Posted on 01/05/2010 8:25:32 AM PST by Alex Murphy
I wasn't born and raised in the Reformed church. In other words, I am a Reformed immigrant. Like many people in the Reformed church today, I migrated out of broad based evangelicalism and non-denominationalism. Many of my friends, both ministers and laypeople, have had similar immigration experiences.
Recently, at the funeral of my father-in-law, I had the opportunity to get reacquainted with many of my Reformed immigrant friends. Much to my surprise, I found myself having a very similar conversation with this group. They shared with me that they felt like something was missing in their Reformed experience. While they were all satisfied with the doctrine, worship and government of the church they spoke of a missing intangible element. They had trouble articulating the exact nature of this missing element. I suggested a variety of terms to give it a name and the one that seemed to come closest was "joy." These immigrants perceived the Reformed church to be suffering from a deficiency of spiritual joy.
These conversations got me thinking. I did my own assessment of my Reformed experience and, I must admit, I had to agree that "joyful" was not one of the first adjectives that came to my mind to describe it. Then I began to contemplate why the Reformed church seems to be lacking in the joy department. My contemplation yielded two main reasons.
The Reasons
First, I think the Reformed church is joyfully deficient because of the immigration wave of which I am part. Over the past twenty years the Reformed church, particularly through the efforts of men like R.C. Sproul, has been very successful in drawing people out of evangelicalism and assimilating them into the ranks of the Reformed. What attracted these immigrants were the things that they perceived as woefully deficient in evangelicalism. These included things such as irreverent worship, imprecise doctrine and sloppy to non-existent church government. In other words, most of the immigrants to the Reformed world made their migration because they were dissatisfied with evangelicalism. They were evangelical malcontents. This means that many people in the Reformed church today fought their way into it. They entered into the Reformed church with strong convictions and bearing the bruises of their evangelical exodus. This type of soil is not naturally enriched with joy. This type of soil requires joy to be cultivated and we've not been doing a great job at it.
Second, I think we are joyfully deficient in the Reformed church because we are perpetually circling the theological wagons. The Reformed church seems continually occupied with the task of theological preservation, a struggle that resembles Tolkien's battle at Helm's Deep. We are simply forever consumed with survival and we don't have time to focus on neglected, but seemingly less vital, topics like joy. For example, when it comes to the topic of worship we don't spend our time pontificating on the joy of worship, but rather we exhaust ourselves, appropriately so, with topics like the regulative principle. When it comes to the topic of justification, we expend our resources, again appropriately so, in defending its forensic nature rather than on the joy which flows from it. The end result is often joyfully deficient theological precision.
The Remedy
So how do we remedy this deficiency of joy in our ranks? We do what the Reformed have always done-we turn to God's holy Word. There is no doubt that the Scripture emphasizes joy in the life of the believer. This is not the namby-pamby joy of the world, but real spiritual joy that can only be experienced by those who are in Christ. The great Dutch Puritan, Wilhelmus a Brakel, defined this spiritual joy as follows:
This spiritual joy consists in a delightful motion of the soul, generated by the Holy Spirit in the heart of believers, whereby He convinces them of the felicity of their state, causes them to enjoy the benefits of the covenant of grace, and assures them of their future felicity.
Note that Brakel's definition directly links this joy to the "benefits of the covenant of grace." Exposure to God's covenant Word and covenant deeds should yield joy in God's people.
This is exactly what happened in the days of Nehemiah.
In Nehemiah 8 we are given the privilege of witnessing an ancient worship service which was celebrated after the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt. The people begged for God's Word and they listened to it attentively. The congregation of God's people felt the piercing power of his Word and they also felt the weight of their sins. This led them to mourn and grieve.
But then something quite extraordinary happened, Nehemiah, Ezra and the Levites commanded the people to stop their mourning. Nehemiah told them why they must do this, "Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength" (Nehemiah 8:10, emphasis mine). With these words the worship service ended and the Scripture records what the congregation did next, "Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them" (Nehemiah 8:12, emphasis mine).
This account from Nehemiah demonstrates that spiritual joy flows from a proper understanding of God's covenant Word. But this text also teaches us that the ministry has an important role to play in encouraging that joy among God's people. When ministers read and preach God's holy Word, particularly God's law, we must always speak to God's people like Nehemiah. We must say to them "Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength" (Nehemiah 8:10). We must remind them of the source of their joy.
In the Reformed church we need to do a better job of emphasizing this spiritual joy in our own lives, in our congregations and in our pulpits. We must remind our people that, just like our righteousness, spiritual joy is not something we can create or produce. It is an alien joy. It comes from our communion with God and it is only made possible through the propitiation of Jesus Christ. We must remind God's people that it is God who sovereignly bestows this gift upon his children. We must tell them that this joy is so powerful that it can be experienced even during our trials (James 1:2) and at all times (Philippians 4:4). We must commit ourselves to proclaiming to God's people the "benefits of the covenant of grace." This is exactly what I plan to do in 2010. I plan on emphasizing this Reformed joy in my preaching in 2010. I hope you will consider joining me in reminding God's people that the joy of the Lord is their strength!
Anthony T. Selvaggio is presently serving as a Teaching Elder in the Rochester Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPCNA), Rochester, NY. His published work includes The Prophets Speak of Him: Encountering Jesus in the Minor Prophets, (Evangelical Press, 2006), What the Bible Teaches About Marriage (Evangelical Press, 2007), A Proverbs Driven Life (Shepherd Press, 2008) and 24/7 Christian: Expository Thoughts on James (Evangelical Press, 2008). He also edited and contributed to The Faith Once Delivered (P & R Publishing, 2007).
Again, I refer you to the Koine greek text that odd group in the Vatican claims to have blessed and forwarded to the world. But, then, truth has always been something abhorred by those boys.
Ah yes, Calvinists alone pick and choose their favorite Scriptures, excluding all the rest. And I am sure I never met a “Free Willer” whose response to Romans 9 was, “Ignore what you’re seeing in Romans 9 and look over here at my favorite verse!”
Seriously, I do agree that both sides of this debate have a tendency to camp in their favorite forests. I assure you, however, Calvinists have looked at the passages you mention, all of them, and have no problem with them. One verse does not “cancel out” another. They both, as you rightly suggest, come from the self-consistent mind of God, and therefore cannot ultimately contradict each other. You can’t just pick your personal favorite as between a supposedly contradictory pair, but must resolve the apparent conflict as well as can be done, and this not always to everyone’s satisfaction. But that must be our goal.
For example, your favorite, Titus 4:11, er, 2:11 (as Titus only has 3 chapters) is wonderful, but it doesn’t prove what you want it to prove. The grace of God, this grace that has been revealed in Jesus that leads to salvation, has been made apparent to all peoples by the appearance of Jesus in history, whereas in times past it was hidden in the deep councils of God. There is nothing in this passage that even remotely requires the acceptance of a Greek philosophical postulate that human volitional freedom is in any sense absolute, as you propose. Rather, all Paul is saying is that the secret plan of God to redeem the lost has been revealed in the person of Christ. Furthermore, the primary insignia of this plan is that salvation comes by grace, which is undeserved favor, a position with which the Calvinist is quite at home. No, if you would rock the foundations of Calvinism, you will need to find a more potent weapon than that.
As for the prodigal son, why would you make this parable teach some esoteric Greek philosophical theory about free will rather than that purpose to which it was most obviously directed, namely, to show the self-righteous Pharisees that the salvation of God was all about the grace of God being extended even to the lowest of the unrighteous, without reference to religiosity? There is danger in stretching a parable beyond its primary teaching point. If I were to follow your line of reasoning, I could just as well conclude that God is an unjust judge whom I must arouse from sleep in order to see answers to my prayers, or that God doesn’t know what will happen to his own son when he sends him to the wicked keepers of the vineyard who had been killing his earlier messengers. If we make God out of have these properties, then we have made him quite unlike the God of Israel, who never sleeps, is just in all his ways, and who knows the end from the beginning.
As for why we inquire into this question, it is a tradition in the Church to think about God and why he has shown mercy to some and not to others. You may blame Paul if you wish, but it is his own inquiry into why so many of his fellow countrymen refused the Gospel that forms the basis for his lengthy dissertation on divine election in Romans. If it wrong to think about such things, then you must write Paul out of the circle of the saved, because he definitely explored this issue. I am happy to report he did not succumb to Greek philosophical ideas about absolute freedom of the human will, but rather took the position that if God would choose some and not others, it was His right to do so, and we ought to be very careful not to judge God’s free will and the manner in which he exercises it:
Rom 9:18-24 Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
The Crankiness of the Catholics.
Synergists in general.
I'll probably mostly sit this one out. Mud's flyin' pretty heavy right now.
Kepha (the Aramaic word Christ used) has no gender, but it's Koine Greek equivalent petra is feminine. In the second part of Christ's translated statement, we see petra used. But since Simon bar-Jonah is male, the author of Matthew was not about to translate the name Christ gave him in the feminine, so it was converted to Petros.
In Koine Greek, petros and petra mean exactly the same thing: rock.
The Koine Greek word for pebble is lithos, which was not used here.
Its about being consistently precise. Its hard to maintain the continuity of your thoughts and messages when you fade in and out of the standard of precision in your statements. If we are to presume that when you said "Rome" you meant "Vatican City", then we should be able to presume that when you said rock you meant fish.
That aint mud!
The Vatican has not been in Rome for eighty years now.
And I am sure I never met a “Free Willer” whose response to Romans 9 was, “Ignore what you’re seeing in Romans 9 and look over here at my favorite verse!”
True. People on both sides do tend to pick and choose. I'm trying not to. I'm not discounting Romans 9. I just don't believe it means what you think it means.
For example, your favorite, Titus 4:11, er, 2:11...
Oops. Typo. thanks.
The grace of God, this grace that has been revealed in Jesus that leads to salvation, has been made apparent to all peoples by the appearance of Jesus in history, whereas in times past it was hidden in the deep councils of God.
See--my Bible says "all men", not "all peoples". All men is individual, not communal. You get on me for not taking Romans 9 at face value, then turn around and not take Titus at face value?
As for the prodigal son, why would you make this parable teach some esoteric Greek philosophical theory about free will rather than that purpose to which it was most obviously directed, namely, to show the self-righteous Pharisees that the salvation of God was all about the grace of God being extended even to the lowest of the unrighteous, without reference to religiosity?
Interesting. I had not heard that interpretation of that parable before. In any case, I believe that the parables Christ told were told with multiple meanings. They are useful for teaching multiple points and are not limited to one.
You may blame Paul if you wish, but it is his own inquiry into why so many of his fellow countrymen refused the Gospel that forms the basis for his lengthy dissertation on divine election in Romans.
I don't blame anyone. But Paul is known to have inserted his personal views in the Bible.
Of course we know that Jesus was speaking Aramaic, since the Gospel of John records the actual Aramaic name that Jesus spoke in naming Peter: Cephas. Even though John, too, is written in Greek.
sitetest
Though I would point out that Cephas is a Hellenized version of the spelling of the Aramaic word Kepha. Again, this is because Kepha in Greek would appear to be feminine, but adding the ‘s’ at the end makes it masculine.
Pick up any lexicon. There is a difference between the two. But, that would mitigate the claims of Rome now wouldn’t it?
And that very fact is testamony to the Church's courage and defiance of the Nazi's.
Precision has never been the strong suit of Rome, the Vatican, or the Catholic Church. Whatever they are wearing this week, they still should repent.
Not in Koine Greek there isn't. Nor is there in Aramaic (Kepha, Kephas).
Now, if you want to talk about Attic Greek, I would agree.
But as you have repeatedly pointed out, the Gospel of Matthew is in Koine Greek.
How about Strong's?
Feminine of the same as Petros; a (mass of) rock (literally or figuratively) -- rock.
Folks discount Christ's words that "No One can come to me unless the Father draws Him", thus missing the richness of what God does.
There is no more I can say except please look at these Scriptures carefully. We believe in having the Scriptures via the power of the Holy Spirit reform our minds. In that Spirit, I commend these words.
An ironically imprecise statement.
Okay, one more time, real slow.
It is not that petra is a small stone (I never said this, but you seem stuck on arguing it) and petros is a large stone (that has nothing to do with the argument). And you have no idea what Jesus said in Aramaic because the recorded words are in Greek and you have no text in Aramaic. End of story.
The point is, if Matthew would have recorded Jesus saying, “You are Peter and upon YOU I will build my church.” it would have been arguable. He did not say this. And, that is the ordinary way He would have designated Peter as the subject of what He would build upon. As it is, He used two different items to designate that upon something else He would build His church. It is likely that Jesus meant upon this truth that He was the Messiah the Son of God. But, Peter is not the target.
You don't get that kind of power. Sorry.
There is Aramaic right there in the Greek text: "Simon bar Jonah" spoken by Christ moments before, in Matthew 16:17.
The point is, if Matthew would have recorded Jesus saying, “You are Peter and upon YOU I will build my church.” it would have been arguable.
Once more you claim that since Christ did not use your preferred 21st century English sentence structure, He therefore did not mean what He meant.
Again, sorry. You don't get that kind of power.
As it is, He used two different items to designate that upon something else He would build His church.
No He did not. Petros and petra mean exactly the same thing: rock.
Sometimes irony can be so damned ironic!
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