This article is part 7 in a series by Tom Nettles on Remembering Jesus Christ. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6).

Possibly, the earliest post-Pauline, post apostolic literature that we have is in the letter of Clement of Rome to the Church in Corinth. Most likely this was written around 95-96 A. D, and persons appointed by the apostles still held office in the church but were being pressed out of leadership by a younger generation. Clement wrote, “For we see that you have removed certain people, their good conduct notwithstanding, from the ministry which had been held in honor by them blamelessly.” [Michael Holmes, Ed. and Rev. The Apostolic Fathers, second edition, Baker Book House, 1989, 53] Clement lamented that because of one or two persons, the ancient church of the Corinthians was “rebelling against its elders” thereby heapjng “blasphemies upon the name of the Lord” and by their “stupidity” were creating danger for themselves. [Holmes, 55] 

In order to counter this egregious violation of Christian fraternity and even apostolic authority, Clement reached deeply into the theology of the Bible as seen most clearly in the condescension of Christ to encourage that church to correct their error. In the process of his argument, we find evidence of strong development of a comprehensive biblical theology, trinitarian theology, and the centrality of Christ’s having assumed human nature to bring to fruition the eternal purpose of God toward his elect. The reality of the full human nature of Christ is one of the fundamental assumptions of the argument. A creedal orderliness is present in the structure and content of this letter.

The basic Trinitarian structure of the implicit creed surrounded by certain affirmations of the peculiar operations of each person of the Trinity may be seen in several passages in Clement’s sober and stately style. Clement counters their pride by calling attention to examples of great humility in Scripture, punctuating the entire discussion with Christ’s example. The emphases on Christ’s work in his human nature are prominent. Formerly in the early days of the church, not only were they blessed with an “abundant outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but they gave heed to Christ’s words, stored them in their hearts, “kept his sufferings before your eyes.” [29] Again, to counter the recent surge of haughty self-importance, “Let us fix our eyes on the blood of Christ and understand how precious it is to his Father.” [32] Clement looked at Rahab’s scarlet thread as “making it clear that through the blood of the Lord redemption will come to all who believe.” [35] Clement quotes Isaiah 53:1-12 as an illustration of his observation, “The majestic scepter of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, did not come with the pomp of arrogance or pride … but in humility, just as the Holy Spirit spoke concerning him.” [36] He then summarized his point by saying, “If the Lord so humbled himself, what should we do who through him have come under the yoke of his grace?” [37, 38] 

Clement urges peace and harmony in the church, because peace and harmony are “especially abundant to us who have taken refuge in his compassionate mercies through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Again, Christ in his humanity has become the guarantee that God’s purpose of blessing his people will certainly come to fruition: “Let us consider, dear friends, how the Master continually points out to us the coming resurrection of which he made the Lord Jesus Christ the firstfruit when he raised him from the dead.” [42]. Looking at Jacob as a man of blessings, Clement affirms, “From him comes the Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.” [45] Our salvation is, in fact, “Jesus Christ, the High Priest of our offerings, the Guardian and Helper of our weakness.” [48] In encouraging and commending love as the cement for true fellowship, harmony, and humility in the church, Clement again pointed to the condescension and love of Christ in taking our nature to gain for us what we lost in our foolish pride: “Because of the love he had for us, Jesus Christ our Lord, in accordance with God’s will, gave his blood for us, and his flesh for our flesh, and his life for our lives.” [56] Such a strong emphasis on substitution would be irrelevant, in fact impossible, apart from The Son of God’s coming by true human birth in a true human nature.

 Always resident in each argument of the centrality of Christ in his true fleshly suffering is a reminder of the trinitarian arrangement of gospel truth. “The apostles received the gospel for us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus the Christ was sent forth from God. So then Christ is from God, and the apostles are from Christ. Both, therefore, came of the will of God in good order. Having therefore received their orders and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and full of faith in the Word of God, they went forth with the firm assurance that the Holy Spirit gives, preaching the good news that the kingdom of God was about to come.” [Holmes, 51.]

Knowledge of these things does not come through any private intuition but from the very oracles of God,–“For thus says the Holy Word” [59]. The apostle Paul already had written to this church about their tendency to factions—“Truly he wrote to you in the Spirit about himself and Cephas, and Apollos.” Rather than being contentious toward one another, they should be “contentious and zealous” about the “things that relate to salvation.” For these things “You have searched the Scriptures which are true, which were given by the Holy Spirit; you know that nothing unrighteous or counterfeit is written in them.” [53] By them the church should know that only the ungodly thrust out the holy. As Clement multiplied the scriptural examples of God’s blessings to the humble, and the close alignment that humility and holiness have with each other, he inserted, “For you know, and know well, the sacred Scriptures, dear friends, and you have searched into the oracles of God. We write these things, therefore, merely as a reminder.” [57]

Clement regularly points, not only to the voluntary humility of Jesus Christ for our salvation, but to the final glory of Christ. The harmony of the entire creation shows God’s goodness to all things “but especially abundantly to us who have taken refuge in his compassionate mercies, through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the majesty for ever and ever. Amen.” [40]. Election moves logically toward a display of Christ’s glory: “This declaration of blessedness was pronounced upon those who have been chosen by God through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.” [56]. Clement includes election, trinitarian perichoresis as actuating the substance of faith, and biblical authority in a statement of Christ’s salvation as an exhibition of the glory of the Father: “For as God lives, and as the Lord Jesus Christ lives, and the Holy Spirit who are the faith and the hope of the elect, so surely will the one who with humility and constant gentleness has kept without regret the ordinances and commandments given by God be enrolled and included among the number of those who are saved through Jesus Christ, through whom is the glory to him for ever and ever. Amen.” [61]. 

These issues are related again in a prayer of Clement, that “the Creator of the universe may keep intact the specified number of his elect throughout the whole world, through his beloved servant Jesus Christ, through whom he called us from darkness to light, from ignorance to the knowledge of the glory of his name.” [Holmes, 61] Clement closes a long prayer by again referring to Jesus Christ as the channel of glory to the Father: “You, who alone are able to do these and even greater good things for us, we praise through the high priest and guardian of our souls Jesus Christ, through whom be the glory and the majesty to you both now and for all generations and for ever and ever. Amen.” [63]. Finally, Clement glorifies God who “chose Jesus Christ and us through him to be his own special people,” looking upon such a relation as foundational to our being “pleasing to his name through our high priest and guardian Jesus Christ, through whom be glory and majesty, might and honor to him, both now and for ever and ever. Amen.” [64].

Clement remembered Jesus Christ. He saw the incarnation of Christ, his taking to himself our flesh and nature, as the model for all Christian humility and consequent unity. Jesus consummates the decree of election by shedding his blood as high priest and rising from the dead as the firstfruit for our redemption. Through him, the elect will see and find infinite joy in an eternal vision of the glory of God.

This article is part 7 in a series by Tom Nettles on Remembering Jesus Christ.

Join us at the 2024 National Founders Conference on January 18-20 as we consider what it means to “Remember Jesus Christ” under the teaching of Tom Ascol, Joel Beeke, Paul Washer, Phil Johnson, Conrad Mbewe and Travis Allen.

The name of Edmund Grindal does not immediately capture attention as a historically relevant figure, at least for most.  Given the world in which we currently live, however, his relevance might well be increasing by the day.
Various dates are given for the birth of Edmund Grindal in St. Bees, England, but 1519 or 1520 is the usually accepted date.[1]  As a young man he studied and advanced in Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, becoming president of his college in 1549.[2]  He was ordained a deacon in 1544, at a time in which the Church of England was separate from Rome but not yet fully Protestant.[3]  He would later express his sentiments for his ministry in the old church by saying, “I have said mass; I am sorry for it.”[4]
When the Reformation made greater in-roads into England during the reign of Edward VI (1547-1553), Grindal became a sincere Protestant.  Heinrich Bullinger’s work De origine erroris had led him to embrace the Reformed doctrine of the Lord’s Supper somewhere around 1547.[5]  Though Grindal never met Bullinger in person, he did become personally acquainted with the German Reformer Martin Bucer during Bucer’s final days as a professor at Cambridge.  He was even one of Bucer’s pall bearers.[6]  During the reign of Edward, Grindal also served in the church under the bishop of London and later Protestant martyr Nicholas Ridley.  During the years when English Protestants were persecuted during the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-1558), he fled to continental Europe, to the city of Strasbourg, for refuge.
When Elizabeth ascended to the throne after the death of her half-sister Mary, Grindal and a host of other Protestant English exiles returned to their homeland and began occupying positions in the Elizabethan Church.  Grindal himself laid aside his personal scruples about episcopacy and certain church ceremonies for what he saw as the greater good of the church, lest it should fall into the wrong hands.[7]  Even prior to his exile, Grindal had been nominated to become bishop of London, and when the Elizabethan Church was being established, he was again chosen for that office.  In 1570, Grindal was promoted to become Archbishop of York.  Following the death of Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1575, Grindal was translated to succeed him the following year.  As Archbishop of Canterbury, Grindal was now the leading pastoral figure in the Church of England.
As archbishop, Grindal’s “chief interest was in the improvement of the education of the clergy and their consequent ability to rightly proclaim the Word of God.”[8]  He wanted the Word of God to preached faithfully for the cause of Christ.
And it was Grindal’s concern for the proclamation of the Gospel that would be at least one of the reasons for his falling out with Queen Elizabeth.  In 1576 the queen ordered Grindal to suppress an exercise known as the “prophesyings” that were taking place in some parts of England.  In our terms, we would more likely call them “preachings,” for that is what they were.  Essentially, what would happen is that several ministers would gather together in a given town on a given day, perhaps a market day, a few sermons would be preached before an audience of laymen, with two or three of the more senior ministers serving as moderators.  After the sermons, the ministers would retire together for a sort of service review, to talk about the sermons in order to help the preachers improve, perhaps discuss other matters of ministerial concern, and have a meal together.[9]  Queen Elizabeth was not too thrilled at the reports she received about these “prophesyings”.  To her they seemed to be tending toward too much democracy and anarchy, and so she commanded the Archbishop to circulate an order for their suppression.
And Grindal could not in good conscience comply with the order.  He felt that there needed to be more preaching in the church and not less.  And so on December 20, 1576 he wrote a long letter to the queen giving his reasons.  He wrote,
With most humble remembrance of my bounden duty to your Majesty: It may please the same to be advertised, that the speeches which it hath pleased you to deliver unto me, when I last attended on your Highness, concerning abridging the number of preachers, and the utter suppression of all learned exercises and conferences among the ministers of the church, allowed by their bishops and ordinaries, have exceedingly dismayed and discomforted me…
But surely I cannot marvel enough, how this strange opinion should once enter into your mind, that it should be good for the church to have few preachers. Alas, Madam! is the scripture more plain in any one thing, than that the gospel of Christ should be plentifully preached; and that plenty of labourers should be sent into the Lord’s harvest; which, being great and large, standeth in need, not of a few, but many workmen!…
Public and continual preaching of God’s word is the ordinary mean and instrument of the salvation of mankind. St Paul calleth it the ministry of reconciliation of man unto God. By preaching of God’s word the glory of God is enlarged, faith is nourished, and charity increased. By it the ignorant is instructed, the negligent exhorted and incited, the stubborn rebuked, the weak conscience comforted, and to all those that sin of malicious wickedness the wrath of God is threatened. By preaching also due obedience to Christian princes and magistrates is planted in the hearts of subjects: for obedience proceedeth of conscience; conscience is grounded upon the word of God; the word of God worketh his effect by preaching. So as generally, where preaching wanteth, obedience faileth…
I trust, when your Majesty hath considered and well weighed the premises, you will rest satisfied, and judge that no such inconveniences can grow of these exercises, as you have been informed, but rather the clean contrary. And for my own part, because I am very well assured, both by reasons and arguments taken out of the holy scriptures, and by experience, (the most certain seal of sure knowledge,) that the said exercises, for the interpretation and exposition of the scriptures, and for exhortation and comfort drawn out of the same, are both profitable to increase knowledge among the ministers, and tendeth to the edifying of the hearers,—I am forced, with all humility, and yet plainly, to profess, that I cannot with safe conscience, and without the offence of the majesty of God, give my assent to the suppressing of the said exercises: much less can I send out any injunction for the utter and universal subversion of the same.  I say with St. Paul, “I have no power to destroy, but to only edify;” and with the same apostle, “I can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.”…
Bear with me, I beseech you, Madam, if I choose rather to offend your earthly majesty, than to offend the heavenly majesty of God.[10]
Grindal concluded his letter by making two petitions to the Queen and exhorting her to remember her humanity and to continue on in the ways of God.  The first petition was that she refer all ecclesiastical matters to the church to be dealt with by the church, as they were matters that were to be judged, borrowing the words of an ancient writer, “in ecclesia, seu synodo, non in palatio” (in the church, or a synod, not in a palace).  His second petition was that when she dealt with matters of faith or religion or matters touching the church, that she would not make pronouncements on them as the authority, as she did in civil and external matters; “but always remember, that in God’s causes the will of God, and not the will of any earthly creature, is to take place… In God’s matters all princes ought to bow their sceptres to the Son of God, and to ask counsel at his mouth, what they ought to do.”[11]
Grindal was willing, if need be, to be kicked out of his office as archbishop rather than comply with the queen’s order to suppress these preachings.  Officially, he remained in office until his death in 1583, nevertheless the queen placed him under house arrest and he was unable to fulfill many of his functions as archbishop.[12]  The queen directed the other bishops to suspend the prophesyings in their dioceses.[13]  For Grindal, however, faithfulness to Christ and obedience to the Word of God far outweighed the treasures of earth and whatever earthly benefits he might gain by retaining the favor of the queen.  He regarded faithfulness to God as more important than earthly success in his undertakings.
Who knew?  The life and example of Edmund Grindal might be more relevant to the present day than any of us, myself included, had ever thought.

[1] Patrick Collinson, Archbishop Grindal (1519-1583): The Struggle for a Reformed Church, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1979), 25.
[2] Ibid., 41.
[3] Ibid., 36.
[4] The Remains of Edmund Grindal, ed. by William Nicholson, (Cambridge University Press: Parker Society, 1843), reprinted 1968, Johnson Reprint Corporation, 211.
[5] Collinson, 44.
[6] Ibid., 50.
[7] Ibid., 90.
[8] Powell Mills Dawley, John Whitgift and the Reformation, (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1955), 148-149.
[9] Collinson, 233-234.
[10] The text of Archbishop Grindal’s Letter to the Queen can be found in The Remains of Edmund Grindal, ed. by William Nicholson, (Cambridge: The University Press, 1843), 376-390.
[11] Ibid., 387-389.
[12] Though his refusal to suppress the prophesyings was the official reason for which he received such treatment from the queen, it seems there was also another reason, if not more than one.  Thomas Fuller, the seventeenth century church historian referred to Grindal’s “sharp reproving of Julio, the Italian physician, for marrying another man’s wife; which bitter but wholesome pill the physician himself not being able to digest, incensed the earl of Leicester, and he the queen’s Majesty against the good archbishop.  But all was put on the account of Grindal’s nonconformity for favouring the factious meetings called prophesyings.”  Collinson states broadly that Grindal was the victim of “courtly intrigue.”  (See Collinson, 253 ff.)
[13] Nick Needham, 2000 Years of Christ’s Power, Vol. 4, (Christian Focus, Fearn, Ross-shire, 2016), 198.

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Based loosely on the Apostles Creed

Begotten of the Father’s nature, offspring of eternal love,

Human child of Mary’s nurture was conceived from pow’r above.

One with God’s eternal being, one with us except our sin,

Opened God’s redemptive wisdom, promised mercies to begin.

Suffered under Pontius Pilate, from the cross into the grave,

This the death planned from the cradle, This the only death to save.

This the only Kin-Redeemer, purchase price was Him alone.

He the God-man, intercessor, none else could for sin atone.

From a manger of man’s making, to God’s bless’d eternal throne.

He will judge the dead and living, take the saved to be his own.

Never may we fail to worship, never may we fail to bow.

Fathomless the grace that saves us, worship ever, worship now.