Some of my recent X posts (roughly mid-March to early May ‘25):
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If you haven’t yet read John Murray’s article, “The Church: Its Definition in Terms of ‘Visible’ and ‘Invisible’ Invalid,” your theological education is still incomplete.
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“Preach as a dying man to dying men, as one who might never preach again.”
– Richard Baxter (paraphrased)
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What’s the real source of anti-white racism?
“Most of the time, I hear white Americans discussing anti-whitism, I think it’s cute, but I think they are far off the target in their contemplations. Their contemplations are not close to the lived experiences of black and brown Americans being brainwashed into thinking whites are the enemy. They give black and brown Americans far too much credit for why they think the way they do about white Americans. If you listen to white Americans takes on anti-whitism you will hear high-brow intellectual theories are thrown around like neomarxism. The answer is far more straightforward than that: ethnic minorities with a lower intelligence and/or an external locus of control blame White Americans for everything wrong with their lives, and the ethnic and white people around them corroborate this. They are living in a socially substantiated reality….
White Americans, for the most part, do not understand this because they do not believe similarly that other ethnic groups are the reasons for their failures.”
Check out the whole insightful article: ladydrummond.substack.com/p/growing-up-a…
As an economist, Thomas Sowell has pointed out for years that if there’s one thing struggling ethnic minorities need to learn, it’s responsibility. As a pastor, I might say the one thing missing is the book of Proverbs, which, of course, emphasizes personal responsibility. Scapegoating other groups for your own failures is the antithesis of responsibility. It’s the politics of envy.
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Libertarianism and progressivism seem like polar opposites on the political spectrum, but actually they are very similar.
They both make personal choices and individual freedom the ultimate good.
The only difference is that progressivism wants to use tax payer money to underwrite those choices (and absorb their consequences) whereas libertarians want you to pay for them yourself
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What Romans 6 teaches about baptismal efficacy has to be paired with what Romans 11 teaches about the possibility of apostasy.
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The papacy solves nothing. The Reformation was, in part, an answer to the failure of the papacy.
If we can interpret the infallible words of the pope with reasonable certainty, we can interpret the infallible words of Scripture with reasonable certainty.
If we can recognize an infallible church/magisterium, we can recognize an infallible Scripture.
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Baptism is not the wedding ring, it’s the wedding ceremony.
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If parents gave their children everything they asked for, it’d be a disaster.
Now apply this to prayer.
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The covenant is simple, despite the best efforts of some theologians to complicate it.
The visible church = the covenant community, those united to Christ as his bride
Baptism = the wedding ceremony, entrance into covenantal union with Christ
The communion meal = covenant renewal
Excommunication = divorce proceedings (for spiritual adultery/covenant breaking)
It’s that simple. Read the Bible this way and so much will make sense.
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In 1886, Henry James complained that masculinity was fading out the world. We were raising up soft, effeminate men and so the world was losing the gift that is masculinity. The culture was becoming feminized — and it was an exaggerated, unhealthy feminization because it lacked the balancing force of mature masculinity. Here it is in his own words:
“The whole generation is womanized, the masculine tone is passing out of the world; it’s a feminine hysterical, chattering, canting age.”
But now we can say that the counterpart is happening: femininity is passing out of the world. A whole generation of women is being masculinized. The beauty of femininity is being lost to girl-bosses. Women are intentionally rejecting marriage and motherhood. They are embracing intentional childlessness. Stay-at-home moms have been replaced by strong, independent career women — a horrific tradeoff. Just as the world loses something vital when masculinity in men is lost, so it loses something beautiful when femininity in women is lost.
The crucial task going forward is not just recovering masculinity and femininity. It’s recovering masculinity and femininity in the right places. We do not need masculinized women and feminized men. We need masculine men and feminine women. We need men who are men, and women who are women. We need real fathers and mothers. Masculinity and femininity were designed to go together. Masculine men are attractive to women, and feminine women are attractive to men. Recovering masculine/feminine polarity is one of the keys to restoring marriage and family. It’s crucial to marriage rates and birth rates, and thus to the maintenance, recovery, and growth of civilization. The balance between and the bond between masculinity and femininity is at the heart of God’s creational design and the bedrock of stable social life.
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The gospel is the story of an interethnic, interracial marriage – Jewish Messiah marries a mixed race, mostly Gentile bride.
FOLLOW UP:
Very interesting and disturbing responses to this tweet. Mostly mockery, virtually no argument for anything. Lots of rage.
The tweet was not *really* about marriage. Obviously, Jesus’ marriage is unique in that he marries a corporate person, not an individual person.
With regard to interethnic and interracial marriage, I would never bind anyone’s conscience beyond the Word of God. I certainly think interethnic marriages (in the Lord) are permissible. But they are not the “norm” and probably never will be. It’s odd to me so many guys on this app are hyper sensitive to this issue when it generally affects a very small sliver of the population. At this point, with marriage rates at an all time low, we should be happy if people get married at all, even if they are looking outside normal circles to find a bride. Given how insufferable many modern Western white women are, I would not at all blame young men for broadening their search for a wife. Just today, I saw a “far right” guy on this app suggesting American men look at Ukrainian women for brides since they are not as influenced by feminism and a whole generation of young Ukrainian men just got wiped out. That would probably not be my choice if I were a single, young man but it’s not bad advice for some men under the circumstances. It’s not good for man to be alone.
Interracial marriage is never going to be the most common way to start a family any more than adoption is going to become the most common way of building a family. And just in case someone is wondering: No, it is not somehow more godly to have an interracial or interethnic marriage, nor is it more godly to adopt children than to have natural offspring. These are largely matters of Christian liberty and prudence.
Back to the point of my tweet. My tweet was only incidentally about marriage. It’s really about redemptive history and the catholicity of the church. If racial identitarianism is making a comeback on the right (which is unfortunate imo), it is crucial to be reminded of the cosmic scope of Christ’s redemptive work and the ethnic catholicity of the church.
My tweet is also about hermeneutics, and typology in particular. This morning I linked an article that goes into this more depth (it was a critique of a TGC article) if you’re interested.
MORE FOLLOW UP: This post caused quite a scandal. But it’s worth noting that the same truth caused a great scandal in the early church. If my post is wrong, Gentiles as Gentiles cannot be saved. (My guess is most of the people objecting to the post are, ironically, Gentiles.) Much of the NT was written to work out the complications that resulted from the new covenant church/bride being a multiethnic body. Ephesians, Galatians, Romans, Acts 15, etc., all deal with this theme. Jewish and Gentile Christians had to learn to get along with one another and form coherent, unified ecclesiastical communities. That does not mean every local church needs to be multiracial or multiethnic – but the fact that God in his providence grew the earliest churches in multiethnic, cosmopolitan areas is not an accident. God wanted the earliest local churches to be models of the catholicity of the universal church.
Many people responding to this post twisted it in weird sexual ways, eg, Jesus must be bisexual or polygamous. But that’s a serious misunderstanding of biblical theology. The one bride of Christ has a corporate sex and a corporate ethnicity – the bride is obviously female and the ethnicity is “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” This should not be that hard, as these are things Scripture calls attention to again and again.
Some are so focused on racial identity politics in our contemporary context that they can’t recognize a description of the “one holy catholic apostolic church” even when it’s right in front of them. It’s like they’re wearing blinders or have tunnel vision. The race issue has become the lens through which they see everything else. They are scandalized at the thought of having to share membership in the universal church with people of other ethnicities and races.
Most negative responses read all kinds of things into my post that simply weren’t there and missed what was there. God have mercy.
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Having a productive household starts with producing children, the greatest natural resource of them all.
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“Men and women are one species — just barely.”
— Edward O. Wilson
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[RESPONSE TO POST ON DATING:] We’re doomed. Unless this changes. I’d say this is why fathers and pastors need to work at understanding intersexual dynamics and passing that wisdom along to their sons. And they need to insist that their young men be willing to put themselves out there. For the vast vast majority of men, learning how to righteously pursue and win and keep a woman’s heart is intrinsic to masculinity.
What I have found is that many young Christian men assume that things they see and hear about women in general will be true of young Christian women – and while that is sadly all too often the case, thankfully there is still a Christian sub-cultural bubble in which women are not swept up into feminism, and would be receptive to masculine initiative. But the wider cultural narrative has the young men (understandably) scared to approach.
If men do not approach and pursue women, there are no marriages. Without marriages, there are no families. Without families — and the next generation they raise up — there is no civilization. At a practical level, there is really no more urgent issue than this one. There is no more important area for Christians to be genuinely counter-cultural by fostering a biblical and more traditional understanding of the sexes, the value of marrying young, the blessings, of children, etc.
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Winning culture battles is not the same as winning the culture war.
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Wokeness = using a twisted form of Christian compassion to subvert Christian truth.
“The mercy of the wicked is cruel.” (Proverbs 12:10)
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The Bible has very little to say about races and a lot to say about ethnicities/nations. While there is overlap between race and ethnicity, they are not identical and the distinctions are important (I have addressed this elsewhere).
People of all races bear God’s image. They all descend from one man. They are all fallen in one man. They can all be redeemed in One Man.
Because all individuals bear the image of God, there is a sense in which we can speak of the equality of all people. But this kind of equality does not imply egalitarianism. Individuals vary widely in gifts and talents. They vary widely in degrees of sinfulness (though all are totally depraved and thus unable to please God in the flesh). If they are believers they can reach varying levels of personal holiness. Some Christians make more progress in discipleship and grow to greater maturity than other Christians. Of course, all progress and maturation in righteousness is by grace, so those Christians who grow to a greater degree have nothing to boast about. Indeed, boasting in oneself is a sign that one does not understand the grace of the gospel at all. Everything is a gift, including natural endowments (intelligence, athletic ability, creativity, etc.) and salvific endowments (faith, repentance, etc.).
When we consider the same issues at the ethnic/national level, we must say that all cultures show the effects of the fall. Every people group has been guilty of horrific atrocities at various times in history. Widespread ignorance of history sometimes blinds us to this reality, but it is most certainly true. We can also say that God’s plan is for each nation to be discipled and brought into his kingdom en masse over the course of history. This is what the Great Commission requires (and as a postmillennialist, I believe that Great Commission will be fulfilled — I make the case for that elsewhere).
We are not required to say that each nation, or the culture of each nation, is equal. We must reject cultural egalitarianism. We must reject so-called multiculturalism. Over time, across history, as God’s plan unfolds, each nation will reflect both the effects of the fall and the effects of redemption. And of course, nations and their cultures are not static — a nation that might be horrifically wicked at one point in history might be very righteous, relatively speaking, at another time in history. Nations rise and fall. Nations repent and later apostatize. Nations are blessed and cursed and blessed again over the course of history. Some nations go out of existence altogether and new nations form. But all nations have a role to play in God’s plan for history. When a nation and its culture show signs of progress and maturing in God’s truth, goodness, and beauty, we must attribute this to grace.
A Christian nation will not boast in its accomplishments, but give thanks to God for his tender mercies. A boastful nation is not a properly Christian nation. We must boast only in what God’s grace has done among us — and the way we boast in grace is by giving thanks. Even the so-called natural endowments of a nation are bestowed by grace. Everything good in any nation comes from divine grace.
Nations, and the cultures that develop within each nation, will have diverse strengths and weaknesses, diverse gifts and talents. Obviously, different nations have different endowments, apportioned by God as he sees fit. As every nation is discipled, every nation will ultimately bring its treasures into the kingdom of God (Isaiah 60:11), but nothing in Scripture suggests that every nation and culture will bring *equally* glorious treasures into the kingdom of God. Just as individual Christians will have varying levels of glory and reward in the resurrection, so different nations will contribute varying levels of treasure to the kingdom.
We can certainly make judgments about which nations (and their cultures) have been superior to this point in history. There should be no question, at least for Christians, that the nations that belong to what we call Western Civilization (or Western Christendom) have been the high water mark to this point in history. But that does not mean Western Civilization can never be surpassed by any other nation or group of nations. It is impossible to say which national culture will be the most glorious over the course of history until history is complete. Thus claims that this or that nation is *intrinsically* superior to all other nations are premature. We do not know what the future holds, and we do not know how the leaven of the gospel might permeate and transform other nations and cultures in the millennia to come.
One thing is certain: Nations and cultures that become arrogant and boastful will be judged; and nations and cultures that are humbly receptive to the gospel and grateful for its transforming power will be blessed.
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If a wife will not submit to her husband, the problem is not that she thinks she knows better than her husband. The problem is that she thinks she knows better than God.
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PSA for Presbyterians: Presbyterians rightly claim to ground their polity in Scripture, particularly the structure we see in old covenant Israel. But it’s also worth remembering that it was General Assembly that put Jesus to death. The right structure with the wrong men can do a lot of damage.
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Every single sin is an act of practical atheism. When we sin we are pretending that what we know is true is not true. We are denying in our actions what we are sure of in our hearts. Every man knows the all-glorious, righteous, and wise God exists; sin is the attempt to suppress that reality. Every single sin is an implicit attempt to kill God.
This is the ironic beauty of the gospel: sin is attempted deicide – but in order to save us from our sin, God had to let us go through with actual deicide. The cross was man’s attempt to rid the universe of God for good. But as man was trying to rid the world of God, God was saving the world.
If sin is man’s attempt to slay God, salvation is God slaying sin. But God slays sin by allowing sin to slay him. At the cross, God used man’s sin to deliver man from sin. At the very moment man was trying to drive God out of the universe, God was filling the universe with the glory of his sacrificial love.
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Ladies, before you criticize your husband’s decision making, remember that marrying you was one of his decisions.
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“From my mother’s womb, You have been My God,” should be the testimony of every covenant child.
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“America now suffers from a full-blown identity crisis. If we hope to recover a coherent national identity, we must start with the Bible. Conservatives and Christians who want to revive the American tradition must demand — unapologetically — the return of scripture and prayer to public life.” (Auron MacIntyre)
Amen x1000!
MAGA is inseparable from MACA. We cannot rebuild our civilization without the tools that created it in the first place, and the most important tool was Scripture.
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It has been said that “God has no grandchildren.” This is exactly correct. Or is it? After all, God says he provides righteousness (covenant faithfulness) to his children’s children (Ps. 103:17). So which is it? Is the covenant truly passed along from one generation to the next? Or does God start over with each new generation? Biblically, it is both, but in a nuanced way. Our children are not included in the covenant by some natural connection (Jn. 1:12-13). After all, we are fallen in Adam, and flesh can only give birth to flesh. Jesus made it clear that natural birth had to be distinguished from the rebirth of water and Spirit (Jn. 3:1-21). On the other hand, God’s promises to and about our children overcome the weakness of the flesh, restoring the fallen family bonds through the work of the Spirit via word and sacrament. Covenantal grace grabs hold of the next generation and includes them in God’s family with their parents.
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It’s impossible to overstate the importance of being in a church where the elders give marital counsel and judgments based on the teaching of Scripture and the facts of the case, rather than their preferred gender.
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A crucial key to properly reading the Bible is recognizing the category of God-fearing Gentiles — that is, non-Jews who worshipped the true God under the old covenant. These were uncircumcised people who trusted and served YHWH.
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Luther said of the hyper-spiritualists in his day who thought they received extra-biblical messages from God, “These people have swallowed the Holy Ghost, feathers and all.”
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Historically, the church has recognized the cross of Christ has three essential dimensions:
1. The cross is a penal substitution, meaning Jesus died in our place, taking the punishment and curse we deserve, satisfying God’s retributive justice and thus making propitiation.
2. The cross is Christ’s great victory over sin and death, bringing about the downfall of the idolatrous principalities and powers and crushing Satan under foot.
3. The cross is a pattern, or example, in which we participate so that we die to sin and become more and more conformed to the image of the crucified Christ.
Each of these dimensions of the cross is present in Mark 15:
1. Barabbas (whose name means, ironically, “son of the father”) is set free and Jesus dies in his place. Jesus dies as Barabbas’s substitute, allowing the guilty to go free as the Righteous suffers in his place. This penal substitution is the foundation of everything else the cross accomplished. Because of God’s holiness and the nature of sin, God cannot simply grant forgiveness in a kind of “presidential pardon”; sin must be punished and justice must be satisfied. In love, God provided a sacrifice, absorbing his own wrath and reconciling us to himself. We are like Barabbas — guilty, but set free because Jesus takes our place and bears our curse.
2. The cross is Jesus’ victory. When Jesus dies, Satan is routed and the principalities and powers toppled. He dies at Golgotha, “the place of the skull.” As he hangs on the tree, what is under his feet? The skull of the serpent. He is crushing Satan’s head even as his heel is bruised. (This point is even stronger if Golgotha got its name because it was the place David put the head of Goliath after defeating him. David was a forerunner of Christ and Goliath an obvious serpent figure, complete with scaly armor, who dies of a head wound.)
3. Simon becomes the cross-bearer, following in the footsteps of Jesus. Simon’s role in the story shows that the cross is not only “for us,” but also “in us,” as we take up our cross each day and walk in the way of Jesus and his disciples. The ethic of the cross is the outflow of Christ’s sacrificial action; the cross is not only an event for us and outside of us, but enters into us and transforms us, so we begin to live in and live out of the very sacrificial love that was on display in the cross. Just as every Christian is a Barabbas, set free because Jesus died in our place, the righteous for the unrighteous, so every Christian is also a Simon, called to take up the cross and follow Jesus in the way of self-denial and sacrificial love.
At times, these three dimensions have pulled apart, and when that has happened, it has been to the great detriment of the church, jeopardizing, if not altogether losing, the gospel. Because we are in union with Christ, all of these dimensions of the cross go together and constitute our salvation.
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A few thoughts on Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus in Mark 14:
Peter denied Jesus. Jesus denied himself.
Peter was ashamed of Jesus because he misunderstood glory. Jesus died a shameful death to bring Peter to glory.
Peter was unfaithful and succumbed to temptation. Jesus ran the gauntlet of the greatest series of temptations in human history, but remained faithful.
Peter succumbs to the riffraff and rabble of the commoners in the courtyard (including the maid of the High Priest – an obvious foil over and against the servant of the High Priest Peter whom boldly but impetuously attacked in Gethsemane). Jesus stands firm before the most powerful council in Israel (and will do so again before Caesar’s representative, Pilate). Peter fell before the weak. Jesus stood tall before the mighty.
Peter lied through his teeth and under oath. Jesus made the good confession before men.
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Reformed theology defines a sacrament as the union of the sign and the thing signified. If I may suggest a revision, I’d say that a sacrament is the union of the sign and the person signified – because both sacraments signify Christ. In baptism, Christ gives himself to us in and through the sign of water. In the Lord’s Supper, Christ gives himself to us in and through the signs of bread and wine.
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Jesus does not replace the Old Testament. He fulfills it.
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We face a marriage rate crisis, a birth rate crisis, and pastoral shortage crisis. Somehow, I think all of these crises are related.
One way to think of these crises: They are the judgment of God on an apostatizing civilization. The excruciating loneliness that comes from family breakdown, the loss of prosperity that comes from smaller generations/childlessness, and a famine of God’s Word are signs Jesus is angry with us. Every society, like every individual, ultimately faces the same decision: Repent or perish.
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Quite a few wives are “people pleasers” when it comes to everyone except for their husband. They care way too much about what everyone else thinks and way too little about what he thinks.
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One of the big problems with marriage counseling is that it outsources headship from the husband to a third party. The husband and wife put themselves under the counselor who is usually tasked with leading them to a solution to whatever problem ails their marriage.
But once a husband surrenders headship of his wife to a counselor in this way, it can be very hard to get it back. The focus is no longer on him lovingly leading her and her respectfully obeying him; the focus instead becomes each of them obeying the counselor, who acts as both referee and coach for the couple. (The problem of subverting headship is further compounded if the counselor is female.)
There are certainly Christian counselors who honor and uphold the biblical architecture of marriage and therefore counsel in a way that does not interfere with the headship/submission pattern (and indeed, encourages it). But those counselors are rare.
Troubled marriages should certainly get outside help. But a lot of counseling, even in the Christian and parachurch realm, actually makes things worse rather than better. As a generalization, I would suggest a man in a difficult marriage seeking help from an older, happily married man, and a woman in a hard marital situation seeking mentorship from an older, wiser woman.
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The decline of civilization as seen in dress/clothing standards.
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What do I recommend in cases of domestic violence? Call the police, then the elders, then a divorce. attorney.
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The basic message of Ecclesiastes:
Quit trying to control your life, and trust God. Quit trying to understand life, and obey God. Quit trying to play God, and fear God.
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The gist of Ecclesiastes 3:
Wisdom is largely a matter of discerning the times. We cannot always see it, but there is a pattern to what God is doing in our lives and in history. It’s all leading to the final judgment when God sets everything completely right. It takes faith to say God is going to make the mess of this world “beautiful in its time,” but he certainly will. Right now we’re too close to the mural to see it, but at the last day we’ll get a glimpse of the much bigger picture and see its beauty. But for now we have to live in faith that God will work everything out.
Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us again we cannot control our lives in any ultimate sense. The time of your birth, your death, and everything else, is in God’s hands. But this a great comfort. You are immortal until the moment God has appointed for your death. As Stonewall Jackson said, “My religion has taught me to feel as safe on the battlefield as in bed.”
We try to control our time. We try to do God’s job for him. Look at how much we schedule and plan. It’s good to makes plans to a point, of course, but recognize that all your times are really subject to God’s will (cf. James 4). God has put us in boxes. Learn to live in that box, being comfortable with who God has made you to be and the opportunities he gives you. Do the work God gives you to do, knowing he is pleased with it and will establish it forever. When you cannot square your experience with God’s promises, trust he will still make things work out — this is what it means to live by faith.
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Ecclesiastes is summed up well in the words of Bayard the Truthspeaker: “Live the life that unfolds before you.”
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If Proverbs is about the value of wisdom, Ecclesiastes is about the limits of wisdom. “Even the wise cannot see all ends,” as Gandalf put it.
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“We never know what God has up His sleeve. You never know what might happen; you only know what you have to do now.”
— Elisabeth Elliot
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Adam Smith’s thesis regarding free trade amongst nations is basically sound. The implementation of Smith’s free market philosophy led to unprecedented wealth amongst Western nations. Smith’s economics largely grew out of a biblical worldview that respected private property (per the eighth commandment) and properly limited the role of the state. The free market produced incredible innovation which has made all our lives better and for that we should be grateful. Centralized planning schemes like communism or socialism or Nazism are all proven failures. Government intervention in and control of the economy virtually always backfires.
But Smith presupposed a Christendom situation in which the nations trading largely shared the same faith and the same underlying civilization. They had social capital to match their financial capital. Today, in an era of secularized globalism, it is very different. Many, or even most, of the trade partners do not share a common worldview. And so we have to improvise. Even if we continue to be defenders of the free market (as I certainly am in principle), we have to improvise to deal with the reality of the situation on the ground. This is where tariffs and protectionism and economic nationalism come into play. How do you trade with other nations that aren’t playing by the same rules? How do you have a free market with nations that use slave labor or do not have the same environmental regulations? Or that charge unequal tariffs on us? That’s what the Trump administration is trying to figure out. The Trump approach is certainly not the only one that can be taken. A strong case can be made for other approaches, such as lower taxes and deregulation in America.
But whatever Trump hopes to accomplish has to be done quickly. One problem Trump faces is that he only has so long to make the tariffs work. If manufacturing is going to be brought back here, how quickly can it happen? Will it really create new jobs in light of automation advancements? Trump’s runway is pretty short because the economy is likely to be a major factor in the midterm elections.
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The old Christian right is pretty much dead (think: “Religious Right” of the 1980s). But at least right now, there’s a fine line between the New Christian Right and the Post-Christian Right.
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“The reason the mass of men fear God, and at bottom dislike Him, is because they rather distrust His heart, and fancy Him all brain like a watch.” — Herman Melville
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A comprehensive doctrine of justification includes both sola fide and final judgment according to works:
“Now we are prepared to state the biblical doctrine of justification more fully. Initial justification is by faith alone. But it is by a faith that will prove itself in works. Final justification is by faith and works together. Or, to put it differently, it is by a faith that has proven itself in obedience and borne the fruit of the Spirit. This is the teaching found across the board in the NT. Jesus (Luke 18:14/Matt. 12:37), James (2:23/2:22), and Paul (Rom. 3:28/Rom. 2:13) all provide a synthesis of present justification by faith and future justification to doers. So far from there being tension, there is complete compatibility. This is because salvation is a complete package, which includes initial forgiveness, final vindication, and growth in the obedience of faith in between. God’s purpose, beginning in the eternal election of a people, reaching achievement in the death and resurrection of Christ, coming to fruition in the applicatory work of the Spirit, and finally culminating with resurrection and new creation, is all of one piece. In other words, there is no tension between the two poles of justification because, eschatologically and decretally, “believers” and “doers” become the same group. Those who are declared righteous at the start are practically righteous at the end.”
Rome does not have a doctrine of initial justification, only final justification (after purgatory). Baptism washes away original sin, but no one is declared righteous until they actually are righteous.
Modern Reformed theology only has initial justification, and no doctrine of final justification. The glorious truth of our present right-standing with God is emphasized, but there is a latent antinomianism in a lot of modern Reformed preaching and teaching. Inadequate attention has been given to the place of works in the final judgment.
The so-called “federal vision,” in line with the best of historic Reformed orthodoxy, has both initial and final justification, properly understood as two phases of a single justification. Initial justification is by faith alone; this settles our standing in God’s law court. But there is a final judgment to come, and those who were declared righteous by faith in this life will be declared righteous and openly acquitted at the last day, according to the works the Spirit has produced in them, offered to the Father through the mediation and intercession of Christ. Thus, justification has a Trinitarian structure: initial justification by faith alone is the Father’s approval of the Son’s work for me, outside of me; final justification according to works is the Father’s approval of the Spirit’s work to me, inside of me. Justification by faith alone gives way to justification according to works because the faith that initially justifies by laying hold of Christ is a working, living, fighting faith.
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The already/not yet or definitive/progressive/final schema applies to the whole ordo salutis, and union with Christ ties it all together.
This quote gets overlooked – it should have caused way more controversy:
“[T]here is an eschatological (‘already/not yet’) structure to each aspect of soteriology . . . And while it requires carefully guarded statement, it is also true that justification is an already accomplished and perfect reality, but awaits consummation…Similarly, while believers have already been justified with irreversible finality, they will appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what is due them (2 Cor. 5:10).”
— Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit, p. 103.
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A few observations:
1. The subdividing on the right taking place at this moment was inevitable but also very counterproductive. There can no real world victories without practical, pragmatic coalitions. Lines do have to be drawn but if drawn too tightly, you remain irrelevant. Mocking others who are also on the right is useless; at the very least, engage the issues where you differ and have a real conversation. (X may not be the best place for that.)
2. Guys like @jonharris1989 and @Joseph_Spurgeon have proven themselves to be trustworthy voices of reason and wisdom at this moment. Of course, @douglaswils is also. The fact that some consider these men compromised with the left or with the PWC consensus is laughable. If your vision for the Christian right cannot include these men, it will never be more than a social media blip.
3. Jon is correct that if and when more extreme views get institutionalized, it will be a crisis point. I don’t think that happens any time soon, but it could.
4. The dangers of ideology are real. If all your views are just the mirror image of the left, you are (ironically) still operating within the left’s frame. Ignore that framing and pursue truth.
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Pastors, tomorrow is your game day. Hopefully, you’ve put in the spiritual and academic prep to do your job well when you step into the pulpit. Pray that as you lead the saints into the heavenly sanctuary and into liturgical warfare that you will strike a great blow for the kingdom of Jesus against the prince of darkness! In your preaching, attack sin relentlessly. Show Satan no quarter. In your preaching, pile on gospel comfort so your people experience the love of Jesus through your words. Warn them and assure them, just like the Bible does. Declare sins forgiven by the blood of Jesus. The sword of the Spirit has been put into your hands – wield it skillfully! Live up to the calling you have received. Stir up the gifts you’ve been given. Equip and encourage the troops. Blow the trumpet with clarity and certainty. Summon God’s people to battle. Go to war against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Fight manfully under the banner of the cross. Preach with courage and compassion. Honor the office you hold. You represent Jesus to his bride – carry out your charge faithfully!
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It’s tempting to respond to trials with anger or despair. But James tells us to respond to trials with joy. The only way we can do this is if we grasp the Father’s loving purpose behind our trials.
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If foreign soldiers landed on American soil, would we give them due process before pushing them back to where they came from? I’m all for due process. But insisting on due process for invaders seems like saying deception and killing are wrong even in a just war.
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The problem free market advocates have (and I would certainly be one) is that other nations don’t play fair. But rather than putting a tariff on nations that cheat the market system, why not move towards not doing any business with them at all? If you can’t play by the rules, you should get kicked out of the game.
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Expertise is defined in terms of proven competence in a field.
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One of the biggest issues in the early church, which takes up a big chunk of the NT, is the inclusion of Gentiles in the church.
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The point of the Bible is to reveal that God saves the world through Jesus his Son and forms the saved into the church, which is his Son’s bride.
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If the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed could be further revised, I would suggest this:
“the Holy Spirit…who proceeds from the Father *through* the Son.”
I think that language best captures the biblical teaching and might be a way of bringing Eastern and Western branches of the church closer together on the issue.
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Hard to fathom it, but the Bible and catechism used to be staples of public education in America.
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The bride/church is:
1. One
2. Feminine
3. Multiethnic.
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Charles Spurgeon summarized union with Christ this way: “As the Savior, so the saved.” This is the heart of the gospel. All that Christ accomplished he did for us and as us. He includes you in his death, burial, and resurrection. When he died for sin, you died too. When he was buried, you were buried. When he rose, you rose with him. And when he ascended, you ascended as well, so you are seated with him in heavenly places.
When he died on the cross, he was your substitute. He died for you and as you – what he did on the tree is yours because he united himself to you. There is no double jeopardy in God’s system of justice. If you already paid for your sins – which you did when Jesus died in your place – you cannot be made to pay for them again. It is finished! Debts are paid! Sins are forgiven! Jesus was treated as a sinner so you can be treated as righteous. He was condemned so you can be acquitted. He died so you can live.
Christ is the needle, we are the thread. Wherever he goes, he takes us with him. When he went through wrath and hell on the cross, when he passed through Sheol, when he ascended to the highest heaven, he was pulling us right along with himself. We ride on his coattails into heavenly glory. We can no more lose glory than Christ can fall out of heaven. So long as we are united to Christ, we can no more be lost than Christ himself. There is no greater assurance than this. Rest in him. Claim his promises – promises of forgiveness, promises of new life, promises of sin-killing power, promises of perseverance, promises of glory. If God breaks his word, he would cease to be God, so by faith you can be completely assured of your salvation – God has staked his life, even his Godness, on doing what he said he would do.
Believer, all this is yours. By faith you are you united to Christ. By the work of the Holy Spirit, the work of Jesus the Son has been given to you and applied to you. This is the good news – rejoice in it!
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A political movement that does not police itself will never have much success – or if does have success, it won’t last because it will end up undermining itself by allowing the most radical, unhinged element within the movement take control.
Frankly, this is what happened to the left. Progressivism was rolling in the 2010s, and looked like an unstoppable cultural force. But the progressive movement allowed the most crazy leftists have the reins and they ended up running the movement into a ditch (thankfully). It’d be a shame to see the same kind of thing happen on the right at the very moment when conservatives are scoring significant cultural victories for the first time in a long while.
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A husband cannot lead his wife well unless he understands her, including recognizing her weaknesses. He has to know her peculiar temptations and sin patterns if he is to help her grow.
Of course, he also has to know his own weaknesses and sins, and he needs to be ready to receive wisdom and correction from his wife as well. But as the head, he is responsible for their marriage and household in ways she is not – and this calls for spiritual alertness and vigilance in his part.
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Our whole salvation is contained in the crucified and risen Christ. The risen Christ IS the gospel. He is our election, our righteousness, our regeneration, our redemption, our sanctification, our glorification. He is our everything, our all in all. Everything we need is in him, and outside of him is nothing we need.
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The incarnation is the basis of our union with Christ. Because he is one of us, he can act for us. Because he is fully human, he can be the head of a new humanity.
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Jesus is a judge in history and at the last day. In history, he judges nations, as Psalm 2 teaches, based on their response to him. At the last day, all will stand before him to give an account at the last day, as he separates the sheep from the goats, and sends us to our eternal destiny of joy or misery.
The church has both an historical hope and an eternal hope. The historical hope is for the growth of the kingdom and the fulfillment of the great commission – the conversion and transformation of the nations. The eternal hope is Christ’s final coming at the last day, the bodily resurrection, and life forever in a glorified new creation.
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Illiberal liberalism:
we have to be clear on what counts as “illiberal.” One man’s liberalism is another man’s illiberalism, and vice versa. Many things that were part of classical liberalism would be considered extremely illiberal today, such as free association, the criminalization of sodomy (read Thomas Jefferson on this!), and having established churches at the state level. If classical liberalism is represented by the core doctrines of American founding, great, let’s recover it. If it actually means a post 1960s civil rights regime that makes individual autonomy the only good, so that each person gets to define his own reality, then deal me out.
Immigration is a great test case. Some say it’s liberal to restrict immigration (since classical liberals are consented with preserving a cultural heritage and thus restrict immigration to those who can quickly assimilate), while others say liberalism requires free movement across borders in the name of human freedom. Is it liberal or illiberal to deport illegals? Liberal or illiberal to insist every illegal gets his day in court? Things like this have to be sorted out so we know what train we are hopping on as it leaves the station.
The Christian faith informally supplied the shared common good for much of our history. The transcendent moral framework came from Scripture, however imperfectly. America was founded as a Protestant nation, with roots in the soil of Christendom and the Reformation. It was understood that freedom is inseparable from virtue, and that the only freedom worth defending is an ordered liberty. America was a new nation, taking her place in the unfolding story of God’s kingdom. Obviously, Americans have long since abandoned that self-understanding for a very different narrative.
We have to admit the ways in which conservatives and Christians in America have failed. The populist revolt makes sense when you realize that conservatives have actually conserved so little – and it’s incredibly difficult to undo what’s been done, or recapture what’s been lost. If conservatives are not going to be “beautiful losers” going forward, they have to stand on sharply defined and immovable principles. But they are also going to have fight much more aggressively and courageously than they have for generations. We have to expect to win and we have to stop making excuses every time we lose ground.
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The world will make a lot more sense if you keep these two things in mind:
1. Most pastors are cowards.
2. Most men are terribly afraid of their wives.
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As a national security measure, shouldn’t the US military only buy US made? Maybe not everything needs to be this way, but when it comes to computer chips and other critical components, why would we trust other nations as suppliers? This would be one way to re-shore quite a bit of critical manufacturing – the US military deciding to only do business with American companies in key areas. Sure, it would cost more for the military, but we’d probably get better quality. And it would certainly help the overall economy.
Also, why do so many people now think tariffs are the *only* way to make the US competitive in manufacturing ? Other approaches are possible. Lowering taxes on businesses here, carefully de-regulating certain industries, etc. could actually do more to encourage manufacturing in the US. If other nations are cheating (eg, currency manipulation or subsidies to particular industries), why not just cut trade off with them altogether until they agree to a genuine free market where we all play by the same rules? It’s obvious at this point that the approach Trump is taking to tariffs is causing a lot of chaos for businesses. Businesses are always going to be reluctant to expand, hire, etc. in uncertain conditions – and the way the tariffs have been rolled out have created a lot of uncertainty.
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It’s good to serve a God who knows his way out of the grave.
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What we are experiencing has been building over several generations, due to a crisis cultural, political, and Spiritual leadership. Lack of quality leadership is a civilization killer. The informal aristocracy that existed in America up into the 20th century was sometimes misguided but always had a deep sense of duty to preserve our civilizational and cultural heritage. That has been completely lost by our elites, who have actually served the public evil rather than the public good, for 100+ years now. It’s the same, and in many cases worse, in other Western nations. Our cultural disintegration is not an accident; it’s a deliberate suicide. Apostates highjacked a once great Christian civilization and drove it into the ground.
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“Every Christian is both a Simon of Cyrene and a Barabbas. Like Barabbas we escape the cross, for Christ died in our place. Like Simon of Cyrene we carry the cross, for he calls us to take it up and follow him.”
— John Stott
Stott’s point is even more powerful when we note that the name “Barabbas” means “son of the father.” One “Son of the Father” is innocent and the other “son of the father” is guilty – but the innocent Son dies that the guilty son might go free. It is a perfect picture of substitution.
Further the name “Barabbas” is totally generic — *every* man is the son of his father. In other words, every “son of the father” should be invited to trust Jesus as his substitutionary sacrifice. All are welcome.
Simon reminds us that the cross is not just an objective transaction, carried on outside of us. We must *participate* in the cross. We must make the pattern of the cross our way of life. We must take up the cross and follow Jesus. The cross does not just deal with objective legal guilt, but with personal moral corruption. The same cross that brings about our forgiveness also ensures our transformation – and it is impossible to have one without the other. We cannot be Barabbases, set free from condemnation, unless we also become Simons, taking up our crosses daily.
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Why is Good Friday good? Good Friday is all about the good news.
It’s good because this is the day Jesus accomplished our full and free redemption. This is the day Jesus laid down his life for us. His life was not taken, but given – he gave his life for ours, willingly, out of sacrificial love. Had Jesus not wanted to die, they could not have killed him.
Good Friday is good because on this day Jesus drank the cup of wrath so that we might drink the cup of blessing. He gave his life as a sin offering, as a substitute, taking upon himself the wrath, curse, and Godforsakeneness that we deserve. He died that we might live, and live forever with him in the glory of the new creation.
Good Friday is good because this is the day the God-man revealed the deepest love in the universe. This is the day the God-man was crucified for us. This is the day of “Amazing love! how can it be, that thou my God should die for me?”
Good Friday is good because this is the day Jesus crushed the serpent under his feet. At Golgotha, the place of the skull, Jesus trampled underfoot the skull of the dragon. At the cross, Jesus won the great victory for us, over the world, the flesh, and the devil. He took away the penalty of sin and broke the power of sin for his people. Ultimately he will take away the presence of sin.
Good Friday is good because on this day Jesus became the Savior of the nations, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. On the day, he bore Adam’s curse that the nations might be blessed.
Good Friday is a good day indeed. It’s a good day for deepening our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Hope, our King.
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If Jesus is king, neutrality is a myth. We are either for Jesus or against Jesus in everything we do. We are either serving him as Lord, or serving some other lord, in every endeavor.
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Pastoral courage is a major missing element in much of the Reformed and evangelical church today. Courage and orthodoxy go together. But the situation does seem to be changing, as more pastors are realizing there is no other way out of the mess we’ve made in the church and in the culture.
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Belief cannot be compelled by political force but many matters of basic morality can be. Beliefs can never be criminalized but many actions flowing out of misguided beliefs can be. The sin/crime and belief/action distinctions are critical in any true Christian political philosophy.
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We sang “Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates,” based on Psalm 24 at TPC this morning. It’s a traditional Palm Sunday hymn. The third verse is a wonderful summation of Christendom and the blessings Christ brings to nations, cities, and families:
“O blest the land, the city blest,
Where Christ the Ruler is confessed!
O happy hearts and happy homes
To whom this King in triumph comes!”
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Roughly 100 million Americans will attend church tomorrow.
Pastors, it’s your job to make attending church worth their while by teaching them the truth of God’s Word. Don’t waste their time with trinkets. Tell them what they won’t hear anywhere else. Preach the Scriptures. Wield the sword of the Spirit skillfully. Lead worshippers into warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Equip and encourage them for faithful and wise living throughout the week. Point them to Christ as the only Savior.
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It is not possible to take 16th century Reformational political theory and drop it into an American context unaltered anymore than it is possible to take the law of Moses and drop it into an American context unaltered. We cannot do with the Reformers what theonomists want to do with Moses because when it comes to politics, context matters and prudence is always necessary.
Of course, biblical law should be an authoritative source of political wisdom and principles in every society. And we can certainly learn from and implement certain features from Reformational political theology – their political work is not irrelevant. But the American context is different — it’s different from ancient Israel and its different from 16th century Geneva. American problems call for uniquely American solutions. We have to deal with America as she actually exists in 2025. We have to play the hand we’re dealt.
To give a couple examples: The American founders developed a system of limited government, checks and balances, federalism, individual rights grounded in nature and nature’s God, etc. We cannot simultaneously say, “the constitution is dead” AND honor our political forefathers. This is one reason why I have questioned the notion of a “Christian prince” in an American context — a “Christian prince” seems fitting in a European context, but not America. A Christian President, a Christian Commander-in-Chief — those would be fully American. But not a Christian prince. There’s no need for Americans to hanker after European titles that we left behind a long time ago. We should work within the system our founding fathers gave us (and of course that system has provisions for change and adaptation). And yes, I’ve read Caldwell — I know we have gone through several constitutional revolutions, and the civil rights regime has created a new de facto order. But even rolling back what needs to be rolled back from the civil rights era has to be done in a way that works with and within our existing institutions.
Another example: White Christian Nationalists will complain that no one accuses Japan of racism for wanting to be Japanese, so why is it wrong for whites to want to have a country of their own? Why is ethnonationalism ok in some countries but not others? But this misses the point, and the problem. American and Japanese history are entirely different. Racial identity politics will always function differently in America than anywhere else. America was multiracial from the days of the earliest settlers. We had black slaves here. We had Amerindians. America has to deal with the race issue differently from other nations because we have a different history. Advocating ethnonationalism here is a very different thing because our national story is very different. And before jumping to conclusions about what I am saying and not saying, I fully believe that we need to enforce our borders and deport illegals, we need to stop anti-white racialism, we need to continue dismantling DEI, we need to bring critical manufacturing back home, etc. But none of those things require us to frame the issues in terms of race. And none of those things will make America monoracial. They are all common sense proposals that serve the good of the nation. Period. Racializing everything is not the way forward. Trump won twice (or thrice), and did so without racialization. In fact, he sought to build a coalition that included blacks and Hispanics, and had more success than any other recent politician — and that’s becausen he knows coalitions are required in any movement if it’s going to be successful. The left *wanted* him to do racial identity politics, but he refused. Trump’s genius is that he’s shown a way forward, a way the right can win. I don’t see why some people want to mess it up by making it all about race. “White Christian Nationalism” is to “Christian Nationalism” what “Make White America Great Again” is to MAGA. Conservative blacks often point out that the best way to deal with race in America is to just stop talking about it. And I tend to agree: if we focus on building a *Christian* nation here (as opposed to, say, a *white* nation), the race issue will take care of itself.
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Quite a few people who call themselves “Christian nationalists” are actually not advocating anything Christian at all, and probably should drop that part of the label. They are just “nationalists.” Or “nature nationalists.” Or “nationalists of the flesh.” It’s not at all clear what role (if any) the gospel, the Bible, or the church play in their “nationalist” political program, so why call it “Christian nationalism”?
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Christian Nationalism and White Christian Nationalism are two different things.
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Whites had their own countries for centuries in Europe.
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Classical Reformed “two kingdoms” theology was largely crafted in order to keep the state out of the church’s business. Modern (or “radical”) “two kingdoms” theology seems designed to keep the church from speaking the Word of God to the state.
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In many Protestant countries, the church had almost no opportunity to arrogate temporal power and there was no papal figure to do so anyway. Many Reformers depended on magistrates but did not control them. WCF and other Reformed Confessions do give the magistrate a role in promoting the true religion, but many Protestants (especially outside of Anglicanism) fought for the church to be able to carry out her own discipline, choose her own officers, control her own liturgy/ceremonies and vestments, etc. Calvin, Knox, English Presbyterians and Congregationalists did a lot of pushing back against what they perceived as tyrannical state control of the church.
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A great deal of modern political philosophy (including modern liberalism) aims at taming, domesticating, and weakening the church as an institution. It’s been quite successful.
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Most of what gets lumped into the PWC started much earlier than WW2 and was not dominant culturally until much later.
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It’s crucial to distinguish the classical liberalism of America’s founding era with later modern liberalism.
Classical liberalism was flawed in significant ways. But it was still tethered to a transcendent moral framework. Classical liberalism in America was compatible with established churches at the state level, household voting, the criminalization of sodomy, etc. Classical liberalism still believed in the common good. Individual and familial liberties were protected, but it was an ordered liberty. Even free markets were anchored in a moral order. Classical liberalism gave us the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.
Modern liberalism is a different kind of beast. It is focused entirely on the autonomous individual who gets to define himself and his own reality. There can be no authority above or outside of the self. It is secular and relativistic. It insists on the fragmentation and privatization of religion and the church. It is statist in character because the state has to take over the functions played by family and church and other “mediating institutions” in classical liberalism. Modern liberalism gave us the post-war consensus, homo-globalism, the COVID regime, wokeness, Obergefell, Bostock, and Casey.
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I’m very critical of the founders on some points. For example, there’s no question they were already working to weaken loyalty to the church and privatize religion (for the sake of social peace, in their view). When Oliver O’Donovan calls the first amendment the symbolic end of Christendom, he’s not altogether wrong. But classical liberalism had many good features too, which should be preserved in any post-liberal order.
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What is racial identity politics? It is not recognizing races exist. It’s allowing skin color rather than principles determine who is guilty or innocent in a court of law. It’s letting skin color rather than principles determine who you vote for. It’s Joe Biden saying, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
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If the book of Judges were adapted into a movie that actually depicted everything in the story, most Christian families would not want to watch something so gory and graphic. I call the book of Judges “R-rated gospel stories.”
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As the Trump administration is shoeing, dismantling DEI does not require some kind of white identity politics or white supremacy doctrine.
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I don’t think America was founded as a multicultural nation. I think we were founded as a Protestant nation, an extension of European Christendom. But dealing with multiple races has been part of what America has had to adapt to from the start.
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Prior to 1980, US census data did not distinguish white from Hispanic
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While the Mosaic law is full of principles that should shape our political life, a lot of the Bible’s political wisdom is found outside the Torah, in places such as the historical books (particularly 1-2 Samuel), the psalms, the prophets, and the New Testament. Political theology should not limit itself to one part of the Bible.
This means “General Equity theonomy” should really be “whole Bible general equity theonomy.”
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I don’t know enough to comment on claims about the US deep state *causing* the immigration crisis in Europe. But whatever the case, had Europe had the will and spirit to stand up for itself, it could have protected its identity and heritage. Letting Muslims into their countries in such huge numbers was a massive miscalculation, and a contradiction of Europe’s history. The religion of Islam is simply not compatible with a Christian society. I think real reason Europe has committed suicide is because they apostatized from the Christian heritage. They lost their identity when they lost their faith.
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Whites had their own countries in Europe for centuries. If they gave it up, it’s own doing. America is different – the continent became multiracial from the moment Europeans set foot on this land.
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It’s sad that there are quite a few pastors — maybe even the majority of evangelical pastors at the moment — who reject the blessings of Christian civilization. And I agree that if we love our neighbors we will work towards a society shaped and influenced by Christian faith.
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Are all whites “liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons”? Or just Cretans?
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Spurgeon on living as salt and light:
“Yes, and bring, religion into your business, and let the light shine in the factory and in the counting-house. Then we shall not have quite so much china clay in the calicoes wherewith to cheat the foreigner, nor shall we see cheap and nasty articles described as of best quality, nor any other of the dodges in trade that everybody seems to practice now-a-days. You tradespeople and manufacturers are very much one like the other in this: there are tricks in all trades, and one sees it everywhere. I believe everybody to be honest in all England, Scotland, and Ireland until he is found out; but whether there are any so incorruptible that they will never be found wanting this deponent sayeth not, for I am not a judge.
Do not put your candle under a bushel, but let it shine, for it was intended that it should be seen. Religion ought to be as much seen at our own table as at the Lord’s table. Godliness should as much influence the House of Commons as the Assembly of Divines. God grant that the day may come when the mischievous division between secular and religious things shall no more be heard of, for in all things Christians are to glorify God, according to the precept, “Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.””
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Spurgeon’s version of Christian nationalism:
“I long for the day when the precepts of the Christian religion shall be the rule among all classes of men, in all transactions. I often hear it said “Do not bring religion into politics.” This is precisely where it ought to be brought, and set there in the face of all men as on a candlestick. I would have the Cabinet and the Members of Parliament do the work of the nation as before the Lord, and I would have the nation, either in making war or peace, consider the matter by the light of righteousness. We are to deal with other nations about this or that upon the principles of the New Testament. I thank God that I have lived to see the attempt made in one or two instances, and I pray that the principle may become dominant and permanent. We have had enough of clever men without conscience, let us now see what honest, God-fearing men will do. But we are told that we must study “British interests,” as if it were not always to a nation’s truest interest to do righteousness. “But we must follow out our policy.” I say, No! Let the policies which are founded on wrong be cast like idols to the moles and to the bats. Stand to that most admirable of policies,—“As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” Whether we are kings, or queens, or prime ministers, or members of parliament, or crossing sweepers, this is our rule if we are Christians.”
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On the whole, the European explorers and settlers who came to North America were quite just and fair in their dealings with the Amerindians. There was a window of time in the 19th century that is a sad exception to that rule, but in general, given how barbaric many of the Amerindian tribes were, the Europeans who came here were quite gracious. For the most part, they did not steal land (which is hard to do anyway when dealing with people who do not have a doctrine of private property). The two groups were often incentivized to get along, to trade, even to intermarry. Many of the settlers worked hard at doing missionary and evangelistic work. The idea that the early European settlers were racists is not only anachronistic (since they had a totally different understanding of race), it is a lie.
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Colonialism, on the whole and considering the alternatives, was good and arose out of Christendom. The British Empire was a great blessing to the world. The exploration and settling of the “new world” was largely justified on Christian principles – it was a desire to further grow and mature Christian civilization, to reach unreached peoples with the gospel, and add to the wealth of European nations and empires.
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Historian Christopher Dawson, explaining how the Christian faith created European Christendom, and along with it, the greatest art, music, literature, and architecture the world had ever known:
“The formal principle of European unity is not physical but spiritual. Europe was Christendom. It was the society of Christian peoples which for a thousand years more or less, had been molded by the same religious and intellectual influence until it possessed a consciousness of spiritual community which transcended political and racial limits.”
The gospel was absolutely foundational to creating Christendom 1.0. There is no other way to account for the relative unity and shared civilization that came into existence. Natural principles alone cannot do it. Aristotle could never have anticipated the kind of civilization Europe became under the influence of Christian faith. By contrast, given the gospel of the Apostle Paul, Christendom is exactly the kind of thing we’d expect.
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Historian Christopher Dawson describing the way the gospel molded the warring, barbaric tribes of Europe into a cohesive and beautiful civilization, producing the greatest art, architecture, literature, and music the world had ever known:
“The formal principle of European unity is not physical but spiritual. Europe was Christendom. It was the society of Christian peoples which for a thousand years more or less, had been molded by the same religious and intellectual influence until it possessed a consciousness of spiritual community which transcended political and racial limits.”
The gospel was very foundational to creating Christendom 1.0. There is no other way to account for the relative unity and shared civilization that came into existence. The cohesiveness and peace of Christendom was not something Aristotle could have envisioned or expected. But it’s exactly the kind of thing the Apostle Paul could have predicted, given the truth of his gospel.
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Love for God cannot be separated from love for the Bible as his Word.
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With the resurgence of interest in nature and natural law, it’s important to make several things clear. Most importantly, we need to see that appeals to nature or a natural principle require argument. It’s not enough to say that something is “natural,” one must demonstrate why and how. People can come to very different conclusions about what is “natural” just like they can come to different conclusions about what is biblical. You have to exegete nature just as you exegete Scripture. You cannot take for granted the very thing you are supposed to prove.
Take a test case: Some argue that nations natural, in the same way the family is natural. Even in an unfallen world, as the human race grew, it would have naturally divided into various ethnicities or nations, each relatively secluded from the others, developing its own culture, language, etc. Others argue that the natural state of humanity is unity since we all descend from one man.
For example Geerhardus Vos wrote, “the unity of the race, unbroken by national distinctions, is the ideal. Had sin not entered, this would undoubtedly have been the actual state of things, as it will become so in the final eschatological dispensation.” For Vos, the existence of nations is a providential concession/adaptation to post-fall conditions. Vos says that the relative seclusion of nations is necessary now, but it was not so in the beginning and will not be so in the end.
My point here is not to pick a side in the debate over whether or not nations are “natural” or “providential.” It’s just to point out that making arguments from nature is often at least as difficult as making arguments from Scripture (indeed, usually more difficult) and just as Christians can disagree over what the Bible teaches, so we should expect to have to deal with differences over what nature teaches. Don’t just cite “nature.” Show how nature teaches what you claim it teaches.
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“Christ must reign, till Satan has not an inch of territory.” — William Carey
Carey worked as a missionary in India for 40 years. He began the work in 1793. He did not see his first convert until 1800. When a Hindu man named Krishna Pal professed faith in Christ, Carey wrote in his journal, “He is only one, but a continent is coming behind him. The divine grace which changed one Indian’s heart can obviously change one hundred thousand.”
That’s the hope that drove the modern missionary movement – a hope that God is determined to save the world through his Son, Jesus, a hope that is for all nations and tribes and languages and peoples.
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Paul’s anthropological pessimism is matched and overcome by his pneumatological optimism.
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The curse that Samuel says will come upon Israel for idolatrously demanding a king is that they will have to live under socialism (1 Samuel 8:11ff, 22:7ff). Socialism is always a scourge upon a people.
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In the Christian’s battle with sin, sometimes “try harder” is part of the solution.
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A few notes on the current situation….
It’s true the stock market is not the economy. It’s true that the stock market has been propped up in various ways for a long time by many policies that favor a certain well-connected class. At the same time, it’s inescapable that a collapsing stock market hurts a huge percentage of Americans. In fact, it hurts the middle class more than the ultra rich. Whether or not Trump’s plan can succeed remains to be seen, but it’s a high stakes game – not only because economies are incredibly complex, but also because his solution only has so long to succeed before Trump and his party start to lose traction. The mid-terms will be here before you know it.
Reciprocal tariffs as a short term way of leveling the playing field sounded fine. Even a lot free marketers saw the case since we really don’t have global free trade anyway. But there are legit questions as to whether or not reciprocity is really happening (eg, how are trade deficits functioning in the tariff plan and why do those trade deficits matter?). Equalizing tariffs with trade partners does not automatically reshore manufacturing. Lots of different trustworthy voices claiming different things is going to leave a lot of people frustrated and confused.
People have talked about a Great Reset for a long time. Looks like we are getting one, just in a very different way.
If tariffs do end up sticking for a long time (instead of just being a negotiating tool), who will be hurt and helped? Goods made in America are more expensive relative to goods made elsewhere. It stands to reason that those who buy American in other countries are rich people purchasing luxuries, while those buying foreign made goods in America are middle and lower class people. Obviously that’s not true across the board in every case, but it does seem to be true as a generalization.
Bringing back a family wage would be wonderful. But 2 considerations should be kept in mind:
A. Unless we start forming more families, it really won’t matter. And while the economic situation is one hindrance that has kept families from forming, it is far from the only one. Our gender divide, low marriage rates, and low birth rates are about a lot more than just economic opportunity.
B. The civil rights regime we have in place remains a massive obstacle to paying men what they need to be the sole breadwinner/provider for a family. If we really want family formation and a family wage, we have to rollback feminism. As Scott Yenor has pointed out, “complusory feminism” killed the old sexual division of labor and the family wage for men along with it. Unless we recover a more natural and biblical sexual constitution, tariffs and more US-based manufacturing jobs cannot restore family flourishing.
Finally, a good national security case can be made for bringing back critical manufacturing to the US. The case for economic nationalism is at its strongest at just this point. But it remains to be seen if it can happen.
I certainly want the Trump administration to succeed in its goals. Many great things are happening. But it’s way too early to tell if Trump will pull it off and if it will have the desired effect.
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Romans 6 teaches that we are united to Christ in baptism. We are united to Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. Paul asks the question, “Shall we go on in sin that grace might abound?” And he answers his own question:“Absolutely not! You’ve been baptized.” In our baptismal union with Christ, we died to sin and were made alive in righteousness. Now we are to offer the members of our bodies – the baptized members of our bodies! – to righteousness. How dare you offer baptized hands and feet to sin! Your body was sanctified in baptism, so use it in a sanctified way. Your body has been washed, so live a clean life. Be who you are.
In baptism, we are grafted into Christ’s story. His death, burial, and resurrection now frame our lives. Baptism gives us a new identity, with new privileges, new powers, new responsibilities. Baptism gives us a new mission in life. Anytime we sin, we are contradicting our baptism, which means we are contradicting our deepest identity.
Wherever you go, your baptism goes with you. Whatever you do, you do as a baptized person. From one angle, the whole Christian life is simply living out your baptism. The Pauline ethic is simple: Be who you are. Live out what you been given. Walk worthily of the call you received in your baptism. The indicative of baptism grounds the imperatives that follow. Having been redeemed by God in the waters of baptism – our new exodus – we now serve no other gods.
When teenagers are leaving the house to go hang out with friends on a Friday night, parents will sometimes say, “Remember who you are.” In other words, “Remember you are part of our family and you represent us. Don’t do anything that would dishonor the family name or contradict what we’ve taught you.” But we can do better than that. We can say, “Remember your baptism.” That is to say, “Remember that you are Christ’s. You have been baptized him, so act like it. Live as someone who is dead to sin and alive to righteousness.” Parents should grab their kids by their baptisms and remind them of their most fundamental identity.
A great literary illustration of baptism’s transformative power (complete with echoes of the Book of Common Prayer baptismal liturgy!) can be found in C. S. Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Listen to my take here:
trinity-pres.net/audio/sermon05…
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From Oliver O’Donovan’s Resurrection and Moral Order, on how a creation ethic and a kingdom ethic cohere:
“…for the very act of God which ushers in his kingdom is the resurrection of Christ from the dead, the reaffirmation of creation. A kingdom ethics which was set up in opposition to creation could not possibly be interested in the same eschatological kingdom as that which the New Testament proclaims….
A creation ethics, on the other hand, which was set up in opposition to the kingdom, could not possibly be evangelical ethics, since it would fail to take note of the good news that God had acted to bring all that he had made to its fulfillment…
Man’s rebellion has not succeeded in destroying the natural order to which he belongs; but that is something which we could not say with theological authority except on the basis of God’s revelation in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We say that this, that or the other cultural demand or prohibition…. reflects the created order faithfully, but that too is something which we can known only by taking our place within the revelation of that order afforded us in Christ. It is not, as the skeptics and relativists remind us, self-evident what is nature and what is convention.”
This quote has a multitude of applications, in countless directions. For example, it explains why natural law and biblical law need each other, and a true Christian ethic draws from both. A creation ethic finds its fulfillment in the kingdom ethic. But the kingdom ethic is rooted in nature and must not be severed from it.
The gospel does not negate nature and creational structures. Nor does the gospel leave them unchanged. The gospel transforms creation and culture. The gospel restores nature to its proper function and goal. It’s as if the fall derailed the train of creation; the gospel puts the train back on track so it can reach its divinely ordained end in glory.
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The gospel = God restores (and glorifies) nature/creation through the death and resurrection of Christ.
When we use the slogan, “grace restores nature,” we need to keep two things in mind:
1. Grace doesn’t just put creation back where it started, but ultimately brings us to the eschatological and glorious end God intended from the beginning. The end is greater than the beginning. Story after story in Scripture bears this out (eg, Joseph in the book of Genesis, Job’s narrative arc, etc.). History is not a line or a circle, but a spiral upwards.
2. The restoration of nature requires death and resurrection. Grace does not restore nature by supplementing it, or by getting added to it, but by killing it and raising it. Only the death and resurrection of Jesus can bring gracious healing to the world. Fallen nature can only be set right in and through Christ.
To add another layer: Grace and creation/nature do not exist in some kind of dualistic relationship. Grace is never extrinsic to nature because creation’s very existence required grace from the start.
Nature is always already graced. Everything is gift (Romans 11:33-36). But for the purposes of this discussion, grace = saving grace, the grace of the gospel. Grace does not get added to a graceless nature, but restores already-graced nature to its proper end.
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Torah was fatherly instruction for the people of God in their immaturity. It’s still authoritative and relevant for Christians, but in the way that the lessons you learned in kindergarten should stick with you for the rest of life. Now we fulfill Torah in its new covenant form; the law has been crucified and resurrected in Christ, and must be adapted to the conditions of the new age. The New Testament gives us plenty of illustrations of how this transformation works, hermeneutically and practically.
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The Meaning of Imputation:
The eye of the storm in the present controversy is Paul’s doctrine of imputation. Here the picture is a little cloudier. There is no question Paul uses imputation (logizomai) language to explicate his gospel. But the questions are: What does this language mean? How does it work? How does imputation relate to justification and the rest of our salvation in Christ?
The exegetical issue is somewhat complicated by the fact that the term “imputation” took on a life of its own in Reformed systematic theology. The Reformed polemic against Rome was structured in terms of a debate between those who believed in justification by imputed righteousness vs. those who believed in justification by infused righteousness. In Reformed systematic theology, the notion of “imputation” took on a great deal more theological freight than it carries in the Pauline epistles. Over time, it became the defining mark of Protestant theology, or, as Bird puts it, a “boundary marker” for the Reformed faith. For some, imputation has become synonymous with the gospel itself.
But the role of imputation in Paul and the role of imputation in Reformed theology are not necessarily identical. Failure to notice the slippage between biblical and systematic terminologies is a major culprit in the present controversy. Terms have to be understood in light of their context. While theologians are certainly free to use terms in stipulated, shorthand ways, we also need to keep in view the distinctive biblical sense(s) a given term may have as well. This is not an attack on doing systematic theology (which is inescapable), but an endorsement of doing biblical exegesis (a burden we have all too often escaped).
Popularly understood, imputation describes a transfer of righteousness. The model looks something like this: Through his active and passive obedience, Jesus accumulated merits in his account. Those merits are imputed to our accounts when we trust him. Because the merits of Christ have been transferred to us, God declares us justified. When the Scripture says, “faith is counted for righteousness,” it really means that by faith, God transfers Christ’s righteousness to us in order to declare us just. Justification is a consequence of this imputation; God’s act of justification is based on his (logically prior) act of imputation.
Obviously, such a model is true insofar as it preserves the free, forensic, gracious, and christological character of our justification. It is also attractive in making a sharp, tidy contrast with the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification on the basis of personal moral transformation or infused righteousness. But this is not exactly what Paul means when he speaks of imputation.
In Paul, imputation language describes how God counts or regards the believer in view of his union with Christ. Imputation does not describe a transfer of righteousness from Christ’s account to ours; rather it is how God reckons us, or considers us, in union with Christ. The key text is Romans 4, since this the place imputation language is most heavily concentrated. We cannot do a complete exegesis or linguistic analysis, but a few notes on the passage should establish the point.
Paul’s concern in Romans 4 is twofold: Who are the children of Abraham – the true people of God? And how are they justified – by faith or by works of Torah? Paul argues that Abraham’s faith-ancestry, not merely his flesh-ancestry, is the decisive issue. Abraham was put right by faith, not works, lest he have something to boast in; the same must be true of his children (Rom. 4:1-3). But what is entailed in becoming righteous like Abraham?
The apostle uses the language of imputation throughout Romans 4, notably in 4:3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 22, 23, 24. In none of these instances does imputation mean that the righteousness of Christ is transferred to believers. Instead, we will find that imputation is used in a way roughly synonymous with justification itself. To say “faith is accounted for righteousness” is to say God reckons, or counts, the believer to be righteous in Christ. This is just another way of saying God justifies us (that is, declares us just) by faith. Faith does not consist in righteousness as such (as though it were meritorious), but faith is reckoned as righteousness by God because of faith’s object (the God who raised Christ; cf. 4:22-25).
In Romans 4:4-5, we find that God did not declare Abraham righteous in Genesis 15:6 because Abraham had been obedient. To be sure, Abraham had been obeying God for quite some time by that point. He walked with the Lord by faith when he moved out of his homeland some years previous (cf. Gen. 12; Heb. 11:8). But those works of Abraham (e.g., rescuing Lot in Genesis 14) did not put God in his debt; even at this mid-point in Abraham’s growth as a believer, he is declared righteous by grace through faith. Abraham did not view himself as an employee, serving God for wages; rather, he viewed himself as someone still in need of God’s grace, and so he continued clinging to the promise of a coming seed. God considered this faithful response to be the true fulfillment of the covenant, and as a result declared Abraham to be a right-standing covenant member. Abraham’s life story shows that in a very deep sense, faith is the sole condition of the covenant from beginning to end.
Romans 4:6-8 explain the nature of imputed righteousness. To have righteousness imputed means that sins are forgiven — or, to put the same reality another way, it means that God does not count (impute) a man’s sin against him. When God refuses to reckon sin (4:8, quoting Ps. 32:2), it means he “covers” our sin (4:7, quoting Ps. 32:1). It means he has cast our sins away (Isa. 38:17), removed them (Ps. 103:12), blotted them out (Isa. 43:25, 44:22), and forgotten them (Isa. 43:25). The non-imputation of sin means God is not pressing charges against us; instead, he is accounting us as in the right. So we have this equation: “righteousness imputed” = “sins forgiven/covered” = “sins not imputed.” Note that it is impossible for imputation language to describe a transfer in verse 8 since a person’s own sin is in view. (How could a person’s own sin be transferred to him?) But that means that it will take some pretty strong argumentation to prove imputation terminology should be read as transfer language elsewhere in the passage.
Verses 9-10 ask if the blessing of imputed righteousness (defined as forgiveness in the immediate context) is only for Jews (the circumcised). Verse 11 answers the question. Paul says God counts the uncircumcised as righteous by faith as well as the circumcised (cf. Rom. 2:25-29). In other words, the uncircumcised can have the same status as the circumcised by faith — as the 2-stage life experience (pre-circumcision/post-circumcision) of Abraham demonstrates (4:10-12). Abraham was justified as a Gentile, before he was circumcised – a point with obvious typological implications for Gentile believers in the new covenant, since it proves them to be children of the patriarch, along with believing Jews. This reinforces the thought of 3:28: If justification was by works of Torah, it would only be available to the circumcised. But the case of Abraham refutes that notion. It is impossible to circumscribe the bounds of Abraham’s family with circumcision or the Torah.
Romans 4:12-18 further reinforce the same point. Abraham is to be heir of the world, not just one nation among many; thus, the salvation promised in the Abrahamic covenant must be for Gentiles as well. In 3:29-30, Paul used monotheism to establish the point that there must be one covenant family composed of Jew and Gentile. Now Paul says there must be one “father of us” – which, again, suggests one covenant family (4:16). Those who are “of circumcision,” or “of the law,” are saved by faith. But those without circumcision or the law are saved in the same way. If the promise was only to the circumcised, it would be appear to be a matter of ethnicity/race, rather than faith and grace. But Paul will have none of that. Abraham is destined to be the father of many faithful nations, all rolled into one covenant community.
Paul finally wraps up this phase of his argument in 4:19-25, a text we have already touched on above. Abraham’s faith was justifying because it was resurrection faith (4:19-21). Christian believers follow in Abraham’s footsteps, as their faith is directed towards the God who raised Christ (here, hinted at as the new Isaac) from the dead (4:22-25), bringing life out of death, justification out of condemnation, birth out of barrenness, and family out of enmity. Abraham’s faith gives glory to God (4:20) – answering to the very problem with fallen humanity Paul identified in 1:21ff and 3:23. Through Christ, God has created a new humanity that escapes the wrath revealed from heaven and brings him glory.
For the complete essay: trinity-pres.net/essays/_publis…
For the essay in published form: amazon.com/Faith-That-Nev…
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Because of abortion, the sexual revolution is the bloodiest revolution of them all, far more bloody than the American, French, and Russian revolutions put together.
pastor.trinity-pres.net/essays/bloodie…
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In baptism, God offers, and we receive; God promises, and we believe; God acts, and we respond. God wraps up the gift of Christ in the means of grace; we receive and open the gift by faith. There is, as Calvin says, “a mutual relation between faith and the sacraments.” This is the structure Calvin insisted upon: “we obtain only as much [from baptism] as we receive in faith.”
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I follow Calvin: it would be fine to have an order of female deacons who minister to women. It would not be a liturgical office, and would not entail authority over men.
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The Lord threatened to put Moses to death for not circumcising his son so it was obviously a problem. Better for Zipporah to do it than for it not to get done at all. Following, Luther, I do not object to women (e.g., midwives) administering baptism is extenuating circumstances (e.g., baptizing an infant who is about to die). I do not think the qualifications for who can baptize are identical to the qualifications for administering the communion meal.
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End no fault divorce.
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Covenant promises and paedobaptism should not make parents (or their children) presumptuous. Parental faith in the promises should produce the parental work of diligent discipleship.
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Just a reminder: the promises of the new covenant explicitly include children. See Jeremiah 31:34.
Jeremiah, like Jesus, referred to children as “the least of them/these.”
The “least of them” are obviously children – Gentile children to be specific, since Israel is going into exile and their neighbors will not be Jews.
“Least of these” in Matthew 25:40, 45 includes children as well. See also Matthew 18:5.
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Baptism as covenant sign is a matter of good and necessary consequence, a plain inference. Baptism is our e trance into the covenant community, the visible church.
The argument for paedobaptism does not rest on the circumcision/baptism link, but the link is there in Colossians 2.
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Titus 2:3-5 would solve many of modern woman’s problems. The modern woman has taken on provisioning burdens she shouldn’t carry, and is trying to get husband to bear household burdens she should carry. There is no way to have a happy family life under such conditions. (Note in the video that she is happy now that her husband obeys her, but we don’t know how he feels about it, and we don’t know how the children are doing given that both parents work and mom is obviously prioritizing her career above them.)
Modern women have to stop thinking of their husbands as their helpers and start thinking of themselves as their husband’s helpers.
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Covenant children are sinners just like all other Christians are sinners. They inherit original sin (Romans 5), but the covenant promise assures them of God’s favor from the womb. They should be raised by believing parents accordingly, which means they should be discipled (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 shows us what this looks like.) The children of Christians should be baptized and treated as fellow covenant members and kingdom citizens until and unless they apostatize.
By contrast, the children of the wicked are children of the devil, covenant breakers in Adam, estranged from God, even from the womb. They have no such promise. They grow up in bondage to sin until and unless God converts them.
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There is no question God views, treats, and relates to the children of Christians differently than he does the children of non-Christians.
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At America’s founding, several states had established churches at the state level. (The first amendment only prohibits Congress from establishing a church at the federal level.) The disestablishment of these state churches in the 19th century coincided with the establishment and growth of the public school system. In other words, public schools replaced established churches and enshrined a new secular religion in place of the Christian faith.
My point here is not to advocate for an established church – the wisdom of formally establishing a particular Christian denomination is questionable and the American revision of the WCF prohibits it. But it should be understood that America *does* have an established religion and a pseudo-church establishment — that religion is secular statism and it is propagated through the tax-supported indoctrination centers we call public schools. Public school teachers are priests and public school administrators are bishops and archbishops. Your property tax is your tithe. Textbooks that teach evolution, moral relativism, gender theory, and other atrocities are the sacred Scriptures in this quasi-church that we call public schools. While many people like to argue that public education has failed because so few children a really learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, the truth is that government education had been astoundingly successful in creating disciples of secularism.
Christian parents must understand that the public schools are the frontlines in the culture war. Progressives do not reproduce much in the bedroom, but they certainly do in the classroom. Studies show that upwards of 70% of Christian kids who go through the public system end up abandoning the church after they move on from high school. There is simply no way for parents to counteract the curriculum and the culture of the government school system with a few hours of counter-instruction at home and church each week.
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We confess our sins in the liturgy every Lord’s Day, with the expectation that it will be a regular habit for every Christian.
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If nations are to be baptized, and children are members of nations, then children are eligible for baptism.
It would be odd if earthly nations bestow citizenship on children but the holy nation of the church, the kingdom of God, did not.
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The modern evangelical church is generally allergic to biblical application. There is very little teaching on practical Christian living that pushes the principles of Scripture to the edges of life. The problem is that this lack of teaching leaves a void in the lives of Christians that gets filled by the world.
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Jesus did not give up his power on the cross.
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Lent is the season of the church year that highlights spiritual warfare. Jesus came as a great warrior. He fought our battles for us. He won the victory over Satan and his temptations in the wilderness. He won the victory over sin and death at the cross. He has trampled the skull of the serpent under his feet. Through suffering, he has entered glory.
One of my favorites Lenten hymns is the classic, “O Lord Throughout These Forty Days.” Here are the lyrics:
Verse 1
O Lord, throughout these forty days
you prayed and kept the fast;
inspire repentance for our sin,
and free us from our past.
Verse 2
You strove with Satan, and you won;
your faithfulness endured;
lend us your nerve, your skill and trust
in God’s eternal word.
Verse 3
Though parched and hungry, yet you prayed
and fixed your mind above;
so teach us to deny ourselves
that we may know God’s love.
Verse 4
Be with us through this season, Lord,
and all our earthly days,
that when the final Easter dawns,
we join in heaven’s praise.
The genius of this hymn is that it connects Christ’s victory to ours. Because Christ has defeated Satan’s temptations, we can too. Jesus strove with Satan and won, so we can as well. He shares his victory with us.
I especially like the line in verse 2: “lend us your nerve, your skill and trust…” Wouldn’t you love to have Jesus’ nerve? Jesus had nerves of steel. When Jesus was under pressure, he did not fold, he did not cave, he did not collapse. He was courageous and steadfast. He did not budge from his stand on God’s Word.
Wouldn’t you love to be the same way? Wouldn’t you love to be as strong as Jesus in the face of temptation? Jesus is willing to lend us his nerve, his strength, his courage, his skill in battle. Jesus never had a failure of nerve and you do not have to have a failure of nerve either. You can stand firm in times of trial and temptation. Jesus is with you.
Verse 3 connects Jesus’ life of self-denial with our practice of self-denial. The secret to self-denial is found here: When you seek to imitate Christ, you do so not as one who is separated from Christ but as one who is in Christ. We are enfolded into his life and power and love. We do not practice self-denial on our own, but as those who are united to Christ. We can live lives of cross-bearing because Jesus lives in us.
This is great time for us to ask God to lend us Jesus’ virtues and make us more like Jesus. Lent is about the warfare and sufferings of Jesus – but our warfare and sufferings are caught up into his. We fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil assured of ultimate victory because Jesus has already won on our behalf.
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Thanksgiving is to Colossians what joy is to Philippians – a thread woven through the whole letter, tying it together.
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Term life insurance is one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind.
Not only does it allow for a man to provide for his family in the event of his untimely death, it also keeps the church from having to bear the burden in such cases so its resources can be spent on the worthy poor and those who are “widows indeed.”
Risk is unavoidable. It’s best to spread it around.
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Jesus fought the good fight. He can empower you to do the same.
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It’s impossible to have Christendom without Christian nations. And it’s impossible to have Christian nations without Christian states and cities. And it’s impossible to have Christian cities without Christian counties and neighborhoods. And it’s impossible to have Christian neighborhoods without Christian families. And it’s impossible to have Christian families without Christian individuals. Having Christian individuals means having Christians workers, Christian students, Christian husbands, Christian wives, Christian fathers, Christian mothers, Christian grandparents, Christian children, Christian grandchildren, etc. Christendom starts with Christians.
And of course, there is no Christian anything without faithful Christian churches, which are impossible without faithful Christian pastors and elders.
Think big but start small. Develop a massive vision for Christian culture but start where you are. Indeed, start with yourself. Do what you can where you are with what you have. That’s how Christendom is built. Christendom comes into existence over the generations, not in one fell swoop. It starts with small acts of faithfulness.
Think about it this way: what you look at on the internet today will impact your great, great grandchildren. You are constantly building something with your life – so what project is your life, your family, your work, your leisure time, contributing to? Are you building another Babel? Or another Christendom?
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This Sunday at TPC, we are singing Wesley’s hymn, “‘Tis Finished! The Messiah Dies” – all 8 verses. We will sing it to the tune of Hesperus. This hymn is one of the best summaries of the gospel ever written. Sadly, and shockingly to be honest, it has fallen out of most hymnals and is little known today. Perhaps that’s because several older hymnals set it to the far less singable tune Olive’s Brow. Whatever the case, this hymn needs to be more widely known and sung. Here are the lyrics:
1. ’Tis finished! The Messiah dies,
Cut off for sins, but not His own:
Accomplished is the sacrifice,
The great redeeming work is done.
2. ’Tis finished! all the debt is paid;
Justice divine is satisfied;
The grand and full atonement made;
God for a guilty world hath died.
3. The veil is rent in Christ alone;
The living way to Heaven is seen;
The middle wall is broken down,
And all mankind may enter in.
4. The types and figures are fulfilled;
Exacted is the legal pain;
The precious promises are sealed;
The spotless Lamb of God is slain.
5. The reign of sin and death is o’er,
And all may live from sin set free;
Satan hath lost his mortal power;
’Tis swallowed up in victory.
6. Saved from the legal curse I am,
My Savior hangs on yonder tree:
See there the meek, expiring Lamb!
’Tis finished! He expires for me.
7. Accepted in the Well-beloved,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
I see the bar to heaven removed;
And all Thy merits, Lord, are mine.
8. Death, hell, and sin are now subdued;
All grace is now to sinners given;
And lo, I plead the atoning blood,
And in Thy right I claim Thy Heaven!
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The phrase “the least of these” in Jeremiah 31:34 is a reference to children
In other words, it’s an explicit proof that children will still be included in the covenant when the new covenant arrives
Compare to “these little ones” in Matthew 18:5-6
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In Acts 2, Peter says, “The promise is to you and your children.” It is impossible to spiritualize the phrase “your children.” Baptists want to spiritualize it because otherwise it’s a clear affirmation that God is still dealing with covenant households. But no one in Peter’s audience — mostly, if not all, Jews, steeped in the covenantal worldview of the Hebrew Scriptures, and gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of Pentecost — would have taken his words as anything other than a reference physical offspring. It is a direct echo of language that appears all over the old covenant (e.g., Genesis 17:7) so it already has an established meaning. If Peter meant something different, something other than physical descendants, he would need to explain himself or use different language altogether. And he would have had quite a controversy on his hands. “You are telling me the new covenant cuts our children out a relationship with God? They are no longer part of God’s people? The promises being fulfilled do not include them?” This would have been so unthinkable to all first century Jews, that it would have created a massive disruption. But no such disruption occurred.
There *was* a disruption as the new covenant began. But the disruption was not caused by the exclusion of physical offspring. It was caused by inclusion of the Gentiles as Gentiles (without circumcision). This controversy was addressed and resolved at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 and in the book of Galatians.
Obviously, there is a place for speaking of spiritual children. Paul can call Timothy his son in the faith. We all acknowledge that there are (for lack of a better term) spiritual fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, in the church. But that cannot be what peter is referring to. In the context of his sermon in Acts 2, that makes no sense.
The Baptist view is predicated on the claim that God does not make promises to believing parents. Baptists claim there no “children of the promise” or “covenant children.” Baptists claim there is no Christian household. But the phrase “your children” indicates otherwise. The children of God’s people belong to God’s people and should receive the sign that seals their membership in the community of his people (baptism). Peter is extending the promise of the new covenant — the promise of forgeivness and the gift of the Spirit — to the physical offspring of believers. Interestingly, in Galatians 3 when Paul summarizes what was promises to Abraham, he locks in on these same two blessings, forgiveness (justification) and the Spirit.
But isn’t faith required to receive these blessings? Yes, of course. But once again, the Scripture’s covenantal paradigm shows us the way. The children of beleivers are included in the covenant, which means God gives them the gift of faith even in the womb. David clearly described his own infancy this way in Psalm 22, and it was considered normative for covenant children to have paedofaith. Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and others are explicit examples of this paradigm as well.
When a believing Israelite living under the old covenant had a child, he did not wonder who the God of his child was. He did wonder if his child was an Israelite. He knew he needed to nurture his child in the faith, as commanded in Deuteronomy 6, but the inclusion of his child was not in question. In the same way, Christian parents should receive their children in the name of Jesus. They should treat and regard their children as Christians. The children of believers in the new covenant are members of the new covenant. In the most complete explication of the new covenant in the Hebrew Scriptures, Jeremiah 31 says that the in the covenant “the least of them” will know God. What could “the least of them” be other than covenant children? Jeremiah’s “least of them” in 31:34 is Jesus’ “little ones” in Matthew 18:6.
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“They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.” (Micah 4:4)
The American dream of peace, prosperity, and ordered liberty was originally derivative of the prophetic dream of shalom, sketched out in Hebrew Scriptures as they described the blessings of the coming messianic age of the new covenant. The American dream without God quickly turns into a nightmare. Either the prosperity gets eroded away in God’s judgment or it no longer satisfies because the blessing of God is missing. America cannot be restored and the American dream cannot be realized without faith, repentance, and a return to liberty ordered by the law of God. It is impossible for America to be great without American being made good.
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The context of the promises about the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 have to kept in view to understand what’s being promised.
Judah is on the verge of going into exile.
Jeremiah has announced the coming deportation.
They are going away to Babylon, made to live among the pagans.
In that context, Jeremiah announces good news:
And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:34)
Who will their neighbors be? Pagans.
Jeremiah is promising a coming day under the new covenant when they will no longer have to evangelize their neighbors, saying, “ Know the Lord,” because their neighbors – their formerly pagan neighbors! – will already know the Lord.
The new covenant is postmillennial – there will come a day under the administration of the new covenant when evangelism will basically become obsolete.
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Lewis correctly observed that feminism destroyed the romantic dance between the sexes.
The reality is that sexual polarity drives attraction. When that polarity is minimized because men are feminized and women masculinized, the bond of attraction between the sexes weakens.
One of the most strikingly unnatural developments in our day is that (outside of conservative Christian circles where the old ways are upheld) men and women simply don’t like each other very much. Women cannot find a man they’re attracted to. And men find modernized “independent” women intolerable. This is completely different from past generations where the magnetic pull between the sexes was obvious from puberty onwards and all too enjoyable for all involved. It is a disastrous situation, not just for the individuals involved but for civilization as a whole. Untold misery awaits.
Again, Lewis nailed it: a man’s headship over his wife and a wife’s respectful submission to her husband are not just practical necessities in marriage, they are erotic necessities as well. God knew what he was doing when he assigned these roles. They are not arbitrary; they are rooted in our natures. The man was built to lovingly lead a woman as her protector and provider. And the woman was built to respond to a man, helping and glorifying him. But if she won’t call him lord, she doesn’t get to be a lady. If she won’t crown him as her king, she doesn’t get to be a queen.
Feminism has brought modern women to a fork in the road: Do you want equality or romance? Equality or a family? Equality or grandchildren? Sadly, all too many women want to be boss babes in their 20s and 30s, and so they won’t get to be grandmothers in 50s and 60s. It will prove to be a bad trade off in the long run.
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Men most certainly should not “let it go.” Male emotional self-restraint is necessary to civilization. This is one of those ancient landmarks that should not be moved, no matter how much our contemporary therapeutic culture tries to make men more emotionally vulnerable and expressive.
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Since everyone is giving their thoughts on “House of David,” I figure I’ll chime in as well. Normally, I wouldn’t even watch it, but since I’m preaching on 1-2 Samuel, I decided to give it a shot. This is what I sent to my congregation today (since many of them are watching it too and asking about it):
I have now watched a couple more episodes of the “House of David” series….and I’m not thrilled with it. While it is pretty well produced and the acting and scenery are solid, it stretches the story of 1 Samuel to the breaking point. Taking cinematic license is one thing; creating fiction and passing it off as fact is something else. (They do put up a disclaimer at the start of each episode, but it’s hardly sufficient.) Obviously, the creators were going to have fill in some gaps because the biblical narrative is not complete enough to be turned into a movie. But inventing a multitude of new characters, plots, and subplots is not the same as filling in gaps. Many of the additions to the biblical story are quite inconsistent with the inspired narrative, which is too bad because the biblical account has more than enough excitement and intrigue on its own. There’s no need to Hollywoodize the story of David — it already has plenty of drama as written.
One of the most egregious problems with “House of David” is that they treat David as a illegitimate son whose mother has passed. Since we just read last week about David sending his parents to stay with the king of Moab, obviously his mother was still alive. They probably made David an illegitimate son based on a misreading of Psalm 51:5, “in sin did my mother conceive me.” But that passage is not saying his parents were committing the sin of adultery in his conception; it is saying that David inherited the guilt and corruption of original sin from the moment of conception (as we all do). Further, making David illegitimate completely upends the purpose of the book of Ruth and actually disqualifies David from kingly office. In Genesis 38, Judah has sinful relations with Tamar. According to the law (Deuteronomy 23:2), this meant Judah (the royal tribe) could not produce a man eligible for office for 10 generations. The book of Ruth ends with a genealogy that runs from Judah to David, 10 generations in all, showing that David is fit for the throne. I’ve preached on Ruth 4 here if you want more background: trinity-pres.net/audio/5.2.21.s…
The series is not all bad. The scene where Agag is hacked to pieces was pretty good. For the most part, it captures pretty well the way evil spirits tormented Saul. Samuel is strangely likeable (much like Bayard the Truthspeaker in Jonathan Rogers’ Wilderking triology, an excellent story based loosely on 1 Samuel). The way the royal court is depicted seems pretty realistic for the most part. But if you watch it, make sure you have an open Bible so you can fact check it. I’m not sure if I’ll keep watching. I’d like to see how the handle David and Goliath but I’m afraid they’re going to mess it up.
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Some Baptists will claim the old covenant was merely physical (thus it included physical children) whereas the new covenant is spiritual (so physical children are excluded). But the core promises of the old covenant in Gen. 17:7, “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your children after you…to be God to you and your offspring after you,” clearly a describe a spiritual covenant. It is a promise of a relationship with God, so it cannot be merely physical. The point is that *physical* children will graciously be brought into a *spiritual* covenantal relationship with God.
A Baptist might say that the old covenant was physical because its sign (circumcision) was physically inscribed upon the body. But the new covenant still has physical signs. The water used in baptism is physical. The bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper are physical. The physical/spiritual dualism simply doesn’t work as a way of capturing the shift from old to new. (Peter Lillback has an excellent article in the book, The Failure of American Baptist Culture, that shows spiritual and individual aspects of the old covenant, and physical and corporate aspects of the new covenant.)
The single olive tree of Rom. 11 shows that the covenant continues to work the same way. In the old covenant, unbelieving branches were broken out. Physical descent did not guarantee ongoing membership in the covenant apart from faith, even if children started out on the tree. In the new covenant there can still be natural branches on the tree – the children of believers. Once you are grafted into the covenant tree by faith, your children will grow on the tree as natural branches. The vision of family life described in Ps. 128 is just as much a reality in the new covenant – and note that the children around the God-fearing man’s table are olive plants!
Has God made promises to parents in the new covenant? Peter answers that question in the very first sermon preached in the new covenant (post-Petencost) era. In Acts 2, he says the promise is STILL to you and to your children – though now the Gentiles (those who “far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”) will also be brought in. The fact that Peter mentions children as covered by the promise means they are still included in the covenant. Peter is not shrinking the covenant (cutting children off in the new age) but expanding the covenant (since Gentiles as Gentiles will now be brought into Abraham’s family).
This is consistent with everything else we find in the NT about children. Jesus used children as models of kingdom entrance in Mt. 18 (it would odd to use small children as models of faith if they are not capable of faith). He warned adults about causing “these little ones who believe in me” to stumble. In Matthew 19, he says covenant children belong to his kingdom. In the new age, covenant children are kingdom children – members of the new Israel and royal priesthood Jesus is forming around himself. The blessing he bestows upon the children brought to him is not a generic common grace blessing, but the blessing of the kingdom (the blessing of the new covenant).
Paul addresses children as church members in Eph. 6. He tells Christian fathers to raise their children “in the Lord.” He applies the promise embedded in the 5th commandment to new covenant children – but he expands the scope of the promise for these Gentile Christian families. None of this makes sense if the new covenant excludes children. None of this makes sense if children of Christians are supposed to be treated as outsiders until they have a conversion experience.
Baptists might claim they’ve never seen a 2 year old child not in bondage to the flesh. But I’d say I’ve never seen a 2 year old covenant children belong apostatize. Our children, like Christians of all ages, are sinners, and they need parental nurture, teaching, and discipline. But the fundamental goal of Christians parents is to disciple (not evangelize) their children.
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A sacrament by definition includes the sign and thing signified. Regarding this baptism: if the sign (water) is not present, it’s not a baptism. Likewise, if the thing signified (the Spirit) is not present, it’s not a baptism. There is no such thing as a waterless baptism or a Spiritless baptism.
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Charles Spurgeon said Christian parents should bring their children to Christ, not to the baptismal font. But this is a false dichotomy. Christ is present in the waters of baptism. Bringing children to baptism is the way we bring them to Jesus (though not the only way, of course). Just as believing parents brought their children to Jesus for a blessing in Matthew 19, so parents bring their children to Jesus in the waters of baptism for a blessing today.
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Paedobaptism is simply grace restoring nature in the context of the family. Paedobaptism just means our children can grow up Christian. God’s new humanity/new creation includes the youngest among us.
Paedobaptism puts a foundation under what most Christian parents want to do instinctively, namely, raise their children as Christians (eg, praying with them, celebrating Christian holidays and seasons with them, singing “Jesus Loves Me” with them, etc.).
Paedobaptism means our children do not need a hurricane-like, dramatic conversion experience when they are older. Rather, they can grow up in a Spiritual rain forest where the covenantal humidity is always very high, so they are continually drenched and soaked in the promises of the Word. They grow up as members of God’s new Israel. The covenant paradigm means our children are not weeds, needing to be uprooted and changed into fruitful plants. The covenant paradigm means God has already claimed them as his own from their earliest days so the parental task is watering, fertilizing, and nurturing the plants God has given us.
Covenant parenting means our children’s testimony does not need a sharply contrasted before and after. They can have a testimony like David’s in Psalm 22. If you asked David when he became believer, he would answer, “in the womb.”
Paedobaptism means our kids don’t need to struggle through an identity crisis, wondering, “Who am I?” That question was answered in their earliest days, when God brought them into his family through baptism. Our children need to be taught to remember who they are, that is, to remember their baptisms. They need to remember that they are dead to sin and alive to righteousness, that they are united to Christ. Covenant parenting is largely a matter of teaching them to remember the covenant God made with them in their youth. We “grab them by their baptisms,”’as Phillip Henry put it.
Some might wonder if paedobaptism and covenant parenting will lead to nominalism. That is a real danger and must be guarded against by applying the warnings of the covenant to our children as much as we apply the promises. But it’s also important to note that the Baptist church has not solved the problem of nominalism. I live in the heart of the “Bible belt” and it’s likely that nominal Baptists outnumber nominal paedobaptists here. The answer to the problem of nominalism is not abandoning paedobaptism, but faithfully practicing church discipline.
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Pastors are not “life coaches.” Pastors are not, and do not need to be, omnicompetent experts in everything. Your pastor is not the first person to go to for advice in many areas of life, whether it be plumbing problems or investing advice or dietary decisions. Pastors do not need to offer commentary on every cultural and political event.
But if pastors are not “life coaches,” they are most certainly “wisdom coaches,” whose job includes applying divine wisdom to every area of life. Pastors are not experts in every field, but they are generalists who specialize in how everything fits together in God’s “big picture.” Pastors are not pundits providing running commentary on news as it breaks, but they certainly need to be discipling their people in the skill of living faithfully amidst the peculiar challenges of the day.
If the pastor’s call is to teach the Bible, and the Bible equips us for every good work (2 Timothy 3), then the pastor should be equipping his people to live faithfully in all of life. This doesn’t mean nailing down every detail – many things are matters of Christian freedom, private judgment, and sanctified common sense – but it does mean providing the shared overarching framework within which a life of comprehensive faithfulness can be pursued.
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In one of the best short articles I’ve read in a while, @andrewtwalk writes in @WNGdotorg:
“Third-wayism among many evangelical elites told us that Christianity “stands above” American polarization only to provide theological justification for ceding the cultural ground to progressives. Or much of mainstream evangelicalism shows discomfort with creation order realities, fearing that loving the nation violates the transnational Kingdom of God or that celebrating masculinity offends the quiet expectation that we all become functional eunuchs within the church. In too many cases, evangelical political theology lacks a doctrine of creation. Evangelicalism often appears as all grace, no nature.
For all its strengths—its evangelistic zeal, its emphasis on grace, its defense of biblical authority—evangelicalism has long suffered from a theology that skips straight from the Fall to the Cross to the Resurrection with little consideration of what original created nature was for. It has little capacity to speak about the created world as good in itself (Genesis 1:31; 1 Timothy 4:4). Nature, order, design, morality, hierarchy, limits—these are not simply remnants of a fallen system to be transcended. They are goods to be received, stewarded, and fought for. But when a theological tradition has no place for creation in its moral and political imagination, the re-emergence of natural goods—like male and female distinction, the good of loving and prioritizing one’s family, or the basic moral instincts of conscience—feels foreign, even threatening. The over-valuation of grace into platonic detachment has left us unable to participate in politics without guilt about immediate compromise. While politics after the Fall is about restraining the evildoer, we overlook why we have the retributive justice of the state—to protect pre-Fall goods.
So when the culture, weary of chaos, begins to grope back toward its outer-boundary natural law violations, evangelicalism will fumble unless we relearn the value of nature. We must be able to affirm the goodness of maleness and femaleness, the goodness of hierarchy and authority, the goodness of limits, the good of the family, the good of conscience and moral law.
This is why many evangelicals find themselves uncomfortable with the language of authority, duty, or rootedness. These are not primarily red-state values—they are creational ones. But if your theology has no robust doctrine of creation, you will inevitably treat them as cultural preferences or, worse, as impediments to “authentic gospel witness” rather than moral goods.”
This issue of grace eating up nature in some versions of evangelical theology is one I’ve written about quite a bit over the years. Many evangelicals start their theology with the fall, rather than creation, then stop at the crucifixion without giving proper attention to the resurrection and the renewal of all things. I address this in my book Measures of the Mission and briefly on this article I wrote on Obergefell back in 2015:
pastor.trinity-pres.net/essays/obergef…
For many evangelicals, grace does not restore nature, grace destroys nature. This is one reason why so much evangelical preaching is actually implicitly antinomian. There is no underlying creation order and design that must be respected; thus, grace easily gets twisted into a license for lawlessness. Grace is used to attack rather than bolster creational structures (eg, hierarchy in marriage). Grace becomes a way of breaking through natural limits so “you can be anything you want to be,” when in truth grace is given to enable us to fulfill our natural design. Of course, creation has a built in teleology (and eschatology) from the beginning, so in saying grace fulfills nature, we are not *merely* saying grace takes us back to where we started. The point is that if the fall derailed nature, grace puts nature back on track.
Francis Schaeffer feared that nature would eat up grace – a valid fear, at least in some versions of Thomism. But today the much greater problem is grace eating up nature. In Colossians 1, Paul tells us Christ is the Creator and Redeemer, so creation and redemption align. Creation is the very “stuff” being redeemed. Christ is reordering everything under his lordship. He is the Cosmic Redeemer.
The world has defeated much of evangelicalism in the so-called culture war because so many evangelicals have not had the tools needed to defend themselves. A thin biblicism is not enough to withstand the onslaught against marriage, masculinity, femininity, etc. But God did not design the Bible to stand on its own, as kind of abstraction. God gives us both special and natural revelation, and from the very beginning intended them to work in harmony with one another. We must not read Scripture apart from nature or nature apart from Scripture. Nor do we pit them against each other. Scripture appeals to nature so obviously God intended them to work together and form a single system of divine revelation.
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The gospel simultaneously forgives our sins and declares war on our sins.
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The gospel shows mercy to sinners but not to sins.
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Teaching on the practicalities of Christian living is not legalism. It’s every pastor’s responsibility.
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Christians need to know the difference between legalism/moralism and making every effort to be holy (Hebrews 12:14).
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Leaders, beware: your leadership position will magnify your flaws, so others will see them and will be impacted by them in ways that would not happen if you were not in leadership.
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There is a ditch on both sides of the gospel – legalism is the ditch on one side, antinomianism is the ditch on the other.
Sometimes, when you are warning against the ditch on one side, people will think you have fallen into the ditch on the other side. We need to preach the extremes, but we need to preach the extremes in balance – the radical freeness of God’s gracious salvation, and the radical demands of repentance and obedience should be preached in equal measure. You know, just like the inspired authors of Scripture.
We must never tame or dilute the extremes that Scripture gives us. “You are justified freely by his grace” and “repent or perish” are found side by side in Scripture without the least suggestion that there is a contradiction. “Justification by faith” and “faith without works is dead” are both true and both must be proclaimed.
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One of the biggest problems in the church today is preachers who adopt antinomian formulations of the gospel.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that if a preacher is never accused of antinomianism, he probably isn’t preaching the gospel. That’s true. But it’s also true that if a preacher is never accused of legalism, he probably isn’t preaching the gospel either. There is a ditch on both sides.
The gospel promises the free forgiveness of sins. The gospel also demands and promises to produce obedience. Forgiveness of sins AND life transformation are gifts of grace.
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Sin = man putting himself in the place of God
Salvation = God putting himself in the place of man
Sin = man claiming prerogatives that belong to God
Salvation = God taking on himself what sinners deserve
Sin is self-deification, man arrogating himself to God’s station. Salvation is God consigning himself to the place of sinners, taking the curse man deserves.
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In Karate Kid, Daniel’s mom says “fighting doesn’t solve anything.” She’s wrong, as the rest of the movie shows. Sometimes fighting does solve things. Sometimes violence is the answer. This is obvious to any Christian who believes the traditional doctrine of just war. It’s obvious to anyone who believes in the biblical right of self-defense. As Solomon says, there is a time for war and a time for peace.
tpcpastorspage.com/2022/08/24/tho…
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The children of Christians are Christian children – not by nature, but by grace. This is the meaning of God’s promise, “I will be a God to you and your offspring after you.”
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The gospel is Trinitarian. The gospel includes not only what Jesus did for me outside of me, but also what the Spirit does to me inside of me. The gospel is not just Good Friday and Easter; Pentecost is gospel too. The Father approves of the Son’s work for me and the Spirit’s work in me, and my entire salvation redounds to the glory of the Triune God.
Sin produced a double problem, legal condemnation and moral corruption. The gospel answers both of these, as it brings both justification and transformation. Both justification and transformation come by faith.
We died in Adam, we are made alive in Christ. We are under the power of sin in Adam, we are set free in Christ. We are guilty and depraved in Adam, we are righteous and obedient in Christ. Christ restores all that Adam lost, and much, much more. Where sin abounded, grace super-abounds.
The gospel God promised to Abraham included both the forgiveness is sins (Romans 4:1-12) and the gift of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 3:1-9). As Abraham’s children we have both of these gifts.
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A significant part of pastoral ministry is convincing unbelievers they are totally depraved and Christians they are not.
A faithful pastor will be deeply pessimistic about what man can do on his own, and incredibly optimistic about what the Spirit can do in us. Our anthropological pessimism is matched and exceeded by our pneumatological optimism. Where the flesh is weak, the Spirit is exceedingly strong.
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If IAO was there implicitly all along in the Reformed tradition, then it’s also implicit in view, and there should be no controversy. (Some people have said it is implicit in my view, and I don’t argue against them.)
If it’s not there implicitly, then obviously it cannot be the sine qua non of the gospel and, so again, there should be no controversy.
If the explicit formulation of IAO is necessary to confess the gospel – to be a Christian – then Luther, Calvin, and everyone but a tiny handful of Reformed scholastics are lost. I hope it’s obvious that is not an acceptable conclusion.
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Just a friendly reminder: there is no such thing as religious liberty.
Why? Two reasons.
1. There is no such thing as “religion in general” – only particular religions. Thus, freedom for one religion will often come at the expense of another religion.
2. There is no such thing as religious neutrality. It’s impossible to have a bunch of religions competing on neutral turf in a society. There will always be an established and privileged religion, even if it’s implicit rather than explicit. Every society has a god (or God).
Thus, absolute religious freedom is impossible. Should Mormons be able to practice polygamy? Should Muslims be allowed to wage jihad on infidels? Should Satanists be allowed to sacrifice cats? Should worshippers of Molech be allowed to slaughter infants? Should pagans be allowed to use psychedelic drugs or temple prostitutes in their ceremonies? Should LGBTQers be able to do drag queen story hour with kids at the public library, or parade their depravity down Main Street? Should people be able to practice slavery, or perversion, or witchcraft in the name of a religion?
Further: What is the basis of public morality and law in a society? Whatever that basis is, is that society’s god/God.
Further: what kinds of speech are off-limits in a society? Blasphemy laws and hate speech laws reveal the god of a society.
Further: what are a nation’s symbols? Are there statues of Baphomet in public buildings? Pride flags flying over state houses? An empty public square is just as religiously freighted as one with a nativity scene in it. Atheism’s naked public square is just as religious as one filled with Christian imagery.
In a Christian nation, other religions might be tolerated at some level, but many of their practices would be outlawed. Toleration is not the same as freedom.
This kind of ordered liberty – as opposed to disordered liberty – rooted in the Christian faith has characterized the West, including America for much of our history, until gullible believers fell for secularist lies about neutrality.
Today, it’s not uncommon for public Christians (including pastors and magistrates) to speak as if our goal is a nation that has “religious liberty.” We are just happy to have a place at the table. But the goal for Christians is not a neutral or pluralistic nation – we should know better than to fall for the myth of neutrality. The Christian goal (as given to us in the Great Commission) is a discipled nation, a Christian nation, a nation ordered under the lordship of King Jesus.
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The point is that liberty is not — and cannot be — an absolute. You cannot do anything you want, provided you do it in the name of religion. Or to put it another way, true liberty is ordered liberty. There has to be some kind of moral framework that determines what liberty is, what’s allowed/tolerated, etc. All liberties and rights arise from the religious framework of the society. This is true across the board, e.g., freedom of speech does not give anyone the right to slander or libel, the right to bear arms does not mean convicted criminal get to take weapons with them into jail, etc.
Obviously there can be liberty for a *particular* religion. But it is simply impossible (logically and otherwise) to grant *all* religions equal freedoms. If my religion permits me to steal and your holds to private property, we can’t both be free. If one person’s religion includes public displays of sexual perversion and another person’s religion requires modesty in public, we can’t both be free.
Historically, America is a pretty good illustration of this. At our founding, various forms of Christian faith were allowed, but we did not allow Mormons to practice polygamy when Utah became a state, we did not allow Amerindians to continue to use the drug peyote in their religious ceremonies, etc. Obviously, with the decline of Christian influence in our society, the situation has changed. In some Western nations, the freedom of Christians to practice their religion, e.g., public preaching on what the Bible says about LGBTQ, has been threatened or outlawed. There is no neutrality.
Civil law does not govern or coerce belief. People can think whatever thoughts they want. For example, adultery can be criminalized but lust cannot be. Constantine outlawed pagan sacrifice (which was good) but did not outlaw pagan beliefs (which would have been impossible).
The doctrine of religious liberty itself is a Christian doctrine, not one that arose in some kind of neutral way. And the Christians who developed the doctrine did so largely to provide a framework in which different kinds of Christians belonging to different traditions/denominations but generally sharing the same worldview and moral code could get along and live side by side. But the Christians who developed a doctrine of religious liberty did not envision a society in which Muslims could practice Sharia (much less jihad) right along side Christians, or where cults like Mormonism could practice polygamy, or where pagans could practice blood sacrifices and use psychedelic drugs. In other words, no one envisioned absolute pluralism because they knew it would be impossible.
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Just a reminder that after you give your kids a phone, about 75% of parenting (in terms of time and energy) becomes a battle over screen time.
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God has made a multitude of promises to his people. And he has never broken a single one. He is a God of his Word, and he keeps his Word.
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I think Vance is right about globalism, cheap labor, and technological stagnation.
There are other examples of this in history. In the Antebellum South, there was little incentive to industrialize (as happened in the North) because the South relied on slave labor. Obviously superior industry and technology have the North an advantage in the war.
In a sense, we are doing the same thing right, now relying on low wage and slave workers in foreign countries to supply our goods. Instead of chasing innovation, we have chased cheaper and cheaper labor.
Hopefully Vance’s vision takes hold and leads to a renewed interest in American manufacturing and innovation.
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The goal of Christian cultural engagement is not to anger the left or “own the libs” or “drink liberal tears.” The goal is to be faithful to Scripture in all of life. Yes, a by-product of faithfulness will be transgressing progressive dogmas. And when that happens, the attitude of the New Right to the left’s accusations, “I really don’t care, Margaret,” is the proper and fitting response. But if we make that kind of transgression the goal, we are ironically still operating within a progressive frame instead of a biblical one. We are debating on the left’s terms instead of our own. There is no reason to let the left determine the playing field or its rules.
Young men today will say, “Everything I was taught growing up turned out to be a lie.” That’s probably the case – but it does not follow that the *opposite* of everything you were taught is therefore automatically the truth. Reality is more complicated than that. You cannot get the truth by simply inverting what you were taught. Getting to the truth is going to require real work, real study, real wisdom.
Nor can the goal simply to be to see who can be the most “based” or “trad.” The left has its own version of this race to the bottom in its “I can be woker than thou” dynamic. But for us, it should not be about who can be the most “based” but who can be the most holistically biblical. We are Christians, after all, so we should seek to live like it.
Bottom line: The problem with the alt right at the moment is that it all too often makes being transgressive against the left the standard rather than biblical fidelity. In reality the goal is not merely to be “based” but to be “biblical,” the goal is not to be anti-woke but to obey Christ as Lord. Making progressives angry is not identical with pleasing God.
As of this moment, the so-called New Right (or alt right) is a mixed bag. It has great energy and many good insights, but it’s still hindered by a lot of immaturity and unrighteous anger.
One sign of this immaturity is the constant quest to look for a singular scapegoat on which to blame the bulk of our social ills. Over the last few years, we have seen the preferred scapegoat shift from China, to the deep state, to Boomers, to illegal immigrants, to the target du jour, the Jews. The reality is that sinners are always going to sin. The world is going to do worldly things. Trying to find some subgroup of sinners to pin the blame on is not particularly useful. It’s far better for us to develop a forward-reaching vision of the true, the good, and the beautiful than to play whack-a-mole with different scapegoats. Pinpointing women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, the postwar consensus, Obergefell, DEI, or some other fatal turning point is not a very helpful exercise unless we know positively what we are for and how to get busy building it. Rear-guard defensive measures are not the need of the moment; creating, innovating, and building in wise and faithful ways are the need of the moment.
Examine the view that the Jews are behind all our social ills for moment. The Jews run the po*n industry, you say? Ok, but you still can’t blame the Jews for your po*n addiction. You’re the one who chose to click that link. Jews pull the strings in DC you say? Well, why are so many (mostly white) Americans so gullible to fall for their lies, or so greedy they accept their money? What does that say about us? You wonder: Why do Jews dominate in so many fields? Well, anyone who has observed them will tell you they work hard. Don’t scapegoat them just because they expose your own laziness.
Again: evil people do evil things. Those who belong to the darkness will try to extinguish the light. None of this should come as a surprise. Scripture tells us about it and shows us what to do about it. And Scripture also reminds us that this kind of evil is not concentrated in one race or ethnicity, one age group, or one gender. Apart from grace, humanity has a universal hatred for God and for all that is good.
Bottom line: tearing down enemies on social media is not as positively building a better culture. Finding scapegoats is not the same as pursuing righteousness. Those who want to blame others need to start by dealing with their own sin.
Christians should recognize the church’s central complicity in our society’s degeneration into the messy clown world we now inhabit. Most social analyses from the right (and the left) pretend as if the church doesn’t exist. The church is socially and culturally invisible in most discussions of what went wrong and how we can fix it.
From the right, solutions tend to range from rebuilding marriage and family life to a renewal of patriotic zeal. There is no question these are good things. The family needs fixing and we cannot get far down the road to social renewal without healthy marriages producing happy children. Likewise, it is true that we must restore a love for our nation’s heroes and heritage in the civil sphere. If no one loves America enough to defend her, our continued demise is inevitable.
But what if the church is not irrelevant to the culture?
Frankly, the simplest explanation for what has gone wrong in the West in general and America in particular is given by Jesus in Matthew 5: the salt has lost its saltiness and so is now being trampled underfoot.
Again and again in Scripture we find several principles taught that must govern our interpretation of history and our vision for cultural renewal in the future. I have developed the exegetical and theological bases for these principles elsewhere so I only summarize them here:
1. As the pastors so the people; as the church, so the culture.
2. Ecclesiastical reformation drives cultural transformation.
3. The heavenly city (the church) bears responsibility for the earthly city.
4. The Great Commission requires and will produce transformed nations.
5. Judgment and repentance both begin with the house of the Lord.
Before we got clown world, we had clown church. The collapse of public virtue, family formation, and love of homeland can all be traced back to a progressive failure of the church to be the church, especially from the early 19th century onwards, when revivalism and rationalism began to eat away at orthodoxy and orthopraxy. The decline of the West should be interpreted in theological categories as apostasy, as a turning away from the worship of the living God to serve idols. The secularization of the West was not inevitable; it’s the product of ecclesiastical failure more than any other factor. Our culture has come unraveled because the church has failed to be the church.
I identify revivalism and rationalism as the twin evils that subverted the faithful church in America. Revivalism replaced confessional fidelity with emotionalism; rationalism replaced the authority of Scripture with reason and science. There were other factors, not limited to, but including: the failure of Protestants to reunify after the Reformation, resulting in a divided and therefore weak church; the cowardly failure of the church to stand up to the rise of feminism and Darwinism; the church ceding oversight of the university (and education in general), the hospital, and the care of the poor to the secular state; the refusal of pastors to carry out the “teaching them all that I have commanded you” (= the whole counsel of God) part of the Great Commission; the loss of reverent liturgy, especially Psalm-singing, since the psalms are super-charged, world-changing prayers the church has strangely decided to ignore; etc.
Bottom line: If the drift of the church got us into this mess, the reformation of the church is the way out. This is not a pietistic substituting of prayer and worship for political activism or culture warring. Rather, it is recasting the ministries of the church in properly political terms. Preaching, prayer, and psalm-singing all have public, political dimensions; they are not merely private acts of devotion done in the secrecy of the sanctuary; they are acts of homage before the King of kings and Lord of lords in the midst of his heavenly throne room. We do not worship as an alternative to other forms of cultural and political activity; rather, we make the church’s liturgy the foundation and anchor of these other forms of cultural and political activity. To say “worship is warfare” is not to say it’s the only way in which we fight, but it is to admit that unless the Lord makes our cultural and political efforts in the public square effective, all our labor is in vain. Ora et labora – pray and work – is the motto of the faithful church. If we want to recover our power as world changers, the salt must get its saltiness back. The New Right will end up just as ineffective as other conservative movements of the last 50 years unless it develops an explicitly Christian/biblical and ecclesiocentric foundation.
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An older thread on paying the price for one’s convictions:
When I was a young guy, first ordained, I was told that by an older pastor, “sooner or later, you’ll have to choose between your money and your faith.” In other words, if you remain true to your convictions, rather than going with the flow, it will be eventually cost you something, so be prepared. Being faithful is not easy or cheap.
Little did I know how true that would turn out to be almost immediately with the FV controversy breaking about the same time I got ordained. (This was the early 2000s.)
I was friends with a lot of big shots in the PCA until FV happened. They could have opened doors for me up until that point. I could have had a pretty cushy career trajectory. After the FV controversy broke, a lot of guys I had known and even looked to as mentors dropped me like I was toxic.
Thankfully, my convictions did not cost me a whole lot in the long run, because I eventually found a soft landing place. But there were certainly long stretches of uncertainly about how my career would be impacted, whether or not I’d be able to get a call or grow a church to viability, etc. I was definitely not anti-fragile at that stage of life. So I’d be lying if I said my convictions did not cost me something along the way. I knew from the first essay I published on baptismal efficacy that I was courting trouble – but I also believed I was saying something that needed to be said. I had convictions and believed it was important to go public with them. I knew other guys with similar convictions but decided to keep them private precisely because they didn’t want to hurt their career prospects in the denomination.
What happened? Basically, I adopted some positions on soteriology, sacramental theology, ecclesiology, and eschatology that were out of sync with the denomination I was in. Most older men in my denomination did not hold views like me, and in fact strongly opposed me. It was not long before I found myself on “heretic” lists – mainly because I was quoting Calvin and Bucer. Older men *should* have known this stuff, or at least known it was well within the Reformed tradition, but they didn’t. Their ignorance became my problem.
What did I do? I certainly didn’t whine about it. I just dealt with it. I doubled down on doing the scholarship, interacting intelligently, responsibly, and respectfully with critics. I wrote hundreds, maybe thousands, of pages on these issues. I went to conferences where I could interact with “the other side.” I continued to pursue relationships even with men who made it pretty clear they didn’t want to be friends with me anymore.
I certainly didn’t complain about how the older men should support younger men (like me at the time) because that was somehow their job no matter what – that thought would never have occurred to me. I was surrounded by a lot of men who did not share my convictions, and I knew there would be a price to be paid for that reason. That’s just how it is. I didn’t “ok, Boomer” any of those men. I continued to respect the office even when I didn’t respect the men.
My advice to younger guys who hold out of the mainstream opinions or out of sync with the leadership of the older generation: Don’t whine about how you’re not being supported by older men. It sounds weak and effeminate. Instead, put in the work — and keep putting in the work. Do the reading. Do the writing. Then do more reading and writing. Make a responsible, respectful case for your convictions. And then let the chips fall where they may. You probably won’t persuade many people and you have to be ok with that. Not everyone is going to buy your arguments. Do not be surprised if you have to pay a price for your convictions. That’s just the cost of doing business if you hold views that would be considered fringe. When the bill comes due for stepping outside the mainstream, just pay it, and do so with joy and courage.
Getting angry or complaining hurts your cause. Mocking older men who have done good work but don’t share your convictions on x, y, or z hurts your cause. Holding to what you believe to be the truth – when that truth is unpopular – isn’t cheap or easy, so don’t expect it to be.
To take an extreme example: One of the things about the whole Achord affair that bothered me was not just that he lied about tweets that he obviously knew were controversial and outside the mainstream (since he posted them anonymously), but that when he got exposed, he and many who defended him acted like some great injustice had been done when he lost his job. But why wouldn’t he want his employer to know his convictions? And why wouldn’t he be willing to pay for those convictions once exposed? If he believed what he was tweeting from his anonymous account was truth, why not stand by those things and then be willing to pay the price for them? I disagreed with the anonymous tweets, but I also think the courageous, manly thing to do would have been to own them and *gladly* suffer the consequences. Folks can debate all they want whether or not he was “doxxed” – but who cares? You cannot have it both ways, holding to marginal views AND expecting to pay no price for those views. You don’t get to be radical AND live a cushy life. I lost my denomination for my views – really not all that different from Achord losing his job for his views. I think the views I hold to are right even though they are controversial; I’d imagine Achord thinks the same thing. Pay the price for your convictions, and then get on with your life as best you can.
If I had written all my baptism articles anonymously and then someone exposed my identity to the public, I would have avoided some chaos and uncertainty in my life. But I would have not been any kind of leader. It would have felt cowardly.
I’ve seen some men (presumably younger men, but it’s not always easy to tell on social media) defend positions I consider wildly wrong and dangerous. But these men certainly have the right to express their views. They just need to know what comes with the territory. If there are young men out there who want to defend Hitler as “not that bad” or defend white identity politics (as I’ve seen on X), fine, but if those are really your convictions, you should be prepared to pay a price for them. If it’s not worth it to you, then they aren’t REALLY your convictions. You cannot hold radical views AND pay no price. Convictions are costly – and they should be.
At some point, we all get confronted with a choice between our money (or job, or popularity, or status, etc.,) and our convictions. But make sure your convictions are really your convictions before you go “all in” on them because it’s not easy to turn back. And if you don’t want to pay a price for your convictions, then the only honest thing to do is adopt convictions that won’t cost you as much.
A final postscript: to young men flirting with rightwing racial identity politics or who want to rehabilitate Hitler with an alternative account of WW2, and so forth – ideas I consider wrong and even dangerous at points – do not confuse social media with the real world. You may find some allies on social media. You will not find many in “real life.” You need to recognize that Neo-Nazism is far from the only alternative to a borderless globalism.
Be true to your convictions – it’s the only way to live – but don’t complain if those convictions cost you a whole lot. Make sure you’re really confident and right and have done the work before jumping on a bandwagon. Otherwise you might regret your choice. There are many types of Christian nationalism being pushed right now – make sure you thoroughly vet the view you end up adopting and the leaders associated with it because not all views are equally viable or defensible in the real world. You also need to consider strategy – what are you trying to accomplish and what tactics are most likely to produce real world victories? I see quite a few young men adopt positions that simply have no chance of getting traction outside a small social media bubble. If it sounds like I am telling you to thread a needle….well, yes, that’s exactly what I am telling you to do.
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“Just make babies” and “just a mom” are two of the most ridiculous phrases possible.
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Christian politics *should be* the use of civil power in the service and pursuit of biblically-defined justice.
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I believe over the course of history, the university will be leavened. But I don’t have a timetable. However, consider this: the very fact that the university even exists is a result of the leavening of the gospel in the world. Same with the hospital. Both are Christian inventions, even if they are prodigals at the moment.
Further, I have no problem saying the world as a whole is objectively better, more leavened, than it was 1500 years ago, 1000 years ago, 500 years ago.
God will show his faithfulness to 1000s of generations, as he said through Moses. Even if the leaven works slowly, and the kingdom has times of ebbing, in the long run God has promised “to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.”
“Strong and certain was the conviction of the Christians that the church would come forth triumphant out of its conflicts, as it was its destiny to be a world-transforming principle that would attain to dominion of the world.”
— J.A. Neander, History of the Christian Religion and Church (1851)
“Micah proclaims how all the world will be brought to God at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. This reunification has already begun, is taking place now, and will continue until the end of the world. … Jesus Christ has been designated the Lord, not simply of one corner of the world, but of all nations. … Since our Lord Jesus Christ’s kingdom has hardly begun, it is necessary for it to be implemented little by little, until it achieves its full perfection.”
— John Calvin, Sermons on the Book of Micah
“David was not a believer in the theory that the world will grow worse and worse, and that the dispensation will wind up with general darkness, and idolatry. Earth’s sun is to go down amid tenfold night if some of our prophetic brethren are to be believed. Not so do we expect, but we look for the day when the dwellers in all lands shall learn righteousness, shall trust in the Saviour, shall worship thee alone, O God, ‘and shall glorify thy name.’ The modern notion has greatly damped the zeal of the church for missions, and the sooner it is shown to be unscriptural the better for the cause fo God. It neither consorts with prophecy, honours God, nor inspires the church with ardour. Far hence be it driven.”
— C. H. Spurgeon
“There is a kind of veil now cast over the greater part of the world, which keeps them in darkness. But then this veil shall be destroyed, “And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations” (Isaiah 25:7). And then all countries and nations, even those that are now most ignorant, shall be full of light and knowledge. Great knowledge shall prevail everywhere. It may be hoped, that then many of the Negroes and Indians will be divines, and that excellent books will be published in Africa, in Ethiopia, in Tartary, and other now the most barbarous countries. And not only learned men, but others of more ordinary education, shall then be very knowing in religion, “The eyes of them that see, shall not be dim; and the ears of them that hear, shall hearken. The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge” (Isaiah 32:3,4).”
— Jonathan Edwards
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If Paul’s teaching on a wife’s submission to her husband is just a reflection of a cultural convention, then his command that husbands love and cherish their wives must be a cultural convention too. This is sheer madness, obviously. The Bible is the Word of God. Its authority and applicability transcend time and culture. It says what it says, and it means what it says.
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What follows is mostly older X posts, including some from a headcovering discussion:
I have written on headcoverings in the past (see my blog, sermons, and sermon notes – plus a podcast). But I want to elaborate a bit on an a point I’ve made before. As I see it, the basic debate is over whether a woman’s long hair is a sufficient “natural” covering, or if she needs an additional artificial covering.
Let me frame it this way: Was Eve created in a state of shame?
Paul says it is shameful for a woman to have an uncovered head (1 Cor. 11:6). When Eve was created, no doubt she had long hair (the man and woman were created as mature adults, perfect masculine and feminine specimens). But she was naked so she definitely did not have an artificial headcovering. She was also unashamed so there was no shame in not having an artificial covering on her head.
Further, the woman was created in the Garden of Eden, in the sacramental sanctuary; if there is any place the woman would need a headcovering, it’s in the sanctuary. Yet, she was headcoveringless, other than her long hair. A woman’s long hair is her natural, God-given glory, the sign that she is under authority.
Whatever point Paul is making about the woman’s headcovering is rooted in nature; that is to say, it is rooted in God’s original creation design. That’s why Paul makes an appeal to nature in the discussion in 1 Corinthians 11. But there is no way the requirement for an artificial headcovering can be grounded in nature since the woman in her natural state did not have an artificial covering on her head. The entire context of Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 11:1-15 is creation; whatever he teaches about the male/female relationship must be consistent with what we find in Genesis 2. The woman in her created state had no headcovering other than her long hair and yet she had no shame.
To sum up:
Paul teaches that a woman with an uncovered head is a disgrace.
But Genesis teaches that the first woman, who was clearly not disgraced, had no headcovering other than her long hair.
Therefore, I conclude nature teaches a woman’s long hair is the only headcovering she ever needs.
I remain convinced that artificial headcoverings for women in worship are adiaphora, neither commanded nor forbidden. What nature teaches is that women should have longer hair than men because her hair is her glory, and she in turn is her husband’s glory.
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If Paul argued the woman needs an artificial headcovering because of the fall, I could see that – but that’s not what he does.
Thus, I have to ask how the appeal to nature functions as a supporting premise in the argument – how does nature prove the need for an artificial headcovering when the woman did not have one in her natural state? I would argue nature teaches her long hair is an adequate covering because that’s what she had in the beginning.
There are certain changes that come in with the fall. But even when God clothes them in Genesis 3 (symbolically covering shame), nothing indicates she was given an artificial headcovering to go with the rest of the clothes she was given.
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King’s bring glory to themselves by having glorious attendants in the royal court. If you saw a bunch of drably clothed attendants in the king’s court, you would think he was not a very glorious king. If you saw glorious attendants surrounding his throne, you would conclude he is a glorious king indeed. Good kings do not suck all glory into themselves; they pour glory out on others.
Likewise, God wants the fullness of glory on display when we gather for worship. He glorifies us as we come into the penumbra of his glory. If you look at the heavenly liturgy in Revelation 4ff, there is glory everywhere. Glory is not a zero sum game – as if for God to be glorified, humans have to be de-glorified.
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I do not think women were required to wear headcoverings by Torah
Would it not be strange if male priests wore headcoverings in the old covenant, whereas now they do not, while women did not wear headcoverings in the old covenant but now must do so?
On a theology of clothing in general, as a sign of maturation and glory, I’d point you to Jim Jordan’s work.
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Clothing is not just about shame. Clothing is maturation. We would have been given clothes even in an unfallen world.
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When did headcoverings become a requirement since the OT says nothing about them?
I do not object to the custom of headcoverings for women. I object to them as a requirement.
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Note that in 1 Cor 11, the appeal is to nature (created order).
In 1 Cor 14, the appeal is to the law (14:34).
We can debate whether Eve’s dialogue with the serpent in Genesis 3 was already the beginning of her sin. Was it shameful for her to speak in the Garden?
But no one can make an argument that she was wearing a headcovering other than her long hair – she was naked and unashamed. She was covered in glory, but it was the glory of her hair.
What the pro-headcovering folks need to demonstrate is that a second covering in addition to her hair is somehow required by nature.
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In the old covenant, the priest’s headcovering was a kind of veil. Now men worship with uncovered heads. In Revelation 4, the elders cast down their crowns as the Lamb is enthroned, signifying the change in covenants.
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Every honest interpreter has to admit 1 Cor. 11:2ff is difficult and there is no problem-free way of exegeting it. The problem with brining the fall into it is that it seems Paul’s whole argument is based on the creation order. The reference to angels is due to the fact that the passage has a liturgical context and new covenant worship takes place in the heavenly sanctuary (Heb. 10:19ff, 12:22ff, etc.).
The whole argument is about male/female distinctions and mutuality. Hair length is one way men and women visually distinguish themselves.
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If Paul is requiring an extra, artificial covering over a woman’s hair, why does Paul give instruction about how women braid and wear their hair in worship in 1 Timothy 2:9? If her head/hair will be covered, why bother warning women about how they decorate their hair? It will not do to say that Paul’s command that women adorn themselves with “modesty” could include a headcovering since Paul explicitly addresses the woman’s hair style. If a woman’s hair is going to be covered by her headcovering, why does Paul have to tell women to not come to church with fancy braids in their hair? Wouldn’t the headcovering cover up those braids anyway?
I conclude from 1 Timothy 2:9 (and additional evidence) that women were not coming to church in the first century with artificial headcoverings. And since whatever Paul is requiring in 1 Cor. 11:1-15 was practiced by all the churches (including Ephesus, where Timothy pastored), artificial headcoverings were not the norm in the apostolic era.
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1 Cor. 11:2ff is about sex roles in public worship.
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There are some very fine people on both sides of the headcovering debate. A few questions for those who take the artificial covering view:
- If a woman is wearing a headcovering, may she publicly pray or prophesy in church? Does she need to wear the headcovering only when praying or prophesying? Or only in church meetings? Or at all times?
- Is the headcovering supposed to cover the face (like a veil), or the hair, or both? How much head or hair needs to be covered to count as a headcovering?
- When did the headcovering become an obligation? Was it an obligation from the beginning, from creation? Was it an obligation under Torah (if so, where is it commanded)? If it became a new obligation with the inauguration of the new covenant, why is there is no real debate or further discussion of it in the NT outside of 1 Cor. 11? And why does Paul make his appeal to creation rather than to features of the new covenant if it’s a new obligation?
- How, exactly, does nature teach that the woman needs an artificial headcovering in worship (or in all of life)? I know what it’s like to make arguments from nature about, eg, sodomy, but what does the natural law argument for artificial headcoverings look like?
- The appeal to church history is powerful since headcoverings were widespread amongst Christian women for much of history. In how many of those cultures did women wear headcoverings to church only vs also wearing headcoverings in daily life? In how many of those cultures did non-Christian women wear headcoverings?
Sorry I can’t get to all the questions/comments raised by my post, but getting these questions answered would help further the discussion.
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How much of a woman’s head has to be covered for it to be considered a headcovering? There doesn’t seem to be agreement on that point, with answers ranging from veils that cover even the face to headbands that hardly cover anything. But I stand by my earlier argument. If the point of the headcovering is to cover her glory (her hair) completely then there is no reason for Paul to give the instructions he does in 1 Timothy 2. If her hair is not completely covered, it is not a headcovering because her glory is still visible.
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I don’t think the seraphim covering their faces and their feet has any direct bearing upon the woman’s headcovering in 1 Cor. 11. The passage would either prove too much or too little if an analogy was drawn.
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I am not all convinced women widely practiced wearing some kind of hat or headcovering historically because of 1 Cor. 11. Many non-Christian women have worn similar things, as a matter of custom, or culture, or fashion.
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If Paul argued the woman needs an artificial headcovering because of the fall, I could see the argument – but that’s not what he does.
Thus, I have to ask how the appeal to nature functions as a supporting premise in the argument – how does nature prove the need for an artificial headcovering when the woman did not have one in her natural state? I would argue nature teaches her long hair is an adequate covering because that’s what she had in the beginning.
There are certain changes that come in with the fall. But even when God clothes them in Genesis 3 (symbolically covering shame), nothing indicates she was given an artificial headcovering to go with the rest of the clothes she was given.
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Are women in your church allowed to pray and prophesy publicly provided they wear an artificial headcovering?
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So how much of her hair has to be covered for it to count as a headcovering?
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The Roman Catholic mitre (and other forms of headdress used by Roman priests) are violations of Paul’s teaching for men in 1 Cor. 11. In Revelation 4, the elders cast down their crowns as the Lamb takes the throne and before they cry out in prayer, “Worthy is the Lamb….”
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The Bible commands wives to respect their husbands. But many Christian husbands do not feel respected by their wives. To a large degree this is because women do not understand respect in the same way as men. For a woman to respect her husband, she has to understand what men perceive as respect, not what she might be prone to think of as respect in a feminine frame. Women tend to think of respect as being considerate and thoughtful. Respect means being respectful. Respect means speaking kindly. It easily degenerates into being “nice.” But that’s not what respect means for men. For men, respect means honor. It means recognition, especially for competence and achievement. A woman who treats her husband more as a child than a man is not respecting him. Mothering a man is the antithesis of respecting him. A woman who nags her husband and constantly tries to tell him what to do and how to do is not respecting him. A wife needs to trust her husband in order to respect him. A woman who respects her husband will express gratitude for the ways he fulfills his masculine duties/responsibilities.
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From February ’25:
What a lot of people don’t understand about the South is that Southern culture, at least since 1865, has been very matriarchal. People think that because the South values tradition that it must be very patriarchal or at least complementarian. But actually Southern men tend to practice a kind of chivalry that defaults to a “she’s the boss” and “if mama ain’t happy, no one is happy” kind of matriarchy. You cannot understand the post-Civil War South unless you understand this fact. As a generalization, Southern men have never recovered genuine masculine headship since the War. Many Southern men have masculine hobbies (hunting, fishing, etc.) but are not actually very masculine in their core. Most Southern men are scared of their wives. They do not know how to handle their wives’ strong emotional responses. They think the way to lead is by being subservient. Even many (not all, but many) conservative Southern churches that have male-only officers tend to be highly feminized environments, led covertly by women; in other words, an all-male session may technically be the decision-maker but the elders only “lead” in ways their wives approve of and with their implicit permission. All that to say: Southern culture is far less friendly to masculinity than most people, including Southerners themselves, tend to think.
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From October ’24 (with follow up posts from the ensuing discussion):
I have written on headcoverings in the past (see my blog, sermons, and sermon notes – plus a podcast). But I want to elaborate a bit on an a point I’ve made before. As I see it, the basic debate is over whether a woman’s long hair is a sufficient “natural” covering, or if she needs an additional artificial covering. Let me frame it this way: Was Eve created in a state of shame? Paul says it is shameful for a woman to have an uncovered head (1 Cor. 11:6). When Eve was created, no doubt she had long hair (the man and woman were created as mature adults, perfect masculine and feminine specimens). But she was naked so she definitely did not have an artificial headcovering. She was also unashamed so there was no shame in not having an artificial covering on her head. Further, the woman was created in the Garden of Eden, in the sacramental sanctuary; if there is any place the woman would need a headcovering, it’s in the sanctuary. Yet, she was headcoveringless, other than her long hair. A woman’s long hair is her natural, God-given glory, the sign that she is under authority. Whatever point Paul is making about the woman’s headcovering is rooted in nature; that is to say, it is rooted in God’s original creation design. That’s why Paul makes an appeal to nature in the discussion in 1 Corinthians 11. But there is no way the requirement for an *artificial* headcovering can be grounded in nature since the woman in her natural state did not have an artificial covering on her head. The entire context of Paul’s discussion in 1 Corinthians 11:1-15 is creation; whatever he teaches about the male/female relationship must be consistent with what we find in Genesis 2. The woman in her created state had no headcovering other than her long hair and yet she had no shame. To sum up: Paul teaches that a woman with an uncovered head is a disgrace. But Genesis teaches that the first woman, who was clearly not disgraced, had no headcovering other than her long hair. Therefore, I conclude nature teaches a woman’s long hair is the only headcovering she ever needs. I remain convinced that artificial headcoverings for women in worship are adiaphora, neither commanded nor forbidden. What nature teaches is that women should have longer hair than men because her hair is her glory, and she in turn is her husband’s glory.
—
The Roman Catholic mitre (and other forms of headdress used by Roman priests) are violations of Paul’s teaching for men in 1 Cor. 11. In Revelation 4, the elders cast down their crowns as the Lamb takes the throne and before they cry out in prayer, “Worthy is the Lamb….”
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If Paul argued the woman needs an artificial headcovering because of the fall, I could see that – but that’s not what he does. Thus, I have to ask how the appeal to nature functions as a supporting premise in the argument – how does nature prove the need for an artificial headcovering when the woman did not have one in her natural state? I would argue nature teaches her long hair is an adequate covering because that’s what she had in the beginning. There are certain changes that come in with the fall. But even when God clothes them in Genesis 3 (symbolically covering shame), nothing indicates she was given an artificial headcovering to go with the rest of the clothes she was given.
—
I do not think women were required to wear headcoverings by Torah Would it not be strange if male priests wore headcoverings in the old covenant, whereas now they do not, while women did not wear headcoverings in the old covenant but now must do so? On a theology of clothing in general, as a sign of maturation and glory, I’d point you to Jim Jordan’s work.
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Note that in 1 Cor 11, the appeal is to nature (created order). In 1 Cor 14, the appeal is to the law (14:34). We can debate whether Eve’s dialogue with the serpent in Genesis 3 was already the beginning of her sin. Was it shameful for her to speak in the Garden? But no one can make an argument that she was wearing a headcovering other than her long hair – she was naked and unashamed. She was covered in glory, but it was the glory of her hair. What the pro-headcovering folks need to demonstrate is that a second covering in addition to her hair is somehow required by nature.
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I do not object to the custom of headcoverings. I object to it as a requirement.
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And I should add, I am not all convinced women widely practiced wearing some kind of hat or headcovering because of 1 Cor. 11. Many non-Christian women have women similar things, as a matter of custom, or culture, or fashion.
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In the old covenant, the priest’s headcovering was a kind of veil. Now men worship with uncovered heads. In Revelation 4, the elders cast down their crowns as the Lamb is enthroned, signifying the change.
Revelation is a worship service – the same heavenly liturgy Paul has in view when he gives his teaching in 1 Cor. 11. Note his reference to angels in 11:10. The church enters into the heavenly sanctuary in gathered worship.
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Every honest interpreter has to admit 1 Cor. 11:1ff is a difficult passage and there is no problem-free way of exegeting it. The problem with brining the fall into it is that it seems Paul’s whole argument is based on the creation order. The reference to angels is due to the fact that the passage has a liturgical context and new covenant worship takes place in the heavenly sanctuary (Heb. 10:19ff, 12:22ff, etc.).
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The whole argument in 1 Cor. 11:1ff is about male/female distinctions and mutuality. Hair length is one way men and women visually distinguish themselves.
Clothing in the Bible is fundamentally about maturity and glory. We would have been clothed even in an unfallen world, even with no shame. The issue here is what nature teaches about a woman’s hair and why shaving her hair off is shameful.
The issue is not clothes. Man and woman would have worn clothes even in an unfallen world. The issue is what nature teaches about the woman’s need for a headcovering. I believe nature teaches her long hair is a sufficient covering, and Paul confirms that in 1 Cor. 11:14-15.
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A note on masculinity:
Men, anxiety underlies virtually all your unmasculine behaviors
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I would pay good money for an ESPN-like sports channel that has no women’s sports. No broadcasts. No highlights. Not even women’s scores scrolling across the bottom of the screen. No women announcers. A sports channel that is a male-only space.
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