Calvin on Pride in the Church

In preparing to preach Hebrews 10:19-25 for church tomorrow, I came across this extended quote from Calvin that is too good not to share widely. In it the French reformer explains why unity and love is so hard to come by in the local church: Our own pride and tendency to look down on others. Apparently churches in 16th century Geneva weren’t much different than those in 21st century America! This, again, is taken from Calvin's commentary on Hebrews 10:25: 

“It is an evil which prevails everywhere among mankind that everyone sets himself above others, and especially that those who seem in anything to excel cannot well endure their inferiors to be on an equality with themselves. And then there is so much morosity (READ: ill-temperament) almost in all, that individuals would gladly make churches for themselves if they could; for they find it so difficult to accommodate themselves to the ways and habits of others. The rich envy one another; and hardly one in a hundred can be found among the rich, who allows the poor the name and rank of brethren. Unless similarity of habits or some allurements or advantages draw us together, it is very difficult even to maintain a continual concord among ourselves. 

“Extremely needed, then, by us all is the admonition to be stimulated to love and not to envy, and not to separate from those whom God has joined to us, but to embrace with brotherly kindness all those who are united to us in faith. And surely it behoves us the more earnestly to cultivate unity, as the more eagerly watchful Satan is, either to tear us by any means from the Church, or stealthily to seduce us from it. And such would be the happy effect, were no one to please himself too much, and were all of us to preserve this one object, mutually to provoke one another to love, and to allow no emulation among ourselves, but that of doing good works. For doubtless the contempt of the brethren, moroseness, envy, immoderate estimate of ourselves, and other sinful impulses, clearly show that our love is either very cold, or does not at all exist.”

How much of our church drama stems from our having a proud attitude toward others, viewing church as the place I go to be "fed" (i.e. to get what I want), not as the Lord's appointed venue in which I am to stir up others to love and good works? 

Anger

“Men are often accustomed to plead zeal…for the honor of God, as the cause of their indignation, when it is only their own private interest that is concerned…It is remarkable how forward men are to appear, as if they were zealous for God…in cases wherein their interest has been touched, and to make pretense of this in injuring others or complaining of them”

-Jonathan Edwards, 18th c*

Alexander Strauch shares this Jonathan Edwards quote in his own book about handling church conflict (my current reading). I’m stunned at how much the Bible has to say about anger; first, how ubiquitous anger is to the human experience, and second, how destructive it is to people and their relationships to God and to others. Just think of all of the Old Testament stories where anger drives lying, murdering, etc. ruining families, faith, and all of the rest. That’s why the Proverbs have so much to say about the foolishness of giving vent to one’s anger (29:11) and how hot tempered men stir up trouble (15:18); Proverbs even says to stay away from folks given to anger (22:24-25). Why? Because it will influence you, too. 

Because Jesus intends to produce in us a new creation, the New Testament is full of treatment about leaving anger behind. “Fits of anger” (Gal.5:20) are works of the sinful flesh, not God; how we practice anger will be controlled by our pre-Christ fallen flesh, and thus Christians are to entirely put away anger (Eph.4:31, Col.3:8). We are to be “slow to anger,” for “the anger of man doesn’t produce the righteousness of God (Jms.1:19). This makes sense: we walk in God’s love, and “love is not easily angered” (1Cor.13:5). “Be angry and do not sin” (Eph.4:26, cf. Ps.4:4), insinuates that anger will boil up sometimes, but we are to catch it before it boils over, not allowing ourselves to sin. Since Jesus is not, by nature, angry, we, who are called to reflect him by imitation (Rom.13:14) are called to put on his peace, long-sufferingness, and gentleness.

The Edwards quote is particularly striking, because it is driven by a seasoned pastoral wisdom. Edwards astutely notes something that often characterizes church folks: They often, by practicing “righteous indignation” (so-called), though pursuing some good, are not driven by their zeal for the good, but by a commitment to their own desires and wants. They’ll (read: “We’ll”: me too) argue strongly, logically, and even consistently for why they must be so impassioned and insistent on getting what they’re sticking their neck out for. But they’re driven by selfish motivation, not by God’s zeal—the desire, perhaps, to control or analyze or argue or whatever. “I’m standing up because this is wrong,” or “I’ve always been a person who will speak up when I think I need to.” But selfish ambition—getting their way—drives the anger that drives their actions, seen in how they engage the issue with words and attitudes that hardly distinguish them from worldly people. 

So is anger sinful? Not necessarily—notice in Eph.4:26 that sin is isolated from anger: “Be angry and do not sin.” It’s as though one can have anger but not in a sinful way. Nevertheless, it is within just a few verses that we are told to “put away all anger” from us (4:31). This seems to suggest that there is a fatal flaw in our fallen hearts that causes us to not possess anger correctly, like God does (Ps.7:11).** Put another way, anger is not necessarily sinful; but since we are, we will make it sinful. Thus we are to put it away from us by rightly practicing our Christian faith: Looking to Jesus our perfect example and savior; recognizing the wrongness of our practice of what might even be good things (like anger); and repenting of the act of anger, including cutting off whatever might lend itself to our giving into it (Mt.5:29-30). 

For help, I couldn’t recommend enough Strauch’s If You Bite and Devour One Another, ch.4. In it Strauch, probably evangelicalism’s foremost expert on biblical church leadership, gives the way forward to deal with anger. If we don’t deal with our anger the devil will get a foothold and exploit it: “Be angry and do not sin…give no opportunity to the devil” (Eph.4:26-27); catch the anger before it boils over, or else it will. And the devil will be close. 

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*from Charity and Its Fruits, 1852, Banner of Truth reprint, 198; quoted in Alexander Strauch, If You Bite and Devour Each Other, 53fn2

**but note that God doesn’t have anger as an attribute but as a response: his holiness responding to sin is, properly, his anger. See Matthew Barrett et.al. Proclaiming the Triune God: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Life of the Church, 37, for the case that since we need sin in order to understand the wrath of God, his wrath cannot properly be an attribute of God. His attributes are what he is eternally; since sin is not eternal in the way that God is (for sin didn’t occur until the devil fell and then humanity fell), God’s response to it isn’t eternal like his attributes are. But that which drives his just-wrath response to sin—holiness—is an attribute of God. 

Calvin on the Gospel as Our Soul Anchor

I use John Calvin’s (1509-64) commentaries almost week every during my sermon preparation. In a way that is, perhaps, surprising to some, his commentaries are extremely pastoral, full of consideration for the people in the pew, to “build them up” (cf. 1 Cor. 14:26). Calvin does get into some of the technical aspects of biblical exegesis, but that is only because of the Bible’s great linguistic, historical, and thematic depth. If you want to know the Bible, get ready to go deep. Calvin’s commentaries provide my favorite example of the right exegetical and pastoral balance. Hence there have been some weeks where I step away saying, “Can I just stand up Sunday and read this for my message?” There are also some weeks where I disagree with his conclusions (and this happens to be one of those weeks.) 

But a couple of weeks ago I was preparing to preach Hebrews 6:19, where the biblical author mentions that our Christian hope is a “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain.” I highlighted this lengthy Calvin quote because I thought it so stunningly depicted the contents both of the struggles of this life and the hope we have in Jesus. Hopefully the passage is a blessing to you:

It is a striking likeness when he compares faith leaning on God’s word to an anchor; for doubtless, as long as we sojourn in this world, we stand not on firm ground, but are tossed here and there as it were in the midst of the sea, and that indeed very turbulent; for Satan is incessantly stirring up innumerable storms, which would immediately upset and sink our vessel, were we not to cast our anchor fast in the deep. For nowhere a haven appears to our eyes, but wherever we look water alone is in view; yea, waves also arise and threaten us; but as the anchor is cast through the waters into a dark and unseen place, and while it lies hid there, keeps the vessel beaten by waves from being overwhelmed; so must our hope be fixed on the invisible God. 

There is this difference—the anchor is cast downwards into the sea, for it has the earth as its bottom; but our hope rises upwards and soars aloft, for in the world it finds nothing on which it can stand, nor ought it to cleave to created things, but to rest on God alone. As the cable also by which the anchor is suspended joins the vessel with the earth through a long and dark intermediate space, so the truth of God is a bond to connect us with himself, so that no distance of place and no darkness can prevent us from cleaving to him. Thus when united to God, though we must struggle with continual storms, we are yet beyond the peril of shipwreck. 

On Augustine's Confessions--A 1600+ Year-Old Extended Personal Reflection

I recently returned to New Jersey from Orlando where my family—including three young kids—and I spent two weeks at Disney World. Somehow I’m still alive, though barely. I made a resolution that while I was away I would read through Augustine’s Confessions (written 397-400). I’ve read a lot of Augustine over the last few years, but I’d never read his most well-known book. While reading the entire book proved difficult for the duration of the time in Orlando, a final day stuck in an extended layover in Charlotte (long story) afforded me the extra time to finish. 

For those unfamiliar, in Confessions Augustine, the great fourth and fifth century African church bishop whose influence over the global church is hard to overstate, outlines his conversion to Christianity from sinful youth to wise man. Here are my reflections, broken down book by book across Augustine’s work: 

Books 1-2 Augustine’s pre-Christian days: Throughout his youth, while his mother Monica, a strong Christian, prayed for him, Augustine “ran from true rest” and “hated simple truth” (this is spelled out in Book 1). He indulged in wrongness bc it felt nice, especially sexual sin (Book 2). 

-How telling is this? The non-Christian spends their whole lives running in circles trying to find rest and they can’t. Proof of their restlessness is their unwillingness to sit and think long and hard about simple truth. They’re bored by it, because it doesn’t excite. Further, the non-Christian sins on purpose because it makes them feel at home. And indeed, in their sinful flesh, they are right at home running from God (consider how Cain couldn’t repent of his pride, though God pursued him).  

Books 3-5 Beginning process of coming to God in his 20s: Augustine struggled through Manichaeism, an ancient dualistic religion. As Augustine states in Book 3, for years he wrestled hard to stay away from the Lord, the fountain of life (Ps.36:9). But the Lord himself pursued Augustine. Augustine still lived in vanity, spiritually dead, though Christ, our very life (Jn.1:4, Col.3:4), had earlier come to the world to put away our death. Eventually Augustine, now a civic teacher of rhetoric, moved from Rome to Milan where bishop Ambrose showed him Christ in the Old Testament. It was here that Augustine began to understand the gospel.

-Note that just like in the Apostles’ preaching in Acts, Christ’s presence in and fulfillment of the Old Testament was instrumental for conversion. I often hear that evangelical churches need to preach the Old Testament more, and this is probably true. But Christ as the fulfillment, goal, and source of the Old Testament is the church’s gospel, such that the Old Testament is not preached unless Christ is preached. Once Christ is put on display, the Spirit of God shows him to believers as the fountain of life. Sinners, therefore, are invited by his call to “Come to me and drink” (Jn.7:37).

Books 6-7 Closer and closer to faith, cutting his teeth on the things of Lord over time, age 29 into his 30s: Augustine relays how he learned spiritual interpretation of Scripture, based on 2 Cor. 3:6 (“for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”) Note that “spiritual” is not opposite of “true,” but of mere grammatical-historical meaning, that is, human authorial and original reader intention. In other words, spiritual interpretation reads the historical meaning of a passage as a witness to the eternal being of Christ and his salvation worked out in time, as Augustine would later explain in the quadriga. Historical things point to eternal things, and thus both application and Christ connections have many possibilities. Finally, in this time Augustine made peace with the existence of evil in a good creation. He learned that in God’s creation all things are good but corruptible. And because of the fall, all things have been corrupted to one degree or another. But Jesus’ resurrection proves that corruption is not the end of the story. 

-Note this hard question people still have: If God is good, why does evil exist? Only the Christian gospel can give a substantial answer that doesn’t make a bad guy of particular people groups, but locates the origin of sin in something that touches each of us and is, indeed, inside of each of us. Still, as in Augustine’s day, God leads sinners through this process, to truth and peace (Jn.6:45, Is.54:13). 

Book 8 Augustine’s famous conversion: Amidst his wrestling he hears the children in a neighboring yard singing “tole lege” (“take and read”), prompting him to pick up his friends Romans codex, where he turns to Romans 13:14: “Put on the Lord Jesus, and make no opportunity for the flesh, to indulge its desires.” Augustine’s conversion is complete—he now believes. He further relays how he makes peace with his long period of wrestling which led to his salvation, describing what CS Lewis would later call undulation,* where in a fallen world good and evil go back and forth to produce good for us in the end. We have to experience downs so we can get to the ups, and the ups help us make peace with the downs.

-This explains Augustine’s affirmation of the sovereignty of God, preparing him for a literary and ecclesial battle he would wage the rest of his life. 

Book 9 Augustine’s baby steps as a Christian, and Monica’s death: Now that Augustine’s come to faith, Monica is ready to die, and she does. 

-Note the wisdom and purposes of God as well as his use of human means to accomplish his purposes: She lives only long enough to see her son come to faith, God using her prayers in his saving purposes. Then she goes home.

Book 10 Coming clearer on the battle with sin: Augustine learned that we are constantly pulled both up and down: Up toward God’s happiness, true beatitude with him the happy One (Matt. 5:3-12), and Down toward the world’s fleeting and perverted happiness, using God’s creation as ends in itself instead of means to ends of enjoying God. Augustine cites Paul’s words in Gal.5:17 about the inner battle between the flesh and the Spirit to describe our being pulled up and down. 

Book 10 is a powerhouse of insightful quotations and reflections: 

-Humans want to remain hidden from God while also possessing perfect knowledge of everything, whereby nothing is hidden to them. But the opposite is true: God fully knows us (Heb.4:12-13), and yet we ourselves know so little. I’m reminded of Peter Kreeft’s comment about Aquinas that though both his faith in God and his commitment to Christian dogma was so strong, yet the fact that he recognized how little we actually know (cf. 1Cor.13:12) moves him closer to agnosticism than to dogmatism! In other words, a moment’s reflection on God’s knowledge and our smallness shows us that there’s more we don’t know than we do know.

-Much of our temptation is not for pleasure but for curiosity—That is, we tend to think that all of our sin temptations are pleasure-oriented. But often it is out of simple curiosity: We want to do or experience something new, because we’re so unhappy with what we already possess. We just want to try new things, not land on and live in truth. 

-Finally, Augustine despairs of perfectly knowing his own motives: “Am I not then quite uncertain of myself in this respect?”—That is, we’ll never know our hearts fully; our hearts deceive us (Jer.17:9). Introspection is good when it doesn’t go too far. You’re not your ultimate judge.**

Book 11 Time as an enigma: I’m going to skip this Book, as it will be confusing to the vast majority of those who would read this post. I find it challenging to understand too. 

Books 12-13 Genesis and allegory: Here we find Augustine the believer learning to interpret the nature of the universe in light of how Genesis describes it. Anchoring himself in his (famous) conviction that interpretation can’t contradict the Lord’s “law of love” (“love the Lord…love your neighbor..”*^), he offers a spiritual interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis. According to Augustine, since the purpose of God’s creation is to produce a new creation, we can see in Genesis what he is doing in the world through the church: 

a) God created by speaking the Word, and so now he sends his Word by his church throughout the world to produce a new creation. 

b) God called Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiple, so now he calls his church to multiply by making disciples and discipling them (Matt.28:18-20). 

c) God overcame peoples’ sin with sovereign grace (see Gen.19:16, 20:6, 50:20), and so now he does the same thing through the world, advancing his kingdom through the sinful acts of mankind, using even their evil for good. 

Augustine wrote this book 1,625 years ago, and yet it is still such a penetrating picture of a man struggling through his native rebellion to God and how God patiently overcame the man’s rebellion and then caused that redemptive process to dominate the man’s framework for reality from that point forward. May it be the case today as well! “There’s nothing new under the sun” (Ecc.1:9). 

Stephanopoulos, Donalds, and God's Existence

You’re probably aware that former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump was recently interviewed by the National Association of Black Journalists, to much criticism and fanfare. Trump was asked if he thinks his opponent Kamala Harris is on the Democrat presidential ticket because she’s black (she is of Indian and Jamaican heritage). He responded by criticizing how she used to always tout her Indian heritage, but then, says Trump, she suddenly began to tout her black heritage. It seems that Trump was responding to a hostile interviewer, and was voicing his chagrin over the current day’s racial obsession, which allows those who have a mixed heritage to identify with whatever part of their heritage fits the occasion. Nevertheless, another ugly Trump interview. 

Byron Donalds, a Florida congressman who has supported Trump, and is black, was then interviewed on ABC News by George Stephanopoulos, who asked him to condemn the president’s supposedly racist comments. Donalds wouldn’t say that the president was wrong, citing how relatively little time was taken up with these comments, and how there are bigger issues. Stephanopoulos wasn’t having Donalds’s redirect, so both men went back and forth about the topic for about five minutes. It was, predictably, an ugly segment for truth-seekers but a beautiful segment for entertainment seekers. 

What caught my eye was what I saw immediately after on Twitter/X. Liberal-leaning respondents touted Stephanopoulos' “dominance” of Donalds, how he “wiped the floor” with the congressman. But conservative-leaning respondents watched the exact same segment and concluded the opposite: Donalds “owned” the host, and “crushed” him for his ugly questions and narrative. 

Hmm...Well, which is it? Who won this debate? What’s true? Both sides seem convinced that they represent the truth, and that it matters immensely. 

Let’s not miss this: Both sides say that truth exists, that it matters, and that they themselves see it clearly, as should anyone else with a brain. But—and this is a snapshot of social media—what they see as “true” cannot be proved beyond doubt to one who is biased in another direction. And since, having all “gone their own way” (Is.53:6), all are biased, arguing about it seems like a losing battle. 

The fact that we acknowledge truth’s existence and that we care deeply about it at least suggests–if it doesn’t entirely prove–the existence of God. How can could truth exist if there isn’t at least someone who sees it clearly? Many people tout some version of moral relativism today, but I’m not convinced anyone actually believes it (because then crime doesn't exist, etc.). Instead, we all, like C.S. Lewis famously said, feel this sense of pressure from the outside, this moral standard pressing in on us, holding us accountable. That standard is truth, albeit mingled with our biases and preferences. But to come into light is to say, “Truth exists, and I’m too invested in myself and the world to see it clearly. But I want to grow up. So I’m going to ask God to lead me.” That’s why Scripture says that those who seek the truth come to the light, who is Jesus himself, the Word made flesh, and their coming shows that God has led them there (cf. Jn.3:20-21). They see through the human impulse to reconstruct truth according to personal interests, and they want to advance to what Francis Schaeffer called "true truth": That which is true regardless of how it might impact my life as currently constructed. Again, they’re ready to grow up.

May you be among them.

The Christian and the Negative World: Aaron Renn's Diagnosis

See the video above for my analysis of Aaron Renn's extremely helpful Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture.  I can't recommend the book enough! 

This will help you follow along: 

I. Knowing our world now 

    a) Positive world (1960s-early 90s): Christianity positively viewed by world; morals same. 

    b) Neutral world (Early 90s-early 2010s): Morals changing; Christianity "eh"

    c) Negative world (2010s-now): Christianity seen as weird, outdated, maybe dangerous 

        -pre-Christian paganism returning, seen in RNC Hindu prayer and other capitulations 

II. We'll need to engage the world differently 

    Used to be three types of evangelical engagements: 

        a) Culture warriors (religious right): Robert Jeffries, Dinesh D'souza, Eric Metaxas 

        b) Seeker sensitive (friendly, large churches): Rick Warren, Hillsong

        c) Cultural engagement (affirm, show Jesus as solution): Keller

    In negative world, (a) might survive in pockets, but (b) and (c) will struggle because they depend on being liked. We simply aren't. 

III. We'll need: 

    a) Individual -- excellence, resilience, and strength 

            -pursue community, institutional strength, and ownership 

    b) Corporate -- clarity on truth, right and wrong (counter "I'm not a biologist, so I don't know what a woman is"); why do young men seek J Peterson, Shapiro, Tate, when not Christians? Because what they say is useful, and stuff at church, the young men think, isn't. 

            -will need prudence: Vote not for candidate that is perfect (in a negative world there isn't one), but for candidates that will promote righteousness and peace so the gospel can advance  

A Discouraging and Encouraging RNC

Many American Christians have been surprised that the Republican National Convention has featured all of the following: 

-a prayer to a Hindu god (yes, it really happened)

-an OnlyFans influencer giving a speech (yes it really happened) 

-a clear softening stance on abortion, seen in JD Vance’s election as Trump’s potential 

VP, and Trump’s distancing himself from Project 2025. 

Whether you’re a Republican/republicanish or not, these things matter to you because the polls suggest that by JanuaryTrump is going to become the first US President since Grover Cleveland to serve two non-consecutive terms. If you are a Republican, you might be happy to see the broadening of a base that has seemed to be pretty narrow for a long time. If you’re progressive you might think that these developments are all a ruse. 

As a conservative Christian, I share the same disappointment as many others that the GOP seems to be waxing post-Christian and, at worst, pagan.* We’re happy that God can still be a part of conversations, but we’re not happy that “God” can be defined relativistically, i.e. Hindu gods are prayed to the same as Jesus Christ, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (cf. Jn. 8:58). And we’re definitely not happy for the normalizing of conditional infanticide that is itself 99% of the time the result of an over-sexualized culture leading to irresponsible behavior. In our Huxleyan brave new world, if pleasure is king, we can’t be surprised that pleasure drives policy and platforms.

Indeed, Christians should not be surprised by these things. America has always rightly touted freedom of religion as well as a divine-influenced understanding of natural law, i.e. that God is real, however you define him, his moral/ethical truth is apparent to all of us, and we should all seek it. The effect of this religious pluralism is that Christianity can have cultural influence, but that’s the best that it can do. Living in what Aaron Renn has called “negative world”, where Christianity is considered culturally weird, it is not only the Left that will bristle at our Christian absolutism, but many on the Right as well. 

That said, the RNC demonstrates, post-assassination attempt, some encouraging things as well: 

-Theism: Like I said, at least God is presupposed. Into that world Christians can say “What you call ‘the unknown god,’ I now proclaim to you” (Ac.17:23).

-Progress on our Infanticidal Regress: The GOP term-conditioned abortion softening (i.e. that it’s okay as long as it’s early enough) is better than allowing abortion to full term or even, in its most insane versions, post-birth. God will judge these people; indeed, he’s already begun. At least for now, late term might be dying (…maybe).

-Patriotism: It was hard to watch Trump pumping his fist post-gunshot, saying “fight,” and not feel a little patriotic. The moment was electric. Resilience is a life-lesson that all people need to learn (and is at the center of Christian hope, Rev.1:9, 2:19, 3:10). Trump’s moment put American resilience on display powerfully. The moment will be talked about for years and years. 

As Christian conservatives we do well to realize that a likely red/reddish November will not bring with it the kingdom of God. Rather the kingdom advances by the gospel and cannot be quantified by worldly measures: The gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Christ is like a tiny, unassuming seed which, once planted, needs time to grow (Mt.13:31-32) and doesn’t do so while we’re watching (Mk.4:26-29). Our eyes are forward on Christ, and the church demonstrates, despite our feelings, that we’re not alone in this: “Here there is not Greek or Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Col.3:11). The Spirit works as we do our job as dual citizens first of the kingdom in this earthly place God has us. Right now that requires the same patience we've needed over the last few years; only now, maybe there’s a slight bit more encouragement. 

But stay awake. Again Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and you’re not first a citizen of this world. That’s why neither of the major parties in American politics are Christian, though one might have more in common with Christian values. “Conservative” isn’t enough if by it you mean “not liberal.” Consider Ambrose Bierce’s astute definition of a conservative as “one who is enamored of existing evils,” while a liberal is “one who wishes to replace existing evils with new ones.”** Many of those to whom the Lord will one day say, “I never knew you” will be conservatives who put country before, or at least beside, Kingdom. 

Don’t settle for mediocrity: Seek Christ and his righteousness…true righteousness…and play the long game. We’ll win in the end. 

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*Chantel Delsol describes this post-Christian paganism in her book The End of the Christian World. Aaron Renn discusses this in his very helpful Life in the Negative World, 41. 

**Quoted in Kreeft, Summa of the Summa, 532.