Does Faith Mean Faithfulness?

With all the controversy that has raged about justification in the past generation, it is surprising that for some time the question of what faith is has remained more marginal. However, this issue has recently come into the foreground of both the church's and the academy's attention. The present essay aims to do justice both to Paul and James, and to clarify that faith is not itself righteousness but should be regarded as trust in Christ, which also has specific verbal content. It is also not an entity, however, which can ever be isolated in the Christian life from obedience, even though faith and obedience are not to be confused.

"Faith Reckoned as Righteousness" in Paul

 

As far as the interpretation of Paul is concerned, it is vital to recognize that God does not reckon righteousness to us on the basis of anything that we do in and of ourselves. One of the chief transformations that took place in Paul's conversion was in his understanding of sin: he came to see the true depravity of the human condition, that "the mind of the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to the Law of God, nor can it do so" (Rom. 8:7). This is in stark contrast to the understanding that he would probably have had as a Pharisee: that despite the internal struggle of the good impulse against the evil impulse, it was both necessary and possible to choose the good. After his conversion, he realized (we do not know exactly how and when) that only by Christ's atoning work and the power of the Spirit are new life and true obedience possible. 

Much of our attention here will be focused on Romans 4, which is one of the key chapters in the Bible on faith. The chapter is also taken up with a discussion of Abraham, and how Paul brings the patriarch as a key witness to his doctrine of justification by faith. Here the apostle is battling against the Jewish tradition of explaining Abraham as a model of piety and (in some cases) law-observance even before the law was given. The trials of Abraham, such as the offering of Isaac on Mount Moriah, are seen in Jewish exegesis as the basis for his justification:

Abraham was a great father of many nations, and no-one was found like him in glory, who kept the Law of the Most High, and entered into covenant with Him, and established the covenant in his flesh, and was found faithful in testing. (Sirach 44:19-20) This is the tenth trial with which Abraham was tried, and he was found faithful, controlled of spirit. [He begged for a place for burial in the land] because he was found faithful and he was recorded as a friend of the Lord in the heavenly tablets. (Jubilees 19:8-9; cf. 23:9-10) Abraham did not walk in it (sc. evil), and he was reckoned a friend of God because he kept the commandments of God and did not choose his own will. (Damascus Document 3:2-4) Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation and it was reckoned to him as righteousness? (1 Maccabees 2:52)   Continue at Simon Gathercole

The Seduction of Pornography and the Integrity of Christian Marriage, Part Two

The Seduction of Pornography and the Integrity of Christian Marriage, Part One

 

The Christian worldview must direct all consideration of sexuality to the institution of marriage. Marriage is not merely the arena for sexual activity, it is presented in Scripture as the divinely-designed arena for the display of God’s glory on earth as a man and a wife come together in a one-flesh relationship within the marriage covenant. Rightly understood and rightly ordered, marriage is a picture of God’s own covenantal faithfulness. Marriage is to display God’s glory, reveal God’s good gifts to His creatures, and protect human beings from the inevitable disaster that follows when sexual passions are divorced from their rightful place.

The marginalization of marriage, and the open antipathy with which many in the culture elite approach the question of marriage, produces a context in which Christians committed to a marriage ethic appear hopelessly out of step with the larger culture. Whereas marriage is seen as a privatized contract to be made and unmade at will in the larger society, Christians must see marriage as an inviolable covenant made before God and man, that establishes both temporal and eternal realities.

Christians have no right to be embarrassed when it comes to talking about sex and sexuality. An unhealthy reticence or embarrassment in dealing with these issues is a form of disrespect to God’s creation. Whatever God made is good, and every good thing God made has an intended purpose that ultimately reveals His own glory. When conservative Christians respond to sex with ambivalence or embarrassment, we slander the goodness of God and hide God’s glory which is intended to be revealed in the right use of creation’s gifts.   Continue at Al Mohler

Cripplegate - A Guide to Our Series

The blogging medium is perfect for making a polemic point without the constraints of the format of a journal article and without the length of a book. But the downside is that a step-by-step argument spread over several days can lose its momentum and seem sort of piecemeal. Plus there is simply the practical issue: where do you find the links to the entire series?

The Cripplegate has run a few such series, so I thought it would be helpful to give all the links in one spot.

Eric Davis, who pastors a church that he planted in Jackson Hole, WY, did a series on common mistakes church planters make:

1. An introduction and an overview of the series: Cautions for church planters.

2. A warning about the idolotry of “mission”: Church planters and missionolatry.

3. A warning about church planters willing to do whatever it takes to grow: Church-planting and pragmatism.

4. A warning about losing sight of the importance of the Sunday morning sermon: Church-planting and pulpit priority.

5. A warning about seeing church planting as the end for which God created the world: Church-planting and idolatry.

Josh Thiessen did a series on training the next generation of church leaders:

1. An introduction to the series: The next generation.

2. The art of informal discipleship: Part 1.

3. Formal discipleship: Part 2.

4. Elder training: Part 3.

Read the rest HERE

Orators and Heralds: Audience-Driven vs. Obedience-Driven

Two weeks ago, I posted a third principle of faithfulness for Gospel ministry from 2 Corinthians 4. If the Gospel is veiled to those who are perishing (2Cor 4:3), and if the problem we’re trying to solve is the world’s blindness to glory (2Cor 4:4), then our task is to preach a message that is powerful enough in itself to overcome that blindness. Paul tells us that such a proclamation is not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord (2Cor 4:5).

And yet it seems that many pastors, churches, and individual Christians have not understood the implications of those principles. Sadly, many do preach themselves. Jerry Wragg has offered us two magnificent posts over the last two days (one, two) outlining some reasons he sees for this. Another of the reasons I believe that is the case is that we have a fundamental misunderstanding of our role. Many evangelical preachers see themselves as orators rather than heralds.

To help us see the difference, I want to quote generously from a chapter by Duane Litfin called “Swallowing Our Pride: An Essay on the Foolishness of Preaching.” It appears in Preach the Word, a book on expository preaching in honor of R. Kent Hughes. In this chapter, Litfin examines the widely-held notion that 1Cor 1:24 speaks only of the foolishness of the message preached to the exclusion of the method of preaching itself. He contrasts the ancient keryx, or herald—that is, what New Testament preachers are called to be—with the orator that Paul labored so diligently to distance himself from (1Cor 1:17–2:5).

Church-Planting and Pragmatism

I remember that evening clearly. It was during the first year of the church-plant. I was on edge, feeling like I couldn’t take it anymore. Through a variety of humbling circumstances, attendance went from 10 to 50 and back to 13. It drove me crazy. In an act of desperation, I insisted our church put on a community dinner ministry, on a different day than our corporate gathering, with hopes that more would come to us. An elaborate meal was made, much money spent, chairs and table set up, and our core-team ready to bombard anyone who came in to “build a relationship.” The time came and no one showed up. I ran into the bathroom, closed the stall door, sat on the toilet, and begged God with a neck-vein-popping prayer to bring someone. I think two or three people came.

And we never saw them again. I was humbled, weak, and desperate for someone to help me get the church off the ground. Our core-team was working tirelessly and faithfully. I was looking for some way, any way, for the church-plant to get traction. And that was precisely the problem. I was looking for a way; I was on my own little hunt through the labyrinth of church-plant methods to just get the thing growing. No, a desire for growth in one’s church-plant is not wrong. But when the goal becomes to get something going, above ordinary faithfulness to be a good servant of Christ Jesus (1 Tim 4:6), we’re off the mark.    Keep Reading...

A Preacher’s Decalogue

Listening to or reading the reflections of others on preaching is, for most preachers, inherently interesting and stimulating (whether positively or negatively). These reflections then are offered in the spirit of the Golden Rule and only because the Editor is a long-standing friend!

Forty years exactly have passed since my first sermon in the context of a Sunday service. Four decades is a long time to have amassed occasions when going to the church door after preaching is the last thing one wants to do—even if one loves the congregation (sometimes precisely because one loves the congregation and therefore the sense of failure is all the greater!). How often have I had to ask myself, “How is it possible to have done this thousands of times and still not do it properly?”

Yes, I know how to talk myself out of that mood! “It’s faithfulness, not skill, that really matters.” “How you feel has nothing to do with it!” “Remember you’re sowing seed.” “It’s ultimately the Lord who preaches the word into people’s hearts, not you.” All true. Yet we are responsible to make progress as preachers, indeed evident and visible, or at least audible progress (1 Tim 4:13, 15 is an instructive and searching word in this respect!).   Continue Reading...

Be Faithful to Your Church This Summer

Summertime features a lot of family vacations, travel, slowing of routines, and laziness. Mention the word summer and most people begin to imagine the beach, cool drinks, and anything but the “normal” routine. All too often, Christians imagine “breaks” from their churches and spiritual devotions. They travel and vacate and they take a holiday from Jesus. Somehow we manage to rationalize by saying, “I’m on vacation,” as if Jesus isn’t Lord while we’re “on vacation,” as if Jesus didn’t afford us the vacation, as if He can’t return while we’re on vacation. I’ve even seen this attitude happen at religious holidays like Christmas and Easter! Keep Reading...

Goat Membership for More Buck

Kevin DeYoung wrote the following letter to a colleague who was thinking of establishing two sets of memberships in his church, one for believers and another for unbelievers.

While Scripture tells us that external membership to the church is validated by public profession of faith in Christ, pressure to rake up the numbers has prompted many to accept as bona fide members those who do not even make the slightest hint that they have been acted upon by the Spirit through a faith that expresses itself in confession (Rom. 10:9), thereby deconstructing beyond recognition what it means to be a part of God's covenant people.This letter is really addressed to many who are contemplating the leap to liberalism, in an attempt to dissuade them from the path of unfaithfulness to their calling: Keep Reading...

Numbers, Faithfulness, or People?

Perhaps one of the most important things to settle in ministry and as a church is how to define “success.”  Without question, we all have some notion of what constitutes “success.”  And whether it’s explicit or implicit, whether it’s written down or unspoken, our notion of success drives our behavior and our self evaluation.

Very often churches and church leaders define their “success” in terms of numbers.  Some defend measurement as an acceptable approach to gauging progress and effectiveness.  They speak of the number of baptisms or converts, church attendance and budgets, and other numerical assessments as shorthand for “success.”  Others reduce “success” to one factor: faithfulness.  ”Whether the numbers change or not,” this group tells us, “is not the issue.  The issue is whether a leader and church have been true to God’s design and intent.” Keep Reading...

Distinguishing Marks of a Quarrelsome Person

Quarrels don’t just happen. People make them happen.

Of course, there are honest disagreements and agree-to-disagree propositions, but that’s not what the Bible means by quarreling. While studying Proverbs recently I was struck by the fact that most of the advice about conflict is not on how to resolve it, but how to avoid it.

Quarrels, at least in Proverbs, are unnecessary arguments, the kind that honorable men stay away from (17:14; 20:3). These fights aren’t the product of a loving rebuke or a principled conviction. These quarrels arise because people are quarrelsome. Some Christians have a lifeline to Speedway and love to pour gasoline on every tiny spark of conflict.

You don’t have to be a card-carrying member of the nice Nazis to believe that quarreling is wrong. You only have to believe the Bible (James 4:1). Hot-headed, divisive Christians are not pleasing to God (Proverbs 6:19). We are told to drive them out (22:10) and avoid such people (Rom. 16:17). This doesn’t mean we only huddle with the people we like. We are not talking about awkward folks or those who disagree with us. We are talking about quarrelsome Christians–habitually disagreeable, divisive, hot-headed church people.

So what does a quarrelsome person look like? What are his (or her) distinguishing marks?

1. You defend every conviction with the same degree of intensity. You don’t talk about secondary issues, because there are no secondary issues. Keep Reading>>>

The Idol of Relevance

Here is a piercing critique of the church’s uncritical pursuit of relevance for the sake of relevance. His argument: “Never have Christians pursued relevance more strenuously; never have Christians been more irrelevant” (p. 12). Guinness explains it like this:

By our uncritical pursuit of relevance we have actually courted irrelevance; by our breathless chase after relevance without a matching commitment to faithfulness, we have become not only unfaithful but irrelevant; by our determined efforts to redefine ourselves in ways that are more compelling to the modern world than are faithful to Christ, we have lost not only our identity but our authority and our relevance. Our crying need is to be faithful as well as relevant. (p. 11)

This is because, as Guinness writes, faithfulness to eternal truth is the means to genuine cultural relevance. In every generation, our goal is centered on the proclamation and advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ through the local church. Only because of the gospel’s continued relevance is it rightfully called the “good news.” Keep Reading>>>

Talking to Father

The Struggles of Gay Christians

The issue of homosexuality is one in which the church has not done so well over the years. The majority of Christians have long held fast to the clear teaching of Scripture—that homosexuality is against God’s plan for the people he created and that homosexuality is a serious sin, one that manifests a particular hardness of heart. In all of this Christians have honored God, I am convinced. But where Christians have been less than exemplary is in a commitment to engage the very difficult issues. I am beginning to see a lot of growth here, but the fact remains—Christians tend to engage the issue of homosexuality on only a surface level. We have easy answers that, to those who demand them, are not at all satisfying. Wesley Hill has had to engage this issue in a far more serious way. Hill is a Christian and he is gay. Now I know many will get no further than this phrase: gay Christian. Hill uses that phrase as a kind of shorthand to express that he is a Christian—an evangelical who holds to the tenets of the Chrisitan faith, but he is also a man who is homosexual in what seems to be his natural orientation or inclination. He has always been attracted to men and only men. He has remained celibate through all his life, convicted and enabled by the Holy Spirit not to act out his sexuality. But hope and pray as he might, he cannot change his inability to be attracted to women. I am not crazy about the phrase gay Christian, but will use it in this review while adding it to my growing list of things to think about in the future. Continue Reading>>>

THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD...by A.W. Pink