The Gospel Seen from the Left

Here is my co-author, Lisa Sharon Harper, answering the question, "What is an Evangelical?"


Lisa Sharon Harper: What's an Evangelical? from Sojourners on Vimeo.

I have entitled this post "The Gospel Seen from the Left." Should it read "The Left seen from the Gospel?" Any comments?

God With Us at Christmas and Always

I don't believe in Christmas. I believe in Christ, that he was born of a virgin, fully God and fully human, so that he, our Great High Priest, could offer himself, the perfect Lamb of sacrifice, as the perfect and gracious payment for the sins of his people. I just don't believe in limiting the celebration of his birth to one season of the year, or, on the other hand, limiting the theme of preaching to exclusively the nativity for fully one twelfth of every year.

But as it is here, and here to stay, I also believe in making the most of it.

A common distortion in the popular celebration of Christmas when the focus is on biblical themes is the concentration of attention on the birth and infancy of Jesus in isolation of its significance as the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity (e.g. "Jesus' birthday").

But the biblical witness does not miss this point. In Matthew's account of Jesus' birth, the angel tells Joseph that he is to name the boy Jesus because, as the name indicates, he will save his people from their sins. Several verses later, we are told that his birth will fulfill what we read in the prophet Isaiah, that he will be called Immanuel, which means God with us.

Why two names? The reason is that the child born in Bethlehem cannot be a savior, J'shua, the Lord saves, unless he is also Immanuel, God tabernacling among us in human flesh (John 1:14).

Charles Spurgeon, the great nineteenth century London preacher, made the same point in his 1859 Christmas sermon, "A Christmas Question," using Isaiah 9:6 as his text.

"Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given." The sentence is a double one, but it has in it no tautology. The careful reader will soon discover a distinction; and it is not a distinction without a difference. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given." As Jesus Christ is a child in his human nature, he is born, begotten of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. He is as truly-born, as certainly a child, as any other man that ever lived upon the face of the earth. He is thus in his humanity a child born. But as Jesus Christ is God's Son, he is not born; but given, begotten of his Father from before all worlds, begotten—not made, being of the same substance with the Father.

The doctrine of the eternal affiliation of Christ is to be received as an undoubted truth of our holy religion. But as to any explanation of it, no man should venture thereon, for it remaineth among the deep things of God—one of those solemn mysteries indeed, into which the angels dare not look, nor do they desire to pry into it—a mystery which we must not attempt to fathom, for it is utterly beyond the grasp of any finite being. As well might a gnat seek to drink in the ocean, as a finite creature to comprehend the Eternal God. A God whom we could understand would be no God. If we could grasp him he could not be infinite: if we could understand him, then were he not divine.

Jesus Christ then, I say, as a Son, is not born to us, but given. He is a boon bestowed on us, "For God so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten Son into the world." He was not born in this world as God's Son, but he was sent, or was given, so that you clearly perceive that the distinction is a suggestive one, and conveys much good truth to us. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given."

If it is not God who gracious condescended to take our form in Bethlehem's manger, then he could not have even more graciously taken your place on Calvary's cross. But the gospel--the good news for helpless sinners--is that Jesus was not only a child born, but also a son given, and that for us. It is because he is Immanuel from God that he can be Jesus for us.

Soli deo gloria.

Time Stands Still

From NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site, an impressive and evocative picture:


If every picture tells a story, this one might make a novel. The six month long exposure compresses the time from December 17, 2007 to June 21, 2008 into a single point of view. Dubbed a solargraph, the remarkable image was recorded with a simple pinhole camera made from a drink can lined with a piece of photographic paper. The Clifton Suspension Bridge over the Avon River Gorge in Bristol, UK emerges from the foreground, but rising and setting each day the Sun arcs overhead, tracing a glowing path through the sky. Cloud cover causes dark gaps in the daily Sun trails. In December, the Sun trails begin lower down and are short, corresponding to a time near the northern hemisphere's winter solstice date. They grow longer and climb higher in the sky as the June 21st summer solstice approaches.

Two things came immediately to mind when I saw this picture: the movie "Smoke", which includes the plot device of having a main character take a photograph every day from the same spot in front of his cigar store, creating a pictorial chronicle of the life of the city he lives in; and the Canadian rock band Rush's song Time Stands Still, a favorite of mine because of its melancholic, nostalgic, but ultimately redemptive view of life, friendship, and memory, themes the movie also moves among. Also, the background vocals of Amie Mann ('til Tuesday) are haunting.

A cigar, a glass of cognac or brandy, and an old friend in front of a fire...the kind of moments in time we wish we could hold on to--the moments that point us toward our eternal home, where we will be free from time's abuse, and time's loss. As we lean toward heaven, we ought to seize a few moments of worth for ourselves on a cold winter's night, both as comfort now, and as a reminder of the good things that await us.

The Dark Knight and the Politics of Admiration

At the end of the most recent (and I think the best) Batman film, The Dark Knight, the caped crusader says, "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded."

Friedrich Nietzsche says something similar in On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life. People abuse what he calls "critical history" when they use to debunk everything that is admirable and noble, everything that might inspire people to heroic lives of great accomplishment. In every exemplar of the human race--a Washington, a Jefferson, a Lincoln, to use only American examples--there are certainly blemishes to be found. Though the nobility of these great men is true greatness, their faults are also true faults. But for the sake of inspiring people to live life most fully, Nietzsche warns against the abuse of historical investigation that "asks a thousand impertinent questions." If you make a public display of what these great men were in every ugly detail, people will cease to believe in the possibility of goodness and nobility and will no longer rise to the challenge of embodying those virtuous qualities. The world will sink through and through into bland mediocrity. I would add that this is especially a danger in an age when people have largely ceased to believe in God or do not set their sights as squarely as they should on the God in whom they do believe.

A film like Flags of Our Fathers (2006; dir. Clint Eastwood) takes the opposite approach. That film burrows irreverently and wrecklessly into the historical details behind the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima. It reduces that dramatic declaration of victory at the end of an heroic and decisive battle to a staged photo opportunity. It paraded the heroes as shams and drunks. The premise is that if you burrow into the facts behind every hero you will find a disappointment. Everything we have been taught to admire is a lie. There is no greatness. There is no virtue. There is "nothing to kill or die for."

If someone had torn Lincoln's clothes off him as he delivered the Gettysburg address, or old Churchill's clothes off him (try not to think about it) as he delivered his Iron Curtain speech, everyone would have seen these men's blemishes and how ridiculous and ordinary they are underneath the lies that are their clothes. But that exposé would also have distracted us in each case from something genuinely praiseworthy in these men and their deeds, something human beings need, in their life together, for their flourishing. In such cases, what is ordinary--character flaws and unflattering circumstances--masks the extraordinary. And what we would have to admit, if we were forced to confront it, is not actually what is most important from a political standpoint.

Advocates of this debunking approach to history of course have their own heroes. Whereas they are quick to debunk George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and so on, they jealously protect names of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama...as well they should. But they should note that he who lives by the debunking spirit will also die by it, and the civilization we share will die in turn, and is dying.

I draw your attention to Andrew Klavan's insightful reading of the film in his Wall Street Journal article, "What Bush and Batman Have in Common" (July 25, 2008).

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past. And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans. Conversely, time after time, left-wing films about the war on terror -- films like "In The Valley of Elah," "Rendition" and "Redacted" -- which preach moral equivalence and advocate surrender, that disrespect the military and their mission, that seem unable to distinguish the difference between America and Islamo-fascism, have bombed more spectacularly than Operation Shock and Awe.

I offer this as a third take on The Dark Knight. In the end, Batman becomes a Christ figure. He is despised and rejected, taking to his own name the evil deeds of another, in order to save the city. Though Batman is the Dark Knight, the Bible offers Jesus Christ as the Crimson Knight, "clothed in a robe dipped in blood," leading an army of White Knights, "arrayed in fine linen, white and pure" (Rev. 19:11-16). We just cannot escape the power of that gospel message.

The Gospel as Comedy

cartoon by John Guido

What makes this funny? (If you don't think it's funny, just pretend.) A chastened spirit is the last thing you expect from a Viking. Yet Haldor, who is clearly just coming off a rampage or an outburst of Nordic wrath, is looking all sheepish and so-very-sorry. My eleventh grade teacher told us that humor is the juxtaposition of the incongruous. Think of Monty Python's Flying Circus and Airplane.

But for that reason, Haldor illustrates the gospel. That transformation, that new nature, that unnatural kindness and, on the other hand, that brokenness over the evil that lurks within and bursts forth, is what Jesus does with sinners.

Christianity, in that respect, is comedy, not tragedy. My wife, a Grove City College educated English teacher, tells me that comedies and tragedies are distinguished by how they end. Comedies end in weddings, whereas tragedies end in funerals. Consider Shakespeare. Much Ado About Nothing ends in a wedding; Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet end in funerals. The Bible ends with the hope and promise of a wedding. "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!'" Christ, the bridegroom, responds, "Yes, I am coming soon" (Revelation 22:17, 20).

I recall Patrick Downey (assoc. prof. of philosophy, St Mary's College, CA) saying something like that when I knew him at Boston College fifteen years ago. You will find something of interest along those lines in his book, Serious Comedy: The Philosophical and Theological Significance of Tragic and Comic Writing in the Western Tradition (Lexington, 2001).

Back to humor--cartoon humor in particular--if you are interested in this subject, you need to read The Naked Cartoonist by Robert Mankoff, the cartoon editor for The New Yorker. He knows what's funny, and he explains why what works works and why what doesn't doesn't. On pp. 21-22 his advice is "just a little more inking--and a lot more thinking." He shows the magic of layering an idea over what otherwise is an ordinary picture, perhaps just by a caption. I always found that this is what separated Bizzaro from The Far Side (aside from off-putting pointy characters versus attractive round ones).

You can read this 2006 HuffPost interview with him.

For example, "If you're watching America's Funniest Home Videos you never say, "I don't get it." You're not saying, "Ok, a guy fell off a chair. Can someone explain that to me again?" But if you're looking at a Danny Shanahan cartoon in which there's two praying mantises -one male and one female and the male is missing his head and the female is saying "You slept with her, didn't you?" There's something to piece together. There's a slight delay where these different sort of competing ideas come together - mesh and produce laughter."

On God's Love, Nature Mumbles

I hope that you are blessed with a preacher who gives you sermons each week that are not only Biblically faithful, but also thought provoking. Mine does. He was preaching this evening on Ecclesiastes 9:1 "But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him." (ESV)

If you look out at the world, at the evidence that life provides to the observant, the reflective and the morally serious, it is clear enough that there is a God, whether you get it from the intelligent design of the universe or the unavoidably moral sentiments we feel in the face of evil. But whether that God loves us or hates us is hard to determine from what we see.

Yes, there is sunshine and friendship and compassion and self-sacrifice and the beauty with which the lilies of the field are dressed. But a quick survey of today's headlines (I did not have to dig for these) leaves a muddled message from nature. “Hezbollah rocks eastern villages.” “Violence threatens Darfur camps.” “Zimbabwe police arrest activists.” “Gaza mortar attack kills Israeli.” Even in non-political news, we read “Minivan flips on western Pennsylvania interstate; 6 killed” and “Incest Dad Was Addicted to Sex With Imprisoned Daughter.” It is all so horrifying. And natural disasters easily match the deeds of men for their human devastation. Consider the recent cyclone in Burma. “Aid agencies estimate that 100,000 have died and warn that this figure could rise to 1.5 million without provision of clean water and sanitation.”

When I lived in the small town of Walker, Iowa, there was a bitter old man there who When confronted with a local Christian apologist's "argument from nature" responded, "I could make a better world with a rough cut saw." Christopher Hitchens looks at the world and concludes that if there is a God...well, what he says is not flattering. In the Hitchens-D'Souza Debate that The King's College hosted last October (see my post, "Debating Christianity? Debate Hitchens!"), Dinesh D'Souza tried to prove by natural reason observing the natural world that Christianity is true, or at least that it is not a problem. But that approach itself is a problem, and the inspired writer of Ecclesiastes confirms this: "...the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him."

And better minds than these have found the world either fundamentally puzzling or ambiguous or even meaningless. Plato found that life under sun was fraught with tensions and unanswerable questions. Machiavelli, Bacon, and Hobbes abandoned the search for meaning in favor of comfort and security, and perhaps glory. Nietzsche proclaimed the whole thing fundamentally irrational, and suggested that we craft out of nothing whatever meaning we think that robust human existence requires.

The final word on the subject, however, belongs not to nature and history and the judgments of men, but to God. What the writer of Ecclesiastes knows to be true he knows not by sight, but by faith.

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:11-14)

God created the world good, and he pronounced it so (Genesis 1:31). But sin brought the universe into disorder. Why should it be any wonder that the natural theology it proclaims is incoherent, or at least ambiguous? But the gospel--the good news--is that God in the person of his son Jesus Christ invaded our history. Through his death and resurrection, his grace transforms nature and perfects its message. He is re-creating the world one soul at a time, and one day the entire heaven and earth will be a new creation. The new creation is where we see the goodness of God, and we see it most unambiguously in the first fruits of that work, the Lord Jesus himself. Ecce Homo. Behold the Man. Whether you are a grumpy old man in rural Iowa, a brilliant essayist with Vanity Fair, or just a longing soul confronting your world in a search for meaning, you will find your answer not in the newspapers or in the ups and downs of your life, but in The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

E Pluribus Unum in 2008

We live in a time of greater political division than we have seen in generations. Today’s college student has known nothing else. The fact that people have responded so positively to Barack Obama’s call for a new politics that is trans-partisan and post-racial and that will bring the country together shows that people are hungry for the unity that healthy political life requires. His likely opponent in the fall, John McCain, himself places a great deal of emphasis on collective patriotic self-sacrifice over against selfish individualism.

But liberal democracy is not about unity. The ancient republics sought to foster civic unity around a shared understanding of virtue, the best way of life, and perhaps even what we would now call national greatness. The American Founders deliberately rejected this model in favor of the uniquely modern republic. Liberal democracy, that modern innovation, is about recognizing and managing disunity in a civil manner. Anything else, especially in an age of modern technology and the efficient apparatus of the modern state, will tend swiftly in the direction of totalitarianism.

Unity of the sort that people long to experience in politics can be found only in the body of Christ. Paul exhorts the church at Ephesus “to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call—one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:1-6 ESV).

Unity of the sort that political leaders promise us from time to time requires either a liberty crushing political cult (North Korea is an extreme example, but a fair one) or humility and gentleness on a scale that the limitations of the flesh will simply not allow. Such good and pleasant fraternal peace is rare enough in the congregation of the redeemed.

Beware of political promises that mimic the promises of Christ.

For a prior reflection on our successful management of political disunity, see my previous post, Democrat Anger Management.

The Relentlessly Forgiving Life

The Wall Street Journal recently devoted the middle editorial, "War and Forgiveness," to "the heroism and remarkable forgiveness of Jacob DeShazer, a bombardier on the famous Doolittle raid over Japan of April 18, 1942." This was the daring, national morale boosting bombing raid depicted in the movie Pearl Harbor (if that helps).

The Doolittle bombing raid was close to a suicide mission, a one-way trip to bring the war to the Japanese homeland for the first time. Coming not long after Pearl Harbor and before the Pacific island victories to come, the raid was a huge boost to domestic morale. Corporal DeShazer was one of five crewmen on Bat Out of Hell, a B-25 aircraft that took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, dropped incendiary bombs over Nagoya, and then flew on to Japanese-occupied China, where the crew was forced to bail out.

DeShazer was taken prisoner, and was starved, beaten and tortured by his Japanese captors. For 34 of his 40 months in captivity, he was kept in solitary confinement. His pilot (Lieutenant William Farrow) and engineer-gunner (Sergeant Harold Spatz) were killed by firing squad. But DeShazer survived the war, was liberated after V-J Day in August 1945, and went on to get a degree in Biblical literature from Seattle Pacific College (now Seattle Pacific University). In 1948, he returned as a Christian missionary to the country that had nearly killed him, and he would continue his ministry in Japan for 30 years.

DeShazer died on March 15 at his home in Salem, Oregon, at age 95. It is one of life's safer bets that he is resting in peace.

In WSJ.com Forums, reader Kimble D. Stohry, Colonel, USAF (ret.) of Ellettsville, Indiana, tells us this:

Another Doolittle Raider, Robert Meder, had witnessed to DeShazer while they were pulling weeds one day in a Japanese POW camp in China. Meder later died in captivity. That short conversation (and the calm manner in which Meder had died) sparked an interest in DeShazer to read the Bible when he later received a Bible in prison camp; he devoured it. Coming to Romans 10:9-10, he read and then simply believed in what it said; and was saved. After the war, and seminary, Missionary DeShazer (supported by other Raiders) passed out a gospel tract [unbeknownst] to Mitsuo Fuchida in Japan. Fuchida, as a Japanese naval aviator, had led the attack on Pearl Harbor years earlier. Fuchida later believed and was saved. It's a small world in the Lord and this part got started with a simple conversation ‘while pulling weeds’.

Romans 10:9-10 reads (in the King James version, which he would have used): "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."

You can learn more about DeShazer at www.dolittleraider.com.

Read Mitsuo Fuchida's 1953 account of his conversion to Christ by the ministry of his former enemy, DeShazer, here.

Trouble in Fairyland for Obama

There must be something going terribly wrong in the Obama campaign because even the New York Times has made the editorial choice of recognizing in print what other less smitten sources have seen for some time: the self-proclaimed post-partisan candidate, supposedly the Uniter of these United States is not himself post-partisan, but a hard-left liberal. ("Obama's Test: Can a Liberal Be a Unifier?" Mar. 25, 2008.)

At the core of Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars and build a new governing majority. To achieve the change the country wants, he says, “we need a leader who can finally move beyond the divisive politics of Washington and bring Democrats, independents and Republicans together to get things done.” But this promise leads, inevitably, to a question: Can such a majority be built and led by Mr. Obama, whose voting record was, by one ranking, the most liberal in the Senate last year?

Yes, there's trouble in fairyland.

In addition, how Obama can sustain any credibility under the withering prose of Christopher Hitchens is astonishing ("Blind Faith" in Slate, March 24, 2008). Consider how he (quite properly) characterizes Obama's reprehensible use of Grandma Dunham in The Speech.

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)

Well, perhaps less and less so. Good hearted European Americans have been joining good hearted African Americans in heeding Obama's call for a post-racial United States of America. But we can expect Obama's offensive and indefensible equation of his dear old grandmother's occasional candid moments with Jeremiah Wright's decades of racist rantings to cool the warm affections of White voters, even Democratic ones. There is "an inchoate resentment among many white voters who are damned if they will be called bigots by a man who associates with Jeremiah Wright."

Of course, Ole Hitch sees all this as evidence that "religion poisons everything." But he has it backwards. It is people who poison everything. People like him, Jeremiah Wright, me and you. The prophet Isaiah told Israel what is true of us all: "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). People poison religion, marriage, the life of the mind, little league baseball...everything. But Hitchens doesn't see this because, like the Chicago preacher whom he calls "wicked and stupid," he too is self-righteous. The remedy for the poison that flows from every human heart in one form or another is the grace of God in Jesus Christ who said, "In this world you will have tribulation. But take heart! I have overcome the world." In the face of a multi-thousand year human history of poisonous mutual destruction, what hope is there that either Christopher Hitchens or Barack Obama is going to "fix our souls" (to use Michelle Obama's words)? This requires a miracle. It requires an act of re-creation.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." - II Corinthians 5:17

Sunday Reflection: Trust Not In Princes

We speak of John McCain's resurrected campaign and of Barack Obama's campaign of "hope" and we wonder if Hillary Clinton can come back from the dead politically.

But today we should remember not to put our trust in princes nor our hope in the sons of men, whether left or right, man or woman, black or white. There is one man who rose from the dead to bring hope to the world. If you pin your hopes on the political leaders of this world, you will be disappointed (and if the best of them are what they claim to be, they will humbly join me in that warning).

But Jesus--the Son of God, who was promised to Israel, born of a virgin, suffered hell on the cross for our sins, rose from the grave for our justification, ascended into heaven to reign with the Father, and is coming in glory to gather his people and to judge the earth--that Jesus will never disappoint you.

"Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12)

Truth That Transforms

Ravi Zacharias once compared philosophy and the gospel this way:

The greatest difference between Jesus Christ and moral and ethical teachers, who have been deified by men, is that these moralists came to make bad men good; Jesus came to make dead men live.

Ravi's words remind me of what Augustine said in "On True Religion."

If Plato and the rest of them, in whose names men glory, were to come to life again and find the churches full and the temples empty, and that the human race was being called away from desire for temporal and transient goods to spiritual and intelligible goods and to the hope of eternal life, and was actually giving its attention to these things, they would perhaps say (if they really were the men they are said to have been): That is what we did not dare to preach to the people. We preferred to yield to popular custom rather than to bring the people over to our way of thinking and living.

In other words, Plato and his philosophical circle did not even attempt on a wide scale to make bad men good. It was not in the nature of "the many" to be susceptible to arguments for virtue, much less for the love of what is intelligible and unseen. Augustine, himself philosophically learned, pours contempt on philosophy in comparison to Christianity because of its impotence. Philosophy, for all its boasts and ambition, has no power to transform people. If human vice, dare I say evil, were simply a matter of the uninformed intellect, then moral philosophy and public education would be sufficient for the progress and perfection of the human race. But you cannot simply argue someone into virtue, nor into the Kingdom of God.

Thus, those who are skeptical of Christ, and of the heart transforming power of his grace, will ask:

1. Do I need to be transformed? The issue here is, at its root, not education but repentance.

2. Does anyone need to be transformed? The issue here is the view of human nature, which is rooted in the view of oneself, which is at root the matter of repentance.

3. Can anyone be transformed? At issue here is the resurrection.

4. Has anyone been transformed? This is the question of the spiritual power of repentance in Christians, the resurrection life of Christ in Christians. Is Christ indeed risen and does he bring the dead to life with him?

Consider these questions--Christians and skeptics both--as you approach Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.

No Heaven...It's Better Than That

I rejoice at anything that demolishes sentimental Christianity, and replaces it with the real thing.

When I read in TIME magazine ("Christians Wrong About Heaven, says Bishop," by David Van Biema, Feb. 7, 2008) that N. T. Wright is shocking people by teaching that there is no heaven, I was expecting the worst because he is, after all, an Anglican bishop. But it was quickly evident that he is only disabusing people of that "floating around on clouds in everlasting boredom" notion. While he does not deny that when a Christian dies he will "depart and be with Christ" (Philippians 1:23), Wright directs people ultimately to the Biblical teaching of the new creation of which every born-again Christian is evidence, anticipating the new heavens and the new earth.

Never at any point do the Gospels or Paul say Jesus has been raised, therefore we are we are all going to heaven. They all say, Jesus is raised, therefore the new creation has begun, and we have a job to do....It's more exciting than hanging around listening to nice music. In Revelation and Paul's letters we are told that God's people will actually be running the new world on God's behalf. The idea of our participation in the new creation goes back to Genesis, when humans are supposed to be running the Garden and looking after the animals. If you transpose that all the way through, it's a picture like the one that you get at the end of Revelation.

...What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won't be going up there to him, he'll be coming down here....But the end of Revelation describes a marvelous human participation in God's plan. And in almost all cases, when I've explained this to people, there's a sense of excitement and a sense of, "Why haven't we been told this before?"

This is vitally important to one's understanding of the gospel and of the Christian life. If you are a Christian, this will transform how you see what God has done for you and how you live every day of your life.

When the Talking Heads sang, "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens," they thought they were mocking Christianity. But the joke was on them. If you are not a Christian, and if a cartoonish depiction of heaven is one of the reasons for your rejection of Christ, then you need to re-examine the Christian hope and reassess your view of the Christian gospel.

You must read Creation Regained by Albert Wolters, and either Greg Beale's The Temple and the Church's Mission, Stephen Dempster's Dominion and Dynasty, or anything from Graeme Goldsworthy.

Vote Wisely, But Hope in Christ Alone

As we head out of Wyoming into New Hampshire in this presidential primary season, voters are asking (perhaps unconsciously), "Which one of these characters genuinely loves the public good?" "Who is telling the truth?" "Which candidate has the ability to defend the nation against enemies abroad and accomplish his goals despite opposition at home?" "Which of these people would it be a pleasure to follow?"

None of them can satisfy any of these criteria. I am not being overly critical of this particular batch of candidates. It is true even of the best merely human leaders of history. It is true of Reagan and of Washington. It is true because "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (John 3:23).

All human government is given by God (Romans 13:1-7), is called to administer God's perfect government, and yet falls short of the glory of that righteous rule. It's imperfection and our recognition (whether philosophical or visceral) of its imperfection point to the sovereign, good and wise government of God himself for which our hearts long but which will be realized only in the mediatorial kingship of Jesus Christ.

Today my pastor, Benjamin Miller of Franklin Square Orthodox Presbyterian Church on Long Island, New York, impressed upon us the importance of recognizing that the God who so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son to save his people from perishing in their sin is a specifically covenanting God. This is a prominent emphasis in his Biblical self-revelation that most Evangelicals, despite their boasts of being Biblical, fail to see. It was years before I came to appreciate it.

Those of us who are interested in government, as everyone should be, need to understand this characteristic of God in order to understand where our hearts are pointing us.

In Deuteronomy 7:6-11, the Lord explains to his people what it means to have a God who graciously condescends to enter into a covenant relationship with a people, sinful though they are. (1) He chooses in love. (2) He swears in faithfulness. (3) He redeems in power. (4) He commands in authority.

(1) He chooses in love.

The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples...(Deut. 7:6-7)

(2) He swears in faithfulness.

...but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations...(Deut. 7:8-9)

(3) He redeems in power.

...the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt (Deut. 7:8)

(4) He commands in authority.

You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today (Deut. 7:11).

I have taken all Bible quotations from the English Standard Version which you may find, along with other translations in many languages, at BibleGateway.com.

Of course, this God who spoke covenant promises to Israel is the same God who fulfilled those promises in the Messiah, Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells the church at Galatia that the promises given to Israel are fulfilled in Christ and thus for the Christian church, both Jews and Gentiles: "if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise" (Galatians 3:29).

If you are disappointed with political leaders, it is because they are no better than you and me. If you want to be governed by someone who will never disappoint you, indeed who will marvelously exceed all your expectations and even correct your expectations as he transforms your heart, look to Jesus who is not only the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), but also the King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:11-16).

Now, it's on to New Hampshire.

The Glory and Empire of Christ

I have recently published a short article, "The Glory and Empire of Christ," in New Horizons, the denominational magazine of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

It starts this way. Follow the link to read the whole thing.

The sixteenth-century political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli turned the world upside down when he introduced the notion that man, through an astute understanding of his world, could rise above the vicissitudes of life and actually overcome fortune.

In chapter 25 of The Prince, the infamous author states that though people had previously thought that fortune and God govern the affairs of men, it is rather that fortune governs half and men the other half. (Machiavelli was no Calvinist.) In saying this, he implicitly identifies God with mere fortune. As his argument continues, he reduces the role of fortune to those circumstances in which men have not taken prudent measures to resist her. When "wise" princes heed this advice, they secure their power and glory. Machiavelli was not the first to think like this, but he was the first to state these principles openly and shamelessly with a view to making them respectable.

In the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar is one such prince who is ambitious to expand his empire. He delights in the vastness of his dominion and in the glory of his accomplishments: "Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?" (Dan. 4:30). As the cultural descendants of Machiavelli and the spiritual descendants of Adam, we have similar ambitions. They may be petty from a political standpoint, but they are spiritually no less a rebellion against the kingdom and glory of Christ than Nebuchadnezzar's boast. ...

My family is very happy in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In an age of spiritual fluff and entertainment, they take the Bible seriously -- not just in general, in the abstract or in isolated passages, but as a whole and theologically. They take the Biblical gospel seriously. They take Biblical worship seriously. At my congregation on Long Island, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, that bears fruit in joyful and caring fellowship as well.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied" (Matthew 5:6). Later in the sermon, he added, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you" (Matthew 7:7). Men may lie. Men may fail. But God never breaks his word.

Sunday Reflection: The Indispensable Christ

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was easily the greatest preacher of the 20th century in Britain. The Lord used him to preserve orthodox Protestant Christianity in that land, but also to revitalize it in America.

He says this regarding the place of Christ in Christianity:

"There is no such thing as Christianity apart from the Person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. That does not mean that the Lord Jesus Christ is a 'bearer' of good news from God. No! It means that He Himself is the good news. It is the Person and what the Person has done. It is not merely that he is one of a great series of prophets and of teachers who have been raised up by God. No! There is an absolute uniqueness here -- He Himself. And He Himself is absolutely vital, and must always be central and in the most prominent position.

"Now that is what constitutes the uniqueness of the whole Christian gospel. Take any religion that you like; you will generally find a man's name associated with it; but in none of these can it be said that the particular man is absolutely essential. You have Buddhism, but you can have Buddhism without Buddha. You have Confucianism, but you can have Confucianism without Confucius. It is more or less and accident that a particular man happens to put forward the teaching. But here, when you come to the realm of the Christian faith, the whole position is absolutely different. Take away the Person and there is no message at all. There is no teaching. There is nothing. The connection, in other words, between our Lord Himself, as a Person, and Christianity is obviously something which is of central significance."

(Taken from the first volume of Lloyd-Jones's exposition of Paul's Letter to the Romans, pp. 98-99.)

America's Unstable Evangelicals

The picture that I painted in my previous post may not be as rosy as it is in fact. The sober observer of our times might consider a recent Gene Edward Veith column in WORLD magazine. He reports:

...evangelical teens tend to have sex first at a younger age, 16.3, compared to liberal Protestants, who tend to lose their virginity at 16.7. And young evangelicals are far more likely to have had three or more sexual partners (13.7 percent) than non-evangelicals (8.9 percent).

Apparently abstinence pledges, regardless of how well intentioned, merely delay sexual intimacy about 18 months. 88% of teens who take these vows fail to keep them. So says University of Texas at Austin sociologist Mark Regnerus in Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the lives of American Teenagers (Oxford, 2007).

Before I come to Veith's discussion of these startling figures, let me point out that part of the problem is this yet unredeemed flesh in which we find ourselves...yes, even as Christians. Our redeemed spirits aspire to more than our flesh will allow. Sanctification closes the gap over the course of a Christian life, but never anywhere close to completely. These teenagers are at the beginning of their Christian lives, and are undertaking the struggle in a culture with little to support their new commitment.

On that subject, Veith mentions school environments. I assume that he is referring to public schools, at least for the most part. People throw their baby Christian (if that) children into the moral swamp of the public school system because (a) it's free (though there is a cost, apparently) and (b) they want their little seedlings to be "salt and light." Utter madness. Some kids can handle it, but you should not assume that your kid is one of them.

Another reason is the weirdness of the modern world.

Adolescence—that time when a person is physically an adult but socially a child—is a modern invention. In the past, people married much younger, as soon as they were sexually ready. Today's culture postpones marriage while stretching celibacy to the breaking point.

Veith's analysis of the problem is the most illuminating when he turns his attention to the failings of the churches in which these youths make their commitments.

Churches used to teach and exemplify self-control, the necessity of keeping one's emotions in check, the discipline of self-denial and mortification of the flesh. Today the typical evangelical church, in its example and practice, cultivates "letting go," emotionalism, self-fulfillment, and an odd religious sensuality.

It's easy to reduce "wordliness" to a few neat categories, and then keep Pharisaically clear of it. Don't smoke, don't chew, and don't go with girls that do. Abortion. Fornication (can we still use that word?). Homosexuality. At some point, we learn that the problem is not just out there in those people. It is also in here in me. The sinful nature is something I share with those wordlings and secularists, even if I do have Christ (or, rather, he has me).

Pharisaism, legalism, understanding your Christianity in terms of what you do and do not do, i.e. in moral and cultural terms, can only lead to failure, and either despair or hypocrisy, as we see in these young people. Christianity is Christ, and the gospel of Christ is the grace of God that comes to us through the cross. It's not what you do. It's what he has done for you and your personal faith-relationship with him. ("For by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9 ESV).

As Veith is wise to remind us, "They need to be brought closer to Christ, so that a growing faith can bear fruit in better conduct." Like every Christian, they need to internalize more deeply the amazing grace of the gospel, and be graciously changed "from glory to glory" (II Corinthians 3:18 NKJV).

Sunday Reflection: Community and the Longing Soul

This morning, Pastor Benjamin Miller at Franklin Square Orthodox Presbyterian Church on Long Island, New York, said,

We long for a bond of human community that nothing can break (no one moves away, grows cold toward us, dies), in which each is eagerly pursuing the good of everyone with an infinite and gracious love. But that is found only in God the Father through Jesus Christ.

This brings to mind Augustine's prayer from the Confessions, "Father, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." Aristotle's observation is true: we are "political animals." We were made for community. "No man is an island, sufficient unto himself," said Donne. But though made for community, we were not made for this world. What we long for in relationships, we cannot find in earthly, natural relationships.

The human bonds that sweeten our lives are blessings from God, but like all of his blessings they point beyond themselves to the One who alone truly satisfies. It is the failure to see this that in the modern world has led to utopian ideology and thence to monstrous tyranny. Mistaking the sign for the signified, seeking in this world what can be found fully only in the next, or in what transcends this world, is idolatry and leads necessarily to disappointment, misery and destruction.

With that in mind, the wisdom of the American system of government can be seen in its moderation. It secures for each citizen the freedom to pursue happiness, but does not guarantee that happiness. That is only God's to give.

Indeed, God has promised us that happiness. He has promised you that happiness. He gives you himself, and does so only in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of sinners and the Mediator of the New Covenant.

To Israel he said, "I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish" (Jeremiah 31:25 ESV).

He fulfilled this promise in Jesus the Messiah, the hope of all nations: "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst" (John 6:35).

Sunday Reflection: Peace with God!

We have all declared war on God by our sin, and entered into cosmic rebellion. This is all the worse as it is against, "a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness" (Exodus 34:6).

When you surrender to God, you must come to him with the cross of Christ as your white flag.

There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. - Acts 4:12

When you surrender to God you are truly victorious, that is, over your chief enemy which is your sin, and the misery and death it brings.

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death....The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. - I Corinthians 15:25-26, 56-57

Another word of peace and grace and hope from God:

For in him (that is, the Lord Jesus) all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. - Colossians 1:19-20 (all quotations from the English Standard Version)

If you are restless for peace with God, click here.