New Thoughts (05/26/14-06/04/14)
God is Worthy (05/28/14)
It is well to note the way in which verse 3 lays out the cause for all that we cherish as faith and hope. But, I am brought up short by the reminder that before we even consider the benefits we ought properly to bless God. It should be no surprise that Peter, as with the other Apostles, follows the order we learn for prayer: ACTS. First comes adoration. It is no surprise because that acrostic for prayer is founded upon the Lord’s Prayer and that same prayer informs the Apostolic order. The JFB notes how Peter’s entire letter reflects that order – an intriguing observation. But, it is a sound reminder to me at present that as with prayer, so with study, so with Christian life more generally.
We ought properly to begin every endeavor with adoration of God our Creator, Christ our Savior, the Spirit our Counselor. Matthew Henry makes this more than merely an ought, declaring it our duty to bless God. Now, we can run the risk of getting puffed up by this thought of blessing God. But, that is a result of misunderstanding, should it prove to be the case. When God blesses us, that is something. It is tangible. It is a giving of real and realized benefit. But, when we bless God? We have nothing to give Him nor do we give Him anything in blessing Him. The most we can do and the least we should do is to acknowledge His excellence; to proclaim the blessedness that is already His by His very nature.
We have every cause to bless God. For all that, the most reprobate of sinners has every cause to bless God, for he enjoys the benefits of God as well as do we in this life. The sun shines to his benefit as much as ours. The rains fall to water his crops just as they do ours. He has breath even as we do. What he has not is life. What he has not is the capacity to recognize and acknowledge the blessedness, the excellence of this God who made him. He will, in spite of all this blessing being showered upon him, curse his circumstance, and only more so when comes the Day of Judgment.
For our part, the story must be the reverse. Just as that sinner will curse God even in the midst of great blessing, so the Christian will bless God even in the midst of the most trying of circumstances. There is no trial may come our way that is sufficient cause to cease from blessing God. Even if we must face the most heinous of deaths, as so many have done before us and as so many face even today, yet God is worthy of our praises, and He shall be blessed for His keeping of us. I range far ahead of myself, but how can one not? This is the whole of Peter’s message. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ because we have been reborn into Life. We have eternity ahead whatever this brief tour of duty on earth may bring. Whatever our circumstances, we know the inheritance that lies ahead. We know the God who has set that inheritance in store and who keeps it on our behalf. We know the God who keeps us on His own behalf.
Listen! God’s blessedness does not come from us happening to give Him thought. Were every man to cease from His praises, He would remain just as blessed. Were every man found condemned to eternal hell, yet His name would be just as worthy of praise. God is God. He does not depend on you or me. He does not depend on us for His existence. He does not depend on us for His pleasure. He certainly doesn’t depend on us for His righteousness or His power. His blessedness is, as the JFB says, absolute. He is absolute. He is wholly sufficient in Himself, wholly self-derived, and wholly independent of any outside force or influence.
Now, consider that this God Who is perfect in Himself and has no need, yet determined in Himself to give us this hope of eternal life. As Barnes says, surely this is cause and enough for gratitude! Add to this that He has determined to have eternal purpose in us. We have purpose! Life is not a pointless exercise in dying. Existence has meaning. Circumstances are not just random events of evolutionary pressure. They are God’s purpose working out. We are God’s purpose working out. Because of Him, we have our being. For Him we have our being. Because of Him, we have meaning, our actions are not just empty motions nor are they uncontrollable response to stimuli. They are to God’s purpose. And for those who are the called of God, that purpose is our great joy. Thus, we are granted even greater cause to bless God.
And so we ascribe to the Lord that which is already His. “Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of the mighty: Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory due to His name, and worship Him in holy array” (Ps 29:1-2). “Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength. Ascribe to the Lord the glory of His name” (Ps 68:7-8). Ascribe to the Lord, you His saints, the blessedness of His being, the majesty of His reign, the power, the holiness, the mercy of His love towards us. May His name be praised forever and ever. Amen.
Cause & Effect (05/28/14-05/30/14)
Now, with a proper sense of God’s primacy and self-sufficiency, perhaps we are properly fit to consider the cause of our hope and the effect of His election of us. Isn’t it something that in God’s Providence we happen to be contemplating the famous five points of Calvinism in Sunday School just now? As such, I have probably been a bit more sensitive than I might otherwise have been to the notes of Sovereignty and Perseverance that saturate this passage. But, I see that even coming through here the first time, the matter of cause and effect caught my eye.
It’s hard to miss there in verse 3. God’s mercy caused rebirth. As I noted months back, there is a corollary to this: He did not allow rebirth. He caused it. He didn’t make it possible. He made it inevitable. This bothers some people, I know, but what joy there is in this! God did it. He determined life for me, and though I assuredly have an active hand in pursuing life, yet I pursue life with this assurance: God has made life inevitable. I shall not slack off knowing He has me. No! Where is the gratitude in that? Where is the appreciation of this life into which I have been reborn? Having entered into life, there can be but one response, and that is to live. And, as Paul said, to live is Christ. To live is to step into that obedience of faith for which I was created. To live is to love as God intended. To live is to walk in the faith God has so graciously set in my heart.
Now: it is impossible to look at this without getting drawn into philosophical considerations of cause. In fairness, I get lost in which is which on many occasions. Efficient cause, mediating cause, instrumental cause; we could stand some definition. A quick look at the web indicates four causes are defined in Aristotelian thought. The material cause consists in that from which a thing is made or changed. The formal cause sees to the shape, appearance or arrangement of the thing made or changed. The efficient cause, the moving cause, is the agency of change, something outside that thing being changed working upon said thing. The final cause speaks to purpose or goal. Calvin adds a mediating cause, which seems clear enough. I have spoken of an instrumental cause, but that is not different from the efficient, only serving to amplify the necessity of that cause having its effect. The JFB adds a whole suite of causes beyond the Aristotelian model. I’ll get to those in their turn.
Looking at my comment from first going through this text, I see that I have effectively repeated myself thrice. God is, to be sure, the efficient cause. We need not even provide an object for that statement. Name the object, God is the cause. He is the outside force acting upon that object determining all else about its existence. He determines the material cause from whence the object shall arise. He determines the formal cause, by which that object shall be made what He would have it to be. He likewise has sole discretion as to the final cause, the purpose of that which He has brought into being.
I speak of Him as also being the instrumental cause. He is instrumental in our becoming what we are. Apart from Him it is impossible that we should be anything at all. We can be assured that there is no possibility so ever that we should arrive at the state of being fit for eternal life apart from His willing it to be so. I also say that He is the reason for the cause, which is to say He is the final cause. He is not only the author. He is the goal. He is the purpose for which we are created, for which we are fashioned into this image of His Son. It is for Him that we are being perfected. This is something we do well to be mindful of. It is not, finally, for us that we are saved and sanctified. It is for Him. It is for His glory, not our comfort. When we say that it’s all about Jesus, we must include the end result in our thinking.
Calvin sees in Christ the efficient cause of our hope. We have salvation and its companion, eternal life, as the final cause, the reason for which we have been given hope. Then, he adds a mediating cause, which he sets forth as being God’s mercy in contradistinction to any merit on our part. God’s mercy mediates the work of Christ to our account so as to produce this living hope, this hope of life. Notice the way Peter emphasizes this connection. God, in His great mercy causes our rebirth into living hope, and He does so through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is the Gospel set forth on one sentence. God is the cause. God is the means. God is the purpose. It’s all about Him. Yet, it is to our infinite benefit that this be so.
Barnes echoes this sense of the cause being outside ourselves. He writes, “People are not begotten to the hope of heaven because they have any claim on God, or because it would not be right for him to withhold the favor.” We cannot earn our way into hope. We cannot point to anything in ourselves that could explain why we ought have any hope, let alone the fact that we do. We do not earn our way into life. We do not work up sufficient points to purchase our life. We are begotten into this life, this hope of heaven. I know I have said it elsewhere, but it bears saying again: We did not cause ourselves to be born in the first place. We received birth as a gift from our parents, or more accurately, from God. We can no more cause our own rebirth than we could cause our initial zygote.
Faith also has firm connection to this whole business of hope, as does joy, as does love. But, let us stick with faith for the moment. Peter makes that connection in verse 5, as he points us to our protecting God. But, we know it is here at the outset, for the attestation of Scripture is everywhere to this point. Apart from faith we cannot please God. Your faith has saved you. Yes, but let us never forget that even that faith is not from ourselves, but is a gift from God Himself. It is the Spirit’s part in this endeavor, to implant that faith where God has elected, that we might lay hold of that which the resurrection of Christ has demonstrated as our holy and acceptable rebirthright. His righteousness has put paid to the guilt of our sins. His resurrection has set the seal upon our adoption papers. His death has given us life, and His life has given us hope. He is, then, ‘the source and fountain of our joy’, as Barnes says, which we realize through faith in Him. In fairness, Barnes lays the source in faith. I must insist we relocate the source in Christ. He is the source. Faith is the formal means by which we appropriate Him to our great joy.
The JFB speaks of faith as the subjective means of resurrection. This introduces yet another distinction that apparently arises out of the Aristotelian approach. The objective is that which is, and is regardless of any man’s thought on the subject. The subjective gets to the way that objective thing is understood. Given that this commentary proceeds to introduce baptism as the objective means, that would seem to be the distinction they are driving at. Baptism is the reality, the True means of resurrection, and faith is how we understand that objective means.
Now I’m not at all certain I can agree with the statement. Baptism having no salvific power in itself, I do not see how it can be the means of resurrection in any sense at all. It is a seal upon the resurrection having been obtained. It is an attestation to that faith which has indeed appropriated salvation and rebirth, and thus an attestation to the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. But, the means? That seems to have the process backwards.
So, let us look further. This same commentary speaks of Christ’s resurrection as the efficient cause of our own, as well as the ‘exemplary’ cause. This is apparently a sub-species of formal cause, indicating the plan that gives rise to the matter. The quick reference I have looked to indicates that there cannot be both a formal and exemplary cause for the same thing. So, His resurrection is the plan, the map to how ours is to be as well as the power which acts to affect our resurrection.
There is a handy picture on this site (http://simplyphilosophy.org/philosophy/classical-greek-philosophy/aristotle/the-four-causes) which explains the four causes. We see a man beginning to shape a statue from a block of stone. The idea he has in mind, the image he intends to carve out, is the formal cause and he himself is the efficient cause as he wields hammer and chisel. The block of stone is the material cause, and the statue standing in its place is the final cause.
The JFB also lays out four causes for salvation, setting God’s mercy as the primary, the death and resurrection of Christ as the proximate, regeneration as the formal, and eternal bliss as the final. OK. Let’s see if we can map that into our definitions. We have a formal and a final indicated, so then, he is saying regeneration is the thing which forms the idea of salvation, and eternal bliss is the purpose thereof. Now, we have a primary and a proximate. Dear, o dear. So many causes to choose from. But, I think the idea is that the death and resurrection of Christ are in effect the efficient cause, the thing most immediately responsible for our salvation. That leaves God’s mercy as the material cause? But, that seems wrong. It appears to me that with the proximate and primary, we are wandering from philosophical terms to legal terms, with God’s mercy the ultimate cause.
Then, we also have the point that God is the efficient cause, and faith the effective means. At some point I really must dig into this philosophy stuff a bit more. It is closely related to theology after all, and bears heavily on the understanding these men bring to the subject.
Here, at the end, is where I wind up. It is where Calvin wound up, where Augustine wound up, and where so many since have settled. All of this; our redemption, our salvation, our preservation, our resurrection, even our faith has its entire cause in God. We have about as much say in the matter as does that stone from which the sculptor shapes his statue. I would argue we have even less say. A stone might, at least by its grain and composition, make the desired image easier or impossible to fashion. That is arguably the fault of the sculptor’s limitations rather than the stone’s material makeup. But, in God we have the ultimate sculptor. He who is able to fashion the cosmos out of nothing can certainly fashion what He pleases out of the stuff of humanity. How can I but go back to Paul’s comment on this subject? “Who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it? Doesn’t the potter have right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?” (Ro 9:20-21).
The JFB, however it assigns cause and means, arrives at this point: Thought it is God’s power and God’s will, it is not so employed as to result in dead, mechanical necessity of our compliance. I would argue that the necessity is there. It’s just not dead. The commentary suggests that the reality is us living in His power and clothed in His spirit. For the elect, that assuredly is the reality of our experience. But, I might quibble somewhat with the seeming attempt to wrest some control of the process back to ourselves.
Sovereignty (05/30/14)
This is the thing I come back to: It is all God or it is nothing at all. The moment we inject ourselves into the equation we render the result unstable, indeterminate. God, the Father of lights, suffers no variation, no shifting shadow (Jas 1:17). Let me continue with that fine letter for one verse further. “In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits among His creatures” (Jas 1:18). You see? It is all God. His will did it. His Word achieved it. Returning to Peter, His power preserves it. And, we might add, His oath assures it, such that, “by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement” (Heb 6:18).
It is true – let there be no doubt! – that we who are the elect are not left to be passive recipients of His manifold blessings. No! We are called to work out our salvation, even knowing that it is He who is working it out (Php 2:12-13). And, looking to the end of that passage, note well that God is not only the formal and the efficient cause. He is the final cause. It is for His good pleasure. Period. It’s not about you. Being as He is also the one who created this material from which He is fashioning a people for Himself, we may as well set Him as material cause as well. It is all God.
Does this make you feel small and insignificant? It should! You are. Your worth consists simply in the fact that God has made you what you are. He is huge and hugely significant. You? Not so much. But, this is no cause for resentment, rather for great joy and confidence – the very joy and confidence that Peter is encouraging here. If God has your inheritance and God has your back, you are doubly assured of the outcome. You will inherit and your inheritance will lose nothing of its worth.
If, on the other hand, my inheritance depends in any way upon me – and I will stress, in any way – then it is not merely in doubt. It is entirely improbable that I shall ever inherit. That’s the whole message of Law and Gospel. The Law sets forth all that is required if I would inherit under my own power and guidance, and the record of man from first to last is that failure is guaranteed. If it’s up to my obedience, I have already failed and there’s no point continuing. Even if I accept that every sin prior to my acknowledging Christ (or as some once argued, prior to baptism) has been forgiven, I am still just as doomed. The Law is too perfect and I am too imperfect for the outcome to ever be otherwise.
If it’s up to me to do well enough, I won’t. If it’s up to me to work my way into perfection, I can just give up now. If it’s up to my faith staying strong, as some suppose, even then I am condemned as I stand. I cannot exercise my faith, cannot work it up to so stable a thing. I am stuck with that poor father whose best confession to Christ was, “I believe! Help my unbelief!” (Mk 9:24). That’s where we all are. We believe and yet we don’t. It is that nagging unbelief that convinces us there must be something we have to do in order to win clear to our inheritance. But, that’s not the case. We cannot make ourselves more thoroughly adopted. Neither can we nullify the adoption papers. The court won’t hear our case. It is settled, and it is settled in a sovereign, holy, unfailing and infallible God.
God is so perfect in power and knowledge and wisdom that He has subjected not only the seed but also the soil to His purposes. I am thinking, of course, of that parable of the soils. The sower sows. The seed falls where it may. The results vary by the soil conditions. The intent of the parable is pretty clearly to encourage evangelism with abandon. Tell everyone! Don’t try to gage the reception. Don’t think you can assess who will respond and who won’t, and don’t reserve your words for those you think ready to hear. But, the seed is God’s Word and quite frankly, the soil is God’s soil. If the Word is received, it is because God so fashioned the hearer to receive it. If the Word flourishes, it is because God has worked upon the heart to make it fertile soil for the Word implanted. If, on the other hand, the soil of a man proves rocky or weedy, this, too, is in God’s hands. We can attribute it to the work of the devil, and this is so. Yet, he can only work as the Lord wills. He would not be sovereign were it otherwise, and He is assuredly sovereign. If He were not sovereign, He would not be God. As He is God, He is necessarily sovereign. As He is sovereign, all is just as necessarily as He determines it shall be.
You can find that frustrating, or you can more sensibly realize that this is your greatest comfort – your only comfort. He has determined your salvation. It shall be. He has determined you shall be freed from your sins and brought fully into resurrection life. It shall be. He has determined you shall inherit together with His Son. It shall be. What, really, have you to complain of?
It is good to have a sovereign God, and rather pointless to have a god who isn’t.
Faith (05/31/14)
If it is through faith that God’s power achieves our salvation, and it is to prove our faith real that trials come, we can surely recognize that faith is a critical component for life. I must notice that Peter speaks of it as ‘your faith’ (v7). It is ours in so much as we possess it and have ownership of it. But, let us be clear on this: It was given to us. Going back through the myriad causes, we must arrive at an understanding that apart from God we could have no faith. Had the Father not elected to impart faith, we would have none. Had the Son not made such an impartation just, we would have none. Had the Holy Spirit not come implanting this faith, we would have none.
Having faith, we understand the marvel of it. But, I think we lose sight of the fact that without that faith there is no argument anybody could have made that would have convinced us of God’s Truth. If you’ve attempted to bring the Gospel to one who is determined in their unbelief you know this is the case. If you can still remember your own unbelief, you might recognize that the very arguments you cherish and acknowledge as fact now would have been treated with derision then.
We also know too many who have seemingly come to faith but have in fact done little more than to experience a brief emotional overload. The plea was well worded, feelings were running high, and raising one’s hand to accept Christ just seemed the thing to do. But, it was a thoughtless action that came not from conviction, only from excitation. There is a reason, then, that our faith needs to face trials and be proven. But, let’s understand this: It is not that faith needs proving, for faith is from God if it is faith at all. Being of God, it is therefore utterly reliable. No, it’s our legitimate possession of faith that needs proving. Further, it is we who need the proof, not God. He already knows.
So, Calvin notes that such faith as has not been both proved and purified is of little value. I might argue that purification is part of the proving. That seems in keeping with Peter’s point here. Trials come to purify faith, like fire purifies gold. They are to a purpose, and that purpose is purification. What is not faith will be stripped away by the trials, leaving only the real thing. One thinks of Jesus’ comments about the works of man being tested by fire. Every worthless thing is burnt off, and only that which is genuine and beautiful shall stand. The trials come to purify, and in purifying give proof to us that our faith is not only legitimate in itself, but has found its proper object.
The trouble is that we tend to return to this idea that our faith is our doing. We suppose it an organic part of ourselves that must be enabled by an exercise of our will. So, for example, we find Clarke saying, “For faith in the Lord Jesus brings him into the heart.” It may be possible to find truth in that statement, but it strikes me as exactly reversed. It is the Lord Jesus having come into the heart that brings faith. It could be argued that no, it is the Holy Spirit who comes into the heart and implants that faith which then brings Jesus along. But, I am loathe to allow even that much responsibility to lay with me. Try the perspective of the Wycliffe commentary, that faith is the Christian’s response to God’s provision. Here, again, it seems to me that too much power is left in fallible hands to render salvation secured. No, faith is God’s provision. He gave it. If He had not, you wouldn’t have it. You could not procure it at any cost. You cannot now add to it (or subtract from it, God forbid). It is His provision.
Does that seem too fatalistic, too near to making us unwitting pawns in our own lives? It is not so! I would contend that it was so before our rebirth. Oh, we made our choices, and we made them willingly. Yet, it can be said that we made our choices with knowledge only of the one option. It was like voting in a totalitarian election. Yes, you get to pull the lever, but there’s only one candidate. So it was with us and sin. We chose it, and we chose it freely enough to become morally culpable for our choices. But, the usurping prince of this world, having enslaved us to himself, had so blinkered our eyes that sin was the only choice we could see.
The Spirit, arriving with that faith which comes of God’s electing choice, removed those blinkers, granting us wider vision. I will borrow from Calvin here. Faith has its own eyes, able to ‘penetrate into the invisible kingdom of God.’ How marvelous! Suddenly, we see new options. Having seen these new options, the sole choice we had before no longer seems a choice at all. Indeed, when we move with conscious thought, sin loses all enticement. It still has a powerful draw on us, but it is primarily muscle memory now. It’s the habit of long years and requires conscious effort to break. We understand that of any habit, good or bad. The current understanding is that 10,000 hours of practice renders one an expert. We have had well over 10,000 hours of practice with sin. Now, we labor to arrive at 10,000 hours of righteousness. But, we labor with God’s power to help, which alone gives us hope of success.
That thought segues nicely into this. “Faith and love follow hope,” says the JFB. For, faith never perishes. Gold will, as Peter says. Though it will withstand the hottest fires we know to make, yet in the end, when God’s fire comes to dissolve the elements, gold will not be spared. Faith alone will persist. And where faith is, love must also be. For, ‘the cause of love is faith,’ as Calvin writes. Faith is not mere knowledge. It’s not enough to know God, nor even to know His blessings. “You believe that God is one? Good for you! So, do the demons. And they shudder from knowing” (Jas 2:19). There is knowledge, but not faith. Faith is required to truly see, or we may say to see truly.
Seeing God truly, we see His love and provision for us truly. Seeing His love, we love. “The cause of love is faith.” I could return to a favorite Charlie Peacock quote here. “The facts of theology are altogether cold. Though true in every way, they alone can’t save you.” Faith causes love, and together produce a true hope, a hope that is not the wishful, gee wouldn’t it be nice sentiment so common today. It is that very certainty that comes from what the eyes of faith have seen, and what these trials have proven true. Here is a marvelous thing: Joy must follow upon the meeting of faith and love. So, then, we now have these four: Faith, love, hope and joy. Notice Peter’s point here. The proof of your faith, tested under trail, is found in ‘joy inexpressible’. What proof? To whom? It is to you!
Have you ever undergone such a trial and found yourself surprised by your own joy in the midst of it? Or, perhaps you’ve known another stalwart believer whose irrepressible spirit has endured in spite of lifelong difficulties. I think of a dear friend of ours who has suffered from MS as long as we’ve known her, who has sought relief from any number of healing ministries to no avail; and yet, never have you encountered so sweet and content a spirit. I think of another acquaintance of ours from many years back. Her knees were attacked by disease, and her life, from our perspective, was one of chronic pain and suffering. And yet, there was such joy about her, never a complaint; just simple contentment and pleasure in being alive.
To be sure, you can bring me examples of unbelievers who face their daily lot with similar emotional fortitude. You can bring me examples of unbelievers who would seem to be far better people than the average Christian, more inclined to aid their neighbors, more earnest about doing the right thing in every situation, more joyful in going about their lives. It is to our great sorrow that this is the case. It ought not to be. I don’t say this as wishing that these unbelievers would fare worse. I say it in recognition that our own nature, even as believers, tends to make us slothful about our pursuit of righteousness. Knowing it’s all God, we fall into thinking we can just sit back and leave it to Him. Well, at one level we must leave it to Him. At the same time, it must come about in His determined fashion, and His determination is that we must take an active hand in our sanctification.
Trials: What are they but opportunities to take just such an active hand? In so doing, we discover something wonderful: God is at work in us. Our response under duress is something far better than we expected. Surely, I am not the only one to have such a reaction! We are, we discover, capable of far more than we thought. But, discovering this, we are quick to recognize (the eyes of faith once more see truth) that this is none of ourselves. It is all God. Those who know themselves truly, know that what has just transpired is beyond them; that the goodness displayed must needs have come from somewhere else. It is only as sinful pride exercises its influence that we suppose ourselves to have really done something. Pride says, “Look what I just did.” Humility says, “Look what the Lord has done!”
And, that’s the whole point! Faith sees God’s power at work in us, and knows from this that hope is well and securely anchored in this God who loves us and whom we love. This realization cannot but produce joy. It’s all true! Salvation is assured. My election is real. God is in control. Rejoice! And again I say, rejoice!
False Hope (05/31/14)
Let’s have a moment of contrast. Many think they have faith in something. Many are as solidly convinced of their particular lies as we are of the Truth. It looks the same. They may have great confidence in what they suppose must ensue. They may find great hope in their expected outcome. But, it’s all lies and fabrications and eventually, it must come about that reality shall collide with delusion and delusion will fail.
Faith is not mere confidence. Confidence can be misplaced. Confidence can know disappointment. Faith, founded upon God Himself, coming from God Himself, cannot disappoint. It must hold, for God holds it.
Over against this reality of true faith, Matthew Henry notes the one he would construe a hypocrite. In particular, he is thinking of those who think themselves possessed of saving faith, but who have it not. “The hypocrite and his hope expire and die both together.” This ought to give us pause, particularly as concerns our efforts at evangelism. Too much of modern outreach is satisfied to produce immediate numbers. We collect our data. So many signed their conversion cards today. So many came to the altar call. So many raised their hands in response to the plea. We count them up and call ourselves successful. But, how many are back next week? How many are still around next month? Next year?
Was it really saving faith, or was it a manufactured, emotional response? Was it real or was it Memorex? If we have only fooled them into thinking they’ve come to salvation, we have done them greater harm than ever the devil did. We have not produced a believer, but a hypocrite convinced of a salvation they do not possess. How ever shall they be convinced now of their need who have been thus assured they already have the cure? And yet, theirs is a false hope, and a false hope I fear shall be laid to our account.
There is a reason Jesus did not commission us to go and make converts, to go collect a census. He called us to go and make disciples. It is a harder work. It is a longer work. It is a less glamorous work. But, it produces real believers (God willing) with real faith and a real hope. It passes on that which exceeds knowledge of bare facts. It imparts Truth. I dare say that initial, emotional response is fine. It is not a bad thing in itself. But, the one who has responded needs feeding and maturing. He needs training and, dare I say, testing. That first response of, “I believe!” isn’t proof of a real faith. Back to Peter: Trials come to prove. Until trials have come, we cannot be sure that what we have is faith. It may just be opinion. And, opinions are worthless things apart from the backing of Truth.
There is faith and there is false hope. Which one do you have? When put to the test, it shall be shown you whether your confidence has been misplaced or whether indeed God has shed abroad His love in your heart. Here, it is worth pulling in another quote from Matthew Henry. “It is one thing to believe God or Christ (so the devils believe), and another thing to believe in Him, which denotes subjection, reliance, and expectation of all promised good from him.”
There is a convenient measuring stick we can use while waiting for trials to come. There are the things trials will prove. Am I so subject to my God that should He require me to walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will peacefully make that journey? Will I insist on making such preparations as I can think to make first, seeking to survive the trip in my own strength, or will I rely on Him? Be clear: God is not saying to walk blindly and blithely into danger. Thou shalt not test the Lord your God. But, we men particularly tend towards being problem solvers. We tend to be determined to show our self-reliance, our ability to take care of ourselves in every situation. But, that’s relying on main strength, not on God. What if He insists we go into situations we know full well are beyond us? Faith goes. And, finishing up that quote, faith expects all the promised good from Him. I would strengthen that. Faith is full assured that all the promised good will come, because it is from Him. And God cannot fail.
Salvation the Goal (06/01/14)
I will continue to maintain that God’s glory is the final cause of our faith. But, from a more personal perspective, I can accept that salvation is the final cause. It is in our salvation that we glorify God, and thus the two are effectively one. It is our salvation that really registers with us. It is this which we can taste and appreciate. Through our salvation, we taste and appreciate the goodness of God.
Clarke would have it that faith has been repaid with salvation; salvation being its proper issue. This would seem to me to completely misunderstand the situation. If salvation is by grace alone, then it assuredly cannot be repayment for anything. Even though we gladly confess that salvation is likewise by faith alone, it is not in the sense that salvation is purchased by faith. For, faith is not of ourselves, but is as much a gift as is that salvation which comes by faith. That which is a gift is not a payment. In this matter of salvation there can be no least hint of having earned it. Hear Paul clearly on this. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Eph 2:8-9). Repaid? I think not.
Another interesting idea gets posited by Matthew Henry. “Faith helps to save the soul, then it has done its work, and ceases forever.” Really? Faith, the author of Hebrews tells us, is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen (Heb 11:1). I suppose, in that sense, when we have seen the fullness of our salvation, faith will have run its course. Things being then seen, it requires not faith to believe. But, if I stop at the point of the soul’s salvation, that would seem to suggest that faith comes to an end almost as soon as it arrives. Faith, being implanted by the Spirit at the Father’s behest, opens the eyes of the heart to see both the horrible state of our soul and the wonder of God’s loving work on our behalf. So, faith moves us to welcome the Christ of God as our Savior (albeit I would argue there was no possibility at that point that we would do otherwise). In that very moment, and I dare say it is but a moment, our soul has found its salvation. Faith came. God’s word achieved His purpose. Soul was saved unto eternity. Now, bodily resurrection lays yet ahead, and surely the perfection of our salvific estate remains a work in progress until that day. But, there is a fundamental point Peter is making here which bears on the matter: You have obtained the outcome of your faith: The salvation of your soul (v9). It is finished! Once more the glorious word of Christ: “It is finished!” (Jn 19:30).
The goal of faith is salvation. Therein lies, for our purposes, the final cause, the reason, the intended outcome. Being God’s intent, we are able to speak of it as not merely the intended outcome, but the inevitable outcome. But, let me step aside from matters of the Calvinist/Arminian divide for a moment. Salvation is the goal of faith, however you choose to arrange matters. That being the case, we ought to recognize that anything else we gain in this transaction is a bonus. Should we happen to be granted good health, that’s a welcome development, certainly. But, if we don’t, we’re still saved. Should we enjoy a life of relative wealth and still hold fast to God, who shall complain. But, if we endure a life of relative want, shall we hold to Him less? Shall we be less thankful?
The JFB picks up on this point in some degree, noting that salvation is primarily concerned with the soul, even though the body has a share in salvation. Their emphasis is on the fact that bodily redemption comes later, whereas the soul is already saved. But, if the soul is already saved, the body’s ultimate redemption is already guaranteed. That said, we know from Paul that the redeemed body is something almost, if not entirely other than the body we have on today. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable… We shall all be changed… For this imperishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1Co 15:50-53).
If, then, this present, perishable body is granted healing however many times in the course of earthly life, what of it? It shall be put off and the immortal put on. If one is healed, even healed miraculously, yet this body shall eventually die. The body is not the point. If we amass all manner of earthly goods, what have we gained except for more ties holding us here? What have we gained that we shall carry into eternity? Nothing. It doesn’t matter. That is not to say that we go about denouncing all material things as evils in some fit of Manicheism, nor even that we reject them as neutral. Things are neutral. That’s another point Paul makes. It is not the thing that is good or evil, it is the use made of the thing. Moral responsibility remains with the man.
But, the goal is salvation, and salvation is assured. Whatever else we may be granted in this life is a bonus. Now: You may say it’s all well and good for me to suggest such a thing sitting in my comfortable house before a computer screen with fine internet access, plentiful coffee, and a good breakfast ahead of me before I go off in my comfortable car to a lovely church building wearing a nice, light-weight suit. Look at you, sir! You are blessed with all manner of goods. But, what if, as the devil argued over Job, we strike these things. What if the car breaks down, the suit wears out, the house is taken away and you’re out on the streets? Are you still going to maintain that these things don’t matter? And, I shall have to say yes, I shall so maintain, or very much hope I shall. I have seen, assuredly, many of my brethren who do so, and I would count myself blessed indeed if I am found able to do likewise.
Look, this is exactly what Peter is getting at in this letter. Yes, you are suffering. Suffering is real. It is not a matter of being so delusional as to find enjoyment in the suffering. Christianity is no call to masochism. But, it is a call to dwell beyond circumstances. Our life is anchored in heaven. Our eternity is settled, and frankly, the trials of the present can only hasten the day when we are home. What threat is death when death is but the transition to our inheritance? What cause for grousing this present life, when it is but a blip on the screen of eternity? The goal is salvation, and the salvation is the seal upon our eternal inheritance. Faith has, in its very first moments, produced this result. We are granted some years further in which to grow in that grace God sheds upon us. We are granted to know the maturing work of the Spirit upon us, to see our own development, to see the seeds of our faith planted in others who are also growing. We are granted the inestimable joy of knowing we have been rendered useful to God, been allowed a part in His magnificent, still unfolding plan of redemption. But the end, the final outcome, is already nailed, and not by my doing, not by your doing. It is all God.
Here is a point reiterated across several of the commentaries. I’ll take the starting point from a footnote in Calvin’s commentary. “The soul is now saved by faith.” The emphasis is mine, but only in making it boldface. The emphasis, in all fairness, is God’s. Hear it from Barnes, who writes to the effect that our salvation is so certain that we may reasonably speak of it as already done. The Wycliffe commentary gives their translators the following bit of direction: Salvation is present tense. You are saved. It’s not you were saved. It’s not you will be saved at some point. If it is past tense, there is the question of whether we’ve misplaced it. If it is future tense, there is the question of whether we shall reach it. But, it’s present tense. It’s certain. It’s established. And, being as it’s in God’s hands, it is in no doubt whatsoever. It is not ours to lose. It is God’s to keep.
That’s going to bother some. It would doubtless bother Clarke. But, here’s the thing we must bear constantly in mind. This salvation is a thing so utterly valuable – recall Peter’s comparison; it’s on a completely different scale than that gold which we hold to be of such great worth. It is, to take Jesus’ example, a pearl of greatest price (Mt 13:46). We are not blind to the worth of what has been handed us. We are not stupid to the treasure that has been put in our account. Neither are we so arrogant as to suppose we earned this. No! We recognize the value, and we recognize the Source. It is, in the end, that very sense of infinite value that moves us to work.
Salvation is by faith, and faith is by grace. Yet, Paul would have no disagreement with James, when James reminds us that faith without works is dead (Jas 2:17). The two go hand in hand. But, works do not earn faith. Faith produces a heart desirous of working. Love impels us to the work of the kingdom.
When I was making my first pass through this text, I arrived at this question: “If salvation is not of sufficient value to me that I will work for it, why should I expect Him to do so?” There is validity in that question. But, I think on this occasion I would reverse it somewhat. If I will not work for that salvation (or let us say in light of that salvation), what cause have I to suppose myself in possession of it? That, I suppose, presents the same argument as James. But, the question is deserving of consideration in both directions. Faith, which signs over salvation to our account, cannot but work, and works are of no value apart from that faith which preceded the effort. If our works do not flow out of heart-felt appreciation for what God in His graciousness has given, they are worthless efforts, however fine they appear to our eyes. If our faith is not leading us to the desire (and actively pursued will) to do the work of the kingdom, at very least we ought to repent and seek God out that we may be truly saved and not deceived by a false hope.
Now, salvation is the fruit of faith, but salvation bears fruit of its own. Calvin points us to the joy that Peter denotes here, indicating rejoicing as the fruit of salvation. So powerful is this rejoicing, he says (following Peter’s lead), that the joy of our salvation overcomes every bitterness of evil and every sorrow. This is what Peter is driving at. Even though you suffer, yet your joy in Christ is great – great to the point of dancing in the streets! This is a thing that will utterly befuddle the world. This is the fuel that carried the martyrs through as they were burned at the stake. This is the fuel that upholds the martyrs in our own day. I cannot but think of this poor woman in Sudan, Christian all her life, now married and with child, and yet she is slated for death due to apostasy from Islam. Given yet another chance to save her earthly life by recanting her faith, she has stood tall. For the joy set before her, she will endure; if anything, counting it a great and undeserved honor to so share in the sufferings of her Savior.
So we find Peter at the end of his days, as best we know his finale. He is slated for crucifixion, and what is his concern? At the very least, let me be crucified upside-down. I am not worthy to suffer so nearly the same as my Lord and King. But, however painful these last hours (and no doubt they were painful in the extreme), yet there was this: Praise God, I’m going home! This pain is an end to pain. This suffering is an end to suffering. There is no more that man or devil can do. God has won and eternity awaits. Why not go out with joy? The trials are over and life is just begun.
Honor & Glory (06/02/14)
Peter tells us that this proven faith of ours will result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ returns (v7). We might ask whose praise, whose glory and whose honor? My first inclination, as seen in my original notes, is to say that these all redound to God. They are His by right, and His by the nature of that evidence which is our proven faith. After all, our faith is proven true not because we were so serious about passing the test but because of God’s power upholding us. The credit is due Him not us. This certainly accords with Scripture’s testimony that God will not share His glory with another. But, then we must ask whether this glory Peter speaks of is to be considered the same as His glory. We could also ask whether, in assigning praise, glory and honor to His victorious children He does not in effect glorify Himself. This is not to say there is any vanity in God that He feels some need to glorify Himself at all times. Rather, I would say that His glory is innate to His being. He cannot help but glorify Himself in all He does for all He does is by very nature glorious.
From that thought alone I can proceed to say that indeed, if God so chooses to glorify us for coming through the trials with proven faith, even knowing and confessing our victory is by His strength; then of necessity His glorifying us glorifies Him. There is nothing inconsistent in this.
Here, as a few of the commenters have noted, is the thing Peter is setting before us. “Christ shall publicly honor and applaud his servants in the face of all the world.” That’s Matthew Henry writing. In the fact of the world: I rather doubt Mr. Henry had any sense of the present snarky usage of that phrase, yet I think it suits. The public honor that God shall send our way will indeed be something of an ‘in your face’ to the world. Our faith in spite of the world’s constant efforts to dissuade us is already an ‘in your face’. There is a reason the world hates us. It’s not because we try to be obnoxious. It’s not that we seek to rub it in. It’s the fact that our very presence, our very existence rubs it in.
Mr. Henry also points out that honor consists in somebody else’s assessment. We cannot honor ourselves. I suppose it would hold that God likewise cannot honor Himself. He can and does demonstrate Himself honorable. But, the word of honor must come from without. This is our duty, if you will, to honor God as is His due. That He would likewise deign to honor us is something altogether different. Yet, it is not, as I have said, in any way inconsistent. Nothing prevents the greater from honoring the lesser. Indeed, it could be argued that this is far greater honor than that which is bestowed by the lesser upon the greater. The latter is but the acknowledgement of the obvious. The former, being unnecessary, carries more weight.
And consider that God, if He makes such an honorable assessment, does so with perfect knowledge and perfect honesty. Isn’t that something? I cannot imagine a man standing before the magnificence of God and supposing himself worthy of honor; Mr. Bloomberg’s comments to the contrary notwithstanding. He may suppose himself worthy of walking into heaven uncontested, but he supposes so in utter ignorance of both God and self, having never truly assessed either. He may be honorable in his own assessment, but that is not the assessment that counts. Honor, as Mr. Henry said, consists in the assessment of another, and in this case, that other can be no other than God Himself. His opinion, in the end, is the only opinion that carries any weight at all.
And what is it God honors? He honors that faith which has been found genuine. Mere professions of belief don’t suffice for the simple reason that professions may be true or false. They may hold fast. They may be matters of momentary convenience. Genuine faith withstands testing. Now, not to get ahead of myself, but it needs saying: Withstanding testing does not guarantee the genuineness of belief. That is to say men are capable of holding onto beliefs that are utterly invalid even to the point of death. But, we may say that the faith which is falsely professed will not stand testing. That much we can aver. And where faith has been proven real, there God has cause to assign honor and He will. That honor, the possessor of faith will fully realize, rightly goes to Him Who gave us faith and Who upheld us in faith. No doubt, as He praises us ‘before assembled worlds’, as Mr. Barnes writes, we will find in ourselves no other response than to return those praises to Him. It shall be no false humility to deflect all honors back upon His majesty. It shall be but the truth declared, and really, a further proof that His assessment was correct. Our faith, being from Him and sustained by Him, cannot but acknowledge Him as the be all and end all of faith – of very being.
But, I pulled that phrase from Barnes both because he twice utilized it, and because it just touched a certain something in me. He will honor such faith ‘before assembled worlds’. I am struck first by the use of the plural there. It is not just the people of one world gathered together, it is assembled worlds. Now, bear in mind that this is a commentary published somewhere around 1884. That’s not exactly the golden age of science fiction yet. H. G. Wells was still a teenager at the time. But, as somebody who has been consuming science fiction as long as I can remember, this smacks of sci-fi. Assembled worlds: Consider the longstanding search for life on other planets. If there is such life, as Larry Norman sang, then I’m sure He’s been there, too. Consider the current theories of a multiverse, the count of possible worlds expands. And yet, this only increases the honor and glory on that day. However many planets in however many universes are found to support intelligent life in whatever forms such life may take, they will all be assembled on that day to witness those, from every tribe and tongue and nation and, it may well be, every species from every universe who have been called by the Father Who created them all. They shall all be honored for that faith which has held them through to the end. And all the worlds which rejected them shall know the folly of having done so, to their great and eternal sorrow.
I want to point out one other thing, though, that praise is not to us. It is to that faith which bore us through. It is, then, effectively back to Himself. The one who in that moment thinks to retain the honor to his own account (were such a one to be found) would have demonstrated by that determination that he was never possessed of faith to begin with. It would be a confession of unworthiness to accept that honor as our due. It would be so great a contradiction that it could not be supposed to stand as even a possibility. And yet, even having such praise and honor in passing from our great and holy God is honor enough and then some! Simply to have the honor of passing that honor on to Him is honor in itself. Being present to hear His praises and return them to Him as their proper recipient is joy unspeakable. To be present in His glory, to share in its reflection, is enough to satisfy the hungriest soul.
Perseverance (06/02/14-06/03/14)
We turn, then, to that which serves to prove our faith, or more properly to prove that faith is ours. Perseverance: It is not a comfortable word, for to persevere requires trial, and trial is not a thing greatly to be anticipated. We can accept them, knowing they are by God’s design, and that is largely the message of this letter. Understand that it is by God’s design and to God’s purpose. It is not to destroy you but to build you up. That is not to say the trials should be construed as pleasant. No. We are not Christian masochists. Trials do produce sorrow and grief, and these are admitted. We are not to deny the painful realities of life.
This must inform our perceptions and behaviors when attending to funerals, certainly. There is something in us that, knowing the grave is a temporary residence, supposes that we who see eternal life ahead ought find no grief in death. In a sense that is true. We see the glory set before us and rejoice. Yet, we are not thereby called to deny the sorrow of loss. We are not Stoics. We are Christians. If we are counselling the one who has lost a family member or friend to the grave that he ought demonstrate no sorrow or remorse, we are missing the humanity of Christianity. There have been those who were required to set aside sorrow. I think particularly of Aaron at the loss of his sons. But, their loss was specifically due to egregious crimes against God, and Aaron was the foremost representative of God at that time. For him to display grief over God’s justice would have been entirely inappropriate. God is glorified by His justice and in that regard we must accept His justice as cause for praise just as much as His mercy.
But, even here, I dare say the sorrow Aaron felt was denied. I am certain he found a private place of mourning. I am sure he was grieved at the loss, even as he admitted the justice of it. Here’s the thing: We don’t deny grief. We don’t deny sorrow. But, we do look beyond it. We recall to mind that the worst this life throws at us remains but a blip on the screen of eternity.
Here is a thing to sustain us even through those times when the future glory evades our eyes. We are protected by the same God who has our inheritance preserved in His heaven. Because of Him, we are kept by faith. We cannot help but recognize, though, that faith has a variability to it, or at least our perception of faith has such variability. Faith quails. The weakness of our flesh causes us to effectively lose faith, or forget faith. And yet, we are preserved. And yet, we persevere. Why? Because we are protected not by our faith (as if it were ours!) but by God’s power. As Calvin suggests, we would be constantly wondering whether we would see tomorrow if not for the Lord aiding us. But, as the Lord is aiding us, we know our salvation is not made uncertain, however weak we may be in ourselves. Our salvation, “is sustained by God’s power.”
As I have been pondering the last several days, it seems to me that two things prevent us from acceding to Reformed doctrine. The first is a failure to consider God’s nature; what it means for God to be god. The second is a failure to truly consider our own. If we look at our record, I don’t see how it can be possible that we would conclude otherwise than that left to ourselves we would swiftly fall to the temptations that surround us. A true self-assessment must conclude that in our own strength we are just as doomed as ever. The testimony of Scripture only serves to amplify the point. We look at the best of the heroes of faith and discover that to a man they were flawed. David, that most majestic of God’s men, sinned in heinous fashion. Paul was a terrorist, Peter a coward. Moses couldn’t control his temper. Solomon? Wisest man ever to live, yet so foolish as to toss over the worship of God for idol worship to keep his women happy
If these men could not stand, who have the acclaim of God’s own history, how can we possibly suppose we can stand in our own power? We cannot. It is the knowledge of this, that not only could we never make ourselves right before God, we couldn’t even hold onto that righteousness He puts in our hands that properly drives us to our Savior. Desperation is the only proper assessment. Apart from God I am doomed. If He does not uphold me, I am beyond hopeless. But, that’s just what Peter is telling us! He does uphold you. He is your strength. He preserves your inheritance and He preserves you. It is His will has determined to save you, and it’s not like His will can fail of being accomplished.
If we look back to faith – our faith, we discover that our faith is also His. He gives it. He stirs it up. He causes its increase. And frankly, even in those periods when we feel our faith is weak, the fact is that our faith is not weak because it is still His and he still maintains it. What is weak is our perception. What is happening is that we are distracted from our pursuit of heaven. The things of the earth, which ought properly to be growing strangely dim in the light of His glory are instead looming large in our imaginations. They are the more tangible to us, and therefore hold greater sway, unless we are very intentional about exercising the eyes of faith. And, if we are intentional in doing so, it is God Who is at work in us!
This is such a difficult concept to get right. It is all God and yet we are intimately involved. It is He Who works and yet we work in fear and trembling. In our weakness we lay ourselves wholly upon His power, and in His power we labor even to exhaustion in pursuit of that holiness which He has assured us is ours. It’s all His doing, it’s because of His keeping power, and yet we know (for He tells us repeatedly) that we cannot truly, ‘let go and let God’. No! He does not allow it. He calls us to count the cost, and sell everything that we might have Him. He says, “Follow Me.” We cannot do so while simultaneously clinging to the world. And yet, He leaves us in the world. Why? To work for Him. To work because of Him. That He may work through us to not only reach the lost around us, but also to work in us.
Barnes offers this point. His power keeps us, but it is not merely God exerting His power. Apart from His power, there could be no certainty of salvation – not for so much as one man. But, it’s not just God exerting His power. He stirs up faith within us as the means of keeping us. So it is that by faith we are saved (and even preserved), and yet that faith is not of ourselves. And yet, at the same time it is. It is ours. But, it is ours because He has given it, implanted it. It preserves because He preserves.
“You are kept,” writes Matthew Henry. You do not keep. You are kept. God uses our own faith and our own care to achieve this end, yet it is God in action, God directing. And, it is God who ensures the outcome. Faith shall keep. We shall persevere. And the end of our perseverance, the goal towards which we persist in pursuit, is salvation. But, it’s God stem to stern. God gives grace by which we are saved. God gives faith by which we are preserved. God preserves even when faith seemingly fades away. Hope does not fail because hope is from God and in God and for God. Hope pours forth from the Gospel and preserves the elect against all apostasy so that they shall most certainly obtain the fullness of that salvation which is already theirs in the present.
Here is certainty for you: Heaven is the certain inheritance of every child of God. This is Paul’s testimony. “If children, heirs as well: heirs of God together with Christ, if we suffer with Him so to be glorified with Him as well” (Ro 8:17). This is Peter’s testimony. “An inheritance imperishable and undefiled which will not fade away is reserved in heaven for you, and you are preserved on earth for it” (verses 4 & 5). Matthew Henry makes this distinction: God’s gifts are given to all indiscriminately, good and evil alike. But, His inheritance is given only to His sons and daughters.
Much is made these days of taking steps to ensure that your wealth will pass on to your children as intended, and not be intercepted by the government’s tax agents or lawyers or what have you. God has seen surely to His inheritance. His will and testimony is written in Christ Jesus Himself, and the Holy Spirit serves as His lawyer here, ensuring that all is done according to His will. We are in His will. He has set down the details of our inheritance, and they are wonderful. He has made no provision for our passing before inheriting because there is no need. We cannot fail of inheriting because He is seeing to our preservation. He Himself is guardian over us until we reach our majority.
This is something Adam Clarke brings out. The idea of a minor being guarded until of age to inherit was perfectly common at the time and frankly, still isn’t. The nature of the guarding may change, but conceptually the intent and the result are the same. We may be said to remain in our minority until that day when we see Christ Jesus face to face as He truly is. Then and only then will the work of maturing us be completed. Then and only then we shall have been made as He is, fit for eternity and properly situated to receive that inheritance which has been ours from the dawn of creation. We shall persevere.
There is another point Clarke makes which I am more inclined to question. Our part, he says is to believe and it is our belief which exerts God’s power. He makes the case so strongly as to write, “No preserving without the power, and no power without faith.” The problem I have is that I hear in his words an insistence on returning control to my own hands. If I don’t exert faith, God won’t exert power. It’s up to me. But, I cannot accept that and find any cause for the hope of heaven, let alone the certain hope that Peter attests to here. If there remains an I must, then I can only conclude that it shall not come to pass. I am entirely fallible, even in this renewed state. The spirit may be ever so willing, but as Jesus Himself diagnoses the case, the flesh is weak. And the flesh will drag the spirit down with it every time. But, God.
Our part is to believe. But our belief is itself a gift from God. It is an act of free will, and yet He has seen to it that we who are the elect could not but so choose. Unbelief is simply no longer an option. That’s not an excuse to get cocky. It’s not pride saying that everybody else may fall away, but not me. It’s a confession of God’s greatness. It’s acknowledging that He is wholly and utterly in control. And yet, I know I am not merely along for the ride. I am not permitted to sit idly awaiting His power to move and save me. He works through this faith He has imparted. He works through the intelligence He gave me. He works through my work when my work is in Him. I can even say He works through my work when my work is done as in opposition to Him. If we must exercise faith so as to see God exert His power, I can only say that unless God exerts His power, we shall never exercise faith.
It comes to this, which I borrow from Barnes. This preservation of the saints is, in fact, the only security for salvation to be found. If God does not preserve, there is no hope. Because God does preserve, there is certain hope. I confess I struggle anymore to see how anybody can reject this idea and still have cause for hope in Christianity. I can accept that such folks exist. I can accept that they are well and truly saved. But, I cannot imagine how they find cause for confidence in Christ if the business of salvation still rests on their own shoulders. I say this knowing that I myself was once of that same mindset. I recall very well telling a couple freshly come to the church we were in at the time that of course salvation could be lost. Of course you needed to keep your nose clean or God would toss you out in a second. And yet, I can only shake my head in embarrassment now that I once had so low a view of God.
Father, help me to have patience and understanding for those who yet hold to different perspectives here. Grant that we might together come to perceive the beauty of Your truth as we seek to worship before Your throne. And, though we may disagree in these matters, even though they seem so critical to me, let Your peace prevail and Your unity be maintained. Help us to know, o God, when the defense of Truth must take precedence and when the preservation of Love.
“Time and use will not wear out religion.” I love that declaration by Barnes. There is much that could be built upon it. It seems to me that he treats religion and faith as synonyms. And in that sense, it makes perfect sense that time and use could not wear it out, for it is of God and God is eternal. It is also, though, a call to action and a call to give freely. We are here for a season and in that season we are to honor God as best we are able. The greatest honor we can do Him is to obey Him. The greatest obedience we can offer is to go make disciples, to use this religion He has set within us, to put faith into action.
As we seek to do our best to wear out religion by constant use, may we enjoy that for which Paul prayed. “May your heart’s eyes be given capacity to see the hope of His calling; the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Eph 1:18). Oh! To see that hope and know it certain! Oh! To come to greater appreciation of His inheritance stored up for us. Oh! To recognize that He has His inheritance in the saints - in us. May we see and know. May we find in that the power to persevere and even to grow in grace, knowing He is working and in Him, we are working, too.
Proof (06/04/14)
One brief point to note about Peter’s approach to his readers is this: He first establishes the absolute certainty of God and of God’s work on their behalf. Only then does he move on to addressing their trials. Here is a lesson for leadership. Those we serve are likely to come to us with their difficulties at the forefront. Here is this grave issue I am facing. What am I to do? Where is God in this? Our tendency is to want to face that difficulty head on. If that’s what’s going on, here’s what you do. We want to have answers. We want to solve problems. But, that’s the wrong approach and solves nothing.
If we go into these things in our own power, offering our own wisdom, we have nothing to offer. Even if our advice is spot on, we’ve still left the advisee shortchanged. Get God in there. Make Him known. Make Him evident. Remind. That’s really what Peter is doing here. He’s not teaching them anything new. He is reminding them what they already know. Look! God has your future. You know this. God has your present. You know this. Keep Him in mind. Remember Who He Is. It’s His power keeping you. It’s His wisdom and provision that allows these things you face. And, He loves you! He paid an exorbitant price to have you. Do you suppose He is doing something to your detriment? Would He really act against His own investment?
You see, if our view of God is clear, it clarifies our sense of what we face. That fact takes us to the rest of this letter. Trials are not punishment. Now, as Peter will remind several times in this letter, some difficulties do come as rebuke for sinful behaviors. Salvation is unto holiness and life, not unto licentiousness and death. But, you know. You know whether the things you face are matters of correction or matters undeserved. We are addressing the undeserved trials, the things that come against us for no other reason than that we are Christians in a fallen world.
Without a solid understanding and sense of God, these things can shake us. But, when we see that God is in the trial, we stand. This is the first thing we must come to recognize: God does not send these trials to demonstrate our inadequacy. Satan will. Satan sends temptations with intent to overwhelm us, to prove us failures. God sends trials with intent to prove us genuine. This is present in the imagery of gold tested by fire. One doesn’t put gold to such a test with the hope of seeing it destroyed in the testing. No! One designs the test to both reveal and preserve what is really gold. So it is with the testing of our faith and character. God would hardly be served by destroying what faith and character there may be in us by this testing. Far be it from Him! No, His testing will eliminate the cruff. That which renders our faith less lustrous, that which still clings to our character and mars its beauty will be burned off, peeled away, sloughed into the drains by trial. But, the real faith and character remain unscathed and even improved by the very same trial.
Trials are experiments designed to prove; to give proof of the reality of faith. And never fear! Faith shall be proved true because faith is, after all, the product of God’s work in you, not your works for God. They are not efforts to discredit, but presentations of evidence. I will remind us of just who it is needs that evidence. It’s not God. He knows. It’s not even the devil. He knows, too. It’s you and me.
So astounding is the grace poured out on us in this Gospel that we have trouble accepting the reality of it. It cannot really be that God would take such an interest in me, can it? I can’t have really been so changed, can I? I know I have gone long stretches where I wondered if there was any evidence whatsoever by which I could demonstrate the truth of my faith in Christ. Is there anything to show it? My tongue, sadly, is still too inclined to speak in fashions unbecoming. My tastes and humors still give evidence of too much that is worldly and too little that is godly. But, there are those times when the test comes and proves that indeed, things have changed and for the better.
Here is a matter on which all the various sub-sectors of Christianity can agree: When God afflicts, it is with sound judgment and in proportion to our need. Hear that again. It is ‘to our need’. It is not arbitrary or capricious. It is our loving Father addressing a need in our lives. It is discipline, yes. But, it’s also reassurance. As we are able to observe our response under trial, we see that God is indeed working in us, and that can only impart greater confidence going forward.
But, there’s still the challenge of going through, and there it is well to know we are appointed to this affliction and are thus appointed by our loving Father. This is strength to stand. If He has sent this our way, it is for a reason – for a Good reason. It is for our good and His. We need the assurance that not only has He sent these trials our way for our benefit, but also that He will never allow the trial to persist even a moment longer than is necessary to His purpose. He is thoroughly in control, thoroughly in charge of both you and your circumstances.
We may also recognize that it is desirable that we have our ‘apparent religion’, as Barnes speaks of it, proven genuine. It is desirable for those who witness our trials, for seeing our genuine faith may be the seeding of faith into their own lives. We don’t know. It is desirable for those who shepherd us in our seasons of trials, for by this evidence the shepherd is better able to assess our growth in faith, and so better able to assist our growth. It is desirable for us, as I have been saying. Add to it this: If our faith is not genuine, far better that we be made aware of that fact while yet there is hope of doing something about it! Far better we know our confidence baseless that we may seek Him Who alone may give it base.
Much which appears genuine is not, as Barnes points out. It is true of gold. It is true of religion. Is it ever! We need not look very far at all to discover those who call themselves churches of Christ but are far from Him. Feel free to accuse me of elitism for saying it, but it is so clearly the case. I’m not talking those with whom we have some disagreement over the finer points of doctrine. I’m not considering matters of the Calvinist / Arminian divide. I’m not even, at this juncture, thinking in terms of Catholic vs. Protestant. I’m thinking those in branches of most any denomination who pay lip-service to Christ Jesus, but know not who He is, or who set Him out to be one among many gods.
I think back to that funeral service I attended a few weeks back. It was presented within what declared itself a church of Christ. The hymns we sang were familiar, the Scriptures we read were the same. But, then comes this note of the earth prayer, and suddenly you know you’re not in Christ’s church at all. It’s like the temple in Solomon’s later years, all manner of idols in there alongside the one true God, and the one true God, being disinclined to share His glory, has left the building in disgust. Much appears to be genuine religion but is not, just like fool’s gold, and where it is not genuine, “The one is worth no more than the other,” says Barnes.
Now, here we can get into some difficulty. If our faith needs proving and we haven’t faced these trials, perhaps we ought to go seek them out? No! We do not need to go hunting crosses to bear. Our call is not to invite suffering upon ourselves. Our call is to bear those which God sets upon us. This is no new urge, understand. In that time when Rome was generating martyrs in quantity, many in the Christian community were feeling like the fact that they had not faced martyrdom left them somehow second class citizens. Folks began seeking out martyrdom. That’s not the call! It had to be corrected.
Many have similar perspectives today. They will go out looking to cause offense because, after all, the world is supposed to be offended at us. But, not because we are obnoxious! We look at examples like the infamous Westboro Baptists and sorrow for the false impression they have of Christ. We sorrow for the shame they bring down upon the name of Christ. Why? Because they have gone out with seemingly no further purpose than to offend for the sake of offending. This is not a witness to the glory of God. This is not a spreading of the Gospel. It’s just obnoxiousness.
We may wander off the trail in other ways; taking on false burdens, seeking out ways we can suffer for the name of Christ. It may be very subtle. But, the Truth is unchanged: The only trials we are called to bear are those God has set upon us. The rest of it has no value.
Here is another risk we may run. Let me quote from Adam Clarke. “He then who preferred Christianity to his life gave full proof, not only of his own sincerity, but also of the excellency of the principle by which he was influenced; as his religion put him in possession of greater blessings, and more solid comforts, than anything the earth could afford.” Now, I would in no wise minimize the power of the martyr. The testimony of history does not permit of it. But, at the same time, I would not wish to overstate the case, and it seems to me that Clarke has done just that. If martyrdom is the proof of the ‘excellency of the principle by which he was influenced’, then we must allow that Islam apparently has an excellency equal to Christianity, and that cannot stand.
The fact that one is willing to die for a cause is not proof that the cause is valid. How can it be? Consider that in any war it can reasonably be supposed that one side is in the right and the other in the wrong. Yet, men die on both sides and die willingly in service of their cause. We can look at some of the fanatics of recent years, mass murderers who take their own lives, and so on. Do their deaths render their actions admirable because they were willing to die for them? Obviously not. More to the case, though, is the Islamic martyr, for that is more nearly a parallel. But, it is a mockery, as we well understand. The Christian martyr dies at the hands of others for his belief. The Islamic martyr seeks to cause the death of others in taking his own life. The one dies in in the certainty of eternal life, the other dies in the service of death only. Would we hold, can we reasonably hold, that these two religions must be equally valid given that men die for both religions?
Frankly, we cannot possibly hold both religions to be valid if we have any thought for the nature of God. The two are so utterly contradictory in their truth claims that at minimum one must be wrong. That alone ought to suffice to clarify for us that martyrdom does not prove the religion, only the strength of conviction in the one martyred.
We do well to honor and pray for those who face martyrdom for the sake of Christ in our own day. We rightly see in it the proof of their faith, and we well know that their faith is not in vain. We know, too, from the historical record, that God uses just such martyrdoms to spectacularly effective ends in furthering His kingdom. That is not to say He condones the death of His people. No, precious in His sight is the death of His saint. But, He will not see that death made in vain. Face it. Those who have died for His name’s sake live forever with Him. But, those who have sent them home will in no wise escape Justice. More, they will discover that the blood of the saints indeed causes the kingdom of God to flourish on earth.
One need only observe the results in our own time. Those nations that seek most to repress Christianity are the very nations where Christianity is growing at its greatest pace. And so it has ever been. Here, I might turn back to Clarke for a point worth considering, lest I be thought to only bring him up so as to knock him down. The trials of the present are necessary. They are necessary, he notes, in that we couldn’t avoid them apart from miraculous deliverance. They are necessary, because God has purposed them to our advantage and therefore deliverance would not prove to our good. He reaches this conclusion: The believer free of trials tends towards carelessness.
We know the truth of this. God knows the truth of this. It is there in the warnings He gave His nation Israel when they were yet en route to the Promised Land. You will know wealth and comfort and plenty, and you will forget the Lord your God. This is the danger of the comfortable life. This is the great risk we run here in the West. We have our little pressures, it is true, but we are inclined to live a life free of troubles. We have our good jobs, our comfortable houses and our seemingly boundless suppliers of groceries and goods. We are clearly self-sufficient. It’s one small slip to start thinking ourselves to have no particular need for God. He becomes little more than a social convention (thus explaining so many of those churches in name only congregations). We don’t need Him, He needs us. And that is the first step into damnation. Trials keep us mindful of reality. For all our strength and wealth we are in truth needy, poor, and weak to the point of failing. It is only by God’s power we have hope to persevere. Fortunately for us, in God’s power we are assured that we shall indeed persevere. Why? Because He has determined we shall. Praise be to His name now and forevermore! Amen.
