. In seventeenth-century England, it was critical.
The Westminster divines faced both legalism and antinomianism, a false binding of the conscience on the one hand and libertinism on the other. In addition, this was an era of fear: fear of the return of Roman Catholicism and an opposite fear (one that at times seemed equal), the fear of anarchy represented by such quaintly named groups as Quakers, Levellers, Diggers, Mechanic Preachers, and Muggletonians. How freedom and responsibility are balanced in the Christian life was a matter of major concern. Hence, here in chapter 20, section 2, the exposition of Christian liberty in general (section 1) becomes narrowly focused on the issue of liberty of conscience in particular. During the first two years or so of the assembly’s work, the divines labored long and often to compose for their own time a chapter of biblical balance. For that reason, they produced a statement of lasting value. In these brief reflections on their teaching, it may be helpful for us to consider (1) its biblical foundations, (2) its historical relevance, and (3) some aspects of its practical application.
Biblical Foundations
What do we mean when we say, “God alone is Lord of the conscience”? What is “conscience,” and in what sense is God “Lord” of it?
The word conscience (Greek syneidsis) appears around thirty times in the New Testament, with the Apostle Paul using it twice as often as all the other authors combined. In his world, the conscience was seen as a function of human nature in which the self becomes aware of a moral assessment being made on its behavior based on some internally operative standard of judgment. The conscience is thus experienced as an approving or condemning voice that functions both to assess past and to guide present and future behavior.
Paul’s use of conscience, however, needs to be set within a biblical framework. Man (male and female) was created as the image of God in righteousness and holiness (Gen. 1:26; Eph. 4:24). Adam and Eve’s consciences were informed by and aligned with the revealed will of God and functioned to assess and to guide their behavior (Gen. 2:15–17). The result? In their original created condition, to borrow Paul’s expression (Rom. 2:15), their consciences bore witness to their integrity. They experienced an appropriate conscience approval, the evidence of which lay in that “the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25). God’s will for them and their faithfulness to it aligned. They enjoyed a “good conscience” and the experience of unclouded friendship. But that did not last long. Soon, in the aftermath of their disobedience to God’s Word (3:1–6), their Word-informed consciences were accusing and condemning them.
Genesis 3:7–8 opens the next stage in the human drama: “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Thus act 2 began: “And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths . . . , and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord.” They tried unsuccessfully to hide their sense of shame from each other (their sense of guilt emerges in the blame game in which they engage in 3:11–13). Nor could they hide from God. Their consciences had declared them to be guilty even before He asked them where they were (vv. 9–11).
Adam and Eve refused to allow “God alone” to be “Lord of the conscience.” In this context, it is easy to sense that the confession’s words sound like an eerie echo of the history of Eden. Adam and Eve were truly free when they lived according to God’s Word. They were in fact “free from the doctrines and commandments . . . which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship.” Their tragic mistake was “to believe such doctrines . . . [and] obey such commands. . . .” But they foolishly listened to the serpent and exercised “implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience.” That process was calculated “to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also” (WCF 20.2).
From where we stand at the other end of the Bible story, we see that the conscience is now no longer perfectly aligned with God’s Word. It is instead an aspect of people whose minds do not and whose wills cannot submit to God’s law (Rom. 8:7). Our regeneration needs to be accompanied by the recalibration of our consciences according to the Word of God. And if that process is to progress, we need to be on our guard against the same pattern of entrapment to which our first parents succumbed in Eden.
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I must guard my heart as if everything depended on it. This means that I should keep my heart like a sanctuary for the presence of the Lord Jesus and allow nothing and no one else to enter.

Sometimes people ask authors, “Which of your books is your favorite?” The first time the question is asked, the response is likely to be “I am not sure; I have never really thought about it.” But forced to think about it, my own standard response has become, “I am not sure what my favorite book is; but my favorite title is A Heart for God.” I am rarely asked, “Why?” but (in case you ask) the title simply expresses what I want to be: a Christian with a heart for God.
Perhaps that is in part a reflection of the fact that we sit on the shoulders of the giants of the past. Think of John Calvin’s seal and motto: a heart held out in the palm of a hand and the words “I offer my heart to you, Lord, readily and sincerely.” Or consider Charles Wesley’s hymn:
O for a heart to praise my God!A heart from sin set free.
Some hymnbooks don’t include Wesley’s hymn, presumably in part because it is read as an expression of his doctrine of perfect love and entire sanctification. (He thought it possible to have his longing fulfilled in this world.) But the sentiment itself is surely biblical.
But behind the giants of church history stands the testimony of Scripture. The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart (Deut. 6:5). That is why, in replacing Saul as king, God “sought out a man after his own heart” (1 Sam. 13:14), for “the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). It is a truism to say that, in terms of our response to the gospel, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. But truism or not, it is true.
Behind the giants of church history stands the testimony of Scripture.
What this looks like, how it is developed, in what ways it can be threatened, and how it expresses itself will be explored little by little in this new column. But at this stage, perhaps it will help us if we map out some preliminary matters in the form of a catechism on the heart:
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We cannot spread our sin further than He can spread His grace. To meditate on this, to taste the waters of such a pure fountain, is surely to know “joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:9).

The New Testament’s most frequent, and indeed most basic, description of the believer is that he or she is a person “in Christ.” The expression and its variants overwhelmingly dominate the teaching of the Apostles. And one of the clues Scripture gives to help us understand what this means is to express our union with Christ in terms of what Owen calls “conjugal relations,” or, as we would say, “marriage.” Through the ministry of the Spirit and by faith, we become united to Christ, “one” with Christ, in the way a man and a woman “become one flesh” in the marriage bond. This picture, already present in the Old Testament, (Isa. 54:5; 61:10; 62:5; Ezek. 16:1–22; cf. the book of Hosea) comes to fulfillment in the New in the relationship between Christ and His church. Christ rejoiced in this prospect in eternity, and He has made it a reality in time, enduring the humiliation, pain, and anguish of the cross. Christ, in all His saving grace and personal attractiveness, is offered to us in the gospel. The Father brings to His Son the bride He has prepared for Him, and asks both parties if they will have each other—the Savior if He will have sinners to be His; sinners if they will embrace the Lord Jesus as their Savior, Husband, and Friend.
Like many of his contemporaries, Owen saw this spiritual union and communion between Christ and the believer foreshadowed and described in the Old Testament book the Song of Solomon. His exposition of the attractiveness of Christ to the Christian is heavily influenced by the descriptions of the Lover and the expressions of affection of the Beloved. Though his analysis was typical for his day, few commentators today would follow him in the details of his exegesis.
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The Spirit comes to us as an earnest, a pledge, a down payment on final redemption. He is here and now the foretaste of future glory. But His presence is also an indication of the incompleteness of our present spiritual experience.

How do we distinguish the promptings of the Spirit of grace in His guiding and governing of our lives from the delusions of the spirit of the world and of our own sinful heart? This is a hugely important question if we are to be calm and confident that the spirit with whom we are communing really is the Holy Spirit.
John Owen suggests four ways in which the Spirit and the serpent are to be distinguished.
1. The leading of the Spirit is regular.
The leading of the Spirit, he says, is regular, that is, according to the regulum: the rule of Scripture. The Spirit does not work in us to give us a new rule of life, but to help us understand and apply the rule contained in Scripture. Thus, the fundamental question to ask about any guidance will be: Is this course of action consistent with the Word of God?
2. The commands of the Spirit are not grievous.
They are in harmony with the Word, and the Word is in harmony with the believer as new creation. The Christian believer consciously submitted to the Word will find pleasure in obeying that Word, even if the Lord’s way for us is marked by struggle, pain, and sorrow. Christ’s yoke fits well; His burden never crushes the spirit (Matt. 11:28-30).
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Newton realized that sometimes we engage in controversy professedly “for the glory of God” but are blind to the ways in which our own motives impact and play out in our speech and actions. The rubric “for the glory of God” must transform how Christians respond to controversy. “For the glory of God” does not call for a monolithic response to every controversy. Circumstances alter cases. We do not cast pearls before swine.

John Newton (1725–1807) is best known today for his great hymns (including “Amazing Grace” and “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken”). But in his own day, he was perhaps more highly prized as a letter writer—“the great director of souls through the post,” as someone described him. Such was the value of his correspondence that he published several volumes of his letters (including one of his letters to his wife, which called forth the comment by one reviewer, his friend Richard Cecil, that wives would be in raptures reading such love letters while “we [husbands] may suffer loss of esteem for not writing them such gallant letters”).
In several of his letters, he comments on the subject of controversy. He had a distaste for it. (It would be an unhappy thing to have a “taste” for it, would it not?) He also had a sense of being unfitted for it. He remarked that it was “not only unpleasing to my taste, but really above my reach.” But lack of experience is not necessarily an obstacle to one’s ability to give biblical counsel. Newton constantly sought to give such counsel. (Did he not encourage William Wilberforce in the great public controversy of slave trading?) In a day when only a paltry number of Anglican ministers were evangelical, he was particularly conscious that Calvinists, being much in the minority, might feel pressed into controversy too frequently.
It is surely for this reason that one of his chief concerns was that if we are to engage in controversy, our perspective needs to be dominated by the issue of the glory of God. “If we act in a wrong spirit,” he writes, “we shall bring little glory to God.” The first question of The Westminster Shorter Catechism is relevant here as everywhere: How do I speak, write, or act in situations of controversy so that God may be most glorified?
This is the principle. But it needs to be particularized. Newton realized that sometimes we engage in controversy professedly “for the glory of God” but are blind to the ways in which our own motives impact and play out in our speech and actions. The rubric “for the glory of God” must transform how Christians respond to controversy.
“For the glory of God” does not call for a monolithic response to every controversy. Circumstances alter cases. We do not cast pearls before swine.
Here are three illustrations of controversy. In the first, silence is the appropriate God-glorifying reaction; in the second, confrontation; and in the third, patience. Why such different responses?
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