Change at Founders Ministries
Founders Ministries announces the resignation of Jared Longshore from the staff and board of the ministry. He served since 2017 as Vice President of Founders and was a part of the launch of the Institute of Public Theology in January of this year.
“Jared has been a great friend and brother and I am grateful for his service over these last several years,” President Tom Ascol said. “God has used him to encourage many through the work of Founders. We will miss him and pray for God’s guidance and blessing as he enters a new chapter of his life and work.”
Dr. Ascol also expressed his excitement about the many initiatives that are ahead for Founders. “We have some excellent new titles in the pipeline for publication by Founders Press as well as an outstanding line up of preachers for the 2022 Founders Conference on ‘Militant and Triumphant: The Doctrine of the Church.’ I am especially delighted to announce that Dr. Tom Buck will be joining Voddie Baucham, James Coates, Travis Allen, Conrad Mbewe, and me to address this urgently relevant theme exegetically, theologically, and practically.” There is still time to register for the conference, though space is limited.
Dr. Baucham, a Founding Faculty Member of the Institute of Public Theology and Founders Ministries board member said, “Jared Longshore is a dear friend, brother, and co-laborer. His contribution to the work of Founders Ministries and IOPT has been invaluable and we wish him well in the next phase of his journey.”
Dr. Baucham will be teaching a course at IOPT in January 2022. You can learn more about his class and register by accessing the IOPT website.
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The Resurrection of the Body
31:2. At the last day, such of the saints as are found alive, shall not sleep, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the selfsame bodies, and none other; although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever.
(1 Corinthians 15:51, 52; 1 Thessalonians 4:17; Job 19:26, 27; 1 Corinthians 15:42, 43)
31:3. The bodies of the unjust shall, by the power of Christ, be raised to dishonour; the bodies of the just, by his Spirit, unto honour, and be made conformable to his own glorious body.
(Acts 24:15; John 5:28, 29; Philippians 3:21)
Second London Confession, 31:2–3It was a cold, gray February afternoon when we buried my grandfather. The ground was still muddy from the snow that had melted earlier in the week. Every tree was bare. The small crowd under the tent shivered against the cold as the national guard officers folded the American flag they would present to my grandmother. But into the sorrow, the gathering of family members and friends read the Apostle’s Creed from the tiny bulletins issued to them by the Methodist minister: “…I believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, Amen.” I was struck by the power of that ancient Christian confession against that bleak backdrop. It was also struck by how few funerals I attend ever even mention the hope of bodily resurrection.
In most funerals I attend, and in most popular discussions about death I observe, the focus of the Christian hope falls almost exclusively on what theologians call “the intermediate state:” the promise that upon death, the believer’s spirit leaves the body behind to dwell in the presence of Jesus in heaven. On the one hand, this emphasis is perfectly reasonable, since it is the immediate hope of all the saints who die before the Lord’s return. We are right to celebrate Jesus’ assurance that, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:43) We rejoice that “the spirits of the righteous” are now “made perfect” in the heavenly assembly (Heb 12:23) . We find unspeakable comfort in the truth that to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord, that for the believers, to die is gain, and that it really is better by far to depart and to be with Christ (2 Cor 5:6; Phil 1:21, 23).
But while our immortal spirit’s reception into heaven is the believer’s immediate hope, the Bible teaches that it is not our ultimate hope. As wonderful as the intermediate state will be, it is, well, intermediate. An even great future awaits the people of Jesus! A hope even richer, more thrilling, more satisfying. It takes the whole story of the Bible to understand this audacious Christian confession: I believe in the resurrection of the body.
“To the dust you shall return”
The Bible’s first two chapters map out God’s design for human life: embodied human beings made in his image, living forever in fellowship with him in a perfect, physical creation. This, God says, is “very good.” (Gen 1:31). But by Genesis 3, the rebellion of those image-bearers has destroyed God’s beautiful design. Sin’s consequences are not only spiritual and moral, but physical: the once-submissive creation now rebels against its former caretakers, and bodily life is now marked by pain, sickness, weariness, and, ultimately, death. The man formed from the dust, made to live forever in face-to-face fellowship with God, must now return to the dust (Gen 3:19). The relentless recitation of the deaths proceeding from Adam in Genesis 5 bears grim witness to the awful wages of sin, and to the unyielding truthfulness of God’s Word: “in the the day that you eat of it, you will surely die (Gen 2:17; Rom 6:23).”
These opening acts in the biblical drama remind us that there is nothing “natural” about death. Death instead is an “enemy” (1 Cor 15:26), a sinister intruder on God’s good design for human life. The Genesis patriarchs wept over the bodies of their dead loved ones for good reason (Gen 23:2), and so do we. All human beings—whether they affirm the Bible’s account of reality or not—instinctively know that death is not the way it was meant to be. I can see it in the “gone but not forgotten” memorial decals on the pickup trucks in my hometown. You can sense it in the feverish attempts to stave off the aging process in fitness centers and cosmetic products. I can hear it in the quavering voice of the old bluegrass singer Ralph Stanley, pleading: “O death, won’t you spare me over til another year, won’t you spare me over til another year…”
The apostle Paul tells us that these are all so many manifestations of creation’s “groaning” under the unnatural curse of death; we long to be “set free from [our] bondage to corruption (Rom 8:21).” But will anyone hear these groans? Can anyone deliver us from death?
“…those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake”
Yes! Standing in the ruins of Eden, God not only pronounces judgment, but promises salvation: “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” God tells the Serpent, “and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Gen 3:15). God did not disclose the details of his plan, but he made it clear that he would one day restore the beautiful kingdom our sin had destroyed, and deal with the awful curse of death itself.
For the rest of the Old Testament, God’s people cling to the persistent, if shadowy, hope that Yahweh would overcome death for them. One catches the patriarchs’ hope beyond the grave in their insistence on securing burial plots in the land of promise (Heb 11:22). We hear it also in Job’s confession that, “after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another…” (Job 19:26–27)
The prophet Isaiah foresaw a day when the Lord would spread a feast for his people on Mount Zion, and “will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken (Isa 25:6–8).” Near the end of the Old Testament, Daniel articulates God’s coming victory over death explicitly in terms of a bodily resurrection: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever (Dan 12:2–3).” By the time Jesus comforts Martha at the grave of Lazarus, it seems Daniel’s expectation has taken hold among God’s people: when Jesus tells Mary that “your brother will rise again,” Martha immediately responds “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” (John 11:23–24)
One thing this brief survey indicates is that, the saints of old longed for more than a strictly spiritual “life after death.” Rather, they looked forward to the complete undoing of death, in a glorious, bodily resurrection at the end of history. They did not know that before that could happen, Someone would first blaze a trail through death, right smack in the middle of history.
“In him was life”
From the beginning of his ministry, Jesus seems intent on nothing short of abolishing death (2 Tim 1:10). Beyond his seemingly endless reversals of leprosy and other terminal illnesses, Jesus repeatedly disrupts the funeral services of unsuspecting mourners. From the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7:11–17), to Jairus’s daughter (Mark 5:35–43), to his friend Lazarus (John 11:38–44)—Jesus with only a mere word reaches into the realm of death to retrieving its prey. There was precedent for miraculous healings, and even resurrections, in the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, but Jesus’ sheer audacity in the face of death is entirely new. He bullies death. He takes for himself the brazen title, “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25–26). He makes the staggering claim that one day “all who are in the tombs” will hear the sound of his voice and come out to give an account to him (John 5:28–29). Never had anyone spoken like this man! (John 7:46)
But all of this is made to seem like just a sad delusion when Jesus succumbs to the curse of death himself. After an agonizing and humiliating crucifixion on Good Friday, the one who called himself “the Life” (John 14:6) is rendered a “corpse (Mark 15:45).” The dead body of Jesus is wrapped in burial clothes, anointed with spices, bathed in tears, and sealed in a tomb—presumably to return to the dust like every son of Adam before him. Yet there were also hints that, even in his violent death, “the Life” was still lurking—from his strangely victorious cry before his final breath (John 19:30), to the rending of the Temple curtain, to—least explicable of all!—the opening of the tombs of the Jerusalem saints (Matt 27:52–53)! Improbable as it seems, could it be that Jesus’s own death was in fact his own master strategy to empty the graves of God’s people once and for all?
Of course, this is precisely what his followers discovered to be true on Sunday morning. The tomb of Jesus had been vacated, his discarded grave clothes neatly folded and left behind (John 20:6–7). “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” the angels asked, “He is not here, he is risen, just as he said.” (Luke 24:5–6) Over the next forty days, the risen Jesus would himself appear to more than five hundred of his followers(1 Cor 15:6). As they heard his voice and touched his flesh, it was clear that this was the same Jesus they had known and loved before. “It is I myself,” Jesus assured them. (Luke 24:39) Yet Jesus was also unmistakably different. His resurrection wasn’t like that of Lazarus, or Jairus’s daughter, who returned from death the same, only to die again later. Jesus had passed into an entirely new state. His body, subject to ordinary limitations during his earthly ministry, now had amazing, supernatural properties: he appeared and vanished at will; he could pass through grave clothes, a sealed tomb, and locked doors. As Jesus would explain, he had not simply “survived” death; he had broken death (Rev 1:18).
And he had done it for them.
“Swallowed up by Life”
The apostle Paul helps us connect Jesus’s resurrection to our own future hope. Now ascended to God’s right hand, the risen King Jesus will one day return to us; when he does, he will transform our bodies to be just like his on that first Easter morning. “But our citizenship is in heaven,” he reminds the Philippians, “and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself.” (Phil 3:20–21)
This transformation our bodies will undergo will be like that of a seed that has been buried in the ground. A seed goes into the soil as a bare kernel, but it bursts forth at harvest as a beautiful, golden shaft of wheat! It is the same seed you left covered in dirt, but its transformation leaves it almost unrecognizable! In the same way, these mortal bodies of ours will one day go into the ground, completely used up and expired. But on resurrection morning, Jesus will raise that same body in an entirely new condition: “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. What is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” (1 Cor 15:42–44)
What assurance this gives us as our fallen physical bodies ache and age, get sick and grow weak. Paul compared life in these bodies to living in a “tent”—fragile, uncomfortable, temporary living quarters. In these tents, we often “groan,” longing for better, stronger, more permanent bodies. But instead of giving our hearts to bitterness, self-pity, or despair, Christians look with confidence to the resurrection bodies Jesus has promised us:
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. (2 Cor 5:1–5)
This new body is the destiny of every believer, even if we are still living at the Lord’s return. “We shall not all sleep,” Paul tells the Corinthians, “but we shall all be changed.” Jesus will outfit all of his people with a body like his, that can sustain the glory and joy of eternal life in a world made new. When the last trumpet sounds and the dead in Christ rise, those still alive will experience “the perishable putting on the imperishable,” and “the mortal putting on immortality.” It will be the work of a moment when Jesus appears—“in the twinkling of an eye”—but at the arrival of King Jesus, death will forever be swallowed up by life (1 Cor 15:50–55).
With this “great change” accomplished, we will at last know that unbroken reunion between Christ and his people that our hearts ache for in this life. As we together rise to meet the Lord, we know that all the “former things” that parted us before have now “passed away.” All things have now been made new, and “we will always be with the Lord. (1 Thes 4:14–17; Rev 21:1–4)
The hope of bodily resurrection makes the “committal,” or graveside service of a believer into a sacred moment of worship and gospel proclamation. Here, we remind each other that Christians are right to grieve for their loved ones who have died in the Lord, as Tabitha’s friends did for her (Acts 9:39). But we do not grieve without hope, as the world does (1 Thes 4:13). Instead, our hearts brim with confident expectation at the graves of our brothers and sisters. We have not abandoned them to the ground; we have planted a seed that Jesus is coming to raise up new, beautiful, and permanent. Our relationships have not been permanently severed; their bodies have “fallen asleep in the Lord,” and on resurrection morning, Jesus is coming to wake them up. Through a Savior whose love is stronger than death (SOS 8:6), they will rise again, and so will we. And so we will always be with the Lord.
“Then comes the end”
The Bible’s grand story is not complete without the bodily resurrection of God’s people. It is blessedly true that the spirits of our loved believers who die before the return of Jesus will immediately be welcomed into his blessed presence upon death. But Jesus did not come merely to provide a detour around death for his people. He came to destroy death. To do this, Jesus invaded the tragic story of the first Adam as a “Second Adam,” a hero come to reclaim all that the first Adam lost of his Father’s “very good” world in the beginning. That mission remains unfinished so long as that sneering enemy, Death, claims the body of even one of his people. That is why the grand finale of Jesus’ victory will be the destruction of Death in the glorious, bodily resurrection of all who belong to him:
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Cor 15:20–28)
The scene Paul describes is breathtaking. Before the world began, God’s Son had accepted a dangerous and costly assignment from his Father: to rescue sinners and reclaim his Father’s world, no matter the cost (John 17:1–5). On other side of that completed mission, the Lord Jesus now stands before his Father in the company of all his redeemed, resurrected people. Every promise has been kept. Every enemy has been vanquished. Not one sheep is missing. All things are now in subjection to him, the world’s rightful ruler. Then, shining like the sun, we will watch in awe as that faithful, noble Son presents it all as a gift of love to his Father. I don’t know exactly what it will feel like in that moment when “God is all in all.” But I think it may be something like what C. S. Lewis tried to capture at the conclusion of his Narnia stories:
And as He spoke . . . the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.Tweet Share
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Fight the Fight of Faith
Faith is not a one-time event for the Christian. It is not merely something that we did at some point in our past. Certainly, there was a time when we moved from unbelief to belief. But that moment of initial believing ushered us into a life of faith. A Christian is someone who, having initially trusted Jesus as Lord, goes on believing. We continue depending on Christ. This trust is not perfect. Sometimes it may grow dim and waver, and other times it can be strong and sure. But faith, for the Christian, is continuous. It is ongoing. It is a way of life.
The Apostle Paul calls this way of life a fight. He encouraged his young colleague in the ministry to “Fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12a). Faith is a fight for the Christian in that we must work hard, discipline ourselves, and sometimes struggle to keep on believing. The seeds of unbelief remain in our hearts and sometimes it seems as if they have so successfully sprouted that real faith is almost choked out. At such times I take comfort in that heart-broken father who asked Jesus to heal his son. With his demon-possessed boy writhing in the dirt at his feet and foaming at the mouth, this man looked at Jesus and, with tears in his eyes said, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). He had faith (“I believe”). But he was lacking in assurance (“Help my unbelief”).
These words have been my prayer many, many times over the course of my life. When trials come, when it seems that God’s promises (what He has pledged Himself to do) are being contradicted by God’s providence (what He actually is doing), our faith can be severely tested. At such times the person who is trusting Christ needs to remember that the Christian life is a fight, and we are called to “fight the good fight of faith.”
One good way to equip yourself for this fight is through Scripture memory. What makes faith hard and unbelief easy is losing sight of things that are true. Storing up your mind with God’s own Word makes His truth more accessible to you than if you only had a general idea of it. Scripture that is committed to memory can be readily called to mind by the Holy Spirit who indwells every believer. The Psalmist testified to power of Scripture to work this way in his life when he wrote, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You” (Psalm 119:11).
What makes faith hard and unbelief easy is losing sight of things that are true.
Another good way to wage war against unbelief is by heeding the specific counsel of God’s Word. The Bible records the real life stories of people who faced all kinds of trials and challenges. God taught them important lessons through these experiences. And by recording their stories in the Bible, He also can teach us through them. Often the Bible gives us the counsel of men and women who have gone before us in the fight of faith. By both their example and words, we are encouraged to keep believing.
This is true of King David and his instructions in Psalm 37. He wrote this Psalm when he was an old man (v. 25). It reeks of the wisdom of long experience. David knew what it was to be “on top of the mountain.” At one time he could do no wrong in the eyes of his fellow countrymen. Songs were written about him. Foreign kings respected him. His enemies feared him. But by the time he wrote Psalm 37 he had lived long enough to experience the reversal of fortunes. He had sinned grievously against his God and his people. He had experienced the death of a baby and inconceivably wicked conduct by other children, including the murder of one son by another and the betrayal and execution of that murderous son.
David had seen wicked people prosper and good people suffer. And out of the wisdom of long experience with God he encourages us to “Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him” (v. 7). This is sound counsel for people who really know God. The Lord never hurries and is never late. Furthermore, what is sometimes easy for us to forget, He is always working for eternity. We often become anxious and wonder where God is or if He really cares. It is good to hear the God-inspired counsel of an experienced man like David, who also had those thoughts: Rest in Him. Wait patiently for Him.
What exactly does it mean to rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him? It means to give our burdens and concerns over to Him. To trust Him to do what is right and what is good for us. It means to remember heaven, to remind ourselves that we are in this fight of faith for the long haul. God’s sense of timing is not limited to our clocks and calendars. To rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him means to orient your heart with such determination toward Jesus Christ and His death on the cross that the bloody scene of Calvary begins to melt your fears and anxieties as you gaze on it and are enabled to say, “For me.”Follow Tom Ascol:
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Why We Rejoice Over the Supreme Court’s Dobbs Decision
In the providence of God, the Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was handed down five days after I began an exposition of Romans 13:1-7. My first sermon on that passage (which came during an ongoing study of the whole letter) involved an overview of it, outlining the argument that Paul makes and the way that he makes it. I also explained the nature of authority and the jurisdictional realms in which God has delegated His authority in His world, namely the home, the church, and the state.
My sermon after that decision focused on verse 1, which states the thesis for the whole paragraph: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Because God has instituted civil governments, everyone is obligated to be submissive to them. The idea of government and governmental authorities comes from God. This is a fundamental truth that all Christians must remember as we work out our public, and especially our political, theology. We are submissive to governmental authorities because we are subject to Jesus Christ, who possesses “all authority” (Matthew 28:18).
We must remember this as we think about the Supreme Court’s recent decision (in Dobbs) to overturn the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States. Because God has even the heart of kings in His hands (Proverbs 21:1) we know that, ultimately, that decision is His work. Since it is a work that offers some legal protection to unborn children, everyone who loves mercy and justice should unashamedly rejoice. By its ruling the current justices determined that Roe v. Wade was an unjust decision—a mistake made by an earlier iteration of the court.
No one can legitimately doubt the accuracy of this ruling. In 1973 the right to abortion was invented out of thin air and attributed to the fourteenth amendment. But any honest reader will study in vain to find the right to kill unborn babies in that amendment. Certainly, those who adopted the amendment in 1868 had no thought of it being used to justify abortion.
The idea of government and governmental authorities comes from God. This is a fundamental truth that all Christians must remember as we work out our public, and especially our political, theology.
So, praise God that on June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States reversed an unrighteous decision by overturning Roe v. Wade. It was the right decision before both the law of God—“You shall not murder”—and before the Constitution of the United States—“No State shall…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The United States federal government is comprised of a chief executive (the President) and representatives (Congressmen & women and Senators) who are all elected by the citizens. These elected officials are obligated to carry out their responsibilities according to the rules that are established in a written constitution.
The third branch of our federal government is the judiciary with the Supreme Court being the highest court in our land. It has the responsibility of settling questions and controversies arising under the laws of our nation. Its job is to interpret the United States Constitution and render judgments on the constitutionality of all lesser laws or actions that become the occasion of dispute.
Chiseled into the Supreme Court building in Washington DC, just above the main entrance, are the words,
EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW
That motto expresses the primary responsibility of the Supreme Court—to ensure that the citizens of the United States are granted equal justice under the laws of our land, the highest of which is the constitution itself.
By reversing Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has properly carried out its duty to at least begin the process of restoring equal protection under the law for the most vulnerable among us—unborn babies. So, lovers of justice rejoice and should thank God for His kind provision of this decision.
We who know the Lord should especially rejoice over God’s kindness in causing those justices to make the ruling that they did. Their decision brings our nation back into a closer alignment to the governing authorities that God has appointed over us in the civil arena.
What I mean is this. The God of whom Job 12:23 says, “He makes nations great, and he destroys them; he enlarges nations, and leads them away,” the God who establishes empires and casts them down, this God—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ—in His providence established the United States of America in such a fashion that our highest governing authority is not a person or an office, but a document. And that document—the Constitution of the United States—was recognized and submitted to by the Supreme Court when they overturned Roe v. Wade and began to recognize that unborn babies deserve equal justice under law just like every other image-bearer of God.
By reversing Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has properly carried out its duty to at least begin the process of restoring equal protection under the law for the most vulnerable among us—unborn babies.
So, we praise God for ordaining government and for providentially establishing the government of the United States as a constitutional republic. We further praise Him that the highest court in the judicial branch of our government properly exercised their authority in making a righteous ruling by overturning the wicked ruling of Roe v. Wade.
While this does not mean that unborn babies will now be afforded equal protection under the law, it is a step in the right direction. Let’s continue to call on our civil authorities at every level and in every branch of government to exercise their God-given authority in ways that He has prescribed. And let us continue to be subject to them out of our greater submission to the King of all Kings and Lord of all lords, Jesus Christ.Follow Tom Ascol:
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