May the Lord help us to kill entitlement. May he remind us by his Gospel what it cost his son to save us. That it’s his breath that keeps us alive and his hands that hold the universe together. Help us Lord to kill this sense of entitlement in us. Help us so that we may serve you wholeheartedly. That we may give cheerfully. To serve others with a clean heart and approach you with thanksgiving in our hearts. Give us the posture of Jesus that approaches the cup with trust in you. 

Many times we approach God like we do an employer. We come not broken and indebted but rather anxious and annoyed at him. Why? Well because we feel he’s failing us. We come to collect our paycheck for service rendered and it’s late or unavailable. We feel we’ve done our part better than most but when we need him he’s not there. Think about when you’ve needed that job so badly. Perhaps it was a business deal or a relationship you were pursuing. Think of when you were unwell or had an ailing loved one. Perhaps you were facing loss. The lie says you serve God, give your best and he’ll get you sorted. It’s more like being the employee of the year and your boss will look after you. He’ll surely not want to let you go. Except that’s not how it works.
Many who blame God and quit the faith do so because of this wrong expectation. We feel God owed us and yet he didn’t come through for us when we needed him. It’s a relationship bound to have a bitter ending. But it’s not really a relationship, to begin with. It’s more or less what exists between you and your shopkeeper. The goods are what bring you together. Without them, you’ve really no need to know each other. You’ve no relationship outside of this business. Such is what happens when we view God as our boss or shopkeeper. We expect a wage for service rendered and our relationship doesn’t go beyond what we get from him.
Privilege is the Posture of Scripture
With this entitlement, we feel wronged when God doesn’t come through for us. How could he not? We feel betrayed because we believe he owes us this much. But scripture puts across a different posture altogether. In place of entitlement, it gives us privilege. It says we owe him everything. We owe him our lives and for the Christian our second lives. It says ours is a relationship of grace. That what we have is not ours. What we do is not our work. And our very lives are not our own. In this regard, God doesn’t really owe us anything and yet he’s called us to ask everything from him.
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As Christians look to upcoming elections and consider vital issues facing our public square, we must not be found silent nor unintelligible in our ethical convictions. Silence and underdeveloped theses for the verity of our moral vision are both an affront to our mandate and the duties of discipleship. At a bare minimum, Christians must express our biblical convictions in the voting booth, electing candidates that will uphold justice and promote the good. Christians must also articulate our convictions on abortion, marriage, and why the entire array of the LGBTQ rainbow revolution spells disaster for any nation that hopes to achieve flourishing. We also need Christians contending for the rights of children against the onslaught of “gender medicine.” In short, evangelicals must be more political, not less.“If the church fails to apply the central truth of Christianity to social problems correctly, someone else will do so incorrectly.”[1] The twentieth-century theologian Carl F.H. Henry (1913-2003) made that argument in 1964. Regrettably, his thesis has held true over the past sixty years. But this doesn’t have to be. The moral decadence of American politics and culture can be reversed, but only through a God-given combination of spiritual graces. Theological conviction, moral clarity, and public courage on the part of American evangelicals are what is needed, and in this essay I hope to show how Carl Henry’s public theology is a good model for engaging our secular world.

The Disconnect Between Profession and Voting Practice
Consider, for example, the November 2023 elections. The various electoral contests in that year revealed a disturbing insight into the state of American society: our cultural consciousness has been discipled by a resurgent neo-paganism. Indeed, ever since the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the pro-life movement has endured significant setbacks and legislative defeats; and these failures occurred in what we thought to be deeply conservative states with high church attendance. In 2023, Kentucky reelected its Democratic governor who supports little to no restrictions on abortion. The residents of Ohio, where 73% of adults claim some manner of Christian faith (and 29% are evangelicals), passed a constitutional right to abortion in 2023.
These developments were captured in Ligonier’s 2022 “State of Theology” survey, which uncovered troubling realities not only about society, but amongst those who called themselves evangelicals. On the question of whether gender identity is a matter of choice, 42% of Americans agree that it is. Amongst evangelicals, that number is only slightly better at 37%. While 91% of evangelicals believe that abortion is a sin, exit polls from Ohio’s recent vote to enshrine abortion access as a constitutional right show that at least a quarter of white evangelicals support unfettered access to abortion. There is clearly a disconnect between what evangelicals believe to be unjust and their actual vote for unjust practices.
That same Ligonier survey also revealed the following about evangelicals: 43% believe that Jesus is not God; 26% say the Bible is not literally true; and 38% contend that religious belief is mere opinion rather than about objective truth. Is it any wonder that secularism triumphs when those who apparently bear witness to the truth of God’s revealed will have strayed from their obligations as disciples of Jesus Christ and have departed from the authority of God’s Word?
There is no Middle Ground
Our minds will either be conformed to this world or transformed by the Word (Rom. 12:2). In this scheme, no neutrality exists. The absence of obedience and the lack of abiding in Christ spells disaster for the Christian. We will find ourselves imaging this world, looking less and less like Christ with minds contorted by godlessness and worldliness.
This principle extrapolates into the broader culture. The Christian worldview rejects the myth of moral and ethical neutrality in the public square. Carl Henry stood upon that conviction, declaring that every contour of society—from its customs and culture to its legal structures—would either abide in the verity of God’s created order or conform to something else. Either the central truths of the Bible and its comprehensive moral framework would guide our civil and political communities, or a neo-paganism would nourish a national collective consciousness.
Indeed, Henry believed that “the fate of the Bible is the fate of Christianity and even of civilization itself.”[2] The eviction of the Bible and a biblical worldview as the ballast for society means the abandonment of the only stable source for societal flourishing. Dislodging the binding authority of God’s eternal law and his Word coincides with the embrace of ethical relativism and moral malleability. The result of this condition, Henry warned, was “society’s inevitable theological, spiritual, and moral suicide.”[3]
Failure to relate God’s revealed will to the broader society means surrendering our neighbors, communities, states, and nation to the ravages of a humanistic paganism. True human rights and human liberty, rightly understood, will disintegrate under the corrosive acids of moral relativism. Indeed, the democratization of ethics created the conditions for suffocating the vitality of families, the life of the unborn, and the recognition and respect of ontological reality in sex and gender. The stakes could not be higher.
Carl Henry’s Clarion Call
Carl Henry dedicated much of his career to the issue of public theology. The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, published in 1947, called for a renewed evangelical engagement in the public square. He cast a vision for an evangelical movement that avoided the isolationist tendencies of fundamentalism while also providing a theologically orthodox alternative to Protestant liberalism and the social gospel.

Many Johannine tomes are more concerned with rethinking Christology rather than relishing in the old paths, more concerned with literary critique than looking at Jesus, more concerned with hypothesized compositional layers than the coming of the God-man to save sinners. Hutcheson’s aim in writing this commentary ought to be the aim of every biblical commentator—”to do service to the church of Christ in my generation, and to contribute my endeavours for promoting that public design of making the holy scriptures yet more clear unto the Lord’s people.”

One of the reasons I frequent used bookstores is the promise of hidden treasure. Buried beneath stacks of tottering books with faded covers can lie treasure of immeasurable value—gems forgotten by the passage of time. To discover that gem is like knowing a delicious secret before anyone else. I found that secret gem one morning when I stumbled upon The Exposition of the Gospel according to John by the Scottish Covenanter, George Hutcheson.
Hutcheson’s work contains all the hallmarks of robust Puritanism—doctrinal precision with heartwarming devotion to Christ. It is no wonder, then, that Hutcheson was one of Charles Spurgeon’s favorites. Hutcheson’s commentary on John was Spurgeon’s favorite to consult. He said of it, “Excellent; beyond all praise. It is a full-stored treasury of sound theology, holy thought, and marrowy doctrine.”1
For many today, however, George Hutcheson remains a stranger. Hutcheson (1615-1674) was a Church of Scotland minister, biblical commentator, and key figure in the events involving the Scottish Covenanters. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh (MA, 1638) and pastored in the villages of Colmonell and Irvine in the county of Ayrshire. He was close friends with David Dickson, another prominent Scottish Covenanting minister, biblical commentator, and Principal of the University of Glasgow. Hutcheson wrote other commentaries, such as A Brief Exposition of the Twelve Minor Prophets (1653-5), An Exposition of the Book of Job (1669), and more.2
Overview of Work
The Exposition of the Gospel according to John (1657) originated from Hutcheson’s preaching notes on the Gospel of John, likely from sermons preached at Colmonell, Ayrshire. Hutcheson explains in the introduction how he prioritized writing this commentary after he was faced with his mortality from some unknown incident. In the shadow of his own finitude, Hutcheson wrote this work to point to the infinite Son of God, who is “the fountain and preserver of life in living creatures” and who “hath undertaken to work the work of redemption of sinners, and so hath engaged himself to carry it through” (12, 84).
The commentary is a mid-sized volume of 439 pages. However, due to the density of the exposition and Hutcheson’s ability to make every word count, it feels more thorough and comprehensive than the largest contemporary tomes on John. The structure of the commentary is a combination of explanation and application. Hutcheson walks through the entire Gospel verse-by- verse. He first explains each verse and how it relates to the overall scheme of John’s narrative. Then, he has a section labeled “Doctrines,” which is a numbered list of various systematic doctrines and practical applications of the verse.
The explanations of the verses are clear and useful, but what makes this commentary stand out is the depth of doctrinal clarity and the breadth of application after each verse. Hutcheson combines lucid dogmatic explanation with sensitive pastoral application. For example, consider how in the space of a brief paragraph Hutcheson goes from elucidating the unity of the divine essence and the distinction of the persons in the Godhead, to redemptive-covenantal language, to an encouragement for believers to trust in Christ because of his nature and offices:
“The Son’s coexistence with the Father is also a matter seriously to be considered by believers, wherein they may see the deep wisdom and rich love of God, who hath found a way of reconciliation of lost man by the same in nature and essence who is the party offended, and that the unity of the divine essence and the distinction of persons should contribute to make the redemption and reconciliation of lost man effectual by him; wherein also believers, who have fled to Christ for refuge, may not only find him to be true God, able to supply all wants, and to save to the uttermost, but may also find the Father in the Mediator, as being one in essence with him.” (11).
Hutcheson and Reformed Orthodoxy
Spurgeon’s description of Hutcheson as a “full-stored treasury of sound theology” is certainly apt. Hutcheson’s exposition is a theologically sound distillation of the basic tenets of Reformed orthodoxy. His exegesis is doctrinal and biblical; his understanding of the Trinity and Christology is classical and conciliar; and his articulation of soteriology is set within the broader framework of covenant theology. Not only is the content of Hutcheson’s exposition markedly Reformed, but his method of exposition is reflective of earlier theologians, such as the sixteenth-century Reformed scholastic theologian, Girolamo Zanchi. R. A. Muller notes, Hutcheson’s style of adding “a series of doctrinal loci at the end of the exposition of each pericope” is similar to Girolamo Zanchi.3
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