Further Remarks Concerning the Fitness for Office Controversy in the Presbyterian Church in America
Christ is one, and he alone is righteousness for all who believe in him, irrespective of anything in themselves and irrespective of their place in the church. But office has higher standards than membership, is available only to a select few (Jas. 3:1), and is not meant to glorify the ones who hold it but so that they may serve everyone else in humility and without partiality. (Mk. 10:42-45; 1 Tim. 5:21).
Last year I asserted that we should reconsider what terms we employ in discussing the question of fitness for office in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Subsequent correspondence suggests that such an assertion merits further consideration. Of particular interest is the concept of the unthinkable in moral questions.
In such matters conscious obedience to what has been explicitly stated is, it needs but little comment, of great importance. God has revealed his moral law in the Old Testament, clearly transcribing by the hand of his prophet Moses those things that he wishes men to do or refrain from doing. But alongside of the question of intentionally obeying such explicit commands is the related matter of the unthinkable.
Consider an example. Some time ago I was working in a clinic where a boy was getting a shot. He resisted by making a scene, to which what appeared to be his grandmother responded by chiding him for his incivility. The boy responded by loudly cursing this poor woman.
When I mentioned this incident to a coworker from Michigan, he, while not approving the behavior, nonetheless asserted there were occasions in which he could conceivably curse while addressing his mother, albeit not with a disrespectful tone. That notion, like the boy’s behavior, is utterly foreign to my Southern upbringing, so much so that I am not sure what would have happened to me if I had ever done either. It was simply inconceivable that I would ever curse in the presence of a parent or grandparent, much less toward one.
Nor was this because I had the advantage of a rigorous Presbyterian upbringing (I didn’t). I knew that one does not disrespect familial authority like that even when I was, at most, vaguely familiar that Ex. 21:17 exists. This was because I was the beneficiary of a common moral sense that had been developed and propagated by my culture in the form of sundry taboos.
And central to the effectiveness of such taboos is the concept of the unthinkable: for what cannot be thought in one’s own mind cannot be discussed with others, and what cannot be discussed openly cannot be done with impunity. The creation of the taboo is a strong impediment to the commission of the behavior it ultimately seeks to defend against.
Now such taboos are not merely a result of God’s common grace (where they are beneficial), nor a result of sin (where they depart from his will, Mk. 7:1-5, 9-20; 1 Tim. 4:3-5); they are to have their place also in the church, provided of course that they are fully in accord with scripture and do not go beyond it by forbidding what God allows (Col. 2:18, 20-23; 1 Tim. 4:3) or requires (Matt. 15:3-6). See, for example, 1 Corinthians 5. A man in Corinth had married his step mother (a violation of Lev. 18:8), and Paul in his letter is aghast that such a thing had not only occurred but also been boasted over (vv. 2, 6).
It is not clear why the church was boastful about such a thing, but some think that it involved a misunderstanding of liberty in Christ.1 Whatever its precise cause, the church had stumbled by permitting what even pagans recognized as intolerably evil (v. 1).
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Why You Need to Know the Difference Between Hidden and Revealed
God is a stranger because he’s a divine being who’s always beyond our grasp. He can also be even more distant because we’re the kind of beings who embrace the darkness and resist his light. Together, these things make God feel impossibly hidden. At the same time, God has done everything possible to turn himself into a friend. He sent Jesus to speak, act, and even embody the Father’s will. All of this proves God wants to be known through Jesus.
Biographies are one of my favorite genres to read. You not only get to witness the transformation of someone who will one day change the world, but their experiences also help you reimagine what is possible. You might even feel like you’ve made a new friend along the way because their story has shaped you. And yet, this person will always be a stranger to you. Since you’ve never actually met them, there’s still so much about them you just won’t know.
There’s a similar kind of suspense in knowing God—he’s both a stranger and a friend. Though you feel his presence listening to the Scriptures, deep in prayer, or in the friendships of your faith community, he can feel distant when you need him the most. You can’t always find him, but he always seems to find you.
In theology, this is known as the hidden and revealed God. If you ever feel like God is a stranger, then this article is for you. God is hidden, but that’s only because he wants to be found in the right places. His identity is first fully revealed in his autobiography, the Scriptures. Then he shows up in the incarnation of his Son, the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth, to confirm what that story says about him. In the end, encountering Jesus means being found by the hidden God.
Hidden
God is hidden in at least three ways. First, he’s hidden because some aspects of his character are simply beyond our grasp. The poet of Psalm 145 reminds us of this when he says God’s greatness is to be praised, and that his greatness is unsearchable (Ps. 145:3). It’s as if God exists in a different yet overlapping dimension than us. We simultaneously worship his greatness while lacking the ability to appreciate all of its depth. Though his knowledge and power break into our world and change it, the evidence he leaves behind isn’t always easy to decipher (Isa. 40:28; Ps. 147:5). This is why the prophet Isaiah concludes God’s ways are simply higher than human ways (Isa. 55:8-9).
We can’t find God because he exists on a different level than we do, but our moral failures also push God even farther away. Again, the prophet Isaiah makes this clear. He says our “iniquities” separate us from God, stop him from listening to our prayers, and even cause him to turn his face away from our cares and concerns (Isa. 59:2). It’s not just that we’re unable to know God, it’s that sin actively disrupts the divine connection between us.
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Be Angry and Do Not Sin
Slow down. Reaffirm that you put your trust in your Father who judges justly. Pray that the Spirit would anoint you with wisdom and grace, as you remember the grace that you have received from Christ. If you have missed this path, you have yet to find the place that Paul gives to righteous indignation.
Ephesians 4:26–27 makes room for anger that is not sin.
Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. (Ephesians 4:26–27)
The problem is that we are happy to exploit what seems to be a legal loophole. Anger, in its very nature, is self-justifying. My anger is righteous; your anger is not. So if we are to find some righteous wiggle room here, we must proceed very carefully.
Let’s begin with what is clear. The passage names anger as a close neighbor of the devil. At a moment’s notice, anger can drift toward his murderous ways, and we transform into something less than human. With this in mind, Paul also writes, “Let all… anger… be put away from you” (Ephesians 4:31). Our anger, therefore, puts us on high alert. Best to put ourselves in chains until it passes.
Since Paul’s words in Ephesians give no specifics on anger without sin, we turn to the illustrations on which he relied. We turn first to Jesus who, indeed, could be angry without sin. He was angry when money changers interfered with the Gentiles’ worship of God (John 2:13–16). He was angry when children were kept away from him (Mark 10:14). He was angry with Pharisees who opposed a healing and preferred to use the law to place a burden on the people (Mark 3:1–6). He was angry when his disciples wanted judgment rained down on a Samaritan village rather than mercy (Luke 9:5–55). Paul, too, could be angry in his rhetoric against those who hoped to put Christians under the law of Moses (Galatians 5:12). What these and similar passages have in common is that this anger was never in response to personal attacks, but it was on behalf of those who had been wronged. What did Jesus do with personal attacks? He followed the ways of the psalmists and entrusted judgment to his Father (1 Peter 2:23).
The Ephesians passage is a quote from Psalm 4:4—a reference that might give more insight.
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Biblical Conversion is Not Self-Improvement
The very bad news of the gospel regarding the sinner’s hopeless and diabolical situation is more than matched and surpassed by the very good news of the gospel that speaks of the incredible saving power of God. It is the power to transform us into forgiven saints with the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and the power to enable us to live a life that is pleasing to him. All this has nothing to do with self-improvement and everything to do with the matchless grace of God.
Mankind’s greatest and most urgent need is to get right with God. That of course presupposes that we are NOT now right with God. We are sinners who live in alienation from and hostility to God. The whole point of the life and work of Christ was to make a way for lost sinners to be reconciled to a holy and just God.
But we must be clear as to what biblical conversion is all about. And that means being clear about our condition as sinners and our complete inability to save ourselves and turn our lives around. Since I am again reading through Jeremiah, I recently came upon a familiar passage found there. Jer. 13:23 says this: “Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.”
Our condition as sinners is one of utter hopelessness and inability. Consider some of the things the New Testament says about who we are as sinners and what we are like as sinners:
-spiritually sick (Luke 5:31-32)-rebellious children (Luke 15:11-32)-lost (Luke 19:10)-enslaved (John 8:34)-in darkness (Acts 26:18)-remain in darkness (John 12:46)-under the power of Satan (Acts 26:18)-God’s enemies (Romans 5:10)-slaves to sin (Romans 6:22)-influenced and led astray to mute idols (1 Corinthians 12:2)-spiritually blind (2 Corinthians 4:4-6)-God’s enemies (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)-slaves to those who by nature are not gods (Galatians 4:8)-dead in your transgressions and sins (Ephesians 2:1)-objects of wrath (Ephesians 2:3)-dead in transgressions (Ephesians 2:5)-darkened in their understanding (Ephesians 4:18)-separated from the life of God (Ephesians 4:18)-darkness (Ephesians 5:8)-in the dominion of darkness (Colossians 1:13)-alienated from God (Colossians 1:21)-his enemies (Colossians 1:21)-idol worshippers (1 Thessalonians 1:9)-held in slavery (Hebrews 2:15)-not a people; who had not received mercy (1 Peter 2:10)-sheep going astray (1 Peter 2:25)
That is quite a list. It is a damning indictment of those who we are without Christ – which is all of us. And that is why Scripture speaks about what it is like to have a real, God-given conversion:
-We are moved from death to life.-We are moved from darkness to light.-We are moved from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God.-We are moved from bondage to liberty.-We are moved from slaves to sons.-We are moved from being enemies of God to friends of God.
So a radical change takes place when the sinner is converted. It has to be radical: we are talking about bringing spiritual life to dead men and women. And that is why the Apostle Paul for example speaks about the power of God when it comes to the conversion of sinners.
As he said in Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” The word for power (dunamis) is used two other times in this chapter: in v. 4 which discusses God’s power in raising Jesus from the dead, and v. 20 which speaks of God’s power in creating the world.
Many Christian commentators could be mentioned here who have spoken to these truths. C. S. Lewis for example said this: “Fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms.” And again: “Conversion requires an alteration of the will which does not occur without the intervention of the supernatural.”
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