God and Healing
Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, January 22, 2023
It is important to wrestle with these questions in an attempt for answers. Why is God’s will so, seemingly, horrible to some people who love him? Here’s my answer: I don’t know. But I continue to believe that he is the sovereign King of the Universe, that he is Goodness itself, and that he loves me more dearly than I can imagine.
I’m a charismatic, I believe that God heals today and that this happens frequently. I’ve watched someone’s leg grow while someone else prayed for them. I’ve felt the muscles in someone’s back untwist while I prayed for them. I’ve known a friend’s brain cancer to disappear. God heals. We can, in a general sense, suggest that God wills that everyone be healed, not least on the basis that sickness has no place in his inbreaking kingdom (Revelation 21).
I’ve also prayed for numerous people who have not been healed, including a dear friend who is going blind, I’ve known a friend die from a brain tumour despite our prayers.
Which at the very least raises a theological question for us. It raises a range of pastoral ones too. Why was it that these people aren’t healed? Is it their fault? Is it mine for not praying correctly?
Some of the big American charismatic churches that are popular in my circles would probably suggest that the problem was with our faith. One particular church suggests in their popular teaching that there is no ‘deficiency’ on God’s end (sure, no one disagrees), so when someone isn’t healed all the ‘lack’ is on our end.
Thankfully they don’t always blame the person being prayed for their lack of faith, though this sadly does happen, more often they would situate the lack of faith in those praying. Which raises some important pastoral questions. And it’s nonsense.
Let’s go back to the Bible. Sometimes, we’re told that Jesus ‘healed everyone he met’ so therefore we would too if we could, indicating that the problem is ‘on our end.’ Except clearly he doesn’t heal everyone he meets: think of Mark 6, which raises its own questions, or of characters healed by the apostles who Jesus presumably knew (e.g. Acts 3).
In the pages of the Scriptures, we find a God who heals, marvellously, time and time again. We also find a God who wounds (2 Corinthians 12). Our theology needs to be big enough for both. We know that the revealed will of God is to heal and to bless. And we know that God sends calamity (Isaiah 45).
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Ordinary Means of Grace Ministry
Written by Jon D. Payne |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
Sinners are saved and Satan is vanquished not through the visible glory of social activism, political victories, or cultural transformation. As beneficial as these pursuits might be to improve society, the saving power of Christ is not mediated through them. In fact, it’s one of Satan’s tactics to make us believe that it is. Rather, the saving power of Christ is operative, by the Spirit, through God’s chosen instruments of salvation: preaching, prayer, water, bread, and wine. Administered by lawfully ordained ministers of the gospel, the ordinary means of grace form God’s chief strategy for making disciples.Jonathan Edwards served as a missionary-pastor to the Mohawk and Mohican Indians from 1751 to 1758. Despite the numerous challenges of ministry in the northeastern frontier, the New England pastor was not fixated on contextualization or man-centered methods of mission and discipleship. Rather, like the Apostles, Edwards was devoted to gospel proclamation through the ordinary means of grace (Acts 2:42).
SAVING POWER THROUGH APPOINTED MEANS
Edwards believed that the word of the cross (i.e., the gospel) is the operative power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:18). Moreover, he believed that Christ’s saving power is mediated through divinely appointed means. In other words, salvation comes to us ordinarily through the means of Word, sacraments, and prayer in the context of the local church. Despite his foreign context and contrary to all human wisdom, the Colonial missionary placed his confidence in what God promises to use and not what man thinks might work. He carried out the ministry on God’s terms, not man’s devices. Through the means of grace, God’s elect receive Christ and abide in Him through faith.
The example of Jonathan Edwards punctuates the essential point that the context of ministry must never determine the means of ministry. Geography and culture must never determine theology and practice. Whether laboring in the sophisticated environs of Northampton or the wilderness surroundings of Stockbridge, Edwards modeled an unflinching commitment to the proclamation of Christ through Word and sacrament. He stood firmly in the Reformed tradition. Believing the Westminster Shorter Catechism to be “an excellent system of divinity,” Edwards believed that the
outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption are his ordinances, especially the word, sacraments, and prayer; all which are made effectual to the elect for salvation. (WSC 88)
In other words, it is through the ordinary means of grace that the ascended Christ, by the Spirit, saves, sanctifies, and comforts His chosen ones. The means of grace are the effectual tools that Christ has promised to use to build His church (Matt. 16:18; 28:18–20; Acts 2:42; 1 Cor. 1:18–2:5; 4:1; 2 Tim. 4:2–5). Of course, it’s not in the tools alone that Edwards placed his confidence but the saving power of Christ operative in and through them. Religious and liturgical formalism was an abomination to Edwards. It should also be to us.
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Somber Thoughts on a Contemporary Difficulty in the Evangelical Churches
But lay aside the practical consequences of ordaining women pastors, as well as its obvious violation of the clear commands of Scripture….This notion that it is unfair to deny office on account of things outside the conscious control of those that want it if they have the same abilities or moral character that others who attain to it possess. It would be easy to imagine that God is unjust on this point and to ask: why, when all believers participate in the Spirit and receive understanding and spiritual gifts from him, has he not seen fit to enable all people, men and women, to be fit for all the duties and offices of the church? Because God is sovereign, and his will is independent of ours.
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom. 12:2)
Our culture cannot abide the notion that any position should be denied someone who wants it on account of any trait that is outside that person’s conscious will. This is often presented as a just desire for equality between persons, but what it actually represents is the elevation of the individual will and its imagined rights above the will of the corporate bodies of which the individual is a part. The modern spirit of absolute individual autonomy says that the individual has rights where the corporate does not, and that in any conflict it is the corporate that must yield to the claims of the individual. Indeed, it is felt that the corporate body only exists to empower, affirm, and celebrate the individual in his or her attempt at self-realization.
To present an example in the civil realm, there are many who act as though the military does not exist to defend the nation, but to provide an environment in which people can climb the ranks and acquire as much remuneration, prestige, and power as they are able. It is thought unfair to prohibit women serving in the combat arms, for example, for that would limit their opportunities for advancement, as if their career ambitions are the important thing in such cases, rather than the actual needs of infantry or artillery battalions.[1]
That same spirit shows itself in the church. It is felt unfair that women should be denied the ruling and teaching offices in the church if they desire them and show themselves as having excellent moral character and much talent in teaching, administration, etc. Great numbers of people, whose sincerity and good intentions I do not for the most part doubt, are therefore agitating for change on this point, and many have gone ahead and elevated women to positions of leadership.
It is an endeavor which is somewhat understandable, for many of the practical considerations of ministry seem to commend it. We see how badly great multitudes need mercy and the good news of eternal life; and we see how many zealous and compassionate women there are among us; how much more opportunity they have to work than many men; how many of them have many useful talents that can be deployed to this end; how many of the people who need help or who have open ears to spiritual concerns are themselves women; and how many men seem apathetic about the work of ministry, and we think that practical concerns and simple fairness commend extending office to those who are eager to carry out its labors.
And yet to do such a thing encounters insuperable difficulties. Paul’s apostolic instruction concerning such matters is, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim. 2:12). Elsewhere he says, even more restrictively, that “women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says” (1 Cor. 14:34). Discussing this in a 1919 article, “Paul on Women Speaking in Church,” B.B. Warfield says that “it would be impossible for the apostle to speak more directly or more emphatically than he has d[one] here. He requires women to be silent at the church-[meeti]ngs.”[2] Nor can this be regarded as being non-binding or only the apostle’s opinion, for he explicitly claims divine inspiration for it, saying promptly thereafter in 1 Cor. 14:37 that “if anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.” (And of course, being part of the canon, 1 Corinthians participates in the attribute of divine inspiration with all the other books of the Old and New Testaments, as explicitly declared by 2 Tim. 3:16’s assertion that “all Scripture is breathed out by God.”)
There are practical concerns as well, such as that women seem to not desire office as much as is thought. The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) greatly wishes to achieve a version of equality which includes parity in the numbers of men and women leaders. But their report upon the matter, Gender and Leadership in the PC(USA), says women are underrepresented, accounting for 58% of members and only 38% of active teaching elders in 2016, even after generations of ordaining women. Perhaps the familiar refrain that women are more spiritual than men is false, then, or at least does not have anything to do with their desire to hold church office.
(And as an aside, the picture of the PCUSA’s efforts at gender equality that report portrays does not suggest an equitable or pleasant outcome, but rather a situation characterized by widespread, continuing discord. Either extending office to women has not meant them also achieving the same prestige as their male counterparts, or else such as has been achieved is deemed insufficient. Neither suggests the experiment has been particularly successful: either official equality did not mean actual/practical equality, or else equality really has been achieved and its beneficiaries do not like its true nature in comparison to what their ideal visions imagine it should be like.)
Then there is the practical concern that the churches that have ordained women as pastors, far from increasing their appeal, have been struggling with severe membership losses. That which was supposed to increase ministerial effectiveness has not done so, at least for many of the major denominations that have pursued it. The PCUSA’s constituent predecessors had about 4.25 million members in 1965. It is now down to 1.14 million, and loses about 110 churches and 50,000 members every year. The national population has meanwhile increased from about 195 million to an estimated 334 million. This represents the PCUSA’s percentage of the population dropping by about 85%. That is not winning the culture, and represents demographic difficulties reminiscent of the Jewish nation during its judgments (Jer. 4:26).
But lay aside the practical consequences of ordaining women pastors, as well as its obvious violation of the clear commands of Scripture, for these objections have often been pointed out before. Consider again the idea upon which it precedes, this notion that it is unfair to deny office on account of things outside the conscious control of those that want it if they have the same abilities or moral character that others who attain to it possess. It would be easy to imagine that God is unjust on this point and to ask: why, when all believers participate in the Spirit and receive understanding and spiritual gifts from him, has he not seen fit to enable all people, men and women, to be fit for all the duties and offices of the church?
Because God is sovereign, and his will is independent of ours. He does not rule to do our bidding (Lk. 17:7-10) or to bring about perfect equality of authority (1 Pet. 5:5) and opportunity (Matt. 19:30) between people, nor to make it so our faith is easily palatable to unbelievers who ascribe to the phantasm of absolute individual autonomy (1 Cor. 1:23; 1 Pet. 2:8). The church belongs to him, not us, as do its offices and gifts: he may give them in whatever amount he wishes to whomever he wishes, and he may deny or withdraw them as he sees fit. They are his to do with them as he pleases.
We cannot say this is unfair because 1) we are creatures, and creatures have no right to criticize or question their creator (Job. 40:2; Isa. 45:9-11; Rom. 9:20); and 2) none of us deserve anything from God except rejection and punishment (Rom. 3:9-20). All we have is a gift (Jn. 3:27; 1 Cor. 4:7; Jas. 1:17), and gifts are matters of grace, not justice (Matt. 20:1-16; Rom. 12:6). For his own reasons God has given office and gifts to some (Eph. 4:7-14) which he has not given to most others (inc. the present author). That is his prerogative, and you can either accept it or rebel against it. You cannot deny God’s rights to freely do with his own whatever he wills, for that is to deny his independence and sovereignty as creator and governor of the world.
And in that is seen the essential evil of rebelling against him by disobeying his commands against women pastors. It is an act of gross impiety that denies essential attributes of his character and seeks to supplant his will with that of mere sinful humans. Now God says in his word that “rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Sam. 15:23). He forbade such offenses absolutely in the Law, prescribing the death penalty as punishment (Lev. 20:27; Deut. 13:1-18), and in the New Testament says that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of heaven (1 Cor. 6:9; Gal. 5:19-21) but will perish in the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8). Let the gravity of that sink in: those that ordain women are engaged in a sin that God regards as the moral equivalent of idolatry and witchcraft (as some translations have 1 Sam. 15:23’s “divination”). If something is the equivalent of such heinous sins we should not toy with or study it, but rather reject it outright without delay.
That may yet be a snare for many, for I fear that some are content to oppose it, but with a manner and conception that is at least partly of their own choosing and not with the full force of Scripture’s denunciations of such open rebellion. There is a brand of conservative thought that desires to oppose what it regards as error, but in a respectable – dare I say, winsome – way that it (vainly) hopes will not be open to the accusation of fanaticism or fundamentalism. But in such matters we ought to oppose wrong in God’s way, not our own, which means describing sins as they truly are, not in a purposefully restrained manner that fears lest it seem too harsh or offensive. The future will reveal whether the opponents of this error oppose it as though it is a matter of life and death, or whether like Joash they fight with less zeal than is required and ultimately fail (2 Kgs. 13:14-19).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation, available through Amazon.[1] When all specialties were opened to women in 2015 it was on condition that they be able to meet the standards required for each, which suggests that my perspective here is false, as doing so expanded the available candidates to fill combat positions. I.e., it put the military’s needs first and without compromise. However, there are no shortage of men who could fill those positions – the vast bulk of the military serve in administrative and support capacities – and many of the people who pressured the military to make such changes seem to have been motivated less by a desire to expand our combat forces than by concerns about perceived fairness to women.
[2] The manuscript has a tear where the text in brackets is located above, and the words “done” and “meeting” have been inferred as the proper ones from the context.
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Unless The Church of Scotland Returns To The Gospel, It Will Die
Unless the Church of Scotland returns to the Gospel, it will die. To some, this seems a strange statement. What does same-sex marriage have to do with the Gospel? It’s straightforward. We do not make up the Gospel. We receive it by revelation from Christ – through his word. Part of that is his teaching about marriage. When we start to dismantle that word and rearrange it according to the views of our culture, then it is not the Gospel we believe, but ourselves. When we move away from Scripture, we move away from Christ. Whenever a Church does that, it withers and dies.
Christian Today asked me to write this article about the C of S assembly decision. It is different from my earlier article on the Wee Flea earlier this week.
What Happened?
After a long and protracted process which began with the Scott Rennie case in 2009, the Church of Scotland approved the solemnisation of same-sex marriages in the Church by a vote of 276 to 136 at this week’s General Assembly in Edinburgh. Ministers can now apply to be celebrants, and no one will be compelled to take part.
The Moderator, Rev Dr Ian Greenshields, explained why this had taken so long.
“The Church of Scotland is a broad church and there are diverse views on the subject of same-sex marriage among its members.”There has been a lengthy, prayerful and in-depth discussion and debate about this topic for many years at all levels of the Church to find a solution that respects diversity and values the beliefs of all.”
There was considerable concern at the beginning of this process that the evangelicals would leave. Given the decline in the Church, the Church leaders were well aware of the devastating impact this would have – so they played the long game using a mix of carrot and stick.On the one hand they appointed evangelical moderators (whose job was to ensure that the evangelicals stayed on board and ensured that there were theological commissions with evangelicals on board – although always a minority). On the other hand, they made it difficult for evangelicals to leave – for example playing hard ball over buildings and finances.
These tactics worked. Although a number of evangelicals did leave – including almost all the big evangelical congregations in the cities – there was not a mass exodus. Indeed, some evangelicals facilitated the change.
What does it mean?
The politicians approve. For example, the SNP tweeted their delight: “Congratulations to the Church of Scotland – to all those campaigners for today’s historic moment! An overwhelming majority in the General Assembly in favour of allowing ministers to conduct same-sex marriages.”
And of course, the media are on board. It is incomprehensible to most modern journalists how anyone could be opposed to same-sex marriage. To them it is like being opposed to love! The trouble is when you ask them to define ‘love’, they struggle.
The Church of Scotland is now fully on board with the progressive ‘values’ that run contemporary Scotland. This week they also passed a motion supporting the government’s ban on so called ‘conversion therapy’. It’s strange that they appear to be silent about the other great social issue currently dividing society – transgender ideology. It would be good if the Assembly told us what a woman is and acted in defence of women.
Where is the Church going?
The answer is: to extinction. The Church of Scotland has seen a fall of a third of its membership in the past decade. The Trustees report stated: “A 34 per cent reduction was seen between 2011 and 2021, with no indication of this trend reversing from 2021 congregational data.” Over the past 60 years, the Church has lost a million of the 1.3 million members it once enjoyed.
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