The gospel encompasses a wide-range of ideas and images and we should not limit ourselves to thinking about it in a one-dimensional way. The gospel is gloriously multidimensional and we give God the glory when we contemplate on the gospel as such.

When it comes to theology, we tend to take a doctrine and strip it down to its basic form, leaving out all the intricacies and complicating details. We zero in on a particular verse or repeated theme in Scripture and then we say “That’s what it is all about.” We do this so that we can fit the doctrine neatly in our minds, keep it there, and pass it on to others.
One manifestation of this tendency is seen with respect to how we define the gospel. We ask: What is the gospel? We answer: It is the forgiveness of sins. We might add that the good news is being saved from the wrath of God through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ – sin condemns us to death, Jesus takes our sin away and satisfies the justice of God. That, we could say, is the essence of the gospel. However, while the gospel is nothing less, it is more. Forgiveness of sins is one dimension of the gospel, but not the only one.
If we insist on restricting the gospel to one-dimension, we rob it of its multifaceted glory. We see its multifaceted glory in a passage such as Colossians 1:12-14. Paul has begun his letter to the church in Colossae by giving thanks for the faith of the Christians there and for their reception of the gospel. Paul explains how he and others are praying for the Colossians, specifically for their growth in the gospel. As he then shows them how the gospel itself is the source of sanctification in the Christian life, Paul uses several different ideas to describe the gospel.
“the Father, who has qualified you”
God qualifies the believer by justifying the believer. God declares the believer to be free of sin and in right standing before him.
Read More

It was among the worst of times when Paul wrote to Titus around AD 65. Ruling the world during this age was Nero, an equally corrupt successor to the degenerate Caligula. By comparison to these two, every President the United States has ever had has been choir-boy-esque. Among Nero’s many inventive ways to do evil (Rom. 1:29–31), he murdered his mother and two wives to secure his throne. He is also believed to have intentionally started a massive fire in Rome which he then blamed on Christians, leading to significant persecution of the Church. Such were the times.
And Crete was the place. Some early Mediterranean converts who were recently delivered from bondage to lots of ugly sin (Tit. 3:3) had planted several local churches there under Titus’s pastoral oversight (Tit. 1:5). Theirs was a culture infamous for its moral bankruptcy. Cretans were known as inveterate liars who were enslaved to evil, beastly behavior, and lazy self-indulgence (Tit. 1:12). If not the worst of times and places, this certainly was a very bad time and a very hard place to live out the virtues of Christ, quite likely worse and harder than ours.
By Way of Reminder
So in Titus 3:1 Paul tells Titus to remind his flocks of seven important Christian virtues. Their need to be reminded implies a tendency to forget. Apparently, top-to-bottom cultural corruption creates a need for repeated conscience re-calibration. While we might not be in such ugly times now, the message Paul didn’t want the Christians in Crete to forget is one God also doesn’t want local churches today to forget.

In surveying their eschatological vision of culture and the resulting imperative for Christians to be diligent in the cultural labors out of a sense of calling in light of God’s future work of recreation, Kuyper and Schilder impel Christians towards similar ends. Further, their respective differences, owing to divergences in their understanding of God’s purposes in creation, can help strengthen the others’ view by adding a counter-stress against where they each descend into problematic conclusions.

Abstract
Abraham Kuyper’s theology of culture is gaining interest in the English-speaking world, especially among those outside the Dutch Reformed tradition. Historic debates in the Dutch Reformed tradition over Kuyper’s hallmark doctrine of common grace often seem parochial or irrelevant to contemporary engagement with his thought. Revisiting one figure in those debates, this essay argues that Klaas Schilder, one of Kuyper’s most vocal critics, offers an important counterbalance to problematic features of Kuyper’s theology. While the divide between Kuyper and Schilder has historically been severe, consideration of their similarities regarding their eschatological vision of Christian cultural creation offers a way to harmonize their differences.

“Kuyperians were pluralists before pluralism was cool,” writes James K. A. Smith.1 Indeed, neo-Calvinists in the tradition of Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) display a marked fondness for stressing the possibility and imperative of shared cultural labor between Christians and non-Christians in society.2 Christians can work alongside non-Christians to create God-glorifying artifacts of culture, such as art or music, as well as less tangible elements of culture, such as share values, language, philosophic systems, or social and political institutions. While Smith certainly appreciates such contributions of the Kuyperian tradition, his critique aims at correcting what he perceives to be far too great an interest in the commonness which Christians share with the rest of society, at the expense of neglecting their distinctiveness. Neo-Calvinists have lost a sense of Christianity’s prophetic cultural witness, he argues. Or, to put it in more Kuyperian terms: neo-Calvinists have neglected the ecclesial contours of the antithesis between Christ’s work of redemption and humanity’s rebellion in sin. More specifically, they have failed to live out the active ministry of the institutional church of shaping communities in the distinctiveness of Christian liturgical life, which in turn is to serve as a leavening force in society for civic virtue.3
To rekindle the force of the Kuyperian antithesis, Smith has shown interest in the lesser known influence of Dutch theologian Klaas Schilder (1890–1952). Schilder, a strident critic of Kuyper and his legacy, provides what Smith sees as an element lacking in many contemporary neo-Calvinist theologies of social and cultural life. This is namely a “dispositional deflection” away from public life steeped in non-Christian principles, while at the same time providing a call to remain faithfully present within society, for its good and for Christ’s glory.4 Smith is not alone in recognizing the value of the greater emphasis Schilder puts on what neo-Calvinists call the antithesis, the epistemic and existential divide between regenerate Christians and the unregenerate, especially concerning social and cultural cooperation. A growing group of Kuyperians have begun to look to Schilder in an effort to strengthen their Kuyperian heritage.5
This willingness of those sympathetic to Kuyper’s theology of culture and common life to reach across what has been a bitter divide in the Dutch neo-Calvinist tradition represents a promising new chapter in the conversation. Schilder rejected Kuyper’s foundational doctrine of common grace with great skepticism, and any effort to harmonize their thoughts must begin elsewhere. This essay proposes to put Kuyper and Schilder in conversation yet again, seeking to find some constructive unity in their varied understandings of culture, the antithesis, and common life shared between Christians and non-Christians. Whereas much of this discussion has historically focused on areas of disagreement, little serious effort has been given to those areas where Schilder and Kuyper’s theology bear similarities and can in fact work well together. The way to do this, this study proposes, is to begin where these similarities are the strongest.
For various reasons, Kuyper and Schilder disagree about much regarding creation, divine providence, and doctrines which serve to construct a “protology,” that is, a doctrine of the axiomatic beginning of all things. However, their eschatological vision for culture and human life does possess some crucial harmony. This study will therefore begin at the end, so to speak, examining both Kuyper and Schilder’s eschatological visions of culture, in order to discern how Christians in the present ought to understand their cultural task in light of the future. To frame this proposal, this study will survey the nature of the divide between Kuyper and Schilder on culture and common grace, before turning to their respective eschatological visions for culture to begin to work of synthesizing their views.
The Nature of the Divide
Beginning with the end of all things is a fitting endeavor in the study of Schilder’s theology of culture. “All threads of life and revelation,” he says, “lead in the end to heaven.”6 Though his thoughts on the cultural life of the eschaton certainly diverge from Kuyper’s, they do find significant common ground here as well. Schilder’s main conflict with Kuyper concerns instead the beginning of history. Kuyper is famous for his expansion of the doctrine of common grace in Reformed thought as the basis for his theology of cultural life. For Kuyper, God’s design for his creation is for humanity, his vice-regents, to develop the hidden potential sown into the created order as seeds awaiting germination.7 Cultural life, that is, the fruit of human labor as they interact together with God’s created order, is but one element of this latency.8 Humanity is charged with the task of creation’s development in Genesis 1:26–28 as part of God’s command to both fill the earth and to subdue it. The fall and the entrance of sin into the life of humanity, however, raises the question of how such a task and humanity’s capacity to fulfill it is affected by so deep a rift in God’s design for things. For Kuyper, God’s common grace accounts for the existential reality that humanity has indeed been able to develop creation’s latent potentials, sometimes for better though often for worse. Common grace, therefore, serves as Kuyper’s account for how cultural life remains possible, and reveals that God’s design for his creation has not been aborted, but continues to unfold and advance in this life prior to its consummation in the eschaton.9
Schilder, writing a generation after Kuyper, rejected Kuyper’s accounting for human cultural life in common grace, partly because of what he saw as problems inherent in Kuyper’s doctrine of divine providence. While both Kuyper and Schilder adamantly embraced a supralapsarian vision of God’s eternal decrees, the nature of Schilder’s critique highlights the supralapsarian tendency to frame the situation in more absolute terms.10 For Schilder, it cannot be the case that what allows both sinful humanity and the redeemed to both seemingly develop culture can be called grace.11 In reality, what Kuyper calls “grace” is simply the prolonging of judgment that will ultimately result in grace for the elect but condemnation for the reprobate, justified by reprobate humanity’s sinfulness manifest and magnified by their cultural labors.12 What accounts for present cultural life is a common “tempering” of God’s judgment against sin, so that his equal plans of both grace and wrath might come to completion in history.13
Despite such a dire prognosis, Schilder does retain a fundamentally positive view towards human cultural life, going so far as to call cultural abstention on the part of Christians a sin against God’s creational calling.14 For Schilder, cultural life is one area of responsibility for humanity under God’s covenant of works, which God entered into with the whole human race via Adam in paradise. This covenant bears actual expectations for faithfulness, namely to live out the fullness of the imago dei for which God created humanity and to the development of creation’s latencies in cultural life—covenant expectations which remain in force for all humanity even today.15
One Culture or Two?
One can begin to see in the above outline of Schilder’s thought the emergence of his emphasis on the antithesis. For Schilder, to properly speak of culture in its present reality is to speak only in connection with its ultimate telos. The problem of the fall is that it detaches human cultural striving from its proper integration with right orientation of cultural life, which hinges on right worship of God.16 The hope of the work of Christ is that regeneration restores the possibility of properly integrated cultural labor, that is work which sees “every part in its proper place in the whole”—even if this is only provisionally possible this side of the eschaton.17 The recognition this brings is that according to Schilder’s thought the vast majority of cultural development throughout history is debilitated by sin, even if cultural life as such remains inherently good according to God’s designs.
Read More

But the trouble is, if we put all our hope and faith in these things, instead of God himself, then we will get our spiritual priorities all wrong, and we will end up looking to men and not God to be our deliverer. As I say, fighting in the culture wars and the like is vital, but at the end of the day we must put our full trust in and dependency on the only one who is worth leaning on: God himself.

We live in exceedingly dark times. It seems wherever you look, wickedness and evil are in the ascendency, and it seems that this darkness is covering the whole earth. It can be overwhelming at times. One wonders if there is any way out of all this. One seeks for respite and a reprieve, but that seems to elude us.
The Christian is realistic. We know that sin abounds in this fallen world. Evil will always be with us. But we also know that there is hope, because God is not finished with us yet. God is working out his purposes, and one day all evil will end, and all darkness will disappear.
But right now we live in between the first and second coming of Christ. What Christ initiated 2000 years ago is now being partially realised, but will not be fully realised until he comes again. So we will see some victories, some breakthroughs, some real encouragement now, but we will also experience some losses, some setbacks, and some disappointments.
And as things get darker, it is so easy to concentrate on that darkness, and get our eyes off God. I know this is true for me. One of my main prayers of late has been to actually repent of my lack of faith, my lack of trust. I feel so overwhelmed at times, and the encroaching evil seems so palpable. I can focus too much on what is happening around me, and not on the one true God.
So I am asking God to help me increase my trust and my faith. I am praying the prayer of the father of the child healed by Jesus who said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). It is so easy to get discouraged and to lose all hope. And at times like that, when we take our eyes off the Lord, we can too readily look to other sources of hope.
We can look to the next election, or another politician, or a different set of laws, or a reformed education system, or a cleaned-up media, or a better country, or a more godly culture, and so on. Now do not get me wrong: all these things are important indeed. I have been working in all these areas, and we need to be engaged in this way.
But the trouble is, if we put all our hope and faith in these things, instead of God himself, then we will get our spiritual priorities all wrong, and we will end up looking to men and not God to be our deliverer. As I say, fighting in the culture wars and the like is vital, but at the end of the day we must put our full trust in and dependency on the only one who is worth leaning on: God himself.
This was a lesson ancient Israel kept needing to learn afresh. They so often found themselves in a real bad way, but instead of turning fully to Yahweh for help, they looked to others for their deliverance. That is why we have so many passages such as the following:
Psalm 20:7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
Psalm 33:16-17 No king is saved by the size of his army;no warrior escapes by his great strength.A horse is a vain hope for deliverance;despite all its great strength it cannot save.
Psalm 118:8-9 It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.
Psalm 146:3 Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men, who cannot save.
Yet Israel so often did just this: they looked to other nations to help them out. They tried to make foreign alliances to keep them safe. In Isaiah 31:1-3 we read about this very thing:
Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help,who rely on horses,who trust in the multitude of their chariotsand in the great strength of their horsemen,but do not look to the Holy One of Israel,or seek help from the Lord.Yet he too is wise and can bring disaster;he does not take back his words.Read More

It’s hard to listen, and even counselors struggle with it at times, but listening pays great dividends in our relationships. Take the time to examine how well you listen, and refocus your efforts on listening more and talking less. You may be amazed that your frustration level will diminish, and your fondness will grow.

At one time or another, you’ve probably heard someone say in a dismissive tone, “I’m just not a good listener!”
Whether we get distracted by what we plan to say next, are easily offended by unfair criticism, or feel overwhelmed by needing to find the right words to reply, quality listening is complicated.
Add to that the fact that we tend to view ourselves better than we are, and we tend to view others as worse than they are, and quality listening becomes a complicated dynamic that many fail to adequately understand.
However, if we are going to pursue a habit of loving listening in our relationships, we must heed the many warnings about lousy listening from Proverbs. Failing to listen is not a laughing matter.
The previous post described four benefits of loving listening. However, Proverbs also gives us four warnings or results if we fail to listen. We undermine our effectiveness and damage our relationships when we don’t listen well. Lousy listening dishonors God and those around us.
1. Lousy Listeners are Prideful (Prov. 18:2)
Proud people don’t need the details; they already know the answer. In your conversations, how certain are you that you are right?
Some people go through life constantly correcting others, presuming to be an expert on almost everything, yet failing to realize they are more like the people they critique than they are different. Those around them feel unwanted and unneeded because their opinion is never heard; the proud person simply tells them what they should do.
Proverbs 18:2 says we imitate the fool if we don’t choose loving listening, and we allow our pride to disregard others around us. Pride becomes destructive in relationships, and most of the time, the proud person has no idea that the “proud” shoe fits them nicely.
If you are spending far more time talking than listening, pride is often at the root, and this warning may be one that you need to take seriously.
2. Lousy Listeners Look Foolish (Prov. 18:13)
In high school, I worked at one of the top restaurants in the country. They took great pride in their service, and their food was consistently excellent. It always amazed me how many of their top servers could go to a table, take 4-6 dinner orders with no pen or paper, and enter the order correctly, all from memory. It took extraordinary listening and memory in a noisy dining room of 400 guests. However, some servers took notes and wrote it all down. The owner didn’t care; he just wanted to ensure that the details were heard correctly and that the food reflected the customer’s wishes. Bringing out the wrong order or getting the details wrong made us all look foolish and was not tolerated.
When we are lousy listeners, we will often get the details wrong, and we, too, can look foolish. Proverbs 18:13 reminds us that a wise man will listen first and speak after.
Read More

Thank the God of truth for each and every stirring sermon, instructive doctrine, family devotion and private reading – these are Gospel means by which the Holy Spirit brings us to our knees, draws forth earnest prayers, floods our souls with light, so we might be stirred to grow in grace in the knowledge and power of Christ.

If you could get rid of all the traditions and build a church from scratch what would it be like? Do you have one particular blueprint, template or model in mind? Would the principle focus be the pulpit, pew or program? I suspect there are as many different shades of opinion on that question as there are Gentle Reformation readers.
If the most biblically-minded, in seeking answers, tend to gravitate towards Acts, the resounding example Paul gives is that of the Thessalonian Church. He begins his letter with thanks for self-evident, genuine faith: he then continues a confident boast, in the election of these saints, with some marks of God’s “Model Church”. Let me just mention THREE:
Firstly, the Power of the Truth
If, by contemporary standards, Paul’s earthy expressions lacked rhetorical polish, this preacher packed a punch – his message, as 1:5 indicates, was Spirit-empowered, Scripture-unfolding, Christ-portraying, mind-enlightening, conscience-penetrating, guilt-inducing, soul-awakening and salvation-bringing.
Our Gospel came to you not only in word but also  in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.
Thank the God of truth for each and every stirring sermon, instructive doctrine, family devotion and private reading – these are Gospel means by which the Holy Spirit brings us to our knees, draws forth earnest prayers, floods our souls with light, so we might be stirred to grow in grace in the knowledge and power of Christ.
Secondly, the Pattern of the Cross
If Silas and Timothy remained for follow-up discipleship, sound foundations were laid in Paul’s initial, intensive, three-week, mission event.
Read More

Psalm 128:2 mentions one of the many blessings of those who fear the Lord and who walk in His ways. The writer states, “You will eat the fruit of your labor.” This was written after or during a time of exile, when pagan nations swooped in and literally ate the produce that Israel had worked for. Once Israel returned to the land, they could enjoy the crops they raised. In general, what I see here is that job satisfaction seems to be a divine by-product of long, dedicated efforts.

Previously, I shared some observations about work from several of the minor prophets. Today, I thought it might be helpful to provide a brief summary of some of the observations about work from the Psalms that I have compiled in my book, Immanuel Labor – God’s Presence in our Profession.
The Psalms Show Us God as a Worker
We know that God created the heavens and the earth in six days and then rested from His work (Gen. 2:2-3). David declares that God’s work is reflected in His creation (Ps. 19:1.) (See also Ps. 102:25)
Moreover, God continuously works now to sustain His creation. Psalms 65:9–13 describes how God provides water, vegetation, and animals for His people through His care over the land He gave them.
Psalm 104:10-31 highlights in much greater detail all of the things that God provides for His people. In addition to what was mentioned above, he adds wine and oil, trees to build homes, temples, and other buildings, the moon and sun to mark off the seasons, and the sea which contains much food.
Additionally, in Psalm 111:2-7, we observe that God works to show His grace, mercy, providence, power, and faithfulness. In Psalm 143:5, David ponders all of the work that God has done throughout His own life. His deep understanding and experiences give him hope, causing him to continue to trust in Him.
The Psalms Take Us into the Work Environment
Throughout Psalm 107, we see God’s people stressed out by changes to the work environment. Some were looking for work. They wandered in the desert (vv. 4-5). God delivered them by providing for their needs in His unfailing love (vv. 6-9). Others made their living on the water. Storms at sea brought fears of losing personnel, boats, and goods (vv. 23-27). God delivered them by stilling the storm and bringing them to shore (vv. 28-32). In spite of these difficult situations that were beyond their control, God’s never-changing covenant love, faithfulness, and protection got them through.
Psalm 128:2 mentions one of the many blessings of those who fear the Lord and who walk in His ways. The writer states, “You will eat the fruit of your labor.” This was written after or during a time of exile, when pagan nations swooped in and literally ate the produce that Israel had worked for. Once Israel returned to the land, they could enjoy the crops they raised. In general, what I see here is that job satisfaction seems to be a divine by-product of long, dedicated efforts. I know that it is for me.
Read More

If we focus all our attention on people and who they are and what they do or don’t deserve, we’ll never love our neighbour.  True Christian love is only possible as we think about our existence before the face of God and the grace we have received from him through Christ.

It isn’t easy to love a jerk.  Someone who’s quiet, meek, and kind – no problem.  But the person who annoys us, whether through habit or personality?  The person who pushes all our buttons, perhaps even intentionally?   The selfish and insensitive clod?
Yet the Lord commands us to love our neighbour as we do ourselves (Mt.22:39).  That Christian love is “not irritable or resentful.”  Instead, it “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:5-7).  This is the love that leads us to “do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Gal. 6:10).
But how do we do that with someone we might think to be unworthy of our love and good deeds?  How do you love a jerk?  You might say take a look in the mirror.  Humbly realizing that we’re all unworthy jerks could indeed be a good place to start.  However, in his epic Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin explored this practical issue in the Christian life from a different angle.  His advice, drawn on sound biblical teaching, is worth a listen.  If you want to look it up and read the whole section for yourself, it’s in Institutes 3.7.6.  I’ll be quoting from the Lewis-Battles edition.
Calvin begins by acknowledging that most people would be unworthy of our love if they were judged according to merit.  But that isn’t how Christians are to think.  Says Calvin, “But here Scripture helps in the best way when it teaches that we are not to consider that men merit of themselves but to look upon the image of God in all men, to which we owe all honor and love.”  He goes on to affirm that with members of the household of faith this obligation is intensified by virtue of the fact that God’s image has been renewed and restored in them by the Holy Spirit.  Nevertheless, what remains of the image of God after the fall into sin and before regeneration is itself reason enough to show love to all by doing good.  Calvin concludes, “Therefore, whatever man you meet who needs your aid, you have no reason to refuse to help him.”
Calvin then anticipates a series of objections.  Someone might say, “But he’s a stranger!”  To which Calvin would reply that this is irrelevant.
Read More