Interpreting the Parables of Mark

A lecture by a man I love, Covenant Seminary professor Hans Bayer.



Dr. Bayer, who wrote the notes on Mark for the ESV Study Bible, recently authored a commentary on Mark as well as a forthcoming volume on christology and discipleship in Mark.

The Middle of the Marathon

A great word by my brother Gavin on persevering through the long stretches of ordinariness in the life of a disciple of Jesus.

Valuable for His Own Sake

Machen:

We are subject to many pressing needs, and we are too much inclined to value God, not for His own sake, but only because He can satisfy those needs. . . .

[Food, clothing, companionship, and inspiring work] are lofty desires. But there is one desire that is loftier still. It is the desire for God Himself. That desire, too often, we forget.

We value God solely for the things He can do; we make of Him a mere means to an ulterior end. And God refuses to be treated so; such a religion always fails in the hour of need. If we have regarded religion merely as a means of getting things--even lofty and unselfish things--then when the things that have been gotten are destroyed, our faith will fail. When loved ones are taken away, when disappointment comes and failure, when noble ambitions are set at naught, then we turn away from God. We have tried religion, we say, we have tried prayer, and it has failed. Of course it has failed! God is not content to be an instrument in our hand or a servant at our beck and call. . . .

If we possess God, then we can meet with equanimity the loss of all besides. Has it never dawned upon us that God is valuable for His own sake, that just as personal communion is the highest thing that we know on earth, so personal communion with God is the sublimest height of all? If we value God for His own sake, then the loss of other things will draw us all the closer to Him; we shall have recourse to Him in time of trouble as to the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

--J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith?, 73-74

Satan's Designs: Unforgiveness

What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his designs. (2 Cor 2:10-11)

If you and I are not forgiving someone, no matter how right it feels, we are being outwitted by Satan.

Hunger Filled Them to the Full

Ambrose writes of the banishment of Eusebius and Dionysius upon the Council of Milan in A.D. 355.

They did not need a grave in their own country; a heavenly mansion was prepared for them. They wandered over the world as having nothing, and possessing all things. Wherever they were sent, it was to them a paradise. Abounding in the riches of faith, they could lack nothing. Poor in money, but rich in grace, they made others rich. They were tempted, but not slain; in fastings, in labors, in imprisonments, in watchings. Out of weakness they were made strong. They looked for no tempting delicacies; hunger filled them to the full. The summer heat did not parch them; they were refreshed with the hope of eternal grace. . . . They feared no human chains; Jesus had set them free. They did not ask to be rescued from death; they took for granted that Christ would raise them from the dead.

. . . sorrowful, yet always rejoicing . . . --2 Cor 6:10

When I am weak, then I am strong. --2 Cor 12:10

"Whoever keeps his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will keep it." --Luke 17:10

Edwards: Justification

And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. --Romans 4:5

Edwards:

When it is said that God justifies the ungodly, 'tis as absurd to suppose that our godliness, taken as some goodness in us, is the ground of our justification, as when it is said that Christ gave sight to the blind, to suppose that sight was prior to, and the ground of that act of mercy in Christ, or as if it should be said that such an one by his bounty has made a poor man rich, to suppose that it was the wealth of this poor man that was the ground of this bounty towards him, and was the price by which it was procured.

--Jonathan Edwards, 'Justification by Faith Alone,' a sermon series on Rom 4:5 that, Edwards believed, was instrumental in sparking the first local revival of 1734-35; the 100-page sermon series can be found in the Yale edition of Edwards' Works, vol. 19, pp. 143-242 (here 147)

Mildewed and Numbing

Thielicke:

There is a kind of piety, a kind of obedience that has about it a mildewed, numbing lack of freshness and vitality that never makes a person really happy. There are plenty of ‘good people’ whose religion never makes them really warm and happy.

--Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus (Harper, 1959), 33

Christiformative Salvation

Interesting and illuminating article in the current JETS by our brother Eric Johnson over at Southern Seminary: "Rewording the Justification/Sanctification Relation with Some Help From Speech Acts Theory."

Johnson suggests that we apply the speech act model of locution/illocution/perlocution (what a statement means/what a statement does/what a statement intends to result) to current debates on the relationship between justification and progressive sanctification. He proposes that this gives us a fresh perspective by which to keep justification and sanctification distinct yet inseparable. Specifically, Johnson suggests that justification (the declarative) is God's illocution through Christ, and sanctification (the progressive) is God's perlocution through the Holy Spirit.

I don't agree with everything (e.g. the assertion that Paul spends more time on justification by faith than any other facet of salvation, p. 770) but the essay is excellent. In one solid section of the article Johnson suggests that "Christiformative salvation" is what we are after in the Christian life (he prefers the term "Christiformity" to "sanctification"). The second-to-last paragraph is a stirring portrait of Christian transformation.

As finite, temporal, and embodied creatures Christians become conformed to Christ gradually, over time, by means of multiple faith-experiences of God and his word, through which the brain-soul of believers becomes more or less permanently restructured by (1) their relationship with God; (2) God’s declarative word (“You are already righteous and holy in Christ”); and (3) virtuous practice (which depends upon and grows from relationship with God and his declarative word), such that through faith the believer’s character is more disposed to perceive, feel, and act similarly in the future.

This gradual, long-term change is what is being termed “Christiformative salvation.”

The initial changes created by God’s word through faith include regeneration (Titus 3:5; John 1:13) or being made alive to God (Eph 2:5); the entrance of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the believer (Rom 5:5; 8:11; 1 Cor 3:19); the freedom to love and obey God; the death-blow given to the old self (Rom 6:6; Gal 2:20); and the birth of the new self (2 Cor 5:17; Col 3:10).

Longterm, ongoing (yet halting) Christ-centered characterological change includes the growing ability to abide in Christ and commune with God, encompassing greater knowledge, intimacy, and love for God for who he is in himself, and so better, purer worship; greater and deeper repentance; fuller, deeper faith that permeates more of one’s inner world; better obedience; growth in the quality of the fruit (or virtues) of the Spirit; increasing self-awareness and less self-deception; growing reliance upon the indwelling Holy Spirit, the mortification of the old self and fighting against the flesh (Romans 6; 8:13; Gal 5:16–20; Col 3:9–10), and increase in the psychological complexity, power, and influence of the new self (2 Cor 5:17; Eph 2:10, 4:24); greater acceptance that one is a child of God (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6); deepening fellowship with the saints and mutual edification (Ephesians 4); greater wisdom and skill in witnessing to others of Christ; greater focus on helping the poor and weak; and more contented suffering.

In the context of a living relationship with God, the more deeply and thoroughly believers consent to God’s declarative words—“You are already righteous and holy in Christ”—the more deeply, thoroughly, and permanently they actually become righteous and holy in Christ, given by God and mediated by his word, and their experience, practice, and human relationships. (p. 779)

Wildly Irreligious

Capon:

Grace is wildly irreligious stuff. It's more than enough to get God kicked out of the God union that the theologians have formed to keep him on his divine toes so he won't let the rifraff off scot-free. Sensible people, of course, should need only about thirty seconds of careful thought to realize that getting off scot-free is the only way any of us is going to get off at all.

--Robert Farrar Capon, The Romance of the Word: One Man's Love Affair with Theology (Eerdmans, 1995), 11

Capon seems to have been a mildly eccentric man, and he has an awful (and awfully confused) understanding of the atonement, one which flirts with universalism. So, as with anyone, one must swallow the meat and spit out the bones. But I am loving this guy. Gospel defibrillation!

Very Helpful, Reverend

A couple great things from my brother Gavin this month--a good review over at TGC of Jerry Bridges' most recent book and a really nice article in the current JETS drawing out the saving (not just the apologetic or vindicatory) significance of Christ's resurrection.

This Is Me in the New Earth

Just tell me that 3:30 to 4:10 isn't eschatological.

Our Only Sanity

Jesus, I my cross have taken
All to leave and follow Thee
Destitute, despised, forsaken
Thou from hence my all shall be

Perish ev'ry fond ambition
All I've sought or hoped or known
Yet how rich is my condition
God and heav'n are still my own

--Henry Lyte (1793-1847)

Two Aeons Converge

Helpful.

Contrary to Jewish expectation, the Messiah has accomplished the work of redemption, the Spirit has been poured out, yet evil has not been eradicated, the general resurrection is still future, and the final state of God's kingdom has not been established.

In other words, the new era has begun--has been inaugurated--but it has not yet replaced the old era. Both ages exist simultaneously; and this means that 'history,' in the sense of temporal sequence, is not ultimately determinative in Paul's salvation-historical scheme. Thus, the 'change of aeons,' while occurring historically at the cross, becomes real for the individual only at the point of faith. The 'change of aeons' that took place in Christ is experienced only 'in Christ.' Therefore, the person who lives after Christ's death and resurrection and who has not appropriated the benefits of those events by faith lives in the old era yet: enslaved to sin, in the flesh, doomed to eternal death. On the other hand, Abraham, for example, though living many centuries before Christ, must, in light of Rom. 4, be considered to belong, in some sense at least, to the new era.

--Doug Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT; Eerdmans, 1996), 26

Tullian at Wheaton

An outstanding three-message series of gospel-rich wisdom from our brother Tullian Tchividjian last week here at Wheaton College.

So Completely Different

Helmut Thielicke, the German pastor of the mid-twentieth century, on the parable of the lost son in Luke 15:

We must read and hear this gospel story as it was really meant to be: good news! News so good that we should never have imagined it. News that would stagger us if we were able to hear it for the first time as a message that everything about God is so completely different from what we thought or feared. News that he has sent his Son to us and is inviting us to share in an unspeakable joy. . . .

[This news] comes into our life as an amazing surprise. That there should be someone like Jesus, that he should gain the Father’s heart for us, that he should rescue us from the frustration of our personal lives and snatch us away from this horrible vegetating on the edge of the void—all this is indeed a tremendous surprise.

--Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus (Harper, 1959), 31-32, 36

Grace

Death unto Life

In 1974 the American Episcopalian priest Robert Farrar Capon had an experience so devastating to him that his life, as he understood it, was over. Though he was still physically breathing, death had come.

He writes:

I was not just devastated, or hurt, or ill-used, or broken; I was dead. Unless you have been through such an experience, you may find this overblown; but my life, as I had known it, was over, gone, kaput.

Capon then says a very interesting thing--

If I ever lived again--and it was inconceivable to me that I could--it would not be by my hand. Fairness or unfairness, guilt or innocence, blame or exculpation had nothing to do with the case. My life-designing capabilities were not impaired or in need of remedial treatment; I just didn't have my life anymore.

He goes on to describe how new life began.

But far from being a sad state of affairs, that turned out to be the best news I had ever heard. My death was not the tragedy I first thought; it was my absolution, my freedom. Nobody can blame a corpse--especially not the corpse itself. Once dead, we are out from under all the blame-harrows and guilt-spreaders forever. We are free; and free above all from the messes we have made of our own lives.

And if there is a God who can take the dead and, without a single condition of credit-worthiness or a single, pointless promise of reform, raise them up whole and forgiven, free for nothing--well, that would not only be wild and wonderful; it would be the single piece of Good News in a world drowning in an ocean of blame. It was not all up to me . It was never up to me at all. It was up to someone I could only trust and thank.

It was salvation by grace through faith, not works.

--Robert Farrar Capon, The Romance of the Word: One Man's Love Affair with Theology (Eerdmans, 1995), 8 (italics original)

So much I want to say about this. But I will leave it, for your own reflection. But be sure not to pass too quickly over the words, "especially not the corpse itself."

Bless the Lord

I will bless the LORD at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
--Psalm 34:1

HT: Trevor Long

Why Does Genesis 1:1 to Malachi 4:6 Exist?

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

--Romans 15:4

Giving Up Our Own Defensive Will

Jack Miller, to a church he had recently visited and spoken to--

There is a release of God's power when control is surrendered to the Spirit of Christ.

This is not a matter of mere feeling but of faith relying on the word of Christ. Get down on your knees in prayer and then get up and take the risk of humbling yourself by apologizing to that brother or sister you have sinned against. Is not such a liberating act a giving up of your own defensive will? Or go to a friend and say, "I have such a critical spirit and a loose tongue. Will you pray for me?"

Here we have the beginnings of a deep surrender.

--The Heart of a Servant-Leader: Letters from Jack Miller (P&R, 2004), 93