Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. Tomorrow marks the 506th celebration of Reformation Day, commemorating the October 31st when Martin Luther fearlessly published his Ninety-Five Theses, mailing one copy to the archbishop and posting another copy on a prominent church door. Whether it was dramatically nailed to that door with a hammer, or more likely glued to the door with a paste brush, Luther’s document set in motion a wave of reformation that we honor half a millennium later.

But given how much time has elapsed since this event, we can find ourselves questioning what exactly we’re celebrating. Is it the profound recovery of the truth of justification by faith alone in Christ alone? Is it the liberation of the Bible into the language of the people? Is it the end of indulgences? The rejection of papal authority? The dismantling of the priest class as mediators between God and man? Or perhaps is it all of these things, all combined? Pastor John, as you honor the enduring legacy of the Reformation, what’s your primary cause for celebration?

Let me fudge on the word primarily. I’d like to replace it with five other words, but I couldn’t think of five other words. I did think of five other questions; I just couldn’t think of words to go with them. I thought of two, but I gave up on five words. So I’m going to replace your question with five, but I will — at the end I think — answer exactly what you’re asking. So here we go.

1. Ultimate Celebration

First, what am I celebrating ultimately? That is, what’s at the top as the goal of all things when I celebrate the Reformation?

“What am I celebrating ultimately? The answer is the glory of Jesus Christ.”

The answer is the glory of Jesus Christ. In Calvin’s response to the Roman Catholic Sadoleto, he said, “You . . . touch upon justification by faith, the first and keenest subject of controversy between us. . . . Wherever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished” (John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, 95). I think the same point could be made on issue after issue in the disputes of the Reformation. So ultimately, we celebrate the exaltation of the glory of Christ.

2. Foundational Celebration

Second, what am I celebrating most foundationally? So the first one was most ultimately; the second one is most foundationally. That is, what’s at the bottom, as the ground of all things, when I celebrate the Reformation?

The answer is the free and sovereign grace of God. When Martin Luther came to the end of his life, he regarded his book The Bondage of the Will as his most important work. And the reason is that he regarded the issue of human autonomy versus sovereign grace as the key underlying issue of the Reformation. He said,

I condemn and reject as nothing but error all doctrines which exalt our “free will” as being directly opposed to this mediation and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. For since, apart from Christ, sin and death are our masters and the devil is our god and prince, there can be no strength or power, no wit or wisdom, by which we can fit or fashion ourselves for righteousness and life. (What Luther Says, 3:1376–77)

Which means that as long as someone insists on ultimate human self-determination, they fail to grasp the depth of our need, and they obscure the greatness of the free and sovereign grace of God, which alone can give life and faith. So I’m going to celebrate that as bottom. That’s the bottom.

3. Celebrated Achievement

Third, between the glory of Christ at the top and the free and sovereign grace of God at the bottom, what am I celebrating in between as the greatest achievement of God — flowing from grace, leading to glory?

The answer is the decisive achievement of the cross of Christ in providing peace with God for guilty sinners. Four times in the book of Hebrews, the author underlines and emphasizes the work of Christ in the forgiveness of sins as “once for all.” I love this phrase and the way he uses it in Hebrews 7:27; 9:12, 26; 10:10.

This is the first one: “[Christ] has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself” (Hebrews 7:27). So I will be celebrating that the finished and complete work of Christ — in providing imputed punishment for our sins and imputed perfection for our righteousness — was once for all and cannot be reenacted in the Roman Catholic mass so as to become a necessary point of transfer of that decisive grace. It was purchased once for all for us and given to us through faith in Christ alone.

4. Celebrated Scripture

Fourth, between the glory of Christ at the top and the free and sovereign grace of God at the bottom, what am I celebrating in between as the decisive means of my enjoyment of peace with God that Christ achieved?

Answer: the inspired word of God in Scripture — read and known by every Christian. The church of the Middle Ages cut people off from the word of God. They had done so intentionally. It was a capital crime in the 1400s in Britain to translate the Scriptures into English so people could read them. They burned people alive for reading fragments of the English Bible — even children.

They believed that God did not offer his fellowship to be enjoyed through a personal encounter with him in his word, but rather through the ministry of priests and sacraments. This was evil, and the chasm created between Scripture and the people of God has not been closed to this very day.

I’ve mentioned before my experience in Europe where a nun was converted at eighty years old and had never read the Gospel of John. A Roman Catholic professional religious woman never had read the Gospel of John. That is symptomatic of a deep evil in cutting people off, historically and today, doing things that subtly discourage the personal encounter with God through Christ in his word. So, I will be celebrating the personal preciousness and access to the word of God for my daily means of enjoying personal fellowship with my Father in heaven.

5. Celebrated Truth and Experience

And the last question: What great Reformation truth will I be celebrating concerning how I experience the living Christ through his word?

“Faith is the decisive, primary way I enjoy what Christ purchased and what the word makes possible.”

Answer: I will be celebrating the truth that faith — acted directly on Christ through his word, not mediated by priestly sacraments — is the decisive, primary way I enjoy what Christ purchased and what the word makes possible. Here’s what I read this morning in my devotions that made my heart sing. I was reading in Ephesians 3 that unspeakably great prayer, where Paul says, “[I pray] that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (Ephesians 3:16–17). That’s amazing. Christ dwells.

Now, this is a prayer for Christians. This is not a prayer for conversion. We think, “Oh, that means Christ knocks on the door and then comes in.” That’s not it. He’s in; we are Christians. He’s praying for saints in Ephesus, that Christ would dwell — that is, consciously, alive, present, at home, experienced. How? Through faith: “so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” He’s praying for Christians who already have Christ. This is a prayer for real, authentic experience of the living Christ.

So, when I embrace the crucified and risen Christ as my supreme treasure — alive, present, at home in me — that very faith, that embrace, is the sufficient instrument for the enjoyment of his fellowship. That will be my primary, daily celebration.

Over the course of five decades, the late J.I. Packer (1926–2020) wrote hundreds of articles for Christianity Today, but perhaps none ruffled more feathers than his 1991 piece “Let’s Stop Making Women Presbyters.” It was no secret where Packer stood on the issue, but this piece presented a penetrating analysis in which he summarized how “the present-day pressure to make women presbyters owes more to secular, pragmatic, and social factors than to any regard for biblical authority.”

Packer came out and said what could not be more obvious, on the one hand, but also, for egalitarians, more bothersome, on the other.

Women’s Ordination Made Plausible

Matthew Colvin belabors a similar point in his 2020 review of William Witt’s Icons of Christ: A Biblical and Systematic Theology for Women’s Ordination. Colvin, an ordained presbyter in the Anglican Church in North America, explains that a shift in plausibility structure, brought on by modernity, is the key influence for those who advocate for women’s ordination — by which is meant affirming women to the office of pastor and elder (presbyter). Colvin writes, “Charity toward our forebears in the faith ought to lead us to ask, ‘What has happened to make women ordination seem plausible to people in our day, even though it was unthinkable to all past ages of the Church?’” (“Reviews of Icons of Christ”).

That is a good question, and one that Michael Novak swiftly answers in his 1993 First Things article “Women, Ordination, and Angels”:

This [women ordination] is doubtless because of the intellectual shift in our thinking from “natural law” to “natural rights.” In natural law thinking, natural differences between males and females (“natural” both in the biological-neurological and in the cultural-symbolic dimension) offered sufficient reason for accepting a differentiation of functions and roles. For centuries, the prevalence of organic, role-differentiated thinking allowed the traditional practice of excluding women from the priesthood to seem fitting and right. In the light of doctrines of “natural rights,” by contrast, according to which equal rights inhere in all persons qua [acting as] persons, this exclusion has come to seem arbitrary, and in the end unjust.

In short, the new plausibility structure in which women eldership is embraced, as Colvin describes, is a mixture of the secular egalitarianism Novak chronicled in 1993 and the disregard for biblical authority Packer cited in 1991.

Office for Manly Men

Swimming in such a plausibility structure for so long, many today might actually find a line in Packer’s article almost unbelievable, if not just simply backwater. Writing with his vintage clarity, Packer states,

The argument here is this: presbyters are set apart for a role of authoritative pastoral leadership. But this role is for manly men rather than womanly women, according to the creation pattern that redemption restores. Paternal pastoral oversight, which is of the essence of the presbyteral role, is not a task for which women are naturally fitted by their Maker.

“Manly men.” That’s hard to miss.

Some voices today even claim uncertainty about what men and women are, but thirty years ago Packer doesn’t just say men, but he even qualifies it with manly.

Christian Scripture is clear about male-only eldership, both in its propositions and story line, but Packer is extrapolating a deeper point. The pastoral office is not for males in general, but for qualified and duly appointed men — which Packer understands to entail their exhibiting masculine traits summarized by the adjective manly.

The office of elder is intended for manly men, and for good reasons — reasons that require unhurried reflection on the text of Scripture and unclouded attention to the natural world. Such unhurried reflection takes us deeper than biblical minimalism and arguments of silence are willing to go, and the unclouded attention is able to re-recognize what human history has always assumed, that manly means something.

Defending Packer and building upon his 1991 article, I’ll try to state the matter as straightforwardly as he would.

What Is the Responsibility of Elders?

“Elders teach and exercise authority in the local church,” writes Greg Gilbert. “That’s what they do; that’s why the office exists” (Can Women Be Pastors?, 23). Put another way, elders feed and lead — and the two are inseparable. The leading comes primarily through the feeding. This ensures that all oversight and care for the flock, including guarding the church’s doctrine and worship and mobilizing her for mission, is in constant submission to the word of God.

Paul requires that the elder “must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 2:9; see also “able to teach,” 1 Timothy 2:3). Centered on the Bible, then, the elder builds (he instructs) and defends (he rebukes). He both pastors the flock to still waters and fends off wolf-like intrusions — by telling the church what God says.

This concept for elders didn’t pop out of nowhere, but its roots go back to the work of the Levites, the Old Testament priestly tribe, which travels back to Adam.

Adamic, Priestly Duty

In Numbers 3, when God issues the duties of the Levites, he tells Moses that they shall guard the people and their worship. One of the Hebrew words behind “guard” (shamar) in Numbers 3:7–10 is also used in Genesis 2:15 when God gives Adam, the man, his Edenic duties:

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep [shamar] it.”

The Levites related to the temple and congregation the way Adam was supposed to relate to the Edenic temple and Eve. This tells us both about their work, that it’s fundamentally masculine, and the expectation on Adam, which he failed to meet. Whereas Adam should have guarded Eden and Eve against that which contradicts God’s word, he failed to rebuke the serpent’s lies.

This is what Paul refers to in 1 Timothy 2 as his ground for why women should not teach or exercise authority over a man (that is, perform Adamic duties). Paul explains, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor” (1 Timothy 2:13).

Insufficiently Masculine

Paul’s guidance for the church in 1 Timothy comes from his own (inspired) unhurried reflection on Genesis 1–3. When he says that Adam was not deceived, but rather Eve was, that is not to acquit Adam, but most likely to indict him! Eve was deceived because Adam failed to guard the garden and his own wife as he ought.

Adam’s failure was, in a word, leadership. He didn’t do what God had placed him in the garden to do. He was insufficiently masculine, and his failure led to the upending of God’s creation design. Rather than Adam obeying God’s command and guarding Eve as they exercised dominion over lesser creatures, the lesser creature, the serpent, taught Eve heresy while Adam passively stood by, disobeying God. God had intended authority to flow from himself to Adam, from Adam to Eve, from Adam and Eve to lesser creatures, but Satan attacked by turning God’s order upside down.

Humankind has been lost ever since, manifesting the characteristic sins of men and women described in Genesis 3:16–19, and distorting God’s creation design and structure of authority. As Gilbert explains, “The woman will seek to dominate and master man, and man will twist his authority into an abusive domination of women” (32). That’s in the world, though. It’s not to be so in the church and Christian households.

The redemptive vision to which Paul calls the church means restoring God’s original design, not assimilating to the sinful distortion. And this vision is especially featured within the church’s leadership — with “manly men” serving in the office of elder.

Really Call It Manly?

Far from arbitrary, the office of elder is reserved for mature men for good reason. Manly men are best fit for the office because the work of building and defending, of instructing and rebuking, is quintessentially masculine.

To instruct, to build, to feed requires initiative, assertiveness, and steadfastness characteristic of masculinity. The equally important task of rebuking, of defending, of leading is just the same, often requiring sacrificial watchfulness and an unemotional assessment of values. The work is Adam-like and Levitical. It’s manly.

Therefore, for “women elders” to actually function, it must mean that either one has altered the biblical office to accommodate a feminine essence, or women are acting like men.

We don’t have the authority to do the former, and the latter is out of step with God’s design. Some women might seem able to do manly work, and in some painful situations they must, but it does not make for long-term health and thriving. God’s design calls us to something more beautiful — manly men and womanly women doing manly and womanly things, respectively. With the elders being manly men.

Remember how it felt as a kid at the end of the school year, when the long summer holidays stretched out before you? You knew it wouldn’t last forever, but fall seemed a world away.

That’s kind of what it felt like for me and my wife, Pam, during our early childrearing years (though it wasn’t a holiday). We knew this golden “summer” season of life would someday end. But for quite a wonderful while, it seemed like the “fall” of our kids’ departures into adulthood was a world away.

However, just as we learned as kids, summers aren’t as long as they first appear. Our parenting “fall” has arrived, and with it all the necessary changes. This is God’s design: “For everything there is a season” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). And as God pronounced, this design is good (Genesis 1:14, 18). I don’t begrudge it.

But I do grieve it, which I also believe is good. Because when God made “a time for every matter under heaven,” he included “a time to mourn” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4). The time to mourn is when someone or something precious to us passes away. And the precious season Pam and I were given to live together with all our children is passing away. It’s not easy to say goodbye.

“When God made ‘a time for every matter under heaven,’ he included ‘a time to mourn.’”

But something happened this year that provided our whole family a chance to say goodbye to that season together: we sold the family home.

Leaving More Than a Home

In June 2001, Pam and I bought a modest house on a small inner-city plot in South Minneapolis and moved in with our two young children (ages 5 and 2). Three more children came along over the next few years. So, for the better part of two decades, this house was the busy hub of our family of seven. It was a gracious provision from God and served us well.

As our kids began to reach adulthood, however, and as some began to leave the nest, Pam and I discerned the Lord readying us for another move. We weren’t sure when this would happen, so we kept it in prayer, kept it on our kids’ radars, and kept our eyes open.

Then, last January, the moment surprisingly (and suddenly) arrived. The right home for the next season of life at the right price became available. Both of us discerned the Lord was in it, so we pulled the trigger. This immediately threw us into high gear in order to get our house ready to sell and ourselves ready to move.

But getting our house ready to sell proved more difficult than I anticipated. I don’t mean the repairs, upgrades, and cleaning. I mean getting ready to leave the place. Because leaving this place really brought home the realization that we were leaving more than a home; we were leaving a wonderful era.

The Rooms Where It Happened

In the hustle and bustle of those busy years, I didn’t fully realize just how much that house was being woven into the fabric of our shared lives, but for 21 years it was where most of our most profound family moments occurred.

It’s where children were conceived and where they first came awake to the world. It’s where some first crawled, then walked, then ran; where some first spoke, then read, then wrote. It was where we spoke most about God and spoke most to God together. It’s where we spent the most time reading God’s word and singing to and about God together. It’s where we expressed our deepest longings for God — and our doubts about him — together. It’s where we shared our greatest joys and sorrows together, where we had the most fun and most fights together. It’s where we shared thousands of meals and washed hundreds of thousands of dishes together. It’s where our children grew up together, and where Pam and I grew noticeably older together.

This house framed our family life for most of our family’s life. These were the rooms where it all happened. So, I guess it’s fitting that as we packed up these rooms, the reality of all we were leaving behind really hit home.

Goodbye to Golden Days

For me, the emptier each room became, the more it seemed to fill with memories. I’d enter our bedroom and think how everyone used to crowd on our bed for evening book time. Walking through the living room might recall a bunch of Blooms enjoying Sunday sundaes. A glance at a basement wall could prompt, “You wrote her lullaby here, remember?” Sometimes I could almost hear my kids bounding down the stairs, giggling over something silly, arguing with their mother, tattling on a sibling, happily singing, letting the storm door slam while running out of the house, or calling for me from their bedrooms to come give them their nighttime blessing.

The last few days at the house, when it was mostly empty, it was as if ghosts of the past were released from some grey-matter basement in my memory to finally run free. Ghosts of past Christmases, Easters, birthdays, evening dinners, family devotions, chore times, movie nights, and Saturday special breakfasts would show up unbidden (and suddenly I’d be searching for Kleenex).

Well, perhaps not entirely unbidden. Consciously or not, I was looking and listening for them. And so was everyone else. Every family member was recalling them. We reminisced a lot together and did a lot of laughing and crying — often simultaneously. It was a sweet way (with the right amount of bitter) to say goodbye to our beloved house. But we all knew it was more than that. It was a cathartic way to say goodbye to a golden time of shared life, a wonderful “summer” season that was ending.

On the last night, we all gathered at the house, joined by our dear next-door friends, who had been so much a part of our lives for more than a decade, and together we went room by room, sharing recollections. Then, when only our family remained, standing in the entry, we thanked God for that house, for those beloved rooms where it had all happened, and for all the happenings that had made that season of life so precious to us.

Three Parting Thank-Yous

I loved being a father. I’m not done being one, of course. I just mean that I loved raising my children. I loved providing for them, protecting them, playing with them, comforting them, and teaching them. Those formative years were wonderful. I will miss them.

“Some things are so profound, we can only say them simply.”

But the next season is upon us. Three of our children have departed the home, and the two who remain (our twins) are high school seniors. Pam and I are already experiencing some of the new season’s wonderful gifts (like grandchildren — we now have three!). So, as a kind of benediction to mark the passing of a season I’ve loved, I want to offer a few simple words of thanks. For some things are so profound, we can only say them simply.

Thank you, heavenly Father, for the priceless gifts of our children’s lives, and for the inexpressible gift of allowing Pam and me to share with them their growing-up years. This remarkable quarter-century season came from you, and it was indeed good.

Thank you, Pam, for being, in my estimation, the primary human reason this season was so wonderful. From the moment you became aware of each child’s existence, you haven’t ceased to lovingly, faithfully, and sacrificially care for them. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in parenting. Your steady faith in God, your patience and grace toward the rest of us, and your gentle, quiet spirit daily seasoned our home and made it a place of peace.

And to Levi, Eliana, Peter, Moriah, and Micah: thank you for the privilege of being your father. I realize you weren’t given a choice, but somehow it still feels to me like a gift from you because of how profoundly your lives have enriched mine. The years I was able to spend with you and your wonderful mother have been the best of my life. It was a golden time. I would do it all over again. But “for everything there is a season,” and God has faithfully brought us to the dusk of this one and the dawn of the next. And so, it only seems right to speak over you once more the blessing you each received from me nearly every night of your childhood:

The Lord bless you and keep you;the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. (Numbers 6:24–26)