We know and trust that our faithful God will give us life after death, a glorious life if we trust in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. Even on the really bad days, we can hold onto this hope. And on the days when things are going really well, we know that what is coming will be so much better still.

Many novels and movies these days are set in the near future, and they generally have something in common. The future most of us expect is a disaster. Whether that means living through world wars, nuclear disasters, environmental catastrophes, or cruel dictatorial governments, most visions of the future are bad. There are many who have no hope when they look to what is coming.
The Sadduccees in Matthew 22 might not have expected killer robots or global warming, but they also didn’t have much hope for the future. They had a privileged life now, running the priesthood and having the support of the Romans. Yet they did not believe in the resurrection of the dead (v23). They thought that death was the ultimate end. All they had to look forward to was growing old and then being no more.
Yet when they bring a rather unusual question to Jesus that deals with the resurrection, they don’t get the answer they expect.
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The calling of all Christiann men to lead our homes and churches is God’s good, perfect design; there is nothing about the prescribed leadership of men that even hints at oppression. To the contrary, it is a design rooted in the calling to love sacrificially and in the wisdom to know the three sources from which such self-giving love flows.

When I hear the phrase biblical patriarchy today I can’t help but think of Mark Twain’s comment, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Last night, from the Jesus Without Baggage website, I read an article entitled, “How Christian Patriarchy is a Misguided and Harmful Belief that Does Tremendous Damage.” It claimed:
“Christian Patriarchy oppresses and denigrates women and girls. They are expected to submit meekly to whatever the husband demands. This is wrong, oppressive. The idea is that men are directed by God and have the responsibility to direct their wives. But Women can follow the voice and direction of God just as easily as men can. Christian Patriarchy develops an environment for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse against women and misrepresents biblical passages. (The author then cites 5 biblical texts that teach that men are to lead their homes and churches.) These passages are used as if they are the very word of God—eternal propositional truth. But these opinions were written by people (not God) to address issues in particular congregations and based on the culture that existed at the time. They are not the eternal Word of God.”
These words are but another example of the phenomenon we examined last week, i.e., the way critical theory’s oppressor/oppressed lens has corrupted so many people’s views of God’s perfect gender design. Also consistent with what we said last week, she is a woman, like way too many, who has been harmed by abusive men. I begin this way because this author and many, many egalitarians believe things about God’s design of gender roles that just ain’t so. The opening words of Paul’s letter to Timothy about spiritual leadership in the church and home directly refute the claim that God’s role assignments inherently harm women. To the contrary, the very aim of his leadership charge to Timothy, Paul states, “is LOVE.”
As we continue our May series, Portrait of Effective Spiritual Leadership, today we uncover three aspects of the spiritual leadership charge Paul begins to give Timothy in chapter 1.

Your charge is to teach others to avoid useless theological speculations but instead stay focused on ordering their lives to accomplish God’s mission.
The aim of your charge is love.
The love you need to fulfill your charge springs from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

 Teach Others to Avoid Useless Theological Speculations: Instead Focus on Ordering Their Lives to Accomplish God’s Mission
Just as I urged that you would instruct certain people not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to useless speculation rather than advance the plan of God, which is by faith, so I urge you now… (I Tim 1:3-4).
Paul comes down hard on theological mind games. The false teachers were not only deviating from the true gospel taught by Paul, they were adding things referred to as myths and endless genealogies. The Greeks loved argument for the sake of argument and intellectual centers in Rome were always looking for the latest teaching. These kinds of man-made theological games, says Paul are useless speculation, which is in sharp contrast to teaching that advances the plan of God, which is of faith. Paul uses a fascinating word for advance the plan, also translated stewardship, (OIKONOMOUS), from which we get economy. It is usually used for household management, a cognate from OIKOS—house + NEMO—to arrange. Useless speculation is the opposite of teaching that empowers stewardship, i.e. ordering our world to accomplish Christ kingdom agenda in every sphere.
Paul’s use of OIKONOMOUS points to his insistence that God’s true Word be applied in Christian’s everyday lives. Just as James calls believers to be doers of the Word and not hearers only, Paul expects us to manage our outward lives in such a way that we implement biblical teaching, i.e. shape our lives by it. Paul would have agreed with Gordon MacDonald, author of Ordering Your Private World, who astutely observed, “If my private world is in order, it will be because I am convinced that the inner world of the spiritual MUST GOVERN the outer world of activity.” So, our private, inner world requires ordering, so that it can shape the outer world of activity. “Good teaching,” says Paul, “must help Christians implement their faith plan for seeking first the kingdom in all their lives, living as transformed creatures.”
The Aim of Your Charge is Love (1 Timothy 1:5)
Think of how this stated AIM of spiritual leadership refutes the arguments of those who are brainwashed into thinking that biblical male leadership is oppressive. It just ain’t so. Anyone who looks into God’s gender design objectively, who casts off the dirty oppressor/oppressed lens of critical theory, will see that the consistent call throughout the Bible is for men to love those under their care by devoting themselves to whatever it takes for them to thrive, to die to themselves so those under their care flourish. Consider:
Adam is placed in the garden to cultivate it (AVAD) and to protect it (SHAMAR). His wife, Eve, and their children are in the garden. AVAD means to supply whatever his wife and children (and those he serves in business) need to flourish. He sweats. He dies to himself so that they may reach their full potential. Adam not only is to sacrifice his labor to care for them, his commission is to protect them spiritually, emotionally, and physically. If necessary, he dies to protect them. This vocation of Adam is the definition of AGAPE, self-giving LOVE. It is giving of yourself sacrificially to meet the needs of another.
Jesus, the Second Adam, models the manhood that Adam was to fulfill. He came to earth to free us from the tyranny of sin that was destroying us, giving his life in love so that we might be set free from the penalty, power, and presence of the spiritual cancer, sin. He pours out the Holy Spirit who sows in us the seed of godliness, who cultivates new life on the path of righteousness to which Jesus calls us. And Jesus fulfills the role of protecting us (SHAMAR). He defeated Satan at the cross, ascended to the Father and poured out the spiritual gifts and the weapons of warfare. Jesus interceded for us in John 17 to be kept from the evil one an, in fact, he and the Holy Spirit intercede for us every day. Jeus the head of his bride perfectly LOVES her.
Timothy, likewise, is called to be a leader, in his case of the church. Where does Paul start with his charge? The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. The purpose of male leadership of the home and church given in the creation design and for his covenant people is crystal clear; The aim of our charge is love. Our spiritual leadership, like that of  Adam and Jesus was given for the purpose of loving those under our care. And Christian men have been doing so for two thousand years. Nancy Pearcey, in her book, The Toxic War on Masculinity, reveals objective data that prove that the most loving, caring husbands of any subgroup in America today, are devout men who hold the biblical view that they should lead their homes. She writes,
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In our day it is especially important to be confessional.  When we looked at the dismal state of theology in the American Church, we saw significant and disheartening errors in the average Christian’s views of Scripture, God, man and sin, salvation, the Church, and current issues like extramarital sex, abortion, gender identity, and homosexuality.  Basically all of these errors are clearly addressed in the confessions, so adherents to the confessions can easily avoid them.

Teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.
-1 Timothy 6:2-5, ESV
In our series on Reformed theology, we have covered the Reformed view of salvation through the five solas and the five points of Calvinism.  But salvation is only one part of theology, so Reformed theology must go beyond the five solas and Calvinistic soteriology (salvation) by subscribing to a theologically-holistic Reformed confession.  Therefore a Reformed church must not only be Calvinistic but confessional. This post will look at the impIortance of confessions and the relation between the need to be always reforming with the need to follow a historic confession in order to avoid straying from what Scripture clearly teaches.
The Importance of Confessions
From the earliest days of the Church, defining what we believe has been extremely important.  Throughout the epistles, we see evidence of various heresies that dogged the Church, requiring divinely-inspired reiteration of what Scripture teaches.  One extra-persistent early heresy was Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ.  In large part to refute this, the early Church adopted the various creeds: the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, and Chalcedon Definition.  When we consider this context, it is easy to see why these creeds so strongly affirm Christ’s divinity.  Each generation faces new challenges to the faith, forcing the Church to strongly state what Scripture clearly teaches about those specific topics.  An example in our day is the challenge to biblical manhood and womanhood from feminism, homosexuality, and transgenderism.  To address this, a pair of ecumenical councils quite similar to Nicaea produced the Danvers and Nashville Statements that we addressed here.  Since such statements address particular heresies, they are somewhat limited in their scope.  But by the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church had strayed so far from the teachings of Scripture into a wide variety of heresies that a complete and robust definition of what Scripture teaches on all of faith and life was required.  As the Reformation spread, different groups began to form with varying interpretations regarding secondary doctrines, so those groups needed to define their beliefs.  This as the origin of the various confessions of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries which ultimately became the defining documents of various Reformed denominations.
We have need of the same comprehensive definition of beliefs. Many Christians do not venture beyond soteriology in defining their doctrines, thus leaving themselves open to various errors.  They chant “no creed but Christ”, and therefore stumble into all manner of heresy.  Lacking a Scriptural foundation, they ultimately worship a god so different than the God of the Bible that their worship is idolatry.  The confessions like the ancient creeds prevent such errors by keeping us grounded in the faith, providing vital guardrails against new and strange teachings.  It is true that only Scripture is inerrant and timeless while the confessions are the product of men.  However, this does not prevent them from being useful to us.  Error comes not only from the denial of what Scripture clearly teaches but from new and creative interpretations of Scripture. There is nothing new under the sun, so any new error derived from a creative interpretation is likely just a restatement of an error that has appeared at some point in Church history.  Therefore, most of these errors are addressed in the Reformed confessions.  But when we ignore Church history, we exalt ourselves over our spiritual ancestors as if we are far wiser and more enlightened than they were, only to fall prey to the folly that they have already so wisely and eloquently addressed.  The errors of Rome at the time of the Reformation were so pernicious and comprehensive that God was especially gracious to gift the Church at the time with many wise scholars well versed in Scripture to create the confessions. We would be foolish to ignore them.
The Reformed Confessions
Last time, I mentioned the importance of John Calvin documenting all of the doctrines that characterized the Reformation—not just soteriology—in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, which was essentially the first Reformed systematic theology.  Others built upon this by codifying what Scripture teaches on all topics of faith and life.  As the different Reformed groups began to distinguish themselves from each other, it became vital to distill these beliefs down into a single, Scripture-based document that all of the ministers within the group could agree on.  These were their confessions, which laid out their beliefs on Scripture, God, man, sin, the church and sacraments, civil authorities, the home, and eschatology (the end times).  They are often accompanied by catechisms, which are sets of questions and answers used to teach what the confession contains.  Together, these form a robust theology for faith and life.  The confessions were so important to this period that it has been called “confessionalization”.[1]  They became even more important during the rise of liberalism and the Enlightenment of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, at which point many churches abandoned the robust theology of the confessions in favor of conversion-focus and individual experience.[2]  That mentality has persisted to this day such that many churches reject the notion of confessions altogether, dismissing them as antiquated human works of little value today.  But the historic confessions provide a necessary bulwark against the liberalism of mainline denominations and the individualistic emotionalism of seeker-sensitive American evangelicalism just as they have historically defended the Church against Roman Catholicism and other heresies.  Therefore, to be truly Reformed is to be confessional.
To be confessional requires understanding the Reformed confessions enough to subscribe to one of them.
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