The Gospel Coalition

Much that is interesting and exciting in America among orthodox, Protestant Christians, seems to be happening in that community that defines itself as Reformed. Online some of the representative sites are 9Marks and Church Matters, Desiring God, Together for the Gospel, and - drawing many of the people involved with these ministries together - The Gospel Coalition. As noted before, there is much at The Gospel Coalition site that is of interest, and there promises to be much more. Among the things posted is a "Confessional Statement." The first two articles are below, with a link to the full statement.

(1) The Tri-une God
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who know, love, and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect both in his love and in his holiness. He is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and adoration. Immortal and eternal, he perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sustains and sovereignly rules over all things, and providentially brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for himself and restore his fallen creation, to the praise of his glorious grace.

(2) Revelation
God has graciously disclosed his existence and power in the created order, and has supremely revealed himself to fallen human beings in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God who by his Spirit has graciously disclosed himself in human words: we believe that God has inspired the words preserved in the Scriptures, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, which are both record and means of his saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which is utterly authoritative and without error in the original writings, complete in its revelation of his will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over every domain of knowledge to which it speaks. We confess that both our finitude and our sinfulness preclude the possibility of knowing God’s truth exhaustively, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can know God’s revealed truth truly. The Bible is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises. As God’s people hear, believe, and do the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel. [the Confessional Statement]

The Gospel Coalition | Confessional Statement

The Gospel Coalition: Truth

Between Two Worlds presents a part of the Gospel Coalition's foundational document - the portion about Truth. [Christianity Today describes the Gospel Coalition here.] A selection responding to the challenge of "postmodernism":

How should we respond to the cultural crisis of truth?

For several hundred years, since the dawning of the Enlightenment, it was widely agreed that truth—expressed in words that substantially correspond to reality—does indeed exist and can be known. Unaided human reason, it was thought, is able to know truth objectively. More recently, postmodernism has critiqued this set of assumptions, contending that we are not in fact objective in our pursuit of knowledge, but rather interpret information through our personal experiences, self-interests, emotions, cultural prejudices, language limitations, and relational communities. The claim to objectivity is arrogant, postmodernism tells us, and inevitably leads to conflicts between communities with differing opinions as to where the truth lies. Such arrogance, they say explains, in part, many of the injustices and wars of the modern era. Yet postmodernism’s response is dangerous in another way: its most strident voices insist that claims to objective truth be replaced by a more humbly “tolerant” and inclusively diverse subjective pluralism—a pluralism often mired in a swamp that cannot allow any firm ground for “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” Such a stance has no place for truth that corresponds to reality, but merely an array of subjectively shaped truths. How shall we respond to this cultural crisis of truth?

a. We affirm that truth is correspondence to reality.

We believe the Holy Spirit who inspired the words of the apostles and prophets also indwells us so that we who have been made in the image of God can receive and understand the words of Scripture revealed by God, and grasp that Scripture’s truths correspond to reality. The statements of Scripture are true, precisely because they are God’s statements, and they correspond to reality even though our knowledge of those truths (and even our ability to verify them to others) is always necessarily incomplete. The Enlightenment belief in thoroughly objective knowledge made an idol out of unaided human reason. But to deny the possibility of purely objective knowledge does not mean the loss of truth that corresponds to objective reality, even if we can never know such truth without an element of subjectivity.

b. We affirm that truth is conveyed by Scripture.

We believe that Scripture is pervasively propositional and that all statements of Scripture are completely true and authoritative. But the truth of Scripture cannot be exhausted in a series of propositions. It exists in the genres of narrative, metaphor, and poetry which are not exhaustively distillable into doctrinal propositions, yet they convey God’s will and mind to us so as to change us into his likeness.

c. We affirm that truth is correspondence of life to God.

Truth is not only a theoretical correspondence but also a covenantal relationship. The biblical revelation is not just to be known, but to be lived (Deut 29:29). The purpose of the Bible is to produce wisdom in us—a life wholly submitted to God’s reality. Truth, then, is correspondence between our entire lives and God’s heart, words and actions, through the mediation of the Word and Spirit. To eliminate the propositional nature of biblical truth seriously weakens our ability to hold, defend, and explain the gospel. But to speak of truth only as propositions weakens our appreciation of the incarnate Son as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the communicative power of narrative and story, and the importance of truth as living truly in correspondence to God. [the entire document]

Source: Between Two Worlds: Epistemology 101: The Gospel Coalition's Theology of Ministry

Gospel Coalition blog

The Gospel Coalition now has a blog. Two recent contributions by Mike Pohlman caught my particular attention.

First, reference to a new book, Baptism: Three Views:

IVP Academic released this month, Baptism: Three Views. Edited by David F. Wright, this helpful book includes contributions from Bruce Ware (believer’s baptism), Anthony Lane (mixed practice), and Sinclair Ferguson (infant baptism). .... To read the entire Introduction, go here.

From that introduction:

Karl Barth, who during his theological career changed his allegiance from paedobaptism to believers’ baptism, knew life on both sides of the fence He commented:

An important sign that a defender of infant baptism is certain that his cause has a sound theological basis ought surely to be that he is able to present and support it calmly. But he cannot become irritated in debating with his opponents If anyone does become irritated, it is a sign that he feels he has been hit at a vulnerable and unprotected point in his position, that he does not have a good conscience in relation to his cause, that consequently he cannot have a good and quiet conscience in relation to his opponents, and that he has to lay about him all the more violently for this reason.

This, of course, was Barth’s warning to his opponents (now paedobaptists) who might take up cudgels against him! The advice surely applies to parties on any side of the question, and it is a testimony to the "good conscience" and the good arguments of each of the contributors to this book that they commend themselves dispositionally.

And second, in a post titled "Truths Worth Singing," Pohlman uses as an illustration the hymn I once chose as the theme hymn for a conference I planned:

In his Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, Wayne Grudem emphasizes that the study of theology must not be an end in itself:

I do not believe that God intended the study of theology to be dry and boring. Theology is the study of God and all his works! Theology is meant to be lived and prayed and sung! ....

And, of course, the best hymns (and worship songs) should be nothing less than great theology set to music. Consider "How Firm a Foundation" by John Rippon (1787):

How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word.
What more can he say, than to you he hath said;
To you, who for refuge to Jesus have fled? .... [more]

Baptism: Three Views – The Gospel Coalition Blog, Truths Worth Singing – The Gospel Coalition Blog

The Gospel Coalition

The Gospel Coalition now has a site at www.thegospelcoalition.org. It is very well-designed and contains a wealth of material. All of this is in support of a much-needed, and seemingly growing, movement within the Church. A description of their general purpose is in a preamble:

We are a fellowship of evangelical churches deeply committed to renewing our faith in the gospel of Christ and to reforming our ministry practices to conform fully to the Scriptures. We have become deeply concerned about some movements within traditional evangelicalism that seem to be diminishing the church’s life and leading us away from our historic beliefs and practices. On the one hand, we are troubled by the idolatry of personal consumerism and the politicization of faith; on the other hand, we are distressed by the unchallenged acceptance of theological and moral relativism. These movements have led to the easy abandonment of both biblical truth and the transformed living mandated by our historic faith. We not only hear of these influences, we see their effects. We have committed ourselves to invigorating churches with new hope and compelling joy based on the promises received by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

The site also contains their "Confessional Statement," a "Vision for Ministry" statement, pictures of those they identify [in an unfortunate lapse into jargon] as "stakeholders," a library of texts divided into "Classics" and a "Contemporary" section, and a variety of audio/visual materials with more promised.

The Gospel Coalition

"The message is the medium"

In a blog posted at The Gospel Coalition about a church-planting conference called "Plant New England":

.... The church-growth movement has bought into the entertainment paradigm with catastrophic results. The unfathomable riches of God’s wisdom in Christ just cannot be plumbed by video clips and sermons on loneliness. The Christian message—salvation for hell-deserving sinners through Christ’s death and resurrection by faith alone—has been subjugated to the entertainment paradigm and predictably distorted, truncated, and even lost altogether. As a result, the church has become increasingly ignorant of its faith and, not surprisingly, increasingly confused about its mission. ....

Christianity is all about proclaiming the message of the gospel. So what is a fitting medium? The message actually contains the medium God has endorsed—the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and in these last times, God has spoken to us by that Word, his Son. ....

This realization should profoundly affect how we do all things “church,” including church planting. In gospel-driven church planting, the message of the gospel is the church-planting methodology. As one NETS planter put it, “I’m a gospel-only kind of guy. No tricks, no gimmicks, no rock-climbing walls, no bait to get them in and then preach the gospel. The gospel is the bait. The gospel is the hook.” ....

The Message Is the Medium: Gospel-Driven Church Planting – The Gospel Coalition Blog

The goal of youth is to grow up

Is there any real relationship between what the contemporary church considers "youth oriented" and what young people are actually interested in? Not much, I think, although most Christian young people are polite about it and kind to the clueless. What most of us baby-boomers think of as contemporary is about as relevant to young people today as Fanny Crosby was to us. Even when we get it right, young people are not necessarily impressed. From a review by Todd Pruitt of T. David Gordon's Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns at The Gospel Coalition site:

.... Gordon places “paedocentrism” near the center of the present soiling of corporate worship. “Reaching the young” has become for the church what “doing it for the children” is for politicians. After all, who opposes reaching young people? But Gordon challenges this paedocentrism. “Biblically, the goal of youth is to leave it as rapidly as possible. The goal of the young, biblically, is to be mature. . . . We equate youth with youth culture, and erroneously believe that we cannot minister to the one without embracing, condoning, or promoting the other” (p. 161).

What is more, Gordon challenges the assumption of many baby boomers that pop music forms in worship is an effective way to reach young people. One of the “money quotes” from the book is, “Young people who attend a church and see a group of fifty-year-olds playing their guitars in front of the church in order to ‘reach the young’ will perhaps politely appreciate the gesture, but they frankly regard the music as being fairly lame” (p. 159). .... [more]

As a result of my lengthy experience with high school students I developed the firm impression that many teachers underestimate the capacity of students to comprehend complex materials and ideas. The problem often isn't the difficulty of the material but the inability of the teacher to translate it into understandable terms — which, after all, is why teachers exist. Jon Nielson, also at the Gospel Coalition site believes that we underestimate young people's capacity to understand solid preaching as well: "Your Students Can Handle Expository Preaching":

Expositional preaching for high school students? Are you crazy?

Expositional preaching—moving sequentially through a book of the Bible, seeking to discover the main point of the text, and making that the main point of the message—can’t work for high school students . . . can it? Don’t they need something more attention-grabbing, flashy, and topical?

Responding to this thinking, which dominates youth ministry circles, I’ve come up with a list: Top Reasons for Expository Preaching in High School Ministry. I should note that my conviction regarding expository preaching extends to the whole church. ....

Nielson's points:

1. They can handle it. Adults in the church have pitifully underestimated the capacity of young people to grasp biblical truth revealed in the very structure of the biblical text. ....
2. It helps them learn to read the Bible. While topical teaching can be helpful at certain times, a steady and unbalanced diet of it undermines students’ understanding of God’s Word. ....
3. It protects us. A commitment to expositional preaching protects youth ministers from students and from ourselves. .... Only by elevating the Word of God in our teaching, letting each passage along the way dictate what we teach our students, do we ensure that we consistently and faithfully teach the revealed Word and will of God for students’ benefit.
4. It makes you a model, not a celebrity.

Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns - TGC Reviews, Your Students Can Handle Expository Preaching – The Gospel Coalition Blog

Walking away from the faith

Jon Nielson, a youth pastor, responding to the very real concern about the falling away from the Church during their college years of young people who grew up in Christian homes. He finds it easiest to examine "Why Youth Stay in Church When They Grow Up":

.... What is it that sets apart the kids who stay in the church? Here are just a few observations I have made about such kids, with a few applications for those of us serving in youth ministry.

1. They are converted.
.... We need to stop talking about “good kids.” We need to stop being pleased with attendance at youth group and fun retreats. We need to start getting on our knees and praying that the Holy Spirit will do miraculous saving work in the hearts of our students as the Word of God speaks to them. In short, we need to get back to a focus on conversion. How many of us are preaching to “unconverted evangelicals”?  ....

2. They have been equipped, not entertained.
....[Y]outh pastors especially need to keep repeating the words of Ephesians 4:11-12 to themselves: “[Christ] gave . . . the teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” Christ gives us—teachers—to the church, not for entertainment, encouragement, examples, or even friendship primarily. He gives us to the church to “equip” the saints to do gospel ministry, in order that the church of Christ may be built up.

If I have not equipped the students in my ministry to share the gospel, disciple a younger believer, and lead a Bible study, then I have not fulfilled my calling to them, no matter how good my sermons have been.  ....

Forget your youth programs for a second. Are we sending out from our ministries the kind of students who will show up to college in a different state, join a church, and begin doing the work of gospel ministry there without ever being asked? Are we equipping them to that end, or are we merely giving them a good time while they’re with us?  ....

3. Their parents preached the gospel to them.
.... The common thread that binds together almost every ministry-minded 20-something that I know is abundantly clear: a home where the gospel was not peripheral but absolutely central. The 20-somethings who are serving, leading, and driving the ministries at our church were kids whose parents made them go to church. They are kids whose parents punished them and held them accountable when they were rebellious. They are kids whose parents read the Bible around the dinner table every night. And they are kids whose parents were tough, but who ultimately operated from a framework of grace that held up the cross of Jesus as the basis for peace with God and forgiveness toward one another.

This is not a formula! Kids from wonderful gospel-centered homes leave the church; people from messed-up family backgrounds find eternal life in Jesus and have beautiful marriages and families. But it’s also not a crap-shoot. In general, children who are led in their faith during their growing-up years by parents who love Jesus vibrantly, serve their church actively, and saturate their home with the gospel completely, grow up to love Jesus and the church.  ....

Why Youth Stay in Church When They Grow Up – The Gospel Coalition Blog

The past is prologue

At The Gospel Coalition three evangelicals are asked "How Do You Use Liturgical Elements in Your Church Worship?" I found their answers encouraging. From Scotty Smith of Christ Community Church in Franklin, TN:

We in Christ Community Church (PCA) are increasingly enjoying the richness of responsive readings and creeds as we develop our liturgy week to week. In our first years we pretty much decried the use of such aids, but we now realize their doxological beauty and benefit. In fact, for many years, the word liturgy was almost a four-letter word in our reactionary infancy as a church family. We wanted to cultivate a free, Spirit-led worship culture, and wrongly assumed that creeds would lead to formalization and dead orthodoxy. In our current calendar year, we are praying our way through the Heidelberg Catechism. We also include prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, responsive readings from the Scriptures, and confession and professions from the pen and hearts of our leadership family. In recent years we have also celebrated the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed as a part of a gospel-driven liturgy. Let me be clear: we still want a “free and Spirit led worship culture,” but now we clearly see the place of responsive readings and creeds as a means of helping us offer our Triune God the worship he deserves and in which he delights.

Bob Kauflin of Sovereign Grace:

For years most of our singing came up front and lasted about 35 to 45 minutes. As we studied congregational worship throughout history, including in the Bible, we saw that every church has a liturgy. The question is whether or not that liturgy helps people focus on God’s glory in Jesus Christ. While prolonged singing has its advantages, one of the dangers is cultivating a perception that the Holy Spirit only shows up when music is playing, and usually for a long time. So we started occasionally using elements like responsive readings, pre-written prayers, public confession of sin, and creeds. These helped us accomplish a number of ends, all of which are helpful. Scriptural responsive readings root us directly in God’s Word, which fuels our response of singing. Pre-written prayers can bring clarity, specificity, and comprehensiveness to our prayers. Confessing our sinfulness together reminds us all that our need for a Savior didn’t stop when we were converted. Creeds connect us to a long history of saints who have confessed their common faith in an unchanging triune God who has redeemed a people for himself through Jesus Christ. All that to say, we’ve found it immensely helpful to benefit from practices of believers who have gone before us without feeling bound to one particular liturgy or way of doing things.

And from an article about Ken Myers, the editor of the Mars Hill Audio Journal:

.... One of Myers’s recurring themes is the ways in which the dumbing down of the general culture has infected American Christianity and conservatism. These are two spheres where we might expect the work of “preserving cultural treasures” to be taken up. Yet wander into a Mass or worship service in any suburban Catholic or Protestant church and you’ll hear “praise songs” that might have been lifted from Sesame Street or, if the service is High Church, the soundtrack of Phantom of the Opera. It’s hard to believe this is the same religion that inspired Bach and Palestrina, whose choral works are no more familiar to the average pastor or parishioner than the chants at a Kikuyu circumcision ceremony. The liturgy, what’s left of it, is either pedestrian or absurd. (The Shepherd who used to maketh you to lie down in green pastures will now, if you’re a Catholic, “in verdant pastures give you repose.”) Among clergy no less than the laity, a desire for beauty and reflection is deemed prissy and dull.

“I’ve always thought that beautiful art was a great apologetic resource,” Myers says. Beauty is the chief attribute of God, said Jonathan (not Bob) Edwards. “Beauty points to a Creator.” Yet the church, Myers says, “capitulates more and more to the culture of entertainment.”

“It’s a way of keeping market share. But they’re digging their own grave. There’s a short-term benefit, but in the long term the kinds of cultural resources they need to be faithful to the Gospel won’t be there.” ....

TGC Asks: How Do You Use Liturgical Elements in Your Church Worship? – The Gospel Coalition Blog, Pop Goes the Culture | The Weekly Standard

Youth ministry: why equipping is better than entertaining

I passed thirty-five years spending most of my professional day every day with people between the ages of thirteen and nineteen. During that time I made some discoveries: it is impossible for an adult to be "cool" by trying, and it is impossible to keep up with what is "cool" because it changes about every five minutes. If kids like and respect adults, the reason is likely to have more to do with integrity and lack of artifice than with anything more superficial. Actually enjoying and liking teenagers helps a lot, too. And if you are a teacher, genuinely, transparently, and effectively conveying that what you are offering and demanding is valuable — and interesting — goes a long way.

These thoughts were inspired by Jon Nielson's essay about the challenge of being a youth pastor: "Teens Want More Than Pizza."

.... Faced with increasingly busy schedules—packed full of sports, music, drama, and college-prep classes—many teenagers are finding little time (or need) for the church. While youth group and youth retreat attendance skyrocketed in the late 1990s, many youth pastors are now finding that students are “not even coming for the pizza anymore.” Maybe the pizza was part of the problem to begin with. ....

I’ve been a high school pastor for about eight months now; I certainly have much to learn! In just those eight months, though, I have formed a few convictions from which, by God’s grace, I will not soon depart:

• I cannot compete with my students’ culture in the area of entertainment.

Some youth pastors can keep up much better than I can. Still, even the savviest, coolest, most-in-touch youth pastor around will find himself unable to entertain students in a way that will keep them coming to his youth group. The competition is simply too stiff.

• I can offer high school students the real gospel of Jesus Christ—and they can handle it.

The gospel—the objective reality that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,” which is received by faith alone—is what high school students really crave. The amazing (and constantly humbling) thing about continually offering the gospel to students is the response it brings. The response is not: “Wow, Jon, you’re cool,” or “That music was off the hook!” It’s actually a much more biblical response: repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. High school students crave the real, true, life-changing, not-watered-down gospel of Jesus Christ. Woe to us if we give them anything less.

• Growth happens not by entertaining, but by equipping.

.... It is time that youth pastors return to a surprisingly ancient concept. God gave pastors and teachers to the church to “equip the saints for the work of the ministry” (Eph. 5). Chris Palmer, a youth pastor quoted in the USA Today article, was on to something when he described his new approach to youth ministry: beginning to teach that following Jesus is “hard work,” as well as “radical and exciting.” If high school students crave the true gospel of Jesus Christ, they desire to see lives (including their own) that are radically and genuinely affected by a relationship with Jesus Christ. They spot hypocrisy better than most of us adults. .... [more]

Teens Want More Than Pizza – The Gospel Coalition Blog

John Piper

John Piper, along with Mark Dever and a few others, always seems worth reading and hearing. Several of his sermons that are available online are linked below:

The sermon that John Piper delivered at the organizing sessions of The Gospel Coalition was titled "The Triumph of the Gospel in the New Heavens and the New Earth." It, along with several sermons by others, is linked here and from the image on the left.

Several sermons Piper preached at The Passion Conference have been posted at the Desiring God site here. One of them is "How Our Suffering Glorifies the Greatness of the Grace of God."

The Gospel Coalition | Media, Desiring God: The Passion Conference Videos

Teach the children

Jeff Robinson at The Gospel Coalition gives us seven good reasons to teach church history to children. They are just as applicable to adults. The first two reasons he offers:

1. Because they must know that Christianity is a historical faith. Jesus really lived. He died. He rose again. He ascended into heaven. He is building his church, just as he promised. Church history bears witness to all these facts, all of which took place—and are taking place—in time and space and history. I don’t want them to confuse the story of redemption with The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, Robinson Crusoe, or Rapunzel.
2. Because we want them to avoid chronological snobbery. As C.S. Lewis put it, new does not necessarily mean better (or vice-versa). Like their parents, our children are constantly inundated with messages of “new” and “better”—versions 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and the like. I want my children to know that the gospel is not new, cannot be improved, and will never change. They must know too that while there is no “golden age” with regard to the history of man, great awakenings in the past drive us to pray that God will do it again. [the rest of the seven and resources as well]

7 Reasons to Teach Our Children Church History | TGC | The Gospel Coalition

Picking fights with allies

At the Gospel Coalition site a Calvinist interviews an Arminian, specifically, Fred Sanders, a professor at Biola. The full interview is here. In one section Sanders was asked to complete some sentences. Two of them:

If you think Arminianism is semi-Pelagian, then...

You need a more flexible vocabulary of heresiology. John Wesley's longest treatise was on original sin, and he affirmed it, right down to the bondage of the will. He put a sermon on the subject into his Standard Sermons. The Wesleyan emphasis on sinners being enabled to respond to the gospel has nothing to do with a high view of human abilities, and everything to do with an optimism of grace and a trust in the Holy Spirit's prevenient work.

Perhaps anti-Wesleyans do this because they are hoping to make the error of Arminianism more obvious by exaggerating it into its supposedly logical conclusion. But if you think Arminianism is an error, you should just call it "the heresy of Arminianism." If you have to exaggerate its flaws to make it seem terrible, you probably shouldn't.

It may also be that some anti-Wesleyans are tempted to characterize Wesleyans by their worst exemplars. There have indeed been Pelagians and semi- demi- hemi- Pelagians in the Wesleyan tradition. I don't know any other way to interpret Charles Finney. But it's a basic rule of fair discourse that you should meet your opponent's views at their strongest and most central, not their weakest and most peripheral. Calvinism has generated its fair share of antinomians, determinists, theocrats, anti-evangelicals, and formalists. Anti-Calvinists shouldn't attack on that front, but at the places where the tradition is strongest.

The one thing I wish Calvinists would stop accusing Wesleyans of is...

Being anthropocentric in their soteriology. Caring more about human free will than God's glory.

I also wish Calvinists would resist the urge to think of Wesleyanism as the secret to Reformed self-definition. I don't mind sharpening a position by contrast, but Calvinists need a better foil than Wesleyanism. Only if you live in a very small thought-world is Wesleyanism the opposite of Calvinism. A more instructive opposite for Calvinism probably ought to be Roman Catholicism, if we're going back to origins. About 200 years ago, I believe the Reformed in Europe still thought of Lutherans as their opposites. I would think today's evangelical Calvinists would think of liberals as their opposites. But if you think "there are two kinds of people, Calvinists and Wesleyans," you're on a false trail; your devil is too small (to paraphrase J. B. Phillips). That will lead you to pick fights with other conservative, evangelical, Protestant Christians who really are on your side of the net in the game that counts. .... [more]

You’re a Calvinist, Right? – The Gospel Coalition Blog

Honor your unbelieving parents

My parents were, and relatives are [to the best of my knowledge] all Christians, so, although I have friends whose circumstances are different, I don't share Darren Carlson's experience: "Sharing the Gospel with the People Who Changed Your Diaper":

.... When I signed up for a discipleship program out of college my Dad thought I was being brainwashed. When someone shared the gospel with my wife at UNC-Greensboro and invited her to a Baptist church, she had never seen such joy and became a believer. Her parents thought she joined a cult. A few weeks after her conversion she was part of YoungLife.

Our parents, our sisters, their husbands, and their children do not share our faith. Marriage has certainly brought out the stark contrasts in our lives, and the arrival of children even more so. We are not experts on how to share the gospel or how to relate to our families now that we have believed in Jesus and been saved. Family scenarios are diverse, and there is no one shoe that fits all situations. Still, knowing that many hold beliefs in stark contrast to their families I offer these suggestions. .... [read on]

Sharing the Gospel with the People Who Changed Your Diaper – The Gospel Coalition Blog

"Abba" doesn't mean "Daddy"

From the FactChecker at The Gospel Coalition Blog:

When listening to a sermon on the Fatherhood of God, we've heard it more times than we can probably count: the illustration that when Jesus refers to his Father as abba, it is a very comfortable, deeply intimate child-like term, interpreted as either papa or daddy. ....

This intimacy and love between the divine Father and his Son is as true as the existence of God himself, for it is his very nature. But it is simply not true that Jesus' use of the word abba means something a small child would utter in reference to his father. It does not mean "daddy" or "papa." .... [more]

FactChecker: Does Abba Mean ‘Daddy’? – The Gospel Coalition Blog

Being a Baptist

Via Denny Burk, Spurgeon on believers' baptism:

“If I thought it wrong to be a Baptist, I should give it up, and become what I believed to be right… If we could find infant baptism in the word of God, we should adopt it. It would help us out of a great difficulty, for it would take away from us that reproach which is attached to us,—that we are odd, and do not as other people do. But we have looked well through the Bible, and cannot find it, and do not believe that it is there; nor do we believe that others can find infant baptism in the Scriptures, unless they themselves first put it there.” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon, et al., The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon, vol. 1 (Chicago: F.H. Revell, 1898), 155.)

More, from James Hamilton at The Gospel Coalition Blog

.... As a Baptist church, we believe that baptism is a matter of obedience. Jesus instructed his followers to baptize disciples (Matt 28:19), so we baptize those who have become disciples because we want to obey Jesus. We also believe that only believers are united to the body of Christ by faith (cf. Gal 3:26-28), so only believers should be welcomed as members into the visible expression of the body of Christ, the local church. If someone is not repenting of all known sin, trusting Christ for salvation, and submitting to all his commands and teaching, we don't welcome him or her into church membership. Since we view baptism as a matter of obedience, we understand unbaptized people to be disobedient on this point. ....

Baptists believe that those who have not been immersed in water as believers to symbolize their union with Christ by faith have not been baptized. Presbyterians and other paedobaptists think they have been baptized, even if they have not been immersed in water as believers.

John Bunyan agreed that baptism is the immersion of a believer in water but felt that he did not have the right to deny church membership to someone who gave evidence of regeneration and believed he had been baptized. William Kiffin's response was that he did not have the right to disregard, and thereby overrule, a command of Jesus.

As Baptists we're not denying that paedobaptists have a right to their own perspective, we are simply maintaining the integrity of our own convictions. Our consciences will not permit us to welcome into membership and communion those who have not obeyed Jesus at the point of baptism.

This is the whole reason there are Baptist churches at all. .... (more)

Denny Burk. Spurgeon on believers' baptism:, Baptism and Church Membership: Sometimes Obedience Results in Painful Separations – The Gospel Coalition Blog

Of that day or hour no one knows

Joe Carter at The Gospel Coalition Blog provides an interesting and informative summary of "four general perspectives on eschatology":

• dispensational premillenialism
• historical premillenialism
• amillenialism
• postmillennialism

He explains the features of each, some variations on the themes, and identifies some of the personalities who identify with each interpretation.

On a not unrelated note, "Harold Camping apologizes for failed Rapture prediction":

Harold Camping, the Northern California preacher whose radio ministry spent millions of dollars last year predicting a fiery apocalypse that failed to materialize has apologized to his followers in an open letter, saying “we humbly acknowledge we were wrong” and “we have no new evidence pointing to another date for the end of the world.” ....

The cartoon was on Ray Ortlund's blog yesterday.

Jesus is Coming Back When? – The Gospel Coalition Blog, Harold Camping apologizes for failed Rapture prediction - latimes.com

Joy

The Gospel Coalition site has invited various Christians to write about "The Page That Changed My Life." For Matthew Lee Anderson it was reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

.... Chesterton does not simply magnify "joy," a concept we hear much about and experience very little. He understood the permanent temptation to view the sadness and the sorrow as the substance, and the cheerful and uplifting as the shadow.

Chesterton marks out a path that leads away from despairing cynicism, the besetting sin of hipster Christians. When our resistance to the overwrought, pollyannish cheerfulness of suburban megachurch Christianity (or so the story goes) crosses over into treating the "real" and "authentic" as that which is broken and sorrowful, we have embraced a sub-Christian outlook on the world. ....

...There is a joy beyond words, a joy behind the veil that runs too deep to show others. And it is a joy that, when we taste, we realize that we are ill equipped to live with. Like those poor Israelites who plead with God to hide himself, it is goodness that we are not equipped to handle, even while we include sorrow and suffering among our friends. Here Chesterton closes his work: "Joy, which is the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. . . . There was something that [Jesus] hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon the earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth." [more]

Our Delightfully Strange World – The Gospel Coalition Blog

The most difficult doctrine

In his account of returning to the faith, Peter Hitchens described his fear of Hell as a factor:

No doubt I should be ashamed to confess that fear played a part in my return to religion, specifically a painting: Rogier van der Weyden's 15th Century Last Judgement, which I saw in Burgundy while on holiday.


Click on the picture to enlarge.

I had scoffed at its mention in the guidebook, but now I gaped, my mouth actually hanging open, at the naked figures fleeing towards the pit of Hell.

These people did not appear remote or from the ancient past; they were my own generation. Because they were naked, they were not imprisoned in their own age by time-bound fashions.

On the contrary, their hair and the set of their faces were entirely in the style of my own time. They were me, and people I knew.

I had a sudden strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time. My large catalogue of misdeeds replayed themselves rapidly in my head.

I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned. Van der Weyden was still earning his fee, nearly 500 years after his death. ....

Michael Patton, while noting that "...[T]here are many more things I love about Christianity than what I hate," lists "Eight Things I Hate About Christianity." Counting down, the number one thing he "hates":

Hell. This is hands down the most difficult doctrine in the Christian faith. We believe in a loving God who sees fit to allow his creation (his children) to suffer in a place we call hell—a place, by the way, that affords more suffering than anything imaginable. A place, by the way, that is never-ending. It is not as though I don’t believe it. I do. It is not as though I look at God in judgment. I don’t. It is simply something that confuses me. While I completely disagree with any form of “Christian” universalism (i.e. all people are going to make it to heaven), second-chance theories (i.e. unbelievers will experience a second chance to escape hell in the after life), or the idea of annihilationalism (i.e. the belief that hell, along with all its inhabitants, will eventually be annihilated forever), I understand and sympathize with the reason why they go in this direction. If I could find some sort of loop-hole to get out of believing in the doctrine of an eternal hell, I would. If there was such a thing as a Christianity that did not necessitate a belief in hell, I would submit my resume. (And believe me, I have tried). Oh, closely connected to this are the cliché answers Christians give about hell. Many Christians I have encountered act as if hell does not bother them in the least. Of all the things you can be cliché about, don’t be so here.

One of the responses to this unattractive doctrine is [as Patton notes] universalism. This morning Mike Pohlman at the Gospel Coalition's blog, responding to a request, posted a collection of resources about universalism, and, of course, Hell.

Parchment and Pen » Eight Things I Hate About Christianity, Responding to “Christian Universalism” – The Gospel Coalition Blog, How I found God and peace with my atheist brother: PETER HITCHENS traces his journey back to Christianity | Mail Online

"A joy beyond words"

Re-posted:

 

The Gospel Coalition site once invited various Christians to write about "The Page That Changed My Life." For Matthew Lee Anderson it was reading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy:

.... Chesterton does not simply magnify "joy," a concept we hear much about and experience very little. He understood the permanent temptation to view the sadness and the sorrow as the substance, and the cheerful and uplifting as the shadow.

Chesterton marks out a path that leads away from despairing cynicism, the besetting sin of hipster Christians. When our resistance to the overwrought, pollyannish cheerfulness of suburban megachurch Christianity (or so the story goes) crosses over into treating the "real" and "authentic" as that which is broken and sorrowful, we have embraced a sub-Christian outlook on the world. ....

...There is a joy beyond words, a joy behind the veil that runs too deep to show others. And it is a joy that, when we taste, we realize that we are ill equipped to live with. Like those poor Israelites who plead with God to hide himself, it is goodness that we are not equipped to handle, even while we include sorrow and suffering among our friends. Here Chesterton closes his work: "Joy, which is the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.... There was something that [Jesus] hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was one thing that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon the earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth." (more)

Our Delightfully Strange World – The Gospel Coalition Blog

Christianity and politics

A Mark Dever sermon from 2010 may be, according to a post at The Gospel Coalition, "The Best Sermon on Christianity and Politics":

.... Collin Hansen, who attended the service, later wrote that it was "the best sermon I know on Christianity and government." Likewise, Thabiti Anyabwile described it as "a biblical theology of Christians and the state, at once full of unction, intellectually challenging, and affecting the heart. I've heard a lot of Mark's preaching, but I don't know that I've ever heard him better."

Dever offered three simple points from Mark 12:13-17. First, Christians are good citizens. Second, no earthly kingdom can be identified with God's people. Third, Christians are finally accountable to God.

Why It Matters: With election day just around the corner, Dever's message bears fresh relevance. By listening to the sermon and reading Hansen's copious summary, you will be well served.

As Americans, it's often helpful to be reminded that the epicenter of Christ's kingdom is not located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And the purposes of God have never been thwarted at the hands of men—a streak that's not about to end on November 6. Such a recognition isn't quietism or escapism—just biblical Christianity. ....

Dever's sermon.

‘The Best Sermon on Christianity and Politics’ – The Gospel Coalition Blog