Perennial Dangers to the Church

Over at the Sharefaith blog today I share a few thoughts on some threats to the church in the book of Acts, threats that provide wise instruction for us today. Thanks for the kind invitation to participate, Daniel Threlfall!

Jonathan Edwards, Theologian of Love

'A Divine and Supernatural Light,' 'God Glorified in Man's Dependence' and 'Heaven Is a World of Love' are classics, wonderful, and hard to beat, but my favorite Edwards sermon so far is 'The Spirit of the True Saints Is a Spirit of Divine Love,' based on 1 John 4:16. Deeply moving, and igniting of all sorts of longings and joys. The sermon also expresses as well as any the couple of themes most central, in my opinion, to the heart of Edwards' theology and ministry.

It's included in the second of the two volumes of sermons transcribed by Michael McMullen and published by B&H.

Here are a few extracts. Best read slowly.

The soul of the true saint longs to see more of God, the glory of God, and the beauty of Jesus Christ. . . . The soul of the saint longs to be like God, to have more of God in his heart . . . longs to have communion with him and can't be satisfied with anything short of the full enjoyment of God. (p. 303)

The joy that a saint has in God and in a Redeemer is unspeakable. The unspeakableness of it seems to be a special property that belongs to it. There are no words to express that kind of sweetness or humble exultation that arises from the sensible presence of God to the soul that is filled with divine love. (304)

The very nature of God is love. If it should be enquired what God is, it might be answered that he is an infinite and incomprehensible fountain of love. (305)

This divine principle [of love] is a lamp, a sacred flame lit up in the soul. (309)

What more pleasant life can there be than a life of love? (310-11)

Light is not true that is not accompanied with love. Light without warmth is false light. (312)

There is nothing so contrary to the nature of the devil as love, for he is a spirit who is full of malice. He can easier imitate what is in the head than what is in the heart. (314)

He who turns and chooses Christ, Christ will not reject him. That is all that Christ waits for--to have sinners willing. (316)

The heart of a godly man doth freely choose God and Christ for his portion. Take away all torment and set hell aside and he could and might have his choice and he would choose God rather than anything else. If the godly man might have his choice either to live always in this world in the enjoyment of all manner of worldly prosperity or else in God's time die and go to heaven to dwell forever there in the enjoyment of God and Jesus Christ, he would choose the latter. (324)

He who has true divine love desire[s] to be emptied of himself that God may fill him. He loves to renounce his own honor that Gd may have honor. He loves to renounce his own righteousness that God may have glory. He loves to be low that God may be high. (325)

They who love God set their hearts on the secret of happiness which will never fail them, and they will be happy to all eternity in spite of death and hell. (328)

He who has divine love in him has a wellspring of true happiness that he carries about in his own breast, a fountain of sweetness, a spring of the water of life. There is a pleasant calmness and serenity and brightness in the soul that accompanies the exercises of this holy affection. (332)

Labor to live a life of love. (333)

God has been great to many earthly princes in the outward possessions and riches and honor to which he has advanced them. But God has done more for you than for all the kings and potentates of the earth met together in that outward glory. Their towns and kingdoms are but dirt and dung in comparison of what God has given to you. (338)

God in Christ allows such little, poor creatures as you are to come to him, to love communion with him, and to maintain a communication of love with him. You may go to God and tell him how you love him and open your heart and he will accept of it. . . . He is come down from heaven and has taken upon him the human nature in purpose, that he might be near to you and might be, as it were, your companion. (339)

Let these considerations influence you to the love of God and Jesus Christ, to love them with a superlative and love nothing contrary to them, and love nothing above them, and love nothing equal to them, and love nothing along with them with any parallel love. And express your love by doing for them, by being willing all your days to labor and suffer for the glory of God. (341)

They Never Avoid a Thousand Criticisms

John Calvin on the realities of pastoral ministry:

None are more exposed to slanders and insults than godly teachers. This comes not only from the difficulty of their duties, which are so great that sometimes they sink under them, or stagger or halt or take a false step, so that wicked men find many occasions of finding fault with them; but added to that, even when they do all their duties correctly and commit not even the smallest error, they never avoid a thousand criticisms. . . .

[T]he more sincerely any pastor strives to further Christ's kingdom, the more he is loaded with spite, the more fierce do the attacks upon him become. And not only so, but as soon as any charge is made against ministers of the Word, it is believed as surely and firmly as if it had been already proved. This happens not only because a higher standard of integrity is required from them, but because Satan makes most people, in fact nearly everyone, over credulous so that without investigation, they eagerly condemn their pastors whose good name they ought to be defending.

--commenting on 1 Timothy 5:19

Dad wisely reflected today on the need for a culture of grace. Surely one manifestation of a culture of grace is happily thinking the best of people and only with great reluctance detecting the bad, rather than suspiciously thinking the worst of people and only with great reluctance detecting the good. Especially when our pastors are in view.

Two Ways to Be Addicted

Gerhard Forde:

The addict . . . may be addicted either to the substance in question or to his own obsession with quitting and become a 'dry drunk.' . . .

We must come to confess that we are addicted to sin, addicted to self, whatever form that may take, pious or impious. . . .

One can be addicted either to what is base or to what is high, either to lawlessness or to lawfulness.

--On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (Eerdmans 1997), 16, 17, 27

Wow.

A God-Sized Vision

Eagerly anticipating this book on revival by our brothers Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge, available in a few weeks.

Tim Keller writes, 'The importance of spiritual revival and the necessity of conversion is being questioned in many evangelical and Reformed circles. I'm so glad that this book is appearing now, as a witness both to how God has worked in the church in the past and what he can do in the future.'

I cannot read Edwards' accounts of what happened in the 1730's and 40s without longing for it to happen again today. Beginning in me.

Edwards: The Light of the Glorified Christ

Jonathan Edwards reflects on what believers' eyes will be like in their new and glorious existence in the new earth. (Have you ever considered how not just your body in general but distinct parts of your body will be glorified?)

'Tis not likely that, when they come to have bodily eyes again, they will see by such gross and slow rays as we see by in this world. 'Tis not likely that the light of heaven will be the same with the light of the kitchen and dungeon of this lower world.

The light that is emitted from the glorified body of Christ, the external sun of the heavenly world, is not the same sort of light with that which is sent forth from our sun. The light of this sun is darkness to it, his beams are very gross, stale, dull, heavy things in comparison of them. 'Tis probable that the saints in heaven will have a full sight of the glorified humanity of Christ, from one end of heaven to the other, and 'tis not probable that it will be by such rays of light as we see things. 'Tis probable also that they will be able to see from one side of the universe to the other, from heaven to hell; but 'tis not likely it will be by such slow rays of light, that are several years traveling from the fixed stars to this earth. The glorified body of Christ will shine forth on this world at the day of judgment, with the same light, and in the same glory, with which it shines in heaven; for he will then appear in his greatest glory on that great occasion when he shall come in the glory of his Father to be glorified in his saints and admired in all that believe. He will then shine in a different sort of light than the sun, so that the sun shall be turned into darkness before him.

--Miscellany 926, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol 20 (Yale University Press, 2002), 169-70

In case you didn't catch that--Edwards thinks believers in the new earth will be able to see across the entire universe since Christ, not the sun, will be lighting the whole universe, and the light emitted by Christ's glorified body must be far faster than the speed of light in a solar system lit up by our sun.

'No mind has conceived what God has prepared . . .' --1 Cor 2:9

Nice Haircut

HT: Lighthearted Calvinist

On Gospel Tweets

A slew of nice ones from Tullian. A few more from Paul Tripp, via Timmy Brister. And 95 of them in an A29 contest last summer.

Jake Belder registers some concern over them.

Linking to Jake, Anthony Bradley expresses in World even more disdain for them.

Jared Wilson responds to Anthony.

Jake fires away once more.

A few quick thoughts.

1. Don't know Jake, but I continue to learn from and am blessed by all these men. We are on the same team! So easily forgotten.

2. O the wisdom of God--a four-year-old can understand the gospel, and an elderly saint at the end of a lifetime of wondering at it is only just beginning. Tweet-able and inexhaustible at the same time.

3. Didn't Paul put the gospel in less than 140 characters in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4? And Romans 10:9? And Peter, in Acts 16:31?

4. There may be valid frustrations in the way some tweet the gospel (though I've read the above pieces and have yet to see any), but you have a much bigger problem if you can't do it at all.

5. It's one thing to see issues with gospel tweets that really are unwittingly subversive to the biblical gospel, and to graciously identify them. It's another thing simply not to like gospel tweets. One is a truth issue, one is a taste issue. The latter is not responsible journalism.

Tragic Irony

John 18:28:

They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters, so that they would not be defiled, but could eat the Passover.

Carson comments:

The Jews take elaborate precautions to avoid ritual contamination in order to eat the Passover, at the very time they are busy manipulating the judicial system to secure the death of him who alone is the true Passover.

--D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John (PNTC; Eerdmans 1991), 589

The Puritans and the Bible

J. I. Packer:

Puritanism was, above all else, a Bible movement.

To the Puritan the Bible was in truth the most precious possession that this world affords. His deepest conviction was that reverence for God means reverence for Scripture, and serving God means obeying Scripture. To his mind, therefore, no greater insult could be offered to the Creator than to neglect his written word; and, conversely, there could be no truer act of homage to him than to prize it and pore over it, and then to live out and give out its teaching. Intense veneration for Scripture, as the living word of the living God, and a devoted concern to know and do all that it prescribes, was Puritan’s hallmark.

--‘The Puritans as Interpreters of Scripture,’ in A Quest for Godliness (Crossway 2010; repr.), 98; cf. 113, 122

No truer act of homage. To prize it and pore over it. Intense veneration.

'And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock . . .' --Matthew 7:24