The Banner of Truth Trust was founded in 1957, and early in the following year the Trust published its first books. Thomas Watson’s Body of Divinity was one of them. At that time the book and its author were little known. In an issue of the Banner of Truth magazine (Nov. 1957), the editor, Iain H. Murray, enthusiastically informed readers of the new titles that were soon to come from the press: ‘Watson’s Body of Divinity,’ he wrote, ‘contains some of the richest doctrinal and experimental material to be found anywhere amongst the Puritans.’ And then he asked, ‘Who can estimate how much we have suffered individually and as a nation for neglecting our unsurpassed seventeenth-century literature!’

The book when published carried an interesting note on its copyright page: ‘The unabridged but revised version of Watson’s Body of Divinity, published in 1890,¹ has been followed in this reprint. ‘This present edition, though a comprehensive work in itself, does not contain the whole of Watson’s sermons on the Catechism; it is the Publishers’ wish to reprint the remainder if warranted by public demand.’ Many contemporary voices decried the idea of republishing the books of seventeenth-century Puritans in the middle of the twentieth century. But the founders of the Trust believed that such were needed, and if made available, would be avidly read by Christians whose spiritual appetite was being whetted by the kind of preaching they had heard from the minister of Westminster Chapel, London, Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The trustees’ wishes were soon to be fulfilled, and in a manner ‘exceeding abundantly above all they could ask or think’; for not only was Watson’s Body of Divinity to be reprinted many times in the succeeding years,² but alongside it was soon to appear the two other parts of Watson’s sermons on the Catechism, The Ten Commandments (1959)³ and The Lord’s Prayer (1960).⁴ In 1971 the Trust also reprinted Watson’s sermons on The Beatitudes.⁵

The hunger for more of Watson’s writings led to the inclusion of a number of them in the Banner’s Puritan Paperbacks series. The first to appear was A Divine Cordial (1963),⁶ followed by The Doctrine of Repentance (1987), The Godly Man’s Picture (1992), The Lord’s Supper (2004), The Great Gain of Godliness (2006), and Heaven Taken by Storm (2025).

The seven decades that have passed since the beginning of the Trust’s work has witnessed a remarkable growth of interest in the writings of the English Puritans. In acknowledgment of this, the Banner of Truth is issuing The Works of Thomas Watson. It is amazing to think that this will be the first time that Watson’s ‘concise, racy, illustrative, and suggestive’⁷ treatises and sermons will appear in a uniform set of volumes, similar to those produced in former generations for the works of several of his contemporary Puritan authors, such as John Owen, John Flavel, and Thomas Brooks, which have also been reprinted by the Trust. It should be said, however, that not every work that bears the name ‘Thomas Watson’ has come from the pen of the minister of St Stephen’s, Walbrook. In particular, two works, The Witnesses Anatomized, and Jerusalem’s Glory, do not appear to belong to our Thomas Watson, when judged on the basis of internal and external evidence. We are grateful to Dr Chad Van Dixhoorn for his expert insight and helpful advice regarding this matter.

This new production has followed the editorial policy of George Rogers, principal of Spurgeon’s Pastors’ College, who prepared the 1869 edition of Body of Divinity (see his comments on p. xx — reproduced below for the sake of this article). Where it was thought necessary, translations of foreign words and phrases have been added, as well as footnotes to elucidate the text. May the ‘happy union of sound doctrine, heart-searching experience, and practical wisdom’ make these volumes useful to all who read them.

The Grey House
Edinburgh
January 2026

The Editorial Policy of George Rogers (from page XX of Volume I of The Works of Thomas Watson):

‘All editions extant which we have seen, abound in errors and imperfections. These have been rectified, not entirely we fear, but in a degree as nearly approaching to accuracy as in revision of another’s composition could be expected. No alteration of sentiment has been made, but every shade of the author’s meaning has been scrupulously retained. The style has been modernised, so far as could be done without detracting from its own peculiar characteristics. Long sentences have been divided into two or three, where it could be done without injury to the clearness or force of the signification. Modern words have been substituted for such as had become obsolete; Latin quotations restored to their correct form, as far as their sources could be ascertained; and divisions of subjects more perspicuously arranged. The whole, in fact, has been rendered more readable, and consequently more attractive and intelligible, which in our estimation far outweighs all the supposed advantages that could arise from perpetuating the crudities and vulgarities, as they now appear to us, of former times. By popularizing ancient works, their readers are multiplied and their meaning may often be more readily apprehended.’

The Works of Thomas Watson:

The post The Works of Watson: Publisher’s Preface appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

In late November of last year, on the hills above the remote village of Muirkirk in south-west Scotland, three figures picked their way through icy bogland. The purpose of their expedition was to locate a memorial erected to the memory of the martyr John Brown, who was shot on his doorstep by Charles II’s dragoons for his allegiance to the cause of Scotland’s National Covenant. The site was remote in 1685, when Brown was killed, and even now it is hard to reach, accessed by a winding lane and then by a rather overgrown track which ambles over the sodden moorland.

Whatever the difficulties of reaching the site of John Brown’s memorial, we were very glad to do so in pursuit of footage for a new Banner of Truth four-part video series, ‘The Covenanter Story’. The Covenanters were Scottish Christians of the seventeenth century whose commitment to the kingship of Christ in his church brought them into direct conflict with the British state in the persons of the Stuart kings, men who believed themselves rightful rulers not only of the state, but also of the Kirk (church) and the conscience of individual men and women.

The videos, which are now available for free on our YouTube channel, relate the stories of four men whose martyrdoms shed light on different stages of the Covenanter struggle: James Guthrie (d. 1661), Hugh M‘Kail (d. 1666), John Brown (d. 1685), and James Renwick (d. 1688).

John Brown’s death is particularly poignant, and that for several reasons. Unlike the other three men, Brown was not a pastor but an ‘ordinary’ Christian—a man who made his living, such as it was, as a ‘carrier’, an early form of postman. Unlike the other three, his death was not a public execution, but an extra-judicial killing ordered by the brutal commander John Graham of Claverhouse (1648–1689). Finally, Brown’s death was strikingly foretold by Alexander Peden, the ‘prophet of the Covenant,’ and at his wedding, no less. Jock Purves relates the circumstances:

[Peden] had married the Covenanter to Isabel Weir in 1682, and after the simple Puritan ceremony had said to Isabel, ‘Ye have a good man to be your husband, but ye will not enjoy him long; prize his company, and keep linen by you to be his winding sheet, for ye will need it when ye are not looking for it, and it will be a bloody one.’ A Covenanting wedding! The Covenanter’s deepest joys ever carried the shadow of the Cross.¹

To see the still-lonely spot where Peden’s prophecy was fulfilled, and Isabel Weir violently bereft of her husband, was a sombre privilege indeed.

The Covenanters: Much maligned and much neglected

Raised in the south of England, I first came across the Covenanters in the secular historian Neil Oliver’s 2008 television series ‘A History of Scotland’. Oliver’s sympathy for the men of the Covenant was, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather limited. It was easy for him to dress them in the garb of ‘fundamentalism’, men fanatically and irrationally devoted to ‘King Jesus’ (he practically spat those wonderful words out at times!)²

This perspective on the Covenanters—the idea that they were unhinged religious zealots—first gained traction among their original enemies in church and state and persists to this day.

While we rightly reject this characterization, it must at least be conceded that Mr Oliver knows about the Covenanters. By contrast, very few within the evangelical church, including those who would describe themselves as ‘Reformed,’ have a working knowledge of these Christian witnesses. And this is a great shame, for they ‘belong to us,’ so to speak. Those faithful Covenanters who lived out a brave faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in evil days are our brothers and sisters. And while the Presbyterians among us have a special claim on their kinship, the fact is that all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus may legitimately lay claim to them as spiritual ancestors. We confess the same essential faith that they did. More soberingly, we may soon find ourselves facing the same essential conflicts that they did. Let us learn from them with that in mind.

The Covenanters dared to uphold the sovereign claims of Christ in the face of the presumptuous counterclaims of the Stuart monarchs and their stooges in church and state. They paid the price in harassment, social ostracism, imprisonment, forfeiture of land and possessions, and forced exile and transportation to other lands. Thousands of them were killed: some in combat, others because of torture and harsh prison conditions, and others by execution, public or private. Thousands more were, like Isabel Weir, bereaved of loved ones.

A matter of stewardship

In producing these videos, our goal has not been primarily polemical. We are not seeking to defend the Covenanters in any systematic or thorough way from the claims of historians unfriendly to their aims and sceptical of their character or methods. There is certainly a place for such work, and readers interested in the cut-and-thrust of historical apologetics will find much that is still of value in J. K. Hewison’s remarkable two-volume study The Covenanters.³ Rather, our goal has been to introduce the outline of the Covenanter story, along with some choice highlights of Christian love, devotion, and sacrifice found in it, to a new audience. We wanted to provide an ‘on-ramp’, a user-friendly orientation to who the Covenanters were and why they still matter for us as Christians today. We hope, too, that the videos will signpost interested readers to books like Jock Purves’ Fair Sunshine and John Howie’s The Scots Worthies, which provide fuller accounts of great value for Christian instruction and encouragement.

As pressures increase on Christians in the Western world, may these videos serve the church by highlighting witnesses who, in an imperfect yet significant way, bore witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, the only one who may with full justice be called ‘the faithful witness’ (Rev. 1:5).

You can watch the videos here, and sign up to our emails (UK/World list or North America list) to learn more about our books and ministry.

Watch the first video:

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“My heart,—

Being within a few hours to lay down my life for the testimony of Jesus Christ, I do send these few lines as the last obedience of unfeigned and spotless affection which I bear unto you, not only as one flesh, but as a member with me of that blessed mystical body of the Lord;¹ for I trust you are, and that God who hath begun his good work in you, will also perfect it and bring it to an end, and give you life and salvation.

Whatever may be your infirmities and weakness, yet the grace of God shall be sufficient for you, and his strength shall be perfected in your weakness. To me you have been a very kind and faithful yoke-fellow, and not a hinderer but a helper in the work of the Lord. I do bear you this testimony as all the recompense I can now leave you with:—In all the trials I have met with in the work of the ministry, these twenty years past, which have not been few, and that from aggressors of many sorts, upon the right hand and upon the left, you were never a tempter of me to depart away from the living God, and from the way of my duty, to comply with an evil course, or to hearken to the counsels of flesh and blood, for avoiding the cross and for gaining the profit and preferment of a present world.

You have wrought much with your hands for furnishing bread to me and to my children, and was always willing that I should show hospitality, especially to those that bore the image of God. These things I mention not to puff you up, but to encourage you under your present affliction and distress, being persuaded that God will have regard unto you and unto the children of my body, which I leave unto your care, that they may be bred up in the knowledge of the Lord. Let not your wants and weaknesses discourage you: there is power, riches, and abundance with God, both as to the things of the body and things of the soul; and he will supply all your wants, and carry you through. It is like to be a most trying time, but cleave you to God and keep his way, without casting away your confidence; fear not to be drowned in the depths of the troubles that may attend this land, God will hide you under his shadow, and keep you in the hollow of his hand.

Be sober and of a meek spirit; strive not with providence, but be subject to him who is the Father of spirits. Decline not the cross, but embrace it as your own. Love all that love the Lord and delight in their fellowship. Give yourself unto prayer, and be diligent in reading the holy Scriptures. Wait on the ordinances, and have them in great esteem as the appointed means, of God, for your salvation. Join the exercise of piety and repentance together, and manifest your faith in the fruits of sincere obedience and of a gospel conversation.

Value your conscience above your skin. Be not solicitous, although you know not wherewith to clothe you and your children, or wherewith to dine; God’s providences and promises are a true, rich, and never-failing portion. Jesus Christ be all your salvation and all your desire! You, I recommend unto Him, and Him unto you: My heart! I recommend you to the eternal love of Jesus Christ—I am helped of God, and hope I shall he helped to the end. Pray for me while I am here, and praise with me hereafter. God be with you—I am yours,

JAMES GUTHRIE

Edinburgh Tolbooth, June 1st, 1661.’

Featured image (visible when article shared on social media): Edinburgh’s Mercat Cross, where James Guthrie was executed, as it would have been prior to 1756.

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How many times does the Bible tell us to watch our own hearts! Yet how often do Christians slip and fall for want of diligence in this very basic duty! Not for nothing does the Bible say: ‘He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city’ (Prov. 16:32).

Many men have served their countries as president or prime minister yet have not been able to guard their own hearts and lives from simple lusts and common temptations. Many distinguished leaders have commanded armies on land and fleets at sea but have not been able to resist one or two besetting sins. The fiercest battles are not so much those outside of us but those within. This is the Bible’s view of the matter. For this reason God’s Word tells us: ‘Keep thy heart with all diligence: for out of it are the issues of life’ (Prov. 4:23).

Keeping the heart is not a work for which men will give us much praise or recognition. It is a secret activity of the soul, unnoticed by all but God. It will not confer on us an honorary D.D., nor will it advance us to some position of academic prestige. It is tempting, therefore, to dismiss this secret duty of watching over the soul as a task too mean to engage our attention.

We are apt, especially as young Christians, to gauge the importance of our duties by the measure to which they bring us into public notice. This may not be wholly wrong, but it is an attitude which has its dangers. Satan’s ladders to rapid fame and importance usually have a few rotten rungs in them which men do not notice at first.

We are all very immature when it comes to assessing our spiritual priorities. We may prepare diligently to perform our outward duties but hasten through our secret preparations. Our sermons are ready; but our hearts are unready. Our outward lives are impressive, but our private lives may be in disarray. Sin is preached against orthodoxly enough but not mourned over enough in the secret place. How else can we explain the ministerial falls that shock and horrify us? How else can we account for sudden scandals and tragic apostasies? The hidden man of the heart was forgotten in the hurry and bustle of attending to more public duties.

The Bible corrects this unbalanced approach to spiritual priorities. It teaches us to look to our own souls before we put the whole world right. It commands us to make sure of the root before we concern ourselves with the branch or the bud. If the root is healthy there will be good fruit in due season. But premature fruits may wither and die in a little while where the roots of our souls are neglected. ‘Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away’ (John 15:2).

The soul is the greatest treasure which we possess. To guard and to look to the health of the soul is therefore our highest wisdom. Yet how seldom do men do so! If society reflects men’s secret view of life, how small a place the soul has in our day! Our fathers built churches, but we build supermarkets and sports halls. Our fathers read Bibles and studied theology, but we read – if we read at all – of fantasy, fiction and folly. Our fathers watched over souls – their own and those of their children – but our age thinks only of the body and its appetites. The world outside may be expected to follow its own pagan view of life. But the Christian must never lose his biblical priorities. The soul must come first, if God is to receive his glory from our lives.

The Christian should care for his soul as ‘God’s acre’ within him. After all, the soul is that which distinguishes a man from a beast. It is that part of us which originally bore God’s image. Our souls are immortal, eternal, deathless. Though sin has so tragically marred the image of God within the soul, yet regeneration has, in the true Christian, restored this lost image. If we knew the value of the soul we should keep it like the crown jewels and set every faculty we have on the alert to protect it.

Let one reason for caring for our souls be this: that one slip may erase at a stroke all the good we ever did. Let a man be a faithful preacher or missionary for a score of years. Yet, if he slips and spoils his reputation by some thoughtless fall, all his good deeds done over twenty years will be buried in men’s minds under this one fall, which lasted perhaps but for a day. Such is the precarious nature of the life which we live as spiritual persons. We walk on a moral tight-rope all our way till we get safely to the ‘other side’.

Let a second reason for keeping watch over our souls be this: the stealth of our enemy. Did we but remember it as we should; we have an adversary who will stop at nothing to bring about our fall, if only he can. He well knows our frailty and our love of ease. He can match his bait to our taste.

He can give us, as he gave to Peter, a fire at which to warm ourselves. He can find for us, as for Samson, a Delilah to lure us into fatal sleep. He can still mix his cup with such cunning that the drinker will not wake up till his soul is in the flame of hell. Let him who doubts all this consider Balaam, or Saul, or Judas Iscariot.

If we need a third warning not to neglect our souls let it be the extreme care which our blessed Lord took over his. At the age of twelve, he was more concerned to acquire knowledge of the truth than afraid to upset his parents. This is a lesson on how a perfect man values the means of grace and hungers to do the will of God. Loved ones must, if needs be, suffer a little sorrow, but no hindrance must keep him from being about his ‘Father’s business’ (Luke 2:49). Then watch our Lord in his wilderness temptations as he repulses the enemy at every turn and vanquishes his every assault. Watch Christ too as he puts Simon Peter in his place: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan’ (Matt. 16:23). Friendship is precious, but it must not come between Christ and his mission to go to the Cross.

To keep watch over our souls, as Christ here shows us, means to keep fierce and jealous guard over our sense of obligation to God. It is to put the will of God first in our every action. It is to prefer the course of duty to the path of pleasure. It is to hate all influences and all suggestions which might weaken our devotion to the will of God, or which might unsettle our resolve as Christians to put the glory of God before every other consideration whatever.

It is so very possible, our hearts being corrupt, to lose our ‘first love’ (Rev. 2:4). Either through bad example, or through self-deception, or merely because of declining resolve, the Christian can learn to lower the standard of his obedience. What began in his life as gold has over the years become silver – then brass, and at last is only iron and rust. He once ‘lived’; now he has only a ‘name to live’ (Rev. 3:1). His silver is now dross, and his wine mixed with water. In the true believer this is never completely the case. But it may to a fearful extent become so. What has gone wrong? He neglected his soul.

When a house suffers from subsidence, it is all affected, from the roof to the foundation. So, when a Christian neglects his soul, all aspects of his spiritual life undergo a visible decline. He once believed in an infallible Bible; now he smiles at this as youthful fancy. He once rose up early enough to pray and to prepare his heart for the day ahead; now he tumbles out of bed with scarcely a minute for prayer or meditation. Once he kept his place in the house of God and was never late; now he drags himself to church and is never on time. What went wrong? He neglected his soul.

As a camp-fire in the jungle dies down, the wild beasts creep closer. Similarly, as a Christian neglects his soul, his indwelling sins stare him in the face with more menace. Old sins return to haunt him. Youthful lusts, formerly felt to be dead, rise up again with new vigour. Strange languor and disabling torpor make it well-nigh impossible for the once-active believer to fight off his spiritual enemies. His witness dies down. His worship cools off. His love for fellowship diminishes. He invents excuses for absenting himself from godly company. He is but a pale shadow of the man he was. What has gone wrong? He has neglected his soul.

The souls of preachers and ministers are as fully open to the kinds of decay here spoken of as are the souls of other Christians. Let no man deceive himself. When the battle to keep up our spiritual lives is lost in the secret place, it will not save men from the downward slide that we are called ‘Reverend’ or that we wear clerical garments. The neglected soul will not long retain its love of pure doctrine or evangelical worship.

The minister who begins by neglecting his soul will end, if he does not repent and recover in time, by secretly (and then openly) denying central doctrines of the faith. The need for a New Birth is now no longer taken seriously by him. Bare assent to some Creed is all that he now asks of his church members. Bit by bit the whole message of the Bible slips from him. The Atonement, the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, the wrath of God, the Second Coming, the Judgment to come – all these articles of the faith slip from his personal creed, even if he has not yet got the courage, or rather the moral integrity, to say so. How did this preacher change from being evangelical to becoming a sceptic? He neglected his soul.

Strange to say, neglect of soul is all too often a feature of the mature, rather than of the young Christian. It was in his maturity that good Noah was overcome with wine. It was a mature, not a young, David who – sad to relate – looked at Bathsheba with such tragic consequences. It was a mature Solomon who multiplied wives and clouded his good reputation by tolerating their divinities. It was a mature, not a teenage Hezekiah who showed off his treasures to the foreign ambassadors. These things were written for our learning.

There are snares and pitfalls for the old Christian, just as there are for the young. Perhaps it is because he fancies himself to have passed the danger-zone of life that the older believer may relax his concentration. So much is now behind him of the conflict of his pilgrimage. He is almost in sight of the golden shore. But the veteran pilgrim must fight on to a finish. To relax too soon may be to get a stain on his good record and lose a portion of his great reward.

The way back from all neglect of soul is given us, as all good counsels are given us, in the Word of God: ‘Be zealous and repent’ (Rev. 3:19). Appoint a time for prayer and fasting. Afflict your soul. Weep for your past sins. Cry mightily to God for pardon and a fresh sense of his love. Hate the sinful coldness which dampened your first ardour for Christ. Recall the price paid for your soul in his precious blood. Beseech the Almighty for a new baptism of his Spirit to rekindle the altar-flame. Perhaps more of us need this repentance than we have realized.

Featured Photo (visible when the post is shared on social media) by Vadym Alyekseyenko on Unsplash

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Somewhere, Stuart Briscoe has commented that three attributes of a pastor are needed: ‘The mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros.’ The last attribute seems rather incongruous, even unspiritual, but it has much to commend it. Given the nature of the pastor’s tasks, especially that of preaching truths that are needful but not welcome to the natural man, it is to be expected that the pastor will meet with criticism. Christ warns us on this very point: ‘Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets’ (Luke 6:26). The handshake and the compliment at the end of the service may not be what you need.

Encouragement is helpful but applause is dangerous

It is right for Christians to encourage one another. In the midst of his struggles with Saul, David was strengthened by the words of his friend, Jonathan. Jonathan urged David not to fear, and reminded him of God’s promise that the kingship would go to him, not Jonathan. In this way, Jonathan ‘strengthened his [David’s] hand in God’ (see 1 Sam. 23:19, 20). The same notion is found in the New Testament. The Greek word for ‘encourage’ can also mean ‘exhort’ or ‘counsel,’ but Christians are told to encourage one another (1 Thess. 4:18; Heb. 3:13). This is not as the world would view encouragement, which is usually along the lines of soft words and flattery. Everyone wins a prize! Paul encouraged the fledgling church at Lystra that it was through many tribulations that we enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). Biblical encouragement is very much linked to truth.

It was Israel at its most rebellious who told the prophets to ‘speak to us smooth things’ (Isa. 30:10). When Hananiah prophesied that the exile of Judah would only last two years, that was rather more appealing than Jeremiah’s prophecy that it would last seventy years (Jer. 28). Ezekiel was told by God: ‘And behold, you are to them like one who sings lustful songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it’ (Ezek. 33:32). Exhortations to winsomeness provide a large part of the advice given today to preachers, but salesmen and politicians may be winsome. It is needed, but it is not the same as love, and it is certainly not a substitute for truth.

There are a great many apocryphal stories told about Charles Spurgeon, and this could be another one. Someone is supposed to have listened to the Prince of Preachers, and thought that he would encourage him by telling him that he had just preached a wonderful sermon. Spurgeon was aware of the temptation, and replied: ‘Yes, the devil just told me that ten minutes ago.’ John Newton made the startling observation that ‘If opposition has hurt many, popularity has wounded more.’¹ Many a good pastor has absorbed too much from his friends in the congregation and too little from his critics. This can only have detrimental effects on the cause of biblical truth in the world.

In the eighteenth century, George Whitefield was always ready to be rebuked and to repent. To one minister in England, he wrote: ‘When I am unwilling to be told my faults, dear Sir, correspond with me no more.’² He was not easily discouraged, as he did not live for applause. In 1742 at London, Whitefield recorded: ‘I was honoured with having a few stones, dirt, rotten eggs, and pieces of dead cats thrown at me’.³ Yet he continued preaching for three hours. There is a real, albeit often hidden, strength in humility.

The people who help most may not necessarily be the most spiritual or friendly. Douglas Kelly comments rather wistfully that ‘Along with most ministerial salaries comes the added bonus of free criticism: some of it loving and helpful, and some of it mean-spirited and untrue.’⁴ There is much truth in that, but it is not always so clear. The trouble is that some of the loving criticism may be unhelpful, while some of the mean-spirited comments may actually be of greater use.

It is not uncommon to hear pastors state that their policy is to take notice of criticisms made by mature Christians, but not those made by those who belong to the world. Think this through first. At a devastating time in David’s life, his son, Absalom, rose up in rebellion against his own father, but ended out losing his life in the ensuing civil war (2 Sam. 15–18). As a father, David was shattered, and so wept and mourned. The people, however, interpreted this to mean that David was not appreciative of those who had fought on his side. It is Joab—of all people—who told David to speak kindly to his servants and comfort them. As a result, the crisis passed, and David reclaimed the throne (2 Sam. 19). Joab was imbued with political astuteness rather than sanctified godliness, but his rebuke of David was timely and needed.

In the days of king Josiah, in 609 B.C., the Pharaoh Neco went up to fight the Assyrians at Carchemish. To do so, he would pass by Judah, and Josiah—a good and godly king—decided to confront him. Neco warned him that if Josiah opposed him, he would be opposing the will of God. Josiah rejected this, and paid the penalty: ‘He did not listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of God’ (2 Chron. 35:22), and was killed in battle. Paying heed to Neco would not have appealed to Josiah—and it is mysterious—but in this instance Neco had more wisdom than Josiah.

Miriam and Aaron were the siblings of Moses, and not usually his rivals, but at one point, they succumbed to the sin of jealousy, and asserted in the name of a distorted egalitarianism that God did not speak only through Moses. For this presumption, Miriam was struck with leprosy, but Moses bore no grudges, and prayed to the Lord for her healing. Aaron too came to see the folly of his ways (Num. 12). Presumably, the three siblings all learnt something from the episode.

When Nehemiah was threatened and undermined in his work of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem, he refused to lose his nerve, being certain that ‘I am doing a great work’ (Neh. 6:3). Do not be easily swayed: preach, read, pray, try to evangelize, and most of all, seek to grow as a Christian. Persevere in the God-given tasks before you.

I was once told by a Jehovah’s Witness that I was arrogant. It did not seem right to argue back with great vehemence that I was really the epitome of lowliness and humility. Surely this was a rebuke from God, using one who did not know the gospel of the God-man Jesus Christ. David accepted that the curses of Shimei actually came from the Lord (2 Sam. 16:5-14, especially noting verse 11). We will miss much-needed rebukes if we insist on only listening to those whom we think have earned the right to correct us.

Spurgeon was the prince of preachers, but also the wisest of counsellors. He was a shrewd observer of humanity, including himself. So, he warned: ‘Those who praise us are probably as much mistaken as those who abuse us.’⁵ ‘Too much consideration of what is said by our people, whether it be in praise or in depreciation, is not good for us’ (p. 406). One wonders how much the ‘Believe in yourself ’ pop psychology has been behind the modern rise in what is called ‘mental illness.’ Spurgeon surely is correct in saying that ‘In proportion as praise pleases you censure will pain you’ (p. 331). We are not the centre of the universe.

Concentrate on the content of what is said

Rather than analyzing the motives of any critic, it is better to spend more time in sifting through the content. Jesus describes himself as ‘a man who has told you the truth’ (John 8:40). We in turn are to seek the truth about ourselves. We are not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, but to think with sober judgment (Rom. 12:3).

The risen Christ told hostile Saul, who was to become the apostle Paul: ‘It is hard for you to kick against the goads’ (Acts 26:14c). As one who was convinced that Jesus was a blasphemer, and that his followers were dangerous enemies of the God of Israel, Saul was like an animal—an ox perhaps—which kicked against a sharpened stick and so hurt itself. Deep down in the midst of all his ferocious Pharisaism, Saul had a sense that not everything was right. He was actually opposing God, not serving him.

Truth hurts and yet truth heals. The church will outlive any pastor. It was not set up as a pastor-appreciation society but as a blood-bought, Christ-centred, Bible-dependent body of sinners whom God is gathering to himself. The favour of God is what keeps us going, not the applause of the world, whether inside or outside the church.

Sometimes not responding is the best policy

It is the weak person who feels he has to win every battle, no matter how trivial. It is a common fallacy to think ‘Something must be done. This [proposal or response] is something. Therefore, let’s do it.’ Just as there can be wisdom in silence (Prov. 10:19; 17:28), so there can be wisdom in doing nothing. Job thought so (Job 13:5)!

A whisperer separates friends (Prov. 16:28), so be careful what you listen to and what you retain. A soft answer will often turn away wrath (Prov. 15:1). Prickly personalities are not to be commended, for love covers a multitude of sins (1 Pet. 4:8). Modern Western societies have become increasingly litigious as they have made taking offence almost an art form, and dressed it all up in the name of ‘justice.’ Many things are to be left to the judgment (Rom. 12:18, 19); perfect righteousness belongs to the new heavens and new earth after the return of Christ (2 Pet. 3:13).

Being impervious to others is not a fruit of the Spirit. It may give us a hide like a rhinoceros but only in a Stoic, not a Christian, sense. God does not need us (Acts 17:25), but most wonderfully, Isaiah tells us that in all the affliction of his people, God himself was afflicted (Isa. 63:9). Part of our striving to reflect the character of God will mean we weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15). To the Thessalonian church, Paul, this man amongst men, could say that he was like a nursing mother taking care of her own children (1 Thess. 2:7). Toughness is not insensitivity. In the words of Richard Baxter: ‘The whole of our ministry must be carried on in tender love to our people. We must let them see that nothing pleaseth us but what profiteth them; and that what doeth them good doth us good; and that nothing troubleth us more than their hurt.’⁶

Wisdom issues are difficult, but they have always been with us. Martin Madan, whom John Newton knew personally and loved, and who was William Cowper’s cousin, wrote Thelyphthora (‘A Treatise on Female Ruin’), which set forth an argument in favour of polygamy. Madan considered that a man who seduced a woman should marry her even if he was already married. Cowper ended up writing against his own cousin, but Newton was not convinced that it ought to be replied to, although he did think that he had to preach on the subject.⁷ He knew that people could not be battered into submission as if problems were only ever moral and spiritual, and so he wrote in 1796: ‘Sometimes when nervous people come to me, distressed about their souls, and think that is their only complaint, I surprise them by asking if they have no friend in Cornwall, or in the north of Scotland, whom they could visit’ (pp. 389-90). A response that seems right in one situation may not be entirely wise in another situation.

Face-to-face is almost always better

The apostle John said that he had much to write, but instead he preferred to come to ‘the elect lady’ and talk face-to-face (2 John 12; 3 John 13, 14). Even when Paul departed from this practice, as he did with the Corinthians, he made it clear that he wanted to visit them, but did not do so for what he saw as crucial reasons: ‘But I call God to witness against me—it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth’ (2 Cor. 1:23). He thought it in their own best spiritual interests—as well as his own—that he not make ‘another painful visit’ (2 Cor. 2:1).

The book of Proverbs is not designed to give us hard and fast rules and promises of life, but rather observations of reality. One proverb to ponder is: ‘When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him’ (Prov. 16:7). There are few things more conducive to that than a face-to-face meeting conducted with the maximum amount of goodwill.

Social media is usually the worst place to interact with people, although it can be used for good—by a small minority. Email is a playground which easily becomes a battleground. Facebook and similar networks are even more fraught with danger. On many occasions the various forms of social media only help to reverse Proverbs 16:7, and turn our friends into our enemies. The result is an escalation of hostilities: ‘The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out’ (Prov. 17:14).

Love and humility in all circumstances

The Preacher warns us: ‘Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others’ (Eccles. 7:21, 22). In his invaluable Lectures to My Students, Spurgeon has a chapter entitled, ‘The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear.’⁸ Here he comments that ‘It is the part of the generous to treat passionate words as if they had never been uttered.’ Spurgeon comments as the Preacher does, that ‘[You] would now be in an awkward position if you were called to account for every word that you have spoken, even about your dearest friend.’ Blaise Pascal put it even more graphically: ‘I state it as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them behind their backs, there would not be four friends left in the world.’⁹

It is a disturbing truth that it is often those with the sharpest tongues who have the thinnest skins. To cite Spurgeon again: ‘You must be able to bear criticism, or you are not fit to be at the head of a congregation; and you must let the critic go without reckoning him among your deadly foes, or you will prove yourself a mere weakling.’¹⁰ None of us enjoys having our faults—real or imaginary—pointed out to us. But if you admit your faults, no one will argue with you.

On 15 February 1553, just a year before he began his series on Job, Calvin opened up about the need to be tamed by trials:

It is very difficult for me not to boil over when someone gets impassioned. Yet so far no one has ever heard me shouting. But I lack the chief thing of all, and that is being trained by these scourges of the Lord in true humility. And therefore it is all the more necessary that I should be tamed by the rebukes of my brethren.¹¹

Know yourself and know what you need to experience to curb your temptations.

Attacks on Charles Simeon—and there were plenty—were diffused by his humility. ‘My enemy, whatever evil he says of me, does not reduce me so low as he would if he knew all concerning me that God knows.’¹² In suffering, he could not fail to be right, but in acting he could easily do amiss. Such an attitude softens our hearts and prepares us to love all, and to desire their welfare.

Josiah Bull has rightly emphasized Newton’s strengths as his humility, sound judgment, and the beauty of his all-round character. His conclusion is compelling: ‘it was his goodness rather than his greatness that rendered him so especially attractive—the abundance of the grace of God that was in him.’¹³

The last word belongs to one of the Puritans, and all pastors would do well to make it their own:

Teach me how to take reproofs from friends,
even though I think I do not deserve them;
Use them to make me tenderly afraid of sin,
more jealous over myself,
more concerned to keep heart and life unblameable;
Cause them to help me to reflect on my want of spirituality,
to abhor myself,
to look upon myself as unworthy,
and make them beneficial to my soul.¹⁴

Peter Barnes is editor of The Australian Presbyterian. For many years he was minister of Revesby Presbyterian Church, NSW, Australia, where he continues as a member.

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Books which have little or no ‘unction’ about them are generally of little use to us as preachers.

Of course I do not state this as a universal rule. We do not expect to find unction in biblical dictionaries and encyclopedias, for example, yet they may be very helpful and valuable. But a truly good book usually has a sanctifying influence. It does more for us than give us information. We are stirred up, made prayerful and given an increased longing to be better Christians and better servants of Christ. It is quite clear that not a few of the most eminent preachers of the past used and recommended this ‘unction test’. Whitefield, for instance, applied it to Bunyan. He thought that Bunyan and the persecuted Puritans knew what it was to speak and write ‘under the cross’ and believed that ‘the spirit of Christ and of glory’ rested on them and their work:

They in an especial manner wrote and preached as men having authority. Though dead, by their writings they yet speak: a peculiar unction attends them to this very hour . . . without pretending to a spirit of prophecy, we may venture to affirm, that they will live and flourish, when more modern performances, of a contrary cast, notwithstanding their gaudy and tinsell trappings, will languish and die in the esteem of those whose understandings are opened to discern what comes nearest to the scripture standard.¹

Spurgeon applied the same test to commentaries. In the 1880s one of the most prestigious of all new works of exposition was The Pulpit Commentary which ran into a series of large volumes. These were generally orthodox in content but they did not satisfy Spurgeon, the preacher. When the second volume on John’s Gospel appeared in 1888, with exposition by a Reverend Reynolds and homiletics by a Professor Croskery, Spurgeon had this to say in his review:

The good men who wrote the exposition and outlines have in no case erred on the side of too spiritual an interpretation. John’s gospel is a book in which the teaching is spiritual to a very high degree, and the great qualification for expounding it is not so much learning as an unction from The Holy One. We will not say that these divines know very little of unction, but assuredly we see small traces of it in their volume. The modern spirit has a tendency to dry up the Scriptures, and to leave them like the skins of grapes when all the juice has been trodden out in the wine-press. . . What they have seen and written is good of its sort, but an hour with Hutcheson is worth a month of Croskery. Commentators of the present age may be more critical than their predecessors, but they are not more edifying and improving . . . We are growing so wise that soon we will be ashamed of everything savoury and sustaining.²

Today we have many commentaries unknown to Spurgeon offered to us and, though the unction test is hardly in favour with modern authors, I do not think we need to be ashamed to use it. It will certainly save us a lot of time. Twentieth-century commentators such as R. C. H. Lenski, William Hendriksen, and others, who breathe a spirit of reverence for Scripture, are the only kind of commentators we really need. And I should add, we do need them. We cannot envy those congregations whose preachers suppose that they rarely need to turn to a commentary.

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There are not wanting here and there the signs that good Christians are suffering from a kind of spiritual metal-fatigue. In our fellowships iron rarely sharpens iron any longer. Much preaching that is orthodox lacks that ring of conviction which is needed to thrust it home into sinners’ consciences. A guilty tameness smothers our zeal. Prayers are hum-drum and predictable. The apostolic fire has died down and looks like dying away. The gospel, even where it is preached at all, is clothed with the impeding garments of excessive politeness and respectability. Our sermons are frequently no more than a gentle homily or a quiet talk about good religious ideas. Slowly and imperceptibly evangelical people are coming to terms, emotionally and intellectually, with the spirit of the age. Though we should not care to say so, we nonetheless betray our inner despair of ever seeing revival, or even a reversal of the present trend downwards.

This weariness of soul is not difficult to explain. A deep-seated disappointment has paralysed many Christian people in our day. Both preachers and hearers are disheartened. The recovery of the doctrines of purer orthodoxy some thirty years ago has not yet been matched by a recovery of spiritual power or influence in society. The world passes by the doors of many excellent churches with as much unconcern today as it did when the old theological liberalism reigned in them, and before new and biblical ministries began in them. Preachers who deserve to be listened to by a thousand have to be content with less than fifty hearers.

The vision which many had only a few years ago has not been realised. The mirage has not yet become a pool of water. The promises of God are seemingly at variance with his providences. A bewilderment and a confusion has come upon us. There is a widespread feeling that something has gone wrong. Meanwhile we all grow older. There is an unspoken agreement that the fight is too hard for us. When shall we be able to withdraw from the scene of battle with at least some semblance of honour?

Spiritual drowsiness is very catching. The air soon becomes heavy with it. Active life and movement, once so noticeable, gradually dies down as one after another succumbs to the spirit of drowsiness. As the voices of young children in a nursery die down one by one at their rest time, so the once active testimonies of God’s people become gradually silent in a sleepy time. The Bible portrays for us times when the people of God enter into a period of collective sleepiness. The age in which Moses was born was such a time. Israel had settled down in Egypt. Even their hard servitude did not take from them a love of the Egyptian life-style. They were very loath to follow Moses out into the wilderness. They had dreamed too many this-worldly dreams to want to give up the leeks, the onions and the garlick for the uncertain prospect of receiving their ‘Promised land’. Four hundred years in Egypt had sent Israel fast asleep.

The days of the Judges were another period in which the church of God was largely asleep. It is amazing to us as we read the Old Testament to see how flagrantly Israel was disobeying God’s Word at the period of the Judges. They appear to have been blind to the plainest teachings given so recently by God through Moses. Even some of the Judges themselves had serious blemishes in their faith and conduct. ‘Every man did that which was right in his own eyes’. If we require an explanation for the state of life at that time, we must surely put it down to a widespread and almost universal soul-sleep. One might have hoped better of the church in New Testament times. But it was not to be so. For a thousand years, till Luther woke up with a start in Germany, the European church slept soundly while Bible, gospel and grace lay hidden out of popular sight. Only here and there was there a warning cry from some remote Italian valley or passing Lollard preacher. Europe, however, as a whole slept on. Dark night covered the one continent of mankind which ought to have carried the torch of gospel truth to every corner of the globe.

It is solemn, too, to recall the words of Christ which inform us, evidently, that the very last period of world history will again be characterised by widespread spiritual sleepiness: ‘They all slumbered and slept’ (Matt. 25:5). Not only the nominal church, represented by the five foolish virgins, will be asleep when the Bridegroom returns; but also the true church herself, though certainly prepared, will have sunk down with weariness and drowsiness just before the wedding day dawns.

The above instances – not the only ones we could cite – are evidence enough to remind us that a blanket of sleep may fall across large parts of the visible church in some ages. This is a sheer fact of history and one which the Word of God presents to us for our warning. No doubt there are many who sleep in the best ages of the gospel and under the liveliest of preaching. No doubt society is at best little more than half-awake at any time to the moral and spiritual duties of God’s Word. Nevertheless, it would seem to be a clear lesson of Scripture that some ages are marked by a sleep that is well-nigh universal.

Sleep is a remarkable phenomenon. It is a kind of animated death. In sleep we are oblivious to the real world. The thief may be at the door, or the fire already running up the curtains of the bedroom. But when asleep we neither notice, nor know, nor care. On the other hand, in the dreams of sleep we care for what is unreal and delusive. Men flee from savage beasts, or fall from cliffs, or sail to treasure islands. Our attention is taken up with what is fictional and fictitious.

Just so is the sleep which comes upon men’s souls in ages when the gospel is weak. Armies of heresies threaten the church and people of God; but the church’s watchmen are so fast in slumber that they neither realise nor care. When here and there a faithful voice is raised in warning, there is a general outcry and a demand for the maintenance of silence. Or there may happen some scandalous abuse which threatens to mar the church’s reputation and her credibility. But when sleep has laid the faculties of the soul to rest, men resent the unpopular question and seek to smother the healthy spirit of enquiry. Nothing is so unwelcome to a sleepy man as the alarm which summons him from his bed.

When soul-sleepiness is widespread, men are all taken up with childish dreams and empty trifles. They make great sound and bluster about small matters of procedure and right order. But they may as easily overlook the great matters of justice, mercy and truth as those Pharisees who ‘strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel’ (Matt. 23:24). The cry of all – or almost all – is for more sleep, and woe be to him who tries to wake them!

None who is even half-awake needs to wonder what the explanation is for the state of our modern societies. True religion is banished from the school-room and from the media. The slaughter of aborted infants proceeds like a daily holocaust, Governments meet to legislate away the Sabbath and to decriminalise sodomy. Leprosy is breaking out in every limb of the body politic and there is no physician to heal us. Scarcely a voice is raised in high places to call us to repentance. Such voices as there are are either not heard or else not heeded. Poor nations! Alas, that so great a civilisation as ours should be so deep in spiritual slumber!

It is not surprising that evangelical Christians at this hour should feel numb with battle-fatigue. It is no great miracle if they too, catching the general spirit of drowsiness, are tempted to give in to unresisted slumber at this hour. But this is what we must at all costs refuse to do.

By some means or other Christians must contrive to stay awake and on their feet in these days. If, in order to do so, we must cast out the television set or cut off our right arm, we had better do so. To fall asleep at this hour is treason to Christ and to our own souls. It is to lose our ‘full reward’ (2 John 8), or, worse still, to lose our reward and our soul altogether.

The way to avoid sleeping when poisonous gas fills the room is to run for fresh air and to breathe deeply. We owe it to God and to our salvation to run for fresh oxygen for the soul in this present crisis. What is to stop us all from a radical re-appraisal of our present life-style?

Instead of meeting for merely social purposes, might we not as Christians meet to read good books to one another? The time which we have formerly devoted to easy viewing and listening, might we not devote, in part at least, to secret prayer or family prayer or neighbourhood prayer? The hours which have been spent cruelly criticising the preacher could in future be put to better use in the careful study of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. Some of the energy formerly spent in excessive recreation and socialising might be more productively spent visiting the widows in their affliction ( James 1:27) and in comforting the downcast.

Above all others, preachers must cry to heaven for grace to stay awake at this hour. Let them plunge their heads in the cold waters of God’s truth till their dreams of worldly ease are thrown aside. Never did the world more urgently need an awakening ministry than now. Never was there a more crucial hour for lifting high and blowing loud on the gospel trumpet. All heaven watches as we strive to keep awake while all others sleep. It will stand to our eternal credit if we keep at our post. Sooner than we think perhaps may come the dawning of a new and better day. The wakeful servant must one day sit in honour at his Master’s table (Luke 12:37).

More editorials from Maurice Roberts are collated in The Thought of God, Great God of Wonders, and The Christian’s High Calling. Rev. Roberts is also the author of Finding Peace with God: Justification Explained and The Great Transformation: The Sanctification and Glorification of the Believer.

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Our Daily Food: Or Portions for the Lord’s Household (small clothbound, 208 pages)

James Smith was a contemporary of Spurgeon’s and a previous minister of the New Park Street Chapel. He was a prolific writer, and a variety of devotional materials flowed from his pen. Our Daily Food, or, Portions for the Lord’s Household is one of the briefest and sweetest, produced in a form close to the original, a fine size to put into a pocket or purse and to carry with you. Each day provides, very simply, a phrase of Scripture and an appropriate selection of holy verse, some of which those who love the older hymns will recognise, while others will seem fresh to most readers, the source material having fallen out of fashion. Smith thus doles out a nugget of spiritual nourishment to stir and sustain the soul through the course of one’s daily labours. An ideal gift, and especially valuable as a devotional resource for those whose energies are flagging or whose capacity is low, perhaps because of sickness or old age.

The Shorter Catechism Illustrated from Church History and Biography (clothbound, 284 pages)

John Whitecross was the father-in-law of John G. Paton, and this collection suggests much about the character and quality of Paton’s wife. The current Banner edition is entitled The Shorter Catechism Illustrated from Church History and Biography. The format is exceedingly simple: after each question is stated and answer is given, the author provides two or three pages of illustration and anecdote, some more verifiable than others, but all warm and colourful. For those learning the catechism, especially as part of family worship or church life, this book will wonderfully enliven and illuminate the process, as well as suppling an abundance of material for any preacher’s stock of illustrations. Presented in hardback, it is an excellent resource.

Shapers of Christianity (small paperback, 112 pages)

In Shapers of Christianity Nick Needham provides a highly-selective and high-speed tour of Christians whom the Lord has used to glorify his name, or—to use the book’s subtitle—‘brief sketches of twelve outstanding Christians from across the ages.’ While it is hard to trace any other obvious criteria for a selection that spans two thousand years, and travels from Lyon with Irenaeus to Princeton with Machen by way of Canterbury, Geneva, Oxford, and Zadonsk (yes, Zadonsk), each of these little pen-portraits is fascinating in its own right. In lively prose and with refreshing bluntness (and sometimes surprising sympathy), Needham analyses and assesses each of these personalities and their contribution to the cause of Christ. This book will introduce you to brothers you perhaps had no idea existed, as well as refresh your acquaintance with names you might think you already know.

Pain of a Particular Kind (small paperback, 88 pages)

Pain of a Particular Kind: The Loss of a Child is a harrowing little book, as reflected in its title. It develops themes which Peter Barnes has addressed in shorter forms, growing out of his own wrestling with the topic as pastor, parent, and grandparent. Some of it will make difficult reading, especially for those who have suffered this pain for themselves. Loaded with quotation and anecdote, the book considers the sorrow of loss, God’s answers to our questions, helping those who grieve, and God’s final word. Acknowledging our lack of certainty at some points, Barnes points us back toward the certainty of God himself. There is a straightforwardness to the book which might cause some to wince, but the author wields his knife to cut out the fat and to leave the lean meat. That food will ultimately strengthen the soul.

Isaiah’s Oratorio: An Appreciation of Isaiah 24–27 (small clothbound, 184 pages)

Hywel R. Jones offers us Isaiah’s Oratorio: An Appreciation of Isaiah Chapters 24–27. The treatment is technically and theologically dense and precise, but still lucid and sweet. The insightful introductory material, essential for understanding the author’s approach, soon gives way to the exposition itself. There Jones moves from the overture through the seven movements of Isaiah’s oratorio, this holy flood of speech and song. To call this a literary treatment is not to diminish the author into a mere teacher, still less to suggest that he treats the inspired text with anything less than a proper reverence. It is rather to recognise the depth of careful and prayerful thought and the devout scholarly awareness that lies behind and seeps into this book. Most of us will not and should not attempt to wrench this book, for all its poetry and piety, into sermons. However, properly employed, it will help us to preach Isaiah 24–27 as the glorious Word of God, and to anticipate the day in which God makes his Word glorious.

Unveiling the Cross: Beholding and Proclaiming the Whole Christ (clothbound, 272 pages)

Another treatment of Isaiah comes from W. Ross Blackburn, his entitled Unveiling the Cross: Beholding and Proclaiming the Whole Christ. It is an interesting book, somewhat derivative in that it deliberately responds to and interacts with Sinclair Ferguson’s Whole Christ. This is not to disparage the book, for where Hywel Jones gives us a glorious sweep over several chapters of Isaiah, Blackburn offers a deep dive into chapter 6 to set before us Christ as the crucified one. In some respects, Isaiah 6 acts more as a springboard than a target, providing for a wide-ranging treatment of the main theme of the book. Although the prose can be pedestrian at points, with supporting quotations produced somewhat relentlessly, the author’s fixation on the person and work of the Saviour as the One who makes atonement gives the book its colour and force. If more preachers and authors aimed to keep the dying Saviour so central, we would do very well.

Two New Volumes of Texts that Transform

Finally, Terry L. Johnson gives us another two entries in the ‘Texts that Transform’ series with Texts that Transform Marriage & Family (small paperback, 184 pages) and Texts that Transform Our Hope (small paperback, 160 pages). In each, the approach is the same: to take a series of key texts along a particular theme and to develop them practically. With a wide range of reference, and what seems a deliberate attempt at brevity, these volumes act as helpful primers to believers who may not have considered these issues before. Neither volume offers anything novel, and that is a commendation. The book on marriage and family introduces mankind as male and female, the mutual duties of husband and wife in the divinely-ordered estate of marriage, and then several chapters on child training and education. Similarly, the book on hope introduces us to Christ’s glorious kingdom, and then covers heaven and hell, before concluding with an intriguing consideration on the freedom of God—essentially, the right of the Almighty to do as he will, in accordance with his inscrutable wisdom and to the end of his own glory. Brief and punchy, these are clear introductions to important issues that may prove useful to those who are learning for the first time, as well as to those who need to ground in Scripture their developing ideas, and arrange a growing understanding with order and sense.

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In Acts chapter 14, beginning with verse 21, we see the result of their work:

‘And when they had preached the gospel to that city and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.” So when they had appointed elders in every church, and prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord in whom they had believed…’
Acts 14:21-23

This is how biblical mission takes place: The right men are sent out to preach the biblical gospel – with the goal of biblical conversions, so that men come to true faith through the gospel, these men join together in individual churches, and faithful elders are appointed over these churches.

This is the goal of mission: planting independent churches under the leadership of faithful elders, where God’s Word is proclaimed in purity and God is glorified in truth through worship that pleases Him and a corresponding church life.

This means: Here the cycle starts over again. This newly planted biblical church then again leads a biblical church life, and in doing so develops again this biblical longing for mission under much prayer and fasting, in order to then send out qualified men and plant biblical churches – and the cycle then starts over again. No, it is not sufficient – nowhere near sufficient – to build schools and construct orphanages and hospitals somewhere. All of this may be good and right and also important, but biblical mission work has biblical churches as its goal. If this is not the aim, if this is not the intention, then we cannot speak of biblical mission work. The Lord has commanded us to make disciples, to baptize them and to teach them to observe all things that the Lord Jesus Christ has commanded us. This happens in biblical churches under the supervision of biblical elders.

Taking all of these things together, we see what we as the church of Jesus Christ need to pay attention to if we want to do biblical mission work. First of all, we need a biblical church life. We have the duty to faithfully proclaim God’s Word in all truth, to offer pure worship – not according to our own ideas, but according to God’s Word – and also to base our whole church life on the fact that the Lord Jesus really is the Lord and to prioritize obeying Him in all matters. Then we must also be careful not to become self-satisfied, but rather to develop a biblical longing under supplication and fasting, pleading with the Lord to use us and do great things for the glory of His name and for the furtherance of His kingdom.

Moreover, it is important that we nurture men in our midst – men who are learning to preach biblically, men who are useful for the kingdom of God. Doing this must be one of our main concerns! If our country needs one thing, then it is biblically oriented preachers. 2 Timothy 2:2 says, ‘And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.’ Who has the responsibility to train men so that they become pastors, elders, missionaries, preachers? Who has the responsibility to conduct seminars and provide Bible teaching? The church. Seminaries and Bible schools may help with this, but it is and remains the responsibility of the church to train men and then also to send out men, to appoint men, to nurture men in their midst, so that they learn to be faithful in all things. And the church must seek the Lord and plead that He would send out such labourers, also from their own congregation – men whom they would preferably keep for themselves. It is important that the church develop this selflessness, this willingness to make sacrifices, to send out these men, even when it hurts. A biblical church is always a church that is willing to make sacrifices and that also makes sacrifices for the furtherance of the kingdom of God.

If the concern of mission is on our hearts, we must be willing to let men go. Even if this means momentary weakening for us, others will be strengthened and blessed by this. And we do not need to worry or fear or mourn, because if we act selflessly for the kingdom of God, then God will bless this and He will equip us with sufficient teachers. And when we send out these men, then it is with the biblical goal that there would be biblical conversions and that this would lead to the planting of biblical churches where biblical elders can be appointed.

In all this we must be conscious of the fact that mission work without the help of our God is an absolute impossibility. Therefore, to emphasize it again, mission work is first and foremost prayer work. Let us therefore plead that the Lord would send out labourers, because mission work is a work of the Spirit. The Spirit enables people for Himself who the Spirit Himself calls – men whom He trains and forms for this ministry. Therefore, we must seek the help of the Holy Spirit with much prayer. Acts 13:4 says, ‘So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit …’ If we need one thing, it is this: the work of the Spirit, that He would enable us, give us boldness, grant us opportunities so that people would be converted, that He would call people and send them out and give His guidance in all of this. Mission ultimately is a work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, let us plead for the fullness of the Holy Spirit! Our attitude must not be, ‘God, we have some plans. Maybe You can help us with them!’ Instead, we should pray, ‘Oh God, it is Your mission work! It is Your doing! And it is not only an honor and a joy for us, but also our longing to be a part of Your great rescue mission! Please be gracious to us!’

And when the Holy Spirit empowers us, when He fills us, then this does not result in some kind of a circus, but in boldness for witness, that we start to preach God’s holy Word with boldness and develop a zeal for mission. A missionary by the name of Henry Martyn went to Iran, even though this was very dangerous. He said, ‘The spirit of Christ is the spirit of mission. The nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become.’

Therefore, may the Lord bless us with His Holy Spirit, with the spirit of mission, so that He would do His work in our midst! May it be that some of you also would be called to become missionaries, that you would be part of a biblical church where you prove to be faithful, and that the Lord would then one day speak in such a way that it would be clear to all: You are called and set apart to go. May the Lord do this work of the Spirit in our midst, for the glory of His name alone!

Peter Schild is a pastor of the Evangelical Reformed Baptist Church of Frankfurt.

First German edition, 2022. Original German title: Gemeinde und Mission. Translated by Michael T. Schmid. All Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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‘As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then, having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.’
Acts 13:2-3

God Himself, the Holy Spirit, answered their praying and fasting. He probably spoke through the mouth of those prophets when He said, ‘Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Just imagine what this must have meant for the church: they had to send away two of their best men! But this did not come as a surprise to the church. It was evident to all that these two men would be worth considering for missionary service. For a long time, these two men had already been a team and their ministry had been a great blessing to many. It was clear to all that the hand of the Lord was upon them.

When we take a look at Acts 11, we read about their joint work beginning in verse 25: ‘Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch.’ He wanted Paul to be useful in the church. ‘So it was that for a whole year they assembled with the church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.’ This passage talks about these two men who for more than a whole year had proved themselves to be faithful teachers in the church and taught many. They were a team and this was evident to all. They were a great blessing throughout that whole year.

And then something else happened – we read this later in chapter 11: The church received a prophetic revelation that there would be a famine. Therefore, the Christians collected money for the believers in Judea to help them and assist them in this difficult time. And who was sent out to deliver the money? We read in verse 30, ‘This they also did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.’ These two men had proved themselves to be faithful as a team. They had served for over a year as teachers in the church and had been a blessing to many. They had been teaching a great many people. These were men who had proved themselves to be faithful to such a great degree that they were even entrusted with all of the money. There was no thought that they would take it for themselves. These were faithful men, seasoned teachers of the church, who had stood the test. Therefore it is not surprising that the Holy Spirit then said: ‘Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul!’ It was no surprise. The lives of these men had previously shown that these were men of God who were among those most useful for the church. Their qualification and their calling were evident to all.

So we see that the church was called to send out some of its best men. It was not to send those who it could somehow do without. It was called to send out some of its best men, because biblical mission work means: a biblical church sending out biblically qualified preachers to proclaim the gospel in other places – men who have proved themselves to be faithful in their teaching and in their lives, men who know the Word of God and have proclaimed it. The mission field needs preachers of the Word who have proved themselves in a church to be orthodox, able to teach, and faithful. Yes, it is also good to send out doctors, Bible translators and teachers who might teach people to read and write. A missionary can be supported in many ways, but the spearhead of missions is the missionary who is a faithful teacher of God’s Word. We are speaking about men who are biblically qualified and who have been sent out by a church in order to plant churches, men who one would actually want to appoint as elders in the church because they are qualified, men whose lives and teaching satisfy God’s demands according to His holy Word. We cannot allow ourselves to make lower demands on missionaries, as though missionary service were somehow a lesser ministry compared to the ministry of elders in the church.

Is the basic prerequisite for becoming a missionary to have studied theology?

Everywhere in our country, in big cities, there are young men who have not been trained, who are not firm in faith, who have not proven themselves as faithful in a biblical church, who have not been sent out by a biblical church. They simply went to Bible school or to a seminary, and then they send themselves. They simply decided for themselves to now become a preacher. No church had any say in this. But is the basic prerequisite for becoming a missionary to have studied theology? You must have learned to be faithful, to be a member of a biblical church under the oversight of biblical elders who speak into your life. You must have proven to them that you are faithful in little things. Then the Lord will also place you over greater things.

But our country is full of young men who ‘play’ church, who say, ‘Oh, we want to reinvent church!’, who say, ‘It is cool to plant churches.’ The kingdom of God is no playground for people to run around and try things out. It is not about experiments, it is not about adventure. The church is the blood-bought bride of Christ. One does not play around with her.

Church planting and biblical missions are the work of proven men who have been sent out by a biblical church – men who have proven themselves to be faithful and able to proclaim God’s Word, who have been evaluated and commissioned by a church that follows the biblical guidelines. However, there also are men who believe that they do not need any of this, because God supposedly spoke to them. God somehow laid it on their heart to become missionaries. Why would one then still need the authority of a local church?

Have you noticed who is included in this list of men? The apostle Paul! He had a personal encounter with the risen Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord called him to be the apostle to the nations. Have you noticed that Paul did not simply make his way? One actually might expect this to have been the case. But what happened in the previous years? Paul, you have been called by the Lord Jesus Christ – why don’t you just go then? But he does not go. In God’s providence, he first comes to a church, and in the list of men he is named last – an apostle, last of all! He first had to learn to serve with humility and to preach the Word in a church context. And only then he was sent out, when he had proven himself to be useful in the church. He waited until the Holy Spirit spoke through the church and sent him out.

Who do you think you are? How can you think about bypassing the church of Jesus and simply being a self-proclaimed missionary? The apostle Paul was sent out by a church. This is what biblical missions looks like: A biblical church sends out biblically qualified men concerning whom all in the church were sure that the Spirit had called and enabled them. Look at their lives and their ministry: These are faithful men, servants of the Word. These are men whom one would prefer to keep and appoint as elders, because it is clear that they would be such a benefit to the church. These are men who are trusted, because one knows that they do the work that is necessary – this difficult work that is required to plant a church at another location.

This is exactly what this church at Antioch did: It sent out some of its best men – and this surely was painful! Do you believe this was easy for the church? Certainly not. But they were willing to let some of their very best men go – men who had contributed so much to the ministry and who were such a great blessing. You see, sending churches must be prepared to not seek their own good. For the glory of God and for the salvation of the lost, they must say to their most important men: Go, we send you! We will make this sacrifice!

The church at Antioch was completely committed to God’s words. In Acts 13:3 we read that they laid hands on Barnabas and Paul. In doing so, they were saying, ‘We as a church are sending you according to the Word of the Lord. We are completely committed, not half-hearted. The Spirit is sending you and we are completely committed to this.’ Take note of what they do here again. We have seen it already in verse 2: ‘As they ministered to the Lord and fasted.’ And then in verse 3, in connection with their laying hands upon Barnabas and Saul, we read again, ‘Then, having fasted and prayed…’ They truly were a church of fasting and prayer, because they knew that what was happening here was a work of the Lord. It must happen in His power. In fact, it only can happen in His power.

Again: Biblical missions is based on prayer. Mission work is prayer work. It is a work of the Lord. It is the Holy Spirit who calls and enables missionaries. It is the Holy Spirit who sends out missionaries through His church.

We read further in verse 4, ‘So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia.’ Missions is the concern of the Spirit. He Himself equips men. He prepares them for the hard work of missions that requires proven men who have been formed by the Spirit for this ministry. It is a work of the Spirit. But for what purpose? What is the goal of missions?

This is the question we will address in the fourth and final article.

Peter Schild is a pastor of the Evangelical Reformed Baptist Church of Frankfurt. One more instalment of Peter’s booklet will appear here on the Banner of Truth website in the coming two weeks. 

Featured image (visible when article shared on social media) by Christian Papaux on Unsplash. 

First German edition, 2022. Original German title: Gemeinde und Mission. Translated by Michael T. Schmid. All Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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‘As they ministered to the Lord and fasted…’ — Acts 13:2

There is a real danger that a church becomes stagnant in self-satisfaction. The church at Antioch could have said, ‘We have good teachers, a good, orderly worship service and a church life that is pleasing to God.’ And it could simply have been satisfied with itself about this. The church could have said, ‘We do not need anything else. Now we just want to focus on maintaining and edifying ourselves in some way.’ With such an attitude one loses sight of the actual mandate that the Lord has given to the church, namely fulfilling the Great Commission.

This church at Antioch was not self-satisfied. It had a holy dissatisfaction, a holy hunger. We read that they ‘fasted.’ Fasting is an expression of a hunger for God, an expression of a desire that God would intervene, that He would act. The one who fasts says, ‘Oh God, we need You more than our daily bread! We need Your intervention, Your direction, Your wisdom, Your strength, Your guidance! It is absolutely necessary that You act. We want You to receive glory, Your kingdom to be built. Therefore do something, oh Lord, for the glory of Your name! Maybe send out laborers, also from our midst. Show us what we can do so that Your holy name would be glorified!’

Biblical mission arises from churches that are not self-satisfied and preoccupied only with themselves, but that have a holy desire that God would act for His glory. These churches earnestly long that God would use the church for the furtherance of His kingdom. The church members in Antioch could simply have been content with what they had. But no, they earnestly desired the Lord, they sought God. They did not merely seek blessing for themselves, rather we see here that this church apparently had a huge burden for God’s kingdom and for the lost. That is why they also fasted. And it is evident here that the Lord answered their prayer. He sent out men. This suggests that they perhaps prayed something like this: ‘Lord, we want You to show us how we can serve You, how we can further Your kingdom, how we can reach the lost! This concern is more important to us than eating and drinking. We plead with You to do something for the glory of Your name! You must act, Lord, and show us what we must do, how we must proceed! Please lead us!’

This raises the question what our attitude might be, what your attitude might be. Do you have this holy dissatisfaction, a longing that God would intervene, that He would do great things for the glory of His name, that He would save the lost? Do you have a concern, a burden for this? Do you have a hunger for God, more than for your daily bread?

The church of God must always maintain a burning passion for mission work. Charles Haddon Spurgeon once stated it this way: ‘if there be any one point in which the Christian church ought to keep its fervour at a white heat, it is concerning missions to the heathen. If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world.’¹

Do you – does your church – have a holy, burning desire for God to intervene, to do something for His glory? Why does the Lord not use some churches in the same way as the church at Antioch? Why does such little blessing come from some churches, while in other cases, no mission work occurs at all? Could it be that the words of James are fulfilled in such churches: ‘you do not have because you do not ask’ (James 4:2)? Is this not at all a concern for you? Do you not have a hunger for this? Do you not wish at all that the Lord would be glorified, that His name would be worshipped from the rising of the sun to its setting, everywhere in the world? Churches that lack this heartfelt desire do not plead, do not fast and do not ask the Lord to send out labourers, as Christ taught us to pray in Luke 10:2: ‘Then He said to them, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’ Surely this is a biblical command, given by Jesus Himself: to pray that He would send out labourers! The harvest is great, but the labourers are few!

The church at Antioch pleaded with fasting that the Lord would hear the cry of their heart. Those who are richly blessed with biblical teaching are in danger of becoming self-satisfied and simply wanting to preserve themselves. They are also in danger of taking all of their blessings for granted: going to church Sunday after Sunday and hearing a sound expository sermon, taking part in an orderly worship service that is pleasing to God, and experiencing a biblical, orderly church life. One might think, ‘This is really wonderful, that we have all of this. Let us thank God for this!’ But are there also tears about the sad reality that millions and millions of lost souls experience none of this?
The church at Antioch sought the face of the Lord, because mission work is based on prayer work. Missions is based on prayer and supplication and fasting. The Lord can do great things if we only serve Him and seek His face, which is exactly what the church at Antioch did. And the Lord answered their prayer.

Peter Schild is a pastor of the Evangelical Reformed Baptist Church of Frankfurt. Two more instalments of Peter’s booklet will appear here on the Banner of Truth website in the coming two weeks. 

Featured image (visible when article shared on social media) by Billy Williams on Unsplash

First German edition, 2022. Original German title: Gemeinde und Mission. Translated by Michael T. Schmid. All Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The post Biblical Mission Arises from Biblical Longing and Supplication appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

Anytime I’m interviewed about the history of Thanksgiving, the interviewers always seem to try to direct the conversation to popular myths about the “First Thanksgiving,” with the tiresome result that we end up mostly talking about what the Pilgrims had to eat.  For my part, I’d rather discuss the far more important misconceptions most of us have about the Pilgrims: we tend to misunderstand why they came to America in the first place, how they saw themselves, and how they understood the celebration that we–not they–labeled the “First Thanksgiving.”  Between now and Thursday I thought I would share some past posts that speak to those foundational questions.  I hope you enjoy.

In Search of Religious Freedom?

The belief that the Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom is inspiring, but in the sense that we usually mean it, it’s not really true. I’ve shared this reality numerous times since writing The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us about Loving God and Learning from History, and I almost always get pushback from the audience. That’s understandable, since most of us from our childhood have been raised to believe quite the opposite. But if we’re going to really learn from the Pilgrims’ story, we need to be willing to listen to them instead of putting words into their mouths.

One of my favorite all-time quotes is from Democracy in America where Alexis de Tocqueville observes, “A false but clear and precise idea always has more power in the world than one which is true but complex.” The Pilgrims’ motives for coming to America is a case in point.

The popular understanding that the Pilgrims came to America “in search of religious freedom” is technically true, but it is also misleading. It is technically true in that the freedom to worship according to the dictates of Scripture was at the very top of their list of priorities. They had already risked everything to escape religious persecution, and the majority never would have knowingly chosen a destination where they would once again wear the “yoke of antichristian bondage,” as they described their experience in England.

To say that the Pilgrims came “in search of” religious freedom is misleading, however, in that it implies that they lacked such liberty in Holland. Remember that the Pilgrims did not come to America directly from England. They had left England in 1608, locating briefly in Amsterdam before settling for more than a decade in Leiden. If a longing for religious freedom alone had compelled them, they might never have left that city. Years later, the Pilgrim’s governor, William Bradford, recalled that in Leiden God had allowed them “to come as near the primitive pattern of the first churches as any other church of these later times.” As Pilgrim Edward Winslow recalled, God had blessed them with “much peace and liberty” in Holland. They hoped to find “the like liberty” in their new home.

“Licentiousness” and “Hardness”

But that is not all that they hoped to find. Boiled down, the Pilgrims had two major complaints about their experience in Holland. First, they found it a hard place to raise their children. Dutch culture was too permissive, they believed. Bradford commented on “the great licentiousness of youth” in Holland and lamented the “evil examples” and “manifold temptations of the place.” Part of the problem was the Dutch parents. They gave their children too much freedom, Bradford’s nephew, Nathaniel Morton, explained, and Separatist parents could not give their own children “due correction without reproof or reproach from their neighbors.”

Compounding these challenges was what Bradford called “the hardness of the place.” If Holland was a hard place to raise strong families, it was an even harder place to make a living. Leiden was a crowded, rapidly growing city. Most houses were ridiculously small by our standards, some with no more than a couple hundred square feet of floor space. The typical weaver’s home was somewhat larger. It boasted three rooms—two on the main floor and one above—with a cistern under the main floor to collect rainwater, sometimes side by side with a pit for an indoor privy.

In contrast to the seasonal rhythms of farm life, the pace of work was long, intense, and unrelenting. Probably half or more of the Separatist families became textile workers. In this era before the industrial revolution, cloth production was still a decentralized, labor intensive process, with countless families carding, spinning, or weaving in their own homes from dawn to dusk, six days a week, merely to keep body and soul together. Hunger and want had become their taskmaster.

This life of “great labor and hard fare” was a threat to the church, Bradford repeatedly stressed. It discouraged Separatists in England from joining them, he believed, and tempted those in Leiden to return home. If religious freedom was to be thus linked with poverty, then there were some—too many—who would opt for the religious persecution of England over the religious freedom of Holland. And the challenge would only increase over time. Old age was creeping up on many of the congregation, indeed, was being hastened prematurely by “great and continual labor.” While the most resolute could endure such hardships in the prime of life, advancing age and declining strength would cause many either to “sink under their burdens” or reluctantly abandon the community in search of relief.

In explaining the Pilgrim’s decision to leave Holland, William Bradford stressed the Pilgrim’s economic circumstances more than any other factor, but it is important that we hear correctly what he was saying. Bradford was not telling us that the Pilgrims left for America in search of the “American Dream” or primarily to maximize their own individual well being.

In Bradford’s telling, it is impossible to separate the Pilgrims’ concerns about either the effects of Dutch culture or their economic circumstances from their concerns for the survival of their church. The leaders of the Leiden congregation may not have feared religious persecution, but they saw spiritual danger and decline on the horizon.

The solution, the Pilgrim leaders believed, was to “take away these discouragements” by relocating to a place with greater economic opportunity as part of a cooperative mission to preserve their covenant community. If the congregation did not collectively “dislodge . . . to some place of better advantage,” and soon, the church seemed destined to erode like the banks of a stream, as one by one, families and individuals slipped away.

So where does this leave us? Were the Pilgrims coming to America to flee religious persecution? Not at all. Were they motivated by a religious impulse? Absolutely. But why is it important to make these seemingly fine distinctions? Is this just another exercise in academic hair-splitting? I don’t think so. In fact, I think that the implications of getting the Pilgrims’ motives right are huge.

Scorching Sun or Strangling Thorns?

As I re-read the Pilgrims’ words, I find myself meditating on Jesus’ parable of the sower. You remember how the sower casts his seed (the word of God), and it falls on multiple kinds of ground, not all of which prove fruitful. The seed that lands on stony ground sprouts immediately but the plant withers under the heat of the noonday sun, while the seed cast among thorns springs up and then is choked by the surrounding weeds. The former, Jesus explained to His disciples, represents those who receive the word gladly, but stumble “when tribulation or persecution arises for the word’s sake” (Mark 4:17). The latter stands for those who allow the word to be choked by “the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things” (Mark 4:19).

In emphasizing the Pilgrims’ “search for religious freedom,” we inadvertently make the primary menace in their story the heat of persecution. Persecution led them to leave England for Holland, but it was not the primary reason that they came to America. As the Pilgrim writers saw it, the principal threat to their congregation in Holland was not the scorching sun, but strangling thorns.

The difference matters, particularly if we’re approaching the Pilgrims’ moment in history as an opportunity to learn from them. It broadens the kind of conversation we have with them and makes it more relevant. When we hear of the Pilgrims’ resolve in the face of persecution, we may nod our heads admiringly and meditate on the courage of their convictions. Perhaps we will even ask ourselves how we would respond if, God forbid, we were to endure the same trial. And yet the danger seems so remote, the question so comfortably hypothetical. Whatever limitations we may chafe against in the public square, as Christians in the United States we don’t have to worry that the government will send us to prison unless we worship in the church that it chooses and interpret the Bible in the manner that it dictates.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that we never ask the question. Posing it can remind us to be grateful for the freedom we enjoy. It may inspire us to greater vigilance in preserving that freedom and heighten our concern for Christians around the world who cannot take such freedom for granted. These are good things. But I am suggesting that we not dwell overlong on the question. I’m dubious of the value of moral reflection that focuses on hypothetical circumstances. Avowals of how we would respond to imaginary adversity are worth pretty much what they cost us. Character isn’t forged in the abstract, but in the concrete crucible of everyday life, in the myriad mundane decisions that both shape and reveal the heart’s deepest loves.

Here the Pilgrims’ struggle with “thorns” speaks to us. Compared to the dangers they faced in England, their hardships in Holland were so . . . ordinary. I don’t mean to minimize them, but merely to point out that they are difficulties we are more likely to relate to. They worried about their children’s future. They feared the effects of a corrupt and permissive culture. They had a hard time making ends meet. They wondered how they would provide for themselves in old age. Does any of this sound familiar?

And in contrast to their success in escaping persecution, they found the cares of the world much more difficult to evade. As it turned out, thorn bushes grew in the New World as well as the Old. In little more than a decade, William Bradford was concerned that economic circumstances were again weakening the fabric of the church. This time, ironically, the culprit was not the pressure of want but the prospect of wealth (“the deceitfulness of riches”?) as faithful members of the congregation left Plymouth in search of larger, more productive farms. A decade after that, Bradford was decrying the presence of gross immorality within the colony. Drunkenness and sexual sin had become so common, he lamented, that it caused him “to fear and tremble at the consideration of our corrupt natures.”

When we insist that the Pilgrims came to America “in search of religious freedom,” we tell their story in a way that they themselves wouldn’t recognize. In the process, we make their story primarily a source of ammunition for the culture wars. Frustrated by increasing governmental infringement on religious expression, we remind the unbelieving culture around us that “our forefathers” who “founded” this country were driven above all by a commitment to religious liberty.

But while we’re bludgeoning secularists with the Pilgrim story, we ignore the aspects of their story that might cast a light into our own hearts. They struggled with fundamental questions still relevant to us today: What is the true cost of discipleship? What must we sacrifice in pursuit of the kingdom? How can we “shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15) and keep ourselves “unspotted from the world” (James 1:27)? What sort of obligation do we owe our local churches, and how do we balance that duty with family commitments and individual desires? What does it look like to “seek first the kingdom of God” and can we really trust God to provide for all our other needs?

As Christians, these are crucial questions we need to revisit regularly. We might even consider discussing them with our families as part of our Thanksgiving celebrations.

About the author: Dr. Robert Tracy McKenzie is Professor of History and Arthur F. Holmes Chair of Faith and Learning at Wheaton College, Illinois. His most recent book is We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of Democracy and readers who have enjoyed this article may be interested to read more in his 2013 book The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History.

Each of the paintings featured in this post are believed to be in the public domain. If you have reason to believe that this is not the case, please contact us.

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‘Now in the church that was at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then, having fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.’ — Acts 13:1–3

This Bible passage briefly summarizes four basic principles for biblical mission work that will be considered in this book.

Principle 1: Biblical Mission is Grounded in Biblical Churches

Let me state it plainly: Mission is a matter of the church. The church is the sole breeding ground and the true foundation for biblical missions.

We read nothing about mission agencies in Scripture. This does not mean that there should be no mission agencies in principle. They can, by all means, be a help and support for churches in fulfilling their missionary mandate. However, from a biblical perspective, it is the church of Jesus Christ that has the sole responsibility to fulfil the Great Commission. Mission agencies cannot take over this responsibility on behalf of the church.

A Young Church

The Bible passage under consideration shows us a biblical church: the church at Antioch. In verse 1 we read, ‘Now in the church that was at Antioch …’ What is remarkable is that this church at Antioch was a very young church – it was only a few years old. This church was really still in its infancy, but its feet were already ‘shod … with the preparation [to testify] of the gospel of peace’ (Eph. 6:15).

It was this young church at Antioch that initiated the first official missionary journey. A considerable time earlier, Jesus Christ had already given His famous Great Commission, which we find in Matthew 28:19-20: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.’ The church at Jerusalem, however, struggled to take the gospel beyond the immediate surroundings of their city. There first had to be a persecution before the Christians went out to other regions.

Here in Acts 13, in the city of Antioch, we read for the first time in the Holy Scriptures about missionaries being officially sent out from the church to make disciples in the Roman Empire and to plant churches. This is a historic moment. And how did it begin? With a church. Mission is a matter of the church. World missions originated here in a church that was still very young. This means that a church does not have to be old or large in size. What matters is that it is a biblical church. One of the main characteristics of a biblical church is biblical teaching and service to the Lord. This is what characterized the church at Antioch. It faithfully proclaimed the name of the Lord.

Blessed with God’s Voice

Consider how richly blessed this young church was with Bible teachers. Verse 1 says, ‘Now in the church that was at Antioch there were certain prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.’ So the church had prophets and teachers. Prophets were men who had God’s word directly placed in their mouth, who spoke God’s word in a way that is no longer available for us today. And teachers were men who proclaimed and explained God’s written Word. These men simply passed on what God told them – not their own thoughts and ideas. This church faithfully proclaimed God’s Word. And it was blessed with five such men. It is a blessing to have just one such man who really proclaims God’s Word, but they even had five of them. What a gift! What a reason to thank God! This cannot be taken for granted. Such men still exist today, but they have become very rare – men who preach God’s Word faithfully, boldly and plainly. They do not proclaim their own ideas, but are simply a mouthpiece of God.

What a great need we have for such men in our country today! How many people lament the fact that they cannot find such a preacher or a church where God’s Word is faithfully preached, where it is said, ‘Thus says the Lord!’

What a blessing to have not just one, but five such men! Here is a church that is nourished, led, convicted, corrected, encouraged, edified, comforted and strengthened only by the Word of God! What a blessing! Having men who faithfully proclaim God’s Word is one of the main indicators that a church is blessed. There are many apostate churches that amass false teachers for themselves, countless false teachers. God’s Word tells us in 2 Timothy 4:3, ‘For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers…’ The reason they amass such teachers for themselves is that their words tickle their ears, ‘and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables’ (v. 4). They procured false teachers for themselves who tell stories instead of proclaiming God’s Word. What a blessing it is therefore if God gives us truthful preachers – those of whom we read in Jeremiah 3:15, where the Lord says: ‘And I will give you shepherds according to My heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.’ What a blessing! If the church had only one such preacher who proclaims God’s Word in truth, it would have had sufficient reason to kneel down in prayer daily and thank God for this gift! The church at Antioch was richly blessed: it had five such preachers.

Blessed with Unity

And this is not the only blessing that this church had. It is also a blessing that these men formed one unit and did not argue among themselves over theological matters, which could easily have been the case. Consider how different these men were: Barnabas, a Levite, a Jew; Simeon, called Niger, a dark-skinned African; Lucius of Cyrene – most likely a Roman name belonging to a man with Roman background, probably from North Africa. And then there was Manaen, who had grown up together with Herod, probably a very wealthy man coming from high society, a man of rank and power. And Saul was also a part of this group, a devout Jew and a Pharisee, someone who used to persecute the churches, but who was now called as an apostle – and yet he is mentioned last in this list. They all come from very different places and have different backgrounds. It would therefore have been very easy for them to become involved in theological disputes or arguments about their rank, who was first among them. But there was a unity in faith, in doctrine and in confession. This is the blessing of God.

This blessing of unity among the brethren is the theme of Psalm 133. There we read, ‘For there’, regarding this unity among the brethren, ‘the Lord commanded the blessing— Life forevermore.’ This is the basis for true biblical missions, that a church faithfully teaches God’s Word and is one in its doctrine and its leadership. This is the breeding ground for everything else.

Ministering to God

A biblical church not only teaches biblically, it also ministers biblically, as we see in Acts 13:2: ‘As they ministered to the Lord …’ They served the Lord. The Greek word that is translated here as ‘ministered’ is a special word [leiturgeo] that has to do with public worship. It is about serving in the context of worship, as a priest would have done in the old covenant when performing his duties in the temple. These men served in worship, in leading biblical church services, so that the church members were guided to worship God in spirit and in truth and glorify Him alone. These men not only taught correctly, but also instructed all to serve correctly and give God the glory in all areas of life and worship. In other words: As leaders, they truly instructed the church to worship together in a biblical way – a pure worship service that truly glorifies the Lord. And they instructed the church members to serve Him completely also as a church in all areas. Right teaching must lead to true worship where God is glorified in a way that is pleasing to Him.

How sad it is to see that churches all over our country no longer teach rightly, and that they therefore no longer conduct worship in a right way, that their church service is basically nothing more than a smorgasbord of human ideas. They no longer serve to worship God, but rather they serve their own entertainment. How greatly things have changed over the years!

A biblical church is a church that faithfully proclaims God’s Word with a unity of sentiment, but also serves God with pure and holy worship, in the context of a church life that is characterized by serving God and giving the glory to Him alone in all areas. Why? Verse 2 tells us why: ‘As they ministered to the Lord…’ Why should one do this with all faithfulness? Because the church does not belong to us, but to the Lord.

A biblical church is characterized by faithfully serving the Lord. The church at Antioch was a church that completely submitted to Christ. It did not serve itself, but rather served the Lord. It is not about our ideas and conceptions and desires. It is solely about doing the will of the Lord and giving Him the glory that He is due. Such churches where the truth is taught and God is faithfully served in a way that pleases Him will be blessed. And this is the basis for biblical mission: a healthy, biblical church that proclaims God and serves Him faithfully. This is the breeding ground for missions. Therefore, before a church even begins to think about doing mission work and planting churches in certain places, it should first learn to be a biblical church itself. Otherwise everything else that it produces will be null and void. Therefore, we have to begin with ourselves. We must allow ourselves to be reformed. We must become more biblical in all areas. Now when this is the case, when a church lives in such a way, then something grows out from this. And this leads us to the second principle of mission…

Peter Schild is a pastor of the Evangelical Reformed Baptist Church of Frankfurt. Three more instalments of Peter’s booklet will appear here on the Banner of Truth website in the coming two weeks. 

Featured image (visible when article shared on social media) by Eilis Garvey on Unsplash

First German edition, 2022. Original German title: Gemeinde und Mission. Translated by Michael T. Schmid. All Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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A horticultural kind of growth

Owen well understood that the Christian life is not marked by even, unhindered, mechanical progress. Rather, growth is ‘horticultural’, uneven, irregular and inconsistent. The reason for this is not difficult to understand: the life of faith is not immune from the disappointments and heartaches of what Paul calls ‘the sufferings of this present age’ (Rom. 8:18). God does not exempt his children from unexpected, sorely-wounding providences. In 2 Cor. 1:8, Paul tells us that the hardships and pressures he and his friends were experiencing were so severe, that ‘we despaired even of life’! Even in the model life of faith, we find our Lord Jesus Christ experiencing disappointment, opposition, hardships, and bereavement. Nowhere does God imply that his believing children will be cocooned from the struggles, disappointments, and perplexities of living in a fallen world. On the contrary, in addition to this the Lord tells us that ‘everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted’ (2 Tim. 3:12). Without this spiritual realism, our lives will become the prisoners of circumstance, rising and falling depending on the kind of circumstances that touch our lives.

More than spiritual realism

But the Lord has given us infinitely more than the grace of spiritual realism in order that we might cope with the heartaches, disappointments, and mysteries that inevitably touch our lives. First of all, he promises us his unfailing presence in all our times of need: ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’ (Heb. 13:5). More than that, he promises to be the indwelling Helper of his children. In the upper room, as he faced the cross, the Lord Jesus assured his disciples, ‘I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you’ (John 14:18). He was speaking of his coming in his Spirit to be their abiding indwelling Sanctifier and Friend. Whatever difficulties and disappointments you face, however sore God’s unexpected providences, of this you can be sure, you are never alone! All the resources of the Godhead are for you and in you! Believe this!

Our sovereign Lord

More than this, God assures us that not one unexpected providence that touches his children’s lives is fortuitous. Our God is the one ‘who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will’ (Eph. 1:11). Here we come face to face with God’s unconditional sovereignty. But this truth is revealed in Scripture not as a puzzle to unravel, but as a comfort to embrace! Who is this God who is unconditionally sovereign over all things? He is the God who ‘spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all’ (Rom. 8:32). He is ‘the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort’ (2 Cor. 1:3). It is our loving heavenly Father who does whatsoever he pleases. Who God is to us in Christ is our assurance that ‘our Father’s hand will never cause his child a needless tear’. Believe this. By faith draw out the comfort of being a dearly loved and precious child of a sovereign and loving Father.

‘These inward trials I employ’

There is another strand of encouragement that God gives to us in his word. In 2 Corinthians 1, where Paul recounts the great pressures that were causing him to despair even of life, he tells us that ‘this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead’. God was pleased to bring his servant into such straitened circumstances in order to strengthen his trust and confirm his obedience. Samuel Rutherford made the same point: ‘Faith is the better for the free air and the sharp winter storm in its face. Grace withereth without adversity.’ God always has our eternal as well as our present good in mind in his relations with us. John Newton’s celebrated hymn, ‘These Inward Trials’, captures the grace of God’s dealings with his hard-pressed children. Having asked the Lord for growth in ‘faith and love and every grace’, the child of God finds his life assaulted on all sides by unexpected and sore providences. In response to the Christian’s perplexity at what has happened, the Lord replies:

These inward trials I employ,
From self and pride to set thee free,
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou mayest seek thy all in me.

The Lord always and ever has our best before him. He is ‘the gardener’ who lovingly prunes the branches united to his Son so that they will bear ‘even more fruit’ (see John 15:1-2).

Until we go to be with the Lord, we will find unexpected, and sore, providences touching our lives. It cannot be otherwise, for the servant is not greater than the Master! But, though we might well be hard pressed on every side, we are never crushed. Though we might well be perplexed, we are never in despair. Even if we are persecuted, we are never abandoned (see 2 Cor. 4:8-9). God will not exempt you from the tears or the pains; but he will be with you, and in you, every step of the way, bringing the infinite resources of the Godhead graciously to sustain you and make you ‘more than a conqueror’. He who promised is faithful.

This article first appearead in the January 2015 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine, no. 616.

Ian Hamilton is former trustee of the Banner of Truth and an associate minister at Smithton Church in Inverness. 

Featured Photo (visible when article shared on social media) by Sandie Clarke on Unsplash.

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‘It is ironic that of all the people one might expect to hold a low view of God because of their circumstances, the African slave actually held the highest view. Despite all the suffering and oppression of slavery, slaves maintained a view of God that emphasized his sovereignty and his goodness. They were committed to the biblical revelation that exalted God in all his perfections.’—Thabiti Anyabwile¹

During the Great Awakening in America, ‘All across the British Atlantic world, African slaves were converting to Christianity in large numbers through the new Evangelical movements.’² Gilbert Tennent, speaking of a preaching tour in the winter of 1740-41, when he was in Charlestown, wrote, ‘Multitudes were awakened, and several had received great consolation; especially among the young people, children and negroes.’³ In similar terms, William Tennent wrote to one of his correspondents, Thomas Prince. Speaking of his ministry in Freehold, New Jersey, October 11, 1744, he recorded, ‘Some negroes, I trust, are made free in Christ, and more seem to be unfeignedly seeking after it’ (p. 231). Samuel Davies, later to become the President of the College of New Jersey, wrote in 1757, ‘What little success I have lately had, has been chiefly among the extremes of Gentlemen and Negroes. Indeed, God has been remarkably working among the latter. I have baptized 150 adults.’ It was ‘from Calvinism this generation of black authors drew a vision of God at work providentially in lives of black people, directing their sufferings yet promising the faithful among them a restoration to his favour and presence.’⁴

After preaching a final sermon on one visit to Philadelphia and retiring to his lodgings, Whitefield recorded, ‘Near 50 Negroes came to give me thanks for what God had done for their souls.’ He considered this an answer to prayer, saying, ‘I have been much drawn in prayer for them, and have seen them wrought upon by the word preached.’ On Whitefield’s death in 1770, An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield, appeared, containing the following lines:

He pray’d that grace in every heart might dwell:
He long’d to see America excell…
He urg’d the need of HIM to every one;
It was no less than GOD’s co-equal SON!
Take HIM ye wretched for your only good;
Take HIM ye starving souls to be your food.
Ye thirsty, come to this life-giving stream:
Ye Preachers, take him for your joyful theme:
Take HIM, ‘my dear AMERICANS,’ he said,
Be your complaints in his kind bosom laid:
Take HIM ye Africans, he longs for you;
Impartial SAVIOUR, is his title due;
If you will chuse to walk in grace’s road,
You shall be sons, and kings, and priests to GOD.

‘Compos’d in America by a Negro Girl Seventeen Years of Age,’ the poet’s name was Phillis Wheatley.⁵ She had been seized  from Senegal and Gambia, West Africa, when she was about seven years old, and transported to the Boston docks with a shipment of slaves, who because of age or physical frailty were unsuited for rigorous labour in the West Indian and Southern colonies. We know through ship manifest records for the Phillis, that she was taken to America in 1761 where, in the month of August, she was purchased by John Wheatley of Boston. ‘In want of a domestic,’ Susanna Wheatley, wife of prominent Boston tailor John Wheatley, purchased ‘a slender, frail female child … for a trifle,’ because the captain of the slave ship believed that the waif was terminally ill, and he wanted to gain at least a small profit before she died. Here she became the enslaved servant of Susanna Wheatley. Her original birth-name is unknown. The origins of her name are a combination of the boat she had been sold from and the owners’ family name.

Phillis was treated well and, despite being owned by the family, they arranged for her to be educated by private tutors in several subjects, including Latin and Greek. She was ‘so brilliant that she began to publish serious poems as a young teenager.’⁶ By the time she was eighteen, Wheatley had gathered a collection of twenty-eight poems for which she, with the help of Mrs Wheatley, ran advertisements for subscribers in Boston newspapers in February 1772. By the age of twenty, Phillis was no longer tied to the family estate, and in 1772 she was tasked in accompanying the eldest son, Nathaniel, to England, as the family thought it would improve her ailing health as well as her chances of becoming a published poet, in contrast to the attitudes of the colonists. Within a year, Phillis was the first African-American to be published, on the release of her first volume of poetry in 1773.

Her Poetry

She reflected thus on her life:⁷

I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

Her 1770 poem on the death of Whitefield was a pivotal poem in Wheatley’s life. Whitefield was not the only one for whom she wrote an elegy. She published An Elegy, Sacred to the Memory of that Great Divine, The Reverend and Learned Dr. Samuel Cooper. She wrote a poem to no less than the first president of the United States, George Washington, with whom she had corresponded and whom she was later privileged to meet. She was thought to be only thirteen when she wrote ‘To the University of Cambridge, in New England,’ urging,

Still more, ye sons of science ye receive
The blissful news by messengers from heav’n,
How Jesus’ blood for your redemption flows.
See him with hands out-stretch’t upon the cross;
Immense compassion in his bosom glows;
He hears revilers, nor resents their scorn:
What matchless mercy in the Son of God!

In 1767, aged fourteen, she had written ‘An Address to the Deist,’ refuting their scepticism. It opens with boldness, taking on a task normally of ordained men. She hints at this in her opening line:

Must Ethiopians be employ’d for you?
Greatly rejoice if any good I do.
I ask O unbeliever, Satan’s child
Hath not thy saviour been too much revil’d
Th’ auspicious rays that round his head do shine
Do still declare him to be Christ divine
Doth not the Omnipotent call him son?
And is well pleas’d with his beloved One—?
How canst thou thus divide the trinity—

And urges,

Seek the Eternal while he is so near …
At the last day where wilt thou hide thy face
The Day approaching is no time for Grace.
Too late perceive thyself undone and lost …

Her most famous poem is ‘On Being Brought from Africa to America’:

’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
‘Their colour is a diabolic die.’
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

Her poem expresses the view that it was God’s larger plan for her salvation, rather than the wickedness of slave traders, that determined the events of her life.⁸ But she also undermines White complacency, reminding Christians (with an apt pun on cane sugar-refining) that blacks and whites are equal in the divine plan. In her poetic eulogy to General David Wooster she castigated patriots who confess Christianity yet oppress her people:

   But how presumptuous shall we hope to find
   Divine acceptance with the Almighty mind
   While yet, O deed ungenerous, they disgrace
   And hold in bondage Afric’s blameless race.
   Let virtue reign and then accord our prayers
   Be victory ours and generous freedom theirs.

‘The pen of an untutor’d African’

She had sent her poem on Whitefield to the Countess of Huntingdon, who then acted as her patron. When doing so she had said, ‘The Tongues of the Learned are insufficient, much less the pen of an untutor’d African, to paint in lively characters the excellencies of this citizen of Zion.’⁹

John Thornton, perhaps the key figure in the circle of the Clapham ‘Saints,’ was in correspondence with Wheatley on several occasions. She wrote to him in July 1772, in reply to him, ‘I thank you for recommending the Bible to be my chef [sic] Study … O that my eyes were more open’d to see the real worth, the true excellence of the word of truth, my flint heart Soften’d with the grateful dews of divine grace.’ She wrote again on her return to America in late 1773, with a remarkable open boldness, urging him, ‘disdain not to be called the Father of Humble Africans and Indians; though despised on earth on account of our colour, we have this Consolation, if he enables us to deserve it, “That God dwells in the humble & contrite heart.” O that I were more and more possess’d of this inestimable blessing; to be directed by the immediate influence of the divine Spirit in my daily walk & Conversation.’

She was deeply saddened by the death of her mistress, telling a frequent correspondent, ‘I have lately met with a great trial in the death of my mistress … I was a poor little outcast and stranger when she took me in: not only into her house but I presently became a sharer in her most tender affections. I was treated by her more like her child than her Servant,’ and recorded how she departed ‘in inexpressible raptures, earnest longings and impatient thirstings for the upper courts of the Lord.’ She also wrote to Thornton on Mrs Wheatley’s death, giving a more extensive account of how at the close ‘she eagerly longed to depart to be with Christ.’ Phillis ‘sat by the whole time at her bedside and Saw with Grief and Wonder, the Effects of Sin on the human race.’ ‘Where had been our hopes,’ had not Christ taken away the sting of death.

Thornton had obviously entertained the idea that she should return to Africa with two others as missionary to her people. It was not feasible, one reason being that she was then ‘an utter stranger’ to the language of the peoples from whence she had originated. ‘How on my arrival how like a Barbarian I Should look to the Natives.’ In a subsequent letter to Thornton, it is clear the debt she feels to him for ‘such uncommon tenderness for thirteen years from my earliest youth—such unwearied diligence to instruct me in the principles of true Religion.’ She saw him as a father and wished, following Mrs Wheatley’s death, that ‘you could in these respects Supply her place, but this does not seem probable from the great distance of your residence’ (October 1774).

She was also in correspondence with Samuel Hopkins. In February 1774 and again later, she was telling him of copies of ‘my books’ (her poetry collection), and of knowing of two ‘Negro men’ who wished to return from Britain ‘desirous of returning to their native country, to preach the gospel.’ She expressed her desire to do all she could, despite her weakness, ‘to promote this laudable design.’ Indeed, she rejoiced hearing of conversions, writing to a Rhode Island correspondent, ‘It gives me very great pleasure to hear of so many of my Nation, Seeking with eagerness the way to true felicity.’ Two months later she tells the same correspondent of her poor health all the last winter.

John Wheatley emancipated Phillis in 1778, three months before the death of her mistress, allowing Phillis to marry John Peters, another free Black person and grocer, three months later. However, the couple struggled with ill-health, low income and poor work, leading to the death of two of their infant children. The financial situation for the family worsened and in 1784 Phillis’ husband was imprisoned for the accumulation of his debts, forcing her to work as a scullery maid at a boarding house to support them. Phillis died on December 5, 1784, at the age of 31, found by other Wheatley family members ‘reduced to a condition too loathsome to describe,’ uncared for and alone. Their last surviving child died in time to be buried with his mother.

Wheatley was much praised by her contemporaries. Jane Dunlap, of whom little is known and who described herself as a poor Bostonian ‘in an obscure station in life,’ published in 1771 a volume of poems inspired by Whitefield’s sermons and dedicated to his memory. The example of Wheatley had moved her to write.

Shall his due praises be so loudly sung
By a young Afric damsel’s virgin tongue?
And I be silent! and no mention make
Of his blest name, who did so often speak
To us, the words of life,
Fetch’d from the fountain pure,
Of God’s most holy sacred truth;
Which ever shall endure.

Her life and writing may move others also.

Ian Shaw is a member of York Evangelical Church, York, England. 

Photo credit (visible when article is shared on social media): A first edition of the book Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by Phillis Wheatley, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

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(1/13): Because Romans 13:1–7 is one of the few places in Scripture where there is sustained, direct teaching on the state and the Christian’s relationship to it.

As Lloyd-Jones says, ‘This is a subject that is not dealt with frequently in the Scriptures and that is what makes this passage a kind of locus classicus [‘classic place’] with regard to this matter.’ (p. 31).¹

(2/13): Because every generation of Christians needs clear and balanced teaching on issues of church and state.

Lloyd-Jones was at pains to counter the idea that becoming a Christian was a matter of adopting a ‘purely spiritual’ life that was uninterested in the affairs of the world that God had made. ‘As Christians’, he said, we ‘must not contract out of the world.’ (p. 34). That means, among other things, considering the state and our relationship to it.

(3/13): Because our generation in particular needs clear and balanced teaching on issues of church and state.

Christians in the West live at a time and in a place where high dependence on the state (for everything, it seems—health, wealth, security, education, and self-validation) coincides with very little reflection on the state’s true God-given purpose. We urgently need the counsel of God on this question, and Lloyd-Jones helps us to understand it. He is a sure guide through bumpy terrain that must nevertheless be traversed.

(4/13): Because Lloyd-Jones understood the world in which we live, and yet is not our contemporary.

When Lloyd-Jones died, Queen Elizabeth II was on the throne, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, Ronald Reagan was US President, Phil Collins was in the music charts, and Ian Botham captained the English cricket team. In other words, it wasn’t that long ago. Lloyd-Jones speaks to us as one who knows the complexities and frustrations of the modern, globalizing world.

That said, while he lived recently, the Doctor cannot be considered a contemporary. Culture has changed exceedingly rapidly since he preached the sermons on which this book is based. And that is a strength, in this case, because his distance from us enables us to see, for one thing, that the essential points he makes have not changed and, for another, that some of his applications need to be adjusted or extended as we work them out in a different context.

(5/13): Because Lloyd-Jones was historically informed.

These sermons contain a wonderful if somewhat truncated history of the ‘church and state’ debate as it has rumbled on through church history. Lloyd-Jones was a keen historian, and his passion for engagement with the past shines through. But his interest was not merely academic; he insisted that we need the testimony of history if we are to live faithfully today:

‘We have the advantage of being able to look back and see the rival views and the interplay between them, and it behoves us to make full use of this opportunity. So you are now going to have a bit more history. That is not an apology, it is an apologia, or defence!’ (p. 94).

When the Doctor prescribes some history, it is always best to follow his instructions! And it must be said that Lloyd-Jones, in his historical survey,  strikes a careful balance, appreciating the efforts of men in the past whose circumstances were often complicated and pressured. Where necessary, he robustly disagrees with those who departed from the pattern of Scripture.

(6/13): Because Lloyd-Jones is insistent that Scripture should be our authority in all things and he is persistent in his pursuit of the true meaning of the text.

Lloyd-Jones does not rush to application. He insists that before we work out the teaching of Romans 13:1-7, we must understand its essential meaning and its connection to the flow of the epistle. He is clear: ‘true theology should always be based upon a careful and accurate exegesis and exposition and understanding of the Scriptures.’ It is just such exegesis and exposition that we are treated to in the Doctor’s teaching here.

(7/13): Because Lloyd-Jones was not afraid to make challenging applications.

The whole point of the Doctor’s exposition was to promote obedience to the Apostle’s teaching in Romans 13:1-7. Indeed, the Doctor claims that it is because this passage ‘deals more extensively with some of the practical problems faced by Christians in their relationship to the state than any other portion of Scripture’ that ‘it is of very great importance.’ (page 48)

Lloyd-Jones brought out these applications in various ways, sometimes by teaching great principles (see points 10 and 11 below) and sometimes by making very specific applications. An example of the latter is the way in which he taught the propriety of state-administered capital punishment in cases of murder. Lloyd-Jones knew that the question of capital punishment isn’t a fine ethical point to be discussed by academics: it is a matter of grasping what the Scriptures teach about the duty of the state. ‘The state,’ he says, ‘has the power to take life…granted to it by God’ (p. 60). He notes accordingly that, ‘Capital punishment is designed to maintain and to emphasize and to establish the sanctity of life. It has no vindictive quality in it at all…There is nothing that should so teach us the sacredness and the sanctity of life as the carrying out of capital punishment.’ (p. 61).

(8/13): Because Lloyd-Jones didn’t ‘do politics’ in the pulpit.

The question of whether pastors should ‘preach politics’ is being asked by many at the present time. The answer depends, of course, on what is meant by ‘preach politics.’ What Lloyd-Jones certainly did not do was to transform the pulpit into his personal soap-box. He didn’t vent, or cajole, or harangue. He was a servant of the Word (Christ) and of the word (the Bible). He aimed to teach no more and no less than what the whole counsel of God set forth. And in that noble aim we see his wisdom and true greatness as a servant of God and man.

(9/13): Because Lloyd-Jones didn’t ‘do pietism’ in the pulpit.

We must not assume that because Lloyd-Jones was not overtly political in the pulpit, that therefore he was a preacher or practitioner of ‘pietism’, defined as a strictly individual and devotional mode of Christianity which avoids public application. Lloyd-Jones knew that devotion was both public and private, and that the Christian is called to live out his faith in all of life. He taught individuals their duty. He also boldly set forth the duties of the state before the face of God.

(10/13): Because Lloyd-Jones taught godly subjection to the ‘powers that be.’

The default position of the Christian is godly submission to the ‘higher powers’ as they are ‘ministers of God’ (Rom. 13:6), even when those invested with the state’s power do not love God or follow Christ the King (as, more often than not, they do not). This is a challenging doctrine for Christians who suffer, Christians who care about the state of the world, and Christians outraged by evil. We are to pursue godly subjection. Here’s how the Doctor puts it:

‘We are not to look at them [‘the powers that be’] in and of themselves, but are to realize what they are and what has given them their being and their position. As Christian people, we are to honour them, respect them, put ourselves under them, as it were, and submit ourselves unto them.’ (p. 22).

This is challenging, indeed, and calls for grace.

(11/13): Because Lloyd-Jones taught a clear basis for godly resistance to tyranny.

Intriguingly, Lloyd-Jones did not teach that we ought to ‘obey’ the state. Or at least, he did not hold that this was Paul’s teaching in Romans 13. We are to be subject to the ‘powers that be’, yes, but not to yield them unqualified obedience. For ‘the powers’ are not the ultimate authority – that alone belongs to God. And just as Lloyd-Jones clearly teaches Christian subjection to the state, so also he teaches the limits of Christian subjection:

‘We are to be subject to the higher powers until they in any way come between us and our loyalty to God Himself and His commandments to us.’ (p. 53)

(12/13): Because Lloyd-Jones warned us to be ready to suffer.

One consequence of our godly resistance to the tyranny of the state may be serious suffering, even death. Lloyd-Jones notes of the early Christians:

‘…they were confronted with the choice – either they said, ‘Caesar is Lord,’ or else they were put to death. And they were very ready indeed to die rather than make that statement. At that point they rightly refused to be subject to the powers that be. They disobeyed them and were ready to suffer the consequences of their disobedience.’ (p. 53)

Lloyd-Jones is mindful that the faithfulness to God implicit in godly resistance to the state may cost some of his hearers their lives. Indeed, this is yet one more reason for being clear on these things:

‘For our own sake, and for the sake of our brethren who are struggling with these issues, perhaps even at the risk of losing their very lives, it behoves us to have clear ideas as to the teaching of the great Apostle.’ (p. 15)

(13/13): Because Lloyd-Jones preached on the state with a heavenly perspective.

He puts the whole matter this way:

‘We are to remember that as Christians our relationship to the state is, at its very best, only temporary. This is our position: ‘Our conversation’ – citizenship – ‘is in heaven’ [Phil. 3:20]. Now I have warned you not to misinterpret that and say, ‘Therefore I’ve nothing to do with the state.’ That is wrong. Nevertheless, it is our fundamental position that the place we belong to is heaven. That is our capital city. We are strangers here.’

And that, surely—the knowledge that we are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s—is what will sustain us through our pilgrim days. It will help us to offer godly subjection to the state when we can, and godly resistance to the state only when we must.

Striking a faithful balance today

Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ teaching on Romans 13:1-7, found in the thirteenth volume of his series on Romans, is a sparkling example of grounded but passionate biblical exposition. Moreover, Lloyd-Jones teaches us on a topic that we can no longer avoid. Faced with a society which swings between the idolization of the state on the one hand and the utter denunciation of its operations on the other, Christians must evince a different attitude. We must recognize the God-ordained purpose of the state, the God-bestowed authority of the state, and the God-appointed limits of the state. Dr Lloyd-Jones can help us strike the balance faithfully.

Joshua Kellard is Communications Manager at the Banner of Truth Trust.

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Lelio Sozzini did not show all the signs of full-blown heresy from the beginning. Indeed, he was known to and friendly with the reformers Philipp Melanchthon and Heinrich Bullinger, and his fellow countryman Girolamo Zanchi. That said, a letter from John Calvin’s pen shows that the great reformer knew about and was disconcerted by Sozzini’s attraction to curious questioning and speculation.

One cannot fail to note Calvin’s extreme disquietude as he responded to Sozzini in the following manner in 1551:

You are deceived in so far as you entertain the impression that Melanchthon does not agree with us on the doctrine of predestination. I only said briefly that I had a letter written by his own hand, in which he confessed that his opinion agreed with mine. But I can believe all you say, as it is nothing new for him to elude in this matter, the better to rid himself of troublesome inquiries.

Certainly no one can be more averse to paradox than I am, and in subtleties I find no delight at all. Yet nothing shall ever hinder me from openly avowing what I have learned from the word of God; for nothing but what is useful is taught in the school of this master. It is my only guide, and to acquiesce in its plain doctrines shall be my constant rule of wisdom.

I would that you also, my dear Lelio, would learn to regulate your powers with the same moderation! You have no reason to expect a reply from me so long as you bring forward those monstrous questions. If you are gratified by floating among those aerial speculations, permit me, I beseech you, an humble disciple of Christ, to meditate on those things which tend towards the building up of my faith. And indeed I shall hereafter follow out my wishes in silence, that you may not be troubled by me. And in truth, I am very greatly grieved that the fine talents with which God has endowed you, should be occupied not only with what is vain and fruitless, but that they should also be injured by pernicious figments. What I warned you of long ago, I must again seriously repeat, that unless you correct in time this itching after investigation, it is to be feared you will bring upon yourself severe suffering. I should be cruel towards you did I treat with a show of indulgence what I believe to be a very dangerous error. I should prefer, accordingly, offending you a little at present by my severity, rather than allow you to indulge unchecked in the fascinating allurements of curiosity. The time will come, I hope, when you will rejoice in having been so violently admonished. Adieu, brother very highly esteemed by me; and if this rebuke is harsher than it ought to be, ascribe it to my love to you.²

Sadly it would seem that Sozzini did not take the reformer’s warning to heart. The great Scottish theologian William Cunningham noted the following about the men who pursued the heresies inherent in Socinianism:

They were men who had come, in the exercise of their natural reason, to see the folly and absurdity of much of the Popish system, without having been brought under the influence of truly religious impressions, or having been led to adopt a right method of investigating divine truth. They seem to have been men who were full of self-confidence, proud of their own powers of speculation and argument, and puffed up by a sense of their own elevation above the mass of follies and absurdities which they saw prevailing around them in the Church of Rome; and this natural tendency of the men, and the sinful state of mind which it implied or produced, were the true and proper causes of the errors and heresies into which they fell.³

May we all guard our hearts from such self-confidence and vanity, and heed the words of the Holy Spirit spoken through James:

‘Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.’ (James 1:21, 22)

Banner books which discuss Socinianism:

The featured image (visible when article is shared on social media) is a detail from Sir David Young Cameron, 1865–1945, Siena, 1900, Etching and drypoint on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, The G. Allen Smith Collection.

The post ‘This Itching After Investigation’: Calvin’s Concern for Lelio Sozzini appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

Introduction

The Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council,¹ was convened in AD 325 to address the threat posed by the teachings of an Alexandrian presbyter called Arius, who had asserted that the Son was created, and so was not co-eternal with the Father. However, before we assess its work we need to set the conflict in the wider context.

Elsewhere, I have distinguished between the doctrine of the Trinity and the Trinity itself.² God eternally is, and he always is trinity. From eternity he is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one indivisible being, three irreducible subsistent ‘persons.’ He has made this known progressively in Scripture, in latent form in the Old Testament, for the overwhelming stress then was on the uniqueness of Yahweh in the context of the polytheism of the surrounding nations. In the New Testament, while mainly implicit, it is pervasive and notably un-self-conscious, indicating that it was part of the received knowledge of the church, without need for explanation, defence or fanfare.

However, the doctrine of the Trinity, the developed formulation of what the church understands God to have revealed himself to be, with language stretched and refined to express the reality of God’s self-disclosure, resulted from prolonged reflection on the biblical record. Moreover, it emerged from a response to erroneous ideas that imperilled the gospel.

In short, the Bible does not present us with formalized, scientific definitions of doctrine; that has become the task of the church as it defends the gospel and rejects error.

Two deviant tendencies

Until the early fourth century there were two potentially deviant tendencies affecting the church’s grasp of the Trinity. The first was modalism, which blurred the distinctions of the three persons. In the third century, Sabellius held that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit were merely ways in which the one God revealed himself, like an actor taking on different roles. He maintained that the only God, Father in the Old Testament, had become Son in the New Testament and sanctified the church as Holy Spirit after Pentecost. The three were successive modes of the unipersonal God. Consequently, Christ was merely an appearance of the one God, hardly different than a theophany, with no distinct personal identity. With modalism, God’s revelation in human history as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit did not reveal who he is eternally, and so Christ gives us no true knowledge of God. Moreover, this claim  undermined God’s faithfulness, for we could not rely on him if what he disclosed of himself in Christ did not truly reflect who he eternally is. Tertullian countered modalism in his book Contra Praxeas. Later, Paul of Samosata was condemned on these grounds at the Council of Antioch in 268.

On the other side of the spectrum were those who, recognizing the distinctions of the three, accorded a lesser status to the Son and the Spirit. They held that God was an hierarchical being. This was endemic at the time, for the conceptual and linguistic resources did not exist to distinguish between the way God is one and the way he is three. It was an unstable situation, for unless the Son and the Spirit were held to be fully God, there could be no viable proclamation of the gospel—for we would not have true knowledge of God. If Christ were not unimpaired God, he could not save us; if the Spirit were a creature, how could he deify us? was asked in reply.

Modalism and subordinationism were attempts to make the Trinity intelligible to human reason. We would be left with the one God, the Son and the Holy Spirit as temporary appearances, or a graded deity, with Son and Spirit semi-divine. This mix was a time-bomb, destined sooner or later to explode. The chief problem was how to reconcile the unity of the one God with the status of Christ.³

Arius

Suddenly, bursting on the scene in 318 came an Alexandrian presbyter called Arius, a charismatic figure, popular with women, and the composer of what would today be called praise songs, based on sea shanties. Heretics are usually popular, or their views would not be propagated; Scripture prioritizes faithfulness over dynamism.

Arius left little in the way of writing—a song, a scrap or two—so we learn what he taught largely from those who opposed him and from the decrees of Nicaea. He maintained that the Son was not co-eternal with the Father, came into existence out of nothing, and was a creature. Therefore, for Arius, God was not Father eternally any more than a man is a father before he begets his son. The Son had an origin, ex nihilo. At some point he did not exist, and now exists by the will of God. God used the Son as an intermediary to create other entities; so God is effectively at arm’s-length from the creation. Hence, the Son is a different being from the Father, for the Father is his God. Jesus’s statement ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10:30) he took to mean a harmonious agreement of will, not identity of being. The Son was an assistant to the Father, operating under orders. Thus the monarchy, oneness in rule, of God was preserved, since the Son was and is not true God.

This was a threat to the gospel. Providentially, the church had been legalized by Constantine only a few years earlier and so the convening of a major council was less of a problem than it might have been before.

The Council

The creed of Nicaea

We know little of the proceedings of the Council of Nicaea, at which Arius was condemned and exiled. One thing we do know is that, contrary to popular mythology, Athanasius was not a major player. True, he was present as secretary to Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, Arius’s principal opponent, but he was still quite young and did not become bishop until Alexander died in 328.

One of the few items of which we have clear evidence is the creed.⁴ This is not what we call the Nicene Creed, which is the product of the later Council of Constantinople in 381, although it did provide the basis for the later declaration. This earlier creed is as follows:

We believe in one God, Father Almighty, maker of all things, seen and unseen:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten as only-begotten of the Father, that is of the substance (ousia) of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things came into existence, both things in heaven and things on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and became man, suffered and rose again the third day, ascended into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead:

And in the Holy Spirit.

But those who say, ‘there was a time when he did not exist,’ and ‘Before being begotten he did not exist,’ and that he came into being from non-existence, or who allege that the Son of God is of another hypostasis or ousia, or who is alterable or changeable, these the Catholic and Apostolic Church condemns.

The phrase referring to the Son being ‘of the being (ousia) of the Father’ was an innovation. Athanasius tells us how it was included. When it was proposed that the Son was ‘from God,’ Arius’s sympathizers agreed since they accepted that all creatures come from God. Therefore, in order to say that the Son is indivisible from the being of the Father, always in the Father and the Father always in the Son, the bishops were forced to use extra-biblical terms to convey ‘the sense of Scripture,’ realizing that express biblical language alone could not distinguish the truth from the false teaching they opposed.⁵ Together with the allied expression ‘consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father,’ this phrase created a mountain of ambiguity and proved a major bone of contention in the following decades. The problem was the range of meanings ousia had at the time. It could mean generic nature (what is common to the three), asserting that the Son is of the same nature as the Father. However, it could instead refer to a specific individual nature (what is peculiar to one of the three), meaning that the Son is of the same hypostasis as (identical to) the Father, which sounds modalist, erasing any distinctions between them. The final anathema seems to reinforce this latter possibility, for it repudiates the claim that the Son is of another hypostasis or ousia than the Father. In that sense, the terms ousia and hypostasis are apparently synonyms, as they were generally at the time. Eventually, the Council of Constantinople (381) was to use hypostasis for the three, so Nicaea’s assertion that the Son is of the same hypostasis as the Father was by then rejected.

On a central, but less disputed point, the phrase ‘begotten, not created’ opposed Arius’s claim that the Son was a creature, by distinguishing generation from creation. The word homoousios (of the identical being) was used, since Arius could not apply it to the relationships of creatures to the Father, but this word was not clearly defined and would be problematic for some time, until Basil the Great proposed clearer semantic distinctions in the 370s.⁶

Decisions

The council outlawed the teaching of Arius. It was seen as a dire threat to the gospel. In doing so it affirmed emphatically that the Son is of the identical being with the Father, underpinning, inter multa alia, such statements of Jesus that ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10:30) and his comment to Philip, ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9). Simultaneously, it deposed Arius, who was not a bishop but a presbyter, from the ministry. In 337, his supporters enabled him to be received back into the church, but on the very day his reception was to happen, he died suddenly, collapsing into a latrine, an event his opponents regarded as a singularly appropriate act of God’s providence. In short, Nicaea’s main achievement was to place on record once and for all that the Son is nothing less than of identical being to the Father, dealing a mortal blow to subordinationism.

Ambiguities

Unsurprisingly, the monarchians, led by Marcellus of Ancyra, were happiest. He and his supporters maintained that there was one hypostasis in God, a claim that struck many at the time as outrageously modalist. Later in the century, when hypostasis was reserved for the three and distinguished from the one being or essence (ousia), such a claim was condemned. That time had not yet come.

However, did the creed really open the door to modalism? After all, many at the council vigorously opposed it. Probably, its intention was to say that the Son came from the Father’s person, since the Father begat the Son and the two are of the same being. Notwithstanding, it became a major source of confusion. Overall, in Hanson’s words, ‘the ancients did not suffer from the same passion for exact accuracy which modern scholarship displays.’⁷

Yet Eusebius of Caesarea, author of the famous history of the church, who supported Arius, also signed the document! He and others considered that the phrase ‘begotten not made’ distinguished the Son from the creatures made through the Son. For Eusebius, the Son is probably a creature, but is not to be called ‘something made.’ The Creed’s condemnation of ‘before he was begotten he did not exist’ he defended on the ground that everyone accepted the Son to have existed before the incarnation, which—so he argued—was when he was begotten.⁸

The Council’s ambiguity allowed a wide variety of people to accept the creed. In the background loomed the powerful presence of Constantine, determined to achieve as widespread agreement as possible for the sake of imperial unity.

In short, Nicaea bequeathed to the church a lexical minefield that caused much turmoil and many casualties in the decades ahead. The following were the principal ambiguities.

Hypostasis/ousia

These were used interchangeably in Greek and by the Greek fathers. For many, they were synonyms. Their eventual meanings (person/being) were not what anyone understood by them for most of the fourth century, and it is anachronistic to project these meanings back to the earlier time when they do not apply.

There was not then a single word for what God is as three that could command wide, let alone universal, agreement. The word hypostasis in Greek philosophy from 50 b. c. had different meanings for Stoics than it had for neo-Platonists, although in general it meant ‘realization turning into appearance.’⁹ In the New Testament it means confidence (e.g., Heb. 11:1) but on one occasion (Heb. 1:3) it refers to the Son as the ‘impression of nature’ of God.

Thus, at the time of Nicaea (1) hypostasis/ousia could be synonyms and used to describe either what God is as three or what he is as one; (2) hypostasis could refer to the three and ousia be either ignored or rejected; (3) hypostasis could be used for ‘distinct existence’ and ousia for ‘nature’; (4) or uncertainty could prevail. Sometimes single writers moved from one meaning to the other. Not only was there no commonly agreed term for the three but the concept itself had barely appeared on the theological radar.

Genetos/gennetos, agenetos/agennetos

Genetos (having come into existence, and thus created) and agenetos (that which has never not existed, never had a beginning, for it has existed eternally) are one pair of antonyms, as are the almost matching gennetos (generated, begotten) and agennetos (ingenerate, unbegotten). The close similarity of spellings and meanings was another massive source of confusion and contention. In the third century there had never been a clear distinction between something created and something generated. Arius used the two pairs interchangeably for Christ, for he saw him as a creature. Athanasius, in an early work, was also confused.¹⁰ The opponents of Arius had to say that the Son was both agenetos (eternal) and gennetos (begotten of the Father)—gennetos non genetos (begotten, not created).

Hanson remarks, ‘People holding different views were using the same words as those who opposed them, but, unawares, giving them different meanings from those applied to them by their opponents.’¹¹ Ayres comments, ‘Nicaea’s terminology is thus a window onto the confusion and complexity of the early fourth-century theological debates, not a revelation that a definitive turning-point had been reached.’¹² If we add the bewildering speed of events—ecclesiastical, political and theological—it is no wonder the mess took over fifty years to clear. These were muddled times. Isn’t life like that? Yet through it all a solution was reached—but not at Nicaea.

Aftermath

The details, historical and theological, of the period following Nicaea are bewildering, full of labyrinthine complexities. Political intrigue was never far from the fore. The literature describes these machinations in their often sordid detail. The situation was fluid, constantly changing, and the various parties are nowhere near as clear-cut as any classification implies.¹³

An immediate problem was Marcellus. His most emphatic belief was that God is one hypostasis in one ousia. The Son is a word only. The Logos is united to God, eternal, ‘put forth,’ not begotten, one and the same thing as God, silent in the Father. The Logos is only called Son after the incarnation. While God is called by the names Father and Son, there is only one hypostasis and only one ousia, homoousios meaning for him ‘of identical being,’ so that the Son is identical to the Father. The three are names only. This sounds, and in reality is, modalist, and he pointed to Nicaea in support, due to its equation of hypostasis and ousia.¹⁴ A significant group were sympathetic to Marcellus. Not until Constantinople I (381), when hypostasis was reserved for the three and distinguished from the one being or essence (ousia), was there a decisive rebuttal.

Nicaea did not end the Arian crisis—it merely confirmed its existence. By mid-century, more able figures than Arius arose to advance ideas similar to his. Further acute discord wracked the church before the Council of Constantinople resolved the matter.

Nicaea’s failure was largely due to linguistic and terminological problems, the lack of a clearly and commonly recognized vocabulary and an agreed theological grammar upon which consensus could be reached. This is the consequence of the church being composed of humans—new issues often take time to work out; bringing new articulation, in acceptable and watertight ways, to what is believed and confessed does not happen overnight. It requires hard work, rigorous critical thought, tough mindedness, patience, persistence, and a willingness to engage with opposing ideas—a combination of gentle persuasion of some and firm rebuttal of others, suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. For this, later in the fourth century, Athanasius paved the way, to be fostered and completed by the three Cappadocians: Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and especially Gregory of Nazianzus. The crisis over Arius was initially and imperfectly parried at Nicaea, but not brought to resolution until several decades later.

Robert Letham is Senior Research Fellow and retired Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Union School of Theology, Wales. He now resides in the USA as a minister emeritus of the OPC (Orthodox Presbyterian Church). He is the author of The Work of Christ (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1993), Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy—A Reformed Perspective (Fearn, Scotland: Mentor, 2007) and The Holy Trinity: in Scripture, History, Theology and Worship (2004, rev. Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2019) among other books.

Featured Photo (visible when the article is shared on social media) is by Abdullah Öğük on Unsplash

The post Nicaea I: Its Causes, Achievements, and Failures appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

Dr Arnold Dallimore of Cottam, Ontario, the author of the two-volume biography, George Whitefield (Banner of Truth, vol.1, 1970; vol.2, 1980) was one of many authors helped and encouraged by Dr Lloyd-Jones, as numbers of unpublished letters from ML-J to him show. The first was dated February 5, 1960. In the last of November 24, 1980, less than four months before his death, ML-J wrote, ‘I rejoice in the fact that I was able to play some small part in helping in the production of your two most excellent volumes on Whitefield, and I am glad to hear they are selling so well.’ ‘Small part’ was a considerable understatement. When Dallimore first visited England in 1959 he had already prepared a good deal of a life of Whitefield. But that visit, further research and study which followed, and the urging of the Banner of Truth Trust, led him to envisage a much larger work. In a letter to ML-J of March 14, 1963, he explained why the biography had become ‘a long drawn-out affair’. One reason was, ‘Upon returning from England [in 1959], I scrapped what I had previously written, and started afresh.’ At that point in 1963 there were hopes that the first volume would be out by December 1964, the 250th anniversary of Whitefield’s birth. In fact it was not to appear till 1970. Various problems impeded the writing. One was the fact that the author was in a pastoral charge until 1973; another that S. M. Houghton, the Trust’s senior adviser, set very high standards, and he and Iain Murray were particularly concerned that, in his concern to give Whitefield his true place in the Evangelical Revival, Arnold Dallimore verged on discrediting John Wesley’s importance. On all these and other problems the author sought ML-J’s advice, and the latter, more than once, was put into a mediating role with the Trust’s editors. Happily differences were finally settled, more or less to the satisfaction of all. The following is an example of the kind of help ML-J gave. In 1976, when Volume 2 was in progress, Dallimore sent him some draft chapters of volume two and raised particular points for his comment. ML-J replied on December 1, 1976:

With regard to the medical questions you put to me I fear I cannot agree with your conclusions.

With regard to Whitefield what you describe is clearly not ‘cardiac asthma’. This condition never lasts 22 years and is generally a terminal event. I have always believed that Whitefield eventually died of it but, as you say, it could not have lasted from 1748 to 1770. What happened to him then on this occasion? The puzzling element is the vomiting of blood. That does not occur in any heart condition, and I do not recall that he had symptoms that would indicate a gastric ulcer. My suggested explanation is as follows: The pain on breathing again is not consistent with any heart condition such as a coronary condition; but taking that plus the hoarseness and strained throat which he describes I come to the conclusion that he must have had a burst blood vessel in his throat, that he swallowed the blood and then vomited it again. Then, having rested himself and having refrained from preaching, this recovered, and so he was able to go on preaching for over 22 years. I remember how this kind of thing happened to the great tenor Caruso who frequently tended to strain himself and his throat while singing. It was that that eventually led to his death.²

With regard to Howell Harris, again I am not happy about your theory.³ The account of the incident and his making light of it clearly indicates that he never even suffered from concussion, and I am not aware that such an incident leads to mental trouble. What it does lead to sometimes is a tumour on the brain, but I am not aware that he ever gave any symptoms of that. My view of what happened to Harris during that period is that it is rightly explained by nervous exhaustion and what is virtually a nervous breakdown. His behaviour fits that perfectly, and explains his obstinacy in continuing to preach about the blood of God, and his increasing feeling that everyone was turning against him and failing to understand him, and especially as they tried to persuade him to do less. This in turn made him a ready prey to Madam Griffith and her adulation of him. It is all a part of the well known picture in such cases. It is interesting to note that a similar breakdown occurred in Evan Roberts who was so prominent in the last Welsh Revival of 1904/5. The same happened also in the case of a man called Humphrey Jones, who was the means under God of bringing the Revival of 1857 from the USA to Wales, and there are other examples also, as you will agree. I feel that your references to Harris and Madam Griffith are somewhat misleading and might well lead people to the conclusion that there was something morally wrong. Gomer Roberts has clearly demonstrated that there was nothing wrong in that respect, and I believe this is generally accepted now . . .

The correspondence between Dallimore and ML-J indicates the immense labour involved in taking on such a major biography. As the work went on it grew, and anticipated finishing dates were to be changed many times. ML-J well understood the difficulty of combining a pastoral charge with authorship. He commented to Dallimore in a letter of August 28, 1968:

I am glad you confirm the wisdom of my retiring from Westminster Chapel. What really finally decided me to do this was the feeling that I should bring out in book form some of the material I have gathered during the years and especially what I have tried to do on the Epistle to the Romans.

As Lloyd-Jones settled down to more desk work it was his turn to receive encouragement from his Canadian correspondent. In a letter of April 30, 1973, he replied to Dallimore:

It was very good indeed of you to write in this way. It not only warmed my heart but encourages me in bringing out these books, which I find to be a considerable ‘weariness to the flesh’.

Reading these letters now, we can be thankful that both men sacrificed themselves to enrich the church with books of enduring value.

Arnold Dallimore’s biography of Whitefield:

The post On the Doctor’s Advice: Details from ML-J’s Correspondence with Arnold Dallimore appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

The world is a needy place; it lies in darkness and the only remedy is gospel light. This should weigh on us, as it weighted on the Lord Jesus. As he himself was engaged in preaching the good news (Matt. 9:35), he was struck with the lostness of those before him and was moved with compassion, viewing the crowds as ‘harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’ (Matt. 9:36). The sense of the greatness of the need led the Lord to exclaim, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few’ (Matt. 9:37). A shortage of gospel preachers marked our Lord’s day.

It also marks ours. This has been highlighted, for example, by The Gospel Coalition in their article ‘The Coming Pastoral Shortage,’¹ and I am sure we all see and feel it in our own contexts. But why are we in this position and what can we do about it?

Prayer

As has often been said, ‘You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.’ The root cause, then, of the relative lack of gospel ministers has first to be addressed by prayer. This is the remedy the Lord Jesus suggests: ‘therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest’ (Matt. 9:38). A lack of gospel ministers should drive us to prayer. But does it?

In the lives of our churches, how many pastoral prayers cry out for the next generation of ministers? How many men and women in our prayer meetings or small groups regularly call upon God to thrust men into gospel ministry? In our family and personal prayers, how often does this petition feature? For parents, what are we praying for our sons—are we asking God that he might call them to gospel ministry? William Perkins says, ‘Fathers should learn to consecrate their children to God for the work of the ministry.’² If we are falling short in these things, we should recommit ourselves to prayer.

Desire

Paul says in 1 Tim. 3:1, ‘The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to [or desires] the office of overseer [elder], he desires a noble task.’ A lack of men coming forward for the ministry surely indicates a lack of desire for the calling. And according to the flow of Paul’s thought, one cause for this is surely a failure to appreciate the nobility of the calling to gospel ministry.

The words of Romans 10:15, citing Isa. 52:7, show the wonder of gospel ministry as well as any: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’ It is a high, a glorious calling to proclaim the glad tidings of the gospel, the message of salvation in and through the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of the glory and worth of the message, the very feet that carry the gospel are ‘beautiful.’ Seeing this, surely the ministry is a calling that is to be desired.

The ministry is also a calling to be desired because it is a necessary calling. Paul asks, ‘How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?’ Eternal life and death depend on the work of preaching. Knowing that, Paul himself said, ‘Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others’ (2 Cor. 5:11). Understanding the eternal realities that depend on preaching impelled Paul to seek to persuade others. He knew the necessity of the task, and therefore he desired the calling of preaching.

Now, of course, there is also a good humility regarding the call to preaching. James says, ‘Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers’ (James 3:1). The weight of the calling brings great demands and responsibilities. Paul himself cried out, ‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ (2 Cor. 2:16). But our insufficiency never has the final word, because ‘our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant’ (2 Cor. 3:5, 6). Because of God’s grace, despite its challenges, the ministry is to be highly valued and desired.

Too many churches

There are few things more grieving to the Spirit than divisions among God’s people. Patrick Fairbairn calls divisions ‘one of the darkest clouds’ hanging over the church, and that they ‘grieve the Holy Spirit of God, and mar that union of council, prayer, and exertion … [which] the cause of righteousness most urgently requires.’³ The division of the church is never harmless; it is always costly. One of the costs is that more churches require more ministers. Where church divisions are not necessary, there is the incongruous impact of grieving the Spirit, and simultaneously requiring the Spirit to call more men into ministry.

So, one cause of the shortage of ministers is an excess of churches. Perkins advises wisely against unnecessary division: ‘Are good ministers too thinly sown on the ground? Then let all good and godly ministers give the right hand of fellowship to each other (Gal. 2:9) and unite in love … since they are so few it is all the more important for them to avoid divisions.’⁴

How pastors are treated

There is a good and growing awareness of the impact of elders falling into what the Westminster Larger Catechism 130 calls ‘sins of superiors.’ Amongst these sins are ‘an inordinate seeking of themselves, their own glory, ease, profit, or pleasure; commanding things unlawful … correcting them unduly … [and] provoking them to wrath.’ We will all know of congregations damaged by these behaviours.

But it is also important to acknowledge that congregations can treat their pastors badly. That is why we have the exhortation ‘Obey your leaders and submit to them … Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you’ (Heb. 13:17). Where there is not that disposition of submission to leaders (subject to the higher calling of submission to God), the ‘joy’ of the pastoral calling is turned into ‘groaning.’ John Brown notes in this circumstance, ‘the heart of the minister is discouraged, the great Master is displeased, the tokens of his favour are withdrawn.’⁵

No doubt many are deterred from entering pastoral ministry because of how existing ministers are treated. They see their ‘groaning.’ Where leaders in the church are not ‘respected’ (1 Thess. 5:12), is it any wonder men do not seek the office, and the Lord does not send men into the office?

A (literal) undervaluing of the ministry

It is a great scriptural principle that ‘the labourer deserves his wages’ (1 Tim. 5:18) and that ‘those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel’ (1 Cor. 9:14). This means that ministers should be paid appropriately to their calling. Of course, no man should ever ‘peddle the word of God for profit’ (2 Cor. 2:17, NIV). But that does not take away the command of scripture that gospel ministers should be paid well.

It is not unspiritual to say that a poor attitude to ministerial pay leads to less ministers. Unjustly low ministerial pay reveals a low attitude to the calling of the ministry, and this displeases God. William Perkins lamented ‘the inadequacy of the financial recompense and status given to those who enter this calling,’ going on to say, ‘It would be an honourable Christian policy to make at least good provision for this calling,’ noting that the lack of this is ‘a great blemish on our church.’⁶ Where this ‘great blemish’ persists, the Lord of the Harvest will be sparing in sending new labourers (2 Cor. 9:6).⁷

A lack of encouragement?

The church is not to be passive in view of a shortage of minsters. She is to pray, she is to address some of the problems considered so far, and she is to be proactive in seeking out men for ministry. Titus was commanded to seek out good men, and to see them ordained as elders: ‘This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint elders in every town as I directed you” (Titus 1:5). Of course, the men had to be trained and qualified (Titus 1:6-9), but that does not negate the command.

So, without downplaying the necessity of the internal call, the church should be proactive with the external call. There is no reason for the internal call to have the priority. James Durham stated, ‘The Lord sometimes will thrust one forth by a more inward impulse and will draw others by more external means.’⁸ So, are we using all possible external means to fulfil the command to ordain elders? Are we encouraging men to consider ministry, are we testing their gifts, are we telling those in whom we discern gifts that, as far as we see, they might be called to ministry?

Pastoral failures

The moral failures of existing pastors are also undoubtedly deterring men from entering the ministry. We will all, sadly, likely know men who have disqualified themselves from ministry. This can cause men considering the ministry to doubt their ability. If Pastor So-and-so fell due to the temptations he faced in ministry, how can I survive? It can also give rise to cynicism—the ministry is a stage, a platform, full of actors, it is not for me.

The impact of pastoral failure needs to be acknowledged. But it should not deter men from ministry. A heathy sense of weakness is a good thing (1 Cor. 10:12), and the strength to stand and resist temptation is always of grace, not of ourselves. Nor should failures in ministry lead us to cynicism. There have always been those who preach Christ ‘from envy and rivalry’ as well as those who do so ‘from good will’ (Phil. 1:15). The Lord of the Harvest has told us there will always be tares as well as wheat in his kingdom on earth (Matt. 13:24-30).

Conclusion

We undoubtedly are in a time in where there is a shortage of gospel ministers. But we need not despair or be discouraged. The Lord Jesus has ascended on high, and from there he is giving gifts to the church, including all the ministers she needs, ‘to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ’ (Eph. 4:7-12). So we pray in faith, we seek to remove the impediments to men entering the ministry in faith, and we trust the Lord of the Harvest will send the labourers we need.

Dr Donald John MacLean is President and Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary UK.

Featured Photo (visible when article is shared on social media): Nareeta Martin on Unsplash

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In May, 1789, Adam Rankin, having travelled from Kentucky to Philadelphia for the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, made the following query: ‘Whether the churches…have not fallen into a great pernicious error by disusing Rouse’s versifications of David’s Psalms, and adopting…Watts’s imitation?’ The General Assembly gave Rankin a lengthy hearing and ‘endeavoured to relieve his mind from the difficulties’, experiencing little success. They recommended ‘that exercise of Christian charity to those who differ from him in their views of this matter, which is exercised toward himself’. Further, they admonished him to ‘guard against disturbing the peace of the church on this head’. Thus, Isaac Watts, the writer of such hymns as ‘Alas and did My Saviour bleed’, ‘O God Our Help in Ages Past’, and ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ was approved and his Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament were assured a permanent place in the worship of Presbyterians in America.

To people living today it seems strange that using Watts’ paraphrases of the Psalms in public worship would raise such grave concern. But to many living in the 18th century any singing in public worship other than the standard accepted translations of the Psalms was a return to the ‘popish’ forms of medieval Catholicism. Only occasionally were paraphrases or hymns allowed, and then just for special occasions and for specific congregations – not whole church bodies. Thus, for Isaac Watts to have written 600 hymns and versifications of the Psalms for use among the whole Protestant Christian world was a radical break with the past. It revolutionized the worship of dissenting churches and established the English hymn. In this light, Isaac Watts can truly be called the Father of the English hymn.

Isaac Watts was born in Southampton, England on July 17th, 1674, to Isaac and Sarah Watts. The oldest of eight children, he was brought up in the Nonconformist tradition of his parents. His father had been put into prison for his beliefs before his first son was born and was not released until the following year. Upon rejoining his family the elder Watts began instructing his son in the ways of religion which would have such an impact on his life.

During these early years, Isaac Watts began to display his skill for writing verse. Even before he was six years old he had written some verses. When his mother discovered them, she questioned whether he could have composed them. In order to assure her of his ability he produced an acrostic using his name:

I am a vile polluted lump of earth,

So I’ve continu’d ever since my birth;

Although Jehovah grace does daily give me,

As sure this monster Satan will deceive me,

Come, therefore, Lord, from Satan’s claws relieve me.

Wash me in thy blood, O Christ,

And grace divine impart,

Then search and try the corners of my heart,

That I in all things may be fit to do

Service to thee, and sing thy praises too.

As a child Watts also demonstrated a passion for learning. He began to study Latin at the age of four, Greek when he was nine, French when he was ten, and Hebrew when he was thirteen. At the age of six he came under the instruction of the Rev John Pinhorne, to whom he became closely attached as a dedicated student. During this time his father was again ‘persecuted and imprisoned for nonconformity for six months’, as his Memorandum tells us. Upon release the elder Watts was forced to live in London for two years, separated from his family. He sent his children a letter during this period which reflects the kind of upbringing they had received. He told them how much he missed them and that he remembered them always in prayer, adding, ‘Though it hath pleased the only wise God to suffer the malice of ungodly men…to break out against me…we must endeavour by patient waiting to submit to his will without murmuring’. He closed by assuring them that God’s ‘infinite wisdom’ was at work in his trials. Watts seems to have learned well from his father, for the same spirit of humility and submission before God characterized his attitude toward his own sufferings due to poor health throughout his life. Once during a severe illness he wrote, ‘I know not but my days of restraint and confinement by affliction may appear my brightest days, when I come to take a review of them in the light of heaven’.

Watts’ ability as a student became well-known, so that as the time approached for him to enter college a physician in Southampton, Dr John Speed, offered to pay for his preparation for the Christian ministry at an English university. Since only Anglicans could attend Oxford and Cambridge, Watts respectfully declined the offer, ‘determined to take his lot among the dissenters’. Having made this choice, at sixteen he went to the Academy of Newington Green, near London, to prepare for the ministry. The students there were under the tutelage of Rev Thomas Rowe, a Nonconformist minister. The quality of education was very high and Watts applied himself diligently. Samuel Johnson, in his Lives of the English Poets, wrote, ‘Some Latin Essays…written as exercises at this academy, show a degree of knowledge, both philosophical and theological, such as very few attain by a much longer course of study.’ At the age of twenty, after completing his studies at the Academy, Watts returned to his family in Southampton where he stayed for two years engaging himself in reading, prayer, and meditation further to prepare himself to serve God in the church.

It was during this period that Watts became critical of the psalm ­singing in the dissenting congregations, which was bound to the Sternhold and Hopkins version of the Psalms. He felt that the psalmody was crude and impoverished, lacking the dignity and grace that should be a part of Christian worship. His father’s response to his complaint was, ‘Try then whether you can yourself produce something better’. Watts took up the challenge and the result was:

Behold the glories of the Lamb

Amidst his Father’s throne;

Prepare new honors for his name,

And songs before unknown.

Thus began the work for which Isaac Watts is remembered today.

Having spent two years in Southampton preparing himself, in October, 1696, Watts went to become tutor to the son of Sir John Hartopp at Newington. There he taught and studied for five years, becoming assistant to Rev Isaac Chauncey, pastor of the Mark Lane independent church. He preached his first sermon on July 17th, 1698, his twenty-fourth birthday. His interest in improving the worship among independent churches continued throughout this period. In 1697 Watts’ friend and former classmate at Newington Green, Samuel Say, sent him and another classmate, John Hughes, his paraphrases of some of the Psalms. Hughes’ response was enthusiastic, commending Say for his effort and for rescuing ‘the noble Psalmist out of the butcherly hands of Sternhold and Hopkins’. Say seems not to have produced more, but the idea was given fresh impetus in Watts’ thinking. David Fountain, in his biography, Isaac Watts Remembered, writes that the ‘friendship between Say and Watts proved to be one of the influences which caused him some years later to apply himself seriously to the work of “imitating” the Psalms’. This period was also the beginning of Watts’ many struggles with extended periods of illness.

In April, 1701, Chauncey resigned as pastor of the Mark Lane congregation and the position was offered to Watts. After some indecision due to his poor health he finally accepted the call on March 8th, 1702. The church began to grow under Watts’ ministry at a time when many dissenting churches were in decline. Watts was an outstand­ing preacher in spite of his small stature and ‘thin’ voice. His dignified manner, clarity of thought, clear enunciation and his gifts in extemporary preaching combined to make him one of the ‘weightiest’ preachers of his day. Thus, the congregation multiplied and outgrew its Mark Lane meeting-house, moving to Pinners’ Hall, and finally, in 1708, to a brand new meeting-house at Bury Street. But poor health continued to plague Watts and soon it was necessary for the church to appoint the Rev Samuel Price to assist him.

The worst period of illness came in 1712 when Watts was struck by a severe sickness that lasted for most of the next four years. In 1713, believing that death was imminent, Watts recommended that Mr Price be appointed co-pastor.

In the Spring of 1714, Sir Thomas Abney, Lord Mayor of London and a member of Parliament, invited Watts to stay with his family for a week at their country home at Theobalds, hoping that the rest would aid him in his recovery. The visit extended into a residence which lasted thirty-four years, until Watts died. At the Abney home he was able to study and write, and it was there that many of his hymns were composed. The relationship between Watts and the Abney family was warm and he served the family well as a tutor to the Abney children, as a chaplain, and as a friend, while they cared for him during his times of illness. According to Dr Thomas Gibbons in his Memoirs of the Rev Isaac Watts, D.D., without such gracious hospitality he ‘might have sunk into his grave under the overwhelming load of infirmities’. Once when Watts commented to a visitor that a week’s visit had extended into a stay of thirty years, Lady Abney replied, ‘Sir, what you term a long thirty-years visit, I consider the shortest visit my family ever received’.

One of the greatest influences that inspired Watts to write hymns and scriptural paraphrases was his brother Enoch. In a letter to Watts in 1700 he writes, ‘In your last you discovered an inclination to oblige the world by showing it your hymns in print’, and urges him on in this, assuring him that it is not just out of brotherly admiration that he does so. He recounts how ‘mean’ the religious poetry of their day is and that in an age of dying devotion poetry like his is needed to ‘quicken and revive’ worship. He says that, ‘were David to speak English, he would choose to make use of your style’. Reminding Watts of the scandalous reputation the dissenters have for their ‘imagined aversion to poetry’ Enoch exhorts him to publish his hymns in order that ‘these calumnies will immediately vanish’. Watts eventually took his brother’s advice to heart. In 1705 his book of poems, Horae Lyricae, which also contained twenty-five of his hymns, was published. In 1707 the first edition of Hymns and Spiritual Songs appeared. In 1709 a second edition went out, with 145 new hymns added and revisions made of hymns in the previous edition. After this no further changes were made in the work, but more hymns appeared in later editions of Horae Lyricae and in other works. The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, containing most of his paraphrases of the Psalms, appeared in 1719.

Watts’ hymns were received at a time when no one else had been able to succeed in this task. Previously hymns had been written only for specific congregations, not for use by the wider Christian public. Furthermore, hymns were only used on special occasions such as communion. One pastor, Benjamin Keach, used to place a hymn at the end of the service so that those offended by its singing could leave before it was sung. But people accepted and sang Watts’ hymns. In a letter to Watts, Phillip Doddridge wrote of a church in which he preached, ‘your Psalms and hymns were almost their daily entertainment’. Watts became so popular in England and America that people would sit down, refusing to sing, if a hymn by another composer was announced in the congregation. Thus Watts was able to effect a lasting change in the worship of the churches of his day.

 After the publication of The Psalms of David, Watts continued to write, but almost all of his work was prose. He produced a book of children’s songs and poetry, a catechism for children, textbooks for college instruction, and a number of essays on theology and philosophy. Samuel Johnson writes of him, ‘Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action will look with veneration on the writer who is at one time combating Locke, and at another making a catechism for children in their fourth year’. But it is as a hymn-writer that Isaac Watts is remembered best – he is the Father of the English hymn. What many have called the ‘greatest hymn in the English language’ was penned by him:

‘When I survey the wondrous cross

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss;

And pour contempt on all my pride’.

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Owen explains Paul’s statement ‘I die daily’ as a testimony to the stability of his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the dead. It was this faith that carried him though all kinds of difficulties. He concludes that it was the duty of all believers to prepare themselves to die cheerfully and comfortably. He observed that this faith would be seen outwardly in the various conditions and causes of death, which is left to the providences of God, and also inwardly. However, in the latter faith may not always be manifested.

He then explains three essentials, the first of which he covers in the first two sermons. Of primary importance is the constant exercise of faith with respect to the resigning of our departing souls into the hand and sovereign will of God. When the time comes we will enter into an invisible world. We know nothing of that world except what God has revealed in his word. The saints of God believe there will be an act of mighty power put forward by God when we depart for this invisible world. They resign themselves to God’s sovereign grace, his power, his wisdom, his good pleasure, his mercy and his faithfulness. The greatest example of such resignation is seen in the Lord Jesus Christ, when he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ (Luke 23:46).

Owen deals with the fears of our hearts, the uncertainties and darkness relating to the future, and the hatred we entertain with regard to the dissolution of our body. But he says that is to be weighed against the ability of God to receive and preserve us to that day and to be better to us than all these things that threaten to undo us.

In the second sermon he drives home the special nature of this duty, insisting it is our responsibility to discern whether we possess this kind of faith in the power of God. Pointing his readers to Psalm 31:5 (the words Christ used on the cross), he asks what gave the psalmist confidence. Referring to Psalms 16:1, 2 and 31:14, 15, faith takes on board redeeming grace conveyed by the truth of God’s promises. Faith considers the ability of God to preserve them as they enter the invisible world (2 Tim. 1:12), and the faithfulness of God (1 Pet. 4:19). This he further explains is a matter of ‘commending’ and ‘committing’ our soul to God, leaving it in trust to God. This is to be done verbally, as with David and the Lord Jesus in the verses already considered. Owen maintains this is to be done daily, so that the sovereignty, power and faithfulness of God remains uppermost in our minds and hearts. This alone will support us whatever we may suffer before we die. The only persons who can do this are those who have a clear persuasion of their interest in Christ, and a clear view of eternal things. They and they alone are able to die safely and comfortably.

The third sermon begins with a question and ends with a warning. He asks whether we are willing and ready to die. Owen, as a true pastor, deals with the soul’s natural aversion to dying. He mentions those who, in effect say, ‘I am happy to be dead, but I do not want to die.’ He explains this aversion. The soul has never had to act without the body. Death dissolves the union of body and soul. When God made us there were two distinct divine acts. He first formed the body out of the dust and then breathed into the nostrils the breath of life. There will be no new union of body and soul until the resurrection.

At the point of death Christ will free our bodies, but we do not die like the beasts. Our first desire is to be ‘further clothed’ (2 Cor. 5:4). But it is not God’s way to do that at death. Rather he brings us to the point where we are willing to part with our body. All our efforts in our earthly life to remove our sin fail. Death is God’s refining pot, the way he purifies us. We desire to depart and be with Christ (Phil. 1:21), but first the body must have sin uprooted by death itself. We must return to dust. Owen concludes, ‘there is no sting in death, no darkness in the grave … a lying down in the hands of the great Refiner, who will purge, purify and restore you.’

His final words constitute a warning. Do not let death surprise you so that you are overtaken by death while you are in a wrong spiritual frame
of heart. David relapsed from a good frame but recovered his strength (Psa. 39:13). Owen relates some of the difficulties we face—the world, temptations, and self-love. It is all too easy to overvalue human relationships. What is needed? An active meditation on and a constant view of things above, maintaining a spiritual-mindedness. If we ignore such things death will find us unprepared and take us by surprise. He urges us to pray that God will keep up our spirits by his Spirit.

Owen’s personal earnestness comes to the fore in some of his concluding remarks. ‘In plain terms, I am speaking to dying men who do not know how soon they may die. May God advise my own heart that I should labour and watch so that death might not find me without a sight of eternal things! If it does—if our bellies cleave to the dust and our eyes turn to the ground; if we are filled with other things, and death approaches—do you think it will be an easy thing to gather in your minds and affections to agree to it and welcome it? You will not find it so’ (Gospel Life, pp. 236-237).

This article first appeared in the December 2023 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine, Issue 723. Buy the issue or subscribe.

The featured image (visible when the article is shared on social media) is Henry Bright’s On the Norfolk Broads (Yale Centre for British Art, Public Domain).

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The three sermons mentioned above can be read in Gospel Life, a Puritan Paperback which presents some of the material found in Volume 9 of The Works of John Owen.

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If you were to ask the question, ‘Who needs a creed?’ the answer from many would probably be, ‘Not us!’ Such ancient documents are often seen at best as outdated and at worst an irrelevance. That may be the majority view in popular evangelicalism, but that does not mean it is right. The church is always confessing its beliefs whether it realizes it or not. The issue is whether or not they reflect beliefs that are authentically Christian. Let me suggest a number of ways the Apostles’ Creed helps us in our understanding of Christianity that is biblical.

It helps us articulate the Christian faith

The very notion of ‘creed’ immediately suggests the idea of expressing belief. In the barest sense it is an expression of what Christians believe; but historically there was more to it. The Latin verb credo, from which ‘creed’ is derived, carries a more personal sense. Hence several major creeds begin with the words ‘I believe in …’—in the sense of placing confidence in particular truths. The Apostles’ Creed spells out the truths a person must believe in if he or she is to be a Christian.

Martin Luther commends the Apostles’ Creed by saying, ‘Christian truth could not possibly be put into a shorter and clearer statement.’ The challenge it presents to the church in the twenty-first  century is to use it as a framework for expressing these time-honoured truths that are essential to Christian faith in the world of our day.

It provides a tool for teaching the faith

It has been said, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that the Apostles’ Creed was the Alpha course of its day. That isn’t far from the truth. Successive generations have come up with their own tools for  presenting the main teachings of the Bible, but the Apostles’ Creed is the mother of them all.

J. I. Packer’s book, I Want to be a Christian (1977), is an example of how the Creed can continue to function in a contemporary church setting as an effective teaching tool. He uses it as a framework for exploring each tenet of faith it contains in such a way as to lead young Christians to see the essence of what it means; but, at the same time, providing pointers for those who want to dig deeper.

At an even simpler level, the practice of memorizing the creed and reciting it publicly still has enormous merit—especially in an age when memorizing anything is deemed passé. In the syllabus of what every child ought to learn by heart, the Apostles’ Creed must take its place alongside the books of the Bible, the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer as one of its core components.

The creed is a wonderfully versatile tool for instruction. It has a use with children, seekers, new converts and those who realize that no matter how long we may have been in the faith, familiar truths always have fresh depths to be explored.

It makes us focus on the heart of the faith

There is always a temptation to get lost in the minutiae of what the Bible teaches. Nowhere was this more damaging than in the church at Corinth, and Paul’s response to their distractedness is timeless. He reminds them of what he had taught them in the first place: ‘For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received …’ (1 Cor. 15:3)—here are the core teachings that form the bedrock of the Christian faith.

So, as the Creed spells out the sum of saving knowledge for the early church, it takes us first and foremost to the God of the Bible in all his uniqueness and glory. His uniqueness lies in the fact that he is Trinity, and his greatest glory is seen in the salvation he provides at such extraordinary cost through his own Son. And so today, in an age when evangelical Christianity is rapidly losing its way, the creed brings us back to the heart of both the gospel and the faith: namely, God himself.

It guards the gospel against distortions of the faith

Historically, creeds have had a double function: to serve as both a fence and a foundation. They serve as the latter in that they crystallize the essence of all a person needs to know for life and salvation. In that sense they provide the foundation for what constitutes a true church. The sad reality of course is that the church has been plagued, not merely from without, but more often from within by distortions of that teaching. So, creeds have been formulated to provide a fence to guard the church against such aberrations. The Apostles’ Creed is particularly concerned to secure a fence around the very heart of the gospel.

It shows the need for personal faith

Perhaps the greatest threat of all to the church and the teachings on which she stands in every generation is that of sliding into nominalism. Paul warns Timothy that the Last Days will be characterized by those (in the church) who have a ‘form of godliness’ but who deny its power (2 Tim. 3:5). He warns against such people in the strongest possible terms.

It is a danger that lurks most subtly in the Reformed community where we are inclined to lay great store on scholarship and precision. That can be paradise for the kind of people who Paul is warning about—especially those who delight in controversy. The essence of Christianity that is authentically Reformed is its concern for authentic experience. As Paul says elsewhere, all truth should lead to godliness (Titus 1:1).

The first three words of the Creed embed this conviction at the very centre of the truths it goes on to confess. It is only as we declare our belief in this God and all that he has done that we can actually know him, along with all the benefits he promises in the gospel, through genuine personal faith. That’s why we still need the Creed in our day!

Featured Photo (visible when the article is shared on social media) by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

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It is a truism that even the more sophisticated strains of contemporary Reformed theology lack a developed theology of the body and matters adjacent to it (bioethics, we might say). This has proven a challenge to me and like-minded colleagues who wish to serve the Lord faithfully in medicine, while having relatively little home-grown theology to feed on when it comes to bioethics—though, more broadly, the Reformed tradition is a feast for the heart and mind. If those of us seeking guidance for the specialized sort of ethics related to our work are disappointed, how much worse is the situation for the rest of the church.

Many, even learned believers, take such matters to be matters of indifference, subject to the principles of Christian liberty. I humbly propose that we rethink this line of thought.

Some matters are perceived very clearly by most evangelicals, and it is not uncommon for them to be touched upon from the pulpit. I am thinking of abortion and euthanasia. But I fear that when it comes to issues which are far more likely to directly affect a church member, very little teaching is available. Contraception and sterilization are two examples. My perception is that even well-informed believers do not know where to find moral guidance in these areas; indeed, I know that the question of moral guidance often does not enter the discussion. Many, even learned believers, take such matters to be matters of indifference, subject to the principles of Christian liberty. I humbly propose that we rethink this line of thought, drawing on Scripture and the Reformed tradition.

While I am an appreciative reader of Professor David VanDrunen’s work on natural law, and believe he is to be commended for writing one of the rare books on bioethics from a Reformed point of view¹, I believe his comments on contraception and sterilization example the problem I am drawing attention to. Having very briefly touched upon and rejected (in my view, unfairly) certain arguments against contraception, he touches upon sterilization: ‘If, as concluded above, there is no theoretical difference between so-called natural and artificial methods [of contraception], then there seems to be no theoretical problem with sterilization either. The moral questions are again practical rather than theoretical’ (p. 117). With the greatest of respect for the author, I think there is a lot more that needs to be said about sterilization.

Direct sterilization is in no way therapeutic. It is effectively a form of mutilation, which is defined as damage to a tissue or organ leading to its dysfunction or failure.

The morally relevant sort of sterilization I am addressing is sometimes termed ‘direct sterilization,’ which is to say sterilization for its own sake, not merely sterilization as a consequence of an otherwise therapeutic intervention. Patients sometimes become sterile after systemic chemotherapy; however, the aim of the chemotherapy is not sterilization, but the treatment of cancer. Likewise, a man may be effectively sterilized following surgical removal of testicular cancer. Again, the procedure is only accidentally a sterilization. We can term it indirect sterilization, and this is considered acceptable either as a side effect (if it is proportionate) or as a-part-for-the-whole argument (principal of totality), which is the same reason it is right to amputate a gangrenous leg but not a healthy one (more on this below for anyone sceptical of this claim). Direct sterilization characterizes an act whereby a man or woman intends to become sterile by having a procedure such as a vasectomy or tubal ligation (to name two common options I know faithful believers have undergone). Direct sterilization is in no way therapeutic. It is effectively a form of mutilation, which is defined as damage to a tissue or organ leading to its dysfunction or failure.

The relevant biblical background to this matter begins in Genesis, where God created man and woman to be one flesh, to fill the earth and multiply by the process of natural generation. Descendants and offspring were marks of covenant blessing, and sterility a sign of covenant curse. Thus, we see the function of procreation being connected to creation and redemption. It is worth reflecting on why ‘no one whose testicles have been crushed or whose male member has been cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord’ (Deut. 23:1). Clearly, in the age of the new covenant no such restrictions apply— indeed, the example of the Ethiopian eunuch whom Philip evangelized makes this clear, if the theological principles needed confirmation. Yet, the prohibition against castrates from entering the assembly indicates, like much of the ceremonial law, that holiness requires wholeness, and wholeness comprehends bodily integrity. This is a clear endorsement of the goodness of the body, including of the organs of reproduction.

It seems that such clear teaching on care for the body excludes mutilation of any kind, be it the removal of healthy limbs, or the temporary or permanent disruption or destruction of healthy sexual organs.

In the New Testament, Paul expresses his desire that those preaching a false gospel requiring circumcision would go all the way and emasculate themselves (Gal. 5:12)—we should consider this remark in the context of Paul’s double anathematizing of those who preach this false gospel (Gal. 1:8, 9). Paul’s statement in Ephesians 5 is perhaps the most helpful positive biblical statement in relation to our question: ‘In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just has Christ has done the church, because we are members of his body’ (Eph. 5:28-30). That we should love our neighbour as ourselves conveys a similar truth. Husbands must love their own wives by nourishing and cherishing them as their own flesh. It seems that such clear teaching on care for the body excludes mutilation of any kind, be it the removal of healthy limbs, or the temporary or permanent disruption or destruction of healthy sexual organs.

The Westminster Larger Catechism supports this claim. Question 135 asks about the duties required of the sixth commandment: ‘The duties required in the sixth commandment are all careful studies, and lawful endeavours, to preserve the life of ourselves and others …’ Unsurprisingly, the proof-text cited after ‘ourselves’ is Ephesians 5:28, 29. Then, Question 136 sets out the sins forbidden by the sixth commandment: ‘… all taking away the life of ourselves, or of others, except in case of public justice, lawful war, or necessary defence; … striking, wounding, and whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any.’ Based on this and what has been argued above, it is not a stretch to conclude that mutilation, which is by definition an injury to the body which God has made good, is not one of moral indifference. We have a duty to ourselves to preserve our life, to nourish and cherish our flesh, not only because we are creatures, but because we have been purchased with a price and belong to the Lord, and because we belong to others whom we are called to serve. ‘You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So, glorify God in your body’ (1 Cor. 6:19, 20). I propose, therefore, that our duties to ourselves preclude sterilization.

The conventional response to my argument goes like this: we should look beyond the biological facts and acts, and consider the more important personal and inter-personal ethics; what is more important that the rightness or wrongness of a sterilizing act is the broader context of the marriage in which it occurs and the intentions of the spouses; so, if husband and wife are making the very reasonable decision that they should have no more children, so long as they are not doing so selfishly, they are free to exercise their Christian liberty in sterilization.

There are some major flaws to this argument, however. It abstracts godly ends such as stewardship and wisdom from means, which are also governed by the moral law. It abstracts what is done in the body from what is done in the soul, and so does violence to the person made in the image of God. We are not permitted to do evil so that good may abound, so how can it be right to perform an act which Scripture forbids for the sake of a higher end which it encourages? This line of reasoning is not compatible with Christian ethics. And Christian ethics does not recognize that acts done to the body are neutral, whereas mental or spiritual acts truly determine the moral character of an action. Some ‘bodily’ matters are clearly indifferent—what we eat for breakfast, for example. But, as I have shown above, some things done to the body, including mutilation, are not morally neutral, and so cannot be glossed. Wisdom in family building is certainly to be commended, and there is no obligation to have as many children as possible, but this does not mean we are sovereign over our bodies. We are stewards, not owners. We have been made and redeemed by God, body and soul, and we are not our own.

I hope I have shown that acts of direct sterilization are not morally indifferent. The word of God is not silent on the matter. Moreover, there is a whole tradition of natural law argumentation which, in my view, supports and develops what Scripture teaches (by good and necessary consequence)—this is for another day. Suffice it to say that we all need to examine our lives and our doctrine in all areas and submit to God’s revealed will, lest we deprive ourselves of his fatherly smile of blessing on our lives. I would like to urge preachers and teachers to search the Scriptures and the Reformed tradition to remedy what is lacking in our ethics, to better serve our Triune God who has bought us with a price.

Toni Saad is a doctor specialising in neurology, and an ordained elder at Whaddon Road Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Cheltenham, part of EPCEW (The Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England and Wales). Dr Saad has a degree in bioethics and medical law from St Mary’s University.

Featured Photo (visible when the article is shared on social media) by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash

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Most men engaged in pastoral ministry will be asked, at some time, ‘What exactly does your work involve?’. Often, sadly, they will struggle to provide a clear and comprehensible answer. The ignorance in the popular mind about the work of the pastor is becoming increasingly prevalent in a culture which is growing ever more unchurched. So what is a pastor, and just what does a minister do? Even such terms as pastor and minister are more likely to draw blank looks today than at any time in the past.

But perhaps a problem exists which is even closer to hand and which is related to the first. Are there not times when the minister himself struggles to pin down his job description? Surrounded as he is by so great a range of expectations and assumptions, both from the church and the world; subject as he is to so many urgent and varied demands from his own congregation and beyond, the pastor’s identity crisis is really no surprise. He may feel himself to be, at different times, a glorified social worker, a marketing man, a local politician, and a marriage guidance counsellor. So it is surely worth asking whether there is a single, memorable, pithy description which will helpfully and biblically sum up the work of the Christian minister.

The apt title ‘pastor-scholar’ was first brought to my attention towards the end of my first year in the ministry. A wise and experienced visiting minister first encouraged me to think in such a way about the work to which God had called me, and it is to this description of the minister that I would like to draw attention. The two designations ‘pastor’ and ‘scholar’ are worthy of individual as well as combined consideration.

The minister of the gospel is called to be a pastor. The prevailing biblical motif of the shepherd, so rich and tender, is fulfilled in the Chief Shepherd himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, who calls undershepherds to serve him after his own pattern. It was a threefold charge which the risen Saviour delivered to Simon Peter: ‘Feed my lambs’, ‘Tend my sheep’, ‘Feed my sheep’ (John 21:15-17). The Chief Shepherd’s words would ever ring loud in Peter’s ears, for even in his old age the apostle summed up the work of an elder thus: ‘Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory’ (1 Pet. 5:2-4).

But how is the pastor to feed the sheep? He must be a man who is himself deeply and wholeheartedly acquainted with the Word of God, who drinks deeply from its wells of salvation; he must be a scholar of the Word. Paul’s words to Timothy (2 Tim. 2:15) can be taken as a kind of template for the work to which the pastor is called to be engaged: ‘Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth’. It is quite striking to note that Paul’s admonition is flanked by two warnings, the first of which addresses the danger of quarrelling ‘about words’ (verse 14), the second which deals with ‘irreverent babble’ (verse 16). The type of scholarship which Paul urges must avoid these two dangers: one is a species of scholasticism, which devotes a great deal of attention to abstruse questions that may be quite fascinating, but which have little or no practical, pastoral usefulness; and the other plays fast and loose with the Scriptures, resulting in the shipwreck of faith and consequent ungodliness. In both of these contrasting cases scholarship has not been in held in check by pastoral considerations. Hence it is fitting to speak of the ‘pastor-scholar’ rather than the ‘scholar-pastor’.

Archibald Alexander (1772-1851), forty years a professor at Princeton Seminary, NJ, exemplifies the pastor-scholar model as well as anyone. He believed that ‘the time and attention of the minister of the gospel should be principally devoted to the acquisition of useful knowledge; and especially, to that knowledge which is most intimately connected with the sacred office’.¹ Underlying all of Alexander’s thought and work is the deep piety—here, surely, is a word whose meaning we so need to recapture! ‘Every man who is called to the ministry of the Word is a recipient of grace and must be a pious man.’² This piety was the life-blood not only of his own life and ministry, but the subsequent history of Princeton, well into the twentieth century. Consequently, at a time when the new learning, the Higher Criticism, was steadily gaining its menacing ground in the learning establishments of Europe, Princeton continued as a beacon of Faith and Learning, a true school of the prophets holding forth The Majestic Testimony.³

But Alexander was not only a scholar of the Scriptures; he possessed a profound understanding of the human heart, especially in its bearing on the work of preaching and pastoring. His great skill here can be witnessed in his Thoughts on Religious Experience, perhaps the most lasting monument to his gifts, and an essential handbook of the soul for every minister of the gospel. Like Calvin before him, he knew that the true knowledge of God must be conjoined to an accurate understanding of our own human condition. The pastor must take heed to himself before he takes heed to all the flock.

Perhaps the designation ‘pastor-scholar’ might seem rather daunting to some men who feel unworthy of the description ‘scholar’. This may in a large measure be due to their perceived lack of academic qualifications. The corrective here is to see that the Lord’s call to the ministry bestows upon men a high honour and engages the man in a permanent duty, the consequences of which far exceed enrolment in the best centres of academic excellence. The pastor is called to be a lifelong student of the Scriptures and of every branch of learning that will enable him to be an able minister of the new covenant.

At the other end of the spectrum is the minister who knows himself— or believes himself!—to be an erudite scholar. For him, the challenge is more serious; he needs to know that he is called to be a pastor of wandering, needy, hungry sheep. He has not been called into the ministry to satisfy his own intellectual curiosity, or to pursue paths of enquiry which hold a personal appeal but do not equip or edify him for the work to which he has been set apart. For all such, and indeed for all of us, Alexander’s words are most necessary: ‘Genius, learning, eloquence, zeal, public exertion, and great sacrifices, even if it should be of all our goods, and of our lives themselves, will be accounted of no value, in the eyes of the Lord, if love to Christ be wanting.’⁴

Paul Yeulett is minister at Grove Chapel.

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After being sent to train at Princeton Seminary by his home denomination, Murray was unable to settle into a pastorate back in Scotland. Following further study, and a year teaching at Princeton for Caspar  Wistar Hodge (1870–1937), Murray joined the fledgling Westminster Seminary. He arrived only a year after its founding, and from 1930 to his retirement in 1966 he commanded the department of Systematic Theology. There he set the pattern of a rigorously exegetical teaching of systematic theology where students learned the truths of the Reformed faith through a direct confrontation with Scripture. For Murray, exegesis was the lifeblood of dogmatics. This became the hallmark of a Westminster education, but it was also the great feature of Murray as a writer. Because of this, Murray produced many books and articles of permanent value for the church. But with the passing of the years, many of Murray’s works are in danger of being forgotten. What I hope to do in this article is reintroduce the writings of Murray, to a generation that is, perhaps, in danger of ‘not knowing Murray.’

Redemption Accomplished and Applied

First published in 1955 (based on earlier articles from The Presbyterian Guardian), this is Murray’s most accessible and popular writing. In this work Murray opens up the wonder of Christ’s accomplishment of redemption in his atoning death, and its application in the experience of the believer from effectual calling through to glorification. Union with Christ is given its foundational place: ‘Union with Christ is really the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation’. In Redemption Accomplished and Applied the great truths of the glory of God’s sovereignty in salvation are presented with power and freshness by a master exegete and theologian. Murray’s teaching of the Reformed faith rises organically from Scripture in a convincing and God-exalting way. Countless young Christians have been shaped by this book in ways that have benefited their future lives and Christian service.

Collected Writings

Many of Murray’s miscellaneous writings were collated and published by the Banner of Truth in four volumes. These volumes are a treasure trove of scriptural truths and cover a vast range of subjects. The first volume (‘The Claims of Truth’) contains mostly short writings which can be read easily as stand-alone pieces. They are grouped thematically, covering areas like Scripture, Jesus Christ, The Christian Life, The Church, and Historical. Of particular value today are the articles on preaching (particularly ‘Some Necessary Emphases in Preaching’) and on the Lord’s Day (e.g. ‘The Sabbath Institution’).

The second volume is titled ‘Systematic Theology.’ It is not a systematic theology as such, but contains a selection of Murray’s writings on the themes or topics usually considered in Systematics. This volume contains significant writings on some of the most important themes of Murray’s teaching; for example, ‘Definitive Sanctification.’ There are many other stand-out chapters, such as ‘Common Grace,’ and many church leaders would benefit from reflecting on the section on ‘The Church,’ particularly ‘Arguments against Term Eldership’ and ‘Office in the Church.’

The third volume contains a biography by Iain H. Murray (no relation), selected sermons of Murray and a number of Murray’s book reviews. The biography is helpful in outlining Murray’s life and the influences that moulded him. His sermons show his conception of preaching in practice and demonstrate how systematic theology for Murray was no academic pursuit but was in service of pastoring and preaching.

The final volume contains the remainder of Murray’s reviews but principally comprises some of his longer essays, which are grouped together under the title of ‘Studies in Theology.’ There are a number of classic essays. Murray’s vision of systematic theology as fundamentally a confrontation with the text of scripture is set out in his essay ‘Systematic Theology.’ We are currently benefiting from an awareness of the riches of historical theology, but perhaps now more than ever we need the warning of Murray: ‘Systematic theology has gravely suffered, indeed deserted its vocation, when it is divorced from meticulous attention to biblical exegesis … Systematics becomes lifeless … just to the extent to which it has become detached from exegesis’ (4:17). No less important is Murray’s essay on ‘The Free Offer of the Gospel.’ Here he outlines the classic Reformed position on the consistency of a heartfelt gospel invitation to all with the sovereignty of God in salvation. Rigorously exegetical and historically informed, Murray defends the important truth that ‘the gospel is not simple an offer or invitation, but also implies that God delights that those to whom the offer comes would enjoy what is offered in all its fulness’ (4:114).

This concluding volume of Murray’s Collected Writings also shows him to have been a gifted historical theologian. At no point was Murray’s exegesis uninformed by the past teaching of the church. He was at home writing on ‘Calvin’s Doctrine of Scripture’ or ‘The Theology of the Westminster Confession of Faith.’ Perhaps the standout historical chapter is entitled ‘Covenant Theology,’ where he surveys historic Reformed thought on the doctrine of the covenants. Murray the systematician sought to advance the doctrine of covenant theology. However successful or otherwise he was in this, he attempted it from a position of knowledge in which he has worked through the primary sources in detail.

Ethical Writings

Although primarily a systematic theologian, Murray, as noted above, could move easily in other fields. Historical theology was one, but ethical or practical theology was another. Murray’s primary work here is his Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics, originally published in 1957. This work has not lost its relevance: indeed, its teaching on marriage, the sanctity of life and the sanctity of truth have only increased in importance. Of particular significance in understanding Murray is his chapter on ‘Law and Grace.’ This clearly sets out Murray’s answer to the great question, ‘what is the place of law in the economy of grace?’ His answer is compelling and faithful to the best of Reformed theology. Also in the area of ethics is Murray’s helpful book on Divorce, published in 1953.

Exegetical

Princeton Seminary had a tradition of their systematic theologians writing commentaries, for example Charles Hodge on Romans. Murray followed in this tradition with his own work on Romans, published in two parts in 1960 and 1965. This shows Murray at his finest. Exegetically rigorous and theologically informed, this commentary will remain a standard work on Romans until the Lord returns. Murray powerfully exegetes the Pauline treatment of sin and the sovereignty of God in salvation which is wholly by grace. His appendix on justification is especially noteworthy. A profoundly helpful extended treatment of Romans 5:12-19 is found in Murray’s separate monograph The Imputation of Adam’s Sin (1959).

Conclusion

Murray’s writings leave a rich legacy to the church. Few writers have combined exegetical rigour, theological insight and historical knowledge in the way he did. May the number of those who wrestle with John Murray’s thought and writings increase.

The preceding article first appeared in The Banner of Truth Magazine, Issue 718 (July 2023). Dr. Donald John Maclean is a trustee of the Banner of Truth and President and Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary, Newcastle, UK.

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Permit me to ride a hobby horse of mine for a few minutes! I want to issue a plea for an exegetically informed gifted illustrator to produce illustrations for a really excellent children’s Bible story book. I wonder how many children grow up with completely wrong ideas about Scripture simply because of a misleading picture in a story book. I’m not questioning the motives of the illustrators—no doubt they want to produce pictures that are simple and appealing; but how often do they end up distorting what the text actually says?

Noah’s ark is the classic example of this. How many children grow up thinking that the ark was some ludicrously unseaworthy tub that looks like it would capsize on a small pond if a breath of wind happened to touch it, never mind survive a cataclysmic worldwide flood?! Portholes (where are they mentioned in Genesis?!) with a fully grown giraffe’s neck sticking out. Is it any wonder that children grow up thinking the idea of an ark is ridiculous? The Answers in Genesis organisation has done a phenomenal job of showing generations of children (and adults) what the ark would really have looked like, even recreating a full-size replica of it in Louisville, KY.

My mother had a Bible that included a picture of the manna in the wilderness raining down from the sky on a little girl who stood holding her arms open to catch it. It was a very memorable picture which stuck in my memory for decades, but it contradicts how the text of Scripture actually describes the arduous and back-breaking work of gathering the manna off the ground six mornings a week!

I was thinking of this issue again last week when I preached on Moses striking the rock at Horeb to provide water for the thirsty and complaining Israelites. Each week I provide a sheet for the children in the congregation to accompany the sermon, so they can fill in blanks as they follow the message. For the younger children I look for a picture that relates to the sermon for them to colour in. Trying to find an appropriate picture of the water from the rock was extremely frustrating! Almost every picture I came across on the internet showed Moses tapping a rock and something like the stream of water from an airport drinking fountain springing forth! It’s such a missed opportunity to educate our children about the reality of this Bible history! These are incredibly dramatic stories that deserve the best illustrations we can provide—excellently produced in terms of art and colour and vividness, but as faithful to the text as we can make them. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all—especially to children—so we should labour hard to make sure the pictures are as accurate as possible. Instead of the pictures that show several dozen Israelites in the desert with a couple of cows gathered round this little trickle of water, why not show the two million or so people and herds and flocks of animals and the rock exploding as a vast underground reservoir erupts like a geyser and creates a river of freshwater in the desert that follows the Israelites through the wilderness? (1 Cor. 10:4). How do later biblical writers describe this water? Ps. 78:15–16, 20: He split rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock and caused waters to flow down like rivers… He struck the rock so that water gushed out and streams overflowed.

Then the idea of two million people and their animals being supplied with water for forty years in the desert won’t seem so laughable. And more importantly, when Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 10:4 that the rock is a picture of Christ being struck by the rod of God’s judgment so that the spiritual water of life bursts forth from his shattered body to supply countless millions with eternal life, we have an accurate lens through which to view the illustration—the mighty thundering waters of Niagara Falls rather than a feeble little jet from a drinking fountain!

No doubt a hundred comments will soon tell me of any number of excellent resources that do exactly what I’ve been pleading for here! I hope so! And if not, biblically informed illustrators please take note!!

Warren Peel has been married to Ruth since 1998 and they have four daughters. He is pastor of Covenant Christian Fellowship, Galway (Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland), and a trustee of the Banner of Truth Trust.

Featured image (visible on social media) by Henrik Eikefjord on Unsplash

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After arguing for the adjustment of pew-rents which could be an impediment to church attendance, especially for the poor, Chalmers proceeds:

‘What are the likelihoods, that, with the church now open to the bulk of the parochial community—but with that community at present in a state of disuse and distance from all the ordinances of the gospel—what are the grounds for believing, that a minister with all his activity and zeal will succeed in reclaiming them? We have already, I trust, made it manifest, that in so far as this glorious achievement depends upon human effort, the likeliest and most productive of these efforts is a habitual forth-going on his part among the habitations of his people. If he go much among them through the week, the unfailing result in time will be, that they shall come much about him on the Sabbath. This is the ligament, and we know not a more important one in the whole mechanism of human society, by which to elevate a degenerate population, and again to place them on that higher moral platform from which they have descended. There is no romance, there is a sober and home-bred reality in all the steps of this operation. On the very first movements of the clergyman, he will meet with the smiles of encouragement and welcome from every quarter of his parish, with a thousand promises of attendance on his church, many of which in the first instance will not be realized; but, with every month of perseverance in the assiduities of his office, he will find a lessening reluctance on the part of his people, and that even the obstinacy of their practical heathenism is not unconquerable. It will at length give way under the power of his sustained and duteous attentions. Providence will open a door for him, even to the most ruthless of the families; and, implicating his presence with the sicknesses and the deaths and the funerals of every household, he will, on the sheer efficacy of his Christian worth, and with no other engine by which to make his way than Christian kindness, obtain an ascendance over the hearts of his people, only to be won by the omnipotence of charity…

…We confess ourselves to be most intensely set on the restoration of the true parochial system in our cities; and that because it bears with such signal effect on the reformation of the common people; that highest object which can be proposed either to the Christian philanthropist or to the patriot. Our hopes we admit to be sanguine; but we believe them to be solidly founded – because resting, under the blessing of Heaven, on the power of Christian truth, when combined with Christian charity: the one spoken Sabbath after Sabbath by the minister from the pulpit; the other brought to bear through the week, in a thousand nameless but most endearing attentions, by the same minister on the families of the parish.

The man who performs his ready visit at every call of distress, and prays at every dying bed, and ministers at every funeral, gracing and dignifying by his presence each group, however humble, of parochial mourners who assemble to carry a neighbour to his grave, in one word, who strikes in on every occasion when human hearts are most alive to the charm of sympathy, and most susceptible of a good and a holy impression from the services of religion, such a man, backed by the sacredness of his character, and having to do at one and the same time both with the feelings and consciences of his people, could not long—if the promises of the gospel and the laws of our nature abide unrepealed—could not long be withstood, even among the most depraved and the most degenerate of families…

Every thing, we are profoundly sensible², depends—under the operation of the divine Spirit—every thing depends upon the minister; and a thousand times more upon his moral and Christian than upon his literary qualifications. If he do succeed, it will be the achievement of principle and not of talent, the triumph of Christian and heaven-born worth, and not the triumph of high or heaven-born genius.

In a word, our confidence is not in great powers, but in great piety; and however desirable, when we can find it, to obtain the union of both. Yet Heaven, we foresee, will put a most impressive mockery on all our hopes, if, trusting to eloquence or general attraction, we shall prefer the man with these pulpit accomplishments alone to recommend him, to him who, plying daily and devotedly at his allotted task, is chiefly known among the families as the best friend of themselves and their children, and venerated by all as a man of faith and of prayer.’

Thomas Chalmers’ On the Right Ecclesiastical Economy of a Large Town can be read in full here.

Further Reading on Thomas Chalmers

More on Pastoral Visitation

• Andrew Roycroft: 15 Reasons Why Visitation is Vital for Your Pastor
• Andrew Roycroft: Deterrents to Pastoral Visitation

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THE DEATH-BED OF JOHN KNOX

He has come down the pulpit stair,
Creeps slow along the street;
And eager groups are gathered there,
The care-bent man to greet.

And loving eyes look fond farewell
On him they’ll see no more;
And boding hearts in fear foretell,
“John Knox’s work is o’er”.

He has gone up into his bed,
To rest him and to die;
He layeth down his fainting head,
And lifts his soul on high.

He who ne’er feared the face of man,
Before his God lies low;
He who fought sternest in the van
Breathes sacred quiet now.

He lieth in a solemn calm;
No sound is near him heard,
Save voice of prayer and holy psalm,
And of the blessed Word.

But list! He speaks. “The hour is near
That I have sighed to see;
Have prayed with many a groan and tear,
Might shortly come to me.

“Sore weary of the world am I,
And thirsting to depart;
Now God doth end my misery,
And comforteth my heart.

“Thou know’st, Lord, what my wars have been,
What burdens I have borne;
Thou know’st the sorrows I have seen,
How weak I am and worn.

“I kept my watch on Zion’s wall.
And to my trust was true;
Thou bidst me lift the trumpet’s call,
And a loud blast I blew.

“Men have miscalled me harsh and stern,
A man of war and strife:
They knew not how I sighed to turn
From that sore troubled life;

“How I had loved to serve my Lord,
Far from the battle’s shock,
A faithful preacher of His Word
And pastor of His flock.

“What time I rained on evil men
God’s threats, like burning coals,
Albeit I loathed their sins, e’en then
Full well I loved their souls.

“And in yon galley, fevered, chained
Beside the slavish oar,
One fervent hope my soul retained,
Here to preach Christ once more.

“The long thirst of my sorrowing heart
Might never be allayed
Till this bruised land, through every part,
Christ’s name had fragrant made.

“I leave with Him – her Head and Lord –
His precious chosen spouse,
To keep her faithful in His Word,
True to her covenant vows.

“All ‘neath the sun is toil and irk –
Is vanity and loss;
Nought is abiding save Christ’s Kirk
Fighting beneath the Cross.

“Last night for her I wrestled long –
I wrestled and prevailed;
She shall be built – stand fair and strong,
By whomso’er assailed.

“The Eternal, our own God shall rise,
And this long warfare close;
Shall wipe the tears from His saints’ eyes,
And give them sure repose.

“My meditation was most sweet
In the mid-watch last night;
My glad soul did its glory greet,
And well-nigh walked by sight.

“Oh! I have tasted and possessed –
Drunk pleasures with the Lamb –
Have reigned within my heavenly rest,
Where even now I am.

“Death has no victory – no sting –
Thanks be to Christ the Lord!
O salutary solacing!
O comfortable word!

“I take good night of all the saints
In both these realms that be;
My flesh beneath its burden faints;
Let them toil after me.

“With my dead hand, yet gladsome heart,
I hail them to the fight;
Bid them lift up when I depart,
The pure Evangel’s light.

“Now read the Mediator’s prayer¹ –
Great utterance of His will;
I cast my soul’s first anchor there,
And it is steadfast still.”

He sleeps; but mark, a troubled sleep;
For, ever and anon,
There comes a sigh – heart-drawn and deep –
There comes a heavy groan.

It is a sleep disturbed – oppressed –
By some dim anguish moved –
Not like the tranquil child-like sleep
God gives to His beloved.

He wakes; deep awe is in his eye,
But peace is on his brow;
Whate’er the ill that brooded nigh,
Its spell is broken now.

“Ofttimes”, he sighs, “in this frail life,
Hath Satan tempted me;
And oft it was a deadly strife
Ere he was forced to flee.

“But now – O serpent subtilty!
O coil of cunning lies!
He tempted me to think that I
Had merited the prize;

“That I had earned a conqueror’s place –
A palm – a crown – a throne –
Not by the gift of God’s free grace,
But deeds that I had done.

“Oh! but mine ancient enemy
Had well-nigh won the field,
Till the last dart that he let fly
I quenched upon my shield.

“And then I drew the Spirit’s sword –
‘The grace of God, not I’;
And from that quick and piercing word
The vanquished fiend did fly.

“And now, I know, without more pain,
Or anguish of the mind,
The fair deliverance I shall gain –
The abundant entrance find.

“All hail, sweet rest and free reward!
Yet – hear my latest breath! –
Live – live in Christ and serve the Lord,
And ne’er need flesh fear death”.

E’en now the sight fails from his eyes,
And now ‘tis come at last!
With lifted hand – with two deep sighs,
That kingly soul hath passed.

Featured image (visible when the article is shared on social media): Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1775–1851, High Street, Edinburgh, ca. 1818, Watercolor, pen and brown ink, graphite and scratching out on medium, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1977.14.6298.

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The dawning of a new year is a fresh call unto each of us to put first things first, and it is only by heeding this call that we are prepared to start it aright. The greatest tragedy of life is that the vast majority of our fellows are dissipating their energies on secondary things, spending their strength for that which satisfieth not. Alas, how much time have we wasted in the past! But a new year affords us another opportunity to mend our ways: how much of it, then, are we going to improve and con­serve for eternity? The answer to that question will be determined by how far we put first things first.

But it is one thing to recognise and realise that it is both our duty and wisdom to put first things first, and quite another actually to do so. It is much to be thankful for when light from above makes plain the path wherein we should walk; yet something more than illumination is required in order for us to traverse the same. Strength, power, enablement, is indispensable; and that we have not by nature. Have we not already been made painfully aware of this fact? Then have we humbly acknow­ledged it to God, and sought from Him fresh supplies of grace? Let us say with Jehoshaphat, when the enemies of Israel assembled against them, ‘O our God, wilt Thou not judge them? For we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon Thee’ (2 Chronicles 20:12).

What is it to put first things first? First and supremely to give God Himself His rightful place in our lives and render to Him that which is His due. ‘Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel, and his Redeemer the Lord of hosts: I am the first, and I am the last’ (Isaiah 44:6). The great ‘I am’ is self-existent and self-sufficient. Because He is the First, He should be first served. The world had its beginning from Him; we had ours, and therefore at the beginning of the year, and of each day, it deeply concerns us to take Him along with us. God is the sum of all excellency, being inexpressibly blessed in Himself. How He should attract us! God is possessed of infinite benevolence, which is guided by unerring wisdom, and He has all-mighty power at His disposal. What an Object for our most fervent affections! Shall, then, every glittering toy become a rival to this transcendently glorious Being and rob Him of our hearts?

Let us form the habit (if we have not already done so) of directing our first conscious thoughts unto Him who hath preserved us through the night. Begin the day by definitely bringing the Lord God before your heart, contemplate His wondrous attributes, prostrate your soul before Him in worship, adore Him for His glorious perfections. Say with holy David, ‘My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee’ (Psalm 5:3). Nor will this be either difficult or irksome if we turn the eyes of our souls unto Him: it is beholding the beauty of the Lord which puts in tune the strings of our harps, and enables us to make melody in our hearts unto Him. Nor is this all: by doing obeisance we promote obedience. By solemnly paying homage to God and rendering to Him the honour which is due His great name we strengthen the obligations that we lie under to observe His statutes and keep His commandments. By our humble and frequent adoration of His perfections, conformity to His will will be easier, for His authority over us will be more strongly felt.

‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you’ (Matthew 6:33). God is to be given the preference above all others. Let not any business prevent our seeking communion with Him nor hinder the maintenance of it. There are many things we would like to do, but other things deter us. We wish to visit a dear friend, but the pressure of other concerns thwarts us. But this must never be the case with our seeking unto God: that is the ‘one thing needful’ to which everything else must be made to give way. It is not at all necessary to our highest good that we be great in the world or advance our estate in it to such and such a pitch; but it is absolutely essential that we obtain God’s favour and keep ourselves in His love. No worldly business whatsoever can serve to excuse our attendance upon God; nay, the more important our worldly business be, the more need have we to apply ourselves to God by prayer for His help in and blessing upon it. The closer we keep to God in prayer, the more likely are our affairs to prosper.

Second, to yield ourselves up unreservedly to God. Of the Corinthian saints we read that they ‘first gave their own selves to the Lord’ (2 Corinthians 8:5), which should be done by us at the beginning of each day. This means that they [1] gave their hearts to Him, being won by His loveliness; that they [2] surrendered their wills to Him, to be governed by Him; that they [3] devoted their lives to Him, seeking His honour and glory. ‘In the way of Thy judgments, O LORD, have we waited for Thee; the desire of our soul is to Thy name, and to the remembrance of Thee. With my soul have I desired Thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek Thee early’ (Isa 26:8, 9). Our desire must be not only towards the good things that He gives, but towards God Himself – His favour and love, the manifestation of His name to us, and the influences of His grace upon us. Our wills are to be surrendered to God, as the servant is yielded to his master’s pleasure, in everything consulting his desires and interests. God’s will is to be our sole rule, His precepts the regulator of all we engage in. Our lives are to be devoted to His glory: acknowledging Him in all our ways, following Him fully as Caleb did.

Third, to keep our hearts with all diligence (Proverbs 4:23). It is not enough that our outward conduct be proper: the springs from which it issues must be right. ‘Cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also’ (Matthew 23:26). The stream itself cannot be sweet if the fountain-head be foul. A corrupt tree will not bear wholesome fruit. Alas, how widely neglected is this inward cleansing! How generally is external reformation substituted for internal mortification. And why is this? Because we are far more concerned about the approval of our fellow-creatures than we are to obtain the approbation of our Creator. Our actions come beneath the gaze of man, but the springs from which they proceed are under the scrutiny of God. He who ‘weigheth the spirits’ (Proverbs 16:2) demands purity of heart. We are required to judge the motives which actuate us, to make conscience of evil lustings and vain imaginations, to take ourselves to task for wandering thoughts when engaged in Divine worship.

Fourth, to manifest godliness in the family circle: ‘let them learn first to show piety at home’ (1 Timothy 5:4). Here is another God-appointed ‘first’ which it is most necessary for us all to heed, but we would specially press it upon the attention of those who are so anxious to engage in what they term ‘service for the Lord’. The ‘service’ which God requires from all of His people is not a running about hither and thither, asking impertinent questions of total strangers and prattling to them about Divine things, but to be in subjection to Himself, to walk obediently to His Law. To talk to people about Christ is far easier than the task He has assigned: to deny self, take up our cross, and follow Him. Actions speak louder than words: it is by our conduct we are to make manifest whose we are. Christians are to ‘show forth’ by their lives [rather than tell forth with their lips] ‘the praises of Him who has called them’ (1 Peter 2:9). And they are ‘first to show piety at home’, then in the Church, and then in the world, for if there be no piety in our home life, then all our seeming piety in the Church and before the world is but humbuggery and hypocrisy.

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Special person

Had you seen Jesus after he was born in Bethlehem special is not the word that would have sprung to mind. Judging by appearances he was as ordinary a baby as they come. But there was so much more to him than met the eye. The truth, in fact, is utterly extraordinary. In this little baby God himself had come to be with us. Charles Wesley, in his carol Hark! The herald angels sing, gets it exactly right: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see! Hail, the incarnate Deity!” God had taken our nature and come into our world as one of us.

One of Jesus’ first disciples, John, puts it like this. This is from the Gospel that came from his pen. Calling Jesus “the Word” (because he is the one through whom God the Father speaks to us), John tells us that he was with God in the beginning – already in existence when this world came into being – and that he was Himself God. And then John says this: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. Without ceasing to be what he had always been—God the Son—he began to be what he had never been, truly human. Another of Jesus’ early disciples, Matthew, in the Gospel that came from his pen, links it with an ancient promise: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel”;  a name which means, Matthew adds, “God with us”. Special person? Special indeed!

Special birth

You would expect that the entrance of such a special person into our world would have something about it that marked it out as special. And you would be right. For one thing, angels appeared and celebrated his birth in song. But before that there was the birth itself. In the words of the ancient Apostles’ Creed, “Jesus Christ…was…born of the virgin Mary”. By the power of God the Holy Spirit, Jesus had been miraculously conceived in his virgin mother’s womb. No man had been involved.

Let’s hear from Matthew again. He tells us about Joseph, the man to whom Mary was betrothed, and how he thought about ending his relationship with her when he discovered that she was pregnant. “But as he considered these things”, says Matthew, “an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit’”. Mary hadn’t been unfaithful to him. The son to whom she later gave birth was in her womb because God had worked an amazing miracle. Special birth? Special indeed!

Special work

Here’s something else you would expect: such a special person, coming in such a special way, must have a special work to do. And again you would be right. It’s all in his name. Jesus is from a Hebrew verb meaning, to save. Why was he given it? Because saving would be his special work. Specifically, he would save people from their sins. Here is Matthew again. He’s reporting the last words of the angel to Joseph: “You shall call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins”. One of Jesus’ later disciples, Paul, puts it like this: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”.

It is simply the best news this world has ever heard. Our greatest need as human beings is someone to save us from the guilt and the power and the dreadful penalty of our sins – for we can’t do it ourselves. And Jesus came to be that someone. It’s why he took our nature. It’s why he lived the beautiful life that he did. It’s why he died the sacrificial death that he did. It was all for us, so that as sinners we might have a Saviour to whom we could go for forgiveness and eternal life. Special work? Special indeed!

I end with a question: Is he your Saviour? He wants to be. He’s ready to be. And he will be if you will cry to him in your need and welcome him into your heart and life. Millions have done that. They have turned from their sin to Jesus and given him his rightful place as lord of their lives. Why not do the same?

David Campbell is minister of North Preston Evangelical Church.

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The example of Christ, especially the sight of Christ’s sufferings, will not only teach you to suffer, but will sanctify your heart by the suffering, and will provoke you to suffer. What, shall the Lord Christ suffer such great things for me, and shall I suffer nothing for him? Study the sufferings of Christ.

If you would so strengthen your faith as you may be able to suffer hard things, consider much and frequently, the great gains of suffering, possess your heart therewithal. Beloved, suffering times are gaining times; and if your heart and mind were but possessed with that truth, it would not be a hard thing to suffer hard things, and that by faith. I shall therefore spend a little time to make out this, for the strengthening of your faith, that suffering times are gaining times.

Suffering times are teaching times: ‘Blessed is the man whom thou chastisest, correctest and teachest out of thy law’. Schola crucis, schola lucis. ­The cross is God’s free school, where we learn much. Suffering times are teaching times.

As suffering times are teaching times, so suffering times are sin-­discovering times; afflictions recall sins past, and prevent sin to come; afflictions shew us the emptiness of the creature, the fulness of God, the vileness of sin. When Adonibezek had his thumbs and toes cut off, he could remember his own sin. You see how it is in winter, when the leaves are off the hedges, you can see where the birds’ nests were; when the leaves were on in summer time, you could not see those nests. And so in prosperous times men do not see the nests of their hearts and lives, but when their leaves are off then their nests are seen. Suffering times are sin-discovering times.

As suffering times are sin-discovering times, so suffering times are self­bethinking times. You see many a man run on in the day of his prosperity, and never bethinks himself. When the prodigal was pinched, then he bethought himself; and Manasseh in prison, then he bethought himself: and says Solomon, praying for the people in adversity, ‘If then they shall bethink themselves’. There is many a man that, I may say, doth owe his conversion to his affliction, and can say, If I had not been afflicted, I had never been converted. Suffering times, are self-bethinking times.

As suffering times are self-bethinking times, so suffering times are fruit­ful and growing times: ‘Every branch in me he pruneth that it may bring forth more fruit.’ Suffering times then are growing times.

As suffering times are growing times, so suffering times are truth-­advancing times. In the time of prosperity we lose truth, in the time of adversity we find truth and bear our testimony for truth, then truth is advanced. So that suffering times are truth-advancing times.

As suffering times are truth-advancing times, so suffering times are uniting times. In times of prosperity, professors wrangle, fall out, divide; but when the shepherd’s dog comes, then the sheep run together. Suffering times are uniting times.

As suffering times are uniting times, so suffering times are praying times.

He that will not pray, we say, let him go to sea, there he will be sick, and that will make him pray, that is the meaning: ‘In their affliction they will seek me early’. Suffering times are praying times.

As suffering times are praying times, so suffering times are soul-assuring times. There is many a man or woman goes up and down many years doubting, and hath no assurance; and when they grow sick, God doth send in his evidence for heaven by the hand of that sickness, and he hath assurance for heaven that never had it before: according to that in Hosea 2.14, ‘I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak to her heart’. ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God; speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, because her iniquity is pardoned’, When? In the day of her warfare: ‘for her warfare is accomplished, her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received double from the hand of the Lord’. Suffering times are soul-assuring times.

As suffering times are soul-assuring times, so suffering times are weaning times. When this mustard is laid upon the breast of the world, then are we weaned. Suffering times are weaning times.

Suffering times are heavenly times and glorious times. When the world is most bitter, heaven tastes most sweet and glorious; for, says the apostle, ‘then shall the Spirit of God and of glory rest upon you’. When? In suffering times, when the people of the Lord doth suffer, the Spirit of glory shall rest upon them. Suffering times are glorious times. And if all these things be true, then surely you will say with me, suffering times are gaining times. And if you would but think of this, and possess your heart with it, you would be more willing and able to suffer. Christians boggle and startle at sufferings. What is the reason? They do not know the gains of suffering. But is it true that suffering times are gaining times; that suffering times are teaching times; that suffering times are sin-discovering times; that suffering times are self-bethinking times; that suffering times are growing times; that suffering times are truth-advancing times; that suffering times are uniting times; that suffering times are praying times; that suffering times are soul-assuring times; that suffering times are wean­ing times; that suffering times are glorious times? then surely suffering times are gaining times. And if you would strengthen your faith, so as you may be able to endure hard things, think upon this much, and press it upon your own soul, carry this away with you, if no more: suffering times are gaining times. Oh my soul, suffering times are gaining times: and thus you shall be able to hold out and suffer.

The preceding selection appeared in Issues 70–71 of the Banner of Truth Magazine (July–August 1969).

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The first volume of William Cunningham’s works to be prepared for the press by his literary executors, James Buchanan and James Bannerman, was The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation. It was published in 1862, a few months after Cunningham’s death, and reprinted by the Banner of Truth Trust in 1967.

The contents of the volume began life as class lectures to the students of the New College in Edinburgh. They were later published over several years in the form of ten elaborate essays contributed to The British and Foreign Evangelical Review. It is these essays—lightly edited—that we have in The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation. ‘They were written upon a plan’, say his editors, ‘and as an orderly series of discussions, embracing the leading historical characters, and the great developments of scriptural truth at the time of the Reformation’ (p.v).

In the second of the essays, entitled ‘Luther’, Cunningham vigorously defends the reformer against certain groundless attacks made on him by the eminent Scottish philosopher, Sir William Hamilton. The essay was originally published in the British and Foreign for April 1856. In the October number for the same year a follow-on article was published on the subject of ‘The Reformers and the Doctrine of Assurance’. This too was written in response to Sir William Hamilton. In the interval between the two articles Sir William died. In a footnote to the reprint of the October article in The Reformers and the Theology of the Reformation, Cunningham’s editors give a brief quotation from the original introduction. In it Cunningham expresses regret for the tone in which he had written his first article. What follows is the full text of that introduction. It amply vindicates the title of this piece, ‘Humble Controversialist’:

‘When the April number of this journal, containing, in a review of Archdeacon Hare’s ‘Vindication of Luther’, an exposure of Sir William Hamilton’s attacks upon the great Reformer, was published, we were not aware that the health of the distinguished individual on whose statements we commented so freely was worse than it had been for  some years past. We did not know that he was less able to defend himself, or to repel any attack that might be made upon him, than he was when he published the second edition of his ‘Discussions.’ It was with surprise and sincere sorrow that soon after we learned that he had, somewhat suddenly, been called away from this fleeting scene. We could not but be struck and solemnised by the unexpected intelligence of his decease, when we had been so recently adducing serious charges against him at the bar of public opinion, and labouring to prove that these charges were well-founded. We were not conscious, indeed, of being influenced by any ill-will or vindictiveness towards Sir William Hamilton; and we have not, and never had, any apprehension that we had done him any injustice. We are deliberately persuaded that every charge we adduced against him was true and proved, and that the whole of the indignation we expressed was most amply merited by the conduct on his part that called it forth. But while justice to truth and to ourselves requires us to say this, we must at the same time confess, that in some parts of the article referred to, we were tempted to speak of our antagonist in a tone which, though in ordinary circumstances it might have been excused by the very peculiar provocation furnished, his speedy and unexpected death has led us to regret. The knowledge, if we had possessed it, that he was to die so soon, would assuredly have modified somewhat the tone in which the discussion was conducted,—would have shut out something of its lightness and severity, and imparted to it more of solemnity and tenderness; and the knowledge that we did possess, that he, as well as ourselves, was liable every day to be called out of this world and summoned into God’s presence, ought to have produced this result. Alas! alas! how little are we in the habit of living fully under the powers of the world to come, and of realising and remembering, with reference either to ourselves or others, that we do not know what a day or an hour may bring forth! It would surely infuse a much better tone and spirit into controversy, if those who engage in it were more in the habit of remembering, that it is quite possible that the next thing they hear of him with whose statements they are dealing so freely, may be, that he has been summoned into the presence of his final Judge.’¹

William Cunningham was described after his death as ‘one of the…most loveable of Scottish men.’² The touching humility exhibited in these words was no small part of what made him so.

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1. Singing

Our children are blessed as they hear the whole church singing to God joyfully and heartily, with full hearts and full voices. They learn that the truths we sing are truths worth singing about. And they learn to sing. They learn how to sing the psalms. They learn the great hymns that have been passed down to us from previous generations of believers. They learn to obey Paul’s command in Ephesians 5:19, ‘[Address] one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.’ They learn to sing to the Lord with the congregation.

2. Prayer

To be sure, children learn to pray by listening to their parents pray, but they also learn to pray by listening to their pastors pray. They learn to pray along with those who are leading in prayer. They add their voices to the congregation as we all pray the Lord’s Prayer together, or join together in a corporate confession of sin. They learn to add their hearty ‘Amen’ to the end of the prayers, as a way of agreeing with what has been prayed and making it their own. They learn to pray in corporate worship.

3. Reading

Paul told Timothy to devote himself to ‘the public reading of Scripture’ (1 Tim. 4:13), which is for the benefit of the whole congregation, of which Ten Benefits of Corporate Worship for Our Children 27 children are a part (Eph. 6:1-3; Col. 3:20). Children should read the Bible in their home, or have it read to them, but they should also be able to benefit from the public reading of Scripture in congregational worship. It is one of the means of grace that God has appointed for his people.

4. Preaching

The preaching of the word of God is not just for adults, it’s for children too. The whole counsel of God is for the whole people of God and therefore the preaching of the whole counsel of God is for the whole people of God. And the preaching of the word is the high point of the means of grace, and we don’t want our children to miss out. We don’t want them to miss out on what the Westminster Larger Catechism says about the way God uses sermons to change us: ‘The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means of enlightening, convincing, and humbling sinners; of driving them out of themselves, and drawing them unto Christ; of conforming them to his image, and subduing them to his will; of strengthening them against temptations and corruptions; of building them up in grace, and establishing  their hearts in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation’ (Q&A 155). Those are things we want for our children.

5. Sacraments

The sacrament of baptism is a blessing to our children, not just their own baptism, but the baptism of other children, or of adults professing faith. They can see the sign and seal of the covenant of grace and their natural curiosity may spark off conversations with their parents about the meaning of it all. And the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is also a blessing to our children, even though they don’t participate in the sacred supper until they have made a public profession of their faith and been admitted to the Lord’s Table by the elders. They see what’s going on, they hear the words of institution that become familiar with them, and again their questions can generate meaningful discussion about what the Lord’s Supper signifies – much like the question the son would ask the father at the celebration of the Passover in the Old Testament, ‘What does this mean?’ (Exod. 13:14).

6. Habit

The habit of worshipping God on the Lord’s Day is formed in the hearts and minds of our children. The healthy, holy habit of attending corporate worship is formed, which, if kept up, will be a blessing to them all their lives. We are creatures of habit, and we want to form the habit of Lord’s Day worship early in the hearts and minds of our children.

7. Inclusion

It is a tremendous blessing to our children to know that they are included in the covenant community, and that they have both great privileges as a member of the covenant community and great responsibilities. Their greatest responsibility is first and foremost to trust Christ personally and to make public profession of their faith. Our children can either get the distinct impression that worship is for adults, or they can learn that worship is for them too.

8. Learning

They are blessed with the opportunity to learn how to worship God by watching their parents and the rest of the church worship God. Author Jason Helopoulos writes in his book Let the Children Worship:

Corporate worship is corporate. The entire body gathers together. This re-emphasizes the unity God’s people possess with one another. It reminds us that we are one people united in our one Lord, one faith, and one baptism (Eph. 4:5). This blesses the entire congregation. The old saint looks around and sees generations that will carry on the faith once he has passed. A teenager, who may struggle to respect his parents, observes venerable and respected men and women in the community who also believe in Christ Jesus. The young child witnesses other adults possessing the same faith and heart for worship that her parents model at home. As the congregation sings, all the voices of the church unite. When God’s people read the confession of faith, they confess the same truth united. When God’s people hear the public prayers they voice a loud ‘Amen’ united. How unfortunate it is when the entire congregation should witness and voice this unity and receive encouragement from this fellowship, but our children remain absent. It steals blessing from them and the greater congregation itself.¹

9. Modelling

This is actually a blessing for the whole congregation, because by modelling I mean our children modelling for us the child-like faith we should have as we worship God. In Luke 18:15-17 we read,

Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.’

We are helping our children learn to worship, but they are also helping us.

10. The special presence of God

Matthew 18:20 says, ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.’ God, of course, is everywhere, but he is present with us in corporate worship in a special way. He is present to bless us and to keep us, to make his face shine upon us and be gracious to us, to lift up his countenance upon us and give us peace (Num. 6:24-26). And if God is present, we don’t want our children to be absent. As a pastor once put it, ‘If Jesus showed up for worship on a Sunday, would we separate our children from the service?’ The answer, of course, is ‘No.’ We would want our children there if he were there. But he is there, every Sunday, and so we want our children to be there too.

Matt Purdy is Senior Pastor at Carlisle Reformed Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, USA.

This article was published in the December 2019 issue of the Banner of Truth Magazine, no. 675.

Featured Photo by Ben White on Unsplash.

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‘Why do you go to church twice on Sunday? Isn’t once enough?’ Since the practice of attending worship twice on Sunday has fallen on hard times this is a question that is often asked of Reformed Christians. Many people in our culture find it amazing that anyone would actually want to go to church both in the morning and in the evening on Sunday. Others find the idea of attending worship twice to be an inconvenience that takes up too much of their weekend. Sadly, even many Reformed Christians do not see the great significance of attending church twice on the Lord’s Day and, therefore, of remaining uncommitted to the practice. If you have ever wondered about the purpose of having two services on the Sabbath, let me encourage you to think carefully about the following:

1. Evening Worship Is Rooted in Scripture

While there is no explicit command in the New Testament to have two worship services instead of one, there is, nevertheless, a clear pattern in Scripture of ‘morning and evening’. This is seen in the order of creation as God structured time for us humans in terms of mornings and evenings (Gen.1–2). This pattern was also evident in Old Covenant worship as God commanded the daily offerings in the tabernacle to be made once in the morning and then again at twilight (Num. 28:1–10, cf. Exod. 29:38–39). This is why the psalmist declares in Psalm 92, which is explicitly identified as a psalm for the Sabbath, ‘It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night’ (verses 1–2; cf. Psa.134:1). It is not unreasonable, therefore, to believe that this pattern of morning and evening carries over into New Covenant worship, especially since the New Testament gives evidence of worship services that took place on the evening of the first day of the week (see Acts 20:7).

2. Evening Worship Helps Us To Sanctify the Lord’s Day

One great practical benefit of having both morning and evening worship is that it provides an excellent structure to help families sanctify the Lord’s Day. The two worship services become like bookends on the Sabbath, allowing the Christian more easily to keep the day holy as we are commanded, rather than merely sanctifying a couple of hours in the morning! (Despite what is popular in our culture, it is still the Lord’s Day and not ‘the Lord’s Morning’.) Since the keeping of his day is a mark of God’s covenant community that sets it apart as holy and reminds its members that they are pilgrims on the way to the eternal Sabbath, evening worship provides a beautiful rhythm for the Lord’s Day. For centuries thousands upon thousands of Christians have found the interval between the morning and evening worship services the perfect time for food, fellowship, devotional reading, family prayer, acts of mercy or – by no means the least important – a good nap! Freed up from all the craziness of the week, Christians are able to enjoy a day of worship and rest. What better way to end the holy day than by gathering together with the covenant community for the Word, fellowship, sacrament and the prayers (cf. Acts 2:42)?

3. Evening Worship, Like Morning Worship, Is a Means of Grace

Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer 65 asks, ‘Since then we are made partakers of Christ and all his benefits by faith only, from where comes this faith?’ It answers: ‘The Holy Spirit works it in our hearts by the preaching of the gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.’ One of the main reasons why the evening worship service has been greatly neglected in our day is because of a generally low view of preaching and the sacraments. Who wants to sit through another boring sermon when one can get a bigger ‘blessing’ in a small-group Bible study, personal devotions or some other programme?

But if preaching and the sacraments are truly God’s primary means of grace for our sanctification, then surely Christians would not want to miss a worship service. Indeed, as Dr. W. Robert Godfrey has half-seriously pointed out, the question isn’t, ‘Why two worship services on Sunday?’ The question more rightly should be, ‘Why not three or four?’ If God nourishes our faith by the preaching of the gospel, why wouldn’t we want to hear the gospel preached more than once on Sunday? Since ‘faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ’ (Rom. 10:17) and it is the ‘the preaching of Jesus Christ’ that strengthens us (Rom. 16:25), we must realize that the evening worship service provides another opportunity for our faith to be built up and our knowledge of Christ to grow. It provides a broader scope of preaching on the whole counsel of God, allowing the pastor to take his congregation through more of Scripture than only one service would allow. It is for this reason that the elders call the congregation to worship twice each Lord’s Day. As those to whom Christ has given the high calling of ‘keeping watch over [our] souls’ (Heb.13:17), they call us to worship not only so that we may serve the Lord twice on his holy day, but also so that we may benefit from God’s ordained means of grace. As God’s Word commands us to obey and to submit to our elders (again, see Heb.13:17), we should respond to the call to worship as a joyful act of obedience to the Lord.

4. Evening Worship Gives Us Continuity with the Historic Christian Church

Oftentimes Christians baulk at the practice of attending the evening worship service because it is not a part of their custom. What they must understand, however, is that if what they are accustomed to is only one service on the Lord’s Day, then they are not accustomed to the practice of the historic Christian church but to a modern novelty. As we look at the history of the church, we see that morning and evening worship on the Lord’s Day was the norm. In the early fourth century the church historian Eusebius of Caesarea described what he understood to be the universal practice of the church:

For it is surely no small sign of God’s power that throughout the whole world in the churches of God at the morning rising of the sun and at the evening hours, hymns, praises, and truly divine delights are offered to God. God’s delights are indeed the hymns sent up everywhere on earth in his Church at the times of morning and evening. (emphasis mine)¹

During the Middle Ages, morning worship became known as ‘lauds’ and evening worship as ‘vespers’. Attending both lauds and vespers was standard practice for Christians. At the time of the Reformation, the custom of morning and evening worship continued, as is evidenced in the liturgies of the Reformed churches in the sixteenth century. Typically the evening (or, in many cases, afternoon) service was devoted to an exposition of Reformed doctrine and was more catechetical in nature. So important was this second service to the life of the Reformed churches, that when it was threatened by the protests of the Remonstrants (Arminians), the matter was brought to the Synod of Dort (1618–19) and discussed at great length. The overwhelming testimony at the Synod by delegates from countries all over Europe was that the second service was something to be guarded and cherished in order that the Reformed faith might continue to flourish and Christians to have greater opportunity to mature in their understanding. Through the centuries this practice continued to be a principal part of Reformed worship, as can be traced in the traditions of the Dutch Reformed churches, English Puritanism and Scottish Presbyterianism, as well as in Anglicanism and early Lutheranism. Thus it must be understood that Protestant churches that have dropped the evening worship service altogether have sharply departed from what has historically been a normal practice of Christ’s church.

As one charged with the responsibility of feeding the flock of Christ and watching out for their souls, let me encourage you to attend the evening worship service. It is good for your soul! Indeed, some families have legitimate, pastoral reasons why attending the evening worship service is not merely an inconvenience, but a practical impossibility. But often those who do not attend evening worship do so merely out of an attitude that asks, ‘What is the least that is required of me?’ Let us lay aside such ungrateful thinking and be reminded that we are pilgrims on the way to our heavenly home. Just as our lives are marked with the beautiful sabbatical rhythm of six-and-one that was established in creation and looks forward to the consummation, so also we have a beautiful rhythm of worship each Lord’s Day that provides an opportunity both in the morning and the evening to gather together with God’s covenant community, to serve him in worship, and to receive from his open hand his good gifts of Word and sacrament.

Linked Photo by Raphael Andres on Unsplash

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It may seem strange to some persons, that I should give directions for the performance of an act so well understood as the perusal of a book; and especially the perusal of a book of so simple and elementary a kind as this. But the fact is, that multitudes either do not know, or do not remember at the time, how to read to advantage; and, therefore, profit but little by what they read. Besides, simple and elementary as is this treatise, it is on a subject of infinite and eternal importance, and is perused in the most critical season of a man’s everlasting history; when, in a very peculiar sense, every means of grace, and this among the rest, will be either ‘a savour of death unto death, or of life unto life,’ to the reader. Tremendous idea! But strictly true.

Reader, whosoever thou art, it is no presumptuous thought of the author to believe that thou wilt remember the contents of this small treatise, either with pleasure and gratitude in heaven, or with remorse and despair in hell. Can it then be an impertinently officious act to remind thee how to read with advantage what I have written?

1. Take it with you into your closet

I mean your place of retirement for prayer; for, of course, you have such a place. Prayer is the very soul of all religion, and privacy is the very life of prayer itself. This is a book to be read when you are alone; when none is near but God and your conscience; when you are not hindered by the presence of a fellow-creature from the utmost freedom of manner, thought, and feeling; when, unobserved by any human eye, you could lay down the book, and meditate, or weep, or fall upon your knees to pray, or give vent to your feelings in short and sudden petitions to God.

I charge you then to reserve the volume for your private seasons of devotion and thoughtfulness: look not into it in company, except it be the company of a poor trembling and anxious inquirer, like yourself.

2. Read it with deep seriousness

Remember, it speaks to you of God, of eternity, of salvation, of heaven, and of hell. Take it up with something of the awe ‘that warns you how you touch a holy thing.’ It meets you in your solicitude about your soul’s welfare; it meets you fleeing from destruction, escaping for your life, crying out, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ and proffers its assistance to guide you for refuge to ‘the hope set before you in the gospel.’ It is itself serious; its author is serious; it is on a serious subject; and demands to be read in a most devout and serious mood. Take it not up lightly, nor read it lightly. If your spirit be not as solemn as usual, do not touch it; and when you do touch it, command away every other subject, and endeavour to realize the idea that God, salvation, and eternity are before you; and that you are actually collecting the ingredients of the cup of salvation, or the wormwood and gall to imbitter the cup of damnation.

3. Read it with earnest prayer

It can do you no good, without God’s blessing: nothing short of Divine grace can render it the means of instructing your mind, or impressing your heart. It will convey no experimental knowledge, relieve no anxiety, dissipate no doubts, afford neither peace nor sanctification, if God do not give his Holy Spirit: and if you would have the Spirit, you must ask for his influence. If, therefore, you wish it to benefit you, do not read another page, till you have most fervently, as well as sincerely, prayed to God for his blessing to accompany the perusal. I have earnestly prayed to God to enable me to write it, and if you as earnestly pray to him to enable you to read it, there is thanksgiving in store for us both; for usually what is begun in prayer, ends in praise.

4. Do not read too much at a time

Books that are intended to instruct and impress should be read slowly. Most persons read too much at a time. Your object is not merely to read this treatise through, but to read it so as to profit by it. Food cannot be digested well, if too much be eaten at a time; so neither can knowledge.

5. Meditate on what you read

Meditation bears the same office in the mental constitution as digestion does in our corporeal system. The first mental exercise is attention, the next is reflection. If we would gain a correct notion of an object, we must not only see it, but look at it; and so, also, if we would gain knowledge from books, we must not only see the matters treated of, but look steadily at them. Nothing but meditation can enable us to understand or feel. In reading the Scriptures and religious books, we are, or should be, reading for eternity. Salvation depends on knowledge, and knowledge on meditation. At almost every step of our progress through a book which is intended to guide us to salvation, we should pause and ask, ‘Do I understand this?’ Our profiting depends not on the quantity we read, but the quantity we understand. One verse in Scripture, if understood and meditated upon, will do us more good than a chapter, or even a book, read through in haste, and without reflection.

6. Read regularly through in order

Do not wander about from one part to another, and in your eagerness to gain relief, pick and cull particular portions, on account of their supposed suitableness to your case. It is all suitable; and will be found most so by being taken together and as a whole. A rambling method of reading, whether it be the Scriptures or other books, is not to edification: it often arises from levity of mind, and sometimes from impatience; both of which are states very unfriendly to improvement. Remember it is salvation you are in quest of; an object of such transcendent importance, as to be a check upon volatility; and of such value, as to encourage the most exemplary patience.

7. Read calmly

You are anxious to obtain eternal life: you are eagerly asking, ‘What shall I do to be saved?’ But still, you must not allow your solicitude so far to agitate your mind, as to prevent you from listening calmly and coolly for the answer. In circumstances of great anxiety, men are sometimes so much under the power of excited feelings, that the judgment is bewildered, and thus they are not only prevented from finding out what is best to be done, but from seeing it when it is laid down by another.

This anxious and hurried state of mind is very common in those who are just awakened to a concern about salvation; they are restless and eager to gain relief, but are defeated in their object by their very solicitude to obtain it. The Scriptures are read, sermons are heard, advice of friends is received, in a confused state of mind. Now you must guard against this, and endeavour so far to control your thoughts, and calm your perturbation, as to attend to the counsels and cautions which are here suggested.

8. I very earnestly recommend the perusal of all those passages of Scripture and chapters which I have quoted, and which, for the sake of brevity, I have only referred to, without quoting the words.

I lay great stress upon this. Read this book with the Bible at your elbow, and do not think much of the trouble of turning to the passages quoted. If, unhappily, you should consider me, or my little volume, as a substitute for the Bible, instead of a guide to it, I shall have done you an injury, or rather you will have done yourself an injury by thus employing it. ‘As new-born babes,’ says the apostle, ‘desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby’ (1 Pet. 2:2). And as those infants thrive best who are fed from the breast of their mother, so those converts grow most in grace, who are most devoted to a spiritual perusal of the Scriptures. If, therefore, I stand between you and the word of God, I do you great disservice; but if I should persuade you to read the Scriptures, I shall greatly help you in your religious course. Perhaps, in the present state of your mind, it is not desirable to begin and read regularly the word of God, but to go through those passages which I have selected and recommended.

And now may God, of his great goodness and sovereign grace, deign to bless the perusal of this book to many immortal souls, by making it, however humble the production, the means of conducting them into the path of life!

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*An earlier version of this post wrongly attributed this excerpt to Angell James’s Pastoral Addresses (1840).

The post How to Read a Soul-Improving Book appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

Claim: Jesus had no interest in maintaining a male-female requirement for sexual relations.

What the evidence really shows: Jesus believed that a male-female requirement for sexual relations was foundational, a core value of Scripture’s sexual ethics on which other sexual standards should be based, including the ‘twoness’ of a sexual union.

Jesus predicated marital twoness – the restriction of the number of persons in a sexual union to two, whether concurrently (no polygamy) or serially (no cycle of divorce and remarriage) – on the fact that ‘from the beginning of creation, “male and female He made them” [Gen. 1:27] and “for this reason a man . . . will be joined to his wife and the two will become one flesh” [Gen. 2:24].’ (Mark 10:2-12; Matt. 19:3-9). In other words, the fact that God had designed two (and only two) primary sexes for complementary sexual pairing was Jesus’ basis for a rigorous monogamy position. He reasoned that, since the union of the two sexual halves creates an integrated, self-contained sexual whole, a third sexual partner was neither necessary nor desirable. We know that this was Jesus’ reasoning because the only other first-century Jews that shared Jesus’ opposition to more than two persons in a sexual bond were the Essenes, who likewise rejected ‘taking two wives in their lives’ because ‘the foundation of creation is “male and female he created them” [Gen. 1:27]’ and because ‘those who entered [Noah’s] ark went in two by two into the ark [Gen. 7:9]’ (Damascus Covenant 4.20-5.1). The appeal to the ‘two by two’ statement in the story of Noah’s ark is significant because, apart from the repetition of Genesis 1:27 in 5:1, that is the only other place where the precise Hebrew phrase zakar uneqevah (‘male and female’) appears, and there it is strongly linked with the emphasis on a natural pair. The twoness of the sexes is the foundation for the twoness of the sexual bond. In short, according to Jesus, if you think that limiting the number of partners in a sexual union to two persons at any one time is an important requirement for sexual unions, you should regard a male-female requirement as even more important.

There are many other arguments that one can cite as evidence of Jesus’ rejection of homosexual practice, including the fact that the Old Testament that Jesus accepted as Scripture was strongly opposed; that the man who baptized Jesus (John the Baptist) was beheaded for criticizing Herod Antipas for violating Levitical sex laws (the incest prohibitions, even in adult-consensual relationships); that the entirety of early Judaism out of which Jesus emerged believed homosexual practice to be a gross violation of foundational sexual ethics (there are no extant texts within centuries of the law of Jesus indicating any openness to homosexual relationships of any sort, in contrast to the existence of such texts among ‘pagans’); and that the early church that knew Jesus best was united in its belief that a male-female prerequisite for sexual unions was essential. The supposition of a Jesus supportive of, or even neutral toward, committed homosexual unions is without historical analogue in Jesus’ immediate cultural environment; revisionist history at its worst. Moreover, although we have no extant saying of Jesus that loosened the Law’s demand for sexual purity, we do have sayings where Jesus closed remaining loopholes in the Law’s sexual commands by further intensifying God’s demand (adultery of the heart; divorce & remarriage) and warning people that sexual impurity could get one thrown into hell full-bodied (Matt. 5:27-32). The trend of Jesus’ teaching on sexual ethics is not toward greater licence but toward fewer loopholes.

2. Eunuchs

Claim: The positive treatment that ‘eunuchs’ receive in some biblical texts (Isa. 56:3-5, Matt. 19:12, Acts 8:27-39) provides grounds for supporting homosexual unions, as does Jesus’ attitude toward the woman caught in adultery and toward other outcasts.

What the evidence really shows: The references to eunuchs in Isaiah 56:3-5 and Acts 8:27-39 refer to persons who were physically castrated against their will, not to persons who willingly removed their marks of masculinity, much less actively engaged in sexual relations forbidden by Scripture. Jesus’ saying about eunuchs in Matthew 19:12 presupposes that eunuchs are not having sexual intercourse at all, let alone having forbidden sexual intercourse. Both Jesus’ response to the woman caught in adultery and his outreach to sexual sinners was aimed at achieving their repentance so that they might inherit the kingdom of God that he proclaimed.

Isaiah 39:7 makes clear that the eunuchs mentioned in Isaiah 56:4-5 were Israelites who, against their will, were taken to ‘the palace of the king of Babylon’ and made eunuchs, but had now returned to Israel. According to Isaiah 56:4-5, God will not cut them off from his people so long as they ‘choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant.’ There is no way that the author would have regarded someone engaged in same-sex intercourse as still pleasing God and holding fast to the covenant. These are persons that had a portion of their masculinity taken away from them against their will. Why should they now be penalized if they do not support erasure of their own masculinity and have no intent to violate any of God’s commands regarding sexual behaviour? A first-century Jewish text, The Wisdom of Solomon, both extols a eunuch who does not violate God’s commands and condemns homosexual practice (Wisd. 3:14; 14:26). Another Jewish work presumes that eunuchs are not having any sexual intercourse (Sirach 20:4; 30:20).

This is exactly what Jesus presumes when he compares ‘eunuchs who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God’ – that is, Christians who opt out of marriage and choose a celibate life in order to have more time and freedom of movement and action to proclaim the gospel – with ‘born eunuchs’ and ‘made eunuchs’. The analogy only works on the assumption that eunuchs do not have sexual relations. So if ‘born eunuchs’ included for Jesus not only asexual men but also men who had sexual desire only for other males then Jesus rejected for them all sexual relations outside the covenant bond of marriage between a man and a woman. In fact, the whole context for the eunuch saying in Matthew 19:10-12 is Jesus’ argument that the twoness of the sexes in complementary sexual pairing, ‘male and female,’ is the basis for rejecting sexual relationships involving three or more persons. He can hardly be dismissing the importance of a male-female requirement for sexual relations immediately after establishing the foundational character of such a requirement – certainly not in Matthew’s view of the matter.

When Jesus rescued the woman caught in adultery from being stoned, he did so with a view to encouraging her repentance. Put simply, dead people don’t repent. Jesus wanted to give the woman every last opportunity to repent so that she might inherit the kingdom of God. So he warned her: ‘Go and from now on no longer be sinning’ (John 8:11). A similar statement is made by Jesus in John 5:14, where it is followed up with the remark: ‘lest something worse happen to you.’ That something worse is loss of eternal life through an unrepentant life. Whereas the Pharisees didn’t care if sexual sinners and persons who exploited the poor for material gain (first-century tax collectors) went to hell, Jesus cared enough to make them a focus of his ministry so that he might, through a proclamation of love and repentance, call them back to God’s kingdom (hence Mark’s summary of Jesus’ ministry: ‘The kingdom of God has drawn near; repent and believe the good news’ [1:15]). When the church calls to repentance those who engage in homosexual acts and does so lovingly, with a desire to reclaim lives for the kingdom of God, it carries out the work of its Lord.

3. Romans 1:24-27 and the Erroneous ‘Exploitation Argument’

Claim: The Bible’s prohibition of homosexual practice in Romans 1:24-27 applies only to exploitative and hedonistic forms of homosexual practice such as sex with slaves, prostitutes, and adolescents.

What the evidence really shows: Every piece of evidence that can be culled from the text’s literary and historical context confirms that the Bible’s prohibition of homosexual practice, like its prohibition of adult incestuous unions, is absolute, rejecting all forms of homosexual practice regardless of consent and commitment.

Five lines of evidence make this point clear.

First, Paul in Romans 1:24-27 rejects homosexual practice because it is a violation of God’s creation of ‘male and female’ as a sexual pair in Genesis. In Romans 1:23-27 Paul intentionally echoed Genesis 1:26-27, making eight points of correspondence, in the same tripartite structure, between the two sets of texts (humans/image/likeness, birds/cattle/reptiles, male/female). Paul was rejecting homosexual practice in the first instance because it was a violation of the male-female prerequisite for sexual relations ordained by the Creator at creation, not because of how well or badly it was done in his cultural milieu.

Second, the kind of nature argument that Paul employs in Romans 1:18-27 isn’t conducive to a distinction between exploitative and non-exploitative forms of homosexual practice. For Paul contended that female-female and male-male intercourse was ‘contrary to nature’ because it violated obvious clues given in the material structures of creation that male and female, not two males or two females, are each others sexual ‘counterpart’ or ‘complement’ (to use the language of Gen. 2:18, 20) in terms of anatomy, physiology, and psychology. What Paul says regarding the vertical vice of idolatry (1:19-23) is equally true of the horizontal vice of same-sex intercourse: male-female complementarity is ‘clearly seen, being mentally apprehended by means of the things made‘ (1:19-20). Some have argued that the ancients had no comprehension of a complementarity argument. Yet as classicist Thomas K. Hubbard notes in his magisterial sourcebook of texts pertaining to Homosexuality in Greece and Rome (University of California Press, 2003): ‘Basic to the heterosexual position [among Greek and Roman moralists in the first few centuries A.D.] is the characteristic Stoic appeal to the providence of Nature, which has matched and fitted the sexes to each other’ (p. 444). Hubbard is supportive of homosexual relationships, yet admits the point.

Third, the fact that Paul in Romans 1:27 specifically indicts male homosexual relations that involve mutual, reciprocal affections – ‘males, having left behind the natural use of the female, were inflamed with their yearning for one another’ – precludes any supposition that Paul is thinking only of coercive relationships.

Fourth, Paul’s indictment of lesbianism in Romans 1:26 further confirms that his indictment of homosexual practice is absolute, since female homosexuality in antiquity was not primarily known, or criticized, for the exploitative practices of sex with slaves, prostitutes, or children. And there can be little doubt that Paul was indicting female homosexuality, as evidenced by: (1) the parallelism of the language of 1:26 (‘females exchanged the natural use’) and 1:27 (‘likewise also the males leaving behind the natural use of the female‘); (2) the fact that in antiquity lesbian intercourse was the form of female intercourse most commonly labelled ‘contrary to nature’ and paired with male homosexual practice; (3) the fact of nearly universal male opposition to lesbianism in antiquity, even by men engaged in homosexual practice; and (4) the fact that lesbian intercourse was the dominant interpretation of Romans 1:26 in the patristic period.

Fifth, contrary to false claims that people in the Greco-Roman world had no concept of committed homosexual unions, there is plenty of evidence for the conception and existence of loving homosexual relationships, including semi-official ‘marriages’ between men and between women. Moreover, we know of some Greco-Roman moralists who acknowledged the existence of loving homosexual relationships while rejecting even these as unnatural (indeed, we can trace this idea back to Plato’s Laws). This is also true of the Church Fathers. For example, Clement of Alexandria (late second century) referred to ‘women . . . contrary to nature . . . marrying women’ (Paidagogos 3.3.21.3). Obviously marriage implies commitment (else there is no need to marry) yet commitment does not change the unnatural and sinful character of the relationship. And it should go without saying that Jewish writers in Paul’s day and beyond rejected all forms of homosexual activity. For example, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus stated the obvious to his Roman readers: ‘The law [of Moses] recognizes only sexual intercourse that is according to nature, that which is with a woman . . . But it abhors the intercourse of males with males’ (Against Apion 2.199).

It is hardly surprising, then, that even Louis Crompton, a homosexual scholar, acknowledges this point in his massive work, Homosexuality and Civilization (Harvard University Press, 2003; 500 pgs.):

However well-intentioned, the interpretation that Paul’s words were not directed at ‘bona fide’ homosexuals in committed relationships . . . seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstance. The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been wholly foreign to Paul or any other Jew or early Christian. (p. 114)

Also worth noting is the falsity of claims that the ancient world knew nothing akin to our understanding of a homosexual orientation or of congenital influences on at least some homosexual development. As classicist Thomas K. Hubbard (cited above) notes:

Homosexuality in this era [i.e., of the early Imperial Age of Rome] may have ceased to be merely another practice of personal pleasure and began to be viewed as an essential and central category of personal identity, exclusive of and antithetical to heterosexual orientation. (p. 386)

Bernadette Brooten, a lesbian New Testament scholar who has written the most important book on lesbianism in antiquity also acknowledges this point. She states that

Paul could have believed [that some persons attracted to members of the same sex] were born that way and yet still condemn them [better: their behaviours] as unnatural and shameful . . . I see Paul as condemning all forms of homoeroticism as the unnatural acts of people who had turned away from God. (Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [University of Chicago, 1996], 244).

4. Analogies

Claim: The closest analogies to the Bible’s opposition to homosexual practice are the Bible’s support for both slavery and the oppression of women and its opposition to divorce, all positions that we now reject.

What the evidence really shows: The alleged analogies cited above are far more remote than the analogies of the Bible’s opposition to incest and the New Testament’s opposition to polygamy – behaviours that would disqualify any participants from ordained office, even when the relationships in question are adult, consensual, committed, and exhibit no scientifically measurable harm.

Scripture’s opposition to incest and (in the New Testament) polygamy or polyamory (sexual love for multiple persons concurrently) are related in key ways to its opposition to homosexual practice. They are all sexual behaviours proscribed in one or both Testaments of Scripture, and proscribed absolutely, despite the fact that all three are able to be conducted as caring and committed adult sexual relationships. Incest is ultimately prohibited on the grounds that it is sexual intercourse with a person who, in terms of embodied existence, is too much of a ‘same’ or like on a kinship level (compare Leviticus 18:6: ‘no one shall approach any flesh of one’s flesh to uncover nakedness’). The higher risks of procreative difficulties that attend fertile incestuous unions are merely the symptoms of the root problem: too much identity on the kinship level between close blood relations. Similarly the inability of persons of the same sex to procreate is merely the symptom of the root problem: too much embodied identity, here as regards gender or sex, between persons of the same sex. If anything, the identity is more keenly felt in same-sex intercourse since sex or gender is a more integral component of sexuality than blood relatedness. As regards polygamy or polyamory, we have already seen in point 1 above that Jesus predicated his rejection of such behaviour on God’s creation of two sexes for complementary sexual pairing. So a two-sexes prerequisite for sexual relations and a limitation of the number of persons in a sexual union to two are related as foundation and superstructure (the latter being built on the former). These links indicate that the Bible’s prohibition of incest and the New Testament’s prohibition of multiple-partner sexual unions even for males (note that the Old Testament never allowed women to have multiple husbands concurrently [polyandry]) are very close analogies to the Bible’s strong prohibition of homosexual practice.

Slavery is a bad analogy to the Bible’s opposition to homosexual practice because,

first, the Bible shows no vested interest in preserving slavery but rather at a number of points has a critical edge against slavery (for example, having mandatory release dates, maintaining the right of kin to buy loved ones out of slavery at any time, insisting that fellow Israelites not be treated as slaves). Relative to the slave cultures of the ancient Near East and the Greco-Roman Mediterranean basin, the countercultural thrust of the Scriptures is against slavery. However, as regards a male-female requirement for sexual relations, the Bible’s critical edge and countercultural thrust is decidedly in the direction of strong opposition to all homosexual practice.

Second, whereas race or ethnicity is a 100% heritable, absolutely immutable, and primarily non-behavioural condition, and so inherently benign, homosexual desire is an impulse and, like many impulses, it is not 100% heritable (there may be congenital influences but these are not absolutely deterministic), is open to some change (even if only, in some cases, a limited reduction in the intensity of impulses), is primarily behavioural (here for unnatural, i.e. structurally incompatible, sexual activity), and therefore is not inherently benign.

Third, the parallel with slavery lies with support for homosexual unions, not opposition to such, since those insisting that homosexual desires be affirmed by the church are promoting enslavement to impulses to do what God in Scripture expressly forbids.

The Bible’s stance toward women’s roles is a bad analogy for similar reasons.

First, comparing being a woman and having homoerotic impulses confuses categories. Being a woman, unlike homosexual impulses, is a condition that is 100% congenital, absolutely immutable, and not a direct desire for behaviour that Scripture expressly forbids.

Second, there are plenty of positive views of women in Scripture (e.g., the roles played by Judge Deborah and Ruth in the Old Testament, Jesus’ commendation of female discipleship and Paul’s salute to women co-workers in the New Testament), but only strongly negative assessments of homosexual practice.

As with the issue of slavery, the countercultural thrust of Scripture leans in the direction of supporting egalitarian roles for women while being far more stringently and consistently opposed to homosexual practice than anywhere else in the ancient world.

Divorce and remarriage also has serious problems as an analogue to the Bible’s prohibition of homosexual practice, for three reasons.

First, in Scripture divorce and remarriage is simply not as bad as homosexual practice. Jesus predicated his opposition to divorce and remarriage on the foundation that God created us as ‘male and female,’ with the twoness of the sexes defining the twoness of the sexual bond. The foundation is always more important than the superstructure built on it. Logically it is not possible to justify licence in a greater matter by limited licence in a lesser matter. For example, it would be illegitimate to argue that greater tolerance toward divorce and remarriage should lead to greater tolerance toward incest or ‘plural’ marriages. The reason is because the latter two offences are regarded as more severe. Moreover, there is no virtue to being more consistently disobedient to the will of Christ.

Second, the Bible shows a limited canonical diversity toward divorce (permitted for men in the Old Testament; in the New Testament allowed in cases of sexual immorality or marriage to an unbeliever who insists on leaving) but no diversity on the matter of homosexual practice. There are ameliorating factors in the case of some divorce/remarriage situations that simply don’t apply in the case of a consensual homosexual union (for example, a spouse can be divorced against her or his will or subject to regular and serious abuse, which creates perpetrator vs. victim distinctions irrelevant to a voluntary entrance into a homosexual union).

Third, and most importantly, the church’s stance toward divorce/remarriage on the one hand and homosexual practice on the other are alike in this respect: the church works to end the cycle. The church would not ordain any candidate for office who expressed the view: ‘I’ve been divorced and remarried a number of times and would like to continue the cycle of divorce and remarriage with the fewest negative side-effects.’ Such a person could not be ordained because that person has an unreformed mind. Why, then, should the church ordain someone who not only engaged in homosexual practice on multiple occasions in the past but also intends to continue in such behaviour in a serial, unrepentant way?

Often church proponents of homosexual unions also cite the inclusion of Gentiles in Acts 10-11, 15 apart from requiring circumcision and observance of dietary law. This too is a bad analogy, for many reasons.

First, whereas a circumcision requirement and dietary commands are not grounded in creation, a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations is so grounded.

Second, whereas circumcision is a Jewish ritual prescription enjoined in the first century only on proselytes and affecting the body only superficially, the Bible (and early Judaism’s and early Christianity’s) prohibition of homosexual practice was regarded as a universal moral proscription enjoined on all Gentiles precisely because, like sexual immorality generally, homosexual practice affects the body holistically. Both Jesus (Mark 7:14-23) and Paul (1 Cor. 6:12-20) forbade comparisons between food laws and prohibitions of sexual immorality and yet proponents of homosexual unions continue to make such comparisons.

Third, whereas Gentile inclusion in the first century was about welcoming persons but rejecting behaviours (i.e. the kinds of sexual immorality rampant in the Gentile world), today’s efforts to normalize homosexual practice are about accepting specific behaviours.

Fourth, whereas Scripture only incidentally links Gentiles to sin (it recognizes the category of righteous or God-fearing Gentiles), Scripture intrinsically links homosexual practice to sin.

Fifth, whereas Gentile inclusion receives significant Old Testament precedent (for example, Rahab, Ruth, widow at Zarephath, Naaman, the story of Jonah) and uniform New Testament support, homosexual practice is totally rejected in all parts of Scripture – so much so that to argue for affirmation of homosexual unions as the Spirit’s new work becomes absurd inasmuch as it puts the Spirit at odds with Scripture’s core values in sexual ethics.

A principle of good analogical reasoning is: The closest, and thus best, analogies are those that share the closest substantive points of contact with the thing being compared. Honest analogical reasoning does not prefer more distant analogies over closer analogies. Consequently, it is inappropriate to cite the alleged analogies of slavery, women’s roles, divorce and remarriage, and first-century Gentile inclusion as key in the discussion of Scripture and homosexuality while at the same time ignoring both the enormous differences with the Bible’s stance on homosexual practice and the more substantive parallels to the Bible’s stance on incest and polyamory.

5. Significance

Claim: The Bible is not particularly interested in homosexual practice as evidenced by the fact that it is only mentioned on a few occasions.

What the evidence really shows: All the contextual evidence indicates that ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity viewed homosexual practice of every sort as abhorrent to God, an extreme sexual offence comparable only to the worst forms of adult incest (say, a man and his mother) and superseded among ‘consensual’ sexual offences only by bestiality.

A male-female prerequisite is powerfully evident throughout the pages of Scripture. Every biblical narrative, law, proverb, exhortation, metaphor, and poetry that has anything to do with sexual relations presupposes such a prerequisite. Even the male-dominated society of ancient Israel imaged itself as Yahweh’s wife so as to avoid any connotation of a marriage between members of the same sex (an image replicated in the New Testament as regards Christ and his bride, the church). There are plenty of laws in the Old Testament delimiting acceptable and unacceptable sexual relationships between a man and a woman but not between two persons of the same sex. The obvious reason: No homosexual relationships were deemed acceptable.

Those who contend that the Bible condemns homosexual practice only in ‘a handful of passages’ at best (Sodom, the prohibitions in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13, Rom. 1:26-27, 1 Cor. 6:9, and 1 Tim. 1:10) usually neglect a number of other relevant texts: the Genesis creation narratives; the Noah and Ham story; the narrative of the Levite at Gibeah; the texts from Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic History dealing with cultic figures known to play the female role in sex with men (the qedeshim); the interpretation of the Sodom story in Ezekiel, Jude, and 2 Peter; and Jesus’ discussion of marriage in Mark 10 and Matthew 19.

More importantly, they overlook the problem with equating frequency of explicit mention with importance. Bestiality is mentioned even less in the Bible than homosexual practice and incest gets only comparable treatment, yet who would be so foolish as to argue that Jews and Christians in antiquity would have regarded sex with an animal or sex with one’s mother as inconsequential offences? Infrequency of mention is often an indicator that the matter in question is foundational rather than insignificant. You don’t have to talk a lot about something that most everyone agrees with and that few persons, if any, violate. Scripture’s male-female prerequisite for sexual relations and its attendant rejection of homosexual behaviour is pervasive throughout both Testaments (i.e. it is everywhere presumed in sexual discussions even when not explicitly mentioned); it is absolute (i.e. no exceptions are ever given, unlike even incest and polyamory); it is strongly proscribed (i.e. every mention of it in Scripture indicates that it is regarded as a foundational violation of sexual ethics); and it is countercultural (i.e. we know of no other culture in the ancient Near East or Greco-Roman Mediterranean basin more consistently and strongly opposed to homosexual practice).

It is also grounded in the creation texts in Genesis 1:27 and 2:21-24. In the latter, woman is portrayed as man’s missing element or other half, hence the repeated mention of woman being ‘taken from’ the human and being the human’s ‘complement’ or ‘counterpart’, a being both ‘corresponding to’ him as a human and ‘opposite to’ him as a distinct sex. Man and woman may become one flesh because out of one flesh man and woman emerged – a beautiful illustration of the transcendent point that man and woman are each other’s sexual counterpart. As noted in issue 1 above, Jesus treats the two-sexes requirement for sexual relations as foundational for his monogamy principle. And Paul cites homosexual practice as a particularly egregious instance of ‘sexual impurity,’ ‘indecency,’ and a ‘dishonouring’ of the integrity of maleness and femaleness, an egregious suppression of the obvious facts of God’s design evident in the material structures of creation comparable on the horizontal plane to idolatry on the vertical plane.

If all this doesn’t qualify the Bible’s male-female requirement for sexual relations as a core value in Scripture’s sexual ethics (the flipside of which is opposition to all homosexual practice), there is no such thing as a core value in any religious or philosophical tradition.

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After a cracking day at the Evangelical Library in London on “Reading John Owen” (opening, it has to be said, with Nigel Graham giving what may be one of the finest popular introductions to the life of Owen that it has been my privilege to hear – lively, careful, engaging, insightful), I want to do more reading and re-reading of John Owen. I was reminded, by my own efforts and those of others, why I do and may and must enjoy the privilege of reading such profound theology.

One of the works that piqued my fancy afresh was Owen on The Grace and Duty of Being Spiritually-Minded (volume 7 of the collected works, beginning on pg. 262). This was in Robert Strivens’ section of the works, and what prompted me to turn there again was the warning that preachers, accustomed to handling and speaking God’s Word, can develop a facade of spirituality which masks a spiritual dryness. Conscious that one can do much apparent working for God without much genuine walking with God, I thought it would be good to dip again into this work.

Re-reading can be as fascinating as reading. I am sometimes struck by what struck me the first time, or what failed to strike. The passage of time and the expansion of experience makes one wish, perhaps, that one could be as freshly excited as one was before, and one must learn to be more deeply excited than one was. Or, perhaps, some things have simply become more relevant because of the reader’s different circumstances while reading. On this occasion, I was struck by something in the preface to the work.

Owen, as you may know, had been unwell before preaching and preparing this material. He was so sick that not only was he unable to serve others, but he feared he might be taken by death and never able to serve again. Under such circumstances, he began to meditate on the grace and duty of spiritual-mindedness from Romans 8.6, where the apostle says that “to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Later, Owen took the fruit of his sickbed meditations and turned them into sermons. “And this I did,” he says,

partly out of a sense of the advantage I had received myself by being conversant in them, and partly from an apprehension that the duties directed and pressed unto in the whole discourse wore seasonable, from all sorts of present circumstances, to be declared and urged on the minds and consciences of professors: for, leaving others unto the choice of their own methods and designs, I acknowledge that those are the two things whereby I regulate my work in the whole course of my ministry. (7:263)

I am, I confess, sometimes amused by the homiletical handbooks that pass for pastoral theology in our day. Some of the guidance given for the preparation of sermons seems entirely out of touch with the life of local churches. I am amused when I hear the big cheeses of the evangelical world assure congregations that they prepare their sermons, or perhaps know what they will be preaching on on any given Sunday, a year or so in advance. As the pastor of a small congregation, preaching and teaching several times a week, that seems to me to be ludicrous, even dangerous. I do not think I could do that even if I were in circumstances that seemed to allow it.

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that pastors preach on a whim or without a plan. I am not against systematic, sequential expository preaching. But I do wonder how much even Owen’s aside might teach us here. This work of his springs from what I would call a topical expository series. But how did Owen come to it? And why did he choose to preach it?

He has those two answers: first, because it did much good to his own soul when he had considered it for himself; and, second, because he perceived that the same truths which had helped him would, with the blessing of God, prove a timely and profitable study for other believers under his care.

However, he goes on to confess that those two principles are the “things whereby I regulate my work in the whole course of my ministry.” That, in itself, is fascinating. Here is the great theologian and the profound scholar, sitting down as a pastor of God’s people, and asking, first and foremost, what has blessed me, and will it bless others also?

If you are a preacher and teacher, however far you are willing and able to plan ahead, do such considerations have a place in your own preparation? Are you so soaking in God’s truth that you can assess what has been of particular blessing to your own soul? Are you so attuned to and concerned for the saints that you can discern what would prove particularly timely and profitable for them? Are you visiting the congregation regularly and getting to know their lives and their needs so as to be able to make such a judgment? Are you prayerfully thinking of the particular congregation before whom you will stand, converted and unconverted, more and less mature, more or less wounded and wearied, more or less hale and hearty? Are you willing to put in the effort to invest in such ministry? Are you willing to get off the treadmill of your regular or scheduled course of exposition, perhaps to plough fields that would otherwise have remained unbroken, to invest in hours of composition that you had not scheduled into your work patterns? Are you improving your own studies and sufferings to this end?

Such an approach might require that you prepare far in advance a particular course of systematic and sequential exposition, compelled by the fact that this book or section of Scripture will serve those to whom you preach. It might keep you from changing to other, apparently easier or more palatable portions of the Bible, held fast by a sense of responsibility. It might demand that you drop such a long course of sermons and preach for a few weeks on a particular portion of God’s Word. It might compel you to preach a single sermon on a single text. It might prompt you to develop what you thought was a one-off into a shorter or longer series. Again, it is no excuse for a pastor-preacher simply riding his hobby-horses to death. You will note that Owen does not manipulate his hearers by the claim that the Spirit imposed the duty upon him, though I do not think anyone can fail to see the hand of God at work in the matter. This is a man who is sensitive to the truth, sensitive to the operations of the Spirit of God, sensitive to the circumstances and needs of the saints, sensitive to the spirit of the age, sensitive to the demands of a particular place and people, and deeply concerned to be a means of blessing to those to whom he speaks.

This, I would suggest, is pastoral preaching of the highest order – ministry of God’s truth that flows from the heart of a true shepherd of souls, a man who has drunk deeply of the sweet waters of the gospel, and is persuaded from the depths of his being that others need to taste and see that the Lord is good, and to obtain the blessing designed for those who trust in him.

Featured Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash

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It was like that with Jesus. Entrusted to him by God the Father was a work more demanding than any ever attempted in all of human history. The work of securing the forgiveness of our sins. The work of bringing us back to the God from whom our sin had separated us. The work of defeating Satan, delivering us from death, and winning for us eternal life. The work of banishing evil and renewing the whole fabric of creation. What a task! And Jesus was the one selected to do it.

This is Easter. What is Easter all about? It’s about Jesus finishing the all-important first part of this work – the part he had to do here on earth. It’s about Jesus doing and enduring all that was needed so that the good things planned for us could be ours. All the blessings listed above will be everlastingly enjoyed by those who receive him as their Lord and Saviour. And all because by his sufferings and death he brought the work he had been given to a triumphant close.

His work wasn’t easy to finish

You know how it is with ourselves. Finishing is sometimes the easy part. The hard part is getting started. Or getting through the early stages. Not with Jesus. For Jesus, finishing the work was by far the hardest part of all.

Consider what we might call the outer history. People subjected Jesus to one of the cruellest forms of capital punishment ever devised. They crucified him. It was a slow, a shameful, and an agonising way to die.

And then to the outer history add the inner history. There was more going on at Calvary than met the eye. Onlookers saw only the physical suffering. That in fact was the least of it. From a judicial standpoint Jesus was an innocent man. He had done nothing to deserve this awful death. But there was another side to it; a side known only to God. The guilt of countless sinners both from all across the world and from all across the ages had been laid upon him. He had voluntarily accepted it as his own and consented to be treated as if it were his own. Wasn’t that amazing? Jesus, the holy Son of God, made guilty with our guilt, dying our death, suffering in his own soul and body what we deserved to suffer in ours. And all so that we might be free of sin forever and enjoy instead the gift of eternal life.

His work had to be finished

Imagine you are moving house and the house you have bought needs a lot of work done to it. You get the keys a few weeks before moving day and you begin to work through the list. How nice if you could get all the work finished in advance! And it’s frustrating when you find that you can’t. But it doesn’t prevent you moving in, unpacking, and getting settled.

What about Jesus’ work? He had done a lot already. His work was literally a life-long work and he had been at it for over thirty years. So much had been accomplished through his teaching, his miracles, and the beautiful life of love and obedience he had lived. Was it really necessary for him to go as far as the cross – with all the suffering, visible and invisible, that that would involve? Could we not have had the Saviour we needed without the horrors of Good Friday?

It’s a question we hear Jesus answering himself. In one place, for example, referring to his death, he says this: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John Ch.3.14-15). The key word is must. He cannot stop short of the cross. Or here is something he said when the cross was at last behind him. It’s the day of his resurrection and he’s speaking to two disciples who are thoroughly perplexed at what has happened: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24.26). The key word now is necessary. Finishing the work by enduring the cross wasn’t an optional extra. It was an absolute necessity. There would be no restored relationship with God, no new hearts, no resurrection bodies, no new world ahead of us, had it not been for his suffering and death.

His work got finished

As Jesus was about to breathe his last he cried out, “It is finished” (John 19.30). He had gone through with it! The whole of what was needed in order to atone for our sins and open the way to heaven had been done. And we can be sure of it. That’s the message of Easter Sunday. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (and the exaltation to heaven that followed) is the testimony of God to the completeness of his beloved Son’s accomplishment. The one who died for sin now lives to bless us with the fruits of his finished work.

Which brings us to the all-important question: how do we get the benefits of what Christ has done on behalf of sinners? We’ve heard the answer already. We must receive him as our Saviour and Lord. It is a terrible mistake to think that eternal life comes to us automatically – as if no response on our part was necessary. It is a terrible mistake, too, to imagine that the good things purchased for us we must somehow or other earn. No! There is certainly something required of us. But it’s not to work for our salvation. The work has already been done. Jesus has done it all. And the fruits of that work are freely given to all who welcome him.

Welcome him as your Saviour. You cannot save yourself. Say then to Jesus, “Come, and be to me the Saviour that I need”. From this day place all your reliance on him.

Welcome him, too, as your Lord. His rightful place in every life is that of king and lord. Cease, then, from your rebellion. Stop living the way you wish to live. Place yourself entirely in his hands – to direct you and change you. His golden promise is that none who do so will ever be turned away: “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6.37).

David Campbell is the minister at North Preston Evangelical Church and a Trustee of the Banner of Truth.

Featured photo by Jonas Allert on Unsplash

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‘The Lord gave the word; great was the company of those that published it’ (Psalm 68.11)

THE NEED FOR TRUTH

I would like to speak to you today about the importance of the use of liter­ature in the church, for evangelism, for instruction in Christian truth, for devotion, and for its role in planting churches.

Protestants, in particular, are very weak in the proper use of literature to spread God’s truth. We still do not remember the words of Daniel Webster who said:

‘If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, error will be; if God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendancy; if the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will; if the power of the Gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of the land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness, will reign without mitigation or end’.

In Isaiah 1:3, we read, ‘Israel doth not know, my people doth not con­sider’. Then, chapter after chapter in that prophecy we have a terrible picture of the life and practice of a people who were the professed people of God. Surely their sin and wickedness was the result of not ‘knowing’, and they did not know because they did not consider.

Books are to be used to dispel darkness and ignorance. If men do not know, then they must acquaint themselves with facts by reading and study­ing. We need to use books to fight ignorance – the ignorance of Christian truth and doctrine that is so prevalent in our churches today.

It is appalling to meet people who have been communicant church members for years and who cannot find a place in the Bible, who do not have even a vague idea of the great doctrines of the Bible, and who cannot attach any true meaning to such basic terms as justification, sanctification, regen­eration, election, and predestination.

Have we forgotten that Christianity is primarily a religion of facts – historical facts? The Bible is a body of divine information; and to be igno­rant of the information is to be ignorant of Christianity and to be ignorant of God.

Surely one of the reasons for the deadness and weakness of our churches is ignorance. We will not have churches that are strong and fruitful in experi­ence until we have Christians who are strong in biblical doctrine. Christian experience is nothing less than truth and its evidence revealed and applied by the Spirit to our minds, to our affections, and to our wills. Those who ‘do not the truth’ are those ‘in darkness’ (1 John 1.6).

THE POWER OF THE PRESS

The ministry of books can be used to evangelize, teach, train and expel ignorance as it has done in the past. A cursory glance at history should con­vince us that God has used books and literature to enlighten blinded peoples and nations.

How was it that in places where the voices of Luther and Calvin were never heard, their doctrines were embraced, and many of the countries of Europe threw off the yoke of Rome and turned Protestant? It was because books and tracts became, in the hands of God, a mighty reforming and regenerating power.

In reference to the printing press, Sir Thomas More, defender of the Roman Church, complained bitterly that the Reformers had become its master: ‘These diabolical people print their books at great expense, notwithstanding the great danger; not looking for any gain, they give them away to everybody, and even scatter them abroad by night’. ‘The Pope’, rejoiced John Foxe, (the martyrologist), ‘must abolish printing or he must seek a new world to reign over; for by this printing the doctrine of the Gospel soundeth to all nations and countries under heaven’. Thus was the power of the printed page acknowledged.

A book by Richard Sibbes, one of the choicest of the Puritan writers, was read by Richard Baxter, who was greatly blessed by it. Baxter then wrote his Call To The Unconverted which deeply influenced Philip Doddridge, who in turn wrote The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul. This brought the young William Wilberforce, subsequent English statesman and foe of slavery, to serious thoughts of eternity. Wilberforce wrote his Practical Book of Christianity which fired the soul of Leigh Richmond. Richmond, in turn, wrote The Dairyman ‘s Daughter; a book that brought thousands to the Lord, helping Thomas Chalmers the great preacher, among others.

What an eye-opener it was for me to read that the Watch Tower building in New York City puts out 12,000,000 pieces of Jehovah Witness literature a month, fifty percent of which is shipped overseas. They have large three-­storey buildings in which they do nothing but turn out their doctrines and heresies. They use one carload of paper per day and have the world’s largest religious bindery in which it is said that they are able to turn out 30,000 books per day. Still more disturbing is the fact that young men and women, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, give their lives to this cause, with no remuneration apart from their lodging and food. Oh, that the day would come when more young men and women would give their lives to the cause of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ with such dedication as this.

The Russians, a few years ago, published 29,301,400 books in 701 titles. An even greater volume was produced by 700 Communist publishers in 58 countries. Yet at that time the Communists were aiming at a 300% increase in the circulation of the printed page.

In the past the pen has been the hammer to break the errors of centuries. But now the enemies of the truth have learned the value of books and with word processors and printing presses they have left those who love bibli­cal Christianity far behind.

PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS

You may say you are convinced that books have been, and can be, used to evangelize, to teach, and to train, but, you ask, ‘How do I do it?’ Here are a few suggestions:

A minister can lead his people to see the importance of the use of good literature just as he leads them in other truths.

I know a minister who led his people to give good books with their Christ­mas gifts, wedding presents, hospital visits, and to their friends and neigh­bours. Believe me, it will help you build a strong church.

I know a minister who went to a church and there was not one copy of Pilgrim’s Progress in any home, in fact, when he first mentioned Bunyan many in his congregation thought he meant Paul Bunyan, the fellow who chopped down trees! Well, in three years there was a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress in 90% of the homes and many had read it.

I know a case where a church introduced a little book table. A lawyer’s wife took charge of it and in one year sold $10,000 worth of Christian books (wholesale ).

I know a church where they sell $1,000 worth of books at Christmas time to be used with gifts – mostly for evangelistic purposes. And in every case this ministry can be traced to the pulpit where a minister caught the vision and had a burden to use this means to evangelize and build up Christians.

Charles H Spurgeon tells how, when he was a child, his mother would often read a piece of Alleine’s Alarm to the Unconverted to the family as they sat round the fire on a Sunday evening and, when brought under conviction of sin, it was to this old book that he turned.

‘I remember’, he writes, ‘when I used to awake in the morning, the first thing I took up was Alleine’s Alarm, or Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted. Oh those books, those books! I read and devoured them … ‘

BUNYAN’S PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

I want to mention one book specially today that has been mightily used in the history of Christianity, that is my favourite book, Pilgrim’s Progress. Without doubt, next to the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress has been used to bless more people than any other single book, and you should not rest until every family in your church has a copy. Use it in your sermons!

William Chalmers Burns, the first Presbyterian missionary to go to China, translated Pilgrim’s Progress as a means of evangelizing – a different kind of evangelism than we have today. Later, when he worked farther back into the interior of that nation, he translated it into the local dialects.

I want to tell you a few facts about this immortal volume, Pilgrim’s Progress, hoping to make you anxious to read it – yes, and study it, and have some family discussions about it.

– It has some excellent preaching material. Spurgeon read it one hundred times, and it permeated his sermons.

– Pilgrim’s Progress communicates the biblical message of salvation by grace.

– It is pregnant with Bible truth. Spurgeon said, ‘You can prick John Bunyan anywhere for all his blood is “bibline” ‘.

– It is not fiction – it bathes and swims in Scripture. The more you know the Bible and the theology of the Bible the better you will understand and appreciate this useful volume.

– It is the life of the Christian travelling between two worlds. Hear it in Bunyan’s words:

‘And thus it was I, writing of the Way

And the race of saints in this our gospel day,

Fell suddenly into an allegory

About their journey, and the way to Glory.’

– It is the great doctrines of the Bible, set forth in an experimental and illustrative manner.

– It is as relevant today as the day it was written (between 1675 and 1684).

Like the Bible, it is always relevant because it is about God, Man, Sin, Christ, Salvation, Life, Death, Heaven, and Hell.

The poet Browning said, ‘Tis my belief that God spake; no tinker has such power’.

James Montgomery said, ‘God gave a great gift to His church when He converted John Bunyan to write Pilgrim’s Progress’.

No amount of literary study in itself could ever produce Pilgrim’s Progress. It took not only the natural gifts and graces of John Bunyan, but also his deep spiritual experiences and insights into the Word of God, and a biblical interpretation of those experiences. Bunyan travelled so close to the Master’s steps that he gives a marvellously accurate picture of the road to the Celestial City and of the difficulties we shall find on the way.

Today Pilgrim’s Progress stands next to the Bible in sales and translations (198 languages). There are indeed so many editions that it is virtually impos­sible to compute them. There are 50 editions in Africa alone.

Where the Bible goes, we may say, the Pilgrim’s Progress will follow! Bunyan and his book have no appeal, at first, to the men and women of this world, as I have often noticed. The men and women who are too wrapped up in this world either do not understand it, or see no great depth of spiritual truth in it. Others do not care for it. I recall the words of one, a professional man who had to stop reading it because, as he told me, ‘It upsets me too much – spiritually and emotionally’. I am afraid he saw himself too plainly!

Pilgrim’s Progress is better than any book on anthropology or psychology.

Why do I say that? Because most books on these subjects study man without God or the Bible. Now, you can learn a lot about man without God or the Bible, but you can never get to his real problems, and therefore you cannot come up with the correct answers. Bunyan will give you a real insight into yourself and all other sinners as no other book but the Bible.

LESSONS FOR TODAY

Vanity-Fair has not changed. There is a Vanity-Fair every day. Madam Bubble still seeks to draw away pilgrims. Madam Wanton walks on every street. Mrs Bats-Eye still thinks everyone is blind. Men with muckrakes are all around us who will not give up their muckrake for the crown offered by the One above. They will not turn their eyes upward. Are there any of you here today who are so busy with straws, small sticks and dust on the floor, that you have not looked up? Is all your time and energy spent without look­ing up?

The Church is full of Talkatives, the son of Say- Well of Prating Row. Does this not tell you volumes about this type in just a sentence? Ready at a moment’s notice for what you will, this man can, with equal facility and equal emptiness, ‘talk of things heavenly or things earthly; things moral or things evangelical; things sacred or things profane; things past or things to come; things foreign or things at home; and the only condition that the wretched windbag stipulates is that all be done to spiritual profit’.

Surely you have met By-Ends of Fair-Speech. ‘A subtle knave’ whose grandfather was a waterman, looking one way and rowing another and whose distinguishing characteristics are that, in religion, he makes it a point ‘never to go against wind and tide, and to be the best friend of religion when she goes in silver slippers, walking in the sunshine and is applauded of the people’.

What infinite skill Bunyan had to draw such a character picture in just a few sentences!

Who has not been the prisoner of Giant Despair and suffered in Doubting Castle, and then experienced that wonderful release by the Key of Promise? A beautiful picture and very relevant. Christians and their problems do not change with the calendar. Despair, doubt, fear, and death are still with us.

I hope you have been to Interpreter’s House where you see things rare, things profitable, things pleasant, and awesome things to make one stable.

Real lessons can be learned about receiving people into the church at Pa­lace Beautiful from that grave and beautiful damsel named Discretion.

A PRACTICAL LESSON

All of us need to be cheered by the help of Great-Heart, Stand-Fast, and Val­iant-for-the- Truth, and good old Honest. Some of us have been in Doubting Castle. Some in The Slough of Despond. Some have experienced the tempt­ations at Vanity-Fair. All of us have to climb The Hill Difficulty, all of us need to be instructed by the Interpreter in The House Beautiful. All of us bear the same burdens. All of us need the same armour in our fight with Apollyon. All of us have to pass through The Wicket-Gate. All of us must pass through The Dark River. And for all true Christians there awaits The Shining Ones at the gates of The Celestial City, ‘which, when we see, we wish ourselves amongst them’.

‘TWENTY-SIX SOLDIERS’

I hope I have encouraged you to use good sound literature in your ministry. There is power in those twenty-six soldiers – the letters of our alphabet upon the printed page.

Francis Bacon said, ‘If I might control the literature of the household, I would guarantee the wellbeing of the church and state’.

Martin Luther said, ‘We must throw the printer’s inkpot at the devil’. Robert Murray M’Cheyne said, ‘The smallest tract may be the stone in David’s sling. In the hands of Christ it may bring down a giant’s soul’.

August Schlegel said, ‘Literature is the immortality of speech’.

John Trapp said, ‘Be careful what books you read, for as water tastes of the soil it runs through, so does the soul taste of the authors that a man reads’.

Samuel Zwemmer said, ‘No other agency can penetrate so deeply, witness so daringly, abide so persistently and influence so irresistibly as the printed page’.

The printed page never flinches, it never shows cowardice; it is never tempted to compromise. The printed page never gets tired; it never gets dis­heartened.

The printed page travels cheaply – you can be a missionary for the price of a stamp. It requires no buildings in which to operate.

The printed page works while you sleep. It never loses its temper in dis­cussion. And it works when you are gone from the scene.

The printed page is a visitor that gets inside the home and stays there. It always catches a man in the right mood, it speaks to him only when he is reading it.

It never answers back and it sticks to the point.

There are some principles in using literature in your ministry that will be helpful:

– Know the books you give to others.

– Know the person, his needs and capacity, to whom you intend to give a book.

– Know the most serious areas of ignorance and the errors of our day. (The doctor does not give green pills to everyone, and he does not give medicine that is not relevant to what he believes to be the problem.)

– Do not be afraid to invest some money in your own missionary project. Follow through with other books and with discussion on subjects in the books you use.

– Aim to have a book-table in your church and see that its appearance is varied from week to week.

– Be sure to use books and literature that are consistent with the teaching of the Bible.

– Soak all the books you distribute in fervent prayer.

A WORD ABOUT THE BANNER OF TRUTH

For those of you who are not acquainted with our history, and our purposes, may I take a moment to mention a very brief summary of our history.

The work began in 1955 with a little magazine. lain Murray was the principal editor. Two years later, in 1957, The Trust was formed. The two men who had the vision and burden were, Jack Cullum, who was the prin­cipal financier, and lain Murray.

Mr Cullum put thousands and thousands of dollars into the work. He never allowed his name to appear in the magazine or in any of our publi­cations, and it never did so until after his death in 1971.

Mr Murray is to a large degree ‘Mr Banner’. He is the Editor of the magazine and has been responsible for the selection of most of our titles. He has given much of his life to this great work.

The main objects of the Trust have been to help ministers secure good books, particularly those out of print, to encourage true piety, God-centred evangelism, experimental Calvinism, and prayer for revival.

I can say without any equivocation, mental reservation, or evasion what­ever, that we understand and believe the most biblical view of the Christian Faith is that which is known as Reformed and set forth in the great historic creeds of the church, such as the Westminster Confession of Faith, The London Baptist Confession of 1689 and the articles of the Synod of Dort.

The Trust could say that over thirty years ago, and it can say it today.

Banner has never wavered from its position or found it necessary to adopt a new policy.

Our motive has been to promote that system of biblical truth which is most clearly expressed in that exalted system of Pauline theology, nick­named Calvinism!

We have reprinted many of the old Puritan writers, but we do not worship the Puritans, or wish to garnish their sepulchres. We value them as Christian teachers who brought together true biblical doctrine and devotion, doctrine and piety, doctrine and evangelism, more than any other group of men since the days of the apostles.

My dear young minister friends, let me encourage you to use sound Chris­tian literature in your ministry. Never cease to teach your church to use sound Christian literature to evangelize, to instruct, to comfort, and to encourage Christians.

The post Every Christian a Publisher! appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

In times such as ours it is easy to seem a bigot, if one keeps a firm hold of truth, and is careful to have the seal of Heaven on his hope. No Christian can be true and faithful now-a-days on whose brow the world shall not brand the name of bigot. But let him bear it. It is a mark of honour, though intended to be a brand of shame. It proves him to be an associate of the men of whom the world was not worthy, but who, under the world’s lash, did more for the world’s good than all besides. The world ever suffers by the men it honours. The men of mercy to it are the men it hates. Ah, these old Covenanters of our native land were stern bigots in their day. It was well for Scotland that they were. They could part with their lives, but they could not sell the truth. They would yield all for conscience, but they would yield nought to despots. They could bear to suffer and to die, but they were afraid to sin. It was this bigotry which won its liberty for their native land. The legacy bequeathed to it by these men of faith, whose only home was oft the mountain cavern, and to whom the snow was oft the only winding-sheet which wrapped their bodies when they had given their lives for Christ, was a richer boon than all ever given to it by the kings who occupied its throne, and by all men of title and of wealth who owned its acres. Oh yes, they were bigots these, in the judgment of scoffing sceptics and of ruthless persecutors, and not all the piles they could kindle could burn their bigotry out of them.

And these were stern bigots, too, according to the world’s estimate, who headed the crusade against Antichrist, when, at the era of the Reformation, a fire from Heaven had kindled in their hearts the love of truth. It was by unflinching resolution, induced by living faith, these men overcame in the times of stern trial in which they unfurled their banner in the name of God. A pliant Melanchthon would have bartered the gospel for peace–the stern courage of a Luther was needed to prevent the sacrifice. In every age, from the beginning, when the cause of truth emerged triumphant from the din and dust of controversy, the victory was won by a band of bigots who were sworn to its defence.

There is need now of the men whom the world calls bigots. Men of grasp less firm and of love less fervent will do little for the cause of truth and for the best interests of humanity. Other men than these will even barter their own eternal prospects for the honour which comes from men and for the ease which is won by compromise. How many such as these there are, even in the Churches, and even there in the van, who boast of a charity which is indiscriminate in its regards, of a sentiment that refuses the form which the truth imposes, and who have learned from the worldling his scorn of all seriousness, his contempt for all scrupulousness of conscience, and his sneers at the religion which is sustained by intercourse with Heaven! These have their followers. A widespread movement has begun away from vital religion, fixed beliefs, and holy living. The Churches are moving with the current. The time may be fast approaching when the one alternative shall be living faith or open scepticism. A tide which few seem careful to resist is bearing us on to such a crisis. How the result may tell on Churches, communities, and individuals we cannot forecast, nor can we attempt to conjecture without sadness of feeling. But an assured victory is the destiny of the cause of truth. Till the hour of its triumph shall come, all who have linked their interests to the chariot of the gospel shall find themselves a diminishing band as they advance, their loneliness of feeling deepening as former friendships wane into neglect, coldness is changed into scorn, and contempt passes into bitter enmity; and they can follow the cause of truth only amidst the scoffs of unbelievers and the shafts of persecutors.

But let no lover of the truth–let none whose eye ever rested on the hope of the gospel–turn craven-hearted back from trial. To fall in the cause of truth is but to rise in the kingdom of glory. To be trampled under foot till crushed dead by the heel of persecution is but to have the prison broken open, that the ransomed spirit may pass from bondage to a throne. And in his saddest hour let not the sufferer for truth refuse the joy which glimpses of prophetic light bring to his heart as they break through the clouds of present trial. His King shall triumph in His cause on earth, and His friends shall share His glory. All nations shall touch His sceptre. The old strongholds of unbelief shall be levelled in the dust. Iniquity shall hide its face ashamed. Truth, as revealed from Heaven, shall receive universal homage, and be glorious in the halo of its blissful triumphs before the eyes of all.

The post Truth’s Defenders Vindicated appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

Last week I noticed that Ryan Gosling was nominated for an Oscar for playing Ken alongside Margot Robbie’s Barbie in last summer’s hit by the same name. Robbie, incidentally, was not so nominated. I won’t watch the film, but I recall reading that the plot features a wayward Ken promoting patriarchy, and that Barbie—won’t this help us all sleep better—rescues the world from patriarchy. It is likely that I am not the only one to detect a total public relations failure when the man gets the trophy after all.

This in turn reminded me of something I read around the time the movie came out: that the Archbishop of York of the Church of England was also worried about patriarchy, and that its troubling existence makes some understandably uncomfortable with a certain prayer that begins with the words “Our Father.”¹

And the bishop is hardly alone. Many professing Christians sound just like Barbie and the bishop, and tell me that the church has missed something—a two-thousand-year-old fifth column called patriarchy must be rooted out of Christianity for Christianity to survive in our enlightened age.² Without pulling this invasive weed, they tell me, we are doomed.

What do we make of this assessment? Is this really a noxious weed? What is patriarchy?

What is True: Decades of Bad News Concerning Bad Men

In 2002 the Boston Globe published a series of stories revealing a pattern of criminal sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The hypocrisy caused a crisis of confidence that spread in the church worldwide, and continues to the present day—the fathers were not what they claimed to be.

American evangelicalism has not fared much better. Vision Forum promised the restoration of the Christian family through “The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy;” instead its president confessed to inappropriate sexual conduct. Mr. “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” left his wife and left the faith.  Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention faced serious allegations. To our shame the church has often looked more like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein than Job or Joseph.

My own tribe—evangelical Presbyterianism—has its own cases of the same sordid substance. This is the hypocrisy of which Jesus said: “Woe to you!” This is also the way of sinful flesh; there is nothing new under the sun, and what has been will be. Sexual desire, apart from the controlling influence of the Holy Spirit, produces all manner of wicked fruit. The lust of the flesh is destructive and evil.

But some suggest that these failures are not fundamentally rooted in individual fallen human nature but rather social structures that unequally place men in positions of influence, leading to the imbalance and abuse of power. If we solve the imbalance, so the logic goes, we will eliminate the abuse. Utopia requires the elimination of patriarchy.

What is Patriarchy?

Patriarchy simply means father-rule. The word clearly indicates an apportioning of authority. It is an uncomplicated word, used by the church for millennia. Today’s use of the word, however, appears to be confused by two things: (i) people who use it to describe unbiblical schemes (we will call this not-patriarchy) or (ii) people who think patriarchy itself is actually bad.

About not-patriarchy: The promises of I Kissed Dating Goodbye or Vision Forum or Bill Gothard should never have appealed to Christians, ever. These schemes went beyond the Law of God, lacked Gospel basics, and understated dependence on the Holy Spirit. It is no surprise that adherents later kiss Christianity goodbye. All forms of legalistic, harsh, and sinful leadership are not fatherhood but delinquency. We need to learn to recognize and reject counterfeit patriarchy.³

The second concern is the unequivocal rejection of the whole thing: Patriarchy is simply very bad. Countless journalists, opinion writers and professors, the bishop and Barbie (and a growing chorus of evangelical-egalitarian influencers) are in agreement: Very, very bad.

I hear this sentiment in the Presbyterian denominations in which I travel: “Beware patriarchy,” which then is inexplicably defined as “men being unkind to women.” This particular definition often makes its appearance during discussions of abuse or sexual sin; for some this is apparently indistinguishable from patriarchy. If we were playing Clue, it was patriarchy in the church that did it. Case closed.

The net effect? Listen up, everybody: Patriarchy is a big problem. Father-rule is bad. The father is bad.

The Dangers That Follow the Loss of Patriarchy

So why even try to rescue a sullied word? Doesn’t language change? I would submit that acquiescence to the popular equation patriarchy–is-evil will result in the loss of our nation, the Christian home, the church and the Gospel. How, you ask, could this little word be so important?

First, the Bible honors fathers. God instituted fatherhood when he made Adam (first), then Eve, then marriage and then gave the command to be fruitful and multiply. Paul honored Israel’s patriarchs. Peter preached about the patriarch David, and Stephen said the p-word, twice, just before going to heaven as a martyr. The writer to the Hebrews thought Abraham a fine patriarch.⁴ Jesus was not ashamed of his Father.⁵ This is God’s design and this is God’s language.

Second, this is God’s language with profound meaning and import. The association of patriarchy with evil runs against the grain of the nature of God and His creation. It induces in me a cognitive dissonance that surges on the Lord’s Day as I lead the people of God in the confession of our faith:⁶

“I believe in God the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”

Is this not patriarchy? Is this not “father-rule”?

My mind scans the created order and lo, the fatherly structure echoes in my own home—I am a patriarch! There are fathers throughout the natural world, that lead, are stronger than women⁷, and are designed by God to serve and protect women and children. Creation is stamped with patriarchy. Sin has distorted and twisted what was beautiful—yes—but the good pattern is unmistakable.

The creeds amplify an inextricably related pattern in redemption, the pattern of marriage: “I believe in Jesus Christ, [the Father’s] only begotten Son, our Lord.”⁸ Jesus is the bridegroom and the church is his bride; Paul says that marriage is a mystery that points to Christ and His church; and so wives are to submit to their husbands and husbands are to love their wives. Husbands and fathers exercise rule.

It is this entire weight of the superstructure of reality—God and man made after his image, male and female—that is under crafty attack by the kingdom of darkness. Since Satan cannot have the kingdom, he appears to be trying to burn it all down. The smoldering peat fire underfoot is breaking out in all kinds of places, such as the NCAA women’s swimming championships and in the last summer’s SBC debate over the future of Saddleback Church and in discussions of abuse in NAPARC churches.⁹

We have to think carefully. It is true that powerful men have long abused anyone weaker. History’s Epsteins will face an eternal reckoning for their monstrous evils. They should also face consequences in this world, regardless of their professed repentance. It is also very Christian to care for victims. It seems—and this is a critical point—that Satan is keenly aware of this compassionate impulse, which he is presently co-opting by pointing to patriarchy (and not the sinful failures of patriarchs) as the abusive system that caused the pain.

If you doubt this, let’s return to the Church of England: The Archbishop of York believes that the “Our Father” of the Lord’s Prayer is problematic for those who have suffered under—wait for it—an “oppressively patriarchal grip on life.”¹⁰ Bishop Cottrell and I, from vastly differing perspectives, have noticed a nexus of ideas being pressed together: Fatherhood and oppression. Fatherhood is abusive. Patriarchy is bad.

Satan’s false flag operation is fueling misgivings about Biblical teaching concerning gender differences, fatherhood and motherhood, roles in marriage and male leadership in the church. (The church’s government notably has as its head a man, the man Christ Jesus, who set it up, who shed his blood for sinners in love and appoints men to shepherd the flock he loves.) ¹¹ Satan’s operation is a deceitful emotional appeal that can be summarized by a short and familiar formula: “God is evil, isn’t he?”¹²

But the truth is the opposite. The Fatherless realm—the dark kingdom—is the abusive source of abortion, human trafficking, sexual molestation, torture, the self-hatred of homosexuality, transgender mutilation and death. “Patriarchy is evil” is a tragic bait and switch, where Satan disguised as an angel of light promises relief while leading the world ever deeper into dark chambers of Fatherless horrors.¹³

Remember: Reality was designed a good patriarchy, ruled by the Triune God. Patriarchy is not a bad word.

In Defense of Godly Fatherhood

If you are a father, you carry the mantle of patriarchy. You rule your home. To make this a pretext for abuse is vile. Your rule is to be a sweet echo of the eternal love of God made known in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son. It is to be lived in daily prayer for the Spirit of God to pour more of the love of God into your heart in order that you might cheerfully exercise sacrificial leadership and care. Biblical fatherhood is strong, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in mercy and forgiveness, and holy.

We have from the Lord an eight-month-old baby in our home—the happiest kind of surprise. What strikes me anew is the vulnerability and wonder of a little child. I pray that I, with renewed repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, by the help of the Holy Spirit, would protect and love her together with all our children as long as I am able. “Father in heaven, please make me a husband and father that in some small way might reflect your glory and goodness to my family. Please forgive my many failures. Grant me the help of your generous Spirit. In Jesus name, Amen.”

If you believe in Jesus Christ, in Him you have come to the Father. You now trust a good and kind heavenly Father. You and I are under Fatherly rule, mediated by the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. You are under fatherly and husbandly protection and safety. This is very good news for undeserving sinners, and for believing victims of delinquent fathers.

And if you chafe under God’s design—it may simply be that you’ve never submitted to His rule. Listen to this description from the prophet Isaiah of what Jesus came to be and to do, and submit to the Gospel of God’s good and gracious fatherly rule in and by and with His Son:

For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this. (Is 9:6–7, NKJV)

Here is the fatherly redeeming work of the Triune God: by the Father who sent the Son, in the power of the Spirit, His kingdom rules over all—state, church and family—for His glory.

Our confused times call not for retreat from or the obfuscation of clear Biblical truths, but instead a renewed embrace of patriarchy, while praying exactly like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…for Jesus sake, Amen.”

Peter VanDoodewaard is the Pastor of Covenant Community Presbyterian Church in Taylors, South Carolina.

The post In Defense of Patriarchy appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

‘The wisest of women builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down.’ Proverbs 14:1

The mainline Protestant denominations (Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian) are discussing homosexuality with a view to transforming their bodies into more ‘tolerant’, more ‘diverse’, and more ‘inclusive’ organizations. This, any way, is how the advocates of the gay agenda present their programme for change in the churches.

What is the central issue? Simply this: shall homosexuality be normalized? Shall sexual relations between members of the same sex be viewed by the churches as legitimate, acceptable, even as desirable, in the same sense as are sexual relations between married people of the opposite sex? The full implementing of this principle of normalization would mean that homosexual acts would no longer be considered sinful, and practicing homosexuals would be granted full ecclesiastical equality, including the right to serve as ministers and church leaders. Further, children in the church’s educational program would not and could not be taught to prefer one “orientation” or “lifestyle” over another. Little Johnny and Suzie would be taught simply that Heather Has Two Mommies, as a proposed New York City elementary schoolbook famously and nonjudgmentally explained. Enlightened churches would define Christian virtue as loving and accepting those who are different. Conversely sin would be defined as the opposite: judging, condemning, or rejecting alternate lifestyles.

It is silly to argue that Scripture can be reconciled with these views. It can’t. The laws of God (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13) and the laws of nature (Romans 1:24ff), the Old Testament moral code and the New Testament law of love (1 Corinthians 6:9) unambiguously condemn homosexual acts as unnatural, corrupt, and perverse. Common sense, the design of nature, and scriptural teaching agree that the defining acts of homosexuality can never be considered moral or normal. For a man to desire to sodomize or be sodomized by another man is both bizarre and evil. The same can be said for all other forms of sexual contact between members of the same sex.

We know that erotic desire can be misplaced and corrupted. There are names for these various forms of perversion that are too awful to contemplate: bestiality, necrophilia, paedophilia, to name a few. Homosexuality is another example of the same. It is misplaced and therefore perverted erotic desire. Certain forms of sexual expression are inherently evil. The Christian church has always known and taught this, and preached a gospel that calls for repentance and promises deliverance from the power of sin: “and such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 5:11).

Normalizing the perverse has never been an option, partly because one cannot be delivered from that which is not considered deviant. Yet the pressure of our cultural movement toward inclusion and acceptance is so powerful that the denominations seem disinclined to draw any moral line anywhere. It appears that there no longer remains any behaviour which mainline Protestants are willing to call sexually perverse. It seems that the category of sin in sexual relations has disappeared altogether.

The great old American Protestant establishment, the once wise mother church of most American Protestants, is pursuing a course of self-destruction. In Savannah respected churches with evangelical traditions are allowing practicing homosexuals to participate in leadership and even to teach in Sunday School and lead Bible studies.

If the mainline denominations persist and re-classify homosexuality as moral and acceptable and normalize homosexual acts, they will apostatize or de-church themselves, and ecclesiastical calamity will ensue. Right now the proverbial “man in the pew” is scratching his head wondering what his denominational leaders and bureaucrats can possibly be thinking!? The laity is shocked! Shocked! They shouldn’t be. The denominational seminaries abandoned biblical authority fifty years ago or more. The strategy of their graduates in the pulpit has been to lay low, to keep their skepticism to themselves. But the issue of homosexuality is “outing” unbelieving clergy, exposing the rotting core of the old mainline that no longer takes the Bible seriously. American Protestantism has become the foolish woman, tearing down its house with its own hands. Let us pray that God mercifully will call it back from the brink of ecclesiastical suicide.

Terry Johnson is the pastor of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Georgia, (www.ipcsav.org) and is the author of the Banner of Truth book The Case for Traditional Protestantism.

The post Ecclesiastical Suicide appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

Early in their married life, Elizabeth and her husband, George suffered the loss of two of their six children. Eddie died aged five and Bessie died when just a few weeks old. In addition, Elizabeth experienced ongoing ill-health and insomnia through much of her life.  In 1857, George temporarily resigned his pastorate of a large New York church due to a health breakdown brought on by overwork. Shortly after he and Elizabeth resumed their pastoral duties in 1860, the Civil War commenced (1862-5) with all the accompanying heartbreak and suffering.

Elizabeth was a prolific writer of letters, stories, poems, hymns, novels and children’s books, but the impulse behind all of her writing was pastoral. She believed that there are resources in Christ to meet every challenge and comfort every grief. She discovered in her own experience that the deeper the heartbreak, the deeper one can be drawn into experience of the love of God. The greater the challenge, the more one can grow in confidence in the still greater goodness of God. She wanted to point others to those never-failing resources of grace.

She could testify that it is when we surrender to the will of God, and trust his sovereign wisdom in every circumstance, that the worst trials can be transformed into the richest times of fellowship with God. She wrote:

God never places us in any position in which we can not grow. We may fancy that He does. We may fear we are so impeded by fretting, petty cares that we are gaining nothing; but when we are not sending any branches upward, we may be sending roots downward. Perhaps in the time of our humiliation, when everything seems a failure, we are making the best kind of progress.

As a busy mother and pastor’s wife, Elizabeth found that the busyness and interruptions and difficulties of everyday life are the ‘school of Christ’, where we learn to react with patience and good humour. At times she felt as if her family life was falling to pieces as she didn’t have the physical resources or energy she longed for to make a peaceful and well organised home. But in the midst of all of it she was well known for her warm welcome, her generous hospitality, her sense of humour and her artistic gifts.

I have been inspired by Elizabeth Prentiss as one of the most ‘real’ role models of practical holiness I have ever come across. She discovered that the harsh realities of everyday life, far from hindering our growth in grace, can be the means by which we grow. I wrote this biography in the hope that others could be encouraged by getting to know her as well.

The theme of her life is summed up in these words:

To love Christ more –  this is the deepest need, the constant cry of my soul.  Down in the bowling ally, and out in the woods, and on my bed, and out driving, when I am happy and busy, and when I am sad and idle, the whisper keeps going up for more love, more love, more love!

The post Learning Practical Holiness from Elizabeth Prentiss appeared first on Banner of Truth UK.

By ‘posture’ I do not refer to the alignment of one’s body when standing. Good posture, of course, is advisable, for one breathes better, projects his voice better and shows respect for the uprightness and symmetry with which God created his image-bearers. No better instruction on this feature of pulpit address can be found than that offered by Spurgeon in his Lectures to my Students. In his brief apology for this two-lecture series, Spurgeon summarized the intent by assuming that

No minister would willingly cultivate a habit which would blunt his arrows, or drift them aside from the mark; and, therefore, since these minor matters of movement, posture, and gesture may have that effect, you will give them your immediate attention.¹

But I refer to one’s mental and spiritual posture. In what position does a person place his mind and heart as he approaches the time of pulpit proclamation? Within what framework does the preacher of the gospel align his thoughts as he prepares to stand before the people of God to deliver the message of God from the book of God?

My experience in considering this issue does not come from a long history of week-by-week preparation to give soul care to one group of people over several years of pastoral labour. My preaching has been occasional in churches where I served as an assistant to the pastor, in conferences, a few interims, or one Sunday at a time in different churches. I have heard many sermons, however, as a church member and as a regular attendee at chapel through eight years of seminary life as a student and thirty-three years as a professor. And, as is true in virtually every Christian’s relationships, many friends who attend church talk about sermons and preachers and the impact that certain styles of pulpit address have on them.

Content trumps everything. The reconciling work of Christ must be central to the message and omnipresent in the sermon portfolio of every pastor. By reconciling work I mean the incarnation of the Son of God, his life of tested and perfected righteousness, his substitutionary death submitting to a wrath not his due but ours, his resurrection by the glory of the Father, his appearances and post-resurrection commissions and instructions, his ascension, his sending of the Spirit, his present work of intercession, and the hope of his coming again. By omnipresent I mean that each and every sermon must make some conscious and conscientious connection to the Messiah-driven nature of divine revelation. A sermon is not a Christian sermon unless it leads us to Christ; a text is not a biblical text unless it is seen in its connection to Christ. None of the promises are ours apart from Christ but ‘as many as may be the promises of God, in him [Christ] they are yes’ and only in him do we find the assured and final affirmation that we may indeed live to the glory of God (2 Cor. 1:20). Every law was given by him to drive us to him, every deliverer of Israel pictures what only Christ does. Every Psalm gives praise to the King of kings, every proverb shows us that wisdom is bound up in the cross of Christ, every prophet lets us know that in these last days God has spoken to us by a Son. Christ himself taught us this when he called two disciples ‘foolish men and slow of heart’ because they failed to ‘believe in all that the prophets have spoken.’ Had they perceived correctly the prophetic message, they would have known that it was ‘necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory’ (Luke 24:25, 26). He instructed them, therefore, ‘beginning with Moses and with all the prophets’ and ‘explained to them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures’ (v. 27) Without Christ in his suffering and glory all sermon content is trivial humanism.

Next to content, however, no listener can ignore the impression made by delivery. Delivery is affected, moreover, not only by the disciplined use of body and vocal inflection, but by the state of mind a preacher has prior to his taking his assigned place of instruction and admonition before the people of God. So infused are matter and manner that one’s posture of presentation may allow the content to glow with magnetic fervour or bleach it into pale, insipid, even obnoxious hues by its impact on the existential credibility of the messenger. A serious message on the cross may wither from the flippant humour and ill-placed jocularity of the messenger. A message about the humiliation of Christ and the consequent necessity of humility on the part of his followers may crumble under the weight of the cavalier and detached carriage of the messenger. A message on the love of God may sag into mere amusement by the amateurish histrionics of the messenger. In short the most glorious and compelling message possible may lose credibility by any number of ways in which a lack of earnestness becomes prominent.

Jonathan Edwards, in his Thoughts on the New England Revival, observed,

I think an exceeding affectionate way of preaching about the great things of religion, has in itself no tendency to beget false apprehensions of them; but on the contrary a much greater tendency to beget true apprehensions of them, than a moderate, dull, indifferent way of speaking of them.²

He argued that great earnestness did as much to settle the judgment in favour of truth as great learning and concluded, ‘Our people don’t so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched.’³ We, however, need a heavy portion of both. The truths of divine revelation, flowing like hot lava from heart and lips burning with intense passion for God and souls, make truth not only heard but felt. Spurgeon added,

One of the excuses most soporific to the conscience of an ungodly generation is that of half-heartedness in the preacher. If the sinner finds the preacher nodding while he talks of judgment to come, he concludes that the judgment is a thing which the preacher is dreaming about, and he resolves to regard it all as mere fiction.⁴

While Edwards specifically wrote to defend the exuberance of preachers in the first Great Awakening and to deflect the severe criticism they received in an attempt to discredit the revival, his argument that manner, the emotional and spiritual overtones, of delivery colours the content is widely applicable. Given our great tendency to sin and self-centredness, certain particular steps should be taken consciously to give the best opportunity for an earnest manner commensurate with the glory of the message.

First, we should consider who we are – sinners prone to have our tongues corrupt the whole course of nature and defile our entire body because it is set on fire by hell. We preachers will be judged harshly for the wrong use of our tongues. On this we should meditate at several points during the week; we should recall those times that words spoken too quickly or with too little thought have hurt relationships and dishonoured God. How much more will a word unfitly spoken, even the right word unfitly spoken, be a dishonour to God if we stand as his messenger and fail to mortify the flesh in our style of delivery. The immediate suggestions to the mind of light anecdotes or ex tempore comments about oneself or the congregation hardly ever advance the cause of the gospel in a message and usually lighten the mood so that seriousness due the proclamation can not be regained.

Second we should consider who the people are – the sheep of God who need a shepherd that is not a mere hireling. The shepherd may protect the sheep by steering them clear of pitfalls, brambles and sheep-eating carnivores. Calls to repentance, therefore, based on biblical admonition, mandate and law should run liberally through the messages that we preach if we earnestly care for the souls of those that hear. Aside remarks, however, that draw more attention to the feelings of the speaker than the glory of the message hardly ever edify or endear one to the call of Christ. Self-conscious efforts to evoke a periodic ‘Amen’ from the congregation may interrupt meaningful reflection on the part of the more serious listeners and could indicate that the minister is more interested in an immediate affirmation of a series of one-liners than a prolonged engagement with a biblical argument. Worse than that is the attempt to insult the congregation into response by clever, or not so clever, manipulations to shame: ‘Are you people awake yet?’ ‘Are you thinking about beating the Methodists to the cafeteria?’ or ‘Hello?!’ after a failed attempt to create a chuckle.

When they hear our voice, will they indeed hear the voice of the Shepherd that gave his life for them? Paul wrote to the Corinthians, ‘You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God.’ This periodic consideration of who the people are, how Christ has died for them, how the Spirit has called us to them and hopefully written them on our hearts as persons to be cared for will make our public messages to them filled with transparency, earnestness, godliness and joy with the intent of edifying them by setting Christ before them. Instead of evoking a laugh from them, the point of our message should bring weeping from us and them for the reality of the eternity that looms before us mortals, the eternity in which we face the flaming eyes of the righteous judge whose vision will burn away every refuge except the cover of Christ’s obedience.

Third, meditate seriously and purposefully on the glory of Christ. The apostle Peter indicates that this action occupied the prophets prior to Christ’s coming. They ‘inquired carefully’ as to what type of person or time might be required to fulfill the Spirit’s predictions concerning ‘the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories’ (1 Pet. 1:10, 11 ESV). They laboured over the revelation that they had with such intense interest that the Spirit made a separate revelation to them that the answers would not come in their lifetime. These vital and compelling aspects of divine intervention were reserved for a subsequent age and could only be understood in light of the appearance of the person himself. Only through Christ is the veil taken away, and, then, only ‘when one turns to the Lord’ (2 Cor. 3:14-16). Their turning to the Lord, moreover, was the result of hearing the ‘word of Christ’ preached (Rom. 10:17). After Christ’s ascension, the revelation was made in its fullness to the apostles and prophets (Eph. 3:5) even as they preached ‘the good news . . . by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven’ (1 Pet. 1:12). The good news consisted of issues of redemptive truth that even the angels did not fully grasp and which they evidently learned through the preaching of the apostolic generation. As a result of the impact of this preaching, in which the sufferings of Christ and his subsequent glory were highlighted, Peter could admonish the churches to ‘set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ’ (l Pet. 1:13). Every admonition, every word of encouragement, every bit of instruction that Peter wrote relates immediately to the sufferings and glory of Christ. Their ground of acceptance is in his sufferings and their hope for the future is in his glorification (1:2; 2:24; 3:18; 4:1,2; 5:1,10). Their reason for patience in all their trials is the suffering and glory of Christ (1:3-9; 3:14-18; 4:12-14). Their impetus for holiness is in the sufferings and glory of Christ (1:13-21; 2:18-23; 4:3-6). The energy and example for loving the brethren comes from the gospel of Christ’s suffering and glory preached to them (1:22-25; 3:8, 9; 4:7-11). If a preacher would understand a text and be inspired to preach all that it contains, he must spend time during the week reflecting on the glory of Christ in his cross, his resurrection, his intercession and his coming.

Fourth, be saturated with the sermon text and bear it consciously in mind throughout the sermon. In addition to thorough preparation in all the relevant helps available to him, meditation on the text should heighten its importance in the preacher’s mind so that he grasps the potency of the eternal blessings of grace flowing from it and can think of nothing more worthy of his allotted time than the display of Christ through its truth. Be determined that those that hear this sermon will know this text and how its parts radiate from Christ and his sufficiency as Saviour and Lord and bend back upon him, reflecting his glory from a unique facet on the jewel of Scripture. Keep reminding the hearers that ‘Our text tells us so.’ We would never want to do away with the massive variety of helps available today to expedite exegesis and give critical clarity to the meaning of a text. But we must also recognize that Scripture is its own best interpreter. A personal knowledge of the text, its surrounding context, and an intimate acquaintance with the whole Bible makes meditation on a particular text an edifying experience personally and lends power to one’s preaching. A. T. Robertson had broad acquaintance with large numbers of preachers that in truth were men of one book. He observed:

This was literally true in some instances, for some of the early Baptist ministers were too poor to possess even a modest library. In some cases the old preacher would own Cruden’s Concordance or Matthew Henry’s Commentary. But the preacher who had only a copy of the English Bible often made such diligent use of it that he literally knew it. He could quote chapter and verse for his positions and expound Scripture by Scripture; a method not to be despised by the modern interpreter. Sermons out of the Concordance may be fearfully and wonderfully made, but sermons made out of the Bible which one has at his fingers’ ends may be charged with power and can certainly claim the promise of God to bless his Word in a sense not true of some modern disquisitions and essays. If some of the interpretations were at times crude and lacking in historical perspective, they at least reflected the light of truth. They were loyal to Christ and preached the reality of sin, the need of a Saviour, and the power of Christ to save sinners of the deepest dye. The pioneer preacher believed his gospel with all his heart and had no doubts about it, for he had put it to the test in too many instances. He was a man of power largely because he was mighty in the Scriptures and was full of faith in God.⁵

Fifth, be single minded in staying with the text and aware of the presence of Christ during the time of delivery. Many clever asides and easily-permitted digressions would remain in the realm of the unspoken where they should be joined by many others were the preacher to cultivate a deep-consciousness of Christ’s presence with his people during the time of the ministry of the Word. The clutter of superfluous comments could be swept away entirely if we kept in mind that the demands of the text should determine the contour and intent of every sentence. Such concentration on text and Christ would defy the insertion of jokes. Free-standing fabrications of incongruity or implied ridicule simply for the sake of a laugh will not contribute to but will interrupt both the cogency of thought and the pertinent pathos necessary for penetrating a heart with truth and love. Late night talk shows may thrive on this material, but Christian pulpits will wilt right along with the souls that are periodically injected with the virus of insincerity. Jokes have nothing to do with the biblical text and the attempt at teasing relevance out of them is so strained that the congregation usually sees through the charade, and gospel seriousness flies away to find refuge somewhere else. If you seek such jokes in the sermons of Calvin, Luther, Edwards, Whitefield, Wesley, Owen, Howe, Bunyan, Gill, Andrew Fuller, Richard Fuller, Robert Hall, John A. Broadus, James P. Boyce or Charles Spurgeon you will come up empty. They give no advice about it nor example of it. I doubt if the consideration of such a communicative device ever occurred to them, for their view of the task before them did not admit of it. Spurgeon sometimes employed humour, but it was always in the flow of thought – an epigram, a pithy proverb, an arresting image, an astute observation about human nature in its relation to divine things, a statement of irony – that sealed, rather than concealed or nullified, the truth being discussed. Boyce’s sermons so overflow with earnest solicitude for the spiritual health of his hearers that one can almost feel the warmth generated by his devotional energy. Edwards’ intensity for the truth of his doctrine and the salvation of his hearer, concerns intertwined at every phase of his sermon, reverberate with palpable power even from the printed page. Richard Fuller’s saturation with the applicability of his doctrinal and textual theme left no space in his mental apparatus for a jocular spirit to shoulder its way into his thinking.

One should not infer from any of these suggestions that a minister of the gospel must be less, or more, than human. He should, however, recognize the sinful tendency that humans have to trivialize the sacred and mortify that urge. He should recognize the sinful tendency to use the tongue as an instrument of hell, and fear the outcome. As one called to a transcendent task, he must not create a subterranean climate. As one given specific instructions about the chief function of his calling, he must avoid adding his own bright ideas about what would make it more compelling. ‘Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching . . . But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry’ (2 Tim. 4:2, 5). Hold fast the faithful Word that by sound doctrine you can exhort and convince those that contradict it; and show yourself to be a model of good works. In your teaching show integrity, gravity, sincerity, sound speech that cannot be condemned (Titus 1:9; 2:7, 8 paraphrased).

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WE may as well confess at the outset that there is no such thing as a modern theory of the Atonement, in the sense in which there is a modern theory, say, of the Incarnation – the kenosis theory to wit, which is a brand-new conception, never dreamed of until the nineteenth century was well on its course, and likely, we may hope, to pass out of notice with that century. All the theories of the Atonement now current readily arrange themselves under the old categories, and have their prototypes running back more or less remotely into the depths of Church history.

The fact is, the views men take of the atonement are largely determined by their fundamental feelings of need – by what men most long to be saved from. And from the beginning three well-marked types of thought on this subject have been traceable, corresponding to three fundamental needs of human nature as it unfolds itself in this world of limitation. Men are oppressed by the ignorance, or by the misery, or by the sin in which they feel themselves sunk; and, looking to Christ to deliver them from the evil under which they particularly labor, they are apt to conceive His work as consisting predominantly in revelation of divine knowledge, or in the inauguration of a reign of happiness, or in deliverance from the curse of sin.

In the early Church, the intellectualistic tendency allied itself with the class of phenomena which we call Gnosticism. The longing for peace and happiness that was the natural result of the crying social evils of the time, found its most remarkable expression in what we know as Chiliasm. That no such party-name suggests itself to describe the manifestation given to the longing to be delivered from the curse of sin, does not mean that this longing was less prominent or less poignant: but precisely the contrary. The other views were sloughed off as heresies, and each received its appropriate designation as such: this was the fundamental point of sight of the Church itself, and as such found expression in numberless ways, some of which, no doubt, were sufficiently bizarre – as, for example, the somewhat widespread representation of the atonement as centering in the surrender of Jesus as a ransom to Satan.

Our modern Church, you will not need me to tell you, is very much like the early Church in all this. All three of these tendencies find as full representation in present-day thought as in any age of the Church’s life. Perhaps at no other period was Christ so frequently or so passionately set forth as merely a social Saviour. Certainly at no other period has His work been so prevalently summed up in mere revelation. While now, as ever, the hope of Christians at large continues to be set upon Him specifically as the Redeemer from sin.

The forms in which these fundamental types of thinking are clothed in our modern days, differ, as a matter of course, greatly from those they assumed in the first age. This difference is largely the result of the history of thought through the intervening centuries. The assimilation of the doctrines of revelation by the Church was a gradual process; and it was also an orderly process – the several doctrines emerging in the Christian consciousness for formal discussion and scientific statement in a natural sequence. In this process the doctrine of the atonement did not come up for formulation until the eleventh century, when Anselm gave it its first really fruitful treatment, and laid down for all time the general lines on which the atonement must be conceived, if it is thought of as a work of deliverance from the penalty of sin. The influence of Anselm’s discussion is not only traceable, but has been determining in all subsequent thought down to to-day. The doctrine of satisfaction set forth by him has not been permitted, however, to make its way unopposed. Its extreme opposite –the general conception that the atoning work of Christ finds its essence in revelation and had its prime effect, therefore, in deliverance from error–was advocated in Anselm’s own day by perhaps the acutest reasoner of all the schoolmen, Peter Abelard. The intermediate view which was apparently invented five centuries later by the great Dutch jurist, Hugo Grotius, loves to think of itself as running back, in germ at least, to nearly as early a date. In the thousand years of conflict which has raged among these generic conceptions each has taken on protean shapes, and a multitude of mixed or mediating hypotheses have been constructed. But, broadly speaking, the theories that have divided the suffrages of men easily take places under one or other of these three types.

There is a fourth general conception, to be sure, which would need to be brought into view were we studying exhaustive enumeration. This is the mystical idea which looks upon the work of Christ as summed up in the incarnation; and upon the saving process as consisting in an unobserved leavening of mankind by the inworking of a vital germ then planted in the mass. But though there never was an age in which this idea failed entirely of representation, it bears a certain aristocratic character which has commended it ordinarily only to the few, however fit: and it probably never was very widely held except during the brief period when the immense genius of Schleiermacher so overshadowed the Church that it could hardly think at all save in the formulas taught by him. Broadly speaking, the field has been held practically by the three theories which are commonly designated by the names of Anselm, Grotius, and Abelard; and age has differed from age only in the changing expression given these theories and the relative dominance of one or another of them.

The Reformers, it goes without saying, were enthusiastic preachers of the Anselmic conception – of course as corrected, developed, and enriched by their own deeper thought and truer insight. Their successors adjusted, expounded, and defended its details, until it stood forth in the seventeenth century dogmatics in practical completeness. During this whole period this conception held the field; the numerous controversies that arose about it were rather joined with the Socinian or the mystic than internal to the circle of recognized Church teachers. It was not until the rise of Rationalism that a widely spread defection became observable. Under this blight men could no longer believe in the substitutive expiation which is the heart of the Anselmic doctrine, and a blood-bought redemption went much out of fashion. The dainty Supranaturalists attained the height only of the Grotian view, and allowed only a “demonstrative” as distinguished from an “ontological” necessity for an atonement, and an “executive” as distinguished from a” judicial” effect to it. The great evangelical revivals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, swept away all that. It is probable that a half century ago the doctrine of penal satisfaction had so strong a hold on the churches that not more than an academic interest attached to rival theories.

About that time a great change began to set in. I need only to mention such names as those of Horace Bushnell, McLeod Campbell, Frederick Dennison Maurice, Albrecht Ritschl, to suggest the strength of the assault that was suddenly delivered against the central ideas of an expiatory atonement. The immediate effect was to call out an equally powerful defense. Our best treatises on the atonement come from this period; and Presbyterians in particular may well be proud of the part played by them in the crisis. But this defense only stemmed the tide: it did not succeed in rolling it back. The ultimate result has been that the revolt from the conceptions of satisfaction, propitiation, expiation, sacrifice, reinforced continually by tendencies adverse to evangelical doctrine peculiar to our times, has grown steadily more and more widespread, and in some quarters more and more extreme, until it has issued in an immense confusion on this central doctrine of the gospel. Voices are raised all about us proclaiming a “theory” of the atonement impossible, while many of those that essay a “theory” seem to be feeling their tortuous way very much in the dark. That, if I mistake not, is the real state of affairs in the modern Church.

I am not meaning to imply that the doctrine of substitutive atonement–which is, after all, the very heart of the gospel–has been lost from the consciousness of the Church. It has not been lost from the hearts of the Christian community. It is in its terms that the humble Christian everywhere still expresses the grounds of his hope of salvation. It is in its terms that the earnest evangelist everywhere still presses the claims of Christ upon the awakened hearer. It has not even been lost from the forum of theological discussion. It still commands powerful advocates wherever a vital Christianity enters academical circles: and, as a rule, the more profound the thinker, the more clear is the note he strikes in its proclamation and defense. But if we were to judge only by the popular literature of the day– a procedure happily not possible –the doctrine of a substitutive atonement has retired well into the background. Probably the majority of those who hold the public ear, whether as academical or as popular religious guides, have definitely broken with it, and are commending to their audiences something other and, as they no doubt believe, something very much better. A tone of speech has even grown up regarding it which is not only scornful but positively abusive. There are no epithets too harsh to be applied to it, no invectives too intense to be poured out on it. An honored bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church tells us that “the whole theory of substitutional punishment as a ground either of conditional or unconditional pardon is unethical, contradictory, and self-subversive.”¹ He may rightly claim to be speaking in this sweeping sentence with marked discretion and unwonted charity. To do justice to the hateful theme requires, it seems, the tumid turmoil and rushing rant of Dr. Farrar’s rhetoric. Surely if hard words broke bones, the doctrine of the substitutional sacrifice of the Son of God for the sin of man would long ago have been ground to powder.

What, then, are we offered instead of it? We have already intimated that it is confusion which reigns here: and in any event we cannot go into details. We may try, however, to set down in few words the general impression that the most recent literature of the subject makes.

To obtain a just view of the situation, I think we ought to note, first of all, the wide prevalence among the sounder thinkers of the Grotian or Rectoral theory of the atonement–the theory, that is, that conceives the work of Christ not as supplying the ground on which God forgives sin, but only as supplying the ground on which He may safely forgive sins on the sole ground of His compassion. The theory of hypothetical universalism, according to which Christ died as the proper substitute for all men on the condition, namely, that they should believe–whether in its Remonstrant or in its Amyraldian form–has in the conflict of theories long since been crushed out of existence–as, indeed, it well deserved to be. This having been shoved out of the way, the Grotian theory has come to be the orthodox Arminian view and is taught as such by the leading exponents of modern Arminian thought whether in Britain or America; and he who will read the powerful argumentation to that effect by the late Dr. John Miley, say, for example, will be compelled to agree that it is, indeed, the highest form of atonement-doctrine conformable to the Arminian system. But not only is it thus practically universal among the Wesleyan Arminians. It has become also, under the influence of such teachers as Drs. Wardlaw and Dale and Dr. Park, the mark also of orthodox Nonconformity in Great Britain and of orthodox Congregationalism in America. Nor has it failed to take a strong hold also of Scottish Presbyterianism: it is specifically advocated by such men of mark and leading as, for example, Dr. Marcus Dods. On the Continent of Europe it is equally widespread among the saner teachers; one notes without surprise, for example, that it was taught by the late Dr. Frederic Godet, though one notes with satisfaction that it was considerably modified upward by Dr. Godet, and that his colleague, Dr. Gretillat, was careful to correct it. In a word, wherever men have been unwilling to drop all semblance of an “objective” atonement, as the word now goes, they have taken refuge in this half-way house which Grotius has builded for them. I do not myself look upon this as a particularly healthful sign of the times. I do not myself think that, at bottom, there is in principle much to choose between the Grotian and the so-called “subjective” theories. It seems to me only an illusion to suppose that it preserves an “objective” atonement at all. But meanwhile it is adopted by many because they deem it “objective,” and it so far bears witness to a remanent desire to preserve an “objective” atonement.

We are getting more closely down to the real characteristic of modern theories of the atonement when we note that there is a strong tendency observable all around us to rest the forgiveness of sins solely on repentance as its ground. In its last analysis, the Grotian theory itself reduces to this. The demonstration of God’s righteousness, which is held by it to be the heart of Christ’s work and particularly of His death, is supposed to have no other effect on God than to render it safe for Him to forgive sin. And this it does not as affecting Him, but as affecting men–namely, by awaking in them such a poignant sense of the evil of sin as to cause them to hate it soundly and to turn decisively away from it. This is just Repentance. We could desire no better illustration of this feature of the theory than is afforded by the statement of it by one of its most distinguished living advocates, Dr. Marcus Dods². The necessity of atonement, he tells us, lies in the “need of some such demonstration of God’s righteousness as will make it possible and safe for Him to forgive the unrighteous” (p. 181). Whatever begets in the sinner true penitence and impels him toward the practice of righteousness will render it safe to forgive him. Hence Dr. Dods asserts that it is inconceivable that God should not forgive the penitent sinner, and that Christ’s work is summed up in such an exhibition of God’s righteousness and love as produces, on its apprehension, adequate repentance. “By being the source, then, of true and fruitful penitence, the death of Christ removes the radical subjective obstacle in the way of forgiveness” (p. 184). “The death of Christ, then, has made forgiveness possible, because it enables man to repent with an adequate penitence, and because it manifests righteousness and binds men to God” (p. 187). There is no hint here that man needs anything more to enable him to repent than the presentation of motives calculated powerfully to induce him to repent. That is to say, there is no hint here of an adequate appreciation of the subjective effects of sin on the human heart, deadening it to the appeal of motives to right action however powerful, and requiring therefore an internal action of the Spirit of God upon it before it can repent: or of the purchase of such a gift of the Spirit by the sacrifice of Christ. As little is there any hint here of the existence of any sense of justice in God, forbidding Him to account the guilty righteous without satisfaction of guilt. All God requires for forgiveness is repentance: all the sinner needs for repentance is a moving inducement. It is all very simple; but we are afraid it does not go to the root of matters as presented either in Scripture or in the throes of our awakened heart.

The widespread tendency to represent repentance as the atoning fact might seem, then, to be accountable from the extensive acceptance which has been given to the Rectoral theory of the atonement. Nevertheless much of it has had a very different origin and may be traced back rather to some such teaching as that, say, of Dr. McLeod Campbell. Dr. Campbell did not himself find the atoning fact in man’s own repentance, but rather in our Lord’s sympathetic repentance for man. He replaced the evangelical doctrine of substitution by a theory of sympathetic identification, and the evangelical doctrine of expiatory penalty-paying by a theory of sympa­thetic repentance. Christ so fully enters sympathetically into our case, was his idea, that He is able to offer to God an adequate repentance for our sins, and the Father says, It is enough! Man here is still held to need a Saviour, and Christ is presented as that Saviour, and is looked upon as performing for man what man cannot do for himself. But the gravitation of this theory is distinctly downward, and it has ever tended to find its lower level. There are, therefore, numerous transition theories prevalent–some of them very complicated, some of them very subtle–which connect it by a series of insensible stages with the proclamation of human repentance as the sole atonement required. As typical of these we may take the elaborate theory (which, like man himself, may be said to be fearfully and wonderfully made) set forth by the modern Andover divines. This finds the atoning fact in a combination ‘Of Christ’s sympathetic repentance for man and man’s own repentance under the impression made upon him by Christ’s work on his behalf – not in the one without the other, but in the two in unison. A similar combination of the revolutionary repentance of man induced by Christ and the sympathetic repentance of Christ for man meets us also in recent German theorizing, as, for example, in the teaching of Häring. It is sometimes clothed in “sacrificial ” language and made to bear an appearance even of “substitution.” It is just the repentance of Christ, however, which is misleadingly called His “sacrifice,” and our sympathetic repentance with Him that is called our participation in His “sacrifice”; and it is carefully explained that though there was “a substitution on Calvary,” it was not the substitution of a sinless Christ for a sinful race, but the substitution of humanity plus Christ for humanity minus Christ. All of which seems but a confusing way of saying that the atoning fact consists in the revolutionary repentance of man induced by the spectacle of Christ’s sympathetic repentance for man.

The essential emphasis in all these transition theories falls obviously on man’s own repentance rather than on Christ’s. Accordingly the latter falls away easily and leaves us with human repentance only as the sole atoning fact–the entire reparation which God asks or can ask for sin. Nor do men hesitate to-day to proclaim this openly and boldly. Scores of voices are raised about us declaring it not only with clearness but with passion. Even those who still feel bound to attribute the reconciling of God somehow to the work of Christ are often careful to explain that they mean this ultimately only, and only because they attribute in one way or other to the work of Christ the arousing of the repentance in man which is the immediate ground of forgiveness. Thus Dean Fremantle tells us that it is “repentance and faith” that “change for us the face of God.” And then he adds, doubtless as a concession to ingrained, though outgrown, habits of thought: “If, then, the death of Christ, viewed as the culminating point of His life of love, is the destined means of repentance for the whole world, we may say, also, that it is the means of securing the  mercy and favour of God, of procuring the forgiveness of sins.”‘³ And Dr. (now Principal) Forsyth, whose fervid address on the atonement at a great Congregationalist gathering a few years ago quite took captive the hearts of the whole land, seems really to teach little more than this. Christ sympathetically enters into our condition, he tells us, and gives expression to an adequate sense of sin. We, perceiving the effect of this, His entrance into our sinful atmosphere, are smitten with horror of the judgment our sin has thus brought on Him. This horror begets in us an adequate repentance of sin: God accepts this repentance as enough; and forgives our sin. Thus forgiveness rests proximately only on our repentance as its ground: but our repentance is produced only by Christ’s sufferings: and hence, Dr. Forsyth tells us, Christ’s sufferings may be called the ultimate ground of forgiveness.⁴

It is sufficiently plain that the function served by the sufferings and death of Christ in this construction is somewhat remote. Accordingly they quite readily fall away altogether. It seems quite natural that they should do so with those whose doctrinal inheritance comes from Horace Bushnell, say, or from the Socinian theorizing of the school of Ritschl. We feel no surprise to learn, for example, that with Harnack the sufferings and death of Christ play no appreciable part. With him the whole atoning act seems to consist in the removal of a false conception of God from the minds of men. Men, because sinners, are prone to look upon God as a wrathful judge. He is, on the contrary, just Love. How can the sinner’s misjudgment be corrected? By the impression made upon him by the life of Jesus, keyed to the conception of the Divine Fatherhood. With all this we are familiar enough. But we are hardly prepared for the extremities of language which some permit themselves in giving expression to it. “The whole difficulty,” a recent writer of this class declares, “is not in inducing or enabling God to pardon, but in moving men to abhor sin and to want pardon.” Even this difficulty, however, we are assured is removable: and what is needed for its removal is only proper instruction. “Christianity,” cries our writer, “was a revelation, not a creation.” Even this false antithesis does not, however, satisfy him. He rises beyond it to the acme of his passion. “Would there have been no Gospel,” he rhetorically demands–as if none could venture to say him nay–”would there have been no Gospel had not Christ died?”⁵ Thus “the blood of Christ” on which the Scriptures hang the whole atoning fact is thought no longer to be needed: the gospel of Paul, which consisted not in Christ simpliciter but specifically in “Christ as crucified,” is scouted. We are able to get along now without these things.

To such a pass have we been brought by the prevailing gospel of the indiscriminate love of God. For it is here that we place our finger on the root of the whole modern assault upon the doctrine of an expiatory atonement. In the attempt to give effect to the conception of indiscriminate and undiscriminating love as the basal fact of religion, the entire Biblical teaching as to atonement has been ruthlessly torn up. If God is love and nothing but love, what possible need can there be of an atonement? Certainly such a God cannot need propitiating. Is not He the All-Father? Is He not yearning for His children with an unconditioned and unconditioning eagerness which excludes all thought of “obstacles to forgiveness”? What does He want but–just His children? Our modern theorizers are never weary of ringing the changes on this single fundamental idea. God does not require to be moved to forgiveness; or to be enabled to pardon; or even to be enabled to pardon safely. He raises no question of whether He can pardon, or whether it would be safe for Him to pardon. Such is not the way of love. Love is bold enough to sweep all such chilling questions impatiently out of its path. The whole difficulty is to induce men to permit themselves to be pardoned. God is continually reaching longing arms out of heaven toward men: oh, if men would only let themselves be gathered unto the Father’s eager heart! It is absurd, we are told–nay, wicked–blasphemous with awful blasphemy–to speak of propitiating such a God as this, of reconciling Him, of making satisfaction to Him. Love needs no satisfying, reconciling, propitiating; nay, will have nothing to do with such things. Of its very nature it flows out unbought, unpropitiated, instinctively and unconditionally, to its object. And God is Love!

Well, certainly, God is Love. And we praise Him that we have better authority for telling our souls this glorious truth than the passionate assertion of these somewhat crass theorizers. God is Love! But it does not in the least follow that He is nothing but love. God is Love: but Love is not God and the formula “Love” must therefore ever be inadequate to express God. It may well be–to us sinners, lost in our sin and misery but for it, it must be–the crowning revelation of Christianity that God is love. But it is not from the Christian revelation that we have learned to think of God as nothing but love. That God is the Father of all men in a true and important sense, we should not doubt. But this term “All-Father” – it is not from the lips of Hebrew prophet or Christian apostle that we have caught it. And the indiscriminate benevolencism which has taken captive so much of the religious thinking of our time is a conception not native to Christianity, but of distinctly heathen quality. As one reads the pages of popular religious literature, teeming as it is with ill-considered assertions of the general Fatherhood of God, he has an odd feeling of transportation back into the atmosphere of, say, the decadent heathenism of the fourth and fifth centuries, when the gods were dying, and there was left to those who would fain cling to the old ways little beyond a somewhat saddened sense of the benignitas numinis. The benignitas numinis! How studded the pages of those genial old heathen are with the expression; how suffused their repressed life is with the conviction that the kind Deity that dwells above will surely not be hard on men toiling here below! How shocked they are at the stern righteousness of the Christian’s God, who loomed before their startled eyes as He looms before those of the modern poet in no other light than as “the hard God that dwelt in Jerusalem”! Surely the Great Divinity is too broadly good to mark the peccadillos of poor puny man; surely they are the objects of His compassionate amusement rather than of His fierce reprobation. Like Omar Khayyam’s pot, they were convinced, before all things, of their Maker that “He’s a good fellow and ’twill all be well.”

The query cannot help rising to the surface of our minds whether our modern indiscriminate benevolencism goes much  deeper than this. Does all this one-sided proclamation of the universal Fatherhood of God import much more than the heathen benignitas numinis? When we take those blessed words, “God is Love,” upon our lips, are we sure we mean to express much more than that we do not wish to believe that God will hold man to any real account for his sin? Are we, in a word, in these modern days, so much soaring upward toward a more adequate apprehension of the transcendent truth that God is love, as passionately protesting against being ourselves branded and dealt with as wrath-deserving sinners? Assuredly it is impossible to put anything like their real content into these great words, “God is Love,” save as they are thrown out against the background of those other conceptions of equal loftiness, “God is Light,” “God is Righteousness,” “God is Holiness,” ” God is a consuming fire.” The love of God cannot be apprehended in its length and breadth and height and depth–all of which pass knowledge–save as it is apprehended as the love of a God who turns from the sight of sin with inexpressible abhorrence, and burns against it with unquenchable indignation. The infinitude of His love would be illustrated not by His lavishing of His favor on sinners without requiring an expiation of sin, but by His–through such holiness and through such righteousness as cannot but cry out with infinite abhorrence and indignation–still loving sinners so greatly that He provides a satisfaction for their sin adequate to these tremendous demands. It is the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity, after all, not that it preaches a God of love, but that it preaches a God of conscience.  A somewhat flippant critic, contemplating the religion of Israel, has told us, as expressive of his admiration for what he found there, that “an honest God is the noblest work of man.”⁶ There is a profound truth lurking in the remark. Only it appears that the work were too noble for man; and probably man has never compassed it. A benevolent God, yes: men have framed a benevolent God for themselves. But a thoroughly honest God, perhaps never. That has been left for the revelation of God Himself to give us. And this is the really distinguishing characteristic of the God of revelation: He is  thoroughly honest, a thoroughly conscientious God–a God who deals honestly with Himself and us, who deals conscientiously with Himself and us. And a thoroughly conscientious God, we may be sure, is not a God who can deal with sinners as if they were not sinners. In this fact lies, perhaps, the deepest ground of the necessity of an expiatory atonement. And it is in this fact also that there lies the deepest ground of the increasing failure of the modern world to appreciate the necessity of an expiatory atonement. Conscientiousness commends itself only to awakened conscience; and in much of recent theologizing conscience does not seem especially active. Nothing, indeed, is more startling in the structure of recent theories of atonement, than the apparently vanishing sense of sin that underlies them. Surely, it is only where the sense of guilt of sin has grown grievously faint, that men can suppose repentance to be all that is needed to purge it. Surely it is only where the sense of the power of sin has profoundly decayed, that men can fancy that they can at will cast it off from them in a “revolutionary repentance.” Surely it is only where the sense of the heinousness of sin has practically passed away, that man can imagine that the holy and just God can deal with it lightly. If we have not much to be saved from, why, certainly, a very little atonement will suffice for our needs. It is, after all, only the sinner that requires a Saviour. But if we are sinners, and in proportion as we know ourselves to be sinners, and appreciate what it means to be sinners, we will cry out for that Saviour who only after He was perfected by suffering could become the Author of eternal salvation.

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Observations upon my Sufferings.

(1.) That such as will live godly in the world must and will suffer persecution, for the trial and exercise of their faith and patience, purging away of their dross, and for weaning their hearts from a present world, and for confirmation of the truth, 2 Tim. 3:12; 1 Pet. 4:12; John 15:3.

(2.) Although at some times there be more or less of persecution, yet there is no time in which the saints shall be without daily crosses; for a wicked world will persecute with the tongue, even in Abraham’s family, where piety did obtain, Gal. 4:28, 29; Gen. 21:9. Even when religion was favoured, I found persecution by reproach, and contempt of wicked men.

(3.) There are some special days of persecution, when hell breaks loose, and when great trials come, which are called “the hour of tentation,” and “the evil day, the hour and power of darkness,” Revelation 3:10; Ephesians 6:13; Luke 8:13, 22, 25.

(4.) The Lord “stayeth his rough wind in the day of his east wind,” Isaiah 27:8. He many times puts an end to the extremities of his people’s personal trials ere [ed. ‘before] he exercises with public sufferings; he “lays not on men more than is meet,” and therefore suffers not a multitude of evils to lie upon his poor people at once, 1 Corinthians 10:10.

(5.) God first (I find) ordinarily exercises with personal afflictions, ere he call them to sufferings on account of Christ, that, being exercised with the one, they may better bear the other.

(6.) I find that the Lord doth many times affright us with troubles which never come upon us, as he did to Nineveh; and we are made to fear that which the mercy of God never suffers to touch us, Jonah 1:3.

(7.) But seldom or never doth a great personal or public stroke come upon the Lord’s people, but he gives them some warning, and notice of it before-hand, that we be not surprised, but prepared for it, Zephaniah 2:1-4².

(8.) Obstinacy in sin and impenitency, and the removing of God’s precious people, with security under this, have had greatest influence upon my fears of a day of desolation, Isaiah 57:12; Ezekiel 11:3, 4; Isaiah 9:4, 5.

(9.) Our fears, unbeliefs, and discouragements, with our confusions, are our greatest troubles in a day of trouble; it is a prison within a prison, Psalm 142:7, “O bring my soul out of trouble.” Our galled sore backs make our burdens more grievous to us–sin and unbelief are bad ballast in a storm.

(10.) The cross of Christ, when we once engage with it, is nothing so terrible, is nothing so heavy as at a distance in apprehension it is. How dreadful did a prison and appearing before synagogues appear to me! But, when I did encounter therewith, I found it nothing so terrible to me.

(11.) I was never in that trouble yet upon the account of Christ, but I was delivered out of it by the Lord, and that when it seemed very desperate to look for salvation, Psalm 34:19, “The troubles of the righteous are many, but the Lord delivereth out of them all.” We are to believe deliverance from all our troubles, though we cannot tell when or how.

(12.) Nothing contributes more to a Christian carriage under trouble, than faith of God’s support in and deliverance out of trouble, James 5:7, 8. Unbelief sinks the heart.

(13.) It is matter of great humiliation to us, that our troubles and afflictions do us but little good sometimes, that we are so unfruitful under the rod: and especially I observe, that small troubles have but small influence; every physic doth not work with strong constitutions. My lighter troubles, whether upon a personal or more public account, I found but little good by them. It was a deep heart-reaching stroke that did me good: and in times of greatest fears, sharpest afflictions, it was ever still best with me; and at first afflictions do not so much good, it is afterwards that they reap “the peaceable fruits of righteousness,” Hebrews 12:11. And, even when the Lord blesses them to do good, the fruit, alas! is but small; we are not so good under them as we ought to be or might.

(14.) I have observed, the more the Lord’s people are affiicted and persecuted, the more they grow; and the gospel never thrives better than when it is persecuted, Exodus 1:12; Phil. 1:12. Such things as happened to me have been “for the furtherance of the gospel.” All the malice of men could never have broken us, if we had not undone ourselves; they “plowed with our heifer” for the spreading of the gospel was the effect of a long time of their greatest severities.

(15.) Persecutors are ungodly, are cruel, are deceitful; and this did I see evidently, all persecutors have these three properties: and therefore let us beware of such persons, and keep at the utmost distance with them, and expect no good from them; let us not lean on them who smite us; let us suspect all their favours, for “the kisses of an enemy are deceitful; but let “our eyes be only to the Lord.”

(16.) Too great love, respect to, intimacy and communion with wicked men, and not standing at due distance with them, provokes the Lord to give his people into the hands of the wicked. The Israelites’ wicked confederacy with the Canaanites made them “briers and thorns in their sides;” had we carried to the ungodly as we ought to have done, we should not have smarted as we do this day.

(17.) It is a very great comfort to a godly person, that his persecutors and enemies are God’s enemies, and wicked persons: “Let my enemies be as the wicked,” saith Job. We may expect good hearing from God against them. It doth much likewise to determine us in our duties, that what they are for must be ill, and what they are against must be good: and, notwithstanding of the confidence of some compliers, it is strange that in almost six thousand years one instance from Scripture or authentic history cannot be given.

(18.) Under public sufferings we are mostly called to submission and patience, both in reference to God and men: “In patience possess your souls;” and to Christian cheerfulness. Oh, what a comely thing is it to see a meek sufferer, like the Master, “not opening his mouth,” but “dumb as a sheep is before the shearer!” And how ordinarily do men fall in this great sin of impatience? And cheerfulness under the cross of Christ is no less beautiful; and therefore how frequent such precepts and examples, to “glory, rejoice in tribulation?” for this gives a good report of Christ, his cause and cross to others.

(19.) Sufferings on public accounts are not only our duty, but our great privilege; to suffer for Christ is one of Christ’s love-gifts, Philippians 1:29, “It is given you to suffer for the name of Christ.” To give testimony for Christ and his truth is our greatest honour. A sufferer and witness for Christ is the most honourable person and officer in the kingdom of Christ; it is Christ’s highest and honourablest employment, Acts 5:41, “They rejoiced they were counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ.”

(20.) Reproach and shame, and ill-will of men, is the heaviest of Christ’s crosses to bear: “Reproach hath broken my heart,” saith David.

(21.) It is the great guilt of professors this day, that they not only shun the ways of God, but are ashamed of them, and of the cross of Christ, yea, and of the truths of Christ; of such will Christ be ashamed.

(22.) It is a very hard matter to get our sufferings stated upon Christ’s account, but yet it is very necessary we get it done; for many objections doth a poor suffering soul meet with in this case, as possibly not so clear to many as the matter of the sufferings of Christians under heathens, and of Protestants under Papists. Nor is the call to such a thing clear at such a time; some sinful accession of our own (through want of consideration or mistake) to our trouble, sense of guilt and unworthiness, doth render our cause dark to us many times. That as it was said of these, “Ye did not fast to me,” so may it be said of us, Ye suffer not to me, nor for me, but for your sins and yourselves.

(23.) Outward trouble from the hands of persecutors may be both a rod and correction for sin, and a testimony for Christ and his truth. The Lord Jesus may by one rod design both the correction and chastisement of his Church and people, and likewise design a confirmation and witness to his truth, cause, and work. Heb. 12:10, the public sufferings of the believing Hebrews were “chastisements for our profit.”

(24.) We by our sins therefore may provoke the Lord to deliver us into the hands of men, and by our weakness we may have some sinful hand and occasion thereto, and great failings attending our sufferings; and yet Christ accept of our sufferings, so maimed, as a testimony for him.

(25.) ‘Whatever pretext wicked persecutors make of afflicting God’s people, and that they be schismatic, scandalous, seditious, that they walk disorderly; yet the true ground of their quarrel is because of their enmity to God and godliness; and therefore we may be assured we suffer for Christ and for his cause: “All these things will they do unto you, because the love of the Father is not in them.” And David saith, that all his enemies’ quarrel with him was, “because he followed after that which was good.” It is the enmity that is between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, Genesis 3:15 ; Matthew 23:33; John 15:19, 21.

(26.) I observe, that the Lord doth accept of the faithful ends and endeavours, and honest intention and zeal of his people, when the methods and particular means and courses they take for witnessing for Christ are sometimes not altogether justifiable; as he who scruples through want of light an oath in itself lawful, out of zeal for the glory of God which he fears by taking this oath he wrongs, and thereupon suffers, this man’s sufferings are accepted of Christ as a testimony for him.

(27.) The controversy this day is as manifestly stated betwixt Christ and the devil, sin and godliness, whether the world should be Christ’s subjects, or the devil’s and sin’s subjects, as ever it was. The smaller differences, though in themselves of no great consequence, yet centre in this great gulf of rebellion against God. To touch any thing belonging to this wicked generation, Christ’s stated enemies, or to have ought ado with them, is dangerous, Numbers 16:26; and they are the emissaries of Satan, and doing his work, who plead for union and compliance with them.

(28.) Yet ought not the miscarriages of superiors dissolve the civil or natural bonds of relation to them, Matthew 23:1, 2. We are to do, and be submissive to, the commands of superiors, though we be not to imitate their practice.

(29.) Man’s wrath, and all persecution, shall tend and work to the praise of God and the good of saints, Psalm 76:10 ; Isaiah 31:9, and this is a marvellous consolation.

(30.) Many a time may we, in a public stroke of persecution, see our sin and guilt clearly and legibly written, as in Adonibezek, Judges 1; Genesis 19; Such as burned with unnatural lust to one another are justly consumed with fire from heaven: and it is just that lovers, whom we preferred to Christ, be the instruments of our greatest trouble.

(31.) Many times do the people of God find great favour and kindness at the hands of natural men, yea, and more sometimes than from the truly godly: the earth helped the woman many times. I found some professors of religion stood at greater distance with me, than did mere natural and graceless persons.

(32.) The preservation of some, of a remnant in a day of straits, is exceeding wonderful and marvellous sometimes.

(33.) “The wicked are snared in the  work of their own hands,” Psalm 9, and Hamans hanged on their own gallows. The Lord makes the weapons of the wicked recoil on themselves; every mean for a good while they take in hand doth but weaken them, and increase the other party.

(34.) It is the people of God that only can undo and harm themselves; and it is by division that it is done: while we stood in one spirit, we could not be overcome or prevailed against; but false brethren crept in amongst us, divided and broke us through the subtilty of adversaries, and did draw us to rash enterprises.

(35.) The greatest consolations do attend the greatest tribulations, 2 Corinthians 1:5, 6.

(36.) The first brunt of the cross is saddest and sharpest: “No affliction for the present seemeth joyous, but grievous.”

(37.) Great outward troubles, whether personal or on public accounts, quicken and revive our apprehensions of eternity.

(38.) And always do us good; though not alike good to all, nor so sensibly, yet no cross but we get some good of it.

(39.) I found it very hard to appear before councils, and carry rightly. We seek rather to save ourselves in any lawful way, than to honour and give testimony for Christ; and there is not boldness and dependence on Christ for assistance.

(40.) There is not so much of the “Spirit of glory resting upon” sufferers as hath been formerly: which I think flows from these three; 1. That our testimony for Christ is not so glorious; 2. That a sadder shock is coming; and, lastly, That our sufferings are so moderate.

(41.) Yet, blessed be the Lord, for my part I have found the Lord in a special way with me in all my sufferings, and I never repent of any thing I have suffered for Christ.

(42.) Though the Lord can sanctify and bless any lot to his people, yet, to speak absolutely, an afflicted condition in the world is best for God’s people.

(43.) The infinite condescendence of God, and his gracious and tender nature, is that only which can be a bottom to our faith; to believe we suffer for Christ, and as such to be accepted and looked upon by him.

(44.) There is a large allowance for sufferers for righteousness; but many live not upon their allowance, and therefore look so ill upon it.³

Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash

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What, however, if I turn from the past to the future? I can think and write about something that happened seven hundred years ago. What if I project my mind seven hundred years into the future? Can I tell you anything that about the year 2723? No! Remarkable as the gifts are that we humans possess the power to penetrate the future and speak of it as authoritatively as we do of the past is not one of them. We can try and guess. But that’s as far as it goes.

Let me introduce you to a man in the Bible who forms an exception. His name is Isaiah and in the book of the Bible that is named after him and which came from his pen he tells us about something that would (and did) take place seven hundred years on from when he lived. Here are his words: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdoms, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this” (Ch.9.6-7).

Most readers will know of whom Isaiah is speaking. If not you can probably guess, given that this is a Christmas message. Isaiah is speaking about Jesus. And amazingly, he is doing so seven hundred years before his birth in Bethlehem.

There is only one explanation for this that does justice to all the facts and it is this: Isaiah was God’s prophet. His calling in life was to declare to people whatever message God gave to him. Often it had to do with how things were in Isaiah’s own day. But God also had things for Isaiah to announce in advance; things that God was going to do at some future day. The prophecy above is an example. God is not subject to our limitations. He knows the future. He has it all planned out. And this was part of it. Seven hundred years on from Isaiah a very special child would be born – Jesus.

It’s only on one part of the prophecy that I want to touch, namely, the part that speaks about peace. The child to be born would be called Prince of Peace. It is said that “of the increase of his government and of peace” there would be no end. Jesus would be a ruler. And one of the blessings of his rule would be peace.

It’s one of these claims about Jesus that evokes a variety of negative responses – the raised eyebrow, the curled lip, the mirthless laugh, the dismissive shake of the head. And you understand why. We’re two thousand years on now from Jesus’ birth. Where’s the peace? Not in Ukraine. Not in Israel and Gaza. Not in lots of other places. Angels sang of “peace on earth” the very night that Jesus was born. “Aren’t we having to wait rather a long time for it?” someone asks.

Three comments.

The first is that there is no reconciling, peace-making force on earth to compare with the message of Jesus. It is true that his message divides. People take sides over it. But it also unites, as no other message does. When it truly takes hold of us it changes our hearts. Under its influence old hatreds die. We are able to forgive. We begin to love. Those whom once we loathed and would happily have killed are family now, our Christian brothers and sisters. And it hasn’t just happened with a few. Millions upon millions can bear testimony to the gospel’s healing power.

But there is a second comment that needs to be made. Strife among ourselves is not our biggest problem as human beings. Our biggest problem is our broken relationship with God. He has ever so many things against us on account of our innumerable sins. And we for our part don’t care for him at all. In fact we hate him. Jesus, the peace-maker, is the answer to that breakdown in relations too. Through his atoning death our sins can be justly forgiven. We can have what the Bible describes as peace with God. His controversy with us on account of our guilt can be settled once and for all. And at the same time Jesus can so powerfully work in our hearts that we begin to love God and count him our dearest friend.

A third comment to complete the picture. It has to do with the future; with another of the things that God has said will one day happen. Jesus is coming again. We don’t know when (for we haven’t been given a date) but it’s on God’s calendar. And what an event it will be! Jesus will make everything new. The longed-for peace will come. Isaiah’s vision will be fully realised. Jesus, Prince of Peace, will reign over our entire world. And the peace of his reign will be perfect, universal, righteous, and eternal.

But first things first. You must accept Jesus’ message. You must accept him. You must welcome him unconditionally as your peacemaker. Ask him to come and put you right with God by forgiving every sin God has against you. Ask him to give you a loving heart for God and for your fellow humans too. Ask him to make you a citizen of that peace-filled world of which he will one day be the lord. His promise is that you will not seek him in vain.

This piece first appeared on the blog of North Preston Evangelical Church, and is used here with permission.

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Over the years, the Trust has published several books by Dr R. B. Kuiper. However, there are many readers throughout the world who are more familiar with the titles of Kuiper’s books than with the man himself. It is close on twenty-five years since Kuiper passed away. [Kuiper died on 22 April 1966 – Ed.]. He was a man of high spirituality and impeccable orthodoxy. It is appropriate, therefore, that a brief mention should be made of the outline of his varied, scholarly and fruitful life.

R. B. Kuiper (his real Christian names, being Dutch, were seldom used and ‘R.B.’ was the customary mode of addressing him) was born on January 31, 1886 in the province of Groningen in the North of Holland. He was one of a family of eight children born to the Rev. and Mrs Dominie Klaas Kuiper. The father was a minister of the Reformed Church and a man of staunch orthodoxy. Young Kuiper spent only the first five years of his life in Holland. In 1891 he sailed for New York. Dominie Kuiper, now 50 years old, had served three Christian Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. His future ministry was to be in the United States and young Kuiper grew up in the state of Michigan.

Kuiper took after his father in being gifted with a sharp intellect. He proved an excellent scholar at school and entered the University of Chicago in 1903. In 1908 he entered Theological School in Grand Rapids in order to prepare for the ministry of the Christian Reformed Church, at that time a denomination characterised by strong attachment to classical Calvinism. Here Kuiper proved a student of notable excellence. Intent on pursuing theological study he toyed with the idea of crossing to Scotland in order to study at the Free Church of Scotland College. Here he would have sat under Professors James Orr and James Denney. In the event, however, he opted to go to Princeton Seminary and here he became one of the distinguished students under B. B. Warfield and C. W. Hodge, Jnr. as well as of Geerhardus Vos. Warfield was at a later date to mention Kuiper’s intellectual talents to J. Gresham Machen at a critical time in the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America.

In 1911 he married a lady of Dutch background, Marie Janssen, who proved to be a worthy helpmeet to him in the work of the gospel throughout his long and serviceable ministry. There is a warm human touch in the anecdote which informs us that when a little girl was born to the Kuipers, Dr and Mrs B. B. Warfield sent a gift to the newborn child, and along with it a note which read as follows: ‘Dr and Mrs Warfield present their compliments to little Miss Kuiper, and beg to congratulate her on being born, and to thank her for being born in Princeton. Will she kindly accept these little pins as a souvenir of her birthplace April 9, 1912:

Kuiper was ordained to the Christian ministry in 1912 and was soon recognised by the churches as an outstanding preacher. He served several congregations of the Christian Reformed Church in Michigan. Perhaps a little surprisingly, he left the denomination for a time to become minister of the Reformed Church in America in its congregation at Kalamazoo. That was in the year 1923. However, he returned in 1925 to the Christian Reformed Church. This was the period of the ‘common grace controversy’.

R. B. Kuiper was to be Principal of three colleges during his lifetime. In 1930 he was invited to be President of Calvin College in Grand Rapids. This position he held until 1933. Great changes were taking place, however, at Princeton and in the Presbyterian church in the United States in these momentous years. The outstanding theologian and leader of the period was Dr J. Gresham Machen who, along with other conservative colleagues, left the declining Princeton Seminary in order to set up a thoroughly Reformed institution which would continue the old Princeton tradition. Thus it was that in 1929 Westminster Theological Society came into being in Philadelphia, Pennysylvania. Machen called Kuiper to serve in the Chair of Systematic Theology in the new Westminster Seminary and Kuiper agreed to come for one year. Fifty students enrolled at the Westminster Seminary in the September of 1929. There was a faculty of outstanding scholars attached to the new Seminary from the start: Robert Dick Wilson, Machen himself and O. T. Allis. These men were to be joined soon after by Paul Woolley and John Murray. In 1933 Kuiper returned to Westminster in order to become Professor of Practical Theology.

The sudden and unexpected death of Machen in 1937 came as a great shock to the Reformed world of the day. The loss of Machen was also felt in the numbers of students enrolling in the new institution of Westminster. In 1937 there were 30 men in training. By 1946 the number had gone down to five and in 1949 it reached an all-time low with only three men in training. However, after that year the numbers steadily increased so that by 1984 the number had risen to 109.

As Professor of Practical Theology it fell to Kuiper to instruct the young preachers under his charge. It is typical of his attitude that he could advise the students as follows: ‘Preach so simply that a child can understand you, and then the chances are the older people will understand you too.’ This was no call to superficiality or carelessness but took account of the fatal tendency of young men to preach in an academic style and in a way which is above the heads, of ordinary church members. One piece of advice that R. B. Kuiper was apt to give to students is worth recalling here: ‘a sermon on an Old Testament text must be a New Testament sermon’. The preacher, he believed, must do justice in handling his text to history, doctrine and ethics. Only in this way is he preaching the full gospel. Many a student had to unlearn his previous bad preaching habits and habits of preparation. One student, new to the Seminary practice of careful study of a text beforehand, gave himself away on one occasion with these words, ‘These commentaries sure do help, don’t they?’ Clearly he had not been in the habit of using them in the past.

In 1936 a new church came into being with the name of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. The circumstances which gave rise to the formation of this new church are well known. Compromise and liberal thought had greatly weakened the Northern Presbyterian Church. Kuiper’s attitude to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s formation was ‘they had to do it. It was their solemn duty.’ He could see no alternative to the setting up of the new church separate from the now compromised older Presbyterian denomination. Kuiper did not hesitate to join the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. This was the third denomination of which he was to be a minister.

Kuiper remained at Westminster Theological Seminary until 1952 when he left to return to Grand Rapids. Shortly after he left also the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in order to return once again to the Christian Reformed Church in which he had been reared. In that same year he was appointed by the C.R.C. to teach Practical Theology in the Calvin Seminary. He was further honoured by being installed as the President of that institution, a position he held until his retirement in 1956. R. B. Kuiper goes on to record as stating that a seminary professor must be both godly and learned. Both are essential to an efficient professor’s ministry as he prepares younger men for the work of the gospel ministry. It saddened Kuiper in his declining years to see his beloved church, the Christian Reformed Church, increasingly departing from the standards of classical Calvinism through the absorption of modern and more liberal thought.

Kuiper passed to his eternal rest in the early morning hours of April 22,1966. His daughter and son were at his side. He left a legacy of fine Christian books behind him. Some of these have been recently published by the Trust. The Bible Tells Us So was Kuiper’s last literary work and it was not completed, although the portion he did finish before his death is a worthy and helpful contribution. God-centered Evangelism appeared in 1961 and came out in a British edition in 1966. It is regarded as one of the most comprehensive and helpful works on all aspects of evangelism. However, it was Professor John Murray’s belief that Kuiper’s ‘masterpiece’ was his book The Glorious Body of Christ. All who have read that volume will know what a mine of practical thought it represents on all aspects of the Christian Church’s life and witness.

The biography of R. B. Kuiper, written by his son-in-law, Edward Heerema, was published in 1986 under the title R. B.: A Prophet in the Land¹. Kuiper’s life and ministry spans the critical period from orthodoxy at the beginning of this century, through the period of turmoil and theological decline in the ’20s and ’30s and up to the period of the Reformed reconstruction in America in the more recent years of this century. So eminent a servant of Christ must not be forgotten and we trust that the semi-jubilee of his death in April of this year will be suitably remembered by a fresh study of his biography and of his printed writings.

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Jesus Christ said that He was the Messiah the Jews had awaited for over 700 years.

John 4:25–26: ‘The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”’

He said that He existed before the creation of the universe.

John 17:5: ‘And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.’

John 8:58–59: ‘Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.’

He said that He came down from heaven.

John 6:38: ‘For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.’

He taught that He was the only person in the world with a true knowledge of God.

Luke 10:22: ‘All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”’

He taught that He had the power to give men eternal life.

John 10:27–28: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”

Luke 23:43: ‘And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”’

He directed men to Himself as the answer for all their soul’s needs.

John 6:35: ‘Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”‘

John 8:12: ‘Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”’

John 11:25–26: ‘Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.’

He claimed absolute devotion for Himself.

Matthew 10:37: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

He taught that He was the only way to God.

John 14:6: ‘Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”‘

He taught that He had the power to forgive sins.

Luke 5:20–21: ‘And when he saw their faith, he said, “Man, your sins are forgiven you.” And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”’

He taught that He Himself was sinless and absolutely perfect.

John 8:29: ‘And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.”’

John 14:8–9: ‘Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”‘

He said that He was God.

John 10:33: ‘The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”’

John 5:18: ‘This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.’

He accepted worship from other men.

Matthew 14:33: ‘And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”’

John 20:28: ‘Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”’

He taught that one day He was going to raise every dead person in the world from their graves, just by speaking a word to them.

John 5:28–29: ‘Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.’

He said that He would return at the end of the world to determine the eternal destinies of all men who have ever lived.

Matthew 25:31–32: ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.’

C.S. Lewis said, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic–on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg–or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”¹

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