New Thoughts (07/09/14-07/17/14)
The Goal (07/11/14)
In this passage, Peter is addressing the matter of sanctification. We will have much to explore in that regard, but as we do it is well to recall the larger framework. In the last study, Barnes reminded us that from God’s perspective, the large framework is His plan of redemption, and that this plan was so utterly grand as to recommend pursuing the work of Creation, even knowing the Fall must result. I still find that observation to be something that turns my sense of things entirely on its head. God did not apply a patch to His software. It was designed to unfold as it did. Yet, let us not suppose this makes God the author of evil.
Now I would take that perspective and apply it on a more local, more personal level. For the same reversal of cause and effect applies. If we were to be asked what the purpose of faith is, I have little doubt that most of us would answer in terms of our salvation. Faith is given that we may be saved. Faith is God’s gracious gift, seeing we could not save ourselves. We might go so far as to suggest faith is the down payment of our inheritance, which is perfectly Scriptural, but defines faith rather than faith’s purpose. Yes, faith is confidence and in some ways the cause for confidence. But, that is not the purpose of faith.
There is a teaching of Martin Luther’s that the JFB brings forward on this point. The proper goal of faith, he says, is not our own salvation but rather to serve our neighbor. This is another one of those things that, once seen, seems obvious. Of course the goal would not be anything to self-serving. Of course the goal of faith must find its roots in the Great Commission. The focus of faith is ever outward. Having found life, who could not desire life for those around him? And yet, certainly in this New England region, faith tends towards the personal, the inward. I am very much concerned for my own salvation and sanctification. I am not so much concerned with my neighbor’s. It’s their call. They don’t want to know God, so be it. But, that’s not the way we are called to act. It’s not the way we are called to think.
Indeed, a moment’s thought and we would realize that it’s not their call. It’s His call. His call saved us. If they are to be saved, His call will save them, too. Of course, His call has come with that commission, hasn’t it? He does not call, and then leave us with, “There. You’re all set.” No, He calls us and then He sends us. “Go, therefore.” Make disciples. Evangelize. Spread the word. There is hope in the world, even at this late hour. There is light in the midst of this darkness. There is a purpose to this seeming madness.
If we will bear this purpose of faith in mind, what Peter teaches us in regards to sanctification will be found to be perfectly sensible, absolutely logical. If the goal of faith is to server our neighbor (by helping them hear the call of faith as well), then the primacy of love in the process of sanctification just stands to reason. The scope of that love may yet surprise us. I know the scope of God’s love has certainly surprised me.
The Primacy of Love (07/11/14-07/12/14)
I’ll allow Paul to establish the connection here. “The goal of instruction is real love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith” (1Ti 1:5). Now, notice: It is one goal, not three. The goal is love – real love; unfeigned and sincere. I find in myself the tendency to place good conscience and sincere faith in the category of goals. But, the goal of instruction is singular. The sources upon which instruction draws to achieve its singular goal are plural. Real love comes from a good heart. It comes from a good conscience. It flows from a sincere faith.
Clearly, where the heart is still hardened, there is no room for love. But, also, where the conscience is afflicted, the focus is so inward, so fully on self, that there can be no love. There isn’t even awareness of anything beyond self, so how can one love? And faith? The very purpose of faith, with its outwardly directed concern for the lost, requires love. But, that same faith which requires love is also the deep expression of love. In this gift of faith we have discovered God’s love for us. Our eyes have been opened to the depths of His care, to the full extent and significance of the Messiah’s death and resurrection on our behalf. We are forced to confront the reality that all this transpired while we were His enemies! We cannot claim ambivalence. We were not neutrals. There are no neutrals. We were His enemies, fighting Him at every moment. And how did He respond? He loved us enough to rescue us from our slavery to sin, from our commitment to this impossible war we had joined.
So, faith comes. We see God’s love. We feel God’s love. We are filled to overflowing with God’s love. And that, after all, is the whole point of it! It’s not about finding ourselves free and then running off in self-centered enjoyment of this new lease on life. It’s about remembering those slaves who have been beside us all this time, and loving them; wanting them to feel this same relief, this same release. Life, to which Love has introduced us, cannot willingly accept death.
It’s rather like God’s holiness in regard to sin. He is so holy, we are taught, that He cannot even tolerate the presence of sin in His vicinity, let alone in Himself. I could note that there is nothing which is not in His vicinity. That, I should think, is a very clear marker of His patience with us. But, that’s a topic for another time. God is so holy that He cannot tolerate sin. Jesus, in the years of His ministry, was clearly so wholly Alive that He could not tolerate death.
What do you suppose was up with Him healing so many? It was not just to demonstrate how powerful He was. It was assuredly no ego trip. It was simply that death was personally offensive to Him. It was offensive because it is out of order. Sin is out of order. Sin produces death. Ergo, death is as offensive as sin, being sin’s product. Righteousness is righteous because it is right. It is shalom, everything as it should be. Righteousness produces life. Life is as everything should be.
Eternity is the full, intended function of Creation. This does not alter the point Barnes made about Creation being set in motion so that Redemption could unfold in it. Not at all! Where is Redemption headed, after all? It is headed for a fully functional Creation suited for eternity. It is geared for putting off the mortal and taking up immortality. It is aimed directly at Life. It is, after all, created for Life. For from Him, and through Him and to Him are all things (Ro 11:36)! And, He is Life!
So, Life would reproduce. There’s a surprise. Look around you. The Darwinists look at this and discern survival of the fittest. But, that is the corruption of Life. That is the pursuit of death in the guise of living. No, life reproduces because that is its purpose. Life loves life. Life wants all to be alive. Life desires nothing quite so much as to see what was dead reborn. Why do you suppose mankind has always been so enamored of springtime? Why do you suppose so much of religion, not just Christianity, but religion more generally, comes back to this return from death to life? It’s written into our DNA. It’s written into Creation. Life must conquer death in the end, just as Light conquers darkness.
So, then: No surprise to discover love as the goal of faith. Of course, even in rebirth we remain products of our fallen past. The old man has not disappeared from the scene, as anybody with a sense of their own real condition must recognize. If the old man were so fully gone, the bulk of the New Testament would have proved unnecessary to compose. There is no need to urge us to sanctification if sanctification is already complete. There is no need to stand firm against the storms of temptation if we are so dead to sin as to be untouched by its allure. That being the case, we are inclined to reduce the scope of our duties to righteousness.
Some of us, truth be told, have great difficulty even loving God. We are not alone in this. There is that shocking admission from Martin Luther that R. C. Sproul mentions. “Love Him? Sometimes I hate Him!” Oh! We daren’t say such a thing! But, if we are honest, I suspect there are times we would nod our heads in agreement if only we could be certain God wasn’t watching. But, let us accept that we have come to love Him, if not as we ought, then at least in truth. Many are stuck there, not even able to extend that love to encompass themselves.
Admittedly, there is little enough about us to love, isn’t there? That becomes especially evident when the deceitfulness of our hearts has been overcome by the Spirit’s arrival. But, beware! The heart remains deceptively wicked. The heart will not only lie to us about the depths of our sins. The heart will just as happily lie to us about the progress we have made, seeking to reduce us to hopelessness. There is that conviction which comes of the Spirit so as to bring us to a life-bearing repentance. Then, there is the condemnation of the heart which seeks only to convince us we can never be worthy of God. Of course we can’t! That’s why He came in the first place: To do what we couldn’t do for ourselves. That’s why He created this whole framework of Creation: So He could exercise His majestic mercy in doing just that.
“You and I were made to worship,” we sing on many a Sunday. Yes, we were. But, we were also made to fall, so that we could discover the wonder of being set back on our feet. Having been forgiven so much, we love much (Lk 7:47). We worship Him from that love. With time, and a great deal of ministry from the Holy Spirit, we are able to extend that love to ourselves. This is no longer the self-serving, narcissistic love that is just lust turned inward. This is love as it should be: Compassionate, appreciative of beauty, seeing the good and caring enough to do something about the bad.
As I say, many a Christian has difficulty with this first expansion of love. It can take years for healing to progress far enough for one to truly and properly love himself in Christ. Then comes the next step: Loving our fellow believers. On the one hand, this may prove easier than loving self. On the other hand, loving even one other is difficult. They are so different! Think how much work it takes to maintain love in the marriage relationship. Love is not some passive, emotional glow. It is active. It requires taking action. You’re going to have your differences, and they may not go away. You are two individuals made one. That’s not an easy process, nor is it a short one. But, love can be had. Love can be maintained, so long as those who love are willing to do the work of love.
Expand that to the local congregation. I’ll guarantee there are those in the congregation who just rub you the wrong way. Pity the poor pastor who must not allow any such feeling to color his attitude towards even one member of the flock. And more: When tempers flare between the sheep in his charge, he must seek to restore love, even a love he may not feel in that moment. This is an aspect of the shepherding task which has thus far eluded my attention. Yet, this is far and away more difficult, isn’t it? Not only to maintain my own character and attitude, but to guide others in that endeavor even while in the midst of it: Who can hope to be equal to so great a task?
Yet even this tall order is not the extent of it. No! We are called to love as we were loved. How were we loved? It’s right there in that one verse everybody knows by reference. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but live eternally (Jn 3:16). Paul expands the wonder of it, lest we miss it. “While we were yet enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son” (Ro 5:10a). That death which proved His love: It was ours while we hated Him.
How, then, are we to love? “I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44). And don’t lose sight of how Jesus explains this. “This will show that you are sons of your Father in heaven. For, He causes His sun to rise on both evil and good; sends rain to both righteous and unrighteous” (Mt 5:45). It’s not enough to love God, to love family, to love friends and fellow believers. You have thus far done no more than the most benighted pagan. The most hardened of criminals is still likely to love his own children. To love within one’s clique? What’s particularly unusual about that? But, to love without limits! By this we will be known.
Calvin looks at the duty of love and notes, as Paul told the Corinthians, that it is pointless to observe all the myriad details of what one supposes constitutes holiness only to neglect the chief duty of love. This is by and large where Jesus lost it with the Pharisees. They made such a big deal of their piety. Look how carefully we observe all that the Law commands. But, they were straining at gnats. They missed the big picture. They were so wrapped up with keeping themselves clean, as they supposed cleanliness to be, that they failed to care about anybody. They saw God as a demanding overlord, not a loving Father. In their effort to appear proper representatives of God they utterly failed to represent God properly.
Noisy gongs! A clamorous aggravation to the senses, a stench in the nostrils, an offense against Life. That’s what it had come down to for them. This was the utmost hypocrisy which Jesus decried as leaving them no more than whitewashed tombs. You look nice enough, but you’re dead inside. If our love has not expanded to encompass its full scope, I fear we may be in that same place. “You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (Rev 3:1b).
Contrast this hypocrisy to that exhortation Peter delivers here. “Fervently love one another from the heart.” Note well that this is not an out of the blue change, but an intensification or amplification of what has already come to pass. “You have purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren.” There it is again! Love is the purpose. Purification is the means. And as purification continues and progresses, so does this love progress. But, it stems from one common seed: The love of God shed abroad in our hearts. As His love is made known in us, our love for Him grows. Yes, there are those moments of love in frustration, which is how I imagine Luther’s state.
There are times when love demands of us things we would prefer were not demanded. I need think no further than yesterday’s drive to arrive up here in Maine for a brief weekend vacation. For my part, the frustration of a rather longer drive than expected, and the need to navigate us to a decent place for lunch in the midst of unknown and unfamiliar territory led to an undesirable degree of irritability. (Is there a desirable degree? No, I suppose not.) This edginess was a thing that my wife, in her love for me, bore as graciously as one could ask. I, in my turn, must needs bear with the sudden urge to go dress shopping (there was a 50% off sale). I must accept that there are things she may wish to do that are not of the least interest to me. There are things she will do that I would never consider doing. There are ways in which she seems so forward in her dealings with strangers as to be rude. But, then, I must acknowledge that much of my reaction to these things has more to do with my own introverted nature than anything pertinent to social graces. But, I bear. In truth, I bear rather poorly. But, the Spirit speaks within me, reminding me that I am not the center of it all. (Stupid ego!) And, however ungraciously, I manage to remember, and to allow, and to accept.
Love is not always easy, but love is always the proper choice. Love prevails. The love for God within wells up. It reminds us that this love is a two-way thing. It is a two-way thing between Him and us. It is a two-way thing between us. And, as His love for us did not wait for an invitation, did not insist on reciprocity as a prerequisite, we understand that our love must be of that same nature. Indeed, love, in order to be love, must be of that same nature, for God is Love. He defines the concept. That which does not accord with His definition is not love, but cheap imitation. But, this love exceeds the love we have for spouse, for family. It must. It cannot but do so.
On the one hand, we are entered into a new family. By birth we became part of a human family. We have mother and father. We perhaps have siblings. We learn that, however much they may annoy us at times, yet the bonds of love amongst family members will hold. Be they ever so nasty, still they are kin, and that counts for something. But, by rebirth, we have become part of a spiritual family. Rest assured that there are still plentiful personality conflicts in this family. Rest assured that there will be many amongst our newfound siblings who rub us the wrong way. And yet, there is this bond between us, a bond stronger than the ties of kinship. We are one in the Spirit. The song may be old enough to seem trite, but the message remains accurate. This is where Jesus was leading when He looked around Him and said, “Those who do My Father’s will: These are my mother, my brothers, my sisters” (Mt 12:50). It’s a new family. It’s family redefined. For, we have but one Father. This is quite above Paul’s comment about the Corinthians having one spiritual father in his person. No, he would not make such a claim where the Father is in view. His point is quite different.
But for us, whose Father is God in heaven, there is this new definition of brotherhood. You are all my kin, for you are all born of His seed. You are not even distant cousins that I see only occasionally, if at all. No! You are brothers, sisters, each of you. And thus, the love I have for our Father wells up in me, and reaches out to encompass all of you whom He calls His own. This is how we are called to be. But, understand, it’s no effort of will that’s going to bring this to pass. Love is not something we can work up by some inner determination. Love is, as it were, the evidence of this process of sanctification which is ongoing within us, and that sanctification is, in large part, the work of the Spirit. Without Him, it is impossible. This is not to say, as I shall discuss shortly, that we are uninvolved in the process. It is to say that our involvement is utterly futile except the Spirit leads and inhabits the effort.
Now: Love has welled up in us and overflowed to our brothers and sisters by faith. But, love is not satisfied with so small a field. Our love, being God’s love, must expand farther. Our love, being for our brethren, must target all who might become our brethren at some future date. Look: We do not honestly, accurately know the true state of those we consider our fellow believers. We may find ourselves shocked, as I must suppose the apostles were shocked, to discover that some whom we have thought stalwarts of the faith were in fact deceivers, false friends, and agents of the enemy. We may find ourselves equally shocked to discover that some of those we thought were surely beyond redemption are now sitting beside us, as enamored of God as ourselves. Think how the church reacted to find Saul of Tarsus claiming to share their faith! Impossible! How could God even consider such a one to be His own? But, God had, and thank God for it.
We must look at the lost with the love of God. They are, after all, nothing worse than what we were. There is only this to distinguish us, really: “You have been born again.” Well, yes. And we had no more say in that rebirth than we did in birth. We are passive recipients of life; whether that physical life of first birth or the eternal life of the second. We have a very active role in how that life develops, but nothing whatsoever to do with its initial receipt. God loved us when we were thoroughly lost in sin. He brought us life when all we had claim to was death. He loved us when we were at our most unlovely. How shall we then live? We must come to the place of loving as He loves. We must look at the lost world around us with that same compassion in which God looked upon us. We must desire life for them because God is Life, and we love Him. He created these. He created these in His image. We love Him, so how can we not love that which bears His image? How can we wish anything but life upon these whom He considers dear?
Here is, perhaps, where the Universalists went astray. Our love is to be universal; expansive enough to encompass one and all. But that is not the same as saying that salvation shall ultimately encompass one and all. The potential, yes. That is assuredly sufficient to the task. But, the purpose does not permit of it. The word of God clearly declares that salvation is for the elect and only for the elect. God will have compassion on whom He wills to have compassion. The clear corollary of that statement is that He will not have compassion on those whom He does not will to do so. There is a Judgment. There is a Hell. If all are saved, this cannot stand. If this stands, all cannot be saved. But, until such time as God closes out time and proceeds to final justice, we love universally. We acknowledge every person ever encountered as a potential recipient of Life, a potential kinsman in Christ. If there is the chance we shall live with them for eternity, best we start learning to love them now.
Here, I just want to note that I am not alone in this perception of scope. The JFB arrives at the same conclusion. Yes, our love is to be particularly towards our fellow Christians, but secondarily, it must also be towards all who could be Christians. Expand to that bound, and one discovers there is no bound. For all could be Christians. There is therefore nobody in all the world that we are not called to love as God loves us. That’s going to be a tall order. There are doubtless many known to us from history that we could not love. Could you love Judas? Could you love Hitler? Could you welcome those who slaughter hundreds upon hundreds in their pursuit of a false god as your brothers? Can you, as Christ commands, love your enemy? He did. If, then, He is in me, then I must affirm that yes, I can. If I do not, then it is my own failing and certainly not His.
Before I move on to our part in this process, I would bring forth a few more arguments to its necessity. Love, Barnes says, is the evidence of regeneration. He is not chasing his own fantasies here, but only going where Scripture leads. “By our love for the brethren we know we have gone from death to life,” writes John (1Jn 3:14). He proceeds along these lines to the point of boldly proclaiming that if you hate your brother, there cannot possibly be eternal life in you. He reminds us of the love of Christ, who died for us. And then, because we are so inclined to a love consisting in no more than emotional passivity, He insists that love be active. If you close your heart to a brother’s need, don’t think to claim that God’s love abides in you. Don’t love in word alone, but with deed and truth (1Jn 3:15-18).
Finally, let me return to a simple point already made. This love for the brethren is taken as being already the case. Matthew Henry points this out. You already have this sincere love of the brethren. Now, Peter urges us to go higher. Be fervent. Pursue it with gusto. Be constant in pursuit of this love. Be about seeking out opportunities to express this love in deed and in truth. Bringing the previous thread to bear: Be looking for opportunities to love the unlovely, to love to the point of bringing life from the dead as the love of Christ pours out of us in ever overflowing abundance. We shall not lack His love for so sharing it.
With that, I think we can turn to the active part of love’s motor, which is our sanctification.
Active Participation (07/13/14-07/14/14)
As we follow Peter from chapter 1 into chapter 2, there is a question being put before us. It is not set out as a question, but the question is there to be assessed. It is the Francis Schaeffer question. Seeing it is the case that you have been born into eternity, how should you then live? Perhaps it helps to ask, “How should you now live?” What does eternal seed look like in the time of the not yet? That is the question Peter is answering for us, which is cause enough for us to ask. The not yet does not consist in passive waiting. Love is not passive. Love being the produce that comes of this eternal seed, it is the maturing of the seed which must have our attention. That maturation, Peter has told us, comes about in obedience to the truth.
Here’s where we run into trouble (at least, I do). We want to be at the goal line already. We want to be in possession of the end product. What we don’t particularly want is the effort required to attain to the goal. Process isn’t something we look forward to. I could again take the example of this little vacation. To enjoy the peace of being up here requires the process of several hours of driving. You can’t have the one without the other. For all that, you cannot have the vacation if you have not had the labor from which to take a break. You can’t afford it, and frankly, how can one vacate a thing never experienced? But, process doesn’t interest us. Sacrifice isn’t a thing for which we long.
Consider the message. “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Heb 12:11). Nobody likes the process. But, the wise recognize the results lying ahead and accept the process as necessary. “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mt 16:24). There will be sacrifice, and sacrifice, if it is to have any value, is personal. It requires a loss to self. I cannot sacrifice my brother’s goods to any worthwhile effect. I cannot tax my way into charitable giving.
Now, applied to this matter of maturing, the discipline is called sanctification. The sacrifice is not just loss to self. It is loss of self. How should you now live? As a child of heaven. How should you now live? In service to others. How should you now live? As near to righteousness as flesh allows. Whoa! Isn’t this works based salvation all over again? No. It is the only pure and reasonable response to the pure, reasonable word of the living God. It is the response of love. It is the recognition of the great God we serve. He has loved us so, and in our love for Him we cannot help but desire to be like Him. We are imperfect in this; horribly inept. We are indeed as babes, even though we have walked with Him some time now. We toddle at best, and are forever falling down, needing to be picked up again. But, Daddy is patient. Daddy is working with us.
That is our key! Daddy is working with us. God does not simply set us on our feet and say, “Go, and sin no more.” That part is there, yes. But, there is more. There is, “Here, let me show you. Here, let me help you.” In light of this marvelous relationship into which we have been called and admitted, it is impossible to suppose we can now sit back and relax.
Calvin’s thoughts on this might surprise those less familiar with the full scope of his theology. He says in effect that it is not enough to have been once called. What? Isn’t he the great proponent of once saved, always saved? Yes and no. He most assuredly teaches that we can be assured of our salvation. Our salvation does not depend upon us, being God start to finish. But, our salvation does not stand in isolation. The life of a new creature must follow. It is as inevitable as the fact that our growth from helpless babe to functioning adult will transpire. We will become first toddlers, then children, then teens, then adults. We will age and hopefully mature. We will leave the nest of parents in due time and establish a life independent of them. And it will hurt. It will hurt them, primarily, as they see they can no longer guard you from your mistakes. It is well to remember that God is a Father.
And the Father sends the Spirit to be our Counselor. Do you realize this is something different than saying you’ve got this good friend whispering over your shoulder, making suggestions? This is your Legal Advisor. He is so much more than Tutor or Teacher. He is your Expert, and He is at work in you to bring about this very sanctification that Peter urges upon us. Put this aside and take up that in its place. Rid yourselves of old habits and establish new. But, understand: If this was all about the Spirit working within us and we being passive recipients, there would be no cause for such an admonition. The Spirit does indeed work in us, but He does not supersede our own effort, as Matthew Henry points out. He empowers our effort so as to succeed. But, note well: It remains our effort! He cannot empower what isn’t happening. Or, at the very least, He will not do so.
The clear, unified teaching of the apostles is that there is indeed personal involvement and effort in the process of salvation, as Barnes notes. This terminology may be problematic for us. If salvation is the once-for-all work of God, how is it a process? If it’s all God, then why am I involved? How can it be both? My own sense is that we have to recognize a certain distinction in how Scripture and theology speak of salvation. There is salvation in the aspect of being called, elect, set apart by God. Then, there is salvation in the sense more typically referred to as sanctification. The one is of an instant and bears eternal consequence. The other is of eternity and bears consequence each instance.
The truth is that neither can stand a chance outside of God’s involvement. You cannot save yourself by any means. This is the whole plan and scope of redemption. You couldn’t do it. You never could, and you will never be able. Mankind simply doesn’t have what it takes. It takes Christ. That was the plan from before the start, as we saw in previous sections of this letter. That is still the plan, and ever shall be. But, sanctification is no different in that regard. Apart from the Holy Spirit you are not going to sanctify yourself. You don’t have it in you and never shall. But, here’s the distinction: In the matter of salvation, had God not personally initiated the transaction, you would never have sought Him, let alone found Him. In the matter of sanctification, the effort is mutually shared. I don’t know that I would go so far as to say the Spirit will not work except you invite Him to do so by your effort. But, it seems sufficiently clear that He will not long continue the work if you insist on Him doing it all. You have the seed of eternal life. The life of an eternal must follow. You have the seed of righteousness. The righteousness of life must follow. It’s not that this follow-on effort produces righteousness in us, really. It’s that it gives evidence of what God has implanted.
The apostles urge the greatest effort in pursuit of sanctification, and yet they never leave us room to suppose it is our effort that will achieve sanctification. It is effort undertaken in full realization of our utter dependence. Look at Peter’s description here. “Like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, so as to grow in salvation.” Watch that baby. It can’t do much. It can’t go get the milk, warm it, and so on. It can’t even bring bottle to lips. But, if it doesn’t suck the bottle, it shall have no nutrition. And, if there is no bottle to suck, it can certainly make its desire for nourishment known! It requires mutual effort for that baby to feed. Mother must provide milk, but baby must exert the energy of sucking it in. So it is with us. God provides the nourishment, but if we can’t be bothered to take it in, it is to no avail. Let us take the next step and recognize that if we can’t be bothered to take in the nourishment He provides, we have not been reborn.
In turning his attention to our proper nourishment, Peter gives us a list of several character traits we are to be done with. And make no mistake: These are not habits or occasional missteps. These are character traits. The commentaries make much of this list. It is to be noted, for example, that these are all second-table offenses, offenses not directly against God, but against neighbor. Beyond that, though, there is the way in which, as Matthew Henry points out, these sins build out from one another. Each sin in the list feeds the next. Considered in that light, it is rather telling that envy, which we tend to discount as just barely a sin, holds the penultimate position, only slander remaining in the downward spiral of anti-progress.
In keeping with this, the sins listed here (and don’t suppose it to be a complete list) are the sins that destroy charity. Wycliffe’s Commentary notes that all of these negative qualities are rooted in self-love, motivated and powered by self-love. That being the case, of course they run counter to charity, for charity is the polar opposite of self-love. And, if we are so focused on self and turned away from the need of our brother, it only stands to reason that our sins limit the word’s effectiveness. These things: Malice, guile, hypocrisy and the rest, all act to destroy love, the JFB notes. They are driving in the exact opposite direction, away from the goal towards which we are called.
This should hardly surprise us, being as Peter’s purpose is to draw a clear contrast. We are to stir up a more fervent love than we have already, and in order to do so, of course we will need to be quit of every character trait that runs counter to love. May as well try for the land speed record with chutes deployed from the starting line. It’s a fool’s errand, and none would pursue it in that manner. Just so, we cannot pursue fervent love while nourishing the twins of ego and hate. And have no misconceptions about this, either: This self-centered egoism cannot exist apart from hatred. Envy is hatred. That’s why it’s so close to the pinnacle of the negative. It hates that anybody else is enjoying their life. It hates that anybody has anything that self does not. It hates it, quite frankly, even when self doesn’t have any particular desire for that thing. It’s not the pleasure of the thing that matters, it’s that anybody besides me is experiencing pleasure. Hatred!
Oh! It’s so easy for me to count my pride a small matter. It’s like envy. Nobody’s being hurt by it, right? But, no! That’s wrong. This pride is a great evil. It’s pride that lies behind so much of the list here. It’s all self and nothing for you. It’s full-throated opposition to the love that is not merely commended to us, but commanded of us. I hit on this point before, and I’ll repeat it now: If I’m battling the list of 2:1, I’m going to have great difficulty achieving 1:22. I’ll go further. There’s not the least chance of achieving 1:22. Love cannot exist in this atmosphere. There’s nothing for it to breathe.
So, we arrive at Matthew Henry’s summary of the matter. “Our best services towards God will neither please him nor profit us if we be not conscientious in our duties to men.” I already brought in the testimony from 1John, so there’s no need to repeat it here. It simply confirms Mr. Henry’s point. Noisy gong syndrome is a deadly disease. It will require the Great Physician to cure us of it. But, we will have to pursue the PT which He prescribes. If we are not putting aside, then there can be no applying the healing balm. If we will not put aside, we have no cause to think He’s going to rip it from us. We are demonstrating that we are not His in the first place, and He has no reason to do so.
What Regeneration Is (07/14/14)
There is a point to be established here. I am actually rather surprised that most every commentary I look at joins me in making it. The point is simple: Being born again is not a progression to some higher level of Christianity. To ask whether one is a born again Christian is to use three words where one would suffice. To be born again is to be a Christian and to be a Christian is to be reborn. What seems to cause the confusion is a failure to recognize that this rebirth – being born again – is the same thing as regeneration. We cannot be Christians apart from regeneration. Unless ye be born of water and Spirit, Jesus said. Rebirth is not some optional ceremony for the sufficiently advanced. It is the beginning of Life.
I’ll add, as something of an aside, that Peter did not begin this section by setting out a program for his readers. He is not laying down the itinerary that leads us to Christ. He is stating what he deems to be establish fact. You have obeyed the truth. You have purified your souls. You do have a sincere love for your brothers in Christ, this family into which you have been engrafted. In short, you have been reborn. The proof is in. The seed has grown. This is not a recipe for entering the inner circle. Frankly, there is no inner circle. There is no second-tier Christian, no first-class believer. There is believer and there is non-believer. That’s the only distinction.
Calvin is by no means the only one making this point, although it is a bit surprising to hear the point made so early in history. No doubt, there were movements then as well as now which insisted on having found a new and improved Christianity. Certainly there were plenty who would have claimed Calvin was promoting that very thing. But, here Matthew Henry as well: All Christians are born again. I will set a period there because it suits my purpose. He proceeds to the implications and I shall do so as well shortly. But for just a moment stop right there. All Christians are born again. This should be obvious. Yet somehow it isn’t. Somehow we manage to occlude this most basic fact with our imaginations of what it all means and how it all works. May as well go up to the next person you meet and ask them if he is a birthed human. I suppose, given the march of science, it’s possible now that one might answer in the negative, but that just requires a redefining off what constitutes birth. The point stands. One cannot be alive apart from having been made alive by some means. It holds for the natural. It holds for the spiritual.
We have all of us been reborn who believe. We could not otherwise believe. We would not have it in us. There is another inevitability to recognize, as we proceed down Mr. Henry’s logic. Since we are reborn, we are now related. We are all of us brethren. I’ll add another: Having been reborn, our blinders have been removed and we are no long in bondage to sin. We not only can seek after righteousness, but we have the same innate desire for it as a baby has for milk. That is to say, we cannot but seek after righteousness. Brother, if you are not seeking after righteousness then it can only be that you are not truly brother. There can no more be a carnal Christian than a Christian who has not been born again.
Here, I must briefly turn to a point Barnes makes. It is one I am not immediately certain I can concur with. He writes, “The only reason why all people do not love and serve God is that they refuse to yield to what they know to be true and right.” Let me explain my quibble, for as I write that once more, I do see that it parallels Paul’s thoughts from the opening of Romans. The thing is, Barnes precedes this with a discussion about voluntary reception. True religion, he suggests, must be a matter of voluntary reception, and that voluntary reception results from the reasoning of the mind. This, to my thinking, leaves entirely too much in the hands of the fallen creature. If I must arrive at faith by reason, then am I not hostage to my own limitations?
Is my reason capable of arriving at faith? Or, is it more proper to recognize that it was faith that enabled the mind’s eye to see clearly enough to arrive at reason? The beginning of wisdom is, fear the Lord your God. But, I cannot fear Him whom I will not acknowledge, and I cannot acknowledge Him except He has called me. Except He has already implanted faith and caused it to grow, my mind will never reach out for Him, let alone find Him. Yes, we are called to seek Him, to knock that it may be opened. But, there remains this very real sense in which we cannot even think to knock until that door already lies wide open before us. Is that voluntary? After a fashion, yes. But, after a fashion, no. It is true that, having tasted and seen that the Lord is good, I will gladly choose to have more of the same. To that degree it is certainly a voluntary matter. But, it is simultaneously true that had He not sovereignly chosen to call, I should never have thought to answer.
Barnes, it seems, is looking at the other side of this matter; at those who are not the elect. Their moral culpability remains. As I said, Romans is clear on this. All are guilty and they are guilty because they have suppressed the Truth. To suppress it one must surely first recognize it. Otherwise, the crime might well be ignoring it or being ignorant of it, but not suppression. But, the charge is suppression. You know the Truth but refuse to hold to it. You know who God is, what He is like, but you will not yield obedience to Him even recognizing He is your creator.
I must reconsider the young man in the shoe store last night. I cannot make any claim of knowing the course of his life, but I can certainly make a claim regarding his present. His statements last night, trying very hard, one must suppose, to convince himself that there is neither heaven nor hell were yet forced to concede that the soul passes on to somewhere. And, if there is a somewhere, then one supposes somebody must make the call as to where somewhere shall be. But, this is effectively to concede heaven and hell after all, and with them, God to choose the destination. This puts that young man in a very dangerous place indeed. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them” (Ro 1:18-19).
Father, he is so near the truth and yet so far. He has heard and yet wanted to unhear. But, You, Lord open the ears of the deaf, the eyes of the blind. Grant, O God, that he may see. Let him taste that You are good. Let the seed of Your word find fertile soil, and, O! Lord! Let this area be infiltrated by the power of Your good name. Be gracious, my Savior, to these lost ones, and find them. Bring them home, my Lord, and let them be found brothers and sisters in Your household. Change them, Lord, and they are changed. Love them, and they shall live. For Your glory, God! All for Your glory.
Apostolic Unity (07/15/14)
Chapter 1 closes with the words, “And this is the word which was preached to you.” This: The doctrine which Peter has been setting down. But, note! This is what was preached to you, not what I am now preaching to you. In other words, what Peter is teaching is nothing new to his readers, but a reinforcement of that which Paul had preached to them from the outset. I have said it before and will doubtless say it many times more: There is one doctrine. There is not a Johannine doctrine separate from a Petrine doctrine separate from a Pauline doctrine. There is only sound doctrine. There is no Gospel beside the one delivered, and any who would come with a message contradictory to this Gospel, let him be accursed (Gal 1:9).
Peter has already stated his unity with those who planted in Asia Minor, speaking of things ‘announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven’ (1Pe 1:12). If it is preached by the Spirit and God is One, how can we suppose the Truth would be many? How can we attribute so varied and inconsistent a collection of doctrinal teachings to an unchanging God in whom is no shadow of turning? It’s foolishness to suppose this could be the case. Where there is disagreement as to the Truths taught in Scripture there can be at most one party in the right. The only way we can be certain there is at least one party in the right is to make God one party. But, as to what was delivered? There is one message from one God to one purpose.
I find that purpose particularly well summed up in the Wycliffe Commentary. In this word, this Gospel once delivered, is the significance of their faith. In this word is the significance of themselves. This was true of those to whom Peter wrote. It was true of Peter. It remains true for us. In this word is the significance of faith and of self. Apart from the Word, self is insignificant and fit only for destruction. Is the chaff significant? Only in so much as it requires attending to and presents a petty annoyance to the winnower. It is the grain which is significant. The grain is the Gospel. This, too, is the unified message of the Apostles. Here is the Word of eternal life. Where else would you go?
Family Redefined (07/15/14)
I will shift now to another aspect of this message which the JFB brought out. They note that Christian brotherhood flows from rebirth. See it laid out before you. You have this love for your brothers. Why? Well, quite simply because they are brothers. You are reborn. They are reborn. We are together reborn of the same seed. Christian brotherhood flows from this very fact. Christian love flows from this very fact.
This would pass me by without need to comment except that it has been necessary in recent days to consider what quite possibly constitutes a different gospel seeking entry into the church. There is this movement which has elevated family in its more mundane sense to a height equal to, if not superior to the church. They would hold that this is the clear message of the Scriptures, that God primarily expands His kingdom through families, fathers passing faith to children, and children supporting parents and so on.
But, see what has happened in this very section. It is not genealogies that determine inclusion in the kingdom. It is not primarily from family units that the Church is composed. It is by rebirth. Is there benefit to being born of godly parents? Absolutely! There was great benefit to being a 1st century Jew, too. But, it didn’t do many of them any good. It’s not about earthly inheritance. It’s not about genetics. It’s about being reborn of eternal seed. At some point in every family’s history that rebirth is in spite of family rather than because of.
The kingdom is composed of those reborn according to the will and the calling of God the Father. The kingdom is not composed of clans. It is not a heritage one can pass down unless God is pleased to do the passing. Yes, we can train up. Yes, we most assuredly should train up. But, we can no more assure the next generation’s entry into heaven than we can assure that the seed planted in the spring will produce harvest in the fall. The harvest belongs to God to determine. We can only do our part and pray.
Tuning the Message (07/15/14)
Today seems to be the day for short subjects. The next topic for me is the matter of tuning the message. Let me state clearly at the outset that I am not about to discuss making the Gospel relevant to the culture. I am far more interested in making the culture relevant to the Gospel. Rather, my concern in this section is shaped by something that Barnes has taken note of in considering the topic of milk for newborn babes. This is something that should concern me greatly as a teacher.
Barnes says in effect that the start greatly influences the form piety will maintain for all of one’s Christian life. This is at once obvious and a matter of greatest depth. If the seed is bad, the plant which grows from it can hardly be good. But, I think he’s dealing with something less stark. It’s not that piety will either be present or absent based on the start, but the qualities it displays may differ greatly.
It is easiest, I think, to consider this from a denominational perspective. If you have come to faith in the Catholic church, you are going to have certain perspectives towards the need for works and penance and the like that may never depart. If you were raised a Baptist, there are going to be views on the subject of baptism that you will never see eye to eye with a Presbyterian. If Presbyterian (and aware of official doctrine) you will subscribe to a view of predestination that the Methodist would find nearly anathema. Or, take a more modern example. If your faith has been established in a Pentecostal church, it’s going to be hard to view any other form of church as being alive at all. And, if you were established in any other church, the Charismatics and Pentecostals are always going to be a tad suspect. I perhaps paint the picture too sharply, but the point holds. Where you start determines in some degree where you will finish.
In my own case, what all must I consider? The first church I have memory of is Baptist, but apart from the denomination and vague memories of the preacher (mostly from later years, really) I can find little enough there to consider as seed stock. In youth, I was raised in a typical New England Congregational church, which is to say I was being given a very confused message. Proud Mary and Bloody Well Right would seem rather odd choices for hymns, and yet these are both things I recall very clearly. Transcendental meditation would seem a matter to warn against rather than to promote in youth group, but again: This is what we got. Yes, we had our more traditional Sunday School fare, and I have my ten or twelve medallions to prove I was present and accounted for; but there was little of faith to be learned here, other than that farmers were possessed of a rather poor approximation of it.
The real conversion process, from my perspective, came in an Assemblies of God church, and proceeded nicely through a lengthy stint in a relatively independent Charismatic church. Yes, that’s going to color one’s perspective. Being around the constant practice of spiritual gifts it would be odd not to find some validity in their use. Being perhaps a bit more inclined towards logic and reason, it would be equally odd not to recognize that much of that practice is indeed suspect. I would like to believe I developed a fairly discerning nose. But, I would also accept that my discernment was not necessarily (not even likely) as well developed as I wanted to think.
But, let me shift the direction a bit. The issue of starting well is not just in the particular distinctives one church may hold over against another set. Those distinctives, let us accept for the moment, are entirely accurate; absolutely on point. But, how are they presented? Here, again, I might question some of the practices of this family-elevating movement I’m dealing with. Talk to the typical home schooler (assuming such a creature to exist) and you will likely be told that there is no such thing as age-appropriate learning. No, no. All children should be taught together and in like fashion. To believe otherwise is to allow humanist philosophies to trump godly principles.
Yet, it is clear that the apostles, Paul certainly, taught in age appropriate fashions. He writes to that very point. “I could not give you meat. You weren’t ready for it.” Nobody would argue this point when it comes to diet. There is an age below which you just don’t do solids because the body simply isn’t equipped to handle them. The same holds with intellectual development, as much as both the homeschool movement and many of our modern teaching philosophies seek to deny it. There is an age at which rote learning and memorization is appropriate. There is another age when powers of reasoning are beginning to develop and should be encouraged. And, there is an age at which the student is quite likely going to suppose himself advanced beyond his teacher. This will eventually be followed by an age of regret, recognizing that such was never the case.
Humankind follows developmental stages. Why is that? At risk of seeming far too simple, we can write it down to the fact that God made us this way. As with so much (everything) about life, it seems the physical models itself after the spiritual. The one points to the truths of the other, and this is something Jesus was constantly drawing on. You see it apply here. Now, lift your eyes and your thoughts. It applies there as well.
The issue for us, as we seek to teach the Truth of God, is that we must needs be aware of these developmental stages. We cannot expect to teach the newly reborn in the same way we teach those who have arrived at some level of maturity. We cannot teach the one coming from a highly educated background in the same way we teach the one coming from the streets. There is a degree to which we do indeed need to tailor the message, but it is not a question of shaping it to suit society. It’s a question of shaping it to reach society.
Here, Paul once again sets an example. He goes to Greece not as one ignorant of their culture, but as one quite aware of it. You worship this god, you worship that god. You seek so much to cover all bases that you even erect this altar to any unknown god you may have missed. But, let me tell you about that one you missed. He’s the only One! Or, watch him deal with Crete. He’s familiar with their own writings, their own poets. He is thus able to bring their own culture to bear on the Truth. Is that really so far different from the model Christ sets down? “You have heard it said, but I say.”
So, then: We adjust to be comprehensible. That’s really the crux of it. If we are dealing with new Christians and seeking to instill in them an appreciation for the fine distinctions between Calvin and Arminius, we aren’t helping. We’re preening. If, on the other hand, we never get beyond the basics with any who are under our care, we are creating an infantile church that will be to no effect.
Let me return to Barnes and try and close out this thought. He advises that the proper food of piety is simple truth. Now, let me just say that piety is not a four letter word. There is a piousness which is rightly condemned because it is false in every regard; a mask set over an interior life wholly corrupted. But, that’s not what Barnes is talking about. He’s discussing true piety, inward piety which will eventually show through in outward practice. Nearer the start of faith we have need of more basic Truths. We need the underpinning, the simple form. We need the Gospel in easily digestible simplicity: Milk. But, piety will grow in proportion as it is fed properly. The time will come for deeper things. Precept upon precept, we grow. If we remain with the simple, we remain simple ourselves, but not simple as in pure: simple as in unwise. This is not our call. We are to grow in wisdom and in stature as concerns this life reborn.
Impermanence of Man (07/16/14)
The contrast Peter has put on display here is stark: Perishable versus imperishable; impermanent versus permanent. The passage he quotes from Isaiah is aimed at confronting us with just how thoroughly impermanent we are. Calvin writes, “Until their own emptiness is shown to men, they are not prepared to receive the grace of God.” I’m not sure that’s strong enough a statement yet. It seems to me that for many of us, even when our emptiness has been made painfully obvious, still we are not prepared. Many of us, faced with this picture, deny the implications.
Consider the crowd at a typical funeral. Can there be any clearer depiction of just how impermanent we are? Yet, the majority of those attending will feel no more than a momentary sense of mortality. The older ones might be more inclined to sense their own departure time drawing nearer. But, even so, life goes on and eventually one begins to suppose once more that it shall continue to do so. For the young? Old age seems impossibly far away.
That said, there is certainly an awareness of his impermanence which a man cannot deny entirely, however much he tries. There is a reason that we applaud every medical advance that allows us to persist a bit longer. There is a reason that things like cryogenics catch the imagination. There is a reason why many seek to, as we say, make a name for themselves. If they cannot persist physically, they wish to do so in memory. They would be known for something, remembered down through the ages. Why? If death is the end, what purpose is there in this attempted immortality?
Truth is, mankind knows its immortality even as it knows its mortality. We cannot but recognize the reality of the situation. “There is no stability in anything that man does or produces,” writes Mr. Barnes. We know that. We know that however grand a thing we achieve, however seemingly permanent the structures we may build or the statues we may carve, in the end they will not last.
The author of one of the websites I frequent of a morning has been posting a travelogue of his journey to certain corners of Europe this week. One looks at Venice and sees the seeming permanence. One can think of Rome, with its millennia-old edifices. It seems as if it shall last forever. But, it won’t. There will come a day when even Julius, Augustus and Nero are utterly forgotten. Part of this travelogue showed a set of statues depicting the Muses. No doubt, there was a time when the Muses themselves seemed certain and permanent. Of course people will go on worshiping them forever. So, too, all the other gods. Astarte? Certainly she shall always have her worshipers. Baal? What could happen to him? Zeus? Not going anywhere. But, they’re all gone. Allah will be just as gone in due time, toppled like Dagon before him; likewise Buddha, Shiva, and all the other poseurs.
What was striking, though, was that the statues themselves were and are thought to be so permanent. It’s stone, after all, marble. What could destroy it? Time and atmosphere. One commenter bemoaned the effects of man-made pollutants. Alas! The evils of acid rain. Not to diminish the reality of pollution, but frankly if it had not been this it would be something else. There is no stability to be had in the man-made. The greatest artifice of man cannot hope to stand up to eternity.
We understand that the makers of most consumer goods have long since adopted a pursuit of planned obsolescence. Got to keep the market alive, so make the product to fail. Great lengths are gone to in order to discern exactly how long the product is likely to last so as to ensure that warrantees don’t become too costly to maintain. Guarantee the drive train for five years. Design it for six. Just enough to get past the replacement date, and everybody’s happy. Or at least, everybody’s willing to settle.
What we fail to recognize is all of human existence comes with an expiration date. We are all of us products created with the principle of planned obsolescence. We live. We die. However hard we strive for length of days, yet our days come to an end. Yet, there is no cause for fatalism in this knowledge. There is no reason for despair. Behold! You have been reborn of imperishable seed!
Oh, people! Would you know permanence? There is but one way. There is rebirth. A man must be born again if he is to see heaven. I tell you another, sadder truth. Man is permanent after his fashion. There is an eternity ahead. Those reborn of this imperishable seed shall know an eternity in heaven, freed from every sorrow and failure known to us in this life and enjoying a deep, everlasting fellowship with their Creator and Savior. For the rest? Eternity still awaits, but of a different flavor. There is a heaven and there is a hell. What there is not is what the more sullen poets have referred to as sweet surcease. No. It is not into the dark night of oblivion we go in our passing. We go into eternity: Either eternity spent in the pleasure of God’s company or eternity spent in the agony of just punishment, torment without end – a living death that never quite reaches its terminus. This is the real choice, to the degree there is a choice. Why will you choose this endless agony when it need not be your lot?
Permanence of God and Gospel (07/16/14)
Over against our fading glory is set the unfading glory of God. It is particularly displayed for us here in the word of the Gospel. That is the seed of eternity, the imperishable seed implanted. Here, the JFB makes a point that resonates with me. Even should ministry cease, they note, the Gospel will not. Make no mistake about this! Even the Church must one day come to its end. There will not always be pastors, teachers and evangelists seeking the lost. The end of the age does arrive at some point, and all who are the called of God shall be brought home to Him. But, the Gospel remains.
Do I make the case too strong? I think not. We had this discussion very briefly a while ago, the pastor and I. To his thinking, the words of Romans 10:14-15, with the clause, “How shall they hear without a preacher?” requires us to accept that preachers are a necessity for the Gospel’s spread. Apart from the preaching of the word of God, the reasoning goes, the lost shall never hear and shall remain forever lost.
For my part, I find that necessity too strong. I wholly admit and accept that this is the normal course of God’s economy of salvation. But, I simultaneously have to hold with this point from the JFB. Even should ministry cease, the Gospel does not. Even if there be no preacher to go, yet the elect shall hear and be saved. Salvation, after all, is first, last and always the work of God. God, to be God, cannot be made dependent upon man. Man is wholly dependent on God. His work is not subject to our vagaries. His success does not hinge upon our talents. He is building the house, and the house shall therefore be built. Be it by our hands, by another’s hands, or by His own, that house will surely be built, and it shall just as surely stand for God is its architect and builder.
God alone, and because it is His, the Gospel, shall stand forever. There only are we able to find the permanence we seek. But, hear! Even the giants of our faith, even the Calvins and Luthers, even the Peters and Pauls will fade. I dare say they would have it no other way. None of these men were seeking to make a name for themselves. Every one of them, I am quite certain, had at their core the same mindset expressed by John the Baptist. “He must increase. I must decrease.” He is permanent. I am but a passing shadow. He is Light and life. I am this blade of grass on a sandy slope; gone almost so soon as I have come. But, in Christ, I have found my permanence. In Christ, I have found my significance. Not in what I am able to do for Him, for my best offerings remain just as filthy as ever. No! But, I have my significance in Him. In Him I live. In Him I move. In Him I have being, and apart from Him I should be no more. Blessed be His holy Name forever and ever. Amen!
Reasonable, Reasoned Faith (07/16/14-07/17/14)
Before I depart this section of Peter’s letter, I must contemplate the closing sequence of his thought here. But, let me state it in reverse. “If you have tasted the kindness of the Lord, long for the pure milk of the word so as to grow in respect to salvation.” It’s interesting how each of the commentaries I read feels it necessary to explain that this ‘if’ does not express doubt. It cannot, for he has already stated outright that they have every evidence of being such tasters of God’s goodness. Peter is not questioning their faith, he is presenting a logic equation.
Given the line of work I’m in, these if/then clauses are far more likely to read as premise and conclusion, rather than expressions of mere possibility. If, then. This being the case, that necessarily follows. When we put those into our programs, it is not because we doubt the conditional clause shall ever be satisfied. We put them in because we are quite certain the clause shall be satisfied, and when it is that which follows must also transpire.
It is in this same sense that Peter writes. If you’ve had a taste, it is only natural, logical, sensible that you should long for more. I would even go so far as to say it is necessary in that particular, philosophical sense that you will long for more. It cannot be otherwise. If you do not long for more, the only possible conclusion to be reached is that you’ve never tasted. So, yes, you could read a bit of doubt into the construct, but only if you had not had Peter’s previous assertions. The conditional has already been met, he has said. Ergo, there is but one conclusion.
What, then, should we draw from Peter’s construct? If a taste leads us to drink deeply, to nourish ourselves so as to grow; how are we to understand this? Matthew Henry writes that our endeavor should be, “to understand and experience more and more of his grace.” That’s the purpose of these morning exercises of mine. If I am merely stuffing myself with data regarding the intricacies of doctrine, I am failing. If, on the other hand, I am ignoring the deep truths of God and satisfied to remain with what we might call surface knowledge, I am also failing.
We are to be free from guile, not from understanding, according to Calvin. This is not mere opinion on his part, but a reflection of Scripture’s own teaching. We cannot attain to understanding except by the effort of study. But, we cannot have the full benefit of our study except by the indwelling Holy Spirit enlightening our mind to understand and strengthening our will to enact that which we have come to understand. You have purified your souls, Peter wrote. Active Voice. You are the one doing the purifying. It’s not going to happen without your effort. We study to show ourselves approved. We show ourselves approved by obedience to the Truth revealed in study. We prove our understanding by our sincere, honest, unfeigned love of our new family in Christ. We have confidence in that this love grows over time.
The JFB presents us with a citation from Tertullian which sums up the case quite nicely. “The word is to be desired with appetite as the cause of life, swallowed in the hearing, chewed as cud is, by rumination with the understanding, and digested by faith.” That really nails it. If we stop at understanding, we stop short. We have a mouthful of knowledge, but if we fail to digest it, that knowledge is to no avail.
One further quote from the JFB: “The Bible is a living organism, not a haphazard collection of fragments.” You know, these gentlemen simply have a much finder depth of perception. There was that point from Barnes in the last study, concerning the implications of God’s foreknowledge and its necessitating us to understand that Creation came about to give place to the plan of Redemption, rather than Redemption coming as a bandage upon a faulty Creation. Now, we have this. It is again at once obvious and deeply profound. We understand it at one level, yet fail to really live in accord with that understanding.
How many, for example, suppose the Old Testament a thing to be ignored apart from perhaps the Psalms and Proverbs? How many fail to observe the essential unity of testimony amongst the Gospels, or amongst the Apostles? Why, if we grasp this basic point, are so many at pains to declare that Paul attempted to rewrite what Jesus had taught, or that Peter and Paul are on different wavelengths; never mind John? But, if the Bible is a living organism, we are forced to accept that each and every piece of it has a purpose in existence. God did not patch it together any more than He patched Creation. It is by design and the wise man will seek to comprehend the design so as to better avail himself of the parts.
I have that in mind as an opening thought for next fall’s Genesis study. God willing, I shall remember it at that time. For now, it seems a fitting thought upon which to stop.
