This message is part 1 of a three-part seminar on practicing the habits of grace in a hectic world. See here for the other two messages:

Let me start with a text before we do some more orienting work on where we’re going this weekend. Let’s get a little glimpse of the early church, the church that endured these various heresies and challenges of legalism, distraction, and competition in the first century. We get this little glimpse, like a little honeymoon moment, early in the Book of Acts. Peter has preached, three thousand people have come to faith, and then we find this out in Acts 2:42–47. Here’s what they do:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

This is an amazing, shining, warm, bright moment. Early in the church, before persecutions come one after another, and before the Book of Acts moves from one obstacle to the next, we have this little, early moment. Who wouldn’t want these things? Awe coming upon every soul? Many wonders and signs? People want to sign up for signs and wonders. They want to see the spectacular.

And they were sharing their stuff. They weren’t forced to have all things in common. They chose to do this. They were selling their possessions. They were attending the temple together. They were receiving their food with glad and generous hearts. It was so ideal. They were praising God, and they had favor with all the people (that will change). God added to their number day by day those being saved.

Who doesn’t want to be part of a church like this? What’s the recipe? We want to know. What were they doing that had the Holy Spirit flowing through them like this? We want to be part of a church like this. We want to have lives like this. People want to sign up for numbers increasing and signs and wonders being performed.

Spectacularly Unspectacular

In Acts 2:42, it’s just so unspectacular. It’s so normal. In Acts 2:42, what did they devote themselves to? “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.” The apostles were teaching the word. They had this message about Jesus called the gospel, and they were teaching Jesus from the Old Testament Scriptures. This is the apostles’ preaching and teaching about Christ and how we should live. Then it mentions “the fellowship” — we’ll say more about that tomorrow morning, and focus on it as a means of grace.

We have teaching. We have the word being taught. We have the community, the fellowship, the company, the congregation. There’s the breaking of bread. (I take this to be a reference to both the sharing of their meals and to the Lord’s Supper.) And we have the prayers. It’s very basic, normal stuff. It’s Bible teaching, prayer, the gathering of the congregation, and fellowship. And in the midst of that, they share food and the Lord’s Supper. These are very unspectacular things.

And yet, that’s what our focus is going to be on this weekend. As we think about distraction, competition, and legalism, we don’t want to just survive but to thrive in the Christian faith, with joy. So we’re going to talk about these seemingly mundane, very ordinary, electric-with-power means of grace for the Christian life.

This is our outline here for tonight and for tomorrow. As we’re breaking this into three sections, it’s important that we do some introductory work here first tonight. Tonight is going to be the most principled, theological, or visionary component of the three sessions. Then I’m going to try to get way more practical tomorrow morning and afternoon.

Tonight, we’ll start off with an introduction to the means of grace. We want to get our theology right at the outset. What’s the deal with the means of grace? How does that relate to our habits of grace? And tonight we’ll introduce God’s “chief” and “soul” means of grace: the word. That’s what Jonathan Edwards called it. Tomorrow morning, God willing, we’ll come back and do some practical focus on the word, and I’ll introduce prayer. Then in our final session, I’ll focus on some practical aspects of prayer, and then tackle this remarkable and often forgotten means of grace called “the fellowship.”

Clarify, Simplify, Inspire

Let me state here my aims for us in our time together tonight and tomorrow. Here’s my aim for these sessions: I want to clarify, simplify, and inspire. I’d like to clarify the source of the Christian life in God’s ongoing grace for us and how to access that grace. Then I want to simplify our pursuit of God’s grace through his appointed means. God has told us how he means to bless us. He has told us how he means to have the flow of his grace coming into our lives. I want to rehearse those things and then seek to sync up the habits of our lives with the remarkable flow of his grace.

Then I want to inspire you to cultivate habits of grace in your life, whatever season of life and whatever your personal bent, so that you can develop habits that would help you to know and enjoy him. And in knowing and enjoying him, to glorify him. It’s all so that he would be glorified in our delight in him and in the expressions of that delight, as it works its way out into our lives. It’s so that we would let our light shine in such a way that others would see our good deeds and give glory to our Father (Matthew 5:16).

My hope here is to keep the gospel and the energy of God at the center. As we talk about these actions, these efforts, and these initiatives we might take, we don’t want to fall into our own version of Christian legalism. We’re going to put the gospel at the center and the grace of God at the center.

Then we’re going to want to emphasize corporate dynamics as well. This is often overlooked in discussions of the spiritual disciplines. It becomes a very me-and-God-oriented thing, which is good. That has its place, but there are also amazing things in the Christian life that are corporate. There are means of grace that are corporate.

I want to present God’s means of grace and your own habits that develop around those means as not just accessible and realistic but truly God’s means for your knowing and enjoying Jesus, for a lifetime. That’s where we’re going, as our goal: we want to know him, enjoy him, be close to him, and hold fast to him, that he would be the great, personal life and source of our spiritual survival and thriving — and do so for a lifetime.

This is what we aim at: we aim at lives that glorify God through hearts that are happy in him, through souls satisfied in Jesus. That’s going to happen through his ongoing supply of grace to our lives, and he has given us his appointed means of grace. Then we’re going to seek to have our own habits and corporate habits whereby we access his grace and know, enjoy, and glorify him. We want to see God glorified through our joy by God’s threefold means of grace in our own habits of grace.

Primer on the Means of Grace

Session one is an introduction and a focus on the word. I want to introduce “the means of grace,” this concept, and then talk about God’s first and foremost means of grace for our Christian lives. Just to set this up, let me talk about Proverbs 21:31, which is a great means text. One danger in applying Christian theology and human responsibility would be that we think our means — the things that we do — just bring about our ends no matter what, as if it’s just a closed system, as if it’s pure cause and effect. We’re responsible; we get it done. That’s it.

Or we could have a more fatalistic view, thinking, “Well, it really doesn’t matter what we do because God’s the one who does things decisively.” So, we need to bring these two together theologically and experientially when we talk about the means of grace. It’s just a little glimpse of glorious means all throughout the Bible, once you see it:

The horse is made ready for the day of battle,     but the victory belongs to the Lord.

Now, a godly king gets his horses ready for the battle. If he has a battle, he prepares for the battle. Get your soldiers ready for the battle. Prepare, execute, have a strategy, engage. And he’s not so naive as to think that there are no prayers to be prayed and a God to be leaned on and seen as the One who decisively does it. You can have the best army and chariots and guns and tanks, and if God decides you lose the battle, you lose the battle.

Means are important in the Christian life. If God appoints that a nail be in a board, he also appoints a hammer and a hand driving it into the board. Or as a father and a homeowner, I can’t help but think of faucets and light switches. One reason I think about this is that I have a father-in-law who’s a plumber. I did not grow up in a plumber’s family — my dad was a dentist. He did stuff around the house, but he also hired other people to do stuff around the house. I didn’t grow up a handyman. So, when I became a homeowner for the first time fifteen years ago, it was all new to me, and I felt all this pressure because my wife’s dad is a plumber. If something goes wrong, she just expects me to fix it. I’ve had a lot of learning to do.

But an amazing thing about the plumbing or the electricity in the house is that if you want some water, you don’t just walk around the living room going, “Water, fall on me. Water, give me water.” No, the home has been plumbed and wired, so to speak, in a certain way. You go to the sink to get water, and then you turn on the sink. You do the action. You engage the means, and hopefully, water comes out of the spigot. When you do that, you don’t celebrate and say, “Look what I did. I made it water. I made the water come out.”

Or maybe you walk into a room to turn on the lights. By the way, Canadians — you guys are funny sometimes with the hotel lights. The same thing happened to me in Montreal. I could not figure out the lights in Montreal, and it took me about ten minutes last night to figure out the lights in the hotel. There are mood lights, and there are all sorts of different lights. When the lights come on, because I flick the switch, I don’t celebrate that I did it. The city provided the electricity, and some electrician wired up the walls and got the outlet installed.

But it would be silly for me just to walk around and demand that light to come on or to have water without engaging the appointed means. That’s the kind of thing we’re dealing with here in the Christian life. God has told us that he has provided power, he has wired things up, and he has provided various switches. He provides faucets where we engage the means and get the flow of water.

Now, here’s where we’re going in this session. First, we want to talk about the God of grace. We have to start with him. He’s the personal provider of this grace. It’s not this rogue thing, a power that you try to access and find. It’s his power through his Spirit. Second, he has given us his appointed means of grace. Third, we’ll talk about various habits in our lives for accessing his grace. Fourth, we want to emphasize the end of the means as well. To have a means implies there’s an end. You have to have an end of the means. We’ll talk about that and introduce his first and foremost means: his word.

1. Know the God of grace.

First, let’s celebrate the God of grace. First Peter 5:10 says,

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

Our God is a God of grace. When he reveals himself to Moses, he reveals himself as “a God merciful and gracious, full of steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). This is the kind of God who is overflowing. He’s eager to help his children. He wants to shed his grace. The very coming of Jesus is the climactic expression of his grace.

So, we have a God of grace. That’s a very important starting point in coming to the means of grace — that we see that we don’t have this miserable God who’s holding back his stuff. He wants to give. He’s happy, he’s generous, and he wants to give his grace to his people, especially as they come through his means.

First Timothy 1:11 says, “Sound doctrine [is] in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.” I just want to linger over the word makarios, which means “blessed” or “happy.” Our God is the infinitely happy God. He’s not miserable up in heaven. He’s infinitely happy. He lives for all eternity in the infinite bliss of the Trinity. He’s the happy God who radiates out with his glory and, because of that, has a gospel to save sinners.

And then in 1 Timothy 6:15 he says of this God, “He is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion.” Our God is overflowing in his riches, in his goodness, in his fullness. That fullness comes to us and meets us in his grace toward us sinners.

So, first and foremost, we have the God of grace. And then very importantly, we need to recognize how this grace manifests in our lives, and how it comes to meet us.

The Grace of Justification

The God of grace justifies us. You may be familiar with this language of justification, of God justifying us. If you’re not, I’ll try to explain it. If you are, glory with me in it, that the God of grace does this for his creatures.

Romans 4:4–5 says, “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.” So, if you work, you get wages, and they aren’t given to you as a gift. They’re what you are due. You deserve the wages. You enter into this arrangement, and you get the wages.

Then Paul continues, “And to the one who does not work but believes—” The opposite in this contrast he sets up is that one is working for it, and the other is believing. He is contrasting belief here. He says, “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5).

Justify means he counts them righteous. He accepts them fully. He declares them to be in the right with him. “Faith,” at the end of the verse, goes back to “belief” at the beginning of the verse. This is justification by faith. This is coming before the holy God for his acceptance not on the basis of anything we do. We are coming to him to believe in him. We come as the ungodly, and by faith — because of Jesus and his righteousness in our place — we are justified. We are declared to be in the right. Working is one path, and belief is another. That’s the realm of justification.

Here’s more of his blessedness, his fullness, his riches, his goodness, and his lovingkindness. Titus 3:4–7 says,

But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us [justification], not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Not only is he excluding from our acceptance with God poor works, partial works, or flawed works, but he is also excluding works done in righteousness — the best works you can do. God justifies us by his grace. Our full acceptance before the holy God is not based on anything we do. Our habits of grace, however good, even if they’re done in righteousness, do not earn our right standing with the holy, rich, blessed God. That comes through faith in Jesus Christ. God justifies.

The Grace of Sanctification

You might just say, “Well, that’s enough. That’s enough grace for me. I’ll just take that grace and go home.” But God says, “I’m the God of all grace. I have more grace than that. That justification is spectacular good news, and I’m not done.” This is double grace — what Calvin called duplex gratia. This is the grace of God that sanctifies. Sanctification, our own becoming holy, is not an annoyance or a burden; it is another grace.

Titus 2:11–12 uses the same kind of language. He just talked about the appearing of God’s mercy and goodness and lovingkindness in Jesus. Now we’re talking about how the grace of God has appeared. Jesus is God’s grace, embodied and personal. The passage says, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people —” Then you might say, “Oh, that’s great. Grace means there’s nothing for me to do, right?” Well, there’s some grace here for your training. He continues,

The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age. (Titus 2:11–12).

Brothers and sisters, self-control, uprightness, and godly lives — these things aren’t burdens. This is more grace. God is more gracious than to just save you from your sin, forgive your sin, reckon you righteous, and then leave you in the misery of your sin. He says, “I want to save you out of your sin, I want to forgive you of it, and then I want to pull you out of the misery of your sin.” Ungodliness is miserable. Worldly passions are miserable. Self-control, uprightness, and godly living empowered by grace is double grace.

Now we’re getting into how this grace works in our lives as a means, and how we might work. We don’t work in justification. We only believe. But in sanctification, we get to work. We act, and we put some effort in by grace. Here’s how it happens. Paul says, “By the grace of God, I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10). So you might think, “Oh — grace. Does that mean you’re going to find the apostle Paul on a couch?” Probably not with Paul. (It’s not that the couch is a problem. There’s a time for couches, though I don’t know if Paul had any time for it.) Instead he says,

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10)

Now, when Paul said he “worked harder than any of them,” do you know what he’s talking about here? He’s not talking about bums in Crete or the lazy folks in Galatia or whatever; he’s talking about the other apostles. Paul must have had such a gargantuan work ethic that he could say something like this in utter humility. I don’t think there’s any posturing here. I don’t think there’s any pride. I think it was just so well-known. Paul was just wired differently. Peter is not the same. John is not the same. But Paul is just Herculean.

But you know what? Paul says, “That’s the grace of God. It’s not I.” All these long journeys, all that he went through, all the labors and works — he does it by grace. I’m not saying you have to be as tireless as Paul. What I’m saying is that the grace of God empowers us to make effort. There’s no effort for justification. You cannot earn God’s acceptance. But in grace, you can experience the joy of walking in real holiness.

Here’s the dynamic as Paul talks to the Philippians about it:

Beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. (Philippians 2:12–13)

He didn’t say work for it. That would be in the realm of justification. If he said work for it, that would be a breach of justification. He’s saying, “Work out your salvation. God is saving you. You’re righteous in Christ. Work it out.” How? Is it that in your own effort you work it out? No, he says, “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). God works in you.

We saw this in the Titus text about the Holy Spirit being given to us richly. The reason that justified sinners don’t become lazy or antinomian is that with this gift of justification, which you did not earn with any of your works, another gift comes. His name is the Holy Spirit, and through him God loves to continue to pour out his grace.

He’s at work. He works in you by the person of his Holy Spirit, both for your willing and working, which is deeper in us than we can sense. We’ll see that tomorrow when we talk about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is deeper in us than we can even sense. He’s at work in us for our will and for our work, for God’s good pleasure.

The Grace of Glorification

We’ve spoken of the grace of justification, the grace of sanctification, and then there’s a triple grace (and another one, and another one, and another one). This is the last one we’re going to do for right now. The grace of God glorifies.

Second Thessalonians 1:11–12 says, “[May God] fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you—” At this point we think, “Amen. To him be the glory. Glorify Jesus.” Then Paul surprises us here and says, “. . . and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians 1:12).

So, Christ is being glorified in us Christians, and we are being glorified by grace in him. There is a coming glory, a glory that’s already happening in our lives as we grow in holiness and Christian maturity. Second Corinthians 3:18 talks about moving from one degree of glory to the next. There’s a final glory coming, and it’s coming by grace. It’s when the groom glorifies his bride with himself. Ephesians 2:4–7 says,

But God, being rich in mercy [more “richness” language], because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

This is what he has begun in you if you have faith in Jesus, and this is what he will do for endless ages. He will lavish on us the immeasurable riches of his grace in Christ Jesus. So, the God of grace justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies. We are in a matrix of God’s grace in Christ in the Christian life. And God has given us appointed means of grace.

2. Grasp the means of grace.

How do we pursue sanctification? How do we pursue one degree of glory to the next? There are God’s appointed means of grace. Now, sometimes people talk about the spiritual disciplines. It’s a common term. It’s a subtitle in my book because I tried to set it up within the genre of spiritual disciplines.

But I like the term “means of grace” because I want to try to coordinate our actions with God’s actions. I want to see that first and foremost, we have the God of grace, and then in light of who he is, we’re now taking action from a creaturely posture of receiving his grace, rather than only the language of “spiritual disciplines.” Spiritual disciplines could begin and end with you. They could be about what you have to do.

“My most pressing need is not to master the Bible but to be mastered by God through his word.”

This is why D.A. Carson says, “Means of grace is a lovely expression less susceptible to misinterpretation than spiritual disciplines.” That’s your good Canadian brother right there. Or consider J.I. Packer. (Look at all these Canadian voices! He’s originally from England, but he spent a lot of time in Canada.) I first got onto this term “means of grace” from this quote from Packer: “The doctrine of the spiritual disciplines is really a restatement and extension of the classical Protestant teaching on the means of grace.”

Then Packer gives us a little helpful summary. What are these means? We have to know what these means are. Packer is going to help us here. There are four means of grace, he says: “The word of God, prayer, fellowship, and the Lord’s Supper.” He gave us four. We’ll keep coming back to that.

Here’s another quote by J.C. Ryle. As far as I know, he never lived in Canada. He’s a good British brother. He says,

The means of grace are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church, wherein one hears the Word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper. I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification. I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them. They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul, and strengthens the work which he has begun in the inward man . . . Our God is a God who works by means, and he will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them.

Don’t you want that? Don’t you want fresh supplies of grace to your soul from the Holy Spirit? Thank you, J.C. Ryle. We’ll come back to Ryle.

So then, how might we approach these means? I think there’s a helpful paradigm here in Zacchaeus and Bartimaeus. They’re back-to-back stories in the Gospel of Luke. I wonder if Luke’s putting them back to back to get at this very purpose. Whether he’s trying to do that or not, let’s look at the story of Zacchaeus and Bartimaeus.

Bartimaeus and the Road

Jesus drew near to Jericho, and there was this blind man sitting by the roadside, right? He was by the road. That’s significant. He didn’t think, “Well, let me just go wander in the wilderness, and maybe I’ll bump into the Messiah.” He’s by the road. You’re going to get help by the road. Position yourself by the road. Then it says,

And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” (Luke 18:36–37)

Because he was by the road, Jesus was going to come by him. The passage continues:

He cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God. (Luke 18:38–43)

The reason the grace comes to Bartimaeus is that he’s by the road. He went to the place where grace was passing. Jesus wasn’t over there in the wilderness. He was coming down the path, and Bartimaeus was by the path, and so he has the encounter with Jesus. He asks for mercy and receives the grace of healing because he’s by the path where Jesus is passing.

Zacchaeus and the Tree

Now, let’s see what happens with the wee little man, Zacchaeus.

He entered Jericho and was passing through. And behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. And he was seeking to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd, he could not, because he was small in stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him, for he was about to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. (Luke 19:1–6)

Zacchaeus doesn’t run out into the desert and hope to encounter the Messiah out there. He hears Jesus coming. He comes to see Jesus. He sees he’s too short and there’s too big of a crowd, so he goes up to a sycamore tree by the road, gets up in the tree, and gets Jesus’s attention. He positions himself along the path where the grace of God will be passing. Here’s what Jonathan Edwards had to say:

Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites.

By that, he means that you can’t want too much to be happy in God. You don’t have to curtail that. There are no bounds on your desire to be happy in God, which is what you were made for. He continues:

Rather, they ought to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spiritual pleasures. Endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement.

In other words, cultivate your desire for God’s grace and for God’s Son by laying yourself in the way of allurement, along the paths where Jesus will be passing. If he tells us where he is going to be passing, we should position ourselves along those paths.

His Voice, His Ear, His Body

So then, what are these means? How do we put ourselves on the path of God’s grace? Why don’t we come back to Acts 2:42 where we started? It says,

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Remember that we saw Packer mention the word of God. We saw Ryle mention Bible reading and the word being taught. “The apostles’ teaching” is mentioned here. The apostles were doing word-ministry and teaching. Then you have “the fellowship,” the body of Christ, the corporate dynamics of the covenant people together in relationship with each other. They are a means of God’s grace to each other, which is an amazing thing. It’s not just God’s word that is a means of grace, but we are means of grace to each other, back and forth. And finally it speaks of “the breaking of bread and the prayers.” I think the Lord’s Supper as a means of grace fits in the context of the fellowship, in the corporate life of the church.

Here’s how I organize them. Here are my three principles, my way of doing it. You could take a pie and cut it into twelve pieces, or eight pieces, or four pieces. I like to cut my pie into three pieces. I’m cutting the pie of the means of grace into three pieces, and I have reasons for that. I’ll show you those briefly. Here’s my summary:

Hear his voice in his word.
Have his ear in prayer.
Belong to his body in the fellowship of the local church.

I’m making the effort to make it personal here. We hear his voice in his word. Don’t hear his voice out in the wilderness. Don’t close your Bible and “hear his voice.” That’s your own voice talking to yourself. You hear his voice in his word. You have his ear in prayer and belong to his body in the context of the local church.

Matrix of Means

So, where does this threefold matrix come from? I think it’s a whole-Bible doctrine for me. This is a whole-Bible synthesis. You test it this weekend or next week, for months and for the rest of your life. See if this is a viable three-part summary of God’s means of grace.

I do think it’s Trinity-like, in the sense that it’s a kind of whole-Bible synthesis. I think God is very clear that his first and foremost means of grace is the initiative he takes in revealing himself in his word and climatically in his Son, who is the Word. Clearly, he means for his people to respond in prayer, and he doesn’t create those people as individuals alone, but in the context of the church. So, there’s my three-dimensional bringing together of his means of grace that we will be walking through tonight and tomorrow.

I think you can observe the pattern in Hebrews. This is what I’ve often done. I love Hebrews. If you’re allowed to have a favorite Bible book, mine is Hebrews. Hebrews does a really good job of summarizing these. Some of the best texts on hearing God’s voice are in Hebrews. We’ll see those in a minute. We also see this amazing passage about drawing near to the throne of grace with confidence, which means at least a kind of prayer and having his ear. And then regarding fellowship, I don’t know what to say except that Hebrews has probably the two best texts on fellowship.

Hebrews does this so well. You can see God’s means of grace in wanting the Hebrews to persevere. He commends God’s ongoing speaking through his word by the Spirit, approaching the throne of grace in prayer, and then enduring in the context of the local church.

Over time, I think the Psalms shaped me the most, and I started to see this more and more. There are so many texts in the Psalms about God’s word, God’s ear, and the congregation of the covenant fellowship. We could spend hours on it, but we won’t spend hours on it. I’m going to race through it in a few minutes. Here’s the pattern.

God’s Voice in the Psalms

In the Psalms, hearing God’s voice comes from his word. Psalm 19:7–8 says,

The law of the Lord is perfect,     reviving the soul;the testimony of the Lord is sure,     making wise the simple;the precepts of the Lord are right,     rejoicing the heart;the commandment of the Lord is pure,     enlightening the eyes.

The Bible is God’s personal revelation of his law, testimonies, precepts, and commandments. Psalm 29:4 says,

The voice of the Lord is powerful;     the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.

And Psalm 46:6 says,

The nations rage, the kingdoms totter;     he utters his voice, the earth melts.

It’s a symbol of his power. It’s a sign of his power that he doesn’t take out the divine sword or the divine muscles. All he has to do is speak. He’s that powerful. The nations do their raging, their plotting, and he just speaks, and it all melts. As Psalm 68:33 says, “Behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice,” and with it comes much grace for its people.

On the flip side, sin is not listening to his voice. The Psalms lament those who do not listen to God’s voice. It’s very basic. Our Father says, “Son, daughter, listen to my voice. You will be safe if you listen to your daddy’s voice and obey your daddy’s voice. You have a gracious daddy who’s speaking so that you can have joy and be protected and not go into misery. Listen to my voice.” But he says,

My people did not listen to my voice;     Israel would not submit to me.So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,     to follow their own counsels.Oh, that my people would listen to me,     that Israel would walk in my ways! (Psalm 81:11–13)

He speaks to the wilderness generation. They’ve come out of Egypt, they’ve been through the Red Sea, and they’re on the cusp of going into the promised land. God has given them promises. He has said, “Go take the land.” They see the giants, and they’re getting fearful. Psalm 106:24 says,

Then they despised the pleasant land,     having no faith in his promise.

He had promised, saying, “I’m going to give you this land. Obey the promise.” The passage continues:

They murmured in their tents,     and did not obey the voice of the Lord. (Psalm 106:25)

It’s a tragedy when his people do not attend to his voice, and it’s delight, joy, glory, and life when his people attend to his voice.

God’s Ear in the Psalms

The Psalms are also a massive example of having his ear in prayer. The psalmist prays,

Give ear to my words, O Lord;     consider my groaning.Give attention to the sound of my cry,     my King and my God,     for to you do I pray.O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice;     in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch. (Psalm 5:1–3)

And Psalm 17:6 says,

I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God;     incline your ear to me; hear my words.

Don’t you see it in the Psalms over and over again? The psalmists know that God stoops, and he listens. He wants to hear from his people. Not only does he reveal himself in his word, but he wants to hear from his people. He wants this to be a relationship. He doesn’t just broadcast it. He speaks and then wants to hear from his people in prayer.

The psalmists pray for his ear. They ask:

Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy,     when I cry to you for help,when I lift up my hands     toward your most holy sanctuary. (Psalm 28:2)

O God, hear my prayer;     give ear to the words of my mouth. (Psalm 54:2)

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!     O Lord, hear my voice!Let your ears be attentive     to the voice of my pleas for mercy! (Psalm 130:2)

I say to the Lord, You are my God;     give ear to the voice of my pleas for mercy, O Lord! (Psalm 140:6)

And as they ask for his ear, as they pray for it, they’re already confident that he hears. So they not only pray for his ear; they declare that they have his ear:

The Lord hears when I call to him. (Psalm 4:3)

O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted;     you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear. (Psalm 10:17)

I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God. (Psalm 17:6)

The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous     and his ears toward their cry.The face of the Lord is against those who do evil,     to cut off the memory of them from the earth.When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears     and delivers them out of all their troubles.The Lord is near to the brokenhearted     and saves the crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:15–18)

The psalmists celebrate having his ear:

In my distress I called upon the Lord;     to my God I cried for help.From his temple he heard my voice,     and my cry to him reached his ears. (Psalm 18:6)

Blessed be the Lord!     For he has heard the voice of my pleas for mercy. (Psalm 28:6)

You heard the voice of my pleas for mercy     when I cried to you for help. (Psalm 31:22)

Come and hear, all you who fear God,     and I will tell what he has done for my soul.I cried to him with my mouth,     and high praise was on my tongue.If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,     the Lord would not have listened.But truly God has listened;     he has attended to the voice of my prayer. (Psalm 66:16–19)

You might say, “Well, maybe he would listen to David because David was a king. David had this special role. But does this apply to me?” The answer is that this applies to us all the more in Jesus. We have all the more reason, because of Jesus, to know that the Lord hears our prayer.

We’ll talk about that foundation. We’ll talk more about Jesus’s high priesthood, his coming into the throne room, and his pouring out his Spirit so that even as we cry out, it is God himself, the Spirit, crying out in and through us. You have all the more reason than ancient Israelites and Davidic kings to know that he hears your prayer if you are in Jesus.

God’s Body in the Psalms

Belonging to his body and having fellowship appears in the Psalms as well. This is the congregation of the righteous in the Psalms:

I will tell of your name to my brothers;     in the midst of the congregation I will praise you. (Psalm 22:22)

I will thank you in the great congregation;     in the mighty throng I will praise you. (Psalm 35:18)

You get the point. Again and again, the psalmist is not alone. He’s with fellows, covenant fellows, which has pretty clear application for us.

3. Practice habits of grace.

God’s matrix of grace for the survival and joy of his people’s souls includes hearing his voice in his word, having his ear in prayer, and belonging to his body in covenant fellowship. What about these various habits of grace? If those are the means of grace — word, prayer, and fellowship — what about our habits? What is a habit?

This is from Charles Duhigg’s book, Power of Habit. He says,

Habits emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often so that the mind can attend to something else.

This is from Gretchen Rubin:

The real key to habits is decision-making, or more accurately, the lack of decision-making.

So, if every time you get in a car, you have to go through the process of thinking, “Should I put the seat belt on or not?” habit comes along to help with that. Or when the light turns red, do you want to stop at that moment and have a decision-making party and ask, “Well, the light turned red, what should I do about this?”

No, the life-saving habit is to just hit the brakes. The life-saving habit is to say, “It’s Sunday morning. Let’s worship with God’s people.” We don’t need to have a decision-making party here on whether to go this week. Or if it’s Saturday morning, do you ask, “Should I start the day with God’s word?” It’s a good habit to form.

What do good habits do? Habits free our focus to give attention elsewhere. They protect what’s most important. They keep us persevering. They’re person-specific, and they can change in various seasons of life. You may have habits that are not lifelong but just for this season. Habits can change. They’re driven by desire and reward. Your brain generates habits because there’s some reward that you’re looking to, however consciously or subconsciously, which is very important for forming spiritual habits.

Habits also change us. They condition us. You’re not hardwired in such a way that habits themselves aren’t part of changing you. Habits are part of a process of you being changed, your neural plasticity, and the changing of your soul and your heart by these habits.

As we already saw, “the grace of God has appeared . . . training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions” (Titus 2:11–12). We are being trained by God’s grace. God’s grace should form various habits in our lives for the ongoing flow of his grace and the ongoing changing of our souls, of our hearts. It’s reforming us for self-control, for upright and godly lives.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:16)

If I had more time, we would talk about training and the importance of it. We’re in an Olympic city. When you train for the Olympics, it changes your body. You condition the body. And when you are trained by grace, or you train in righteousness, it changes your heart, it conditions your heart, it makes you more able to delight in God rather than all the stuff of the world.

A big question for Christians as we look at the various habits and patterns of our life is this: Am I conditioning my soul to delight in God or the world five years from now? You may be believing right now, but if we audited the habits of your life, perhaps you are conditioning your soul to no longer believe in five years. The question for us, if we want to delight in God, is this: Am I conditioning my soul to delight in Jesus?

4. Long for the end of the means.

This relates to the end of the means. It’s the reason why we’re doing it. There’s an end. And the end is John 17:3, which says,

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Or consider Philippians 3:7–8, which says,

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

Knowing Jesus and enjoying him is the reason that we talk about the means. We could have gathered this weekend and done meditations on the glory of Christ (which is my preference). That’s what we want to do, and that’s where this is going: enjoying Jesus, delighting in Jesus, talking about Jesus. But I’m hoping that by focusing on the habits of grace we’re preparing ourselves for how to enjoy him and conditioning ourselves for enjoying him so that we can see him, know him, and enjoy him. He, enjoying him, is the great end of all these means.

Engaging His Voice

Finally, I’m going to close by introducing the word, and then we will come back tomorrow morning to talk more practically. How do I engage the word? If the word is God’s first and foremost means of his grace — God reveals himself through his speaking — how might I go about accessing his word? Tonight, let’s introduce the principle. God’s first and foremost means is his word. I told you Hebrews had great texts:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. (Hebrews 1:1–2)

This is the Book of Hebrews’ way of saying that Jesus is the Word. He’s the speaking of God. He’s the climactic revelation of God.

Then, in Hebrews 3–4, taking up the Old Testament text from Psalm 95, it says, “The Holy Spirit says . . .” (Hebrews 3:7). This is so important. When he’s talking about Old Testament Scripture, he doesn’t say, “The Holy Spirit said this once.” Rather, he says, “The Holy Spirit says . . .” He’s saying it right now. He said it then, and he continues saying it right now, as you hear it. The passage continues:

The Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” (Hebrews 3:7–8)

That’s what he’s talking about, then, when he says, “The word of God is living and active” (Hebrews 4:12). It’s not a dead word. It’s not like God spoke in the past, but he’s not saying it right now by his Spirit to his people.

The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12–13)

The Holy Spirit continues to speak God’s word. Then the last warning in Hebrews 12:25 says, “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.” He is speaking. It’s amazing to see this live, present doctrine of God’s ongoing speaking by his Spirit here in Hebrews. Our God is a talking God. He’s a speaking God.

What Is God’s Word?

Let me give you a quick summary of God’s word, because what I want to do is get outside of our thinking only of God’s word as this book that we flip through. The book is infinitely precious. But sometimes, if we just think about the letters on the page and not the larger concept and all that it means for God to reveal himself and speak to us, we may not appreciate what we hold in our hands. Our God is a talking God.

He spoke to create. That’s how he created the world. It was not a show of power with his hands, but speaking. And he speaks through creation. In Psalm 19:1, it says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” He spoke in human words through his prophets, like the text we already saw about his law, testimonies, precepts, and commandments from Psalm 19:7–11. He speaks definitively in his Son, who is the Word, as we saw in Hebrews 1. John also says, “In the beginning was the Word . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14). That’s the climactic revelation of God.

So, what is the word of God? Here’s my summary. Just think about the concept of God’s speaking. He speaks, he reveals himself, he’s communicative, he’s talkative. Isn’t that amazing that we have a God who speaks? Where would we be if he did not speak? He speaks to create, he speaks through creation, and he speaks particularly through his prophets. And then his word, spoken through the prophets, is written down and preserved in Scripture. When you hold that book in your hand, this is the preservation of God speaking.

Next comes his incarnate word. That’s his word made personal in his Son. Jesus is the Word of God. I put this in because I was marveling over that this morning in Matthew 17. Moses is there, Elijah is there, and Peter is like, “Oh, let’s build three tents. Moses can have a tent, Elijah can have one, and Jesus can have one.” And the voice speaks from heaven,

This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him. (Matthew 17:5)

I mean, how amazing is that? In the presence of Moses, he says, “Listen to him, the beloved Son.” That’s what Moses was anticipating. The great prophet Elijah anticipates the coming of the Son.

Then we have the word preached or spoken. That’s the gospel. This is the main way the New Testament uses the word word. In the New Testament, when you see “word,” it’s usually not referring to Scripture. That’s the word Scripture. The word word usually refers to the gospel.

Then Christ’s spokesmen, his apostles, write down their letters and their Gospels — the New Testament. So we have the prophets’ word, and we have the word about Jesus, captured by the apostles. So when we take up our Bible — this is such an amazing thing — we have here not only a record of what God has spoken into the world for his people, but we have the speaking. This is the Holy Spirit speaking to us in God’s Word.

Gather a Day’s Portion

Let me give you this last thing as we go. I want to give you one practical thing because, between now and tomorrow when we talk through the practicals, there’s a morning. I’d like to influence your morning tomorrow, if you would let me, before you come out. I call this “gather a day’s portion.”

This is my reminder for me in a world of distraction, competition, and legalism — in a hectic world — to have my focus be where it should be when I pick up my Bible in the morning. A temptation for me is, “How much can I do here?” rather than, “Can I feed my soul? God, would you feed my soul this morning?”

This comes from Exodus 16. God’s people are in the wilderness. They’ve come out of Egypt, and he’s going to give them this gift called “manna.” This is not exegesis that I’m doing here. This is a parallel, an analogy.

Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day. (Exodus 16:4)

Here’s what’s behind it. Your Father wants to provide food for you every day. Don’t store it for tomorrow. Don’t store it for next week. Don’t fill a barn. These are daily provisions. The passage continues:

Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack. Each of them gathered as much as he could eat. (Exodus 16:18)

Lamentations 3:23 talks about how his mercies are new every morning. And Jesus prays, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). Sometimes God gives you daily bread in five minutes. Usually, it’s a little longer than that. Sometimes it’s twenty minutes. Sometimes you may really wrestle with him like Jacob, and it might be an hour.

But I want to encourage you tomorrow morning to come before him and pray, “God, would you give me a day’s portion? Would you feed my soul this morning? Even more than my stomach is hungry, because I slept all night and need breakfast, my soul is hungry. Would you feed my soul this morning in your word?”

So, “gather a day’s portion” is my reminder not to try to do too much in morning devotions and have them get hectic. I don’t want to miss the main thing. My most pressing need is not to master the Bible in a few short months or weeks but to be mastered by God through his word, just a little each day, on the arc of a lifetime.

Developing a daily habit of feeding on him in Christ is more like a marathon than a sprint. It’s not hectic and hurried, but it’s coming before him saying, “Father, would you feed my soul this morning?”

A couple of years ago, a friend and I were enjoying the view from a downtown hotel’s rooftop bar when we realized there was a function going on around us. Wanting to get some free food, we stuck around and started to mingle. But after just a couple of minutes, someone stood up to address the gathering, and we quickly discovered this was an event for a particular activist group — one whose cause both of us felt profoundly uncomfortable with, and so we discreetly slipped away.

Many people might feel similar as they read certain passages of Scripture. In Psalm 98, for example, we find ourselves in the middle of a celebration: there is a lot of music and energy (verses 4–6); all creation seems to be joining in (verses 7–8). But the cause of all the festivity quickly becomes apparent: “[God] comes to judge the earth” (verse 9). Which is where the discomfort might start. Perhaps we want to slip out.

The surprise is not just that the Bible speaks about God one day judging the world, but that his doing so is something to celebrate. Paul connects coming judgment to the gospel he preaches: “. . . on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Romans 2:16). God’s judgment is part of the good news.

The Bible gives us at least five reasons why.

1. God’s judgment is needed.

Many today assume that people, deep down, are fundamentally good, and that bad things only really happen because of poverty, lack of education, poor upbringing, lack of privilege, and the like. What we need is progress, not judgment. Judgment is outdated. We’re sophisticated enough to know what’s right and wrong.

Miroslav Volf, professor of theology at Yale Divinity School, grew up in Croatia and lived through the bloodshed in that part of the world in the 1990s. In his book Exclusion and Embrace, he argues that one reason so many Westerners do not believe in judgment is that their lives are often too sheltered, too suburban, too quiet (300). For those who have lived through genocide, the idea of judgment can bring deep comfort. The fact is, many things in this world are not just unfortunate, but truly evil. We are naive to think otherwise. And too much wickedness is never adequately dealt with.

The truth of God’s judgment shows us that every wrong will be righted. No evil will ultimately prevail. No one will escape justice.

2. God’s judgment is fair.

Many people who don’t believe in God’s judgment do believe in judgment itself, and that it is down to us to implement it. Our social media feeds cry out with comments decrying injustice; often, the commenter also seems certain of exactly what needs to be done. Bloodshed erupts in the Middle East, and people who moments ago hadn’t even heard of the places in turmoil have no apparent doubt about who’s to blame and how to fix it.

The Bible does speak of a form of judgment that takes place in this life. Paul shows us that the state carries the sword of justice as an instrument of God’s wrath and an expression of his judgment (Romans 13:1–4). But such justice is incomplete and proximate at best. Even those of us fortunate enough to live in countries with healthy systems of justice know they are imperfect. Which is why Paul also speaks about “the day of [God’s] wrath,” when full justice will be done (Romans 2:5). If we don’t believe in that future judgment to come, our only hope for justice tends to be political justice in this life. Without God, such measures are all we have left.

“God sees the whole situation; we don’t. He is perfectly just; we’re not. He is not vindictive; we are.”

But we should be very hesitant to think we know how to fix the problems of the world. Paul’s language around the future judgment through Jesus shows us why: he will judge “the secrets of men” (Romans 2:16). Without that capacity, we will never have full justice. We can hide things from one another, even from our nearest and dearest, but we can hide nothing from Jesus. He sees the secrets of our hearts. He knows all our motivations, all our circumstances. His judgment — and only his judgment — will be fair.

3. God’s judgment shows we matter.

It is common to think that if God loves us, he won’t judge us; and if he judges us, he doesn’t love us. But the opposite of love is not judgment, but indifference.

When I was at university, a friend and I began to suspect a particular professor didn’t actually read our papers. They were often ungraded, with only vague comments and no evidence of the pages having been physically turned. So, we conducted an experiment. We each wrote an entirely random, outrageous sentence in the middle of our papers to see if he would spot it and comment on it. He never did. It was quite a blow.

There were some papers I’d worked especially hard on — papers on topics I deeply cared about, and where I wanted to make sure my understanding was clear. And yet he’d never actually bothered to read them. Which told me I didn’t matter to him — or at least this part of my education didn’t matter to him. Not grading and assessing someone’s work is a sign you don’t care about them.

So, God’s judging us is a sign that we really do matter to him. He is not indifferent to us. He cares how we live and what we do. His judgment is a backhanded compliment: our lives really are consequential.

4. God’s judgment makes us less violent.

If God is judgmental, we might think that gives us a personal license to be so as well. But Scripture shows us the exact opposite is the case: because God will bring final, perfect judgment at the end of time, I can trust him and not seek to enact my own form of justice now. If there is no judgment to come, then all I have left is whatever I can come up with in this life. Wrongs will have to be avenged here and now.

Paul writes, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Romans 12:19). Paul wouldn’t need to write this if the tendency toward vengeance was not so prevalent in the human heart. His words are emphatic: “never avenge yourselves.” This is not a recommendation or a rule of thumb that applies most of the time. It is a categorical command. However grievous the wrong, we are never to seek personal vengeance.

Paul shows us why. Significantly, he addresses his readers here as “beloved,” a term he does not typically use in this letter. He is reminding us of the undeserved love we have received from God. We haven’t received what we truly deserve from him; we were his enemies, but he has lavished his love upon us. So, as recipients of such undeserved love, how can we refuse it to anyone else?

But it is not just the love God has shown us, but also his judgment to come, that restrains us from vengeance in the present. We are to “leave it to the wrath of God.” He is the one who repays. He punishes sin and brings judgment. He sees the whole situation; we don’t. He is perfectly just; we’re not. He is not vindictive; we are. We can trust him to repay — and he will. And because he will, I can hold back my own desire for vengeance.

5. Jesus delivers us from judgment.

Perhaps the biggest way the good news of the gospel connects to the judgment of God is this: in Christ, we have no need to fear it. As Paul writes to the believers in Thessalonica,

You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10)

God will indeed judge the world. History will not lack a moral resolution. Perfect justice will come. But those in Christ do not need to fear it. The wrath our own sins deserve has already fallen on Jesus. We have been justified through faith in him. So, along with all creation in Psalm 98, we will be able to celebrate when that judgment finally comes.

ABSTRACT: The “Five Points of Magnetism” articulated by the twentieth-century missionary theologian J.H. Bavinck serve as a grid for understanding human cultures in every age. Formed in the image of God, humans necessarily ask the same basic questions about who they are and how they fulfill their place in the world. The gospel of Christ answers those questions and fulfills every longing. Learning to recognize these questions can help pastors serve their people in preaching and counseling, as well as empower them to offer a compelling witness to the world.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Dan Strange (PhD, University of Bristol), director of Crosslands Forum and the vice president of The Southgate Fellowship, to recover the “Five Magnetic Points” of missionary theologian J.H. Bavinck as a foundation for the church to engage with culture in a compelling manner.

If you knew me, you would know that I have not been gifted with the body of a climber. However, a few years ago I became somewhat obsessed with the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, which captures Alex Honnold’s breathtaking ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park: 2,900 feet (884 meters) in 3 hours and 56 minutes without any ropes or safety aids. In parts of the climb, the rock face appears so vertical and smooth that it seems impossible for Honnold to get a grip (could he really be Spiderman?). On closer inspection, though, we discover indentations, nubs, and abrasions, however small, that Honnold uses creatively, not to mention with great effort and patience, to get traction and continue his journey to the top.

Engaging late-modern culture, and indeed any culture, in terms of our pastoring, preaching, and persuasion can seem as if we’re trying to climb a sheet of glass. We may not like to admit it, but we often struggle to get traction, to understand and connect with people where they really are — their hopes, dreams, and fears. It can feel as if we’re losing our grip and slipping down. How do we get traction given such pervasive uninterest and even antagonism?

As evangelical Christians, however, getting traction is not our only concern, and this is where my Free Solo illustration breaks down. Alex Honnold is not to be our example. There’s a tragic montage in Free Solo that shows how many of Alex’s friends in the free-solo climbing community have fallen to their deaths. Free soloing is absolute madness. Yes, we want to get traction, but we also know we need to be tethered. Our ministry, in all its facets, if it is to be truly life-giving, must be tethered to Christ and his word. This is where we find not only safety and security, but also sight. Far from being restricting, such tethering gives us confidence, freedom, and imagination to get traction in whatever cultural context the Lord has placed us because we learn from God’s word that there is always a point of contact to confront and call our culture to come to Christ.

Seeing Culture Through Scripture

What I’ve said so far is nothing original. The swirl and interplay between our confession and our context — and to which I would add our character — are perennial issues in theology and missiology that can discombobulate and paralyze. Which theory of “contextualization” can we understand, let alone utilize? How do we have the time and energy to keep up with the constant shape-shifting of cultural trends and artifacts? Do all pastors today need PhDs in the sociology of religion and an intricate theory of secularization?

To aid our progress, I have found the Dutch Reformed missiologist J.H. Bavinck (1895–1974), the nephew of Herman Bavinck, to be an expert guide in helping us gain traction while remaining securely tethered: exegeting culture through the exegesis of Scripture.1 In this essay, I outline Bavinck’s theological anthropology in his understanding of humanity’s religious consciousness, unpacked in what he calls the “magnetic points,” which are subversively fulfilled in Jesus Christ. I then apply this to our pastoring, preaching, and persuasion.

The ‘Perilous Exchange’

To unpack what it means for humanity to be religiously conscious, Bavinck focuses his attention on Romans 1:18–32. In the cosmic game of hide-and-seek, Bavinck says, God is not the one hiding. He has made himself known in everything he has created, with the climax of creation being his image bearers. This revealing is dynamic, personal, and relational. More than most commentators on this seminal passage, Bavinck unpacks the revelation of God’s “invisible qualities” (Romans 1:20 NIV). God’s “eternal power” notes our creaturely dependence on our Creator.2 His “divine nature” recognizes our personal accountability to a Someone — the Someone — rather than a “something” or an “It.”3 Dependence and accountability are hardwired into human beings (something to which we’ll shortly return).

What do we do with this personal knowledge? In the game played out since Eden, we are the ones who try to hide. We suppress the truth and try to drown it, and with that choice comes a “perilous exchange”4 where we idolatrously substitute all kinds of created things for the uncreated God in the foolish attempt to extricate “eternal power” and “divine nature” from them.

This suppression and substitution of revealed truth can be hard to understand, but Bavinck offers a memorable illustration in the metaphor of a dream, or better still, a nightmare. In a nightmare, the phenomena we experience in reality during the day are ripped out of their original contexts and become grotesque — twisted and distorted new ideas and fantasies. This whole process makes up what Bavinck calls humanity’s universal “religious consciousness.” We are God’s image bearers built for worship, and yet we have rebelled against our Creator. We know God and so are without excuse, but we are also ignorant of him. We are running to him and away from him at the same time. This is the dignity and depravity of our humanity.

This messy mix is what I believe Paul is getting at in Acts 17 when he calls the Athenians “very religious” and points to their unknown god. He’s not commending their idolatry (he’s been deeply distressed, notes their ignorance, and will call them to repentance), but he starts where they are, recognizing their need for worship as a point of contact (or better, attack).

Five Magnetic Points

Bavinck’s experience on the mission field in Indonesia and then back in a theological seminary in the Netherlands led him to unpack this religious consciousness. Yes, different religions and worldviews are vastly different, and yet, he writes,

There seems to be a kind of framework within which human religions need to operate. There appear to be definite points of contact around which all kinds of ideas crystallize. There seem to be quite vague feelings — one might better call them direction signals that have been actively brooding everywhere. . . . Perhaps this can be expressed thus: there seem to be definite magnetic points that time and again irresistibly compel human religious thought. Human beings cannot escape their power but must provide an answer to those basic questions posed to them.5

These “magnetic points,” fashioned from our distortions of God’s “eternal power” and “divine nature” (which stress our creaturely accountability), can manifest themselves in a multitude of mutations, but “since they are rooted in our existence, they are stronger than ourselves, and somehow we must come to grips with them.”6 Even if these points are never consciously articulated, human beings still answer them by “their entire conduct” and “attitude to life”: their “whole way of living already implies an answer, and is an answer.”7 These are the itches that we have to scratch, even if they just lead to more irritation.

Bavinck notes that there are five of these magnetic points, each offering a perspective on the one religious consciousness. The following is my own summary of them.8

1. Totality: Is there a way to connect?

All humans have an innate sense of totality and connection that shapes our identity. On the one hand, we often feel so small and insignificant, just specks in the vast universe with no value or worth, and treated as such. Any yet, when we connect with something or someone(s) bigger, we find significance through belonging and enjoy communal awareness. Therefore, we crave connection, often feel abandoned after we’ve experienced it, and crave for it again and again.

2. Norm: Is there a way to live?

We have a vague sense there are rules to be obeyed. People recognize and accept moral standards and codes that come from outside them and to which they must adhere. This knowledge brings with it a sense of responsibility to live up to those norms. Even groups that seek to be countercultural have their own set of rules of nonconformity.

3. Deliverance: Is there a way out?

We know something is wrong with the world. There is finitude, brokenness, and wrongdoing, and the problems of suffering and death consistently confront us. We mourn for some kind of paradise lost and long for deliverance from these evils, craving redemption. And yet, we can’t agree on what our ultimate problem is, let alone whether there is a solution that would deliver us.

4. Destiny: Is there a way we control?

Although we know ourselves to be active players in the world, we have a nagging feeling that we are also passive participants in somebody else’s world. We both lead and undergo our lives. Sometimes we feel confident that we are masters of our destiny with agency and power to determine reality. Other times we feel restricted and trapped with no agency, like pawns in a cosmic game of chess or puppets on a string. We’re victims. We oscillate between these two moods, and cannot settle and find cognitive or existential rest.

5. Higher Power: Is there a way beyond?

This is the meta-magnetic point on which all the others converge. Humans perceive that behind all reality, beyond the veil, stands a great reality. The deeper we look to find connection, discover the norm, search for deliverance, and relate to our destiny, the more we come to the question of a higher power. But what is it? Who is it?

These, then, are the magnetic points that make up our religious consciousness, all formed from the anthropological clay of Romans 1 and the broader theological anthropology of Scripture. In Bavinck’s life and ministry, the phenomena before him (with which he used this framework) were what we might call recognized religious traditions and worldviews. And such analysis in cross-cultural settings is as relevant then as it is now.

However, I believe this anthropological framework, these five magnetic points, are just as relevant in our late-modern, post-Christian Western context. These magnetic points can be the lens through which we start to read our culture. They can help us connect with those around us who are scratching their “very religious” itches.9 They can be the magnetic poles we use to orient wandering souls to True North.

One Magnetic Person

Using this framework enables us to connect and confront our culture with the Lord Jesus Christ. In him, all the magnetic points are yes and amen. He is where the traction lies. The gospel of Christ confronts and subverts idolatrous religious consciousness and its historical manifestations, but it also provides its fulfillment. As we observe in 1 Corinthians 1, Christ crucified confronts all idolatrous cultural stories (1 Corinthians 1:20–25). It’s foolish and scandalous to Jews (who look for power) and to Greeks (who look for wisdom). And yet, to those who are being saved, Jesus is the power and is the wisdom that completes these stories (and the myriad of other stories we tell).

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the subversive fulfillment of the magnetic points. He is the magnetic Person that we present to people. In the cosmic game of hide-and-seek, where God is not hiding but we, Jesus, the light of the world, pierces the darkness. He is the greatest seeker who comes to seek and save the lost. (I can only present the barest pencil outline here. I will leave it to you to color in these points with the boldest and richest gospel colors.)

First, Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of totality (the way to connect). The beautiful doctrine of the image of God affirms both our insignificance (we are not God) and our significance (we are images of God). We are Adam — ones “from the earth” — and so our need for connection is natural. And yet, we are disconnected: from ourselves, each other, the creation, and (most of all) the Creator, against whom we have rebelled. Being connected to this world means being connected to a world that is under judgment and is perishing.

Jesus, the Second Adam, offers a new kingdom into which we enter by repentance and faith. Entering this kingdom requires death and sacrifice but not a loss of self in terms of individuality and responsibility. Rather, it brings rebirth and resurrection, communion with God in our union with Christ and community in the body of Christ, the church.10

Second, Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of the norm (the way to live). Jesus offers himself as both the standard and the Savior. In following Jesus, people come to see that God’s unchanging holy law is for our flourishing. Yet, he offers compassion to the outcast and marginalized, and he hates religious hypocrisy.

Third, Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of deliverance (the way out). The war between ourselves, within ourselves, and with our environment has a root cause: our enmity with God. We face his righteous wrath and an eternity in hell. Deliverance can be found only through one Mediator, the God-man Jesus Christ — and through him alone. In him there is not only escape but restoration and eternal blessing.

Fourth, Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of destiny (the way of control). Our world is not governed by blind fate or malevolent forces but by a sovereign God who is Lord over all creation, both natural and supernatural. This sovereignty does not take away human freedom but is its precondition. Christian destiny is liberating and joyful.

Finally, Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of the higher power (the way beyond). We do not worship a non-Absolute deity or an impersonal force, but a Someone, maximally Absolute and maximally Personal, who is both transcendent and immanent, Judge and Savior. We worship One who has reached down to us in grace, the Word made flesh.

Many Magnetic People

Now that we have considered the five magnetic points and the one magnetic person, Jesus Christ, how might we utilize this framework in our ministry and mission?

Pastor Toward the Magnetic Person

First, in our pastoring. Our evangelism and apologetics flow from our discipleship. In 1883, Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon on John 12:32 titled “The Marvelous Magnet.” He said,

All the magnetism comes from the first place from which it started, and when it ceases at the fountainhead there is an end of it altogether. Indeed, Jesus Christ is the great attractive magnet, and all must begin and end with Him. . . . Thus from one to another the mystic influence proceeds, but the whole of the force abides in Jesus. More and more the kingdom grows, “ever mighty to prevail,” but all the growing and the prevailing come out of Him. So it is that Jesus works — first by Himself, and then by all who are in Him. May the Lord make us all magnets for Himself.11

A teacher wrote to me recently about this quotation and gave me a physics lesson. Some materials can become magnetic when placed in a magnetic field, as they are made up of lots of regions called “domains,” which are essentially “mini-magnets.” When not in the magnetic field, they align randomly and cancel each other out so that there is no overall magnetic field. But in the presence of an external magnetic field, these domains align so that, instead of canceling each other out, their strengths combine to make the material magnetic.

Our hearts are like the unmagnetized material: we are fragmented. Our inner desires, commitments, loves, emotions, and beliefs are attracted by all sorts of created things. We have divided hearts (Psalm 86:11). What we need is to be close to Christ. As we behold his glory (2 Corinthians 3:18), spending time in his magnetic field, all our fragmented “mini-magnets” become attracted to him and start to align. He makes us magnetic.

We are either being formed by Christ or being deformed by something or someone else. If we are not being drawn to Christ, we are being drawn away by something else. The magnetic points serve as a helpful diagnostic tool as we pastor ourselves and those in our care. Where are our hearts seeking connections, norms, deliverances, destinies, and higher powers that are not in Christ?

The question then becomes, How are we to stay properly magnetized? The extraordinarily ordinary answer is, of course, by loving Jesus and loving his body, the church, through which the Holy Spirit re-magnetizes us each week, and sends us out on mission and into our God-given vocations. May the Lord make us all magnets for himself!

Preach with the Magnetic Points

Second, in our preparation for preaching. To connect every aspect of their sermons to the lives of the people in their churches, the Puritans used preaching grids that helped map out particular sermon applications. The magnetic points can function in a similar fashion, acting as a bridge to connect our preaching to the lives and concerns of our listeners. Because they are a way of understanding the Bible’s own anthropology, using them as an application grid is not an artificial imposition on the text. Because they are part of who we are, we can’t avoid touching on these themes.

Preachers don’t have to explain the magnetic points in their sermons. Like the scaffold in a building project, such a grid is temporary and won’t be on display in the final product. But the magnetic points do provide a useful grid as we aim to present Christ in our preaching as the fulfillment of our deepest longings.

Persuade with Magnetic Spaces

Third, in our persuasion. As I’ve already noted, the magnetic points provide a helpful framework for connecting with the non-Christians God has placed in our lives in a natural but intentional way.12 Sometimes this occurs in more direct and immediate evangelistic engagement. However, given our increasingly post-Christian culture — which is frantic, fractured, and polarized — civil dialogue and conversation is becoming more difficult. How do we even create opportunities to speak of Christ where people will genuinely listen and engage? Increasingly, some relationships call for a longer “run up.”

Among many steps churches could take, we could consider creating “magnetic spaces,” places where people can pause in the journey of life, gaining some relief from the storm. Like the ancient hospiciums, which before the nineteenth century were not places for the dying but rest houses for travelers, such spaces could provide relief from the storms of life and opportunities to reflect on the many issues people face. A magnetic space could be a book or film club, a regular meeting of parents or businessmen, a sports ministry, a mental-health discussion group, or more.

It should be noted that such magnetic spaces would not be guilty of what can be called bait-and-switch tactics. While each magnetic space is built by a local church, every space would be happily self-contained with an integrity of purpose in serving the community (for example, to produce better leaders, parents, or mental health) and in fostering and promoting civility. We would love all citizens in our hostile and fractious culture to be learning a convicted civility that combines a civil outlook with a passionate intensity, and where there is improved self-understanding, awareness, and listening. We might call this pre-pre-evangelism.

However, we need to note that helping people think through issues of life through the magnetic points serves the gospel by helping people uncover their own ultimate heart commitments. As Isaiah says in his great satire of idolatry, the problem with the idolater is that “no one stops to think” (Isaiah 44:18–19 NIV). Magnetic spaces would be places to get people to stop and think about their commitments and the objects of their worship. By God’s Spirit, they may begin to see the futility of lives not built on Christ, the only one who can give us connection, norm, deliverance, and destiny.

In other words, conversational difference creates the space and the platform for conversional difference. We might call this pre-evangelism. At this point, the churches that built the spaces are open and welcoming for those who want to hear more about Christ being the subversive fulfillment of their idolatrous longings.

Traction and Tethering

Tackling pastoring, preaching, and persuasion in our late-modern culture can seem as daunting, dizzying, and arduous as one of Alex Honnold’s vertiginous climbs. However, the magnetic points can provide both the traction and the tethering we need to make it to the top. Yes, such climbing requires creativity, imagination, and stamina, but we aren’t climbing solo. We have God’s Spirit with us, and we trust what God’s word says about the religious nature of all human beings, our security as Christian disciples, and the magnetism of the Lord Jesus Christ. What an exciting adventure to be part of.