Amen to the Attitude!

Andrée Seu has written a column in this week’s World magazine on why she is now wearing a head-covering to church. I second every attitudinal instinct she expresses in her piece, and I pray her tribe will increase!

That said, though I agree with her submission to Scripture and embrace the clear roles it gives to men and women, I don’t think a woman needs to cover her head when she goes to church.

Why not?

For the same reason that I don’t think we all need to greet each other with a holy kiss. Does that mean that I have rejected what the kiss and the head covering signify?

Not on your life.

I think that the kiss points to our need to express our enthusiastic affection for our brothers and sisters in Christ. Where I live, we do that with loud greetings (always a bit surprising to the more genteel), firm handshakes that nearly yank the shoulder out of socket for the guys, respectful side-hugs for the gals, and big smiles all the way around. The enthusiasm and affection all this communicates is, I think, what Paul wants from the holy kiss.

Similarly, at our church women don’t teach men or exercise authority over them (1 Tim 2:12), and we’re trying to cultivate men and women who obey everything Paul says about marriage in a text like Ephesians 5:22-33. The women get to submit; the men get to lay down their lives. And we’re trying to leaven this all through our lives. The godly male authority and the feminine embrace of and submission thereto is, I think, what Paul wants communicated by the head covering.

It would be possible for us to kiss each other coldly, and it would be possible for the women to cover their heads but “wear the pants,” or try to. In both cases, we would be keeping the commands in the way the Pharisees kept the law. So I hope that we’re keeping the spirit of the law without its letter. That is, I hope that we have contextualized the head covering and the holy kiss so that we keep them even though the ladies don’t have anything on their heads and we don’t peck each other on the cheek.

If you convince me that we haven’t, I’d rather start giving kisses and seeing head coverings on the ladies than relegate what they signify–enthusiasm for each other and male headship–to the first century. Christ rules the church through his Word, and as Andrée Seu rightly writes, the King has spoken.

Look What They Did with Marcion’s Money

John Behr writes in The Way to Nicea (17) of the challenge posed to the church by

“Marcion, a rich ship owner from the Black Sea, who arrived in Rome in the middle of the second century and donated a large sum of money to the church there, for its charitable works, which was soon after returned to him when his particular teaching became known and rejected.”

May we follow the faithfulness of those who have gone before us. . .

Douglas Wilson Can Flat Write

If this paragraph doesn’t make sense to you, go read the whole thing (I would, of course, alter “Baptizing babies” to “Baptizing believers” but this remains a powerful paragraph):

Actually, I believe I can present evidence for what I know. But evidence comes to us like food, and that is why we say grace over it. And we are supposed to eat it, not push it around on the plate—and if we don’t give thanks, it never tastes right. But here is some evidence for you, in no particular order. The engineering that went into ankles. The taste of beer. That Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, just like he said. A woman’s neck. Bees fooling around in the flower bed. The ability of acorns to manufacture enormous oaks out of stuff they find in the air and dirt. Forgiveness of sin. Storms out of the North, the kind with lightning. Joyous laughter (diaphragm spasms to the atheistic materialist). The ocean at night with a full moon. Delta blues. The peacock that lives in my yard. Sunrise, in color. Baptizing babies. The pleasure of sneezing. Eye contact. Having your feet removed from the miry clay, and established forever on the rock. You may say none of this tastes right to you. But suppose you were to bow your head and say grace over all of it. Try it that way.

Tom Nettles on the Church and Politics

I’ve just started reading the second volume of Dr. Nettles’s trilogy on the Baptists, and here’s an important word:

“When the church has wielded the greatest amount of worldly power it has had the greatest tendency to corruption and impurity. When it has sought to pursue its mission apart from any worldly power, and has instead endured persecution, it has manifested fewer errors and exhibited a more powerful and persevering discipleship” (19).

The Reformation: How a Monk and a Mallet Changed the World

Stephen J. Nichols has done it again! Following a number of helpful books along these lines, Nichols has once again provided a masterful summary that would benefit every Christian.

This book gives a bird’s eye view of the whole Reformation (don’t be misled by the subtitle, it is about much more than just brother Martin). Here we have a balanced presentation of everything from the standard Reformers to the Anabaptists, with a helpful chapter on the untold story of significant women of the Reformation.

The book has its own website, with a gallery of sketches of key figures and events, helpful charts, pointers on what to read next, and links to significant sights of the Reformation. You can download the introduction and chapter 1 here, and you can search the whole book on the Crossway site.

This book tells the story so well that I’m going to suggest that my wife read it (and I’m very selective about this, so that’s a high compliment), and this is one we’ll be keeping on hand in our church book stall. Enjoy!

Faithful unto Death with the Sacred Trust

We who steward the mysteries of God have been given a sacred trust, and some of us have been given the unspeakable privilege of learning to read the Bible in the languages in which it was written.

Denny Burk gives a moving testimony to a godly man, now gone to glory, who was a faithful steward of what was given to him. Read this, and may the Lord make us all so faithful to maintain and transmit not only a knowledge of Greek, but a love for the Lord and his Word.

The Problem with Penal Substitution

Set to appear in the “Forum” section of the next edition of SBJT. Posted here with the editor’s permission.

“Mercy and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Ps 85:10). 

The problem with penal substitutionary atonement isn’t the idea that God could be wrathful. Anyone who believes the Bible—and reads it—will see that. Nor is it that penal substitution is dependant upon an outdated, unbiblical cultural framework that has been imposed on the text of Scripture. God gave the sacrificial system. He spoke of atonement being made and his wrath being appeased. He revealed all this. Penal substitionary atonement is in the Bible. Woven all through seamlessly. But if these things aren’t the problem with penal substation, what is? 

The problem with penal substitution is that we have not sufficiently realized this doctrine. We have not yet considered the depths of our own sin. We have not yet considered the holiness and majesty of God. We have not seen the enormity of the fury of his righteous indignation. We have not yet considered what torments we deserve. We have not yet considered the worth of Christ. We have not sufficiently pondered the fact that for us and for our salvation the Pure One was defiled, the First Born forsaken, the One who knew no sin was made sin, the Righteous One was put forward as a sacrifice of propitiation, all so that we might be cleansed, that we might be adopted, that we might have his righteousness, that we might be forgiven. He was broken that we might be healed, slain that we might live. You may be reading this and thinking to yourself, “I have thought through all these things before,” and yet there remain depths that cannot be sounded. 

We think we know all this. We act as though we have it in our back pockets. We assume it. But go to most “churches” and the infinite wealth of these riches of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will not be sung in the songs and preached in the sermons. It is not because there are no songs that sing these truths, nor is there a shortage of relevant passages from the Bible that could be preached. That is not where the problem lies. 

The problem lies with us. We are the problem with penal substitution. 

Going to some of these “churches” can only lead to the conclusion that we think that other things are better to sing about in “worship” and that other things are more relevant for the “sermon.” Listening to some of these “preachers” certainly leads to the conclusion that what the Bible teaches doesn’t matter very much. If it mattered, they would preach it. But it doesn’t matter, and the fact that it comes in a book is problematic, since they have no time to read and they can’t be bothered with things like genre, or context, or the progress of redemptive history, or the grand story the Bible tells, or, for that matter, the ineffable glory of God, the righteousness of his justice, his commitment to his name, and the awful unmixed wrath of the full fury of his holiness that is being stored up against those who do not honor him as God and give thanks to him. 

All this is irrelevant. And since all this is irrelevant, it matters little that Jesus was and is fully God and fully man, that the Father granted him to have life in himself, that only one of infinite worth could satisfy the infinite, just wrath of the Father against our sin.   

None of this counts for very much—at least, that’s the impression you’ll get by going to most “churches.” What they care about is having more people in the pews, and if those people aren’t interested in all that God stuff, and if they have no desire to study an old boring book like the Bible, they’ve come to the right place. What these “churches” seem to care about involves more campuses, more hype, more technology, more humor, more of all the stuff you might see on TV—minus the violence, nudity, and profanity. 

That’s the problem with penal substitution. 

In order to care about it you have to care about God. You have to believe in the authority of the Bible, so that if it tells you that God is wrathful against sin, you conclude that wrath is not beneath God. So that if it tells you that God put forward his Son to propitiate his own wrath, you marvel that this expression of the almighty wrath of God is simultaneously a display of mercy. Wonder of wonders. Salvation comes through judgment. God shows himself just, and he has devised a way to be justly merciful. A mercy so great it leaves us stammering about unsearchable ways, untraceable paths, depths of wisdom and knowledge, about all things being from him and through him. And in the end, we exclaim, “Glory to him, forever! Amen.” 

If you come to care about all this, it will be because you know that your biggest problem is that one day you have to stand before God and account for yourself. In fact, you will know that this is everyone’s biggest problem. This, of course, will re-order your reckoning of relevance. 

You might begin to think that the Bible has relevant things to say after all. You might begin to think that reading is important since God has been pleased to reveal himself in written texts. You might begin to think that since God has revealed himself in these texts, they’re actually worth preaching. You might begin to think that since God has revealed himself in the words and statements made in this old book, it’s actually not boring, its genres are worth learning about, and understanding context and redemptive history really does matter.  

And if you begin to think all this, don’t be surprised if you start preaching and teaching quite a lot about penal substitutionary atonement. It’s all through the Bible, and if you methodically work your way through the whole thing (all of it is, after all, inspired)—avoiding the temptation to skip from hobby horse to hobby horse—you will come up against it. 

The set of concerns the Bible will give to you—concern for God’s glory and holiness, concern for people’s souls as they show boldness against God when they sin, concern for God’s own faithfulness to what he has said he will do, concern for people to be duly astonished at the free mercy of God in the Gospel—all this will make the phrase “penal substitutionary atonement” a set of precious words. Not for the words themselves, but because you love the Gospel. And you will have ceased to be the problem with penal substitution.

Image Conference This Weekend

If you’re in the DFW area, perhaps you’ll be interested in this conference taking place this weekend.

I’ll be leading a breakout session on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood on Friday night, and I’m the unlisted preacher for the Saturday morning general worship session.

May the Lord use this conference mightily for his glory!

What Does Maturity Look Like?

Alex Chediak gives young men a good word here.

Prayer of the Month: 1 Thessalonians 5:23-25

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (ESV)

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.  Brothers, pray for us.