Concert Follow-Up
August 29, 2009
Thanks for a fun night of fellowship and God-glorifying music – to Todd and to all who attended the concert last night.
And, to wrap it all up, here’s Todd and little Emily singing “Jesus Loves Me.”
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Todd MacDonald Concert!
August 25, 2009
On Friday evening, August 28th, we are glad to be hosting Todd MacDonald in concert. The concert starts at 7:30, it’s free (love offering taken), and we’ll have a coffeehouse setting in our fellowship hall (bring your own mug). We look forward to seeing you there.
How a Two Kingdom Theology Can Help You Drive a Bus
August 25, 2009
On August 19, 2009 the Des Moine Register carried a story about a city bus driver who refused to drive her bus because it carried a pro-atheist advertisement. According the article, the bus driver’s husband said, “to me, it’s kind of wrong to deny a person of their job because they have a belief.”
And it is precisely here where a solid biblical understanding of two-kingdom theology can help.
I appreciate the Christian commitment of the bus-driver and her sincere desire to do what she believe right. However, it seems to me that she did the wrong thing. Here’s why…
To begin, Jesus himself makes it very clear that it is God’s will for Christians to remain in this world. Specifically, in his high priestly prayer Jesus prays, not that God would take Christians out of the world, but that he would simply protect them from the evil one (John 17:15). Practically, this means that God has called Christians to live in a broken world that is infiltrated with sin and the influence of the evil one, and the challenge for the Christian (thus Jesus’ prayer) is to live a sanctified life in this world in testimony to the truths of the Gospel.
For our sake, what is important in Jesus’ prayer is the significance of this calling to remain in the world. Since we’ve not been taken out of the world this means that our normal expectation of life is daily encounters with corruption, sin, and evil as we live in the world. All people, even Christians, ride buses with racy, anti-Christian, or otherwise sinful advertisements – and as Christians we do this precisely because we are called by our Lord to live in the world.
Jesus makes the point most clearly when he was asked, “Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” (Luke 20:22). The debate would have been, “Can a faithful believer really give money in support of such a corrupt, sinful, blasphemous government?” Jesus answer? “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25). In other words, understand that you live as a citizen of two kingdoms, and you have distinct responsibilities within each. As a citizen of the world, you’ve got to pay taxes, even if the money goes to a corrupt government. And, as a city employee, you’ve got to drive that bus, even if the advertisements on it are corrupt. In fact, a strong argument could be made that to not drive that bus is the true sin – failing to do your job well, failing to serve your fellow man who needs to get to work on time.
The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come”
August 14, 2009
The last reference in the Bible to God’s people (the Church) is as a bride, and the last word credited to this Bride, in reference to Christ her Bridegroom, is simply, “Come” (Rev. 22:17). Ray Ortlund Jr. explains the powerful significance of this culminating passage in the book of Revelation:
John’s pastoral purpose in setting forth this great vision of the end is focused into one sharply defined point in 22:17, where he calls the church to the single, essential response appropriate to all that has been shown: The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come’ (RSV). The suffering church militant of this present evil age is to cultivate one great impulse throbbing in her soul, viz. an aching longing for the Bridegroom to come to her, to take her in his arms, with nothing within herself to wrest her away, and to be held there for ever. Until such time as he is pleased to come, she is to centre her life around ‘the love of Jesus Christ, the King, Bridegroom, and Husband of his church….
Ray Ortlund Jr., God’s Unfaithful Wife: A Biblical Theology of Spiritual Adultery (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2002), 168-169.
Precious Words for Husbands from John Chrysostom
August 13, 2009
More from Chrysostom on the implications of our marriage to Christ. This time he comments on Ephesians 5:25:
Pay attention to love’s high standard. If you take the premise that your wife should submit to you, as the church submits to Christ, then you should also take the same kind of careful, sacrificial thought for her that Christ takes for the church. Even if you must offer your own life for her, you must not refuse. Even if you must undergo countless struggles on her behalf and have all kinds of things to endure and suffer, you must not refuse. Even if you suffer all this, you have still done not as much as Christ has for the church. For you are already married when you act this way, whereas Christ is acting for one who has rejected and hated him. So, just as he, when she was rejecting, hating, spurning and nagging him, brought her to trust him by his great solicitude, not by threatening, lording it over her or intimidating her or anything like that, so must you also act toward your wife.
Mark J. Edwards, ed., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 195.
John Chrysostom on the Physical Implications of Being the Bride of Christ
August 13, 2009
On my study leave this week I am working on an exegetical study of Revelation 19:7-8:
“Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure” – for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. (ESV)
The focus of my studies revolves around the significance of the Bride, that is Christ’s church, making herself ready for “the marriage of the Lamb.” From a pastoral perspective I am asking, “How does the church prepare for its wedding day?” And, as John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) points out so well, to be betrothed to Christ carries not only spiritual implications, but physical implications as well. Here is what he says in his homily on 1 Cor. 6:15:
For supposing you had a daughter, and in extreme madness had let her out to a procurer for hire, and made her live a harlot’s life, and then a king’s son were to pass by, and free her from that slavery, and join her in marriage to himself; you could have no power thenceforth to bring her into the brothel. For you gave her up once for all, and sold her. Such as this is our case also. We let out our own flesh for hire unto the Devil, that grievous procurer: Christ saw and set it free, and withdrew it from that evil tyranny; it is not then ours any more but His who delivered it. If you be willing to use it as a King’s bride, there is none to hinder; but if you bring it where it was before, you will suffer just what they ought who are guilty of such outrages. Wherefore you should rather adorn instead of disgracing it.
Chrysostom’s point: Not even our bodies are our own since we are now wed to Christ. Indeed, this is what Paul teaches in 1 Cor. 6:15, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?”
In a world in which promoscuity and sexual exploits are the norm, may we remember our true Bridegroom, and with the help of God’s grace may we physically prepare for the glorious wedding day that awaits.
Justification: Eschatological and Irreversible
August 10, 2009
From J.V. Fesko’s very good book, Justification: Understanding the Classic Reformed Doctrine, this paragraph that speaks a very encouraging word in regards to the believer’s justification.
For the one united to Christ by faith, this means he passes through the eschatological wrath of God the Father, not on the last day, but in Christ’s crucifixion; Christ bears the wrath of the final judgment on behalf of those who look to him in faith. The believer is judged in Christ in the present, but that judgment is eschatological and final. Additionally, when the believer is declared righteous through faith alone in Christ alone, that declaration is final; it is eschatological and irreversible. Just as the wrath of the final judgment comes into the present in the crucifixion of Christ, so too the eschatological declaration of righteousness, the believer’s justification, is a present reality (p. 105).
Good news indeed!
