Don’t get taken in by fads

I’m reading Andreas Köstenberger’s commentary on John, and I found the statement I’ll quote in a moment fascinating. Before I quote Köstenberger, let me set the stage. Throughout the latter half of the 20^th century it was fashionable for scholars to view the Gospel of John as the product of a community, circle, or Johannine school. In his commentary, Raymond Brown described a hypothetical 5 stage process of redaction that the Gospel went through. J. L. Martyn also wrote a famous book called History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. This way of reading the Gospel reflects the judgment that the Gospel of John reflects as much of the “history of the Johannine community”—what happened to the Christians connected to John—as it does the history of Jesus’ earthly life. Köstenberger relates this anecdote:

“In a stunning ‘confession,’ Robert Kysar, at a recent session of the Johannine literature section convened under the auspices of the Society of Biblical Literature, has chronicled the rise and fall of the Martyn/Brown-style ‘Johannine Community’ hypothesis and expressed personal regret for ever having endorsed it.” (Köstenberger, John, 3).

If it’s faddish to look at a naked emperor and go on and on about his beautiful clothes, don’t get taken in by the fad. If it’s faddish to look at a Gospel that claims to be about Jesus and go on and on about what happened to the Christian community in the 50–70 years after Jesus died, don’t get taken in by the fad. The emperor is naked, and one day there will be regret.

Just for the fun of being encouraged

You should go read this letter by John Piper, inviting people to the DGM National Conference this fall.

Salvation through Judgment for the Glory of God

This post is mainly in response to Damion’s question in a comment on my previous post. Damion asked about how judgment fits in the equation. Brett commented that this is a no-brainer, and all I can say is that when you look at typical surveys of Biblical Theology in resources such as the Anchor Bible Dictionary or the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia or the relevant article in the Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, you won’t find a the glory of God mentioned as a possible center of Biblical Theology.

For fuller discussion of these issues, please see the paper I presented, a revised version of which will be in the next issue of Tyndale Bulletin.

Briefly, here’s how I see the “salvation through judgment” part working:

1. Salvation shows God to be “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exod 34:6b–7a).
2. Judgment shows God to be the one “who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children to the third and fourth generation” (Exod 34:7b).
3. Thus, salvation and judgment balance one another. The reality of judgment should keep us from thinking of God in purely sentimental terms as though he were a grandfatherly buddy who just lets things go. The reality of salvation should likewise keep us from thinking of God as a terrifying vengeful judge. Those who flee to him will be saved, but those who do not fear him will be judged.
4. Salvation always comes through judgment in various ways.
   1. Salvation for the nation of Israel at the Exodus came through the judgment of Egypt, and this pattern is repeated throughout the OT. When God saves Israel, he delivers the nation by bringing judgment on the nation’s enemies.
   2. Salvation for all believers of all ages is made possible by the judgment that falls on Jesus at the cross. The cross allows God to be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:24–26). Even though members of the remnant live before Jesus, saving faith is explicit trust in the promises of God. I believe the promises of God begin in Genesis 3:15, and I think that many of these promises concern an anointed redeemer whom God will raise up to accomplish the salvation of his people—Messiah. So even though OT saints don’t know that the Messiah will be named Jesus, grow up in Nazareth etc., they have heard God promise to raise up a man who will save them and they trust God to keep his word. So they are saved by faith in God’s promised Messiah.
   3. Everyone who gets saved gets saved through judgment. All who flee to Christ and confess that he is Lord and that God raised him from the dead do so because they realize their need for a Savior. They realize their need for a Savior because they have become convinced that God is holy, they are sinful, and they know God will judge. In a sense, they feel the force of condemnation and justice, the wrath that remains upon them, and they recognize that Jesus is their only hope.
   4. Thus, historically (in Christ on the cross) and existentially (in their own experience of the wrath of God that makes them feel their need for Christ) believers are saved through judgment.

All of this reveals God as righteous and merciful, loving and just, holy and forgiving, for his glory forever. And his glory is what is best for all concerned. . . This is not my philosophy. Those who raise issues of omni-benevolence need to wrestle with what the texts say. The texts are the controlling elements in the discussion. The texts lead me to these conclusions. Soli Deo Gloria.

The Center of Biblical Thoelogy

When I was doing my Ph.D. at SBTS I took a seminar on New Testament Theology with Mark Seifrid. As we read surveys of the issues and discussions, I was surprised by what I thought was missing from one aspect of the scholarly dialogue. One of the things that gets bantered about in these discussions is whether there is a central theme or controlling ideal in Biblical Theology. What surprised me was that no one had suggested that the glory of God might be the center of Biblical Theology. The glory of God has received ample treatment from the likes of Jonathan Edwards (see especially his Treatise concerning the End for which God Created the World), Dan Fuller, John Piper, and my own supervisor, Tom Schreiner (who argues for its centrality in Paul’s thought in his Paul, Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ), but it doesn’t seem to have received serious consideration as a possible center of Biblical Theology.

As I thought about these things, I was translating my way through Isaiah. Over and over in Isaiah we read that God shows his power and righteousness by judging the wicked while putting on display his sweet mercies in the salvation of those who trust him. This matched Piper’s explanation of Romans 9:22–23 and Edwards’ argument concerning God’s ultimate purpose.

So in the providence of God I proposed to present a paper on this issue at a meeting of the Tyndale Fellowship. Howard Marshall responded to the paper on that occasion, and Greg Beale was there to give the Biblical Theology lecture for that year. Afterwards Beale remarked that Marshall’s response was what one might expect from a Wesleyan Methodist (emphasizing God’s love).

After some revisions, and having been shepherded through by Bruce Winter, the essay will appear in the next issue of Tyndale Bulletin. You can read the abstract here. I think the glory of God in salvation through judgment is the center of Biblical Theology. Soli Deo Gloria.

Addressing Our Lack of Spiritual Wisdom

My friend Eric Schumacher, one of the most gifted poets and hymn writers I know, has posted a thoughtful reflection on the first thing for which those Irish Baptists invited the Baptists in London to join them in repentance: our lack of spiritual wisdom to reprove reprove sin plainly in all without respect of persons.

May the Lord use this series that Eric is starting to give us the wisdom we seek from him.

Thabiti Anyabwile: Trophy of God’s Grace

As soon as you get a chance, enjoy this beautiful profile of one of the elders at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.

Promises Made . . . Promises Kept

What if there was a strong church right in the middle of the nation’s capitol? What if it was pastored by a humble man of God of profound spiritual insight, impeccable academic credentials, and a dynamic personal presence? What if this pastor was absolutely convinced that his own abilities and giftings were not the point, that God’s glory in Christ is the point, and that God’s word—not this pastor’s own clever ideas—is what needs to be proclaimed in the pulpit Sunday after Sunday? What if this pastor was reproducing himself in literally dozens of sharp young men who intern under him at the church? What if the pastor and his staff gave themselves to do everything they could to help vivify dying or dead churches?

If all these things came true, wouldn’t we all stop and offer a hymn of thanks and praise to God for so blessing his church with someone who so relentlessly points us to Christ? It’s time to pause and offer that hymn of thanks and praise, and I suggest you learn this one if you don’t already know it.

Let me continue with these “what if’s”? What if this pastor I’ve been describing (Mark Dever of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.) gave himself to preaching overview sermons on every book of the whole Bible? What if these sermons were informed enough of the scholarly discussions to pass muster with Bible professors, and yet not bogged down with all the technicalities that keep us from “seeing the forest.” What if these sermons were truly “gospel preaching,” that is, magnifying the holiness of God and his mercy in Christ and the inability of humanity and the power of God that is demonstrated in his ability to save sinners through the death of Christ on the cross? What if these sermons not only got the big picture of the books of the Bible right, what if they spoke to our day—right into the heart of contemporary concerns?

Well, if all this stuff could possibly come true, we would have, for God’s glory, what we do have, Hallelujah!, in these two books:

I recommend you get them as soon as you can and begin to feast your soul. Take them slowly. As you finish (or start, whichever) the next book in your Bible reading, let Pastor Mark give you either a preview or a roundup, or maybe both. I like these books so much that I’m requiring the one on the New Testament for my “Great Themes of the New Testament” course next week and the one on the Old Testament for my OT Survey 1 course next fall (with a bunch of academic stuff, too). My prayer is that God would raise up many ministers of the Gospel who will preach the Word as clearly and faithfully as this modern day Spurgeon does in these two books.

Why I Think Romans 7 Is Describing Indwelling Sin in Believers

The main argument employed by those who don’t think that Romans 7 is describing the experience of believers is simply that in Romans 6 Paul has described believers as dead to sin (6:2), crucified with Christ and no longer enslaved to sin (6:6), and thus, having died, believers are set free from sin (6:7). These things being the case, it is argued that when Paul writes in Romans 7 of the one who is “sold under sin” (7:14) and serving the law of sin in the flesh (7:25), he cannot be describing believers.

There are several reasons I find this unpersuasive. There are probably more than the ones I will articulate here, but these are the ones that come to mind (influenced by Tom Schreiner’s commentary on Romans and John Piper’s sermon on Romans 7).

(1) Having described the way that believers have been freed from sin through union with Christ in his death in Romans 6:1–10, Paul commands believers in 6:11, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (ESV). This tells us that while there is a positional reality that has been described in 6:1–10, there is an ongoing process of “mental transformation” (12:1–2) that still needs to happen in the experience of believers. Believers must “reckon” themselves dead to sin, and this “reckoning” is described with the same Greek verb used repeatedly in Romans 4 to describe Abraham being “reckoned” righteous not because of what he had done but according to grace (e.g., 4:3–5). So it seems to me that just as Abraham was “reckoned” righteous by faith in spite of his sin, so also believers must “reckon” themselves dead to sin even though they will groan til the day when they are set free from corruption (8:18–25). Why does Paul have to command believers to “reckon” themselves dead to sin? Because of the reality he names in Romans 7:17, 20, and 23—indwelling sin. (See also the command in 6:19, and the reasoning in 6:20–22).

(2) Why would Paul use the first person singular pronoun (“I”) in Romans 7 if he were not describing a reality that he himself experiences? Is there another place in Paul’s writings where he speaks in the first person singular (“I”) but is really not describing himself? The pervasive use of the first person singulars (“I” “me” “my”) and the lack of any indication that Paul is not describing himself argues against the position that Paul is not, in fact, describing himself.

(3) The poignancy of the anguished statements in 7:24–25 should be taken as indicative of Paul’s own feelings (Compare his anguish in 9:1–3). If the desperate cry, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” in 7:24 is not describing Paul’s own experience, don’t these words seem a little melodramatic? Wouldn’t it be more typical of Paul to describe the inability of unbelievers in a more detached way as we see in Rom 8:7, 1 Cor 2:14, or 2 Cor 4:4?

(4) If Paul is not describing his own experience as a Christian in Romans 7, he sure confuses the matter with the concluding words of the chapter: “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (7:25b). If Paul meant to describe the experience of an unbeliever, which culminates in the wretched cry in 7:24 (“Who will rescue me?”), shouldn’t the opening words of 7:25 (“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”) be followed by a Romans 6 type affirmation? In other words, the answer to the cry in 7:24 is given in 7:25a—Jesus will rescue me from this body of death, thank God! If Paul has been describing an unbeliever, why doesn’t Rom 7:25b read like Rom 6:7? Shouldn’t 7:25b, according to this interpretation, read more on the lines of: “now you’ve died with Christ and you’re set free from sin!”?

I submit, then, that the reason Paul has to write Romans 6 at all, the reason he has to command the Roman believers to “reckon” themselves to be what they (positionally in Christ) are in 6:11, is explained in Romans 7. In Romans 6, Paul introduces some of the only commands in all of Romans 1–11 because believers find themselves in the conflicted state described in Romans 7—we want to do good but we often do what we hate instead (cf. 7:15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25).

The answer to this dilemma is then explained in Romans 8:1–17, where Paul describes the difference between living according to the flesh and living according to the Spirit. Those who walk according to the Spirit will indeed “fulfill the law” (8:4), but this walking according to the Spirit entails putting to death the “deeds of the body” by the power of the Spirit (8:13). Here again, these “deeds of the body” have to be “put to death” because they arise from the “indwelling sin” described in Romans 7.