Written by Megan Hill and Melissa B. Kruger |
Friday, May 24, 2024
The world says, “Follow your heart” and “Be true to yourself,” but Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). According to Jesus, obedience means laying aside our love of comfort in order to pursue obedience. This is hard to do! But God provides help in the form of self-control, a strong ally in our struggle with sin. As the Spirit works within us, he frees us to be the kind of people who can say no to what feels good so we might say yes to what is good.—Sharonda Cooper

1. The fruit of the Spirit points us to Jesus.
The fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22–23 is a familiar list of virtues. You may have memorized it or learned a childhood song based on it. On good days, it’s an encouraging list—a reminder that the Spirit is at work in you. On bad days, it can be a crushing list—a testimony to how far you have yet to go. But the fruit of the Spirit isn’t merely intended for self-examination. The list of fruit in Paul’s epistle points us upward, away from ourselves, toward our Savior. Jesus is the only perfectly loving man, the only perfectly joyful man, the only perfectly peaceful man. Day after day in his earthly ministry, and still to this very minute, he kept in step with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25). And he did this for us. He was patient where we are not, kind where we fail, and good where we stumble. His is the perfect righteousness for all who lack faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. As we abide in him, we become like him, bearing good fruit that will last. Do you want to know what Jesus is like and what he accomplished on your behalf? Savor the fruit of the Spirit.—Megan Hill and Melissa Kruger
2. Love is more than a feeling.
One thing you should know about love is that it’s not actually a feeling at all. In fact, more often than not, love is a choice we make or an action we take in spite of our feelings. It’s also something we simply cannot conjure up within ourselves—because love comes from God. The good news is that though love may feel completely unnatural (you can hardly “fall” into it), God’s word tells us that it leads to joy. Jesus issues a command to his followers to “love one another . . . that [their] joy may be full” (John 15:11–12). Somehow, the sacrificial prioritization of another leads to fullness of joy.—Abbey Wedgeworth
3. Joy refreshes our hearts.
Warm weather and longer days—we’re eager to get outdoors and breathe in spring. There’s nothing like fresh air and sunshine to strengthen our winter-weary spirits. But the reality of our routine so often limits those refreshing hours. When confined to a house, an office, a car, or, for some of us, a bed, brisk walks in the sunshine are a luxury. How wonderful that in Christ, refreshment is ours indoors or out, at work or in the pickup line, and even on a sickbed. Renewed strength of all kinds is the fruit of rejoicing. As we delight in God, we are renewed in every way. Joy comes to those who fix their gaze on him in his word, because that’s how we find what his people have always found: “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. 8:10).—Lydia Brownback
4. Peace is possible. Right now.
Peace is possible. For you. Right now. You might be thinking, “You don’t know what I’m going through,” and you’re right. There are seasons and situations when peace seems unattainable. But Jesus not only purchased peace on the cross (Col. 1:20), he has made that peace readily and abundantly available (John 14:27). Paul wrote in Colossians, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” The word “rule” means “to act like an umpire.”
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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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The woman has an incredible responsibility for the future blessings of her home. She gets the right and the privilege of finding the kind of man who will love her like Jesus loves the church. And once she has found that man, she gets to help, encourage, and spur him on so that everyone and everything her marriage touches will be blessed. Far from being a trophy wife, she is central and critical to the blessings of her home. 

3 The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— 4 that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, 5 to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed. – Titus 2:3-5 NKJV

Where We Have Been
As you will remember from last time, the apostle Paul used the word blasphemy when it comes to denying God’s view of womanhood. He was saying that if there were any older women, or anyone else for that matter, who was teaching a view of femininity that is contrary to God’s vision, then they have blasphemed God’s Word (a crime punishable by death in the Old Testament). Yeah, God takes womanhood that seriously. 
Instead of blaspheming God’s Word, Paul instructs older women how to come alongside the younger married women in the community. He calls on them to teach the younger women how to love their husbands and their children. Instead of loving them in a purely sacrificial way, which is so common for women, Paul admonishes the young women to become joyful “husband lovers.” Paul’s goal was not for women to slave away in the kitchen and dutifully serve their families as embittered slaves. On the contrary, he was calling women to be the lifeblood of the home. To fill the atmosphere and the aroma of her castle with abundant mirth, overflowing joy, and infectious delight for all who know her. 
These were the first two of seven essential concepts about womanhood that Paul was teaching, and again, we looked at these things in part 1. This week, in part 2, we look at the final five concepts that the older women are to teach to the younger women so that the Word of God will not be blasphemed. 
Supposing you are still here because you would not like the Word to be blasphemed, I say onward. 
#3 Teach Them to be “Moderate”
In addition to husband-loving and child-loving, Paul calls younger married women with children in the community to adopt a moderate lifestyle. The word he uses for sensible in the NKJV above (σώφρων – Soph-ron) really means embracing a life of moderation by living in the middle. He is encouraging women not to find themselves on the polls of things or to live in the extremes but to find her place somewhere in the balanced middle. Paul says if life were like a seesaw, then stand on the pivot point. This contributes to healthy womanhood. 
Now, before anyone can accuse Paul of being a world-class sexist, remember that he just commanded the men to be moderate as well (Titus 2:2). And, when we remember that Paul also gives this character qualification for anyone aspiring to the office of eldership (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:8), we should not view this as being peculiar to women, but simply an excellent quality to cultivate for any human. Paul is not saying that men are more moderate and women have some work to do. He says we are all prone to excess, and both genders need work here. 
For instance, Men are disproportionately prone to the kinds of immoderation that lead to risk-taking, aggressiveness, adventure and merry-making, overworking, accumulating shotguns and rare bottles of whiskey (on the gluttony side of immoderation), and neglecting emotional aptitude, communication, relationship-building, and physical health (on the anorexic side of immoderation). While women can certainly be immoderate in these ways, it is far more likely that a woman will struggle with moderation in spending, emotional overexpression, communication, comparison, dieting, perfectionism (On the high side), and isolation, bitterness, and jealousy (On the low side). 
These are generalizations, but Paul’s point in this passage, in particular, is for women to live moderate lives. To be content with that, she has. To avoid excess. To avoid asceticism. To live in the middle. And by doing that, she will live richly and conform to the pattern God has for her. 
#4 Teach Them to be Pure
Along with moderation, Paul encourages younger women to remain pure and chaste in their behavior and life. Like a young virgin who is keeping herself pure for her future marriage (1 Corinthians 11:2), and the man who sets His mind on the pure truths of God (Philippians 4:8), the godly woman will also keep herself pure in mind, heart, and body within her marriage. She will prioritize holy purity with her God. She will weed out sin, give no occasion for the enemy, and offer to her husband the continual gift of tender, loyal, and loving fidelity for a lifetime. This, of course, will bless and build up womanhood. 
#5 Teach Them to be Workers at Home
Some of the strongest language in the Bible has to do with when, where, and how men and women will spend their time. For the man, He must leave the home to gather resources. If he lazily loiters around the house all day, twiddling his thumbs and refusing to go to work and provide for His family, Paul says that man is “worse than an unbeliever” and that he has “denied the faith” (1 Timothy 5:8). Ouch! On the other hand, a wife is called to stay home. And this is not unclear in this text. Paul says if a wife and mother leave their home to join in the rat race, neglecting her house duties, her husband-loving, and all the needs of her children, then she has blasphemed the Word of God. 
The reason Paul speaks this way is because men and women are not the same. We are equal in personhood yet distinct in our roles. As male and female, we have a divinely appointed complementarity in the roles God has given us. 
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