Yesterday I noticed something for the first time in Revelation. Now I’ve noticed it, it seems obvious.

The representatives of the church down on earth are called angels in each of the letters to the 7 churches. Though ‘angels’ it seems clear to me they are the officers/ elders/ ministers of the 7 churches in Asia. Calling them angels highlights one of the themes of the book – the transition from the old covenant mediated by angels (Hebrews 2:2, Galatians 3:19) to the new covenant in which humanity has (in Christ) attained maturity, entered the heavenly sanctuary and taken a seat alongside the angels in God’s court (Hebrews 2:10-11, Galatians 3:23-26) . Hence angels and men are now co-equal co-workers in the kingdom (19:10).

But, when John ascends into heaven he encounters 24 elders before the throne. It seems that they are somehow representative of the church too (24 = 2×12, 12 apostles, 12 tribes of Israel). They are kings (they sit on thrones, have crowns, 12 is a governmental number), and they are also priests (like the 24 divisions of singers and Priestly divisions of 1 Chronicles 24 and 25), just like the church in 1:6.

What’s interesting about this is that angels are usually ‘in heaven’ whereas ‘elders’ is a standard name for the leaders of God’s people here on earth. So…

The heavenly representatives of the church are called elders, emphasising that they represent, in heaven, the church on earth. They are seated on thrones in the heavenly places, but they are seated there as elders – the heads of God’s people.

The earthly representatives of the church are called angels, emphasising that though on earth, they really are members of God’s heavenly court and part of the starry host which governs the cosmos (Rev 1:20, Genesis 1:16, Daniel 12:3). They are leaders of the people of God on earth, but they do so as ‘angels’ – part of the heavenly cabinet of God, and ministers of his covenant.

The church is earthly and heavenly, heavenly and earthly, and all at the same time. In a book that is all about the prophet’s ascent into the heavenlies to witness worship there and the impact it has on earth, and then climaxes with the marriage of earth and heaven, this can be no accident.

 

One of my favourite occasional reads over the last couple of years has been Credenda/ Agenda. It’s witty, polemical, thought-provoking, and all that sort of thing. Much like a Presbyterian version of The Briefing with a sense of humour*.

Anyway, Credenda (oh yes, you can even shorten the name if you like, it’s that sort of a publication) has now become an almost exclusively online thing. Which means updates are more regular, rather than coming altogether every quarter in one issue. Recent examples include an article on evangelism to Mormons (we have some of those here in Sheffield), and one I really like on ecoguilt.

The website is here. Go have a look. Some stuff will provoke, some will confuse, some will delight. Most will edify in some way or another.

*[Disclaimer: I hereby declare my love for and enjoyment of the Briefing over a number of years. Look, I subscribe, alright? Honestly, with a cherry on top. But it really isn't all that funny, that's all I'm saying!]

Today is Reformation Day. On October 31st 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Cathedral in Wittenberg. This standard procedure for engaging debate would prove a little more inflammatory than Luther thought possible at the time. The Protestant Reformation happened as a result. With this in mind, I’ve been posting some material on people changed by reading the book of Romans, mainly taken from F.F. Bruce’s Tyndale commentary on the same.

3. John Wesley

“In the evening of 24 May 1738, John Wesley ‘went very willingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine,’ he wrote in his journal, ‘while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.  I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken my sins away even mine; and saved me from the law of sin and death.’ That critical moment in John Wesley’s life was the event above all others which launched the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century.”

It is said that Wesley, in serving the gospel, rode 250, 000 miles, gave away £30, 000 and preached 40, 000 sermons.

 

Today is Reformation Day. On October 31st 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Cathedral in Wittenberg. This standard procedure for engaging debate would prove a little more inflammatory than Luther thought possible at the time. The Protestant Reformation happened as a result. With this in mind, I’ve been posting some material on people changed by reading the book of Romans, mainly taken from F.F. Bruce’s Tyndale commentary on the same.

2. Martin Luther

“In November 1515, Martin Luther, Augustinian monk and Professor of Sacred Theology in the University of Wittenberg, began to expound Paul’s Epistle to the Romans to his students, and continued this course until the following September. As he prepared his lectures, he came more and more to appreciate the centrality of the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. ‘I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans,’ he wrote, ‘and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “the righteousness of God”, because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and deals righteously in punishing the unrighteous…Night and day I pondered until… I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before “the righteousness of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul because to me a gateway to heaven.’ The consequences of this new insight which Martin Luther gained from the study of Romans are writ large in history.” [p58-59]

Although the reformation was about more than the doctrine of justification, it was one of the key battle grounds between the Reformers and Rome. In the coming decades many would put their lives on the line for the truth that we are justified by faith alone through grace alone, and not because of any kind of works done by us. Luther’s re-discovery of something at the very heart of the gospel would form a centrepiece in the preaching of that gospel in the western world for the next two centuries – preaching that set people free from sin and guilt, reformed the church, planted churches, sparked revolutions – in short, changed the world.

Tomorrow is Reformation Day. On October 31st 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Cathedral in Wittenberg. This standard procedure for engaging debate would prove a little more inflammatory than Luther thought possible at the time. The Protestant Reformation happened as a result. With this in mind, today and tomorrow I’m going to post some material on people changed by reading the book of Romans, mainly taken from F.F. Bruce’s Tyndale commentary on the same.

1. St Augustine of Hippo

“In the summer of AD386 Aurelius Augustinus, native of Tagaste in North Africa, and now for two years Professor of Rhetoric at Milan, sat weeping in the garden of his friend Alypius, almost persuaded to begin a new life, yet lacking the final resolution to break with the old. As he sat, he heard a child singing in a neighbouring house, Tolle, lege! Tolle, lege! (‘Take up and read! Take up and read!). Taking the scroll which lay at his friend’s side, he let his eyes rest on the words: ‘not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof’ (Rom. xiii. 13b-14). ‘No further would I read,’ he tells us, ‘nor had I any need; instantly, at the end of this sentence, a clear light flooded my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished away.’ What the Church and the world owe to this influx of light, which illuminated Augustine’s mind as he read these words of Paul is something beyond our power to compute.” [p58]

Augustine went on to be one the most important teachers and Church leaders in the early centuries of Christianity. His thinking on the Church and on the Trinity shaped at least the next 1100 years of Christianity massively, his battle against the legalistic teaching of Pelagius was invaluable in defending the gospel of grace for centuries to come, and even today people still read his sermons.

John Richardson has posted an excellent piece related to the BNP-BBC merry-go-round from last week. I’m going to quote one or two bits from it, but you really should just leave this blog and go read it. Particularly insightful are his comments on why our intelligentsia, government and media, seem to be incapable of dispatching with the BNP with the kind of nonchalant precision appropriate for a teeny-weeny fringe party like they are.

The first is that they are products of an educational system which did not teach them to think. It especially did not teach them to think about positions which disagreed with the popular morality of their educators.

But the other reason why our intelligentsia lack confidence is that, thanks to recent government policy, they have come to rely on force, not on argument. Why bother presenting a case when you can just ban someone from speaking, or blockade the arena where they would appear, or —best of all —pass a law which will make it illegal for them to speak in these terms at all.

We are a society that, like the Question Time audience, cheers and boos to the cues in which it has been coached. And woe betide the person who truly stands out, or goes against the crowd. But sometimes one gets the feeling we are just being set up for the next stage, whatever that might be.

The article he references from the Times is HERE. And I imagine Question Time is still on iplayer.

Pastor Tim Keller, though I’ve never spoken with him personally, has nevertheless helped me enormously in my discipleship the last few years. In fact, Tim Keller’s ministry was one of my entry-points to the creation-affirming, holistic, civilisation-building theology to which this blog is dedicated. It is therefore, in my opinion, great news for Christ’s kingdom that around 150 of his sermons are available for free from his church’s website, HERE. He combines some great things – a love for the Puritans, a generally Kuyperian slant on culture, a dedication to expository preaching, a certain degree of Anglophilia, a dash of Frame’s perspectivalism, love for the urban poor, and a passion for church-planting.

I recently had a conversation with someone who was asking questions about issues around special revelation and whether or not general revelation can save, the salvation of the unevangelised, the justice of God in it all, and implications for our mission and evangelistic practices here in the UK. Part of the problem was some confusing errors this person had heard from a friend (in church leadership nonetheless!) that almost portrayed understanding of the gospel as an add-on for maturation rather than something needful for salvation.

We talked about Romans 1, Psalm 19, Paul’s summary and understanding of the gospel, and of avoiding the error of saying ‘unless you understand this list of doctrines and especially this particular biblical teaching about the mechanics of salvation you cannot be saved’ on the one hand, and the opposite error of saying on the other hand that ‘so long as someone seems to want to serve ‘God’ then they’re in.’ We also talked about why/ how it is that general revelation can’t save, and how (from one perspective) God owes it to no-one that they hear the gospel.

However, a few days later he came back with another question, one that he feared was a deal-breaker to the whole idea that you can’t be saved unless you hear the gospel. The question was ‘but what about “Abraham was justified by faith”?’

And this friend was brought up in a flagship bible-teaching evangelical church, and has been attending Central for over two years. Somehow he’d been able, in all that, to miss the fact that Abraham heard and believed the gospel for his justification (Galatians 3:7-8, Romans 4:13, 18). Of course it’s not that the churches he’s attended don’t believe or preach that. And of course things need saying 50 times before most of any of us ‘get’ it. But that just underlines the point I’m trying to make.

We need to preach the gospel from the OT and preach the OT as gospel.

The 2nd issue of Ecclesia Reformanda arrived the other day through my letterbox. If possible, this one looks even better than the first one. So over the next few weeks I’ll be reading

• Jeffers on Jeremiah 32:37-41 in the baptism debates
• Lloyd on B. B. Warfield’s doctrine of scripture
• White on Romans 2:1-16
• Batchelor on Trinity and Eschatology

You can subscribe to ER here.

I’m reading David Chilton’s commentary on Revelation for some lectures I’m giving here, and stumbled across this excellent quote about predestination.

The opposite of the doctrine of predestination is not freedom, but meaninglessness; if the smallest details of our lives are not part of the Plan of God, if they are not created facts with a divinely determined significance, then they can have no meaning at all. [p100]

It is really very strange when conservative evangelicals of all people are weak on church discipline.

One of the battles fought most strenuously and loudly from this (my) camp has been against the tendency to downplay the significance, severity and reality of judgment. We hear frequently from pulpits and conference lecterns of the need to present the bad news if people are to understand the good news, of the danger to the church and to people’s eternity if they are not presented with the reality of future judgment. And rightly so. That is one of the things I am particularly grateful to God for with regard to the circles of fellowship and ministry in which he has placed me.

But it just struck me for the first time the other day how odd it is that those who champion the logical, structural and spiritual importance of God’s judgment for the proclamation of the gospel should be often ignorant, confused and frequently ‘fudgy’ on the role of judgment and discipline within the community of the gospel. This is completely backwards, for final judgment is chronologically and logically secondary to judgment within the Christian family – judgment begins, after all, with the house of God. I take it that one of the ways the world knows and is warned that there is a final judgment is because that judgment of Christ can be seen in action within the church.

We proclaim with our lips that the kingdom has backbone and, when its consummation comes, there’ll be trouble for rebels. But with our actions we deny those very same things by conducting life within the present manifestation of the kingdom as an antinomian and spineless affair.

See the video below.

See also friends who have commented on this here and here.

Then also see the Christian Institute’s website for more details.

This is about the freedom of families to bring their children up without interference from the State. It is about whether or not the State should control your child’s social, religious and ideological development. Children do not belong to the State, they belong to God, and he has placed them under the care primarily of their parents.

We might think this is only going to affect homeschoolers (though that is reason enough to take action, to defend their freedom), but it could also open the door to further levels of State intrusion into parenting in a way that impacts many families. After all, every parent plays some sort of direct role in their child’s education and development, every parent does some sort of teaching of their children at home – why would that be excluded from government supervision if such recommendations as contained in the Badman report go ahead?

4. The resurrection looms large in Paul’s gospel

Paul sees the gospel in Romans 1:1-7 as essentially the announcement that ‘Jesus Christ is Lord.’ Having said that, there is no way this can be separated from those historical events which elsewhere in his thought also form the essence of the gospel – Christ’s life, death, resurrection and ascension (see e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:3-5). For Paul, someone who denies Christ’s substitutionary death for sins is as much attacking the heart of the gospel as someone who denies Jesus’ Lordship. That’s because the statement ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ is God’s announcement founded on, explained by, and seen in the events of Christ’s life, death, resurrection and ascension. So, no separating what God has joined together.

Given that, it is interesting to note that in his summary in the opening verses of Romans, of all the key gospel events it is the resurrection that takes centre stage. The incarnation is probably there in the language of the Son ‘becoming of the seed of David’ in v3, and Christ’s death is at least hinted at in the reference to this life ‘being according to the flesh’ also in v3 (cf. Romans 8:3). But still, it is the resurrection which saw Jesus appointed as ‘Son of God’ and thus forms the basis for the central affirmation of the gospel, namely his Lordship.

This is interesting not because it implies that Paul relegates the other events to secondary importance, since he doesn’t do that. What’s more, we have enough clear statements of the gospel elsewhere that front the other events such as Christ’s death (e.g. 1 Corinthians 2:2). Rather, it is interesting because it comes as a rebuke to us for our general lack of attention to the resurrection. For many contemporary evangelicals the resurrection is something they believe in and would fight for, but its significance in terms of the actual content of the gospel is largely a mystery. Beyond believing that it holds apologetic significance and that it reassures us that ‘the cross worked,’ plenty of evangelicals are relatively clueless as to how the resurrection fits in the actual inner workings of the gospel.

This almost definitely accounts for some of the ‘leaks’ in our soteriology. For example, it ought to worry us that the average evangelical can explain how the gospel saves us without mentioning the resurrection. And it ought to worry us that many evangelicals think our hope is that we’ll be floating around as a spirit in heaven when this life is over. But the link between the resurrection and Christ’s Lordship in Romans 1:4 should alert us to another possible problem in the long term induced by our ignorance of the resurrection – namely that evangelical profession and proclamation will degenerate towards a gospel of cheap grace that calls for easy-believism. The resurrection confronts us with Jesus’ Lordship, so a gospel that majors on the mechanics of how Jesus forgives us through the cross to the exclusion of what the resurrection did for and says about Jesus could easily degenerate in this way.

Paul would be baffled and, I suspect, not a little bit troubled with, our ignorance in this regard. Romans 1 shows us that at least one of his ways of summarising the gospel made a great deal of the resurrection, and other summaries back this up (e.g. 2 Timothy 2:8). For Paul the central affirmation of the gospel is based on what the resurrection meant for and said about the man Christ Jesus.

A couple of weeks ago the Desiring God National Conference took place over in the US. This being his 500th birthday year, John Calvin was the subject. It was a little too far away for me to go to unfortunately, but all the audio and video has already been made available on the interweb. Go HERE to find it all. I’ve already been enjoying the panel discussion and Wilson’s address.

3. Paul’s gospel was rooted in the Old Testament

Continuing some reflections on Paul’s summary of the gospel in Romans 1:1-7 following my sermon.

In v2 of Romans 1 Paul says that the gospel of God was ‘promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures.’ Paul views both testaments as having the same message – the gospel. It was to be found in promise form in the Old, and as a promise kept (or as an announcement now come-of-age) in the New.

Where I suspect this is most challenging to us contemporary UK evangelicals is in the area of our attitude to the Old Testament. For some Christians it will be a surprise to learn that the OT can be considered ‘gospel’ at all. Others however will have benefited from biblical theology being taught in their churches and may be very familiar with thinking of promise-fulfilment as the relationship between the testaments. And yet I suspect that even for many such Christians the OT is, functionally speaking, largely a closed book.

Taking Paul’s words seriously means more than acknowledging that we need a mere working knowledge of the OT in order to get what we ‘really’ need which is found in the NT. Our grasp (and therefore our appreciation, and worship) of the Lord Jesus Christ will be directly tied to our grasp of the OT. How can we expect to see what it is that Christ is, and has done, if we don’t understand the promises it is he is fulfilling?

Herein, perhaps, lies the root of many distorted and confused gospels. The gap left by lack of knowledge of what promises Christ actually came to fulfil is filled in with a Jesus who is primarily a miracle worker and healer, or who is primarily concerned with personal relationship with me as an individual, or a Jesus who rules over only a certain (‘spiritual’) aspect of my life, or who has come to fulfil my felt personal and social needs. In this sense perhaps the fundamentalist’s Jesus who has come to whisk me away from this sinking ship of a planet shares a similar origin with the Liberal’s non-judgmental Jesus of humanistic optimism. Certainly both are rendered false by reading the NT in the context of the OT promises. For sure, it takes a distorted view of the NT also to consistently believe in these confused and/ or false gospels, but much good could be done were far more attention paid to the bigger of scriptures two ‘halves.’

No doubt Paul would struggle to recognise his gospel in many such distortions. For the apostle, the gospel was something rooted in the prophecy and promises of the entire OT scriptures.