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Church Government in the Apostolic Period

By Rowland Ward — 5 months ago

In the New Testament the house church was common. Judging from Paul’s references in Romans 16:5,10,11,14 & 15, there were at least five house churches in Rome, a city commonly estimated to have a population of a million. Links between these gatherings would have been close. But generally we do not find the infant churches in highly organised connection with each other. The seven churches of Asia Minor are listed in the order they would be visited on a postal route (Revelation 2 & 3) They knew about each other but did not have an organised presbytery exercising oversight as we would understand that. Of course, the seven churches are written to as representative of all the churches then and in every age. The New Testament recognises the priority of the local church and suggests a bottom-up rather than top-down model of presbyterial church government.

Introduction
The existence of the Christian Church comes from Christ. He builds the Church (Matthew 16:18; Hebrews 3:1-6; Acts 15:14; 2 Corinthians 5:17 etc.). When, through the Spirit of Christ, people in a town or city are converted by grace and united to Christ through faith, there you have a church of Christ, a local expression of the Church of Christ. The Church of Christ in its widest extent consists of all those throughout the world who profess the true faith in Jesus Christ and subjection to him as Saviour and Lord, together with their children. The necessary inward aspect of genuine relation to Christ means that membership of the organised Church may not correspond to those truly redeemed. Departures from the Word of God may be such that a Church may become apostate, but even when there are quite serious problems, Paul can address, for example, ‘the church of God in Corinth’ according to its calling and profession.
The Church in its deepest significance is not created by a mere legal Constitution approved by Parliament, or rules arbitrarily drawn up by members, as in a social club, but by God. It is a living organism before it is a developed organisation and must always keep that in mind. A local church or group of churches in an organised form needs to avoid thinking in merely denominational ways but remember that the Church is called to faithfulness to Christ its Head.
Christ is the Head of the Church because he is its King and Lord, and its organised life is to be regulated by the Scriptures, properly interpreted, as illustrated in 2 Timothy 3:
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Christ has given authority to the elders of the Church including specific instructions to them (Romans 12:8; 1 Timothy 5:2-22; Titus 3:10; 1 Peter 5:3). The laws the Church makes are limited to declaration of what the Lord has revealed (Acts 15:6-29) or applications of the principles in what has been revealed to particular cases or circumstances (e.g. 1 Corinthians 8). It seeks to do all things in an orderly way (1 Corinthians 14:26,40), always with a view to building up the body of Christ in love. Every member has a role or office, if you like. All have received gifts to be used to build up the whole body.
Christ is the Head of the Church also because the ministry and sacraments of the Church are effective by his blessing not by any power in the minister or elders or their predecessors in office. Christ equips and calls to office and in ordinary circumstances the Church recognises and admits to the offices Christ has instituted, when she finds the person qualified by the Word of God.
The Church After Pentecost
The twelve Apostles as the leaders of the reconstituted Israel were witnesses of Jesus’ ministry and resurrection. On the day of Pentecost 3,000 of those who listened to Peter were converted (Acts 2:41). We read:
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Acts 3 and 4 record the healing of the lame beggar and the futile attempt by the Sanhedrin to silence Peter and John. Towards the end of Acts 4 we are reminded of the unity of believers and God’s powerful working among them so that ‘there were no needy persons among them’ for gifts of money were ‘laid at the apostles’ feet, and distributed to any who had need’ (Acts 4:34,35).
How long this happy state lasted is unclear. One can well imagine the early enthusiasm waned a little and gave rise to the first evidence of New Testament church organisation in Acts 6:1-7 about AD 34.
6:1 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.
The daily distribution seems to have been primarily ‘of food’ (these explanatory words are added in the NIV), but ‘the distribution’ could be taken to include some ministry of the word as well, given Acts 2:46. At any rate, some Greek-speaking Jewish widows from Gentile lands influenced by Greek culture were being overlooked by the Jews living in Palestine and chiefly speaking Aramaic. It has been suggested of these widows by an Australian Roman Catholic ecumenist:
….they were neither free to attend large gatherings in the temple forecourts nor linguistically equipped to understand what these Aramaic preachers were saying when they returned from the temple to speak in the intimacy of the household (5:42). Accordingly, the Hellenist’s widows were in need of preachers who could teach them in Greek, and preferably at home when Greek speakers came together at their tables (6:2).[1]
We are not told if there were already elders from a Palestinian background helping the apostles. That is certainly possible as a carryover from Old Testament practice. At any rate, up till now the apostles had the leadership responsibility whoever else might have assisted. However, the open-hearted loving care for each other in the infant but growing community of some thousands became impacted by a greater consciousness of differences. Tensions between the descendants of those who had returned from exile in Babylon centuries before and those who had remained in the dispersion led to concern not just because of language but cultural difference. The apostles stated that it was not proper for them to leave the ministry of the word ‘to serve tables’ [diaconein trapezais]. The responsibility for distribution of food and/or money[2] to the poor believers from the resources given to the apostles (4.35,37; 5:2) needed to be placed in other hands. The choice was given to the believers subject to the requirement that those believers chosen should be full of the Holy Spirit evidenced particularly by their wisdom.
The Choice of Seven Men
Strikingly, the seven men chosen all have Greek names and might all have been Hellenists.
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Shepherds on the Titanic

By Trey Dimsdale — 5 months ago

Basham has named names and provided copious footnotes detailing public comments, tweets (or now “posts”), and other bits of the record. She goes after powerful and popular figures like Tim Keller, J.D. Greear, and Rick Warren. I really have no reason to believe, however, that any of it is done in bad faith, despite accusations to the contrary. I have every reason to believe that she cares about Christian witness and the translation of the faith into a faithful response to the challenges of the world. But as it stands, her critiques are not all that helpful in terms of calling American Christians into a posture that truly allows them to be a durable and sustainable force for the preservation of civilization.

In the introduction to Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis uses the image of a hall leading to various rooms to explain the relationship of the various Christian communions and traditions with one another and with the fundamental and indispensable commitments that define the contours of Christianity. The hall, according to Lewis, is the entryway to the faith defined by the ecumenical creeds. The rooms astride the hall represent the Anglicans, the Roman Catholics, and the Methodists. These rooms are where “there are fires and chairs and meals.” The hall, according to Lewis, “is a place to wait in … not a place to live in.”
That illustration is one that was probably quite tidy in a place with relative cultural and social homogeneity like England when Lewis made the observation. American Christianity has always been complex and more diverse in ways that are foreign to Europeans, especially the English. From its inception as a nation, America has lacked an established church, so unlicensed shamans and holy men and evangelists and cult leaders have thrived in the U.S. in ways that would be impossible in the Old World. As a result, Lewis’ hall, at least in America, has become a tent city. There are abandoned lean-tos, burned-out campfires, and assorted refuse scattered among tents that are often mistaken for rooms. There is not much order in the hall, and many of the campers appear not to know very much about why they are there, not to mention where any of the doors lead.
Enter now Megan Basham’s controversial book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda. Basham’s work has landed in the tent city like a bomb, and the reactions to the book could not be more polarized. The book has elicited impassioned screeds that cannot be taken seriously, but equally unserious hagiographic tributes disguised as reviews. I am not, for the sake of this essay or otherwise, chasing Basham’s footnotes. I don’t have any basis to form an authoritative opinion as to whether she is a “real journalist.” All of that was taken up elsewhere at Religion & Liberty Online. What I do know is that she gives voice to many valid critiques of evangelicalism that are intuitively obvious to any honest observer—the political, social, and theological left has more influence in evangelicalism today than it did 20 or 30 years ago. And even those who most vociferously defend themselves cannot escape the fact that they did say the things she claims, even if they want to argue about context. Are there conspiracies? Maybe. Read the book and follow the footnotes. Are there bad-faith actors inside of evangelical churches and institutions? Almost certainly, but again—read the book and follow the footnotes.
My concern is that Basham has not really struck at the root of the problem with evangelicalism. In many ways, it is like a firefighter entering a burning home, only to be horrified that the plaid on the throw pillows clashes with the floral sofa. Those who are praised and the people who are critiqued in the book share more in common with one another in terms of their approach to ecclesiology, authority, and personal piety than they will ever admit. They just differ with regard to their postures toward and positions on social and political issues. In Basham’s defense, a definition of “evangelicalism” has proved to be elusive. This is because “evangelical” has morphed from being a descriptor of groups within Lewis’ various rooms to being a pseudo-tradition in itself that is squatting in the hall. It lacks the doctrinal or confessional substance to be itself a tradition. At best, “evangelical” is a label that describes the cultural character of a church rather than the content of anything that members believe. This includes worship styles and music, but also things like vocabulary and lingo. A church that calls a Sunday service a “mass” probably has little in common culturally with one that calls their service “The Gathering,” with the “t” stylized as a cross.
Irun the risk of oversimplification to make the claim that evangelicalism is the first expression of Christianity that is neither doctrinally nor ethnically driven. While other expressions of Christianity have been influenced by various aspects of modernism, evangelicalism itself is the modernist expression of Christianity. People moved from asking, “How do we respond to what we know to be true?” to asking, “How do we know what is true?” The shift from metaphysics to epistemology as the “first philosophy” that marks modernism has led to a lot of subjectivity in the interpretation of Scripture, theological method, and the dynamics of personal faith. The Christian “testimony” up until yesterday was “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again”—along with the implicit or explicit acknowledgement that the confessor was part of the community awaiting his coming again. But starting today, that testimony is the recounting of a subjective experience unique to each person.
Please note: I am a fan of discerning the “plain meaning of Scripture,” but a “Jesus, me, and the Bible” approach to theology simply will not produce a durable, reliable, and consistent theology. The Christian faith is about conformity to Christlikeness in thought, word, and deed, and not inner peace, personal confirmation in our “heart of hearts,” or any other appeal to a subjective feeling or impression. Subjective feelings and impressions are subject to all types of influences, but the virtues that are defined by Christ’s example are stable and fixed.
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The Trouble with Treacherous Servants

By Brad Littlejohn — 5 months ago

Indispensable servants are always at risk of becoming oppressive masters. Humanity has always known this; it is only recently that our technologies have become so useful as to replace human servants and occupy this ambivalent position, leaving their owners and users reduced to the spectacle of pathetic Ish-bosheths—unable to live with them or without them. There is no simple answer to this dilemma, though it may perhaps at least be some comfort to us in our predicament to realize that we are hardly alone, but are simply facing an age-old paradox that bedeviled Agamemnon before it bedeviled us.

In much writing about technology (including my own) you will often encounter the metaphor of technology as a treacherous servant. For instance, I wrote in a column for WORLD earlier this year about smartphones, “Technology is a great servant but a bad master; although these devices may be here to stay, we have a responsibility to ourselves and our children to ensure we are using them, rather than them using us.” The metaphor is common enough to be at risk of becoming a cliché, but I don’t know that we give it the thought it deserves.
After all, I think we are often tempted, when reaching for such language, to think that this paradox of “servant as master” is one of the novel features of our current technological experience, that it is precisely because our technologies have become so advanced that they are in danger of using us, rather than we them. After all, who was ever at risk of being tyrannized over by their hammer or hatchet? And yet, the problem of treacherous servants turning on or exploiting their masters is a theme as old as literature itself—or probably older.
I had occasion to reflect on this while preparing for my “Faithfulness as Christian Citizens” mini-course for churches, where I draw extensively on Old Testament narratives to draw out illuminating insights for political life. One of my favorite such passages is 2 Samuel 3. For those a little rusty on their Samuels, the narrative goes like this:
Saul has died, and David, as the Lord’s anointed, is seeking to consolidate his rule over Israel. However, initially he enjoys only the support of his own tribe, Judah; the rest of Israel, understandably, rallies around Saul’s sole surviving son, Ish-bosheth. A civil war commences, and the balance of power slowly shifts: “And David grew stronger and stronger, while the house of Saul became weaker and weaker” (2 Sam. 3:2). A fascinating narrative then ensues. Abner, the commander of Ish-bosheth’s army, is described as “making himself strong in the house of Saul” (3:6); Ish-bosheth then accuses Abner (falsely or truly, the narrative never tells us) of sleeping with one of Saul’s concubines (thus symbolically appropriating kingly authority to himself). Abner responds indignantly and decides to defect and “transfer the kingdom from the house of Saul and set up the throne of David over Israel” (3:10). Abner then summons a council of the elders and goes to David on their behalf to pledge fealty.
David accepts Abner’s peace overture, but when David’s own general, Joab, learns of it, he denies that the overture is genuine, denouncing Abner as a spy and treacherously murdering him. David then goes to great lengths to publicly distance himself from this action, proclaiming his grief at Abner’s death and cursing Joab.
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Why Bother If It’s All Going to Burn Up Anyway?

By Bill Fullilove — 5 months ago

Peter may have meant that the earth and all the works done on it will be exposed, in the sense of being judged, which would fit the broader context of his argument quite well. He may also have meant that the earth and all the works done on it will be refined, a quite intriguing proposal in light of images from the book of Malachi. Whether either of these proposals or even another is the best way to ultimately understand the meaning of 2 Peter 3:10, a simple evaporation of everything, burning up with nothing left, is not the meaning Peter intended.

Many moons ago when I was in college and dinosaurs roamed the earth, as a relatively new Christian, I was an environmental studies and public policy major, something that was a relatively new concentration at that point at the academic level and something that made me somewhat suspect among many Christians in the United States. I remember talking with a friend of mine, and she said, “I don’t really worry that much about protecting the environment, because it’s all just going to burn up anyway.”
I remember at the time, not knowing that much about the Bible yet, but thinking, “That just feels like it can’t be right.” But I didn’t really know what else to say, because, after all, that was the end of things, right?
A bunch of years and two careers later, when I became a Bible professor and started teaching, the same question would come up, though not in the same way. People would, in essence, say, “Well why do the arts matter? After all, God’s just going to burn up this world and take us to heaven.” Or, “Why worry about justice on this earth?” Or, “Why dig wells for villages that need water?” Or, “Why feed the hungry? All we need to do is save souls, because that’s all that really will last, anyway. The rest is just going to burn up at the end.”
As a professor and pastor, I would always reply, “But yes, what type of a fire is it? Yes, a refiner’s fire.” I always got away with it, but that was largely from the power dynamic of me being the professor and the so-called expert. And I always worried I was bluffing…
The issue is largely 2 Peter 3:10: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (2 Peter 3:10, ESV).
And if that is not enough, many translations, including the old RSV, which many Protestants used at the time; the Jerusalem Bible, which was a major Roman Catholic translation; and the King James Bible, all translate the last word, “burned up,” ending the verse, therefore, as “the earth and the works that are done on it will be burned up.”
Well, if that is the case, again the question — why do we care? About the environment, culture, the arts, urban planning, any of that? It will all just going to dissolve and burn up at the end of time. If so, whither any Christian doctrine of social engagement, much less of creation care, business, government, or anything else?
Gabriel Chevallier wrote about the trenches of World War I in his novel Fear, “This Earth is a burning building, and all the exits have been bricked up.” Many Christians repurpose that quotation as about the broader evangelistic task of the church, bringing in 2 Peter and adding, “I’m just trying to get everyone I can out of the building, off the earth, before it collapses.” After all, that is what Peter says is coming.
Part of the challenge is the very word typically used for the end of time: apocalypse, as in the “the Apocalypse of John,” a common name for the last book of the Bible. The immediate images engendered by the word are grainy and gritty, maybe nuclear annihilation or environmental catastrophe. Under the influence of the book of Revelation (the aforementioned Apocalypse of John), as well as modern culture, Christians hear “apocalypse” and immediately think of burning barrels and the world of Halo or Cloverfield Lane or Furiosa, some post-apocalyptic societal breakdown, grim and dark, gritty and ruinous.
This, however, is emphatically not the Bible’s vision of the end. The Bible’s picture of the end is beautiful, not that world of nuclear disaster and burning oil drums. The book of Revelation does have fire and terrifying images, of course; however, those images are the prelude to the end, not the end itself. The end of the book of Revelation is actually a picture of beauty, a city, a city the Bible calls the New Jerusalem, one perfect and gleaming in every way. The New Jerusalem is not just the city at its best, but the city as if it were perfect:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1–4, ESV)
This fundamental image of the end is God with us. John goes on in the next verse: “And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (Revelation 21:5, ESV). The picture that follows is beautiful, meant to be the most beautiful picture of a city a Jewish-Christian audience could possibly envision: John’s description of the New Jerusalem. Far beyond beauty, though, John’s picture is meant to evoke all sorts of Old Testament images, that the entirety of the New Jerusalem is not just a redux of the Temple, but a Holy of Holies, a place perfect for God to be.
Even more to the point, John’s image of the end purposely evokes all sorts of images from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1-2: the river of the water of life, the tree of life, nothing accursed, a place fitting for God to be with mankind. And Jesus declares to John through the angel, “These words are trustworthy and true” (Rev. 22:6, ESV).
As Nicholas Piotrowski wrote for The Washington Institute in 2020, apocalyptic is not what Christians typically think it is. Apocalyptic is, in fact, a type of literature, one whose essence is to show the reader a more-real world that is unseen, a genre of writing in which an otherworldly being narrates a revelation to a human recipient. That revelation discloses some sort of transcendent reality which relates both to this world and to the supernatural world. There are approximately 40 examples of this type of literature from Jewish and Christian sources from about 250 BC to 150 AD, some canonical and many from outside the Bible. Apocalyptic, then, does not of necessity even involve telling the future. An apocalyptic work might tell about the future, but it might not. It just has to be in this form and tell about both this world and the supernatural world. What makes something an apocalypse, then, is that it shows us there is a more-real reality than the one we think we are living.
Dr. Piotrowski therefore explains an apocalypse with the following story. He says, imagine you have a beautiful spring weekend day. You decide to take a drive, and the air and the day are beautiful. You put on your favorite music, and you drive. Without knowing it, you get used to the speed, so you start going faster and faster and faster. Off in your thoughts, singing along with the melody, the wind in your hair, you have not a care in the world. Everything is absolutely perfect. However, what you are not seeing, because you are off in your own world, is the police cruiser right behind you in your rearview mirror, carefully tracking and calibrating your speed. There is a more real reality just behind you, about to break in. You see, it turns out you were living in a dream world, with a disaster just behind you, more real than the world you were thought you were living in, until suddenly the real truth of the unseen world becomes manifest to you. Dr. Piotrowski often calls this “the apocalypse of the police car.”
In the book of Revelation, then, the Bible says there is a more real reality than this one we see, a message essential for the persecuted church of John’s time to hear. And that reality is that, in the end, after the fiery judgment, God is going to make this world something perfect, something beautiful. The ordeals and judgments end in Revelation 21:8, but the book does not end until chapter 22. After the fire, there comes a city, a perfect and beautiful city.
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The Autonomy Trap

By James R. Wood — 5 months ago

Written by James R. Wood |
Monday, October 7, 2024
Safety, I assumed, required freedom from others: freedom from commitment, something as close to full material and psychological autonomy as possible. But freedom from others had left me enslaved to an untethered, empty self. In these times it became obvious that the freedom I was pursuing turned out to be utter isolation. Maybe I could just unburden the world of my presence. And that’s when I encountered God.

I remember the moment I told myself I would never talk to my dad again. I was sixteen years old, and my dad’s adoptive parents had just surprised me with my first car: a bright yellow used Geo Tracker (that I would soon trade for a truck). After a slight disagreement, we split into separate vehicles to drive back to my mother’s house. In the other car my dad was drinking while driving my little brother, and I drove my new car with his new wife. When we arrived at my mom’s, she chastised my dad because we were much later than expected (at this time we did not have cellphones) and she noticed the alcohol on his breath. He got out and yelled at her. And then he took my keys and told me he was going to tell my grandparents I didn’t want the car. For the first time in my life, I gave verbal expression to the anger I had internalized for years: “Get out of here. You can’t treat us like this. We don’t need you.”
I come from a stock of relationship-quitters. During my childhood, pretty much everyone in my life had divorced at least once, extended family connections were strained, long-term friends were nonexistent, and moves were frequent. Over time I came to adopt a conception of freedom that had destroyed the lives of many around me, and which would threaten to destroy my own as well: the popular idea of freedom as unconstrained choice. Since this is impossible, the default was a more achievable version: the ability to drop commitments and relationships at any point when they become too complicated. Freedom as the license to leave when things get tough. Live by the mantra of Robert De Niro’s character in Heat: “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” If complications come, don’t worry. You can always go.
I eventually came to see that such freedom left me and some of those I loved unfree to love and to be known in love. Furthermore, this approach to freedom is a form of self-harm that also harms those dependent on you.
As Andrew Root has explained in his masterful work The Children of Divorce, divorce affects kids at a fundamental level. Their memories are tarnished and their family relations are frayed. Did we truly have any happy moments? Were we ever a loving family? Which cousins can we see now? Where will we go for holidays? How do we navigate the family gossip about our parents? Do we need to choose sides? Will we lose connection with those on one side of the family if we live with one parent as opposed to the other?
Children always complicate things – especially social theories that are fundamentally grounded in the autonomous individual. Children expose the lie that we are primarily individuals who only enter relationships voluntarily according to rational self-interest. The involuntary nature of the most important things in life can be experienced both for good or ill. No, we are not free to choose our parents, and that is a good thing: we do not choose to come into the world; our existence is the pure gift of our parents to us.
But the unchosen can be a curse as well. In divorce, children are not free to grow up in an intact family. And things are often (though not always) made worse with the introduction (and often quick exit) of new parent-alternatives. I had hoped that Michael, my mother’s first husband after my dad, would take care of us, would show the warmth to my brother and me that my father never did, would be a safe person for my mom. I mean, he even played guitar. We would sing together. But the emotional outbursts began shortly and became recurrent. And then one day he was gone. By the time John entered the scene a couple of years later, I had already built up defenses, and I kept him at a distance, certain that things wouldn’t work out and that he too would abandon us. Which is what happened. Frequent moves and multiple marriages meant that relationships were always on trial, always conditional. Best to hijack rejection by preemptively refusing to connect.
As C. S. Lewis vividly explained, connection makes you vulnerable: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” This is inevitable. For some, though, the lesson is rubbed in one’s face early and often. Love, I learned, is not safe. Commitment is not real. What is safe is hardened independence, especially toward these parental figures. And for me this began to trickle into other relationships.
We moved every year or so, and thus I was always the “new kid.” This meant I had to regularly audition for friend groups. Since I wasn’t particularly funny or cool, I tried to ingratiate myself with others by letting them copy my homework – because at least I was a decent student. Later I would make friends through basketball, which became my first love. When things got difficult in a friendship, as inevitably happens, I would quickly abandon the relationship, knowing we would likely move soon anyway.
In eighth grade, I was living with my best friend’s family so I could finish the school year before rejoining my own family, who had moved to a new city. Right before one of our basketball games, I got in an argument with him and, instead of resolving it, I just phoned my mom to come get me and take me to our new home.
Commitment was for suckers, I was convinced. But what I eventually came to learn was that this “safety” was not so safe after all. Was I ever known? Did I even know myself? With whom was I connected in an enduring way? Was anything stable? Would anyone stick with me? Am I simply unlovable? Are we all alone?
Lewis was correct – safety through hardening is no real safety at all:
If you want to make sure of keeping [your heart] intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
I gave more and more of myself to school and sports, all the while running from difficult relationships. I became increasingly anxious. On perpetual trial in friendships, and never reaching the other side of conflict, I became excessively defensive with others.
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God Is Trustworthy Even When He Seems Absent

By Scott Hurst — 5 months ago

Knowing God’s providence doesn’t guarantee easy sleep. It isn’t Nyquil. We may go to bed every night feeling like the Hamans of the world will still win. Trusting in God’s providence isn’t magic. It’s a daily habit of remembering the gospel. The gospel is the greatest evidence of God’s providence. God plans, accomplishes and applies our salvation (Eph 1:3-14). God’s good providence was at work before we were even born.

My anxieties get excited when I go to bed. The sound of my head hitting the pillow is their alarm to wake up and send my mind spiralling about things I can’t control.
I tell myself, “Trust the Lord and go to sleep.” That’s easy to believe when I can pinpoint clear signs of God’s presence. But can God be trusted when life is chaos? When God seems absent how can I trust him and rest?
The Bible leads us to meditate on God’s providence so that we will not freak out when life is chaos.
Providence describes the purpose of God in history. John Piper’s definition is a good one: Providence is God’s purposeful sovereignty. The Bible shows us that God governs all things, and his purpose is his glory and the good of his people (Gen 50:20 & Rom 8:28-30). To contemplate God’s providence, we may linger in Romans 8, considering the scope and certainty of God’s purposes. Or maybe we sit with Psalm 23, meditating on his goodness in leading us along a hard path. But Esther 6 is a great passage for contemplating God’s providence when God seems invisible.
The Book of Esther never mentions God by name. Esther lived in the time of exile when Israel was under Persian rule under King Ahasuerus. Haman, the king’s right-hand man, gets royal permission to annihilate the Israelites. God seems absent and his people seem destined for a swift and sudden end.
In many ways, Esther resonates with our lives today. Day after day we go through the motions, and unless we are intentional, God is not referenced. On top of that, the gospel doesn’t seem to make any progress. Society feels under the control of godless people, who call good evil and praise evil as if it were good. It’s not hard to assume God is absent and his purpose has failed.
Esther 6 gives us hope by reminding us that God is never absent, and never on his heels. Unknown to the characters in the story, God works for Esther and his people. Esther 6 reveals the invisible hand of God, helping us trust his unseen providence.
Coincidence or Providence?
Many so-called coincidences happen in Esther 6. Ahasuerus happens to have a sleepless night. He happens to ask for the book of memorable deeds. The scribes happen to read from an obscure place about an event five years ago. It just so happens that Mordecai never received a gift for saving the king. Haman happens to be in the court at the time, so he has to carry out the command to honour Mordecai, his sworn enemy. After plotting to destroy Mordecai, Haman proclaims Mordecai’s honour throughout the city. This all takes place the night before Esther pleads with the king to rescue Mordecai’s people from Haman’s horrible, decreed massacre! Coincidence? I think not.
These so-called coincidences are the purposeful providence of God. Hidden from the characters, but blatant to readers.
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The Deeper Meaning Behind Isaiah 22:13: A Call to Repentance

By David T. Crum — 5 months ago

Written by David T. Crum |
Monday, October 7, 2024
Humanity is often guilty of mockery towards God and His providential judgments. Franz Delitzsch explained, “The sin of Jerusalem is expiated by the giving up of the sinners themselves to death.” Ironically, this prophecy becomes a warning more than an actual foretelling of an event where the Assyrians face destruction from Jerusalem.

“And behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die. Isaiah 22:13”
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die is one of the most quoted parts of Isaiah. This portion of the verse has appeared in films and ancient literature throughout history.
You might immediately think of an ensuing battle when you hear the verse. And while this is technically true, a more significant message applies.
The Book of Isaiah is an integral part of the Old Testament. It is most often associated with a call to repentance, prophecy of judgment, and even the future arrival of Jesus Christ.
However, in verse 22:13, Isaiah recorded the reaction of the people of Jerusalem upon learning their judgment of an incoming invasion. John Calvin commented:
Isaiah, on the other hand, relates here the speeches of wicked men, who obstinately ridiculed the threatenings of the prophets, and could not patiently endure to be told about chastisements, banishments, slaughter, and ruin. They employed the words of the prophets, and in the midst of their feasting and revelry, turned them into ridicule, said, in a boasting strain, “To-morrow we shall die.”[1]
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Are We the Bad Guys?

By Josh Abbotoy — 5 months ago

It’s easier, in a sense, to accept that we were never morally good and never civilizationally great than it is to accept that we had something great, and we squandered it. But that’s the truth. Two inconceivably destructive World Wars destroyed Europe’s soul, killed off many of its best men, and devastated the old aristocracies. Lopsided trade policy with China since the 1970s – based on the Pollyannish assumption that exposure to Western markets would bring democracy to China – has hollowed out America’s manufacturing base, displaced millions of heartland workers, and helped to create a geopolitical rival with a very different, and a much worse, regime.

A couple weeks back, Daryl Cooper’s appearance on the Tucker Carlson Show – in which Cooper opined that Winston Churchill bore much of the blame for the violence of World War II – broke the internet. In the aftermath, a host of commentators breathlessly piled on Cooper, accusing him of being a Hitler apologist, if not a Nazi himself – an accusation that would be laughable to any fair-minded person familiar with Cooper’s corpus of work.
Here’s what is really happening. Cooper has sensed, rightly, that much of the story we’ve told ourselves in Western civilization over the past 125 years has been a lie. We are told that the 20th century represents the triumph of Western humanism. This self-evidently correct viewpoint, we are told, is inevitably becoming a global consensus, ushering in the end of history.
But most of the Western world is recognizing that this triumphalist story is wrong. In these conditions, we should expect broad revisions of the received narratives about the 20th century. Cooper’s conclusion, roughly speaking, is that the West is not as exceptionally good as we think. This is where he errs.
It has become fashionable on the right to attack men like the Founders and Churchill and even lesser critical figures like Reagan as villains rather than heroes. While none of those men were perfect, the moral gap between Churchill and Hitler (and the respective regimes they led) was indeed massive. As Nathan Pinkoski recently wrote, circumstances dealt Churchill a very difficult hand, and he played it to the best of his ability to maximize British interests. Similarly, the Founders, while not immune to criticism, were men of great moral character and intellect, and notwithstanding his several policy failures, Reagan restored, however briefly, some confidence and optimism to America.
The big lie about the 20th century is not the mere exaggeration of these men’s moral character.
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3 Points About the Doctrine of Predestination Every Christian Needs to Know

By Jonathan Landry Cruse — 5 months ago

Not only is it a biblical doctrine and a big doctrine, but it is also a beautiful doctrine. It can so often be caricatured as nothing more than a cold and lifeless calculus. But what does Paul say in Ephesians 1? That it was in love he predestined us (Eph. 1:4-5)! Thus, it has been said that election is based on affection. It is God’s love for us that causes him to ordain us to everlasting life.

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from The Christian’s True Identity: What It Means to Be in Christ (Reformation Heritage Books, 2019) by Jonathan Landry Cruse.
A hurdle many Christians cannot seem to get over is accepting and embracing the doctrine of election, or predestination. By nature, we don’t like the fact that God is the one who does the choosing. We want to be the masters of our fate and the captains of our soul. Yet Paul seems to make the case very clearly in Ephesians 1:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.” (Eph. 1:3–5; emphasis added)
What brings Paul to doxology is distasteful to many. R.C. Sproul accurately describes the feeling of most people towards the concept:
The very word predestination has an ominous ring to it. It is linked to the despairing notion of fatalism and somehow suggests that within its pale we are reduced to meaningless puppets. The word conjures up visions of a diabolical deity who plays capricious games with our lives.[1]
Yes, this is a hard truth to come to terms with, but such a fatalistic view tragically eclipses the beauty of God’s work for undeserving and incapable sinners like you and me. To help us grapple with and grow to love this essential aspect of the gospel, consider the following three points about election.
1. Election Is a Biblical Doctrine
First, the doctrine is biblical. This should seem evident enough, as it is clearly spelled out in the section of Ephesians 1 quoted earlier. Nor is this the only place we run up against the concept in Scripture. Just a few verses later on Paul will say—even more bluntly—that we have been “predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11). In Romans 8:29-30 we read,
For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he predestined, these he also called; whom he called, these he also justified; and whom he justified, these he also glorified.”
These are places in which these theological terms are used explicitly, but if we broaden our radar to also pick up allusions to and themes of choosing, predetermining, and electing, the list gets longer.
There are some out there who have a false notion of predestination and election, namely, that it was the invention of some ancient French madman named John Calvin. No doubt, Calvin would mourn the fact that history has dubbed this doctrine “Calvinism,” as though it somehow belonged more to him than to God.
Others who are more informed would recognize that the idea of election is not strictly Calvinist and is in fact a scriptural concept. Indeed, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and so-called Calvinists all hold to different nuances of predestination. But even then, the most common view is not the biblical one; that is, while God does choose some to salvation.
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It’s Better to Be Respected Than Liked

By J. Warner Wallace — 5 months ago

Written by J. Warner Wallace |
Monday, October 7, 2024
While it may be easy to embrace the beliefs of others to gain approval, we know the courageous path requires us to point others to the truth, even when it’s inconvenient or unpopular. It’s time for the Church to take this second path. We’ve spent far too much time trying to become like the world in order to win its acceptance, rather than having the moral courage to make the case for what we believe.

I had a discussion with one of my kids recently about the natural inclination we all have to be adored. Let’s face it, we all want to be accepted, loved, admired and embraced; it’s difficult when you find yourself on the “outside looking in”, shunned or ignored by those who are popular or influential. We are innately social creatures; we thrive on the adoration of others, even when it comes at a great price. There are times when our decision to do the “right thing” will put us at odds with the people we hope to endear. There are times when our Christian standard must dictate our actions, rather than our desire to be accepted by friends who possess a different standard altogether. In times like these, it’s better to be respected than liked.
The Choice Between Influence and Acceptance
Popularity often requires agreement. It’s easy to like people who hold the same opinions and values. It’s not really surprising, therefore, that many of us, in an effort to be liked, try to find a way to come to agreement with the people around us. And that’s where the trouble usually starts. There are two ways to form agreement:
1. Influence others toward our position, or2. Simply embrace the positions of others
We can try to move them toward us, or we can simply move toward them. One of these strategies will ensure our likability but the other is the path to respect.
There’s a great danger in moving toward the values and opinions of the culture, especially when we take a hard look at the culture we live in. Even the least religious among us would have to admit that we live in a society that often embraces the lowest common denominator. I have friends who are non-believers. Like me, they limit the exposure their young kids have to television, the Internet and other forms of media. Why?
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