faith for faith

The Southern Baptist Convention, began, a most Baptist affiliations do, as a gathering together Baptist churches for the purpose of centralizing resources for the propagation of the Gospel around the world. Fast forward over a hundred years later, you will find a corporate conglomerate that dictates doctrine, that owns the largest publisher of Christian literature in world (viz. LifeWay Christian Resources), that operates its own Willow Tree figurine, VeggieTales, and The Shack distribution stores (viz. LifeWay Christian Stores), that possesses its own insurance agency (viz. Guidestone Financial Resources), that has created and owns its own translation of the Bible (viz. the Holman Christian Standard version), that owns and operates six American seminaries, and that does missions through the International and North American Mission Boards. This transformation is indicative of the shift in the SBC from its former role as the mere centralization of resources for the sake of the Gospel to its present role as a massive, bureaucratic entity that makes preaching the Gospel to the nations a great ordeal.

To understand the great difficulty that the SBC causes with regards to missions, one simply has to look at a decently sized Southern Baptist church. In those churches you might find missionaries who go through the International Mission Board into the nations, but you are likely to find a greater number being sent out directly by those churches thereby by-passing the IMB. The purpose is not that those churches desire to establish their own international identity apart from the IMB, but it is because the IMB has made the process of sending out missionaries so difficult that many who would desire to be missionaries have looked upon the IMB as a great barrier rather than as a great help. They look at the mandatory education requirements and the strict doctrinal conformities and then turn their backs on the IMB and its numerous hoops and look for other options.

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As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all (Rm. 11:28-32).

[Warning: Post is at present unedited] This passage of Scripture is perhaps one of the most difficult passages in Romans, perhaps in all of Scripture, to grasp. It is so because of the language that is used in it– language that is complicated by our natural tendency to assign strict definitions to words that do not in themselves demand strict definitions. In this particular passage, the word of which I am speaking is the word that is translated “election” in v. 11:28, which I shall deal with in short order.

First, as always, we must understand the context in which this passage is spoken. As has been so throughout Romans 11, Paul is speaking of two groups of people–the Jews and the Gentiles. And because of God’s good wisdom and pleasure, he has decreed that salvation would only come to Gentiles if the Jews on the whole (less the remnant) would reject the Messiah. This purpose of the Lord is summed up in the apostle’s final statement in Romans 11 concerning the matter, viz. “For God has consigned all [both Jews and Gentiles] to disobedience so that he may have mercy on all.” This is a reiteration of what the apostle has declared earlier in the epistle, viz. “What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (Rm. 3:9). For what reason? “So that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (v. 3:19). Therefore, just as the law has stopped the mouths of the whole world (for they have no justification in themselves), so too this section is designed to stop our self-righteous mouths and declare what the apostle declares at the conclusion of this treatise: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! etc.” (vv. 11:33-36).

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Most of us have experienced it: the enthusiastic preacher, the classic phrase “If you were to die tonight…,” the bowing of heads and raising of hands, the pronouncements of spiritual birthdays, and a preacher writing in his Bible the name of yet another soul who he had saved after another successful altar call.

If you have not experienced these things, you are among the fortunate, and, hopefully, more doctrinally sound.

For these things are indicative of the doctrinal fallacy that has slowly crept into the post-Reformation church, namely the doctrine of justification by acceptance. This doctrine says simply that one is saved by accepting Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and asking him to come into his heart. This doctrine stands opposed to the doctrine of justification by faith, for it warps the nature of faith from that which not meritorious to that which is meritorious. In other words, it takes faith and shifts its weight. Instead of faith being mere belief in the God who has revealed himself to his people through the Spirit and the preaching of the Gospel, faith, in this “justification by acceptance” doctrine, is fully an act of human reason and free will whereby one evaluates the case of Christ and chooses to accept him by asking Christ into his heart or to reject him by doing nothing.

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But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says, “I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; with a foolish nation I will make you angry.” Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me” (Rom. 10:19, 20).

Like the verse that precedes it, v. 10:19 begins with a question that has a “yes, but…” answer. For, as in the preceding verse where the apostle asks, “Have they not heard?” and in the context we must answer, “Yes, they have heard, but they have not heard,” so in v. 19, we must say, “Yes they have known, but they have not known.” The ESV picks up on this notion of knowing and yet not knowing in v. 19 where it interprets what is literally “know” in “But I ask, did Israel not know? as “Did Israel not understand?” for it is clear in the context that Israel knew on the one hand but did not know on the other.

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All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all, despite their connection with Jesus Christ, continue to sin and to fall short of the glory of God. This is not surprising to us, for we who are in Christ are continually commanded to forsake our flesh and to turn away from our sinful passions and to turn to our Advocate and our Righteousness for forgiveness when we do fall into various sins. We know full well that our salvation is not of ourselves and that our righteousness is not our own, yet at times when we do sin, the Adversary swoops in and attempts to place on us again a burden we were never meant to bear. It is in times such as these that we, instead of falling and immediately running back into our Father’s arms, are convinced that our shame is too great, and we sulk in our sin for days and weeks. We feel that are communion with God is severed, and we feel more like sons of the devil than like sons of God. In these times, we must be all the more vigilant to place upon our heads the Helmet of the Gospel that declares to us afresh that we are clothed with an alien Righteousness and have unbroken communion with the Father through our perfect Mediator, Jesus Christ. The Adversary wishes us to think that we are cut off from God because our failings; we should not give him the pleasure of such a victory.

The great theologians of centuries past were correct when they saw in the Scriptures two covenants–the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace. Both have existed since before the fall of man in the Garden, and both continue to exist to this day. Moses, after writing of both covenants in the historical account of Adam’s Transgression of the Commandment and the Promise of a Crusher of the Serpent’s head, continues to write of both after he has received from Yahweh the Law. Concerning this, the apostle Paul writes in Romans 10, “For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them” (v. 10:5). This is, by Moses, the acknowledgement of the perpetuation of the Covenant of Works, viz. that he who obeys the Law will be declared “just” by the Law. However, since it is made quite clear by the apostle in the preceding chapters of his letter that no one has kept the Law, the apostle appeals to Moses’ appeal to the Righteousness that comes by faith. For Moses writes and the apostle adds:

But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (i.e. to bring Christ down) or “‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (i.e. to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (i.e. the word of faith that we proclaim) (vv. 10:6-8). 

The apostle’s appeal to the revelation given to Moses demonstrates that there are, even now, two methods to approach Jesus Christ (i.e. God) and his righteousness. The first way is the way of works. This method is a declaration by the heart that one will pull himself up by his own boot straps and rise to meet God halfway. It is rule keeping that manifests itself in self-righteousness based upon tithing, wearing nice suits on Sundays, and not being a drain on the government as other low-lifes are. These might acknowledge with their lips that Jesus Christ is God and that he came down to Earth and dwelt among men and died and rose up from the dead, but they do not base their righteousness upon him. They instead look to themselves and their own law-keeping and think that they are right with God simply because ten percent of their gross income goes to the local church.

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Being from North Carolina, it is difficult not to love the sight of snow. It is a sight that is seldom seen, and when it sticks it transforms everything on which it falls. Regardless of where the snow lands, be it on the lawns of the wealthy or on the trash heaps of the landfills, everything is made beautiful. It is, in some ways, a perfect picture of the Gospel. For the Gospel, like the snow on divers landscapes, is not a respecter of social class, race, nationality, or political position, and it falls upon God’s dispersed elect and covers them beautifully with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. God’s people, called forth from every tongue and every tribe, from paupers to kings, who are as muddy and filthy as the natural landscape, find themselves fully blanketed with the whiteness of Jesus Christ and, when the clouds give way to clear skies, reflect with blinding radiance the glory of their Father. They who were once dirty are now clean; they who were once dull are now radiant–not by any merit of their own, but because God came near and gave to them his cleanness and his radiance and thereby made them beautiful.

Having just completed my one-hundredth post here at blog.xpistou.com, I thought that it might do well for me to revisit my reasons for writing on this site day after day. I have written a post prior to this one entitled, “Why I Write,” and hence the name of this present post, “Why I Write Reborn.” Though I did address the same question in said prior post, it was by no mean exhaustive nor adequate. I hope that this post will better answer the question, Why do I write?

I Write To Glorify God
If you were to press me and ask what verse in all of Scripture drives my life day in and day out, I would tell you 1 Corinthians 10:31. In this well known verse, the apostle Paul writes, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all the glory of God.” In it, Paul uses the most common activities of men, viz. eating and drinking, to demonstrate that every action that we take, no matter how minute or how menial, should be an act of worship to God.

My goal, therefore, is that this blog will be an act of worship to God. I know very well that, because I am a sinful man, this site falls well short of this goal often, but nevertheless God’s glory is the bar that I set. This means by necessity that I write some things that I might should not have written and that I am inaccurate and wrong in some of the statements that I make, and for these things I must constantly turn to God by repentance. Though I do falter often in this regard, I continue to write because I am compelled to do so.

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Upon even the most casual of readings of the New Testament, it is impossible to miss the clear reality that those who follow Christ are promised that they will suffer and be despised for following him. These things simply come with the territory. Jesus declares that we who follow him should not to be alarmed at this, for he says, “A servant is not greater than his master; if they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (Jn. 15:20a). Paul also declares that our suffering is of Providential and salvific necessity, writing, “The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if we are children, we are heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided that we suffer with him so that we might also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:17, variation mine). Our suffering and revilement is made to be necessary by our association with Christ and is ordained to be necessary by the nature of the Gospel.

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Mark Driscoll was at Southeastern Seminary yesterday and delivered an excellent, excellent message entitled, “9 Distinctions Between the Gospel and Religion.” Though it does not directly address it, it does highlight the problems with Christianity in the South and demonstrates that it is the religiosity of the Bible Belt that tarnishes Christianity not the religion itself. I highly recommend this to everyone whether you claim Christianity or not, especially if you grew up in the South.

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Feel free to share thoughts on this message or on the topic in general in the comments section on this post. Soli Deo Gloria.