If we fear God our Father we will tremble with delight at his incomprehensible love. We will stagger at the thought that we are his adopted children. We will long to share in his holiness by embracing his loving yet painful discipline that trains us.

“I am a child of God, God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother; every Christian is my brother [or sister] too.” This is my favourite sentence in J. I. Packer’s Knowing God. Packer persuasively argues that being adopted as a child of God is the highest blessing that God gives us, higher even than justification. When we are justified, we know God as our Judge, but when we are adopted, we know God as our Father. To be declared right with the Judge is incredible. When Martin Luther finally understood justification, he thought he had entered “paradise itself through open gates!” But to know God as our Father is to be loved by the one who gives us paradise!
John writes in his first letter: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 Jn 3:1). This should stagger us, both intellectually and emotionally. And it should stir us to holiness.
Fearful Holiness
Augustine draws a helpful distinction between two types of fear:
He who has a filial fear of the Lord, tries to do his Will. Different is the fear of servants; servants fear for the penalty, children fear for love of the father. We are children of God; let us fear Him from the sweetness of charity, not from the bitterness of dread.
Christians do not need to fear the condemnation of God: he has poured out his wrath on his Son in our place on the Cross. But we can still grieve the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of sonship. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to disappoint him. Rather, we want to become like our Father—holy. Peter writes:
As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. (1 Pet 1:14–17)
Like a fire, the fear of the Lord consumes evil desires and fuels holiness.[1]
Such fear changes the way that we pray.
Filial Fear and Prayer
Filial fear does not produce an outward hypocritical show of reverential religion like the Pharisees Jesus condemns.
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Overture 21 is an attempt to satisfy the objections of last year’s Overture 8 thus enabling additional presbyteries to vote in favor to receive the 2/3 required. Overture 22 is a bit technical, but this overture is constructed in such a manner that there are no loopholes; the only thing it allows for is a minority report from the CCB on the reviewed minutes of the SJC in matters of procedural error, and that alone!

As the moderator of the session (First Presbyterian Church of Montgomery, AL), placing Overture 21 and Overture 22 before the Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) 50th general assembly, I thought it might be helpful if I offered our fathers and brothers some of the rationale behind our session’s recommendation of these overtures. My comments are organized around two main points: 1) why the lack of Presbytery support, and 2) why vote yes anyway.
Why the Lack of Presbytery Support
As mentioned to me at last week’s Review of Presbytery Records (RPR) Committee meeting, Southeast Alabama Presbytery (SEAL) is respected and admired for its history of wisdom and stability in affirmation of both PCA doctrine and practice. As an adopted son of the PCA (since Sept. ’08), I affirm with hearty gratitude and rejoicing that this reputation continues among the fathers and brothers that make up SEAL today. With some hesitancy then, I offer the following opinions as to why SEAL did not support these overtures, and why our Session thought it wise to forward them to PCAGA50, nevertheless. The following are based on my recollection of the deliberation at our presbytery’s meeting on March 7, 2023 (hosted at our church facility).
Overture 21
This overture is in effect a replacement for PCAGA49’s Overture 8 which barely failed the 2/3 majority presbytery vote this past year. Overture 21 is an attempt to make the provisions of this prior overture palatable to enough additional presbyteries that it passes the 2/3 requirement (see further, below).
At the SEAL March 7, 2023, called meeting, the main argument offered against Overture 21 was that it would result in too much intrusiveness into the ministry of teaching elders (TEs). The argument was made that O21 would make it easier for ‘charges’ to be brought against a TE.
Agreeing that nuisance charges are unhelpful and contrary to Presbyterianism, our session disagrees with this opinion. Note that some presbyteries, agreeing with the need for clarification on a better definition for “refuses to act” (BCO 34-1; see O2023-21 p. 2.19-24), expressly voted against last year’s Overture 8 (Item 7 before the presbyteries this last cycle) because they believed that its proposed change of the threshold to 10% of presbyteries requesting original jurisdiction was too high! Furthermore, in the history of the Standing Judicial Commission (SJC), the current standard of two presbyteries has not resulted in the SJC assuming original jurisdiction over a case. Noting that SEAL overwhelming voted to approve last year’s Overture 8, we respectfully believe that they got the vote on our session’s replacement proposal wrong.
A secondary argument against Overture 21 was that the 1/3 SJC signature provision (p. 2.12) might be deemed unconstitutional. The Committee on Constitutional Business having vetted Overture 21 negates that concern.
Thus, with respect, our session thinks SEAL should have approved of sending Overture 21 up to PCAGA50.
Overture 22
This overture arose in response to last year’s ruling from the chair that a minority report from the Committee on Constitutional Business (CCB) was out of order. Our session sees Overture 22 as a companion to Overture 21. It also serves the goal of strengthening the functioning of the SJC (see further, below).
At the SEAL meeting on March 7, 2023, the arguments offered were in effect the same as those offered at PCAGA49 defending the chair’s ruling, to wit: the CCB is merely a review of procedural constitutionality, and therefore it is improper for minority reports to arise from its work.
Why didn’t this pass our Presbytery? Our Presbytery is a strong supporter of proper procedures being followed in our courts. As PCAGA49 declined to allow minority reports from the CCB, the sense among the elders at SEAL’s March meeting was that it was proper to vote against this overture as well.
Why does our session disagree with our fathers and brothers? Quite simply,  while we agree that the PCAGA49 chair got this decision right, there is nevertheless the need for a minority report procedure from CCB, when there is an egregious procedural failure in the SJC. Agreeing with our fathers’ and brothers’ sentiments to protect procedures, we believe Overture 22 actually supports that conviction and protects the SJC’s processes when there is such a procedural error.
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Written by Mark J. Larson |
Sunday, May 12, 2024
The Jews, steeped in the mentality of legalism, once asked Jesus, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” (John 6:28). This is the typical question of the unsaved person who does not know the gospel: What work of righteousness shall I do? How can I be good enough to  enter heaven? Jesus’ response is crucially instructive: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:29). Luther properly maintained, “The first, highest, and most precious of all good works is faith in Christ” (Treatise on Good Works). 

Legalism holds its grip upon the minds and hearts of countless numbers of people in our time. It was no different in the sixteenth century when Martin Luther drew a radical distinction between the gospel of grace and the legalism of all other religions outside of biblical Christianity. As Luther contemplated religions of works in his time, he immediately thought of Judaism, Islam as exemplified by the Ottoman Turks, late-medieval Roman Catholicism, and various heretical splinter groups. He declared in his Commentary on Galatians: “If the article of justification be once lost, then is all true Christian doctrine lost. And as many as are in the world that hold not this doctrine, are either Jews, Turks, Papists or heretics.”
Sad to say, the ancient Jewish leaven of legalism even infected the church in the first century. Let us reflect upon this phenomenon and then draw out some practical applications.
The Legalism of the Pharisees
The Pharisaic movement of the first century demonstrates the tendency of legalism to slide into fanatical excess. Even as Jesus pronounced woe upon the Pharisees, he reflected upon their lack of balance: “You tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23). As we read the Gospels, we are continually astounded. We are presented with blind, nitpicking fanatics who could not see the glory of the divine Messiah Jesus who ministered in their very midst. Jesus, for example, was “grieved by the hardness of their hearts” when “they kept silent” after he asked them a simple question, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” (Mark 3:4–5). Their response to Jesus healing a man with a withered hand was diabolical: “Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him” (Mark 3:6).
Paul acknowledges that he too had been an angry man, a violent aggressor, even while clothed with the garments of outward religiosity. His assessment was an insider’s perspective, for he himself had been a Pharisee, and “as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless” (Philippians 3:6). He had excelled at dotting every letter i and crossing every letter t in the Pharisaic rule book of man-made religion. His heart, nevertheless, was far from God. He makes a startling admission for one who was “advanced in Judaism” beyond many of his contemporaries, “being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions” of the fathers (Galatians 1:14). He felt that he needed to make this confession: “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man” (1 Timothy 1:13). Indeed, he had consented to the murder of Stephen (Acts 8:1). He is presented as “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” (Acts 9:1). He “persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it” (Galatians 1:13).
Grace, though, brought radical change. Paul became a new man. He came to embrace a truly Christian perspective regarding law righteousness, the righteousness that a person seeks to build up by meticulous keeping of the law of God and the tradition of the elders. This was a righteousness that tended to lead to pride and a spirit of self-congratulation. Jesus, in fact, spoke a parable in which he described a Pharisee who trusted in himself that he was righteous and viewed others with contempt: “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank you thatI am not like other men.” “I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess” (Luke 18:9–12).
He came to regard his past religious achievements as dung—as the King James Version of 1611 translates the Greek skubalon in Philippians 3:8. Everything that he did by way of outward religious observance was tainted due to his unbelief. As he himself said, “Whatever is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). He would have concurred with Jesus’ woe of judgment which rested upon hypocrites who outwardly appeared to be righteous before men, but inwardly were full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matthew 23:28). He knew that the way of salvation came by faith appealing for mercy.
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