Steven Lawson, Repentance, and Grace

Some of you are well aware of disgraced pastor/preacher Steven Lawson’s marital infidelity with a woman roughly 50 years his junior. Lawson, 73, had been a beloved reformational baptist preacher for many years, and a frequent conference staple, having published many books and running in the same circles as John Macarthur, John Piper, the late RC Sproul, etc. But evidence of infidelity began to emerge last year. As details began to come through, it became clear that the affair was with a woman who was working as his assistant, and in in her 20s. Lawson, having a wife, kids, and grandkids, resigned from ministries, professorships, board positions, etc. 

When the news came out, I cautioned my congregation against jumping too quickly to judgment, insisting that Jesus’ point in “Judge not” (Mt.7:1) was not “Don’t use your brains,” but “Don’t assume you know everything before you actually do.” In other words, "be careful filling in gaps with details that may or may not be true, just to make the story make sense." I believed that God would work on Lawson, that he’d find repentance, and that this was a sin by a true Christian who would come under conviction in time (if he hadn’t already). 

It now being six months since news of the affair broke, Lawson has released an apology statement, copied in full below. After it I’ll share some thoughts in response: 

"It is with a shattered heart that I write this letter. I have sinned grievously against the Lord, against my wife, my family, and against countless numbers of you by having a sinful relationship with a woman not my wife. I am deeply broken that I have betrayed and deceived my wife, devastated my children, brought shame to the name of Christ, reproach upon His church, and harm to many ministries.

You may wonder why I have been silent and largely invisible since the news of my sin became known. I have needed the time to search my own soul to determine that my repentance is real.

I alone am responsible for my sin. I have confessed my sin to the Lord, to my wife, and my family, and have repented of it. I have spent the past months searching my heart to discover the roots of my sin and mortifying them by the grace of God. I hate my sin, weep over my sin, and have turned from it.

My sin carries enormous consequences, and I will be living with those for the rest of my life. Over the years, many have looked to me for spiritual guidance, and I have failed you. I beg for your forgiveness.

I have been undergoing extensive counseling for the last five months to face the hard questions I need to address. I have dealt with sin issues that have been painfully exposed in my heart. I have submitted myself in weekly accountability to two pastors and to the elders of a local congregation, who have shepherded my soul. I am also under the oversight of an accountability team who monitor my progress and give me wise counsel in the decisions I have to make.

I am growing in grace, reading and absorbing the Word of God, putting it into practice, praying, and meeting with other believers. I am involved in the life of the church, attending and participating in prayer meetings, Sunday school, the worship service, and taking communion weekly. I am being fed the Word in the mid-week Bible study. Please pray for my spiritual growth into Christlikeness as I follow Him moment by moment during this recovery season. I am grateful for the unmerited grace of God in the gospel to extend His full forgiveness to me. Again, I ask for your forgiveness as well.

While I continue to do the hard work of soul-searching repentance, I do not intend to make further public comments for the foreseeable future.

Please pray for the Lord’s mercy and grace as I seek to make right the deeply wrong sins I have committed against my wife and family, and that in His time and way He will bring about redemption and restoration in our marriage, for His glory.

Steven Lawson”

First, I suggest that this is genuine. These are the words of someone who is grieved, sorry, and embarrassed by his grievous, sorry, and embarrassing sin. Explaining going six months in public silence because he wants to determine if his repentance is real is, to me, indicative of the self-consciousness that he could “repent” just to restore himself to his previously prominent position. But that is not what Lawson is trying to do. He took enough time—time in which he would be thought of by everyone as a fool or a wolf)—to find out if he is repenting out of “godly grief” (2 Cor. 7:10) or out of mere embarrassment. That is significant, and it comes through in the letter both explicitly and implicitly. Further, submitting to an accountability team is indicative of deference to others’ wisdom, and a sign of humility.

Second, I suggest we reconsider the notion that sexual sin is more prominent among Christians and especially clergy than the common individual. Just a quick internet search reveals several interesting facts (if these stats are accurate): 

-In 2024, a study showed that 21% of people in monogamous relationships admit to cheating, 23% being men and 19% being women.

-In 2014, the percentage of Ashley Madison users who identify as Christian fell somewhere between 22.7% and 25.1%, depending on their denominational affiliation.

-One study put the percentage of clergy involved in affairs at around 12%. Another one put it at 30%, which seems high, but not that much higher than the other numbers. 

My point is this: While it seems really difficult to pin down exact numbers, since infidelity is often not admitted to, the numbers aren't really that different between non-Christians and even clergy. So while even one clergy affair is too many, the idea that we have a pastoral epidemic seems dramatic. Instead, it seems to me that the problem is no different comparing ministers to the general public. Infidelity is a human problem, a human sin. Lawson sinned first as a human, and secondly as a pastor and preacher. It only seems more grievous because he was a pastor. 

Third, no man is your savior, except Jesus. If it hasn’t happened yet, rest assured that people you look up to who will fail you, sometimes devastatingly so. But their sin proves the same point that the gospel revealed thousands of years ago: God is true, though everyone were a liar (Rom.3:4). We have a tendency to platform men and women into almost God-like positions of immutability, then when they fail, we’re crushed. Let it drive you to hope in Christ. “Put not your trust in princes” (Psalm.146:3) applies to clergy as well, maybe especially so.

Finally, don’t judge. It’s culturally marxist thinking to assume that speech is a power grab, and not the legitimate expression of the heart (however imperfect we are at expressing what’s in our hearts). What I mean is this: It’s revealing of your subjection to cultural sensibilities if you just assume that Lawson is lying. What I read above are the words of a broken man whose “house” has fallen and great is the fall of it (Mt.7:27). In this position, Lawson knows he needs God’s grace for forgiveness, change, and personal restoration. Lawson will never be in vocational ministry again, but if he seeks God, he’ll find him: “You’ll find me if you seek me with all of your heart” (Jer.29:13). Perhaps we’d do well if, instead of assuming the worst motives, we’d “hope all things” (1 Cor. 13:7), and search our hearts lest we stumble in the same way others have. 

On Faith's Security: First London Confession (1644), Article 23

At the risk of appearing lazy, I'm going to blog something I've already written. I haven't been blogging much recently because most of my writing time over the last six months has been spent on two projects: First, preparing my dissertation for publication (it releases this week); and second, working on my study of the 1644 London Confession of Faith which corresponds to my current Adult Sunday School study, in hopes of publishing it later this year. So I'm going to share below from said study, particularly Article 23 (XXIII) of 52. A few points are worth noting first: 

1. The 1644 London Baptist Confession of Faith was the first explicitly17th century reformed confession. It was written by Baptists who were trying to show their solidarity with Nicene orthodoxy and Calvinistic doctrine, so as to distinguish themselves from anabaptists who had been involved in some pretty crazy things. 

2. As such the Confession predates the publication of the Westminster Confession of Faith. To be clear, it is not a competition. But it is significant (at least to me) that these Baptist pastors did not seem to need prompting from other reformed evangelicals to write such a work. 

3. The confession was written by representatives from only seven baptist churches in England. As such there are relatively few names attached to it, when compared to similar Confessions of the 17th century. I imagine that they wore themselves out writing this confession.

4. Finally, the confession is not to be mistaken with the later Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, written in 1677, and ratified and published in 1689 when there was a new freedom for evangelicals to do so. Part of my aforementioned writing project aims to correct what I see as misperceptions about supposed similarities between the First Confession and the Second: I don't think they're as similar as some reformed baptists do, and I think that there are good reasons to think as much.*

All of that said, Article 23 of the Confession is a relatively lengthy treatise on the security that believers in Christ have because of their faith. Since this particular article is lengthy, my study of it is relatively shorter than other studies. But my hope is that my readers will be encouraged to consider the security that they have in Jesus: They are safe in his hand as their faith--the hand that reaches out to eternity where Christ is--clings to him. What follows will be a) the Confession article as written in 1644 with original prooftexts, b) my pastoral reflection, and c) a sort of "takeaway" question that I anticipate being asked by readers, with answer. 

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XXIII. Faith Secures Us 

All those that have this precious faith wrought in them by the Spirit, can never finally nor totally fall away; seeing the gifts of God are without repentance; so that He still begets and nourishes in them faith, repentance, love, joy, hope, and all the graces of the Spirit unto immortality; and though many storms and floods arise, and beat against them, yet they shall never be able to take them off that foundation and rock, which by faith they are fastened upon; not withstanding, through unbelief, and the temptation of Satan, the sensible sight of this light and love, be clouded and overwhelmed for a time; yet God is still the same, and they shall surely be kept by the power of God unto salvation, where they shall enjoy their purchased possession, they being engraved upon the palms of His hands, and their names having been written in the book of life from all eternity.

Matt. 7:24-25; John 13:10; 10:28,29; 1 Pet. 1:4-6; Is. 49:13-16

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Here faith begins to find definition. The first thing to note is that faith is precious. It is not cheap, and neither is it common to all men. “Not all have faith” (2 Thes. 3:2). But as faith is given by God (as the next article will show), it has its effect in orienting the believer Godward for all of eternity. Faith comes by hearing the gospel (Rom.10:10), which is the power of God for salvation (Rom.1:16). And this salvation includes the initial act of justification, the continuing work of sanctification, and the final work of glorification. “You were sanctified, you were justified…by the Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:11). 

Thus the writers emphasize the eternal nature of the salvation that faith gives: Believers will never “totally fall away,” as Christ continues to “beget and nourish them in the faith, repentance, love, joy, hope…” etc. This precious faith is the means through which God guards the believer for the day of Christ’s return when faith will be sight: “By faith you are guarded for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5). Note both sides of the coin, according to the apostle: Believers are guarded, meaning God protects them; but they are guarded by faith, meaning that this guardianship is not exclusive of their effort to keep and maintain faith. “I’ve kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:7). We might well remember the disciples asking the Lord, “Increase our faith!” (Lk.17:8); such a prayer is every believer’s responsibility to pray. 

This faith is itself the sight of God’s glory in the face of Jesus. He gives sight (cf. Jn.9). By faith we grasp the eternal realm, apprehending those things that can’t be seen (cf. Heb.11:1-3).** We reach our hand out to eternity, and lay hold of it. Geerhardus Vos once defined faith in terms of “that organ for apprehension of unseen and future realities, giving access to and contact with another world. (Faith is) the hand stretched out through the vast distances of time and space, whereby the Christian draws to himself things far beyond, so that they may become actual to him.”*^  Being divinely-given and other-worldly-nurtured, believers overcome every attempt by the devil, the world, and the flesh to thwart their fellowship with God. “By this we overcome the world: our faith” (1 Jn. 5:4). While the enemy attacks repeatedly (cf. Eph.6), and there might be times that believers will fall under hard providences, they nevertheless stand strong and overcome (Rev.2-3). 

Making it to the end proves, as the confession concludes, that believers’ names are written in the palms of the Lord’s hands, and in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Is.49:13-16, Rev.13:8, 17:8). True believers endure to the end because they are clothed in Christ, whom they put on, making no provision for the flesh (Rom.13:14). But this is why when the Lamb marries his bride (the church), she is clothed in the righteous deeds of the saints (Rev.19:11). Godliness, growth in grace, good works, etc. are all the Lord’s works in men and women; but men and women do, indeed, participate. As is often the scriptural case, one need not choose between the propositions as though they were exclusive options. Rather the truth is seen more fully in holding both aspects side by side: We bear fruit abiding in him as he abides in us (Jn.15:1-6); we do good works he has prepared beforehand (Eph.2:10). And nothing could be a greater honor than to participate in this way in the very life of God, him working through us.*^^

Question—What part does the believer have in their faith? 

-They are to “build themselves up in their most holy faith,” (Jude 20), doing everything in their power to build up and grow in their faith. Hence, as the above reflection showed, Peter says that it is by faith that God’s power guards us; both sides are present in the safeguarding: God’s act (giving faith) and man’s act (exercising faith). In short, God gives the faith that sustains the person’s fellowship with God, and the person works out their salvation by faith. The next article will explain this a little more fully. 

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*This is a summary of content taken from the introduction to the current project I'm working on, To Give to Christ What Is His: A Pastoral Study of the First London Confession of Faith (forthcoming.) 

**Dallas Willard has a really good little study on the greek used in Hebrews 11:1, where faith in Christ is defined less in subjective terms and more objectively. That is, that faith is the evidence of Christ and the glory to which he's taking us more than it is a personally (subjective) hope in Christ the glory, etc. Put otherwise, one has faith because they have Christ. No one would believe the gospel unless Christ brought them along to believe it (for faith is by grace, Ac.18:27). If a person believes, Christ has, indeed brought them. See Willard, Renovation of the Heart, 132.

*^ See Geerhardus Vos, "Heavenly Mindedness" in his book of sermons, Grace and Glory, 122. 

*^^ See Hans Boersma, Sacramental Preaching, 139-146, for an excellent sermon that engages the participatory nature of our works in Christ's works, based especially on Rev.19:8. 

Lloyd-Jones, and Amazement at Saving Grace

A couple of weeks ago was the 125th anniversary of David Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s birth (Dec.20, 1899). While “the Doctor” has now been with the Lord for almost 44 years, his influence lives on among “Reformed” evangelicals.* Lloyd-Jones was a medical doctor who as a young man rose to the rank of assistant to Sir Thomas Horder, the Royal Physician to Kings Edward VII, George V, and George VI. For several years Lloyd-Jones struggled with his medical practice because, having fully embraced his Christian faith, he wrestled with a call to preach. Eventually he surrendered to God and took a pastorate in his home country, Wales. His giftedness was on display early, and he eventually came to Westminster Chapel in central London, as the assistant pastor to (the great) G. Campbell Morgan. After several years of mentoring and sharing pastoral duties, Morgan in 1943 handed the reigns of Westminster’s ministry to the Doctor. He served in the pulpit at Westminster until he retired in 1968, leaving a legacy of gospel-driven exegesis that will never be forgotten.

I recently came across a quote from one of Lloyd-Jones’ daughters that I’d never seen before. It knocked me back, and it’s been buzzing around in my head all day today. The writer of a book my elders and I are reading relays the conversation he had with the daughter, asking her what was the key to the Doctor’s long ministry. He then shares, 

“In typical pointed clarity, she answered: ‘I don’t think he ever got over his salvation. He never stopped being surprised by it.’ That,” says the writer, “is what we want for our congregations.”**

Indeed it is. You’ve sang John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” countless times throughout your life. But is God’s grace truly amazing to you? That God would save someone like you, and by such a glorious gospel in which he creates and allows the fall so that he can demonstrate his mercy and let grace reign for eternity (Rom.5:21)? Then draw folks by his mysterious, gentle, patient leading, so that you who’ve believed in him will only in the end be able to claim, “He loved me first” (cf. 1 Jn. 4:19)? 

I’m not the Doctor—more like the janitor of the doctor’s office! But the longer I journey with Jesus the more convinced I am that salvation is of the Lord. That he’d have his hand on me my whole life—slowly but surely drawing me, calling me, providing for me, and being long-suffering toward me, all so that I’d share his grace with those whom he’s given me to serve—all of this is the height of filial kindness from my Lord who loved me and gave himself for me (cf. Gal.2:20). I’m more and more realizing how miraculous it is that I belong to Jesus. Surprising, indeed. 

May you also never stop being surprised by your salvation! 

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*I don’t mean to demean the “Reformed” label, to which I even ascribe. I just have come to believe that it has such a range of meaning among those who use it that it is almost meaningless now. 

**Jamie Dunlop, Mark Dever, Compelling Community, 182.

Medieval Men and Women

Over the last several years I’ve become a medieval man. 

Let me explain: I’ve always read the Bible as God’s Word, but according to a more modernist metaphysic (=way of understanding the nature of reality) than the Bible’s own. There are two modernist metaphysics: First, the secular modern metaphysic can be described in terms of absolute historical progressivism, where time is the ultimate reference point for all that exists (including God), and history is progressing immutably more positively. That is to say that the world is, in its current form, smarter, more advanced, and overall, better than it ever has been (see Disney’s well-known Carousel of Progress for a popular example of this view.) 

The Christian Version 

We might say that absolute historic progressivism is, generally, a liberal and secular ideal. But there is a second version of this progressivist framework, usually held by conservatives/evangelicals. While most of us wouldn’t say that the current day is better than previous days, nevertheless we seem to believe (even if we don’t care to admit it) in a modified version of the theory where society peaked in the 1950s. This absolute peak of civilization is still seen on classic TV: Mayberry represents a societal pinnacle, the Beavers represent familial health, Lucy represents the peak of clean comedy, etc. Meanwhile most people during this time went to church. That was Christendom’s cultural peak. And that peak is the reference point from which to evaluate the health of any aspect of life. So, say many evangelicals, the societal collapse of the West is indicative of something greatly serious: It’s a sign of the times; we must be at the end. Things progressed historically until the 1950s, and since the 1960s we’ve been in a steady decline. We’re left in a sort of post-historical-progression-current-historical-regression where things seem to be headed toward their end, maybe rapidly (hence the end-times alarmist fortune of many Christian “teachers” over the last 75-80 years.) 

So you see, both liberals and conservative evangelicals hold to a progressivist ideal, even if the peak is different: To secularists the peak is now; to conservative evangelicals the peak was 70 years ago. Hence the constant rage and lack of peace: Liberals, because there’s always some bad news, something wrong, and “we should know better by now”; evangelicals, because we need to get back to the way things used to be, and “why can’t people see it?” 

This affects how one reads the Bible, or at least, how one approaches the Bible: Scripture is viewed less as a supernatural revelation of the one who is Supernature (God), and more as an end in itself. The main thing is not what it says and how it’s supposed to change us—not what’s read—but that it’s read. The main thing—again, if the American Christendom of the 1950s is the reference point—is being “Bible men” and “Bible women,” like men and women in western society used to be. My business cards in my first pastorate read “The Bible rules.” It was well-meaning, but indicative of this perspective: “Unlike other so-called christians who aren’t Bible people, we are.”*

Late vs. Early

So, what do I mean when I say I’m a medieval man? First, what I’m not: I’m not a late medieval man. In broad terms the late medieval era adopted a metaphysic that is contrary to that of Scripture itself. Late medieval thinking said that God is so other that we can’t really know him and his heart. The truth is, however, that whereas God is other (cf. Ps.50:21, Is.55:8-9), his otherness is not to be confused with detachedness; rather he is himself the fountain of life who sustains, provides, keeps, gives, and surrounds all of us at all points of time and space (Ps.36:7-9, Ac.17:25-28). That is, in him we live and move and have our being. We are not God. But we don’t exist apart from Him giving us our being at every moment: “All things exist for him and by him” (Col.1:16-17, cf. 1 Cor. 8:6). To theologize a familiar philosophical maxim, wherever we go, there he is (Ps.139:7-10). This is why Jesus had so much to say about worry and anxiety (i.e. Mt.6:25-34, Lk.12:22-32): God is at all points surrounding, providing for, and sustaining us. And he’ll never stop. 

So I’m not a late medieval man. I’m an earlier medieval man, holding to a form of the type of metaphysic—described above—that men like Augustine, Anselm, Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas held to. This framework says that we have no evaluative power apart from God’s logos (the Word) framing things for us, helping us, leading us, etc. Even if we rush headlong into atheism, it’s either because we’ve rejected the advances of the logos or because he’s hiding his face from us so that we’ll learn lessons that will bring us back to him (cf. Job 37:23). But you see, God is himself our ultimate context, all the time.

One might object that to believe as much is not to embrace a medieval idea as much as a biblical idea. And that might be true. But that is sort of my point. I’ve come to think, counter to the chronological snobbery of the modern day (as CS Lewis famously said), which I had embraced almost completely, that civilization is constantly ebbing and flowing in health, and that, therefore, the 1950s weren’t much better than any other era, and the current day isn’t much worse, or better. But the issue is always, whether at an individual or communal level, how we’re engaging with the God before whom we live and before whom are all of our ways (cf. Dan.5:23). Medieval days—contrary to its caricatures of being dark or merely middle—were days where God was thought of as present at every point. Today when people hear something like that they assume a mystical or escapist notion. That misunderstanding couldn’t make my point any clearer: To medieval thinkers connecting with God wasn’t getting in touch with mystical things or escaping reality; it was acknowledging that God is ultimate reality, and that all things are his things. 

I think that medieval men and women thought like this. CS Lewis was a medieval man, and Flannery O'Connor was a medieval woman.** Part of the reason their works endure though a couple of generations past is that they breathed this air of God as ultimate reality. You read them and are encouraged because they learned to live and think in the way that you know you should, too (and that you will, as God leads you.) 

Love, Joy, and Peace, and Their Sources

Practically, this means that one learns to stop saying whether things are good or bad before pursuing practically the love, joy, and peace that come from knowing that God is good and he’s in all things. Indeed, love, joy, and peace are the first fruit of the Holy Spirit, from which all other fruit flow (Gal.5:22). The Spirit takes the Father and Son’s attributes—love, joy, peace—and gives them to us. Thus the only way to perfect peace, according to Isaiah, is to have one’s mind stayed on God (Is.26:3). To the believer God is ultimate reality; all else goes as it goes with him. But if there are hard times, it’s simply the grace of God’s sanctifying care to conform believers to the image of his son (Heb.12:4-12), and demonstrate his glory in ways that please him. 

Ephraim Radner, a leading North American theologian and philosopher, has articulated well this late patristic, early medieval way of thinking in five brief points. I think that Radner’s correct that medieval men and women thought with these assumptions when they approached life and biblical interpretation. What follows is my own summary of Radner’s points so that they’re (hopefully) easier to understand: 

1. The fact of God as ex-nihilo Creator (that is, he created all things out of nothing) means that temporal, material, and chronological points of reference don’t apply to him. That is, he created temporal reality and chronology, so he is subject to neither. This doesn’t mean we can’t relate to him, but that there is a distinction between Creator and creature. It’d be foolish to say “Here’s some hardship, God must not be present,” as though the things of life determine him. Life doesn’t occur apart from him! 

2. The Incarnation of God the Son in the man Jesus Christ gives the basis for us to learn to define the distinction of 1 above. In other words, Christ is the vehicle through which we learn how we relate to and connect with the God who isn’t subject to the same rules of subsistence that we are.

3. Humans must, somehow, by Christ, span the gap between ourselves and God. But the fact that Christ came means we can do so, by him. Hence Jesus said “I’m the way…to the Father” (Jn.14:6), being himself the subject of “the righteous (suffering for) for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3:18). Yes, God being eternal, is other; but in Christ God identifies with us to bring us to himself.

4. God’s eternal nature suggests that there will be oddities in our engagement with him and his Scripture. We’ll note, for instance, that while God “regrets” things (1 Sam.15:10) and “changes his mind,” yet there is properly no change in God (Num.23:18, 1 Sam.15:29, Mal.3:6, James 1:17), such that his “regret” is unlike man’s (more below). 

5. Patristic and medieval interpretive methods, whether typology, allegory, tropology, or anagogy, weren’t technical tools for biblical interpretation as much as attitudes of perception responding to the oddities, listed above, of relating to and hearing from God. In other words, Augustine would allegorize and Aquinas would do typology not because they just wanted to and liked it, but because they understood that God is eternal, we’re not, and Christ who brings us to God, not time and space, is our first point of reference.*^ One example is, again, whether God regrets or changes his mind. Under a historical metaphysic, clearly he does change his mind (for, just look at how he seems to feel about the world in Noah’s time and about Saul as king.) But if we understand that he’s eternal and unchanging, it must mean that he didn’t change his mind like we who are bound by time as a succession of moments do. Hence Samuel says “God” (who earlier regretted making Saul king) “is not like man, to have regrets”: He regretted making Saul king, but not in the same way that we regret a poor decision. God doesn’t make poor decisions. So here his regret is different from ours.^^ It is likely, thus, that his regret is a gracious condescension to explain something about his holiness and how he will not tolerate sin.

Enchantment

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Medieval men and women were so enchanted by God that the things of this life were only enchanted insofar as God’s presence, working, and grace could be found in it. These folks weren’t enchanted with the world as it is, and thus they wouldn’t last long in discontentedness at the wrongness of things or the inferiority of things compared to earlier days. They knew that it was foolish to say “Why were former days better than these?” (Ecc.7:10) They also knew how foolish it was to suggest that the world is so much smarter now than it past days, because if one thinks he knows anything, he knows not as he ought (1 Cor. 8:2). Rather God is our life (cf. Deut.30:20), and creation reflects and derives its being and nature from him so that whatever is happening, he is present, accomplishing his purpose. Medieval men and women learned with Paul to be content in all things (Phil.4:11), and take both the good and bad because both come from God (Job 1:21, 2:10). This is, I think, what it means to have treasure in heaven (Matt. 6:19f.): To treat God like he’s your treasure. And if he is, you possess all else, too. 

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*Hence how so many Christians still enjoy watching old Billy Graham sermons and reformed evangelicals love David Martyn-Lloyd Jones. Whereas I love them both, we probably love the time in which they lived and ministered more than we care to admit. 

**On Lewis, see Jason Baxter's The Medieval Mind of CS Lewis; on Flannery O'Connor, see portions of her The Habit of Being, and how much she loved Aquinas' Summa Theologia. 

*^See Radner's Time and The Word, 57-58.

^^I'd also ask you to consider Deuteronomy 31:17. There God has Moses tell Joshua that the later generations will forsake God, at which point his anger will be kindled against them and he'll judge them. God is here in control of his wrath and response to sin. It's decreed. His "regret" and "repentance" are thus different from ours. 

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.