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Editor
RYAN ERAS EICC Founder
JOSEPH BOOT
2 Editorial Ryan Eras 4
The Church, Society and the Kingdom of God Joe Boot
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Caring for your Pastor David Robinson
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Christianity is a Public Faith P. Andrew Sandlin
31 The Family: A Living Model of Christ and His Church Michael Thiessen 38
Book Review: John Owen’s Worship and Order in the Church Ryan Eras
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Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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JUBILEE EDITORIAL: ISSUE 26
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RYAN ERAS Ryan Eras is Director of Content and Publishing at the Ezra Institute. He holds an undergraduate degree in History from Tyndale University, and a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Toronto, with a focus on bibliographic control and the history of censorship. Ryan has served in several educational and support roles, providing bibliographic research and critical editorial assistance for several popular and academic publications. He lives in the Niagara region with his wife Rachel, and their children, Isabelle, Joanna, Simon and Gideon.
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As I write this my family is making preparations to host a massive Reformation Day event at the end of October. As we teach our children about the significance of the Reformation and why we’re planning a party for it, I’m careful to remind them what we are and are not celebrating. In commemorating the Reformation, we delight in the renewed emphasis that God’s revealed Word is for everyone, that Jesus Christ has made peace between us and God (Rom. 5:1-2), and that this peace-making is only, ever, and always an act of God’s grace extended to poor, unworthy, rebellious sinners. We’re teaching them that being partakers of grace is indeed a cause for celebration. At the same time, one thing we do not celebrate is the break-up of God’s church. From the perspective of maintaining the unity of the body of Christ, the American scholar Jaroslav Pelikan referred to the Reformation as a “tragic necessity.”1 It’s important to remember that orthodox Christians confess belief in “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”2 One of the key differences the Reformers had with Roman Catholics is the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints – the belief that God’s elect will never fall from grace because God Himself is holding onto them. The sixteenth-century Jesuit Robert Bellarmine called this doctrine “the worst Protestant heresy.”3 On the contrary, Roman Catholic doctrine affirms the perseverance of the institutional church in Rome. The difference is significant; it moves the basis of the believer’s assurance off of the eternal, saving God, and it places the church beyond criticism. Moreover, this view is clearly opposed by Scripture itself. In the book of Revelation Jesus warns the Ephesian church that “you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Rev. 2:4-5). It is God, not the church, that makes the believer stand firm. The church itself stands by God’s grace, and any congregation – even in Rome – is able to fall if it abandons its first love.
One final caveat may be helpful: with the Reformers, we affirm the sanctity of every vocation, and the Lordship of Christ over every area of life. As the articles in this issue demonstrate, the institutional church is not the only place where God is to be worshiped, nor is it the boundary of the kingdom of God. But in affirming this, we need to be mindful that there is risk of error in the other direction, namely, a low view of the church, to think that it is a kind of optional addition to the Christian life. This is a dangerous error. As His ekklēsia – the called-out people of God, He has given us a distinct way of organizing ourselves for the purpose of worship. Scripture refers to the church as nothing less than the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:22-23). It is identified as the pillar and support of truth (1 Tim. 3:15), and Christ promised that He would build His church, and that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). Clearly the church has a significant role to play in the life of the believer, in culture, and in the kingdom of God. This issue of Jubilee examines some of the ways that the church relates to the other cultural spheres, and how believers ought to think about their own lives in relation to the church. IN THIS ISSUE
Andrew Sandlin explains that God’s norm for Christianity does not limit it to the institution of the church. The medieval distinction between nature and grace led to an unbiblical distinction between ‘private’ faith and ‘public’ life. In contrast, normative Christianity has applications for all of life; the gospel is good news to be announced in every square inch of God’s creation. Michael Thiessen discusses the role of the family in training up the next generation of the church, and in modelling godly relationships between husbands and wives as a living picture of Christ and His bride. Joe Boot introduces the idea of sphere sovereignty, explaining the nature of the church and its important and unique role in society and in the
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Editorial: Issue 26
kingdom of God. As opposed to the accusation that Christians want to bring other areas of society under the control of the church, sphere sovereignty asserts that each of the separate spheres of society – family, school church, state, social club, etc. – is to recognize itself as being under the governance of God (not some other sphere). It is possible to talk about a Christian state that still upholds the separation of church and state. Bringing the conversation down to the level of the local church, David Robinson provides some biblically-based principles and ideas for how to care for your pastor. As you invest in the care and encouragement of your pastor, he will be better equipped and strengthened to care for you and to contend for the faith as he is called to do. 1 Timothy George, “The Reformation, a Tragic Necessity,” First Things, last modified July 11, 2016, https://www.firstthings.com/ web-exclusives/2016/07/the-reformation-atragic-necessity 2 The lowercase ‘c’ catholic is a word that means ‘universal,’ as opposed to the Roman Catholic Church. The catholic church is best understood as the people throughout all of history from every place who God has called to Himself. 3 W. Robert Godfrey, “Puritan Views of Assurance and Conversion,” Ligonier, last modified June 26, 2019, https://ligonier.s3.amazonaws. com/store/files/Survey_of_Church_History_ part4.pdf?Signature=VRGpTSDHASw7KESkc7 g50vB1fKs%3D&Expires=1572888326&AWSA ccessKeyId=AKIAJ4U7MPK5AKLYIULA.
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JOSEPH BOOT JOE BOOT is the founder and President of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity and the founding pastor of Westminster Chapel in Toronto. Before this, he served with Ravi Zacharias as an apologist in the UK and Canada, working for five years as Canadian director of RZIM. Joe earned his Ph.D. in Christian Intellectual Thought from Whitefield Theological Seminary, Florida. His apologetic works have been published in Europe and in North America and include Searching for Truth, Why I Still Believe and How Then Shall We Answer. His most noted contribution to Christian thought, The Mission of God, is a systematic work of cultural theology exploring the biblical worldview as it relates to the Christian’s mission in the world. Joe serves as Senior Fellow for the cultural and apologetics think-tank truthXchange in Southern California, and as Senior Fellow of cultural philosophy for the California based Centre for Cultural Leadership. Joe lives in Toronto with his wife, Jenny, and their three children, Naomi, Hannah, and Isaac.
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THE CHURCH, SOCIETY
&
The Kingdom of God THE CHURCH AND A FALSE DILEMMA
What is the nature and calling of the church? What is the church’s proper jurisdiction in society? Should the church involve itself in political and cultural life or remain a private ‘spiritual’ realm that does not occupy itself with ‘secular’ matters? If God’s people are to be involved in the culture, what is this meant to look like? These are thorny problems that have become increasingly important for Christians to grapple with in Western culture as it has continued to secularise. Christians tend to believe that they are confronted with a very restricted choice in these matters: pursue a return to a form of the ecclesiastical culture of Christendom where power and authority over various cultural and societal matters is restored to the church institute, or accept that we now live in a post-Christian age where the only thing Christians can hope for is being one of many interest groups in a diverse, multicultural society, with perhaps a seat somewhere at the table – a chair pulled out for us by a humanistic secular state now to be accepted as the norm. Of these limiting alternatives, the second view presently dominates modern evangelicalism. As a result, it has become popular in Christian circles to bash the Roman Emperor Constantine as a bogeyman – the founder of a wholly bad Christendom model in Western history. It is also a way to score easy points in academic circles, since it conforms to politically correct conventions in the universities. Any Christian who desires and works to see a strong influence for the Christian faith shaping cultural and political life is accused of being “Constantinian” – and is therefore also regarded as a dangerous theocrat ominously lurking, waiting to destroy people’s freedom at the earliest opportunity. Such a perspective is
not only ignorant but a base ingratitude for the incalculable blessings that came to the Western world through the ecclesiastical culture of Christendom, such as the freedom of the church, the university, canon law, hospitals, incredible music and arts and much more besides. And there is certainly much for the believer to be thankful for in looking back on the Christianizing of the ancient emperor in Byzantium – most notably the cessation of a terrible and protracted persecution of Christians. A common response to pointing out such benefits is the glib romanticizing of persecution as an ideal state for the church by pious Western believers who have never experienced it – which is, to put it mildly, naïve. Worse, to pretend to wish for such a situation in the name of growth or spiritual health for the church in our time is the epitome of zeal without knowledge and not knowing what spirit we are of (Prov. 19:2; Luke 9:55-56). The apostles urged the church to pray for political leaders and all those in high positions so that Christians would be left in peace to live quiet, godly lives. They did not intercede for state-sanctioned persecution for the sake of church growth or rooting out nominality in Christian congregations (1 Tim. 2:1-2). In fact, Paul used his political rights as a Roman citizen to escape flogging and persecution, and appealed his own case all the way to Caesar to avoid execution by the Jews (Acts 22:25ff; Acts 25:1-27). While they endured courageously, the early church clearly did not view persecution as an ideal, and the fourth century believers would have regarded the conversion of the emperor Constantine as a mighty work of God’s deliverance – which it most certainly was! That being said, it must also be recognized that the transition from a state of persecution in the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
The Church, Society & The Kingdom of God
early centuries to what relatively quickly became one of power and wealth for the heads of some of the churches under Constantine brought with it a great many temptations which became the occasion for gradual internal decay within the church – just as the temptation to compromise with progressive culture for the easy life in North America is a cause of internal decay in modern evangelicalism. Moreover, though leaving internal church affairs to the bishops, Constantine believed he was appointed by God as the bishop for external affairs. And, while he did many good things, like the ending of a bloodthirsty death cult in the frenzied arenas of the Roman Empire, the long-term results of his conflation of church and civil governmental power were very mixed, both in the East and West. He unquestionably set the stage for a conflict between church and state. Today still, the Orthodox or Greek church is built on governmental authority, and prior to the Russian Revolution, the czar had the same power in the Russian church as Constantine had claimed for himself. The result of this early misunderstanding of the church’s proper function produces difficulties in discerning the nature, jurisdiction and calling of the Christian church in relation to the rest of society (especially the state). Sean L. Field, history professor at the University of Vermont in an article on the rise of royal power in France, noted that by the end of the Capetian period in 1328, ”France… was imagined as a ’new holy land’ and the French as a ‘new chosen people,’ with the royal family appointed to defend the kingdom on God’s behalf.”1 And France was not the only European power in the Late Middle Ages and beyond with the habit of conflating the church institute, the state, and the kingdom of God. Especially prior to the Reformation, there was a profound lack of clarity among Christians surrounding the character, task and jurisdiction of the church as it relates to God’s kingdom in the earth – and much confusion persisted after the Reformation. In recent decades, a profound fog has descended and thickened among Western evangelicals around the same issue with significant consequences resulting for God’s people as culture continues to de-Christianize at a rapid rate. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
So, in this article I want to consider the nature of the church in its relationship to other social entities and societal institutions – especially the state. This will of necessity involve exploring the church’s relation to the kingdom of God. “...it has become I believe that choosing between a revival of the ecclesiastical culture of Christendom popular in or the acceptance of a radically relativized Christian circles place for Christianity and the church to bash the in a normalized secular culture is a false Roman Emperor dilemma. These are not the only ways of Constantine as a thinking about the church and the role and bogeyman – the responsibility of Christians in relation to society. This vital subject will involve unfounder of a wholly tangling some theological and philosophibad Christendom cal knots and escaping a historical maze of model in Western confusion regarding the church and her history.” important relation to other spheres of life established by God. CONFUSING THE ROLES OF CHURCH AND STATE
As hinted already, the difficult challenge of properly situating the church’s relationship to human society and the kingdom of God is best illustrated by exploring the longstanding struggle between the church and state. In fact, it is the very best place to start because this issue has been critically important in shaping ideas about the nature of the church, the character of national cultures and the regulation of socio-political life in the West. At the outset, it must be readily acknowledged that the institutional church has frequently claimed a role for itself in society that goes well beyond anything Scripture teaches about the life and function of the instituted church within a social order. Abraham Kuyper pointed out: While we…may not place church and state over against each other as two heterogeneous powers, history shows how very difficult it is to define the correct relationship between the two. Both of them are to blame for this. It is certainly not only the heroes of the state that restricted the rightful position of the church; there were just as many attempts on the part of the church to extend its power beyond legitiFALL 2019
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mate boundaries. The old battle between pope and emperor continued after the reformation, albeit in a different form.2
During the history of Christendom, ecclesiastical authorities often sought to accrue to the church institute powers and jurisdiction properly belonging to the state (and other spheres of life), thereby creating a kind of societal ecclesiocracy. However, the emergence of this situation is completely understandable when viewed in historical context. The early church, rooted in the scrip“The early church, tures, understood that the gospel had in view a worldwide kingdom and emrooted in the pire of Jesus Christ; the kingdoms of scriptures, understood the earth were becoming the kingdoms that the gospel had of our Lord and of His Christ (Rev. in view a worldwide 11:15). Moreover, in the present age, kingdom and empire Jesus Christ is ruler of the kings of the of Jesus Christ...” earth (Rev. 1:5; Ps. 2). The preaching of this gospel of the kingdom was for all people under heaven and the nations were to be taught and discipled in obedience to everything Christ commanded (Matt. 28:16-20). Moreover, in the context of this worldwide kingdom the church as Christ’s spiritual body and called out people was ultimately one and catholic – which simply means universal. There was nothing wrong with this scriptural understanding of the extent of the dominion and empire of Jesus Christ (cf. Ps. 2; 110). However, as the Roman Empire broke into Eastern and Western parts, leading to the division of a Greek Orthodox and Western church, over time imperial Rome emerged in the foreground, dominated by a relatively undifferentiated hierarchical power structure in which church and state had become entwined in one another. Kuyper’s observation of the result is telling: When the imperial power of Rome faded, then the ecclesiastical influence of the bishop of Rome increased. It was inevitable that the ecclesiastical power, which continued to develop under this hierarchical presidency of the pope, became the competitor to the decaying political unity…the Roman Empire…gradually crumbled altogether.… And since the FALL 2019
significance of the political unity of power continually diminished, it was inevitable that the ecclesiastical power – which even more strongly possessed a universal character – eventually overshadowed the political power. This could change only when the Roman Empire was transferred to the Germanic nations as the “Holy Roman Empire,” but this happened by making an ever-stronger opposition between emperor and pope. The doctrine of the two swords entered the world…; the pope was to be honored as the representative of Christ, and therefore all worldly power should be subject to Rome’s tribunal.3
This meant that in much of Europe the word of the pope became effective law. This view of the church itself as a universally instituted power over all life was reinforced in the High and Late Middle Ages because Roman Catholic theology, as mediated through the Aristotelianism of Thomas Aquinas, regarded the church as belonging to a domain of grace, above and superior to nature.4 This involved a strictly hierarchical view of reality and society with the church perched at the top as the gateway to eternal perfection and bliss – the state playing a support role in bringing people close to earthly moral perfection. The church’s ‘super-natural’ theology of grace, a donum supperadditum (an added gift) meant that Christian culture had to be an ecclesiastical culture – that is, largely led and governed by the instituted church – upheld by the authority and ecclesiastical sanction of the pope over kings and commoners. In other words, the various aspects and spheres of life needed to be churchified and brought within the wide embrace of ecclesiastical authority if they were to be purified and have lasting value. Church involvement or oversight was seen as sanctifying otherwise profane activities and spheres of life. The church hierarchy of the Middles Ages was thus entrenched in a protracted struggle with numerous princes and emperors to control the affairs of various realms and kingdoms, sometimes even employing the power of the sword to accomplish its ends; a power that God had clearly Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
The Church, Society & The Kingdom of God
given to the state (cf. Rom. 13:1-4), not to the institutional church. For as long as this supposedly sacred realm of the church (an upper storey of grace) held sway over nature (a lower storey of nature including the secular state), a semblance of Christian society could be maintained in the form of a unified ecclesiastical culture. But with the Renaissance at the end of the Middle Ages, the overarching authority of the church institution was steadily undermined and the tenuous union of nature (reason, family, state, education, arts etc.,) and grace (the church with her ecclesiastical authority and theology) was shattered. The so-called realm of ‘nature’ no longer wanted the ‘super-natural’ to rule over or supervise it and the West began secularizing. Along with the Renaissance came the rise of universities and a concurrent spiritual decay in the church – both meant growing resistance to an ecclesiastical domination of life. As a consequence, the church of Rome’s authority steadily weakened. People began to feel that the relationship of church and state was distorted by the assertion that civil authority was derived, in part, from the bishop of Rome. The desire for renewal and reformation in church and society culminated in the sixteenth century Reformation, which split the Western church in two. “The papist power lost its universal significance and the church, after the attempt to lord it over the state, now in turn became subject to the power of the state.”5 The subjection of the church to the state proved just as damaging to both the church and society. Despite the Reformation, which broke emphatically with Rome, different protestant churches sought to have themselves established as the official church of a given state or realm. This arrangement where the state assumes an effective leadership over the church is called caesaropapism. Under Martin Luther’s leadership, since the churches in Germany needed the support of German princes to break the hierarchical power of Rome, the tendency was to subject the church more extensively to the state. Just as in Eastern orthodox countries where the state had assumed supremacy over the church even without a reformation, in Lutheran domains the princes were Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
given power not just over the church, but claimed a spiritual influence within it, receiving episcopal rank to function as leaders with Luther’s agreement. The Church of England established by Henry VIII also effectively broke with Rome. Here the regal head of state became the head of the church. A little later in the seventeenth century, even the evangelical Scots, negotiating with the English Parliament in conflict with Charles I, sought to have Presbyterianism established as the official state church in England and failed – in part because many of the puritans in the Cromwellian era favoured the independence of the churches. However, with the return of Charles II in 1660, a series of Acts were eventually passed called the Clarendon Code which persecuted protestants who were not part of the Church of England. Despite all this, with the Calvinistic branch of the reformation, a different view of the church’s relationship to the state did begin to emerge – a theme we will return to. It is true that these “... with the reformed protestant churches initially Renaissance at needed the military might of their rulers the end of the to resist Spain, Austria and France to preMiddle Ages, vent the destruction of Protestantism in its infancy, but the theological resources to rethe overarching ject the Roman view (that saw the church authority of the institute as over civil government) and the church institution Lutheran view (that saw the state ruling was steadily over the church) were present and ready undermined to be developed where a truly independent and the tenuous church influenced political life by means other than government establishment, union of nature.. subsidy or control. and grace was Ever since the Enlightenment, secularization has primarily been pursued by seeking to jettison not just the church institute, but God Himself from all aspects of the ‘lower storey’ of ‘nature’ altogether (most of everyday life and culture) in order to maximize space for the ‘free play’ of the human personality. This has pushed the old unified ecclesiastical vision of Rome further and further back into its own microcosm where the conflation of church and state remains most overt. In Vatican City – an independent city state enclaved within Rome (the smallest sovereign state in the world) – the state is ruled by an absolute elective monarch, the pope. Though
shattered.”
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a distinct entity, Vatican City is under the dominion and sovereign authority of the Holy See. The Vatican’s legal system is distinct from that of Italy and the Bishop of Rome is head of state and church, exercising ex-officio supreme legislative, executive, and judicial power. The fault, however, has not solely resided with the church. Historically the state has regularly sought to usurp the authority and role of the church. We have seen that in caesaropapism in the east and west, it was often governments and states that for political purposes wanted the official establishment of particular churches so that they could be controlled, utilized or manipulated. Even today, the British Prime Minister is required to play an important role in the selection of the Archbishop of Canterbury which, since they are political appointees, has significant implications for the established English church. Due in part to their positions of political power and state support, compromised or faithless bishops often play the role of chaplains to the secular state in the House of Lords, rubber-stamping the progressive drift rather than standing faithfully for the truth of the gospel. The British monarch is also Defensor fidei (defender of the faith), but this has meant little or nothing in recent decades to arrest decline and decay in the establishment. Despite its many faults, at least in this system the Church of England has been historically regarded as something important and unique in society and could expect a certain amount of respect, protection and recognition from civil government. However, in the Erastian collegial system which obtains in places like the Netherlands, there is no material difference between a church, a mosque, a Buddhist temple, a synagogue, or a sports club. They are simply regarded by the state as various ‘societies’ which government must ensure will respect civil law and not hinder individual freedom. There is no recognition in government that God is at work in a special way in the life and witness of Christian churches, nor do they enjoy a unique independence that would distinguish them from a mosque, a soccer club or a society of Jedi knights. Churches have become ‘societies’ to be controlled and managed by the ‘neutral’ state. Kuyper writes: FALL 2019
Caesaropapism assumes power over the church, and then the church turns to stone. If the modern state denies the autonomous character and higher right of Christ’s church, then the church degenerates into the status of a society or an entirely ordinary association.6
At the more extreme end of state interference and control, in various dictatorships of the modern era the church has been grossly assaulted, used and manipulated. In Nazi Germany for example, Hitler sought to seize control of the national church and use it to further his own messianic claims. The German Evangelical Church in the grip of caesaropapism had a long and misguided tradition of loyalty to the state. In the 1920s, a movement emerged within this church called the “German Christians” (Deutsche Christen). Under the influence of the Nazi state in the 1930s, these people embraced many aspects of Nazi thinking and sought the creation of a national “Reich Church” which promoted a nazified version of Christianity. In opposition to the “German Christians” a “Confessing Church” (Bekennende Kirche) emerged. Their Barmen Confession of Faith asserted that the church’s allegiance was to God and Scripture and not to any earthly Führer. The German Evangelical church was thus divided and a struggle within German Protestantism ensued. Many of the Confessing Church leaders were persecuted, betrayed, imprisoned or executed. Historian Frank Dikotter notes the quasi-priestly claims of various twentieth century dictators: Hitler presented himself as a messiah united with the masses in a mystical, quasi-religious bond. Mussolini encouraged feelings of devotion and worship characteristic of Christian piety. There were holy sites, holy pictures, pilgrimages, the hope of a healing touch from the leader. In the Soviet Union, even as the Orthodox Church came under siege, a new religion under the red star appeared, with a corner dedicated to Lenin in factories, offices, restaurants, some of them real altars decorated with ribbons and wreaths. 7 Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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Conflict, confusion and usurpation as well as manipulation, impersonation and control have thus been commonplace in the history of the West in the relation of church and state – each seeking supremacy over the other at different times and in various circumstances. As Christianity has declined, Western society has sought to renegotiate its relationship to the church (secularization) and reinterpret its own Christian history. At the same time, believers have been left wondering how to understand the role of the church in the current socio-cultural order. WHAT IS THE CHURCH?
To begin to unpack this church-state-society problem, a close look at the nature of the church is needed. In view of the fact that religion is basic to all of life (whether Christian, Islamic, pagan, humanistic etc.,) and the faith aspect of human life touches all the areas of our experience in the world, many Christians intuitively recognize that Christianity must be a faith for all of life. That is, they recognize that Christ’s claims about Himself, His kingdom and people, must be very important since they appear all-encompassing and universal. However, difficulties arise in considering the way these claims apply to the church (Grk. ekklesia), His called-out people. The term ekklesia is rendered from the Hebrew Qahal and Edah which were used as the standing names for the congregation of Israel. It is this question concerning the application of Christ’s claims which occasions confusion as to the nature of the church and how the church should relate to the state and other social entities and institutions – especially in the present context of re-paganization in culture. For example, should the church institute assert itself and its beliefs over other social entities and institutions as the primary agent of the kingdom, or are the kingdom of God and the church institute basically identical so that Christ’s sovereign reign need only be manifest in the life of the gathered church? Alternatively, is the reality of Christ’s kingdom to shape all of life and culture? To address this, we need to begin by briefly asking ourselves what the church is, and what the church is meant to do. This will allow us to consider the relationship of Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
the church and the kingdom of God and then to define an ideal relationship of the church institute to the state and other societal institutions. In the scriptures, Christ promises to build His church (Matt. 16:18) – a new gathered people united into one community by the preaching of the gospel. This people, both Jew and Gentile, are those that recognize Jesus as messiah to replace the old faithless congregation of Israel. Among this new people are manifest the powers of the world to come. Willem Ouweneel correctly identifies five different meanings of the Christian church found in the New Testament. First, we notice a worldwide, transcendent, invisible church which is the body of Christ, transcending any temporal period, from its origin to the second coming (Eph. 3:9-11; 5:23-24, 32). Second, we can identify a worldwide, immanent-historical church (Eph. 2:21; Col. 2:19), which is the visible church here on earth that through development and growth, ruin and renewal traverses a certain history. It comprises all true be“...Christ’s claims lievers, spread over the whole earth, in all about Himself, times and places. Third, we have the worldHis kingdom and wide concretely actual church – the totality people, must be of believers at this given moment who are very important here on earth (Gal. 1:13). Then we can also speak of the local church, which is the since they appear totality of believers in a city, town or vilall-encompassing lage (Acts 8:1; 13:1; 15:4; Rom. 16:1; Rev. and universal.” 2-3). In this sense the Greek ekklesia can also be used in the plural (1 Cor. 16:1; 2 Cor. 8:1; Rev. 1:4) and can refer to the meeting of the local church (1 Cor. 11:18; Eph. 3:21; Col. 4:16). Finally, we can speak of the church as a part of the local church that may meet in various places like the home (Acts 5:14; 12:12; Rom. 16:3-5).8 In present evangelical usage, the worldwide, transcendent element is typically overlooked. People tend to speak of the church as a building or as having a regional meaning like the Church of England or the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church of Germany. We tend not to think in the broader terms of Scripture’s view of the church. In addition, many denominations have arisen in the course of history which consist of various geographically local congregations – more or less formally organized within a given hierarchy or FALL 2019
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administration. So, when people speak of the Church of England for example, or the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches, we encounter a different meaning of church to any of the five mentioned in the Bible. This historical development is not itself wrong, but is important to note because, when we speak of “the church” teaching, evangelizing, engaging the community or doing various other things, we do not mean the invisible universal body of Christ, or the “...in a strict sense, immanent-historical visible church as a whole, but rather this or that locally“the church” doesn’t instituted congregation or denominateach or evangelize or tion. Moreover, in a strict sense, “the discipline; different church” doesn’t teach or evangelize or teachers and discipline; different teachers and indiindividuals within viduals within local congregations or local congregations or denominations teach and evangelize, with elders and pastors who discipline. denominations teach
and evangelize, with elders and pastors who discipline.”
So, what authority and jurisdiction does the local church institute have apart from singing, praying, preaching, evangelizing and celebrating the Lord’s Supper? Ouweneel points out: If we could say at all that the church has authority, then this authority applies at most to itself, its own members, and this through its elders. There is no such thing in the Bible as “the” church exercising authority over other societal relationships, over families, over society, even over the state…; this is pure scholasticism, a certain protestant denomination now usurping the position that the Roman Catholic Church had during the Middle Ages.… As an immanent community of people, an association with rulers and regulations, church councils and church fees, every church denomination is, from a purely structural point of view, a societal relationship like any other.9
It would make no sense to suggest, for example, that the universal church has authority over certain areas of a Christian’s life – how could that ever be applied meaningfully? It is only local elders who have a limited authority over the believer in the life of the local church. FALL 2019
Why is this important and does this somehow undermine the importance of the Christian church? Firstly, there is nothing here that minimizes the critical importance and significance of the gathered congregation of believers in local churches for worship, prayer, preaching, the sacraments, and the privilege of church discipline. What it shows, however, is that we cannot transfer the significance, jurisdiction or authority of Christ’s universal-transcendent body and kingdom reign, to the life of any local and historically realized congregation or denomination. Nor can we turn any instituted expression of the church of Christ into “the” church that is now exercising this or that power and authority over other spheres of life. It is Christ alone who exercises power and authority through believers in all spheres of life: In living my Christian life, my marriage, my family, my local congregation, and even my Christian schools and associations, are equally important, as autonomous expressions of the one kingdom of God. In each of these societal relationships, I am under the Lordship of Christ. As such my membership of the local congregation is not more important than my being a Christian husband, parent, professor, businessman, and party member…; the kingdom of God on earth encompasses all these societal associations.10
If this were not so, one’s relationship to the local church congregation would be elevated over all other supposedly “common institutions,” (like marriage, family or vocation) just as “grace” is supposedly elevated over “nature” in Roman Catholic and all expressions of scholastic philosophy and theology. To be clear, what is not being said here is that being a businessman or husband will last forever. The local Christian school my children attend is not an eternal reality like being a member of the invisible, transcendent body of Christ. However, my local church or even denomination is constantly changing in various ways and will not last forever either. Locally instituted churches are not permanent – just consider the warnings historically fulfilled against the churches in the book of Revelation. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
The Church, Society & The Kingdom of God
It might be objected that the scriptures are addressed to the church, marking the church out as superior to all other areas of life. But this would be at best a half truth. The Old Testament is not addressed to the church as instituted by the Lord through the disciples, but to all God’s people throughout all of history. Moreover, some of it is clearly directed at the unbelieving pagan world, like the prophecies of Amos. The Bible reveals that the Word of God comes to all kinds of men and nations, in all kinds of places, both believers and unbelievers, Jews and Gentiles. It is true of course that the apostle Paul did not write letters (that we know of ) to Christian schools, political parties or companies (there weren’t any at the time), but to churches (plural). More often, however, his letters are addressed simply to Christians as saints, that is to believers (Rom. 1:7; Eph. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:2). Only when writing to the Corinthians and Thessalonians are churches addressed explicitly. The other letters are addressed simply to Christians, “and as such they are not only church members, but also Christian husbands and wives, Christian parents and children, Christian employers and employees (Eph. 5:22-6:9; Col. 3:18-4:1; 1 Pet. 3:1-7).”11 We need to be careful to distinguish properly what we mean when speaking about “the church” – because if we go astray here, the consequences are far-reaching. My local congregation or denomination, if faithful to an orthodox Christian confession, is only one small, temporal, visible expression of the universal, transcendent and invisible body over which Christ Himself is absolute head. There can be no question that, as Geerhardus Vos notes, “the kingdom-forces which are at work, the kingdom-life which exists in the invisible sphere, find expression in the kingdom-organism of the visible church.”12 There is kingdom power at work in Christ’s church. In addition, the authority exercised in faithful churches derives from Christ, not men. However, from this it does not follow, as Vos recognizes, that ”the visible church is the only outward expression of the visible kingdom.”13 To borrow a biological metaphor, we can think of the church as organism – the universal body of Christ consisting of all believers serving Christ as Lord in Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
all of life – and of the locally instituted church which includes the specific organisation and tasks of church elders, pastors and the various offices as well as the obligations of members of the congregation to each other. This called-out people are then given the task of going out into all the world with both the message and reconciling life of the kingdom of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM
This more precise description of the church highlights both the intimate relation as well as the vital distinction between the church and the kingdom of God. Vos notes that “the conception of the kingdom is common to all periods of our Lord’s teaching, that of the church emerges only at two special points of His ministry as recorded in Matthew 16:18 and 18:17.”14 The word for Kingdom in the New Testament is basileia. It is the significance and power of this now “Locally instituted manifest reality, first organized amongst churches are the disciples by the Lord, that the gospel not permanent as a whole has in view. Although occasion– just consider ally the concepts of the kingdom and the the warnings church seem almost parallel (because of historically their intimate relation), Herman Ridderfulfilled against bos in his classic work The Coming of the Kingdom notes: the churches [W]e should point out that the concept basileia nowhere occurs in the sense of this idea of the ekklesia. Nor is it used in the sense that the kingdom of God in its provisional manifestation on earth would be embodied in the form and organization of the church…; by the term kingdom of God we can denote not only the fulfilling and completing action of God in relation to the entire cosmos, but also various facets of this all-embracing process. Thus, e.g., the territory within which this divine action occurs and in which the blessings of the kingdom are enjoyed is called the basileia of God or that of heaven (cf. Matt. 5:20; 11:11; 23:13).15
in the book of Revelation.”
Clearly, the scriptural teaching about being in the kingdom of God or entering the kingdom of God as a fulfilled reality through Christ is not FALL 2019
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describing a person’s admittance into a temporal Christian community. The Bible simply does not use basileia in the sense of “church,” yet it never minimizes the importance of the church as the new people on mission in the revelation of Christ and His kingdom. The setting aside of empirical Israel as the covenant people and the formation of a new people as the seed of Abraham and children of the kingdom is realized in the coming of Christ and is explicitly taught by Him: ”Therefore say I unto you, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation (people) bringing forth the fruits thereof ” (Matt. 21:4346). The salvation of the kingdom is being given to a new people to be gathered in by the messiah. In this context we find both concepts of the kingdom and a new people of God. This called out people will manifest and bring forth the fruits of the kingdom. Church and kingdom therefore are not identical. Ridderbos is incisive: The basileia is the great divine work of salvation in its fulfilment and consummation in Christ; the ekklesia is the people elected and called by God and sharing in the bliss of the basiliea. Logically the basileia ranks first, and not the ekklesia. The former, therefore, has a much more comprehensive content. It represents the all-embracing perspective, it denotes the consummation of all history, brings both grace and judgment, has cosmic dimensions, fills time and eternity. The ekklesia in all this is the people who in this great drama have been placed on the side of God in Christ by virtue of the divine election and covenant. They have been given the divine promise, have been brought to manifestation and gathered together by the preaching of the gospel, and will inherit the redemption of the kingdom now and in the great future.16
The gathered church remains critical in all of this because “the ekklesia is the fruit of the revelation of the basileia; and conversely, the basileia is inconceivable without the ekklesia. The one is inseparable from the other without, however, the one merging into the other.”17 The church then is to be constantly moved, motivated and inspired FALL 2019
by the reality that as God’s people, the body of Christ, we are chosen instruments of the basileia in teaching God’s commandments, preaching and applying God’s Word to our lives, living out in all its fullness the kingdom charter revealed in Scripture – a charter which demands all things be reconciled to God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:19). The clear distinction and relation of the church and kingdom of God helps us to recognise several important things. First, it enables us to appreciate and value the important role the church has in its own God-ordained sphere and to be committed to its local visible expression. Here we worship together, are taught the Word, receive the sacraments, enjoy faithful discipline and care for one another in an accountable community with other believers. Second, it helps us to see that the calling of the Christian believer is much bigger and more comprehensive in scope than participation in the instituted church as a worshipping community. A kingdom vision frees and liberates the believer’s entire life in all its aspects (not only from ecclesiastical domination), to be concretely subject to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and His Word – making the totality of the Christian’s life in all spheres an instrument of the kingdom of God. As Vos writes: [The] kingship of God, as his recognized and applied supremacy, is intended to pervade and control the whole of human life in all its forms of existence. This the parable of the leaven plainly teaches. These various forms of human life have each their own sphere in which they work and embody themselves. There is a sphere of science, a sphere of art, a sphere of the family and of the state, a sphere of commerce and industry. Whatever one of these spheres comes under the controlling influence of the principle of the divine supremacy and glory, and this outwardly reveals itself, there we can truly say that the kingdom of God has become manifest.18
The detailed application of this is the calling of every believer – that every province of human life and thought be brought under the sway of God’s kingdom. Yet critically, as Vos notes, “it was not Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
The Church, Society & The Kingdom of God
His [Christ’s] intention that this result should be reached by making human life in all its spheres subject to the visible church.”19 THE PROPER RELATION OF CHURCH, STATE, AND SOCIETY
This brings us to our final argument concerning the way in which kingdom life works itself out and the role the church plays in relation to other spheres of life. With the basileia/ekklesia distinction in place we can now see more clearly the various errors in regard to the relationship of church and state and society. We began this article by noting a false dilemma that is typically present in modern evangelical thinking: pursue a return to an ecclesiastical cultural model with a formally or informally established church taking charge in various aspects of cultural and political life, or acknowledge the secular state as the new unifying principle, accept the de-Christianization of Western society and spiritualize the kingdom of God as pertaining only to the life of the church institute and the heart of the individual believer. The first of these errors is to think that relating Christianity to the various spheres or aspects of society requires relating the church institute, its offices and functions, directly or indirectly to everything possible in society. In short, the idea is that one needs to churchify life. If the gospel is to have an impact culturally, it is believed, then the church itself must exercise as much influence or control as possible in families, civic, and cultural life. The church must have churchmen in high positions, run schools and universities, govern hospitals and charities, and in one way or another insert the church’s offices and functions into as many areas of life as possible. Historically, as the church’s influence in this regard steadily waned after the Renaissance, more and more spheres of life were being differentiated and appreciated in Western society. The Roman Catholic Church’s solution to recognizing these various societal spheres as having a degree of independence, while retaining an ecclesiastical cultural vision, was to posit the principle of subsidiarity. Here, a relative autonomy is given to various “subordinate parts” or groups and assoEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
ciations, while being conceived as part of an allencompassing state. However, this natural state is in turn superseded and shaped by the church as a super-natural institute of grace. The idea was introduced into Catholic social teaching by Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler of Mainz in the 1850s, but was built on an earlier Thomistic understanding of life.20 Aquinas had viewed the state as the all-inclusive total community in the realm of nature, embracing all other spheres of societal life in a whole-parts relation. Of course, the state’s jurisdiction did not extend to the church as a super-natural domain of grace – the state was only the portal to that domain under the church’s supervision. In this model, the family is at the bottom of a hierarchy of communities that culminates in the state, supervised and spiritually overseen by the church. This hierarchical structure is the core principle of subsidiarity. This basically pagan view does not recognise or appreciate the unique character of the various social spheres of life as ordained by God. There is a vague conception of the ‘common good’ to be pursued by the state, but no criterion for achieving this. Thomism and Romanism certainly do not want a state absolutism, but subsidiarity provides no defense against it. It is perhaps for this reason that historically Roman Catholic countries in the modern era struggled with dictatorships, whereas protestant countries like the United States and Canada became successful democracies. The attempt of the Roman Church to maintain its own freedom, while holding together church and state in a union by making the state the allencompassing natural institution, supervised by the church as a super-natural one, is both unscriptural and a historic failure. Yet it contains an idea that has been incorporated into much of modern evangelicalism which likewise tends to see the church as a super-natural domain of grace and the state as a common, natural and neutral area of life under God’s providence, vaguely charged with seeking the “common good.” In this evangelical version, the state and most of socio-cultural life is disconnected not only from the church institute, but from God’s rule, His Word and His redemptive kingdom altogether. FALL 2019
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Ultimately, this arrangement is a violation of both a creational and scriptural principle because “the state does not grant existence to any non-state sphere sovereign social entity. It merely has to acknowledge that, on equal footing, there are multiple distinct and sphere sovereign societal entities.”21 These variations on a theme fail either to properly distinguish the church and the kingdom of God or they view the church as the principal or only agent of that kingdom. However, as we have seen, since the church cannot be merged with the kingdom of God itself, the instituted historical church (of whichever tradition) does not have the burden of imposing its confession or authority on the state or the rest of society – it does not need to control or ecclesiasticize society by bringing it under its control. The unique spheres of family, state, academy, club etc., are not the church, nor are they subordinate parts of the church. However, and critically, this does not mean they are not to be Christian, influenced and shaped the gospel, the Word of God and Lordship of Christ. It only “The unique spheres means they are not required to be under ecclesiastical control. of family, state,
academy, club etc., are not the church, nor are they subordinate parts of the church. However, and critically, this does not mean they are not to be Christian...”
The knee-jerk reaction of much contemporary evangelicalism to deChristianization and secularization in Western culture outside of the church has been to assume a need to dissolve any relationship between Christianity and public life and society (including the state), by collapsing the church and the kingdom of God into one another so that in rightly recognizing the need to separate church and state in terms of jurisdiction and function, they have effectively separated God, His kingdom and His Word from societal and cultural life. Many of the intellectuals amongst them then end up defending the totalitarian democracy of individualist continental liberalism. This tries to hold together two intractably conflicting principles, namely, a radical autonomy of the individual will and the notion of a higher moral law. The result has been a naked secular individualism alongside a sceptical subjectivism. These find institutional expression in a supposedly ‘neutral’ state. Not only is such
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a state anything but religiously neutral, it gradually undermines all social order. As K. L. Grasso points out: Contemporary liberalism subverts the foundations of democratic government because the thoroughgoing subjectivism towards which liberalism inexorably tends precludes in principle an affirmation of an objective and universally obligatory order of justice and rights, and the dignity of the human person. The resultant culture of unbridled individualism and subjectivism is scarcely a fertile soil for the cultivation of republican virtues on which democracy depends.22 SPHERE SOVEREIGNTY
The only viable solution to the crisis of social order and the relationship of Christianity to political and cultural life is in not simply appreciating the separate jurisdiction of church and state, but in recognizing that all spheres of life – family, church, state, education, law, medicine, economic life and business, art and science, and all else besides – are themselves, in their own spheres, made subject to the Lordship of Christ and the Word of God, as equally important aspects of the kingdom of God. This creational and kingdom principle was called Sphere Sovereignty by Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian, stateman and thinker, and it is the polar opposite of subsidiarity. In the Sphere Sovereignty model, the various spheres of life cannot be reduced to one another in a parts-whole relationship in a hierarchical structure. Rather, each area of life (including the family, church and state) enjoys, by virtue of creation, an internal sovereignty. God has established these various areas of life to be governed in terms of their own structural principles, in terms of His Word and subject ultimately to Christ as Lord and king. The state does not grant existence to the family or the church, it must simply recognise them. But neither does a church grant authority to the state by appointing or anointing it. Kuyper writes: When the state and government are bound to God by a bond of their own, even before the church of Christ was there Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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and also without her involvement, then the result is the natural, simplest, and, in comparison with other systems, the most desirable relation of church and state. It is not the church that hands the sceptre to the government…; in the days when Christ was on earth, before his apostles established his churches, Christ himself testified to Pontius Pilate that the power wielded by the Roman emperor and his governor was power given to them by God.23
This does not set aside the obligations of churches to preach righteousness in the public space, and to prophetically speak truth to power. Nor does it diminish the responsibility of all Christians in every area of life and culture to diligently apply their faith and the fulness of the Word of God – whether they are lawyers, politicians, judges, teachers, artists or mechanics. As Kuyper put it: If one at this point asks whether the Christian religion should not also influence public life, the answer is: without a doubt…; but that influence must come to expression along the constitutional route.24
Indeed, there is no part of the cosmos, no nation, no aspect of society or culture that is not being made subject to the Lord Jesus Christ. The family, the church, the school, the courts, parliament or congress are all to be expressions, however fallibly, of the basileia of God. Government expressed in the state is not to be ”ruling over the nation for its own profit, but as a God-ordained power to guard the interests of the nation and to honor God in the nation.”25 In other words, each God-ordained sphere of life, created by His Word, is obligated to be Christian – to submit itself the Christ. It is sometimes objected that this kingdom vision would require some form of establishment, that one church denomination or another must necessarily have its particular confession established if the state was to be genuinely Christian. It is then concluded that to avoid this we are better off with a secular ‘neutral’ state pursuing a vague common good rather than seeking a Christian state that Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
listens to the Word of God. This is evidently false for several reasons. First, a democratic state is run by an elected differentiated public who all bring their beliefs, convictions and moral commitments to their work and service. The vague notion of a common good cannot be left as a contentless abstraction – it is not self-explanatory. The question immediately arises, what is the ‘good’ and how is that to be determined? The reality is that the dominant ideological convictions of a culture are what give shape to the public life of the state. The notion of a state not endorsing some conception of what is true and good within its ideas of “The state does not rights, law, liberties, justice and fairness, as grant existence to it pursues a harmony of legal interest in the public square, is a mirage. As faithful Christhe family or the tians bring biblical faith to bear in public church, it must office, the activity of the state would then simply recognise reflect the impact of Christian principles. Second, in order for the very concept of Christianity to exist (and therefore the idea of a Christian state), a mere Christianity must be definable. There is no reason whatsoever to require that one tradition or confession be imposed by the state to the exclusion of all the others. All genuinely Christian denominations in the West have for centuries shared in common the ecumenical creeds (Apostles’ and Nicene) as a fundamental point of agreement. They have also all regarded (until the invasion of liberalism in the late nineteenth century) the Bible as the Word of God. It is on this ecumenical basis that one could speak of a Christian state.
them. But neither does a church grant authority to the state by appointing or anointing it.”
Thirdly, professing Christian nations and states have existed and continue to exist that have not imposed any particular church’s confession. Both Canada and the United States are good examples of historically Christian nations with no federally established church! Though secularism, humanism and paganism have grown rapidly in North America in the last fifty years and in general the number of Christians continues to decline, Canada was established as a Christian dominion with a national motto drawn from Psalm 72:8. Even its Charter from 1982 began with a preamble recognizing the supremacy of God. The United States, which formally separates church and state (at the FALL 2019
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Federal level), is possibly the most Christian nation the world has ever known – one nation, under God, as originally conceived. The president still takes his oath of office on the Bible (it used to be taken on a Bible opened to Deuteronomy 27-28 which invokes God’s blessing and cursing on a nation for obedience and disobedience). So, it is demonstrably false to equate the ideas of a Christian state or nation with establishment or the necessity to impose one church’s unique confession. It was for these reasons that Kuyper, over a century ago, lauded the situation in the United States: Not a single country can be found in Europe where the relation of state and “Kuyper was church is more blessed than in the right in noting United States. The national governthe immeasurable ment honors God, does not meddle benefits of in ecclesiastical disputes, and is free to set its own course. Conversely, the a free church, church of Christ, far from being an in a free nation, obstacle, instead satisfies life’s needs that recognizes and with the richest variety, has a place honors God.” of honor throughout the entire land, if financially independent, and influences public opinion (and through it the president and Congress); it does so to such a degree that no European national church can even begin to be compared with the powerful influence of America’s churches on the life of the nation. The churches do not hinder the state in any way, and the state does not place any obstacle in the way of the church’s life. Both have complete autonomy and independence.26
As the United States has seen decline in those confessing the Christian faith, corresponding deChristianization in culture and growing threats to the freedom of the church politically have developed. The American system was designed for a Christian people, and if people continue to wander from the faith, their system of government will continue to come apart. Nonetheless, Kuyper was right in noting the immeasurable benefits of a free church, in a free nation, that recognizes and honors God. In such a situation no one church’s confession is imposed, and godly laws and liberty are among the many FALL 2019
fruits of life lived in light of the Word of God. Both Canada and the United States have much to be thankful for in this regard, so much now hangs in the balance. Where a Christian confession among the people is lost, the freedom of the church and God’s people will go with it. Our day is one of great danger and also of great opportunity. Which one it becomes for the generations that follow very much depends on our level of commitment to the Lordship of Christ today.
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Sean L. Field, “Holy Women and the Rise of Royal Power in France,” History Today, Vol 69, Issue 10, October 2019, 57. 2 Abraham Kuyper, On the Church: Collected Works in Public Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016), 383. 3 Kuyper, On the Church, 387. 4 According to Bennie van der Walt, no less than 66 popes in the course of history have referred to Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy and authority. Aquinas was declared a Saint by the Roman church in 1323 and his thought remains critical to understanding Roman Catholicism as well as a resurgent scholasticism amongst evangelicals. 5 Kuyper, On the Church, 390. 6 Kuyper, On the Church, 413. 7 Frank Dikotter, “The Great Dictators,” History Today, Vol 69, Issue 10, October 2019, 73. 8 Willem Ouweneel, The World is Christ’s: A Critique of Two Kingdoms Theology (Toronto: Ezra Press, 2017), 252-254. 9 Ouweneel, The World, 256. 10 Ouweneel, The World, 258. 11 Ouweneel, The World, 261. 12 Geerhardus Vos, The Kingdom of God and the Church, (New Jersey: P&R, 1972), 87. 13 Vos, The Kingdom of God and the Church, 87. 14 Vos, The Kingdom of God and the Church, 77. 15 Herman N. Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom (New Jersey: P&R, 1962), 343. 16 Ridderbos, The Coming, 354-355. 17 Ridderbos, The Coming, 355. 18 Vos, The Kingdom of God, 87-88. 19 Vos, The Kingdom of God, 88. 20 D.F.M. Strauss, “Sphere sovereignty, solidarity and subsidiarity,” personal correspondence Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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with the author, October 2019, 99-100. 21 Strauss, Sphere Sovereignty, 114. 22 K. L. Grasso, “Dignitatis Humanae,” in Weigel & Royal, A Century of Catholic Social Thought, Essays on Rerum Novarum and Nine Other Key Documents (Lanham: University Press of America, 1991), 95-113. 23 Kuyper, On the Church, 414. 24 Kuyper, On the Church, 415. 25 Kuyper On the Church, 415. 26 Kuyper, On the Church, 417.
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DAVID ROBINSON REV. DR. DAVID ROBINSON is EICC Fellow for Patristics and Pastoral Theology, and Senior Pastor at Westminster Chapel, Toronto. David has a Ph.D. in Theology from the University of St. Michael’s College (at the University of Toronto), where he studied the history and theology of Early Christianity. His doctoral dissertation translated and analyzed an early Christian commentary on the book of Revelation. He has presented papers at various academic conferences and has published articles in Studia Patristica, Worship, Theoforum, Humanitas, and Revista Vida y Espiritualidad. David also serves as the Ontario/Quebec regional president of Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) and as senior fellow for the Centre for Ancient Christian Studies. David teaches courses in historical theology and biblical studies at Tyndale University College. He lives in Toronto with his wife Megan and three children, Samuel, Leah and Lucas.
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Caring
Pastor FOR YOUR
IN 1795 A BAPTIST pastor named John Stutterd wrote a circular letter addressed to the Baptist churches of the Yorkshire and Lancashire Association. The letter was on the means of reviving and promoting religion and outlined various means for reviving the church, such as a renewed emphasis on the gravity of sin, the love of Christ for sinners, biblical preaching, and family worship, as well as a renewed commitment to regular participation in Sunday worship, the cultivation of brotherly love, evangelism, and fervent prayer. Even today, we would recognize and affirm the need for a renewed commitment in these aspects of the church’s life and ministry; however, the letter identified one commitment that does not immediately come to mind when thinking about revival: caring for pastors. The letter called on churches “to encourage your ministers, in their important work.” Encouraging our pastors is a means of reviving the church. In what follows I want to consider how congregations can better care for their pastors. I write this as a pastor, on behalf of pastors to their congregations. YOUR PASTOR’S HEART IS OPEN TO YOU
Although the apostles were commissioned to the ministry of evangelism, they were also pastors. The Lord Jesus called Peter to tend and feed the flock of Christ (John 21:15-17). John wrote his congregations to assure them of the eternal life they have in the name of the Son of God and he rejoiced greatly to find believers walking in the truth (1 John 5:13; 2 John 1:4). Paul listed his anxious concern for the churches among the various trials and tribulations he endured (2 Cor. 11:28). Paul agonized to see believers grow in faith. He even compared his pastoral ministry to labour pains. He cried out to the Galatians: “my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!” (Gal 4:19)1
As pastors, the apostles persevered in preaching and prayer, longing to see people grow in Christ. “Him we proclaim,” Paul wrote to the Colossians, “warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ” (Col. 1:28). This is the end for which we labour as your pastors, that we may present each one of you mature in Christ. “Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us” – no, we declare with Paul – “our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:5-6). Yes, it is the Spirit who forms Christ in you, but that same Spirit groans within us and causes us to long and labour for your growth in Christ. For this reason, as your pastors, we don’t hold up our titles or degrees as our credentials. We don’t look for endorsements or commendations from others. No, again we say with Paul, “you yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all” (2 Cor. 3:2). For God’s Son has also said to us, “tend my lambs and feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17) and God’s Spirit has impressed you upon our hearts. The Holy Spirit has made us overseers, “to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). One day we will give an account for our care (Heb. 13:17). One day the letter of your life written on our hearts will be read and known by all. Oh, that it would be a good letter! This is why Paul wrote with such candour and conviction to the Corinthians and “with much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears” (2 Cor. 2:4). He loved those God had entrusted to his care. Paul loved them, but he also longed to be loved by them: “We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. You Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Caring For Your Pastor
are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return (I speak as to my children) widen your hearts also.” (2 Cor. 6:11-13) I write this letter to call on our congregations to widen your hearts to your pastors and show them your affection. OPENING YOUR HEARTS TO YOUR PASTOR
There are many practical ways to show affection to your pastor. I will suggest a few in a moment, but only a few, because such affection is personal. It’s your hearts that are open to your pastor. The affection you show is not generic to any pastor. It’s particular, to your pastor. That said, caring for your pastor may be summarized under three general exhortations: (1) let him care for you with joy, (2) pray for him, and (3) appreciate him. LET YOUR PASTOR CARE FOR YOU WITH JOY
Hebrews 13:17-18 is an exhortation to every local church and each local church member: Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. Pray for us. (Heb 13:17-18a)
Do you let your pastor serve with joy or with groaning? There’s no advantage for you if he’s groaning. Advantage is an economic term. There’s no profit in causing your leaders to groan. It’s a bad investment. Giving your leaders cause for joy is a good investment. Joyful pastors are a blessing to the church, but a church that causes its leaders to groan does so at the cost of its own well-being. Hebrews 13:17 gives two commands which promote the joy of your pastor: obey and submit. We live in a society that is suspicious of authority, and the command to obey and submit to pastors sounds a bit strong. What does it mean to obey and submit? We need to consider both commands in turn. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
The word translated obey is not the usual word for obedience in the New Testament. The word used here means “be persuaded.” Pastors are ministers of God’s Word and you’re commanded to receive their teaching with a willingness to be persuaded. This says something about your attitude toward your pastor’s preaching, teaching, and counsel. Be open to it. Receive it with a willingness to be persuaded by it. The second command is to submit to your leaders. This verb carries the idea of yielding to authority. This verse is saying to you, “let your leaders lead, and follow them.” Your pastors are charged with the care of your soul. To submit to them is to recognize their position and authority and to gladly receive the ministry of their pastoral oversight. Paul says you should esteem those who have charge over you “very highly in “Encouraging love because of their work” (1 Thess. 5:13). our pastors is a Your esteem should be hyperbolic – “very means of reviving highly in love” or, more literally, esteem the church.” your pastor with overflowing superabundance in love. But note the reason: because of their work, that is, because “they labour among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you” (1 Thess. 5:12). Submit to your pastor because the Lord has placed him over you and charged him with the care of your soul. Let him do this with joy by submitting to his pastoral oversight and care. Faithful attendance to your pastor’s preaching and teaching ministry will give him joy. A fruitful response to his preaching and teaching ministry will give him greater joy. Give him feedback on his sermons and let him know how the ministry of God’s Word is bearing fruit in your life. Paul says you should “share all good things with the one who teaches” (Gal. 6:6). “All good things” is pretty open-ended, but clearly your pastor should receive something good for his labour. Give him good fruit for his labour and let him see the fruit of his labour in your own life. You are his letter of recommendation. Paul goes on to warn you in Galatians 6:7, “do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” Sow generously into your pastor. Let him care for your soul FALL 2019
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with joy, not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. You will reap what you sow. PRAY FOR YOUR PASTOR
Obey, submit, and pray. Paul asked for prayer, “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many” (2 Cor. 1:11). Pray for your pastor. He needs it. He is blessed and his pastoral ministry is sustained by your faithful intercession. Again, Paul pleaded with the Romans, “I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive togeth“Prayer promotes the er with me in your prayers to God on peace and unity of my behalf ” (Rom 15:30). When you pray for your pastor, you strive together the church, especially with him. Prayer promotes the peace between the members and unity of the church, especially of the congregation between the members of the congreand their pastor.” gation and their pastor. The devil is the divider and he’s doing everything he can to cause division between you and your pastor. The devil is crafty. He’s subtle. Suspicion and distrust can grow out of small misunderstandings or miscommunications, which quickly turn into whispering and murmuring. Don’t murmur against your pastor, pray for him. Give thanks for him and intercede for him. Pray for him because he’s keeping watch over your soul, as one who must give an account. Pray that he would minister with an upright heart and skilled hand. Pray for him because he’s toiling and struggling, so that he may present you mature in Christ. Pray for him because you love him and pray with him because you love him. Pastors are often attacked by a spirit of loneliness and isolation. It will be a great comfort and consolation for him to hold your hand and hear your voice interceding on his behalf. By the love of the Spirit, strive together with him in prayer. APPRECIATE YOUR PASTOR
Paul called on the church in Thessalonica to appreciate its pastors: “we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently FALL 2019
labour among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction” (1 Thess. 5:12). The call to obedience and submission is related to the pastor’s position and ministry; however, the call to appreciation is related to the man himself. It’s personal. If you are to appreciate your pastor, you have to know him. Get to know your pastor. Spend time with him. Talk to him. Get to know his story, his interests, his struggles, his joys. Get to know his wife and kids. What are their interests and needs? Find out how you can practically show your appreciation (babysitting, meals, help around the house, etc.). Appreciate your pastor and his labour among you. Do you appreciate his labour among you? Do you know what he does to care for your soul and serve the church Monday to Saturday, not just on Sundays? Does he have the time and resources he needs to faithfully labour among you? He needs time to pray and study. Is he overburdened with administrative tasks? Relieve that administrative burden. He needs time with his family and he needs Sabbath rest. Is he overburdened with visitation and appointments and meetings? Paul goes on to say in 1 Thessalonians 5:14: “And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.” He calls the brothers, not the pastors, to admonish, encourage, and help. Are the members of your congregation exercising the priesthood of all believers and caring for one another? Are there men in the congregation who will aspire to the noble office of elder and shoulder the pastoral burden with him? How can your congregation help him carry the burden of pastoral ministry? He needs more time for rest, prayer, and study. He needs more time with his family. Give him the time he needs. Give him time and give him resources. Your pastor needs a good library. Does he have a book allowance? Your pastor wants to grow in his ministry and serve you better. Can the church send him to a conference or help him with further education? Ask him what resources he needs to serve you better. Investing in your pastor is a good investment. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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CONCLUSION: CARING FOR YOUR PASTOR
Your pastor loves you. His ministry to you is a labour of love and he longs to see Christ formed in you. He is charged with the care of your soul, for which he must give an account. You are his letter of recommendation, written on his heart by the Spirit. Like Paul, his heart is open to you. May this letter be a small exhortation to examine your own heart to see whether you’re restricted in your affections towards him. Make room in your heart for your pastor and show him loving affection. Esteem him highly because the Lord has placed him over you to care for your soul. Listen to his preaching and counsel. Let the faithfulness and fruitfulness of your life testify to the faithfulness and fruitfulness of his ministry in the Word. He has no greater joy than to hear and see that you are walking in the truth. Pray for him and pray with him. Get to know him and his family and show them your appreciation. Invest in his ministry. Give him the time and resources he needs to serve you well and with joy. Share all good things with him, for you will reap what you sow. Care for your pastor, so that he can care for you. 1
Quotations from Scripture are from the English Standard Version (Crossway, 2011).
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P. ANDREW SANDLIN REV. DR. P. ANDREW SANDLIN is EICC Fellow for Public Theology and Cultural Philosophy, and President of the Center for Cultural Leadership (CCL). Andrew is an ordained minister in and Executive Director of the Fellowship of Mere Christianity, Faculty of Blackstone Legal Fellowship of the Alliance Defending Freedom, and De Jong Distinguished Visiting Professor of Culture and Theology, Edinburg Theological Seminary, a member of the Evangelical Theological Society. He founded CCL in 2001 with the conviction that only eminently-equipped cultural leaders will actually create a new Christian culture — and that only transformed Christians can transform the present anti-Christian culture of the West. Andrew was born into a devout Christian home. He has been preaching and teaching and lecturing for 30 years. A consummate eclectic, Andrew has been a pastor, assistant pastor, youth pastor, Sunday school superintendent, Christian day school administrator, home school father, foundation’s executive vice president, journal editor, scholar, author and itinerant speaker. Andrew is married to Sharon and has five adult children and three grandchildren.
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Christianity IS A
PUBLIC FAITH MANY PEOPLE IN OUR age are com-
ing to realize that the most popular version of conservative Protestant Christianity, the version that was the entrance ramp to the faith for many of us, may be severely, perhaps fatally, deformed. It was a version into which many of us were reared or converted, and it is still the status quo Christianity almost everywhere in the West, not to mention being exported wherever Western missionaries go. It is a form of Christianity that radically truncates the scope of the gospel to the life of the institutional church, our personal prayer and devotions, the hope of heaven when we die, and little else. This is a sobering thing to contemplate. When we come to realize the anemic, incomplete nature of this thing that calls itself Christianity, we might feel disoriented, cheated, or even angry. Could we have been the wrong kind of Christians? Becoming convinced that the Christianity in which we long placed our confidence is frankly the wrong kind of Christianity exacts a psychic toll. I don’t suggest that many (or even any) of my readers are snared in this erroneous version. But I do know that it surrounds many of us, and we’re inclined to assimilate its mistaken assumptions, even if we don’t affirm it. I propose that it also explains one reason why what Francis Schaeffer called “the watching world” has been increasingly reluctant to become Christian. Roderick Campbell writes: How...it may reasonably be asked, do we explain the widespread rejection of the Christian message today? Perhaps the humbling truth is that Christendom has, in large part, abandoned the kind of Christianity which the Bible proclaims, and that those who turn away from the thing which they know as Christianity are wholly ignorant of what true Christianity really is.1
In other words, unbelievers are rejecting Christianity based not on a true presentation, but a pale reflection of it. In a number of ways, today’s conservative Protestant Christianity deviates from the biblical norm. Let’s call the latter normative Christianity,2 because it’s the legitimate faith that God expects His people to believe and practice. I’m focusing on one of the most prominent and pernicious errors of conservative, non-normative Christianity: privatizing the faith. NORMATIVE CHRISTIANITY IS INHERENTLY PUBLIC
First, note that normative Christianity is inherently public. Today when we hear the world “public,” we think government-controlled and financed. We speak of public lands (national parks), or public education (state universities), or public works projects (bridges, airports, freeways). If it’s public, government bureaucrats are directing it, and your tax dollars and mine are financing it. “Private” on the other hand means directed and financed by money earned and spent and directed in the free market. In the mind of Leftists, the public realm is one of fair, charitable, disinterestedness. The government, like a tender, gentle mother, is kindly looking out for all of us — after it raids our wallets, of course, but never mind that. By contrast, Leftism looks down on anything private. Private industry is governed either by greedy business people who oppress their workers, or by individual, uneducated bumpkins who don’t know how to spend her money. Leftist ideology is perpetually trying to commandeer more segments of the private realm for the public realm. And these self-anointed ones are confident they alone are qualified to govern society. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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However, the very division of life into public and private is a distinctly modern development. In most of the ancient world, the social order was the political order.3 It was the political community that held all of society together. 4 Christianity broke that pagan political unity.5 All of life is to be governed by Jesus Christ, not politics. In the medieval world, Christianity pervaded all of life, though unevenly and inconsistently. The church was the centre of life, but kings and other political rulers were subject to the church. There was a constant tussle for dominance between the two. Christianity was not a private affair, while secularism was not a public affair. There was no secularism. That division came later. When I use the term public, I mean the realm of life beyond what’s between our two ears, beyond our family and church, beyond our circle of friends. I mean education, music, politics, economics, pop culture, technology, and other spheres of life practiced beyond the individual, family, and church. We sometimes speak of “the public,” meaning people as they act outside these other institutions. That’s what I mean by public. My chief thesis is that normative Christianity is inherently public. SCOPE
The first thing to understand is that Christianity is public in scope. Our Founder’s ministry was public. Jesus Christ’s first adult act of ministry was to read and declare the Old Testament in the synagogue, publicly, where He’d been reared as a child. He then taught everywhere: out on the field, on hills, at the seaside, and to large groups gathered in various homes. He taught His disciples privately, but then commissioned them to minister publicly. Almost all of His kingdom in-breaking healings and exorcisms were public acts. The Pharisees and Sadducees and Herodians and other apostate Jews opposed Jesus precisely because His ministry was not private; He was declaring His Father’s will publicly, and they hated Him for that. Jesus wouldn’t have been a threat to their authority had He kept His ministry private. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
His death on the cross atoning for the sins of the world was a gruesome, public act. While His resurrection was private, the many witnesses to His resurrected life were public. The dramatic growth of the new covenant church began at the post-resurrection Pentecost celebration, highly public and visible. At Athens Paul declared the gospel in the marketplace, in the synagogue, and at the Areopagus (Acts 17:16-21). Peter and Paul and the other apostles were constantly declaring the word publicly, and they were punished and jailed for doing this. They were accused of turning the world upside down (Acts 17:6). This is an odd charge to level at religious people whose faith is purely private. APPLICATION
Christianity is public not just in scope but also in application. The faith is designed not just for the entire world – people from every tribe and tongue and nation – but for every aspect of the world. The apostle Paul tells us that God has placed all things under the feet of Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:22). By all things, He means all things: not just “...focusing on the family and church, but hospitals and one of the most museums and universities and biological prominent and research labs and car dealerships and music pernicious errors studios and everything else. CULTURAL MANDATE
In Genesis 1:28–30, God charged man with exercising holy dominion, or stewardship, in the earth. Man is God’s deputy. God is the sovereign ruler of the cosmos, but He has pinned the deputy’s badge on humanity. His design is for godly men and women to oversee the rest of His creation, all of it, not just some of it. He has placed this urge for dominion in every human. This is sometimes called the Cultural Mandate. Man is called to cultivate all earthly creation for His glory.
of conservative, non-normative Christianity: privatizing the faith.”
The fact of exercising dominion is inescapable, it only remains to be seen what kind of dominion we will exercise. Because man fell into sin, he now exercises ungodly dominion. When God converts sinners, He restores them to their chief task of stewarding the world for His glory. What FALL 2019
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we call the Great Commission is the Cultural Mandate adapted to man’s fallen condition. The Great Commission, Christians calling unbelievers to trust the crucified, risen, and reigning Lord Jesus Christ, isn’t designed simply to take a few of the elect to heaven. It’s to restore them to their original cultural calling. This is why the Cultural Mandate was repeated to Noah after the Fall (Gen. 9:1–7). We are to exercise dominion under His Lordship. This obviously includes areas that we call public, not merely private. The great conflict in the world today is between two kinds of dominion people: obedient dominionists versus rebellious dominionists. The rebels are trying to bring every aspect of life under their depraved authority which means, in the end, Satan’s authority, for they’re really serving him. Christians are in a battle to restore “In Isaiah 1–12, we the world to Christ’s authority, by the read God’s covenant power the Spirit.
lawsuit against His people for breaking His law, but then in chapter 13 He seamlessly transitions to indicting the Gentile nations surrounding Israel for breaking that same law.”
PUBLIC GOSPEL
The gospel itself is a public message. The good news is that God in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ His Son is gradually purging sin from the world and restoring and enhancing the glory of Eden.6 The gospel is not a message of escape. It’s not a private fire insurance contract. The gospel is about what God is doing in history. God is at work in the world, not first in our hearts, and He is at work in our hearts only because He is at work in the world. The gospel is God’s plan for His world, not simply for the human heart. The gospel is historical, and it’s public. PUBLIC LAW
God’s law is equally public. There’s no such thing as individualized law. The whole point of law is that it applies to a group of people irrespective of their personal situation. God gave Israel His law, and it was to be read to them in its entirety every seven years (Deut. 31:9–13). The authority of this law wasn’t limited to Israel, however, though it was given specifically to them. FALL 2019
In Isaiah 1–12, we read God’s covenant lawsuit against His people for breaking His law, but then in chapter 13 He seamlessly transitions to indicting the Gentile nations surrounding Israel for breaking that same law. Paul tells us in Romans 3:19 that whatever the law says, it says to those under the law that the entire world might stand guilty before God. God doesn’t have one law for Gentile nations, and one law for the Jews. God’s law applies to everybody, and that law is public. It governs health, economics, warfare, education, vocation and much more. NO UNCONTESTED GROUND
The early Christians weren’t martyred because they believed in Jesus in their hearts. The ancient Romans were polytheists, and as their empire expanded, they collected gods like philatelists collect stamps. They couldn’t care less if people trusted Jesus. But to declare that Jesus is Lord, the first creed of the church,7 and therefore that Caesar is not the ultimate Lord — was considered seditious. The early Christians didn’t think of themselves as bad Roman citizens. They weren’t revolutionaries, trying to overthrow Roman authority. That was an act of highly politicized Jews in their increasingly maddening apostasy. For Christians, however, the faith is inherently public. Jesus is Lord not just of the human heart, but also in all areas of life. The power-hungry Caesars could not, of course, abide such a sovereign competitor. And that’s why Christians had to go. They contested all areas of life, public and private.8 In the words of Al Wolters, “There is something totalitarian about the claims of both Satan and Christ; nothing in all of creation is neutral in the sense that it is untouched by these two great adversaries.”9 Again, Christianity is an inherently public faith. PRIVATIZED CHRISTIANITY EVENTUALLY ISN’T
Second: to privatize Christianity is to destabilize, dilute, and ultimately destroy it. It’s not merely the case that when Christianity is privatized, its effectiveness is blunted. Rather, it becomes something different from Christianity. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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Imagine a sports mogul who wanted to start a new baseball league, but in this league, the game would be played without bases. You’d say, “You can create a new game if you want, but just don’t call it baseball.” Similarly, a privatized religion that stresses Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection but limits them and their effects to the private realm is not normative Christianity. It’s a diluted and deformed version that eventually will become no Christianity at all. GNOSTICISM
This privatization project has been going on for a long time. Its roots are deep in Christian history. It began with Gnosticism,10 the oldest and most pernicious and persistent heresy of the Christian church. Gnosticism began within Christianity. “Gnostic” derives from the word gnosis, or knowledge. The Gnostics believed that Jesus came to save by giving a secret, esoteric knowledge to a select few. The world and human history aren’t important. Sin is not man’s problem. The great problem of the world is creation itself: the material world, the human body, and the physical cosmos. In other words, the Gnostics were dualists. The world is made up of two distinct, separate parts, the material and the non-material, and the material is far inferior to the non-material. Jesus came to enlighten a few select souls, give them secret knowledge, and when they die, rescue their disembodied souls, which fly upward through the heavens back to the true God, who hates the material world. Gnostics believed that creation and human institutions could only lead us away from the true gnosis, so they all longed for release from the body. They were good trichotomists, asserting that man is comprised of several parts, the only important one of which is the immortal soul. This was an ancient Greek idea that had nothing to do with the Bible. According to the Bible, both the material and immaterial aspects of man are woven into one another. Though the spirit can exist temporarily without the body, man without a body is not entirely human. This is why the resurrection is essential.11 But to the Gnostics, the resurrection was abhorrent. The important thing is a disembodied soul, flying up to heaven. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Is any of this sounding familiar? While the church fathers correctly marginalized Gnosticism as a heresy, a number of them tended to adopt diluted versions of it. This is especially true in the Eastern Church. MEDIEVAL DUALISMS
Throughout the Middle Ages, Gnostic elements like dualism survived in groups outside the mainline church like the Paulicians, the Bogomils, the Cathars, and the Manichees.12 Sometimes they were ascendant in various sections of Europe; other times there were bitterly persecuted. What is so ironic is that modern evangelicalism resembles them to a remarkable degree. INDIVIDUALIZED SOTERIC FAITH
But as children of the Reformation, we too are the inheritors of the privatizing error. The Reformation correctly recovered monergistic soteriology. That is, that our salvation is entirely by God’s grace in the redemptive work in Jesus Christ, and that we don’t contribute to our own salvation. We’re saved entirely by grace, and not by works, notably works in the context of the sacramental and “The sacerdotal (priest-craft) church.13 But as the Reformation gradually succeeded in throwing off the soteriological humanism of Rome, it created a privatized humanism in relation to the world. Soteriology became an all-consuming focus. For Luther, the central question of life is how a sinner can become just, or righteous, before God.
Gnostics believed that Jesus came to save by giving a secret, esoteric knowledge to a select few.”
For Calvin, by contrast, the chief issue of life is to bring God glory.14 But even the Calvinists over time reduced the faith to soteriology, TULIP Calvinism, we might say. They are happy to stress salvation by grace through faith alone, but would get skittish when a church confronts abortionists and abortion-bound mothers outside clinics. This last part, they would say, might be morally acceptable, but it’s tangential, secondary to the real calling, which is soteriological. But in the Bible, salvation isn’t just salvation from God’s eternal judgment. It’s salvation from sin in FALL 2019
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all of its pollution. It is salvation from sin not just in the human heart, but also sin at the forceps in the womb. It’s salvation from the assault on the family: pornography, homosexual “marriage,” same-sex temptation, transgenderism, and “gender fluidity.” These issues are not simply legitimate applications of the gospel; they’re themselves are gospel issues. Remember, the gospel is about what God is doing in Jesus Christ to roll back sin — everywhere. Even churches committed to the Reformation often find this view uncomfortable. The “...even the Calvinists prefer to believe that Luther’s emphasis on justification, and the Synod of over time reduced the Dort’s TULIP are the heart of the faith. faith to soteriology... These are important, to be certain, but They are happy to they’re not the heart of the faith. The stress salvation heart of the faith is the good news of by grace through the kingdom of God, the pervasiveness faith alone, but would of God’s gradual reign in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. get skittish when
a church confronts abortionists and abortion-bound mothers outside clinics.”
THE RADICAL REFORMERS
But the Reformation mustn’t bear too much blame. More blameworthy is the so-called Radical Reformation, the Mennonites and Anabaptists (not the same as Baptists).15 The radical reformers took privatization to a new level. They hated Christendom. They believed the prominent church of the day was full of power-hungry, worldly hypocrites. The Protestant Reformers had believed that you were born into, lived, served, married, and died within a Christian commonwealth. States and nations themselves were officially Christian. They were often far from perfect. Many weren’t models of what a Christian society should look like. But they were at least intentionally and professedly Christian. The radical reformers saw this idea as a huge mistake. For faith to be genuine, they asserted it must be intense, passionate, and largely private. Only the truest, most heavenly-minded disciples are really Christians. Most professing Christians are simply hypocrites who should be shunned. The church is largely a called-aside community sequestered from ostensibly Christian society.
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This meant that the radical reformers were strongly opposed to applying the faith to culture. They despised the Lutherans and Calvinists and Anglicans just as much as they did the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. For the radical reformers, true Christians don’t influence the world for the Lordship of Jesus Christ but rather cultivate an intense, private, vertical relationship with God, and an intense, private, horizontal relationship with their fellow church members. The world, including, or perhaps especially, the Christian commonwealth, stood under God’s judgment. Depravity was destined to intensify, and then Jesus Christ would come back to wreak vengeance on Christendom and Christian culture and vindicate the purified saints — the radical reformers, of course. PIETISM AND REVIVALISM
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, two other related movements emerged that helped the privatization project along: Pietism and Revivalism. Pietism, like Anabaptism, began as a reaction also, but against the sterile, rigid, hairsplitting orthodoxy in seventeenth century Calvinism and Lutheranism.16 The Pietists wanted to stress the heart relationship to God, practical Christianity, the warmth of the faith. They weren’t anti-orthodox, but beliefs and creeds weren’t their emphasis. Over time, however, this internal and emotional side began to crowd out orthodox belief. In the late eighteenth century, only the heart religion remained. This meant that the only religion that mattered was private. Then there was eighteenth century Revivalism.17 Evangelical leaders like John Wesley and George Whitefield, like the Pietists before them, were vexed by the low level of Christian commitment they observed. Their solution, however, wasn’t to return to Christ’s authority in all of life, fueled by the Spirit’s power. Rather, it was to stress an intense emotional experience at conversion, and turn the faith inward. They traveled throughout England and later America, holding revival meetings. The goal of the revival wasn’t just to get sinners converted, but also to get nominally Christian people truly converted, inspiring in them intense exEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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istential experience, and a visible, radical break with their previous nominally Christian life. There wasn’t anything wrong with this approach per se. The problem, however, is that revivals became the heart and soul of God’s work in the world. He was getting sinners, including nominal Christians, converted and emotional about their vertical relationship with Him. The Lordship of Christ in the world, in the culture around them, wasn’t germane. Pietism and Revivalism are two of the main evangelical movements that hastened what we might call “the retreat to the interior.” DISPENSATIONALISM
When we come to the nineteenth century we encounter perhaps the most significant factor in privatized Christianity. It began in the British Isles with the remarkably gifted and innovative theologian John Nelson Darby.18 He invented a novel biblical interpretation, or, rather, a new version of Christianity that has come to be known as dispensationalism. 19 Dispensationalism divided the Bible into two separate messages:20 one message to the nation of Israel, and another message to the Gentile church. The Jews were considered to be God’s earthly people, and the church His heavenly people. God’s promises to the Jews were for this world, and His promises for the church were for the eternal world. The Bible itself was deemed a dual book. The Old Testament and parts of the New Testament were given to Israel. Much of the NT, and particularly Paul’s epistles, are given to the church. Among other things, this meant that the NT promises to the church had to be cut off from the OT, which was a Jewish book. The gospel promises are for personal victory and our future home in heaven; they are private. They have nothing to do with God’s redemption of the entire creation by His Son’s death and resurrection and present heavenly reign. According to this view, the old, Jewish religion is public. It has little to do with the present “church age.” Our church future, on the other hand, is to observe the world growing increasingly depraved, but our blessed hope is to be Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
raptured up into the heavenlies before a shadowy figure, the antichrist, rules the earth, though he will eventually be squashed before the largely Jewish millennium. Dispensationalism’s gospel of the church is the gospel of escape, not dominion. It’s the gospel of increasing earthly defeat, not victory. The victory comes only at the second advent, and the enforced rule of the physically present Jesus Christ. Until “Dispensationalism then, the Christian faith is private. divided the Bible The dispensational, dualized gospel understands the basics of our Lord’s death and resurrection and our future home with the Lord, but misses the unified, comprehensive gospel of the Bible. And this misunderstanding is precisely what has dominated much of evangelicalism for the last few generations.
into two separate messages: one message to the nation of Israel, and another message to the Gentile church.”
THE VICTORY OF PRIVATIZATION
Christianity pervasively influenced the United Kingdom and the United States and Canada late into the eighteenth century, despite its gradual privatization. However, through the effects of individualized soteric faith, Anabaptism, Pietism, Revivalism, and dispensationalism, the theology of much of evangelicalism in the twentieth century implicitly assented to the divorce of public and private.21 A reduced piety limited the faith to otherworldly concerns, except for personal evangelism.22 This theological assumption can currently be found on display almost everywhere you look. If during Christmas you display a manger scene on a state-owned lawn, you might be violating a separation of church and state. If a Christian teacher sets a Bible on her desk in the state school, she’s unlawfully intruding religion into the public space. In social debates over same-sex “marriage” so-called, opponents may speak of “traditional” marriage but are considered totally out of line to quote the Bible. Religion is about one’s personal life. This was also the Marxist approach. One of its maxims was, “[R]eligion is a man’s private concern.”23 And it has increasingly become the Western democratic approach: your religious convictions regardFALL 2019
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ing human sexuality (and anything else) are fine, just as long as you keep them in church, or, more preferably, between your two ears. IN LEAGUE WITH THE SECULARISTS
Privatization is the intentional reduction of Christianity by Christians to the very places that secularists declare it’s safe to exist: the prayer closet, family devotions, and church on Sunday, or, at most, church social programs throughout the week. Christians, meanwhile, have bought into the lie that culture is inherently evil, that it cannot and should not be Christianized, that the most spiritual Christians are those least engaged with the culture, that the extent of Christian life can be exhausted by Bible reading and prayer and personal evangelism, and that anything “Christians, much beyond these is “worldliness.”
meanwhile, have bought into the lie that culture is inherently evil, that it cannot and should not be Christianized, that the most spiritual Christians are those least engaged with the culture”
Privatization, therefore, works in league with non-Christian forces to reduce Christianity to what Stephen Perks describes as a “personal worship hobby.”24 Remarkably, many Christians and secularists agree about this privatization. Secularists say, “Christianity should stay private; Christians should stay out of politics; God’s Word has nothing to say to our society; Unbelievers should be calling all of the shots in society and culture; Christianity is a ‘private worship hobby.’” Christians respond with a hearty Amen. This is an odd and unsettling partnership in opposition to normative Christianity. How can we envision the gradual loss of Christianity as the faith becomes increasingly privatized? I was talking to Dr. Joseph Boot in London several years ago and he posited one plausible scenario. Many conservative churches today refuse to address issues like socialism and abortion and same-sex “marriage” by saying they want to avoid politics. “We want to be ‘gospel-centered,’” they assert, “and we don’t want any political issues impinging on the gospel.” But in our time, Leftists increasingly politicize all of life. Already it’s frowned on and may soon
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become illegal to say that Jesus is the only way of salvation, to confess that “Jesus is Lord.” That is to say, the confession that Jesus is Lord is a political issue, and not merely a so-called gospel issue. But if these churches have already surrendered vast amounts of territory to our public, politicized world, will they now draw the line at the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ? Will they finally be forced to say: “We won’t preach Jesus as the only way of salvation, because that’s a political issue?” If so, what we have is no longer Christianity. To privatize Christianity is to destabilize, dilute, and eventually destroy it. OUR TASK, RE-PUBLICIZING CHRISTIANITY
Finally, our task is to re-publicize (“publik-ize”) Christianity. This is a pressing task, because we’re losing normative Christianity. Let’s not assume it can’t happen. We must face the fact that Christianity is being wiped out in the West. God, of course, could sovereignly reverse this trend apart from human instruments, but He usually chooses not to do that. Since humans are His deputies in this world, He almost always employs them to accomplish His will. How do we restore normative Christianity, which is a public Christianity? ABANDON INTERIORIZATION
First, abandon any interiorization programs. Get over the idea that God is only interested in your private devotion to Him. Christianity is not a “private worship hobby.” Wherever you are, wherever God has placed you, He has called you to incorporate His standards, His moral law found in His Word. This is true whether you are rearing children (I should say especially if you are rearing children), writing computer code, waiting tables at a restaurant, selling high-end audio products, or teaching nuclear physics. The Bible doesn’t profess to offer specifics on all of these topics, but it does provide the worldview and context in which you think and act in each one of them. Yes, there is a distinctively Christian way to sell pre-owned automobiles and to do landscaping. We are called to glorify God whether we eat or drink and in whatever we do (1 Cor. 10:31). Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Christianity is a Public Faith
We can, of course, learn important basics from God’s creational norms. Nature is a teacher (1 Cor. 11:14).25 But we can’t know of redemption, and we can’t know of the ministry of Jesus Christ or the Spirit of God. We cannot know God’s will on many matters just by looking at creation. We need the Bible.26 The Bible reveals God’s will on matters as diverse as food and economics and sex and politics and music and warfare and education and farming and parenting and grandparenting and thinking and emotions and reading and love and sickness and much else. The Bible contains truth on these and many other matters, but we’ve trained ourselves to “read around” these passages. We want to get to Psalm 23 or John 3:16. Recall, however, that we are to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4). There’s no doubt that our Lord’s death and resurrection are the heart of the Bible, but there’s more to the Bible than the heart. And we won’t know with certainty what’s right and wrong if we don’t have an excellent grasp of the Bible. PUBLIC DECLARATION
This necessitates, second, declaring God’s Word authoritatively in the very places it’s being most egregiously violated in public. This includes outside abortion clinics and outside pro-abortion politicians’ offices. It includes arguing in the court for legal protection for marriage. This means opposition to homosexuality, homosexual “marriage,” and pornography. It means standing against the Marxists’ Critical Theory in the Southern Baptist Convention and against “safe spaces” for the same-sex tempted in the Presbyterian Church in America. It means using modern technology to press for economic freedom and property rights and against Obamacare, public education, and other contra-biblical confiscatory taxation. We’re not called to be political revolutionaries, taking up arms against the state. We are, however, called to the truth, and to stand for it publicly.
professors, politicians, judges, novelists, news reporters, entertainers, technologists, scientists, and public intellectuals. Not every Christian, of course, is called specifically to public fields, but every Christian is called to pray for and support the re-publicizing of Christianity. This task won’t be easy, particularly after centuries of abandoning the public sphere. “We’re not called Communicating a distinctively Christo be political tian worldview within a modern secular revolutionaries, university, for example, is almost impostaking up arms sible today, and likely a violation of Bylaw against the state. R-305 or something. But with modern deWe are, however, centralizing technology, we need to create called to the truth, our own teaching centers and universities to compete with the secularists and the and to stand for it pagans. Our goal is not merely to create an publicly.” alternative. Our goal is eventually to purge and abolish (peacefully) all secularism and paganism in the so-called public square. NO EXCEPTIONS
For this reason we must stress the inviolability of the private sphere, but we must not stop there. In other words, our goal is not merely to protect Christians from persecution, to insist on religious liberty. Of course, we should do that, but normative Christianity isn’t committed to thriving in cultural ghettos. At the end of history, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord (Phil. 2:4–11); our task is to call for those confessions now. Working toward that goal doesn’t permit Christianity as an exception to pervasive public standards.
PUBLIC INFILTRATION
A number of Christian universities have argued for a legal exemption from the requirement that no institution of higher education may discriminate on the basis of sexual “orientation.” Of course, no normative Christian institution could adhere to such a law. Every Christian institution must insist on biblical standards, and biblical standards discriminate against sin.
Third, we must encourage gifted Christians around us to enter pubic fields and to reclaim them for Christ the King. We need a greater number of distinctively Christian university
Secular politics, suckled on the Sexual Revolution, might permit an exemption temporarily, but eventually it will become ethically self-conscious. If every consensual sexual act is to be permitted,
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and if every university must conform to public policy, then why grant exemption to Christian universities to require biblical sexual ethics? Christian universities shouldn’t be fighting for an exemption from secular sexual standards; they should be fighting for biblical sexual standards to be implemented everywhere. One of the great self-comforting myths espoused by “Christian universities many Christians is that if the church shouldn’t be fighting avoids confronting Satan in the culture, he will avoid confronting them in for an exemption the church. But Satan, like God, wants from secular sexual everything. And if we surrender to him standards; they the culture, we’ll soon be forced to surshould be fighting render to him the church.
for biblical sexual standards to be implemented everywhere.”
This is why the church must constantly be on the offense, not only protecting the faith inside but attacking the evil outside. Our objective is nothing less than a Christian world order.27 This kind of Christianity is practiced almost nowhere in the Western world, or anywhere else for that matter. Yet this is normative Christianity. It’s the only form of Christianity that will successfully combat our ensconced anti-Christian culture is a virile, uncompromising Christianity. We must work to restore normative, public Christianity if we are to preserve Christianity. It’s the only genuine Christianity there is.
1 Roderick Campbell, Israel and the New Covenant (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1954), 10, emphases supplied. 2 Arland J. Hultgren, The Rise of Normative Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994). 3 Christopher Dawson, “Religion and Life,” Enquiries into Religion and Its Culture (London and New York: Sheed & Ward, 1933), 294. 4 Robert Nisbet, The Social Philosophers (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973), 93–158. 5 Charles Norris Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 209–212. 6 Albert M. Wolters, Creation Regained (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985, 2005), 69–86. 7 Oscar Cullmann, The Earliest Christian ConfesFALL 2019
sions (London: Lutterworth Press, 1949), 23. 8 Larry W. Hurtado, Destroyer of the Gods (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2016). 9 Wolters, Creation Regained, 72. 10 Robert M. Grant, Gnosticism & Early Christianity (New York: Harper & Row, 1959, 1966). 11 Millard Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 2:519–539. 12 Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (New York: Viking Press, 1961). 13 Monergism, from the Greek words ‘mono’ – one and ‘ergon’ – work. 14 Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1931), 22–24. 15 Franklin H. Littell, The Anabaptist View of the Church (Boston: Starr King Press, 1952, 1958). 16 Ted A. Campbell, The Religion of the Heart (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 70–98. 17 Iain H. Murray, Revival and Revivalism (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994). 18 Clarence B. Bass, Backgrounds to Dispensationalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960). 19 Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today (Chicago: Moody Press, 1965). 20 For a refutation, see John Gerstner, Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991). 21 See George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980). 22 For an evangelical reaction, see Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1947). 23 Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the 19th Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 81. 24 Stephen C. Perks, The Great Decommission (Taunton, England: Kuyper Foundation, 2011), 12. 25 Leon Morris, I Believe in Revelation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 32–48. 26 Noel Weeks, The Sufficiency of Scripture (Edinburgh, Scotland: Banner of Truth, 1988). 27 John Murray, Collected Writings of John Murray (Edinburgh, Scotland: Banner of Truth, 1976), 1:356–366.
Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
The Family : A LIVING MODEL
of
CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH
ON A RECENT FLIGHT from Montreal to Toronto, I encountered the most turbulence I’d ever experienced. It was rather brief, just 20 minutes of extended ups and downs, but the jarring situation was enough to make me have my seatbelt tightened and my prayers of thanksgiving and repentance said. I cope with moments like this by reminding myself of God’s sovereignty and kindness, along with other truths concerning the predicament. For example, I’ll say to myself, “God is in control and has seen me through many other flights,” and at the same I’ll think on the fact that “my pilots are trained and tested for moments just like these.” Funny enough, these reflections got me thinking about this article. Did you know that to become a commercial pilot an individual has to have 3,000 hours of flying time? These required hours are performed beside, and then under the supervision of, qualified instructors. Furthermore, there is a requirement for a pilot to have a minimum of 1,000 flight hours as a co-pilot prior to serving as a captain for an airline.1 This means that to be the captain of my flight, the man at the stick had to have 4,000 hours of in-the-air flying – instructed, simulated, demonstrated, coached, and corrected, real-life experience. At that moment, the family popped into my head. If we were to raise up young people to learn how to trust the all-sufficient truths of Scripture, apply wisdom skillfully in turbulent times, and live rightly for God within the body of Christ, might they also need something like 4,000 hours of instructed, simulated, demonstrated, coached, and corrected, real-life experience? I wonder, if God were God – and He most certainly is – what might He design to give children such a rigorous and hands-on training in righteousness? The answer is that He has designed and given us such a training ground: the Christian family. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
GUARDED PARENTS TRAIN UP GUARDED CHILDREN FOR THE LORD Has not the Lord made them one – bound in flesh and spirit?2 And why one? Because He was seeking godly offspring. So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith with the wife of your youth.” (Malachi 2:15)
This teaching on marriage actually sits in the middle of an indictment. God acts as both prosecutor and judge against the fraudulent behaviour of particular Israelite men towards their wives during the Persian occupation of Israel (450-458 B.C.). As Malachi records these specific judgments, he then declares God’s warnings to the rest of the people to guard themselves against such kinds of sexual immorality and temptations to be unfaithful to their partners. So, it is in the midst of a very negative situation that this portion of Scripture proceeds to give one of the clearest and most positive descriptions of God’s true design for marriage: a guarded and faithful marriage bears the good fruit of growing up guarded and faith-filled children for the Lord. God’s creational designs bear good fruit and the natural things He created also have the intrinsic ability to bring forth good. Water nourishes our living planet. Oxygen fills our breathing world. The laws we observe in the natural world set universal boundaries. Revealed Scripture sets social boundaries. Trees multiply their own kind all over the earth by their carefully engineered seed. In the same way, and just as tangibly, we humans also bring forth real good when we remain faithful to God and faithful to our marriage covenant. That living out what it takes to stay together and faithful to one another under God is in itself a productive thing. Our hugs
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MICHAEL THIESSEN Rev. Dr. Michael Thiessen serves the Ezra Institute as Ministry Associate Advocacy. Michael did his undergraduate studies in Pastoral Ministry (Heritage College, Cambridge, ON), earned his Master’s degree with a focus in New Testament and Ethics (Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary), and holds a Doctor of Ministry Degree (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School). Michael is the author of Pursuing a First Class Marriage: Find the One Without Trying Many (Deep River Publications). Michael also serves as Associate Director of Church Planting for the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches (FEB Central). He formerly served as Senior Pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Alliston where he continues to minister as a Teaching Pastor. Mike is married to Sarah. They have four children: Simon, Gabriel, MaylahBelle, and Galilee-Ling.
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“In
show God’s love. Our discipline show God’s discipline. Our reconciliation with one another demonstrates God’s patience and forgiveness. In physical, emotional, and spiritual ways we train image-bearers and God-fearers by not leaving each other or burning down the house we ourselves put up. We populate our homes, communities, and societies with individuals who can function effectively and ethically because they have been shaped by those of us who physical, emotional, show them how to guard themselves.
and spiritual ways we train imagebearers and Godfearers by not leaving each other or burning down the house we ourselves put up.”
God created beauty out of nothing and order out of chaos, so we as His imagebearers, who follow His ways, bring love and law to the next generation through covenant faithfulness. This happens very specifically through the hands-on spiritual formation of day-to-day life within the family. Through conformity to God, parents create a flight simulator and then a copilot environment for their children’s hours and hours of training. Christians throughout history have acknowledged the formational role that the family plays. The pastor S.G. Winchester, circa 1856, wrote that “Families are the appointed nurseries of both Church and State. They are to furnish civil society with virtuous and worthy members, and the church with active, useful, and devoted Christians.”3 Susanna Wesley, mother of hymn writer Charles Wesley and revivalist preacher John Wesley, 1669-1742, writes: I insist on conquering the will of my children, because this is the only strong and rational foundation of a religious education, without which both precept and example will be ineffectual, but when this is thoroughly done then is a child capable of being governed by the reason and piety of its parents, till its own understanding comes to maturity and the principles of religion have taken root in the mind.4
A. W. Pink, pastor and itinerant Bible teacher around Nottingham, England (1886-1952), says: FALL 2019
Even those who look no further than the temporal happiness of individuals and the welfare of existing society are not insensible to the great importance of our domestic relations, which the strongest affections of nature secure, and which even our wants and weaknesses cement. We can form no conception of social virtue or felicity, yea, no conception of human society itself, which has not its foundation in the family…. No matter how excellent the constitution and laws of a country may be, or how vast its resources and prosperity, there is no sure basis for social order or public as well as private virtue, until it be laid in the wise regulation of its families. After all, a nation is but the aggregate of its families, and unless there be good husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, there cannot possibly be good citizens. Therefore, the present decay of home life and family discipline threaten the stability of our nation.5
The same was true for the Israelites, the same was true in the nineteenth century, and the same is still true today: family units are the central context for discipleship of fathers, mothers, and children. There are many things local pastors can do to equip the saints for life and ministry, but if we do not teach and exhort husbands and wives and children to guard themselves in their home, and become strong mission outposts themselves, we’ve missed a design idea within the blueprint. Malachi 2:13-16 makes this clear. The people of God cannot flourish if the home fails. Marital unfaithfulness jeopardizes God’s designed mission for His people to produce godly children within their homes because it twists the elements. It weaponizes the institution that was good into an environment of sin. Water can cause devastating floods. Too much oxygen makes one pass out. Trees that are dead become flaming tinder at the smallest spark. When unfaithfulness occurs it betrays all of the significance-building, security-building, and covenant-guardedness aspects of an otherwise unique and powerful union. It discards honesty, straightforwardness, partnership, trust, steadfast love, dedication, commitment, and faithfulness, Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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for deceitfulness, crookedness, adultery, fleeting platitudes, and false promises. In short, mass breakdown of the family leads to breakdown in the church, and when this continues across the board, devastates every level of society. GUARDED PARENTS, NOT CHURCH PROGRAMS
The phrase “guard yourself in your spirit” means to be careful, attentive, and focused in your innermost being. We spend most of our lives alone with our own thoughts. What would happen if we neglected to be guarded in our thoughts? After that, we spend the next greatest amount of time with our families. What would happen if we weren’t guarded in our homes? Would we be guarded in the church? Would we be guarded in our professions? Would we be guarded anywhere? Clergy cannot miss this point. It can be tempting for us to want to do for parents what they should be doing for themselves. We might think, “maybe I can save that family because no one else seems to care,” or “maybe our church program can save that child because the parents aren’t wise.” We might look at a bad father and say, “He’s not going to do it, so we will step in.” We cannot do this. We cannot do for parents what parents should be doing for themselves. It would be a cultural error on our part. It would be equivalent to offering them a safety blanket which promises to stop bullets. Some of us might idolize secular notions of education. Some of us might be the “trained specialists.” Some of us might have experienced that it’s easier to run a program than to confront actual familial sin. Some of us might find that it’s easier to get kids excited rather than to labour in discipleship beside an incompetent adult. Some of us might fear the loss of income that would ensue if people refused to do the work themselves. In the face of all these temptations and feelings, we ought to trust the scriptures when they speak about the importance of the parental capacity for goodness or devastation. Rather than propping up church programs, we should be propping up the family. We ought to be celebrating real victories in real life and warning against real catastrophes. Let us not be self-seeking prophets or foolishly selfcentered, “They dress the wound of my people as Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14). Clergy certainly are an asset to the family. Our ministry of the Word means much more “...mass breakdown than preaching. It does have real power as of the family leads we instill in the hearts and minds of our to breakdown people a scriptural world-and-life-view, a renewed vision of the fullness and scope of in the church, the gospel, a deepened understanding of the and when this transforming power of the Word of God for continues across every aspect of life. We are able to cheer and the board, disciple thriving families. We are able to asdevastates every sist and encourage struggling families. With level of society.” the Word of God in hand we teach, exhort, correct, rebuke, and train adults for their life and ministry. We disciple parents to disciple their own children. We train the trainers. Yet, clergy cannot serve to create the “guarding” function for the family; this is not a function of the church sphere. Husbands to their wives, wives to husbands, fathers and mothers to their children, obedient children to their parents, must stand on guard for one another. • Proverbs 1:8: “Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.”
• Eph 6:1–3: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “’Honor your father and mother’”—which is the first commandment with a promise— ‘that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.’”
• Ephesians 6:4: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”
Pastor Mark Fox tells two stories to support this point in his book Family Integrated Church. The first one is this: Every year the young men (ages 21 and younger) take on the older men (everybody else) in a game of beach football. Every year the result is the same. The older men win. It’s not because we have more speed. We don’t. It’s not because we FALL 2019
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have more zeal. We don’t. It’s not because we have more energy. We definitely do not. It’s because we have more wisdom. We know how to win. The greybeards got that way through years of experience. And wisdom trumps speed, zeal, and energy any day of the week.6
and we are now unwilling to try to change. The church will not even give parents a look. However, Fox is trying something different with the families of his church. In order to explain their strategy for change, he goes on to write, “At Antioch, we believe our primary responsibility is to train fathers to love and lead their families.”8
Fox uses this first illustration to describe his feelings towards the current ideas of children’s and youth ministry. He recognizes that our current models are full of energy, fun, and zeal, but he is concerned that they lack wisdom from God’s Word, which places the mantle of discipleship on the family, specifically through the leadership of the father. Mature fathers and mothers know how to win because they have acquired wisdom in the real world. And wisdom in the real world trumps speed, zeal, and energy of a program any day of the week.
Stories in the Old Testament scriptures repeatedly emphasize watchfulness as people who keep watch at the doors, over rulers, on the paths, at dusk, for the enemy, over the house of Judah, over the suicidal, over the overwhelmed, alongside the simple minded and innocent, over flocks, against those who cause divisions, and against biting one another. Of course, watchfulness is a major theme in Christ’s inaugurated kingdom as well. Jesus commands, “Keep watch for false prophets” (Matt. 7:15). “Watch out that no one deceives you” (Matt. 24:4). “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). “Keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back – whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’” (Mark 13:35–37).
The second story goes like this: An experiment was conducted where a glass partition was put in the tank, dividing it in half, with a pike on one side and a minnow on the other. At first, the pike took off after that minnow like a preacher after a piece of fried chicken. The pike slammed into the glass! Undaunted, the pike got up a full head of steam, licking his chops in anticipation of the fish fry, and wham! He hit the glass again. And then again. And again. Finally he gave up. His little fish brain had been reprogrammed to believe a lie: I can’t eat minnows anymore. It hurts like crazy whenever I try. Just can’t do it. Then the proof that the conditioning was complete; the glass partition was removed. The minnow swam cautiously, slowly towards the pike, knowing his little life was a nanosecond away from being a distant memory. He swam closer to his predator. No response. The pike didn’t even give the minnow a look.7
The example illustrates how evangelicals have likewise been conditioned to accept a lie that parents cannot disciple their kids. We have been conditioned to accept a model for youth ministry FALL 2019
Servant, soldier, farmer; virgin, wedding attendant, wise manager; each was to fortify the city of God with special care, diligence, and discipline. This must be true in our families before it will be true anywhere else. But when it is true, when it does happen, when families look out for one another, they create a beautiful and safe environment where the children have the greatest possible examples to follow the Lord. Parents ought to be encouraged and equipped to “impress” upon their own children the truths of God (Deut. 6:6-9) because it is a wonderful thing to see godly offspring, and because the spread of God’s kingdom is a plan that unfolds over many generations. The Psalms uniquely and beautifully express the joy of producing God-fearing children. Men and women who see their children grow up to be strong and fruitful experience a unique harvest as a bounty of which only God can give. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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Psalm 128:1-6 describes this blessing by saying Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in his ways.... Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your sons will be like olive shoots around your table.... May the Lord bless you from Zion all the days of your life; may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem, and may you live to see your children’s children.
Psalm 144:12 describes this gift of the Lord in similar terms: “Then our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace.” May this be so of us, in this day of our Lord, 2019. MARRIAGE IS A LIVING PICTURE OF CHRIST AND HIS CHURCH A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:31-32)
You’ve heard the phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Still photos have the power to make an impact. When we see something in all its fullness and brightness, we appreciate its beauty. Movies are moving pictures. At thirty frames per second, a two-hour film is worth 216,000 stills. When we see something in all its fullness and brightness while it moves within its larger context, we see how intricate the object can become. Stills and movies fill our minds with powerful visual stimulation and make an impact. If we watch beautiful goodness, we are lifted. If we watch oppressive darkness, we are pushed down. So, what could be even more powerful than still pictures or moving pictures? Living pictures. A PANORAMIC IMAGE OF THE GOSPEL
God, knowing the power of living pictures, gives outsiders an opportunity to see the gospel in living colour, with elongated fields of view, by watching a Christian marriage. In this passage Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
to the Ephesians, Paul is teaching us that marriage is a clear allusion to the two central figures of the new covenant: Christ and His church. This is where things get more specific than Malachi’s prophetic text. It is a general thing to say that guarded and faithful parents raise guarded and faith-filled children, but now we have the description that marriage is a direct allusion to Christ and His church. The target just got clearer. The gospel is the good news that Christ is being unified with His people through His “The gospel explains covenantally-faithful substitutionary sacrifice. The gospel is also concerned with how Christ pours the church’s agreed-upon submission to Himself out for Christ. The church agrees with God to folHis church in low Christ’s ways. The gospel explains how humility and how Christ pours Himself out for His church the church glorifies in humility and how the church glorifies Him through Him through obeying Him. The implicaobeying Him.” tions, then, are quite significant if marriage – husband as sacrificial lamb, wife as redeemed following church – becomes a living picture of the gospel. Voddie Baucham, pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church, once preached, “It is not because marriage is important in and of itself, even though marriage is important in and of itself, it is because of the gospel.”9 Douglas Wilson writes: Paul teaches us that we ought selfconscientiously think of our marriages as dim pictures of the central marriage, that is Christ to His church. It is a great mystery but when a man leaves his father and mother and takes a wife, he makes a proclamation concerning Christ and his church. Depending on the marriage, that declaration is made poorly or well, but it is always made.10
Scott Brown, founder of National Centre for Family Integrated Ministries, writes, It is no accident that the entire story of redemption is couched in family terminology. The Bible begins with the marriage FALL 2019
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of Adam and Eve (Gen. 2:20-24) and ends with the marriage supper of the Lamb, where the bride—the Church—is married to her husband (Rev.19:7-9). The devil hates the family because he hates the gospel of Jesus Christ. A mangled marriage communicates a mangled gospel; an unloving, selfish husband declares a loveless faith and lies about Christ’s love for the church; an un-submissive wife represents the falsehood of an antinomian church; a rebellious child images a “The devil is on a disobedient individual child of God. mission, hell-bent The devil is on a mission, hell-bent to destroy the glory to destroy the glory of God and His of God and His everlasting kingdom wherever it exeverlasting kingdom ists, so he aims at the most important wherever it exists, target: the gospel.11
so he aims at the most important target: the gospel.”
Marriage is important because it has great capacity for gospel work. When it is under attack by the father of lies, Satan, we must renew our minds to give marriage the role for which it was designed. A LIVING PICTURE OF THE CHURCH Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything” (Eph. 5:22-24).
Notice that Paul does not say, the husband “should be” the head of the wife. The grammar in this sentence is quite clear. This is an indicative verb (the indicative mood is used to make factual statements), not an imperative verb (the grammatical mood that forms an order or command). This is a teaching on the nature of the husband’s relationship to his wife, not on the moral obligations he has to her. God has designed the husband as the head of the wife. This is a covenantal relationship. If a woman doesn’t want male leadership in her home, then she doesn’t have to marry. But, if she marries, she has accepted a male head no matter what. “He may be a very poor head, but he is the head nonetheless.”12 FALL 2019
The seventeenth-century Puritan minister, William Gouge, described what the wife’s submission should look like if it will be a true reflection of the church: Four graces [are] needful to season a wife’s subjection: the Church acknowledges Christ her superior, fears Him inwardly, reverenceth Him outwardly, obeys Him also both by forbearing to do what He forbids and also by doing what He commands…these are four virtues which are especially needful hereunto, whereby the Church seasons her subjection to Christ and wives also may and must season their subjection to their husbands…13 A LIVING PICTURE OF CHRIST Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church – for we are members of his body” (Eph. 5:30).
Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church—a love marked by giving. Christ’s love makes the church whole. His words cleanse her and present her beautiful. Everything he does and says is designed to bring the best out of her, dressing her in dazzling white silk, radiant with holiness. And that is how husbands ought to love their wives. Gouge comments on this as well, “As authority must be well maintained, so must it be well managed: for which purpose two things are needful: 1) that a husband tenderly respect his wife; [and] 2) that providently he care for her.”14 Broadly, husbands are commanded to love our wives. We are to be present with them. Your duty Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
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The Family
as her husband is to join with her in companionship. Spend time with her, talk with her, have a vision for the family, and then help with the children when they come. If you do not spend time with your wife, you are attacking her feelings of significance. If sports, TV, and other hobbies get more of your time and presence than she does, you are sending her the message that she is not significant to you. Act to show her that you value and esteem her, following the sacrificial example of Christ to His church. And go to the Word with her. Initiate prayer, conversation about Scripture, and family worship. This last one is a somewhat nebulous term, but it begins with simply opening your Bible and reading it to your family. From there you should ask your family to share the spiritual truths that stood out to them. We use nine questions that mine for the point to find the unchanging universal principle of each passage. You could use a catechism here as well. Third, have your family earnestly pray for one another, making requests of God for His favour, for family, church, community, nation and world, and to cry out for the souls of the lost. Fourth, sing together as a family. This is an important form of communication that evokes reflection in powerful ways. CONCLUSION
Children are desperate to see the sacrificial love of Christ in their fathers and the submission of the church in their mothers. Neighbours are desperate to see the humility of Christ in men and the purity of the church in women. Everyone needs to see that we are God’s workmanship for Christ – by the power of His good design throughout redemptive history and through the renewing of the Spirit. For better or worse, our marriage is a living picture in smell, sight, sound, taste, and touch. As we let God transform us, He paints and sculpts us into a powerful picture of the love between Christ and His church.
1
10, 2013, https://www.faa.gov/news/press_ releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=14838. 2 A literal rendering of 2:15 would be “And not one [he] did/made, and a remnant of spirit [is/was?] to him.” This is a difficult sentence to translate. However, it expresses a spiritual bond. See Richard A. Taylor and E. Ray Clendenen, Haggai, Malachi, vol. 21A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2004), 350. 3 S.G. Winchester A.M., “The Importance of Family Religion.” National Center for Family Integrated Church, accessed September 28, 2019, https://ncfic.org/resources/part-1-theimportance-of-family-religion. 4 Geoff Dickinson, “Susanna Wesley, the Mother of the Wesleys,” My Wesleyan Methodists, last modified June 19, 2019, https://www.mywesleyanmethodists.org.uk/content/people-2/ the-wesley-family/susanna-wesleys-motherwesleys. 5 Arthur W. Pink “The Excellence of Marriage” (1886-1952) in Brown, Scott T. A Theology of the Family. NCFIC. Kindle Edition. 6 J. Mark Fox, Family Integrated Church: Healthy Families, Healthy Church (Maitland, FL: Xulon Press, 2006), 47-48. 7 Fox, Family Integrated Church, 52. 8 Fox, Family Integrated Church, 53. 9 Voddie Baucham, “The Truth on Marriage, Based on Ephesians,” Youtube, accessed August 24, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=uRVD20mRAsE. 10 Douglas Wilson, Reforming Marriage, (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2012). Kindle Edition. 11 Scott T. Brown, A Theology of the Family (Raleigh, NC: National Center for Family Integrated Church, 2014). Kindle Edition. 12 Wilson, Reforming Marriage. Kindle Edition. 13 William Gouge, “Grace for a Wife’s Submission,” (1575-1653) in Brown, A Theology of the Family. 14 Gouge.
“Press Release – FAA Boosts Aviation Safety with New Pilot Qualification Standards,” Federal Aviation Administration, last modified July
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RYAN ERAS Ryan Eras is Director of Content and Publishing at the Ezra Institute. He holds an undergraduate degree in History from Tyndale University, and a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Toronto, with a focus on bibliographic control and the history of censorship. Ryan has served in several educational and support roles, providing bibliographic research and critical editorial assistance for several popular and academic publications. He lives in the Niagara region with his wife Rachel, and their children, Isabelle, Joanna, Simon and Gideon.
book review: John
WORSHIP & ORDER IN THE CHURCH
“WHAT DOTH GOD REQUIRE of us in
our dependence on Him, that He may be glorified by us and we accepted with Him?” With this question, in the typical thorough prose of the Puritans, John Owen opens Worship and Order in the Church (1667). As Owen goes on to demonstrate, there are very clear answers to this question; it is a task that God’s people can succeed in. This short work is written as a catechism, consisting of fifty-three sets of questions and answers on the purpose of worship in the church, and the ways and means that worship is to be carried out; the answers are often accompanied by detailed explanations. The Puritans are sometimes criticized for being excessively thorough – a less charitable term would be ‘long-winded;’ in fairness, the charge often sticks, and here John Owen is no exception. However, an honest reader of Worship and Order in the Church will discover that Owen provides long explanations not because he loves the sound of his own voice, but because he loves God and is zealous that He be worshipped in fitting ways. Owen groups his fifty-three questions and answers under fourteen headings. These headings are then grouped into two main sections: Corporate Worship, relating to the nature and purpose of worship in the local church, and Church Order, dealing with issues related to leadership, practice, discipline, and fellowship in the local church. This is a short book, less than 100 pages. There are no superfluous questions or categories – each section is relevant to the matter of worship in the church, and each is thoroughly supported from Scripture. However, Owen spends most of his time on matters relating to our aim in worship, and our obligation in worship, and these are the sections I want to draw attention to. Both
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of these appear in the first section on corporate worship and serve as a valuable explanation from a biblical foundation for what a worship service is and what it is for. OUR AIM IN WORSHIP
In the earliest questions and answers, Owen demonstrates from Scripture that God has required the regular gathering of His people for worship. This done, he then poses the question about the “chief things that we ought to aim at in our observation.” In other words, what do we hope will be accomplished in our worship? What will we do during this time that will allow us to walk out at the end of the service certain that God was pleased with what we did there? Owen identifies four things: To sanctify the name of God; to own and avow our professed subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ; to build up ourselves in our most holy faith; and to testify and confirm our mutual love, as we are believers.1
He goes on to explain that these four aims are listed in order of priority, and that the later aims must follow the earlier ones. Before we can build ourselves up in the faith, for example, we first need to sanctify the name of God, and confess our subjection to and dependence on Him. If we have neglected these first things, then we have lost the essence of a worship service. Our edification is a benefit that comes from our right esteem of God, and without that proper esteem, we will find that we are not able to build ourselves up in faith, or confirm our love for one another in Christ, since we have no foundation on which to build, and nothing to inform or direct the content of that love. Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Book Review: Worship & Order
However, the reverse is also true. As we gather to sanctify His name, confess His authority, and proceed to worship according to His appointed ways and means, our edification will be the natural result. Owen recalls the promise of Christ in Revelation 3:20 that “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” He explains that “in the celebration of gospel ordinances, God in Christ proposeth Himself in an intimate manner to the believing soul as His God and reward; and He presents His love in Christ in a special manner.”2 These promises are precious to Owen, and should be to every believer, that in the right observation of worship, offered to God from a pure heart and according to the principles laid out in Scripture, our faith is “excited, increased, strengthened.”3 OUR OBLIGATIONS IN WORSHIP
Having established what are the proper aims of worship, Owen moves on to the practical matters of how we do that. As ever, his authority is Scripture, and in laying out our obligations, he is careful to always keep this rule in the foreground. Owen explains that our principal obligation in worship is That we observe and do all whatsoever the Lord Christ hath commanded us to observe in the way that He hath prescribed, and that we add nothing unto or in the observation of them that is of man’s invention or appointment.4
Owen derives this first point from the Great Commission, Jesus’ charge to His disciples to teach the nations “to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:20). He contends that this is a standing rule for the church for all time, and that “no disuse, of whatever continuance, can discharge us from the observation of Christ’s institutions,” and that “no abuse, of however high a nature, can absolve us from obedience unto an institution of Christ.”5 Citing Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Owen notes that “after the great abuse of the Lord’s Supper in that church, the apostle recalls them again unto the observation of it, according to the institution of Christ.”6 Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity
Owen’s response to the question of our obligations is consistent with many of the Genevan reformers’ and the Puritans’ formulation of what has come to be called the Regulative Principle of Worship, the doctrine that “there must be (and is) a specific prescription governing how God is to be worshiped corporately. In the public worship of God, specific requirements are made, and we are not free either to ignore them or to add to them.”7 THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD
One interesting thing about Owen is the way he implicitly acknowledges or anticipates the idea of sphere sovereignty. He understands that church is not the only area where God is to be worshipped and glorified; however the church is ordained by God, Who has prescribed particular ways and means that He is to be worshipped, and when God’s people gather for worship, we gather in the expectation that God will meet us there, and that this communion of God with His people will have a blessing that expands outside the walls of the church building. “In the willing obedience of His people,” writes Owen, “gathering themselves unto the ensigns of His rule, He is glorified in the world.” In a way this catechism represents an interaction with the beginning of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1646-47): “Q: What is the chief end of man? A: To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Owen’s catechism takes this chief end and shows how the local church body goes about fulfilling it in its own unique way. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Owen (1616-1683) was a Congregationalist minister, theologian, and, briefly, member of Parliament during Oliver Cromwell’s Interregnum. It is clear from Owen’s own words and from the specific points he makes that he often has in view what he considered the unbiblical extravagances of the Roman Catholic and Anglican worship services, and that his rules for worship and order are in part intended as a corrective to these. He wrote it in 1667, under the original title of A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God and Discipline of the Churches of the New Testament, and published FALL 2019
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Book Review: Worship & Order
it anonymously, “lest danger should be incurred by the publication of a work advocating a form of polity at variance with the ecclesiastical system that the Court was at that time striving to render, as far as possible, universal in England.”8 In addition to this biblical justification for the nature of the worship service, Worship and Order in the Church is loaded with insights into the role and choosing of pastors, elders and deacons, the administration of the sacraments, and the guides for relationships between congregations. This book is warmly recommended for all Christians in their desire to develop a richer understanding of the nature and role of the church. And in particular I recommend it to church leaders in the planning of their liturgies, and for congregations as they consider men for leadership roles.
1
John Owen, Worship and Order in the Church (Pensacola, FL: Chapel Library, 2017), 14. 2 Owen, Worship and Order, 16. 3 Ibid. 4 Owen, Worship and Order, 20. 5 Owen, Worship and Order, 21. 6 Ibid., cf. 1 Cor. 11:20-23; Matt. 26:26-29. 7 Derek Thomas, “The Regulative Principle of Worship,” Ligonier, last modified July 1, 2010, https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/regulative-principle-worship/. 8 William Goold, “Prefatory note,” in Worship and Order in the Church, 4.
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