New Thoughts (03/08/17-03/11/17)
A Needful Reminder (03/09/17)
As this discussion begins to get personal, how needful it is for us to hear a reminder that all is not lost. It was needful for the Corinthians, certainly. If we are hearing this letter with spiritual understanding, it is likely needful for us as well. It is stated gently in the introductory clause of this passage: You are brothers. We are family, which can only be the case if you, like me, are children of God.
For me it has been several months since I heard the beginning greetings of this letter. For those sitting and listening as it is read, it has been but a brief little while. It’s worth hearing again. “I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus. In everything you were enriched in Him; in speech and knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you. So, you are not lacking in any gift as you eagerly await the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1Co 1:4-9).
Don’t lose sight of that! The need for correction, however severe, does not change this. Christ was confirmed in you. Christ IS confirmed in you. He is not one to change His mind. This was no false fruit of evangelism, but the real thing. It still is. Yes, there are issues, but these are issues to be addressed so that you may grow. They are not cause to declare you a false believer deserving only of eternal hell.
How well we would do to bear this in mind. Where this is a call to repentance, there is hope. Where our ears no longer hear such a call? Beware! Where our hearts no longer care to hear it? Well, perhaps it is too late, but I pray God will rekindle desire in us, clear out the blockages and reissue the call to repent. He is not a man that He should. We are men. We should.
For the Teacher (03/09/17)
This need for repentance is not for the new believer alone, but for every believer. We do not grow out of the need, though it is to be hoped that we do grow. The need for repentance knows no class. Jew or Greek, it doesn’t matter. Man or woman, it doesn’t matter. Student or teacher, it doesn’t matter. Teachers are, if anything, more at risk of pride than ever their students could be. I am getting marginally ahead of myself, but I think I shall continue the thought in brief.
If, as we see in Corinth, there was something of pride in the student that led him to promote his preferred teacher over against others, how do you suppose that played upon the heart of the teacher? Teachers in the church are called to hold to a higher standard, knowing they will be held to that standard by their God, therefore held to a stricter judgment (Jas 3:1). To be sure, this has application to the content of our teaching. If our doctrine is false, the god we present to our students something other than the God Who Is, whether it be through malicious intent or merely incautious or ignorant declarations contrary to His self-revelation, we shall be called to account for it.
But, there’s another aspect of this, which Calvin in particular brings forward. If, in my teaching, I am more concerned with impressive words, with demonstrating my grasp of the material and through it, my superiority, there’s a huge problem. This isn’t teaching. This is ego-building. If I am not paying heed to the condition of my students, tuning instruction to capacity, I am still doing those students a great disservice. I am no longer teaching. I am pontificating, bloviating, speaking not even to the choir, but only to my own prideful self-image.
The wise teacher, as we have demonstrated in Paul’s choices, will not attempt to go higher than his students can follow. I’m not here to impress you with my piety. I’m here to help you grow. There’s a counterbalance to this. So long as the student is able, “it is the part of a good teacher to be always going up higher, till perfection has been attained.” I have to think Calvin is being a least a little hyperbolic with such a pronouncement, for eventually the best teacher will yet hit the bounds of his own capacity, and if he should pause for his student’s slowness, he must surely stop for his own, if indeed there is wisdom in that teacher.
The sum, if I might bring Mr. Henry to bear, is this: “It is the duty of a faithful minister of Christ to consult the capacities of his hearers and teach them as they can bear.” This is not merely for the pastor or the preacher. It is for every teacher and, dare I say, for every parent. This is wisdom that is worth carrying from church to home, from home to workplace, wherever we find ourselves in a position of mentoring, informing, or otherwise aiding the progress of others. You do them no good if you do not take their capacities into account.
I could take a particularly geeky example from the wonderful world of engineering in the modern age. We have our editor wars or, in some cases, simply the inertia of choices made early on. Primarily, one finds two camps, those who use vi or its derivatives, and those who use emacs. I fall into that latter camp. Now, there are marvelously powerful things one can do with that editor, and much of it is stowed away in muscle memory by this point. But, if I seek to impart these wonders to somebody who has spent an equally long time growing intimate with vi, my wisdom is going to be of little use. Even if I were to make that one a convert to the only editor worthy of being called such (I kid, sort of), these advanced topics are going to be beyond him to recall.
As a contractor, I face similar challenges entering into a new workplace, particularly one that has been around for any period of time. Such a place will have its own tools, scripts, processes and what have you, not to mention their own language. It is a rarity to find amongst the ranks of the veteran workforce one who can recall what it was like not to know the language, not to be familiar with the tools. You become so accustomed to the jargon and the way things are done that it doesn’t really occur to you that maybe the new guy has no idea what you’re on about.
We get the same way. The language of faith becomes so second-nature that it doesn’t even occur to us that the person to whom we are talking may be unfamiliar with our phrases, or may not hear them with the same loaded context and meaning that we do. We look upon the unbelieving world and can’t quite comprehend why they don’t act like proper Christians. How can this be? But, dear Christian, “such were you.” Has it been so very long? Have you forgotten from whence you came?
If you are teaching, or witnessing, or representing the kingdom in whatever fashion it may be, are you paying attention to the present state of your hearer? Are you tuning your message to best affect? This is something far different than seeking to make the Gospel relevant. We are not about to alter the Word of God to make it more palatable to a fallen nation. Far be it from us! No, but if we go off to reach the tribes of the Amazon and insist on using English, how can we expect to have an impact? If we are presenting the Biblical story to the children of the church, and insist on using our professorial, five dollar words to do so, how much do we expect them to pick up from our efforts? It won’t be much. Don’t alter the message to make it pleasing, but by all means shape your delivery to be of comprehensible to the one receiving!
For the Student (03/10/17)
If there is a call for the teacher to note the development of his students, there is also a call for the student to develop. If the student does not advance, it is not necessarily the fault of the teacher. It is not necessarily the incapacity of the student either. We are not discussing the unconverted pagan here. We are discussing those regenerated by the Spirit. And yet, here is stubborn will exerting itself in opposition to the God who saved! It is astonishing to consider, is it not? But, it is only astonishing so long as we don’t look too closely at our own condition.
Here we have the Corinthians referred to as babes in Christ. To be sure, there is nothing inherently evil in being a babe, or being so new to faith that little more than the basics is known as yet. There is, however, something terribly wrong when the babe refuses to grow. Consider the message Paul sends to Ephesus on another occasion – you can almost hear him thinking back to this situation as he writes. “We are no longer to be children, tossed by waves and carried off by every wind of doctrine, by trickery of men and crafty deceitful scheming” (Eph 4:14). This is exactly what we see happening in Corinth. Being children, and therefore having no more solid foundation in matters of such supreme importance, every new idea that comes along gets a hearing. It sounds good. It stirs up enthusiasm, and off they go – until the next idea comes along and the cycle starts all over again. What winds up believed is whatever was the last thing heard. That’s not the way to sound faith!
Rather, as Paul proceeds to instruct the Ephesians, there’s a course we are to follow: “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ” (Eph 4:15). I cannot decide whether the speaking of truth in love is the means by which he intends we should grow, or the description of his own actions in informing of this. I expect it is the former. Rather than being tossed by every new idea, and then repeating it in your enthusiasm, speak truth and only truth. Speak it lovingly. Don’t react to these novelties in anger. It isn’t necessarily the case that the one spreading them is an agent of the devil. It may just be a childish student who needs loving correction, who needs to have the true doctrine explained gently and clearly, and at a level he can comprehend. That way, we all grow together, as God intends.
What we see in the example of the Corinthians is not a relapse. It’s not that they had made good progress while Paul was there, and then drifted off after his departure. His exposition leaves no room for that view. “I gave you milk when I was there, because you could not yet handle anything more substantial.” But they failed to so much as start on the path to maturity. “Even now you are not able!” This is not a relapse, as we saw with the Galatians. This is a stubborn refusal to grow up. It’s a determined effort to remain mentally adolescent. It’s a church full of adult children, from the spiritual perspective.
We can argue with relative ease that this is a very common condition in the society in which we live. We are seeing the infantilization of a generation – arguably the second such generation. The disease is metastasizing. So, we have colleges full of children unwilling to have their feelings hurt. We have voters throwing tantrums because their candidate lost. We have a political class that is almost totally unserious, and why? Because the lot of them have been elected by just such adult children, who select those who will coddle them in their eternal childhood.
In the church it is no better. You can find any number of folks who have been in the pew for years on end and yet have made little progress in understanding the things of God. You can find entire denominations that operate on much the same principle as Paul is decrying here. They insist on remaining babes, insist on being blown about by every wind of doctrinal novelty, even chasing after novelty. Give me whatever feels good, and that must be what is right.
How can we suppose that any such measure of Truth could be safe? The heart is deceptively wicked, and here we are making it the arbiter of Truth. What could be less reliable? We are called to assess the heart by the Truth, and here we have entirely reversed the order. If we run off assuming that whatever feels good must therefore be right, because after all, the Spirit informs our conscience so that we would only feel good about what is right, we are inviting every sort of misdirection. We needn’t even trouble our enemy to send evil spirits to influence us. We’re doing just fine ourselves.
“You are still fleshly.” This is not to say you are unsaved. It is to say that you have yet to begin assessing the things of the Spirit as they ought rightly to be assessed. You may have ever so many spiritual gifts, truly given by the Spirit who is True. The Corinthians did, as Paul acknowledges. I’ve already reminded of this, but look at it again. “In everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift” (1Co 1:5-7a). You were enriched. The reality of Christ was confirmed in you. You have all manner of gifts. But, you are still fleshly. You are still babes playing in your spiritual playpen. You are saved, but you are not growing. You have gifts, but you use them like toys. You have hope, but you still think like your unsaved neighbors, still act like your unsaved neighbors. You are, I think, torn between what you were and what you are becoming. But, you can never become what you should be if you insist on clinging to what you were.
The Prideful Root (03/10/17-03/11/17)
“Fleshly deeds are evidence of spiritual needs.” I know it’s considered inappropriate to quote oneself, but I’ll do so anyway. So significant is this evidence that it supersedes even the evidence of spiritual gifts. It should be clear enough from the history we have in the Bible. God could and did perform signs and wonders through the most ungodly people. Balaam comes to mind as the most obvious case, or if you prefer, the donkey on which he rode. Here was a spiritual gift on display. Balaam could certainly prophesy, and however much he may have wanted it to be otherwise, he could apparently not manage to prophesy falsely, however much he might get paid.
Here, we find Paul in mind of those fruits that evidence the nature of the life. We are quite familiar with the lists, even if we haven’t been bothered to memorize them. There are fruits of the flesh and there are fruits of the Spirit. Where the Spirit is present and active, one must surely expect to see His fruits. Else, we become like that fig tree that Jesus encountered – showing every sign that fruit should be available, but having none. The result for that tree was not good. It will be no better for us.
Likewise, where we see fruits more in keeping with the flesh, we can rest assured that the seed of fleshly living remains firmly planted. Where deeds of the flesh are in abundance, look for the root of pride. Here, we see it, as Mr. Clarke phrases it, in, ‘coveting and living for the things of this life’. Ouch. There’s something I really don’t want to look at too closely. We are, after all, members of a particularly affluent culture, and even within that culture, I must measure myself as being on the more affluent end of the scale.
We have a fine house on a fine plot of land, and we love it. We have good distance to our neighbors, not like the country farm I grew up on, but still, sufficient buffer zone to keep them more or less at bay. We have room within the house to enjoy our separate pursuits without crowding one another too much. We have our vehicles, and we can repair them pretty much at will. I have my musical instruments, and truly love putting them to use. Were it not for the need to make a living, I would probably expend the bulk of my time on them.
We are in a position to do pretty much what we want when we want to do it. Yes, there is the work week to consider, but if we wish to dine out, we dine out. If we wish to just hop in the car and go somewhere, we do. If we feel the urge to go see some feature of the countryside or the cityside we can do so. We have few worries worth the mention. But, what are we more desirous of: The things of this life, or the things of God?
This is not entirely a question of where we put our energies. After all, I could be ever so busy pursuing matters related to the life of the Church and not have actually entered into Life. I could be pursuing almost nonstop spiritual training from the web only to discover that what I have been trained in doesn’t pass the smell test, or wouldn’t if I could still smell. Zeal alone means nothing. On the one hand, zeal may lead us to become so jealous of the Truth as we understand it that we tend to drive others away from that Truth by the example of our defense.
It’s interesting, having stopped at this point yesterday, to see today’s Table Talk discussing exactly this point. The good doctor, and current provost of Westminster Theological Seminary writes of his own experience as he discovered the depths of theology as understood in the Reformed tradition. His response? Attack anything that isn’t in keeping with said tradition. Oh, I know that urge! But, this is not the path we are called to. He turns to that same passage I looked at earlier, Ephesians 4:15-16. What are we to do? Shall we assault the potential heretic with angry denunciations? Or, shall we, in keeping with Paul’s dictum, speak the truth in love? He further points us to the thirteenth chapter of this letter, to remind us what the love in which we are to speak should look like. Oh. Those are connected? Of course they are, but it’s rare that we think of the two passages together.
Zeal and jealousy are too closely connected, and jealousy is too near to envy. Envy, it must be noted, is not on the list of spiritual fruits. Think again about what is going on in the church that Paul is addressing. There’s all sorts of zeal. Everybody’s excited about one teacher or another. Everybody’s gung-ho over their gifts. Zeal? We have it in abundance. But, your zeal is off in another direction. You’re not cheering our preferred teacher, but rather some other. Well, if you’re right and he’s the better teacher, that must mean I’m wrong, and we can’t have that! Look at my zeal! I MUST be right. This is, by and large, a natural reaction of the fleshly person. We don’t like being wrong. Given time and the least bit of encouragement, pride will not allow us to be wrong.
This is the mindset that destroys relationships, marriages perhaps foremost among them. A husband who must always be right will become a grating annoyance to his wife. The wife who is constantly correcting her husband will likewise have a corrosive effect on the relationship. And everywhere we see the warning of Scripture against this sort of thing in the pursuit of familial relationships. Even between parents and children, what are we told? Don’t drive your kids nuts. What’s the alternative? Speak the truth, but do so in love. Don’t let pride drive you to insisting on your superiority of wisdom. If indeed you have it, let it be demonstrated in calm disposition and quiet declamation. The world at large, quite frankly, could use a hefty dose of this corrective today.
But, let us stay in the church. Clarke and others note the elegance of Paul’s argument here. He leads his hearers from envy to strife to division as he lays out his case. This is not to say that he encourages these things. Rather, he draws their attention to them, so that they might see the progression of sin in their lives. Envy is associated with the feelings. We might call it the first budding of pride, as we find another’s good to be cause for jealousy on our part. How come he gets to teach and I don’t? How come he gets freed of his obvious sins, and I’m let to struggle?
Now, pause. Such concerns could become a positive encouragement to us; urging us to make progress in our own course of sanctification. But, if it’s a competition, the health has gone out of it. And more often than not, it’s not even going to be a competition. We won’t seek to do better ourselves. We’ll seek to tear down and belittle the one we see getting ahead of us. But, envy doesn’t stop at feelings. It metastasizes. Soon, we see strife breaking out between the envious parties. Strife doesn’t necessarily involve fisticuffs, but you can count on angry arguments. Voices get raised, and brows deepen with the effort of scowling at our now hated opponent.
Pause yet again. Think about what’s happening. In fact, for the moment bring it back into your own household; husband and wife. For whatever cause, you’ve allowed yourselves to become envious of one another. Who knows why. You probably don’t even recognize that it’s happening. Maybe Mr. Husband has become envious of his wife’s life of so-called leisure as she works around the house. Maybe Mrs. Wife has become envious of the honor given her husband by his coworkers or by their church. She, after all, knows him better than they. The tales she could tell! How is it that he gets the attention, and she’s barely acknowledged? Or, perhaps it’s exactly the opposite. She’s seen as such a boon to the church, always there to pray, to encourage, to help in whatever way she can, and he’s perceived as almost a non-entity. He may study and pray and guide his family in all manner of ways, but they aren’t visible like her efforts, so no accolades for him. And envy arises.
If it is not addressed, envy grows into strife, and look at what that strife has caused you to do! You have begun to look upon the spouse with whom your God has adorned you as your hated opponent. You can’t have words with such vitriol in them except this be the case. It may be temporary, almost certainly is. But, in that moment, your beloved has become your hated opponent. This is a terrible thing.
Now bring it back into the church – no, don’t please. But, consider the impact were you to do so. Here you are, adopted into the family of God, and what are you doing? You are looking at your adopted brother as a hated opponent. You are looking at one whom God has called friend and declaring him your enemy. What can this be but to call God your enemy? Do you see how insidious this is?
And still, it doesn’t stop, if that root of pride hasn’t been ripped up and burned to ash. Because, where strife is allowed to bloom, the vine of division grows, and next thing you know, the loving couple has opted for divorce; the church has suffered a split. God’s body, as Paul describes it later, is torn apart. I could readily maintain that applies equally to both cases if we are discussing a Christian couple.
So we have this ‘ascending climax’ of sin in Paul’s presentation; feelings producing words which produce actions. Sin progresses. Sin always progresses if left untreated. There is a reason for Scripture’s association of sin with leaven. It takes such a little bit to lead to utmost corruption, and most of its work takes place hidden away from sight, so that by the time we become aware of it, it’s become a monster of hideous proportions, a trial much too great for us. What are we to do?
“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Ro 7:25)! There is no condemnation for us, as we are in Christ Jesus. There is loving correction. There is a Gardener prepared to assist us by pulling up that root of pride, and He fertilizes us with words of True Wisdom. “If we live by the Spirit, let us walk by the Spirit. Far be it from us to be boastful, divisive, and envious of one another” (Gal 5:25-26). Such things don’t become the regenerate. Rather, let us offer our spiritual songs, lovingly exhort one another to good deeds, seek through every available means to edify one another, building each other up in holy faith unto the mature image of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Pride in the Church (03/11/17)
Let us also recognize that what we are dealing with here are not the reprobate, the psuchikos who are entirely worldly in their ways. These are unrenewed, wholly unaccepting of the great good news of Christ. They account Him a nothing, and His work foolishness. They look upon those who have put their faith in Him as backward, uneducated oafs. What we have here, on the other hand, are the sarkinois, the fleshly. They are Christians, but they are at this stage imperfectly acquainted with the nature of Christian religion, as Barnes sets the case. Sarkinois, he says, “denotes those who still evinced the feelings and views which pertain to the flesh.” And does this not describe us all in some degree? Ought we not, then, to have mercy upon those who have not as yet reached the point we think ourselves to have reached? Indeed, ought we not to consider our own condition, whether we are in fact so advanced as we like to think?
Consider how common a problem this is for man generally. He gets a little understanding, and how do we describe him? I hear it all the time around work, as we struggle to become familiar with the latest design. We know ‘just enough to be dangerous’. Why dangerous? Because having attained to some minimal understanding of the matter, we leap to this inordinate sense of accomplishment, and make pronouncements that demonstrate a great deal of self-conceit. Take an example. We have been at this new project for some several months now, not that many really, given the scale of the thing. Let us say it’s been four months for those of us who have been at it the longest. The first month or so is spent in near total despair of ever coming to any understanding of the thing. Everything’s new: New design, new processes, new co-workers. Whatever familiarity might have been built up by prior work gets tossed.
But, now you’re four months in, and you at least understand a few things. You’ve figured out one or two aspects of the small piece of the puzzle that is your task. Meanwhile, new folks are joining the team. They’re back in month one. They know a comparative nothing. They don’t know the jargon. They don’t know the tools. They don’t know the little shortcuts and idiosyncrasies that you’ve become inured to. Well! Suddenly, I’m not the hopeless newbie, I’m the grizzled veteran. I’m the expert! Well, no. You have a thin edge on these new guys. If you seek to edify, you will impart to them from what you have learned. You will take pity on their unfamiliarity, remembering what it was like for you not so very long ago, and you will seek to make them every bit as productive, every bit as expert as yourself.
If, on the other hand, you are given to pride, you will seek to demonstrate your superiority by constantly pointing out their inferiority. Let me tell you something: Engineers are by nature inclined to this, or their nature inclines them toward engineering. View it in whatever order you like. We are competitive creatures, and we compete on the skills of the mind. I’m not particularly interested in trying to arrive at some sociological explanation for this. I merely state a point. I think it is perhaps made worse for those of us who work as contractors, because we see more ways of doing things, we pick up a wider array of tricks and skills, and when we arrive on a new site, our tendency is to decry the inevitable flaws in their approach. We, after all, know better. We’ve seen better, done better. If it were up to us, by gum, everything would run much more smoothly. Except, of course, it wouldn’t, would it? But, we get all superior nonetheless. Why? Because we can. We have great self-conceit built upon a modicum of understanding.
Another term we often hear applied to this issue is sophomoric. It is that particular disease of the second-year student. He has learned ‘enough to be dangerous’, but has not yet learned that he has much yet to learn. So, he grows conceited in his great understanding, assumes he now has an exhaustive grasp of his studies. It will take that sophomore year to hammer the arrogance out of him. It is here, I think, that one sees the greatest degree of washout from college, for example. I know it’s where I left. I can make whatever excuses I like, and yes, the urge to have food on the table certainly played into it. But, arrogance did as well. I had hit the sophomore year with a summer of work in the technical realm. Why, I probably knew more than my teachers now! I barely even needed to study. After all, I’m already doing this stuff! And then came the tests that demonstrated that while I might have been doing, I was assuredly not understanding what was being taught. Oops.
Let’s get back to church. We have the same trouble. We have heard a sermon somewhere, or read through the Bible in a year, or whatever the case may be, and we conclude that we are now experts. I read Romans! I can now expound upon it with utmost confidence. Really? We can go farther. I could even take this current case. I’ve spent x number of years studying 1 Corinthians. Certainly, I am now able to challenge any contrary understanding. Certainly, I can teach you things you never considered. But, that’s not wisdom. That’s pride. It demonstrates, to return to Mr. Clarke, a carnal state of mind lacking ‘ the guidance either of reason or grace’. Ouch!
You know, it probably doesn’t say anything particularly good about me, but I actually find the reason part more painful. I suppose it’s that engineering background once again. Lacking in grace I could tolerate, but being found unreasonable, illogical? Now, them’s fighting words! But, there it is. If we allow pride to take root; if we allow envy and arrogance to inform our character, we are demonstrating not just a lack of grace, but a lack of reason. For shame!
There is another form of pride which will often plague the church, and that is pride in our chosen teacher. That’s clearly on display in the case of Corinth, but it’s hardly isolated to them. Calvin, who is himself a chosen teacher in which many, myself included, hold in high esteem, points us to the issue. To the degree that we extol our teachers ‘to the skies in magnificent terms’, we enter into the exact problem that Paul is correcting. I have no doubt but that he would include those who extol him, were he still around today. But, again, it gets worse. Where such an attitude persists and finds itself combined with contempt for the Apostles, the trouble grows.
Have no doubt. This is a present-tense, present day problem. It’s there in the efforts to have a ‘new understanding’ about Paul. I think it’s there in the attempts to present Peter, Paul, and John as having different doctrine. It is assuredly there in movements that insist that they have some new revelation that sets aside the order laid out in Scripture. The danger is great. It ought to terrify those who find themselves even inclined to give such things a hearing. It ought to deeply concern those of us who care for those who are giving them a hearing.
Let me be particularly blunt. The present-day trend for self-proclaimed apostles in the church falls into this category. To claim to be an apostle is to reject Apostolic authority, or at the very least to have no understanding of it. It is pride impure and simple. It is an outgrowth of the prior tendency to declare oneself a prophet. But, once everybody had become a prophet by self-appointment, what’s left to distinguish the really advanced? The only label left is apostle. That’s the only office Paul allows above prophet, so let’s have that one! There. Nobody’s getting ahead of us now!
Except of course the process repeats. Suddenly, there’s a plethora of apostles on the scene. It’s not special anymore. It fulfills the adage. If everybody’s special then nobody’s special. But, those moved by pride have to be special. What to do? Well, the current trend is apparently to just toss the five-fold ministry out the window completely. Let’s just declare a new order, received by divine revelation. Those old offices that folks like Paul talked about? Their age is passed. We’re on to something new. Well, on one level these are just new labels on the same offices, so it’s just cheap semantics. But, the real problem is this: Here we have a teacher so false as to extol himself ‘to the skies in magnificent terms’. What else is it to claim for oneself the God-assigned task of completely rewriting Church order? And, this is combined with what can only be disregard for the Apostles whom God did appoint, and through whom He determined to establish His revealed will for the Church. It is, in simplest terms, heresy. It cannot be otherwise.
And yet there are true believers being sucked in to this thing. They are not, to remind once again, psuchikos. They are sarkinois. They have not lost their salvation. I would maintain that such a thing is inconceivable. They either had it and continue to have it or they never had it in the first place, and are in fact psuchikos in spite of appearances to the contrary. But, we deal with the sarkinois, those held by God and called His own, in spite of their wandering after such things.
Clarke, considering the case many decades ago, reached a conclusion. “There are thousands of such people in the Christian church to the present day.” It hasn’t changed. I incline to think that it’s actually gotten worse, but perhaps it’s only worse because it’s my present-tense. What do we do? What we don’t do is to slip into this game of, “I am of.” To enter into that game is to leave the house of God. We can slip into it easily enough. I am of Calvin. I am of Arminius. I am of Luther. I am of the Pope. That’s as may be, but if these are godly men that we promote, then we must see, appreciate, pursue and promote their essential unity rather than amplifying their distinctives.
If we promote any man to the exclusion of others, or at the cost of demeaning others, we are right there next to the Corinthians. I would note that the church of Corinth, for all that it appears to have recovered for a season, does not exist any longer. Factions don’t just divide a church. They destroy it. A church suffering the disease of factions will find that its members have asked, “Where else can I go?” and have found an answer that leads them elsewhere.
What we are seeing is a refusal to respond. This is not mere incapacity. It’s willfulness. It may have begun as weakness, but weakness can be overcome by training and exercise. “Weakness prolonged becomes willfulness.” So states the Wycliffe commentary. This willful clinging to weakness is a refusal to respond to the milk of the Word, and this has consequences. “Refusal to respond to the milk of the Word prevents reception of the meat of the word.” Now, there will always be a place for that milk in our spiritual diet, but we must take meat with it. We must grow. We must progress. We must, however much we have grown and progressed, recognize that this is no cause for pride. After all, there is always room for improvement. There is but one alternative to growing, and that is dying. This holds for the individual. This holds for the church. But, for the church, growth is not found in numbers, but in maturity of those who compose the church.
Application (03/11/17)
What remains to be said? I would remind of things I wrote previously, because I apparently need the reminder. As concerns the life of the church, there is this: We are those who have come to know the living God. We have no doubt made a mess of it. Whatever church you are in, you can expect a mess. After all, it’s made up of people like us. But, however much of a mess we have made of it, you can’t escape that simple fact that there is no other God. As such, we really have no alternative but to seek as best we may to clean up the mess of our church and contribute our best to its health. The Church is, after all, the thing God has instituted as His chief weapon against the enemy, and the chief means of grace for this fallen world.
Does He call us to go? Indeed He does, but He also calls us to flourish where we are planted. There is a time when one must stop. Not all are called to plant. Some must remain to water and weed. It is yet another conceit that leads us to suppose that only the evangelist really does the work, and those who remain in the church are somehow shirking their duty. Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and stand he will, for the Lord is able to make him stand (Ro 14:4)!
Now, as to personal disposition, we can refer back to those two types of fruit that Paul lists in Galatians. One need only look at them to answer the question, “Which would you prefer?” Take yourself back to the days when you were contemplating a partner for life. Which would you prefer? One who is angry, argumentative, and jealous; or one who is patient, gentle, kind, and faithful? To ask the question is to answer it. There may have been a time when the company of drunks, addicts, and sex slaves sounded like fun, but those days are gone. These may be companions for our youth, when we are sadly of the same mindset. But, they are not the sorts of companions that will make adult life more satisfying. They are not the ones you want at your side when facing trials. No, we want those with self-control. We want those who contribute to our sense of joy and peace. We want those who will be kind to us and do us good.
Such considerations lead to an obvious conclusion, don’t they? If these are the sorts of characteristics we prefer in our companions, they are surely the characteristics they desire to see in us. The question must be asked: Is that what they get? What sort of a companion are you?
If I ask that of myself, I must arrive at the answer, “It depends.” I must also acknowledge that this is not the correct answer, even though it is the true one. I could look at myself as having several personae. There’s the one I wear at work, the one I wear at church, and the one I wear at home. They have much in common, but there are aspects that differ. At church, for example, I will do my utmost to avoid impurity and strife and envy and the like. But, at work? Hmm. I could do much better. As I noted earlier, there is this tendency toward competition, and for decrying the utter incompetence of most everybody else. This needs work. This ought not to be. This does not present Christ to a darkened world. It pulls the shades down to prevent the Light from getting in.
As to the home persona, I think it is probably a mixture of the other two, which is nearer the real me. There is a tendency toward impatience with disagreement. There can be a tendency toward anger where that disagreement touches on matters of theology, or just when the environment gets too spiritual to be any earthly good, as the saying goes. I can’t do all religion all the time. I can’t convince myself that’s a good thing, either. So, it produces internal tension that leads to outward flashes of anger, which can lead to a bit of factionalism in the house. God help me.
But, there is my application. It comes down to that one simple question. What sort of companion am I? It’s not a question to face with justifications or deflections. It’s a question to be faced and then addressed. It might best be addressed by the companion question, what sort of companion would I wish to be? This, being a good little engineer, can produce a plan for arriving at the desired state. That plan must be more than simply, “I’ll pray about it,” although it darned well better include that. But, prayer alone, left unaccompanied by personal effort is unlikely to be honored by God.
Lord help me, for I shall surely need it. I need to remain mindful of this, and I know how swiftly such things can drift from me. But, I ask not that You just do this so that I can lay back and passively receive. Much though I would prefer such a thing, it is not Your way, and I’ll not ask it of You. No, but remind me. Keep this whispered in my ear. When I’m back in the office next week and inclined to complain about how stupid everything is, catch me before the tongue gets going. Make of me, Lord, an envoy of joy, peace, patience, kindness, and goodness. Let me be gentle and self-controlled, that I may better reflect Your light into this place. How great an opportunity is there, Lord. Don’t let me squander it on my pride.
