Proverbs 15 and Reproof

I’m reading Proverbs right now and pondered today the 33 proverbs that comprise chapter 15. Several times throughout this chapter the writer speaks of the wisdom which welcomes reproof, rebuke, correction (vv. 5, 10, 12, 22, 31, 32).

I thought: the difference between the wise person and the fool when it comes to reproof is not that the wise does not need it and the fool does. The line of distinction is not that some need reproof and some don’t. All need it. The line of demarcation is who accepts it.

In a strange way, the one who welcomes a rebuke is wiser than the one who thinks he does not need it. It is paradoxical. It is the very admission of failure and acceptance of help that automatically diagnoses one as wise; whereas it is the resistance to admitting failure and rejection of help – that is, thinking one does not need it – that proves that one does.

This is the gospel, is it not? The one who admits failure is pardoned; the one who maintains a self-generated righteousness is lost.

SBTS This Week

Dr. Piper's message in chapel at Southern Seminary yesterday (Tue) on 2 Cor. 1:24. He speaks again tomorrow (Thu).

Tomlin in St. Louis

This weekend my wife Stacey and brother Gavin and I went to a Chris Tomlin concert here in St. Louis, the second-to-last stop on the How Great Is Our God tour. Matt Redman also led worship, and Louie Giglio, founder of Passion, spoke on the greatness of God.

Words don't describe what it is like for Chris et al to lead us into God's presence with loud, God-centered music. I loved it, and pray for more of this in the PCA and across the Western Church.

Feathers and Mountains

Archibald Alexander on the differences of external circumstance and living conditions between this world's rich and poor:

"Indeed, so short is the time of man's continuance upon earth, and so infinite the joys or miseries of the future world, that to make much of these little differences would be like estimating the weight of a feather, when engaged in weighing mountains."

-Thoughts on Religious Experience, 218

Treasure in a Field

Matthew 13:44 The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

I noticed something today I never saw before. I've always focused on two elements of this short parable: the value of the kingdom, and the joy of the one who found it. Those come through strongly.

But a third element is this. Upon finding the treasure, the man does not pick it up and take it with him. (I suppose we could suggest it was too big to be moved, but the fact that he covers it up indicates otherwise. Covering it up seems to say he wanted to buy the field before anyone else discovered the treasure and staked a claim on it.) Instead he goes and sells all he has and comes back and buys the field in which the treasure had been buried. My observation is that we adjust ourselves to the Kingdom, we do not expect the Kingdom to adjust to us. The man didn't take the tresure with him, he left everything behind and came to the treasure.

We give up all we have hoped in and counted on, and leaving it all behind we bank everything on the Kingdom. I wonder if much of the Church here in America, which is all that I'm familiar with, has tried to retain their lives with all its values and securities, instead of adjusting themselves to God.

Psalm 84:11

For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.



God is above me, illumining - 'a sun'
God is before me, protecting - 'a shield'
God is for me, dignifying - 'bestows favor and honor'
God is with me, lavishing - 'no good thing...'

Food for a hungry heart.

Archibald Alexander: Free Grace

In Thoughts on Religious Experience, Archibald Alexander (founder of Princeton Seminary) asks why spiritual growth is so slow in us. He gives 4 reasons; here is the first.

First, there is a defect in our belief of the freeness of divine grace. To exercise unshaken confidence in the doctrine of gratuitous pardon is one of the most difficult things in the world; and to preach this doctrine fully without verging towards antinomianism is no easy task, and is therefore seldom done. But Christians cannot but be lean and feeble when deprived of the proper nutriment. . . . the doctrine of free grace, without any mixture of human merit, is the only true object of faith. Christians are too much inclined to depend on themselves, and not to derive their life entirely from Christ. There is a spurious legal religion, which may flourish without the practical belief in the absolute freeness of divine grace, but it possesses none of the characteristics of the Christian's life. . . . even when the true doctrine is acknowledged, in theory, often it is not practically felt and acted on. . . . Here, I am persuaded, is the root of the evil; and until religious teachers inculcate clearly, fully, and practically, the grace of God as manifested in the gospel, we shall have no vigorous growth of piety among professing Christians. (201-02)

The Hermeneutics of Faith

The key argument, as I understand it, of Francis Watson's Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith is that Paul did not have his own free-floating, independent theological system, which he then went to the Hebrew Bible to validate; rather his theology was itself generated by Scripture, especially Torah. Pauline writings are in fact an interpretative venture (interpretation of the Torah). The direction is OT to Paul, not Paul to OT.

Specifically, Watson argues that Paul was an interpreter of the Torah just as his Jewish contemporaries were, but they read the same Scripture differently. Hence to read Paul is to pursue his hermeneutics - the Pauline theological task is fundamentally a hermeneutical one - and Paul specifically operated with a hermeneutics of faith, particularly rooted in Hab 2:4. The task of understanding Paul therefore involves a threefold field of intertextuality, as Watson calls it - involving Paul, his contemporaries, and the OT.

One of the things I've appreciated as I read this book is the way Watson takes Luther seriously - and when he disagrees, he cites original Luther writings, not secondary sources or well-worn accusations about how Luther read a sixteenth century Catholic meritocracy into first-century Judaism and Paul. For example, he closes one chapter by saying:

[I]t is not part of my intention (conscious, subconscious, or whatever) to "rehabilitate Luther." Many of the reasons for the current anti-Lutheran climate in Pauline studies are good ones, and the retractations I would now make of things I said on this matter in an earlier book (Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles, 1986) are few and qualified. Yet there is a potential danger that certain exegetical possibilities will be ruled out in advance merely because of their apparent proximity to Luther. Such an attitude is more suited to some heresy-hunting orthodoxy than to a critical scholarly discipline. (29)

The only concern I register so far is that Watson at times attributes to the law what ought to be attributed to sin. That is, I believe at times he ought to attribute to human failure the impotence of the law to secure human righteousness, and not some defect in the law itself (e.g. 57).

Romans 10:2

A few good links I've discovered on 'zeal according to knowledge':

"Zeal According to Knowledge," Shane Rosenthal (Modern Reformation 1991)

"Christian Zeal," J. C. Ryle (Tony Cappocia 2001)

"Zeal an Essential Virtue of a Christian," Jonathan Edwards (Works, Vol. 22, 1740)

"How to Submit to the Righteousness of God," John Piper (Desiring God 2003)

I don't normally include family stuff here--it just isn't the purpose of this site--but THAT is one cute kid!!