Taking the Plunge

I've gone ahead and transferred my posts to a new and improved blog over at WordPress. You will be able to keep up with the exploits of Captain Headknowledge from there from now on. But I'll leave this one up as well until further notice.

From Justification to Sanctification

I loaned my copy of C. J. Mahaney's incredible book, Living the Cross-Centered Life, to a co-worker who is a young believer trying to grow out of a severly sinful lifestyle. Bemoaning his lack of reading comprehension at times, he asked me what Mahaney meant when he wrote somewhere in the book (I haven't seen the quote) something to the effect of, "even though I'm living in the flesh, I choose to live by faith." Unclear as he was to the meaning of this statement, I told him I could only guess that the author meant that he was not going to rely on his own moral fortitude to be godly, but he was going to rely on God's grace to empower him to obey his commands. He asked me to write something down about that, and the following is what came out of that effort. Hope you find it edifying, if not instructive in any way.

Rest in the Gospel--The Right Basis

The basis for your acceptance by God is the active and passive obedience of Christ. His active obedience is his 33 years of sinless obedience by which he earned eternal life for you; his passive obedience is his suffering and death on the cross, facing for you the consequences of your sin. Therefore, the basis for your acceptance by God is not your behavior. If the basis of your acceptance by God was your behavior, then you would be trying to earn some reward from God and you would be trying to avoid some punishment from God. The right motive for your behavior as a Christian is gratitude for Christ's work for you.

Renew Your Gratitude--The Right Motive

Fear of punishment and hope of reward is the wrong motive for your behavior as a Christian; gratitude for Christ's work is the right motive for your behavior as a Christian. Gratitude is what you feel when you are given a gift. When you earn what you have, you're only thankful to yourself, and that's not what glorifies God. Both the basis of your acceptance by God, the gospel of Christ's death and resurrection, and your response characterized by grateful behavior are given to you freely by God's grace, not procured by your own strength.

Rely on Grace--The Right Source

Grace is not a force like electricity which makes our appliances work, it's God's good attitude toward you based on his satisfaction with the obedience and death of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. When you successfully resist temptation, and successfully obey his commands, he has granted this success to you as a gift of his gracious disposition toward you because of Christ.

A Primer for Fantasy-Phobes

Over at the Modern Reformation website, a very helpful article is posted by Dr. Donald Williams, Director of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of English at Toccoa Falls College, in which Dr. Williams gives his reflections on the literary and philosophical basis of the now complete Harry Potter series of novels and how they intersect with the biblical teachings that erect the proper boundaries between good and bad fantasy. It's the kind of intelligent analysis that could do the hearts and minds of fantasy-spooked fundamentalists and evangelicals a great deal of good.

How is it biblically justifiable to portray characters who use magic?

Do fantasy stories ever convey a moral or point which can benefit Christian readers, or should we focus on, and boycott, externals?

How did Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling, do in keeping within the bounds of biblically-regulated fantasy?

Questions like these are at least indirectly addressed in Dr. Williams' essay.

Theolgical & Doxological Meditations #37

Q. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?

A. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness (Hebrews 12:23),

and do immediately pass into glory (Philippians 1:23);

and their bodies, being still united to Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:14),

do rest in their graves (Isaiah 57:2) till the resurrection

(Job 19:26).

I Know That My Redeemer Lives

#690, The Trinity Hymnal

Charles Wesley, 1742

I know that my Redeemer lives,

and ever prays for me;

a token of his love he gives,

a pledge of liberty.

I find him lifting up my head;

he brings salvation near;

his presence makes me free indeed

and he will soon appear.

He wills that I should holy be:

who can withstand his will?

The counsel of his grace in me

he surely shall fulfill.

Jesus, I hang upon your Word:

I steadfastly believe

you will return and claim me,

Lord, and to yourself receive.

End Time Redux

Dr. Kim Riddlebarger, Pastor of Christ Reformed Church, Anaheim, California, Co-Host of The White Horse Inn Radio Show and Author of A Case For Amillennialism, and Man of Sin, posted a notice about a third revision of the late, leading dispensational scholar, John Walvoord's book originally entitled Oil, Armageddon and the Middle East. The post is called, "Old Dispensationalists Never Die . . . And They Never Seem To Fade Away." I share his opinion that the reason books like Walvoord's must be continually revised, updating the facts of current events, is because Dipsensational Premillennialism is fundamentally flawed as a way of interpreting Scripture in general and end-times prophecy (eschatology) in particular.

For the record, as the biblical alternative to Dispensationalism, I am learning how Scripture is correctly interpreted along the lines of what is today called Covenant Theology, or Covenantal Hermeneutics.

Second Creation, Second Adam

1. Noah is the earthly Second Adam. God used him to recreate a world in which the people to whom he promised salvation would be able to find it in the spiritual Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ.

a. The Earth was created by being brought out from under the water (Gen. 1:1-2, 6-10), and it was recreated by being brought out from under the water (Gen. 8:13-19).

b. When God created the world, he made a creation covenant which detailed how things were to be done on the Earth, and after the flood, he made a new creation covenant that built on the original one (9:1-17).

i. Repeats the command to multiply (vs. 1, 7).
ii. Allows man to eat meat for the first time (vs. 2-4).
iii. Institutes death sentence for those who commit murder (vs. 5-6).
iv. God promises mercy with a covenant sign, the rainbow (vs. 8-17).

2. Jesus was the spiritual Second Adam because Adam was the photographic negative of Jesus(Romans 5:14-19).

a. All whom Adam represented were condemned to die as sinners because of his one sin; All whom Jesus represented are justified to live righteous because of his one act of obedience.

b. Jesus, the spiritual Second Adam, is the Seed of the Woman (Genesis 3:15) whom Noah trusted and obeyed; like Noah, we are called to trust and obey Jesus (John 3:16).

The God-Given Righteousness of Noah

“This is the genealogy of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God. And Noah begot three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.” Genesis 6:9-12

The God who promised to send the Seed of the Woman to crush the Serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15) gave Noah the faith to believe this promise. God was the ultimate basis of Noah’s righteousness. The way in which the Seed of the Woman would crush the Serpent’s head, destroying Satan’s power through sin over God’s chosen, had not yet been revealed. Noah did not know how God’s promised Seed would save him from sin, he just believed that he would. As we study through the Old Testament, we’ll learn that God reveals his plan to save sinners progressively, a little bit at a time.

Our lives are like that. We set goals, but we don’t know everything we’ll need to do yet, or what will happen to us before we reach our goal, but these details become clear to us day by day. This is the way it works with the history of God’s work of redemption from sin. First we learn the big picture: God had announced his plan to send Someone to defeat the great enemy of our souls; then, bit by bit, who this Someone is, and how he’s going to defeat this enemy slowly became clear to people like Adam, Seth, Enoch and Noah one detail at a time. A few of these details are revealed to us in the righteous life of Noah.

By his grace, God promised to deliver Noah from the flood of judgment which he and the entire world deserved (Genesis 6:18), and Noah believed God’s promise, so one of the factors of Noah’s righteous life was faith. This faith in God’s promise was the basis for Noah’s righteous life, but it was not his faith that saved him, it was the gracious, promise-keeping God who chose to save him that was the ultimate basis of his righteousness and his salvation. Noah was a righteous man because God made Noah a righteous man.

The other factor that adds up to righteousness for Noah was his obedience to God’s commands. God gave Noah very specific instructions to build an ark (Genesis 6:14-16), what size to build it, what to build it with, how to build it and how many of the various beasts, birds and bugs to gather into the ark (Genesis 6:19-20). The testimony of Moses was that Noah obeyed all that God commanded him to do (Genesis 6:22). Yet this obedience by itself did not earn for Noah his status as a righteous man. Remember he was righteous by God’s grace through the faith granted to him by God (see Ephesians 2:8-9) with which he believed the God of the promise of salvation from sin, Satan and the flood. Noah’s faith was the root of Noah’s obedience. Noah’s obedience was the fruit of Noah’s faith. Therefore Noah’s faith evidenced by his obedience was what Moses was talking about when he wrote that Noah was a righteous man (Genesis 6:9).

God saves us the same way. All of us were born with Adam’s guilt legally imputed to us (Romans 5:12-14) by virtue of the fact that Adam represented us in the covenant with God which he violated when he ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3; cf. Hosea 6:7). In addition to this, we were born, having inherited a corrupt human nature that wants nothing but sin (Romans 3:10-18), unable to do anything (Romans 8:7) that will please him (Hebrews 11:6) and save ourselves. As things stand, we deserve death and an eternity of suffering the wrath of God.

But out of the mass of condemned humanity, a remnant finds favor with God (Genesis 6:8; cf. Romans 11:5-7). Because of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection for sinners, God looks on this remnant with grace and gives them the faith (Acts 13:48; 18:27) to trust the work of Christ that is preached to everybody (Mark 16:15). We then rely on his grace to give us the obedience with which we show our thanks and love for the work of Christ on the cross (John 14:15). So we learn how God saved us in the Bible, and we also learn how to respond to this good news in grateful love by learning the commands of God—because true faith works by love (Galatians 5:6). That’s how we can be remembered as a righteous man or a righteous woman after our story has been told, just like Noah, by a God-given faith in Christ that obeys God’s commands.

In The Even You Are Seated Next To A Calvinist

Click on the image above and you can read your anti-Calvin safety procedures. . .

Fortunately, I wasn't aware of these procedures when I was cornered by Calvinists.

What invokes such fear in the hearts of non-Calvinists? The fear that they aren't in control?

I fear what would happen if I was in control!

Acts 13:46 And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. 47 For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,
“‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles,that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’”
48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

Acts 18:27 And when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed . . . .

Romans 11:1-10

11:1 I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” 4 But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” 5 So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
7 What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, 8 as it is written,
“God gave them a spirit of stupor,eyes that would not seeand ears that would not hear,down to this very day.”
9 And David says,
“Let their table become a snare and a trap,a stumbling block and a retribution for them;10 let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see,and bend their backs forever.”

Romans 9:14-18

14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16 So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

To God Alone Be the Glory!

Kingdom Coffers: Rabbit Trail on Government and Reformation

Yesterday, I concluded my post by promising to give you "more on the government's ability to inhibit Reformation later . . . " Well, it's later. The following passage from the following book, coupled with the interesting historical summary on tithing in the Wikipedia entry I recommended yesterday, is the source of my thinking in yesterday's post. Tell me what you think. For until someone gives me better info to correct my thinking, that's what I'm going to think. Happy reading!

From, A History of the Reformation, Volume 2:

The Reformation in Switzerland, France, The Netherlands, Scotland and England;

The Anabaptist and Socinian Movements;

The Counter-Reformation.

By Thomas M. Lindsay, D.D., LL. D. Principal, The United Free Church College, Glasgow, Scotland.

Introduction

4. The Reformed Ideal of Ecclesiastical Government.

This similarity of published creed was the one positive bond which united all those Churches; but it may also be said that all of them, with the doubtful exception of the Church of England, would have nothing to do with the consistorial system of the Lutheran Churches, and that most of them accepted in theory at least Calvin's conception of ecclesiastical government. They strove to get away from the medieval ideas of ecclesiastical rule, and to return to the principles which they believed to be laid down from them in the New Testament, illustrated by the conduct of the Church of the early centuries. The Church, according to Calvin, was a theocratic democracy, and the ultimate source of authority lay in the membership of the Christian community, inspired by the Presence of Christ promised to all His people.

But in the sixteenth century this conception was confronted and largely qualified in practice, by the dread that it might lead to a return to the clerical tutelage of the medieval Church from which they had just escaped. Presbyter might become priest writ large; and the leaders of the Reformation in many lands could see, as Zwingli did in Zurich and Cranmer in England, that the civil authorities might well represent the Christian democracy. Even Calvin in Geneva had to content himself with ecclesiastical ordinances which left the Church completely under the control of les tres honnores seigneurs syndicques et conseil de Geneve; and the Scottish "Supreme Governor of this realm as well in things temporal as in the conservation and purgation of religion." The nations and principalities in Western Europe which had adopted and supported the Reformation believed that manifold abuses had arisen in the past, directly and indirectly, through the exemption of the Church and its possessions from secular control, and they were determined not to permit the possibility of a return to such a state of things.

The scholarship of the Renaissance had discovered the true text of the old Roman Civil Code, and one of the features of that time of transition--perhaps its most important and far-reaching feature, for law enters into every relation of human life--was the substitution of civil law based on the Codes of Justinian and Theodosius, for canon law based on the Decretum of Gratian. These old Roman codes taught the lawyers and statesmen of the sixteenth century to look upon the Church as a department of the State; and the thought that the Christian community had an independent life of its own, and that its guidance and discipline ought to be in the hands of office-bearers chosen by its membership, was everywhere confronted, modified, largely overthrown by the imperious claim of the civilian lawyers.

Ecclesiastical leaders within the Reformed Churches might strive as they liked to draw the line between the possessions of the church, which they willingly placed under the control of civil law, and its discipline in matters of faith and morals, which they declared to be the inalienable possession of the Church; but, as a rule, the State refused to perceive the distinction, and insisted in maintaining full control over the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Hence it came about that in every land where the secular authorities were favourable to the Reformation, the Church became more or less subject to the State; and this resulted in a large variety of ecclesiastical organisations in communities all belonging to the Reformed Church. While it may be said with perfect truth that the churchly ideal in the minds of the leaders in most of the Reformed Churches was to restore the theocratic democracy of the early centuries, and that this was a strong point of contrast between them and Luther, who insisted that the jus episcopale belonged to the civil magistrate, in practice the secular authorities in Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Palatinate, etc., kept almost as tight a hold on the Reformed national Churches as did the Lutheran princes and municipalities. In one land only, France, the ecclesiastical ideal of Calvin had full liberty to embody itself in a constitution, and that only because the French Reformed Church struggled into existence under the civil rule of a Romanist State, and, like the Christian Church of the early centuries, maintained itself in spite of the opposition of the secular authorities which persecuted it (pages 7-9).

Kingdom Coffers: "Flat Tax" or "Love Offering"? Part 3

The History of the Relationship Between Church, State and Tithing

I highly recommend that everyone read the Wikipedia entry on the Tithe. It gave me some very interesting insight into the way in which the historically blurred line between church and state has helped to seal in our minds the assumption that giving ten percent of one's income (at least) is a New Covenant principle.

It seems that the Roman Catholic Church adopted tithing from the Old Testament as a workable, pragmatic model to ensure a regular income for their growing heirarchy. As you know, Rome during the middle ages exerted enormous influence over the nations of Europe, during which millennium, the concept of tithing became well ingrained. Thus, when the Reformation began, the governments of Europe seized the opportunity to protect themselves from similar influence from the diverse Protestant churches, by themselves exerting influence over the church, rather than allowing the status quo to continue at the hands of these upstart Protestants.

Part of this influence was in the various ways the governments of Europe extracted "tithes" from the people and supported their various state churches (Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, etc.), which trend has just in the past couple of hundred years begun to diminish. Here's an example of how America "dun good!" (for once, if you consider Americanism's various other less than fortunate influences on American Christianity--no nation is exempt from syncretism) in refusing to take money from the church and give money to the church (the current President excepted--I wonder what other Presidents have likewise contradicted this national emphasis in other ways? That would be an interesting history lesson . . . ). Another way the government prevented complete Reformation was on the issue of the Lord's Supper (at least in "Calvin's Geneva"). But I'm done with that topic for now, but the comments apparently keep rolling in, much to my glee!

More on the government's ability to inhibit Reformation later . . .