by HARVEYOPP | Apr 4, 2015 | JIM SAWTELLE
To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Romans 8:6
Does Paul intend to say by this verse that a Christian—a true believer—is never disturbed? Never anxious? Never struggling with the providential circumstances of life? Is it always like this for the Christian: that I must be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease?
As I was preparing for a bible study on Romans eight recently I came across a discussion on this issue in William Hendriksen’s commentary.
For many Christians, a verse like this (verse 6) can bring about moments of real crisis. If you have been in the pastoral ministry very long at all, if you have been around Christians for any length of time, you will have encountered someone going through crushing trials. You will talk with men and women who have anguish because they are in anguish. They will express great guilt and even resentment that they are going through massive pains and sorrows, and they’re worried that their lack of a mind of “life and peace” must mean their minds are not set on the Spirit.
In fact, the context in which this verse appears seems to reinforce the idea that a lack of peace must be an indicator of a state of unbelief. Verses 5-8 give us a sustained contrast between an unbeliever and a believer. The mindset of the flesh and the mindset of the Spirit. The mindset of flesh is sold out to and dominated by what the sinful nature desires (v 5), this mindset leads to death, is hostile to God, does not submit to God’s law, does not please God—nor can it.
While the mind set on the Spirit is the exact opposite. And its fruit is life and peace.
So you can appreciate why the anxious Christian who does not have this sense of “life and peace,” who is struggling resentfully with their suffering, who is crying out, ‘O, Wretched man that I am!’ might be stricken with doubt as to whether they are in fact a child of God at all.
Is that conclusion necessarily correct? Hendriksen: “The answer must be, Not at all.” He goes on to affirm that while the basic disposition of the Spirit indwelt child of God is life and peace, that doesn’t mean a believer won’t have deep sorrow over indwelling sin and ardently desire to be free from it.
Having said that, “The idea that the believer is a person who is always staying on an even keel should be given up. A believer’s life is not that simple. It is tremendously complex.” Hendriksen goes on to remind us of the apostle Peter who made the great confession (Matt 16:16, 17), but also expressed the great denial (Matt. 26:69-75).
And what about, Hendriksen asks, the writer of Psalm 77? A believer (!) pouring out some of the most honestly expressed and outraged emotions on providential pain ever penned.
The thought of God brought me no peace,
But rather made my fears increase;
With sleepless eyes and speechless pain
My fainting spirit grieved in vain;
The blessedness of long ago
Made deeper still my present woe.
Recalling days when faith was bright,
When songs of gladness filled my night,
I pondered o’er my grievous woes
And searching questioning arose;
Will God cast off, and nevermore
His favor to my soul restore?
I asked in fear and bitterness:
Will God forsake me in distress?
Shall I His promise faithless find?
Has God forgotten to be kind?
Has He in anger hopelessly
Removed His love and grace from me?
These doubts and fears that troubled me
Were born of my infirmity;
Though I am weak, God is most high,
And on His goodness I rely;
Of all His wonders, I will tell,
And on His deeds my thoughts shall dwell.
(Psalter Hymnal, #145)
Note how with “the mind set on the Spirit” the psalmist is led through the valley of death, eventually emerging into a sense of life and peace. “However, according to the plain language of Scripture, and the testimony of ever so many Christians, even the believer may experience a tremendous struggle between “the old man” and “the new man,” between doubt and trust, unrest and peace” (see also: Ps. 73, Gal. 5:17; Eph. 4:22f.; 6:10f.; Heb. 12:4).
Anguished saint, fix your heart on the goodness of God in Christ, for His Spirit will lead you to life and peace. In this life and the life to come.
MARANATHA! O Lord, Come! Glory! Warfare over. Sin gone. Tears wiped from your eyes. Eternal joy and bliss. Soon you will be up to your eyeballs in Milk and Honey!
by HARVEYOPP | Apr 4, 2015 | Scott Henry
Good Friday is the day when Christians remember the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a day we remember how Christ became a curse on the cross (Gal. 3:13) for all those given to Him by the Father (John 6:37) in order that through His atoning work they might receive the blessing of God. On Good Friday we remember how Jesus suffered during His whole life on earth, and how He endured the reproach of sinful men and suffered the physical torture of being beaten and nailed to the cross. But the greatest of His suffering was when Jesus was forsaken by His Father. On the cross, Jesus Christ experienced the inexpressible anguish, pains, and terror of eternal death in order that those who would believe in Him might receive everlasting life. That’s the truth behind Christ’s cry on the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). It was at this time that Christ became a curse for sinners and was cast out by the Father for every sinful thought, word, and deed of all He came to redeem. 2 Cor. 5:21: “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
The Day of Atonement described in the Old Testament foreshadows, in great detail, the substitutionary work of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the 16th chapter of the book of Leviticus, Aaron, the High Priest, was commanded by God to bring two goats before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Aaron then cast lots for the goats: one for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat. The goat on which the Lord’s lot fell was presented before the Lord as a sin-offering and its blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat as a symbol of cleansing from sins. But the other goat was presented alive before the Lord to make atonement upon it. Aaron would place his hands upon the head of the goat and confess all the sins of Israel upon its head, symbolically imputing the sins of Israel to the scapegoat. The scapegoat was then sent into an uninhabited land symbolically bearing the sins of Israel upon it. The significance of the ceremony was two-fold: the first goat signified the cleansing of all the sins of God’s people, and the second goat, the scapegoat, signified the truth that all the sins of the people were cast away from them and would never return.
The truth behind this Old Testament ceremony is that it foreshadowed the work of Jesus Christ on behalf of His people. Jesus was both the sin-offering who cleansed His people with His blood, and the scapegoat upon whom the sins of His people were imputed. Jesus was also the High Priest who gave Himself as a sacrifice for the sheep of His pasture, the people of His hand. On the cross, Jesus was the One banished far into the uninhabited wilderness of eternal death in order to redeem His people from their sins. That’s why Jesus is called the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and it’s also for this reason that believers can have the blessed assurance that their sins are cast as far as the east is from the west, never to be remembered against them again (Psalm 103:12). Why? Because on a Friday afternoon, over 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became our sin-offering and our scapegoat in order that God’s wrath might be turned away from us, and we become favorable in God’s sight. That’s the truth we embrace as we remember the work of our Savior, Jesus Christ, on Good Friday.
Is your trust in Jesus Christ as the only One who could ever wash away your sins by His atoning work? Scripture is very clear; “there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).
by HARVEYOPP | Apr 4, 2015 | CARL TRUEMAN
I discovered Aquinas quite by accident some twenty years ago. Hired to teach Medieval and Reformation theology at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., I found that my one Roman Catholic colleague, a liberal nun, was more than happy to allow me to teach the honors course on Thomas. Thus it was that the most traditional Protestant on faculty taught a regular class on the Angelic Doctor to a room full of mostly traditional young Roman Catholics.
I have considered Thomas a treasured source ever since. In fact, I believe he is perhaps more important now than ever before, for we live in an age where Christians need to think clearly. Clear thinking depends upon precise categories and distinctions, and Thomas offers such things to his careful readers.
For example, I noted in passing last week how the collapse of the distinction between love as passion and love as virtue has proved so confusing and catastrophic not simply in society at large but also in the Church. That is a point worth expanding. In the Prima Secundae of the Summa Theologiae, Thomas treats love as both a passion and a virtue. Love as passion is neither good nor evil because it originates in the appetites, not the reason. We might say love as passion is really love as a feeling. Love as virtue, however, refers to a principle of action rooted in the reason, connects to a wider understanding of human teleology, and thus is intrinsically moral.
We can clarify this distinction between these two aspects by looking at how the word love is used in everyday parlance. I fell in love with my wife because there was something about her which attracted me. Such attraction involved physical sensations. When calling her on the telephone to confirm our first date, I felt a mixture of excitement and desire. The sound of her voice set my heart beating a little faster. There was, and still is, a thrill to being in love with her which involves an attraction that has a physical aspect to it. This is love as a passion.
But love is also a virtue. For I am to love my wife not simply when I find her attractive but even when I do not find her to be so. In fact, perhaps it is especially when I do not find her to be attractive that my love as virtue is to be most clearly demonstrated. Thus, the woman caring for her beloved husband who is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease or cancer may not feel much positive passion towards him but her actions exhibit love of a depth rarely seen elsewhere. Her behavior is rooted in love as a principle of action. That is what love as virtue means. Indeed, this is surely at the heart of Paul’s understanding of marriage when he comments that husbands should love their wives as Christ loves the Church. After all, Christ gave himself for her in self-sacrifice when she was far from attractive. It was not passion which drove Christ’s passion, but virtue.
Turning now to the modern world, we can see that the concept of love which is extolled as a virtue is in reality almost exclusively that of love as passion. Every time soap operas and sitcoms present love as constituted by physical sex (do they ever do anything else?), love as virtue is reduced to love as passion. Every time daytime talk show hosts make some declaration about morality based upon what they feel in their heart, then passion, not virtue, becomes the criterion of what is good and true. And every time an academic denies that there is an objective telosto human nature, passion masquerades as virtue and ethics is turned into aesthetics.
Perhaps this is the real issue in current debates about marriage. Robert George has pointed out that no fault divorce was the real watershed in the recent legal history of the institution. That changed marriage from a relationship of lifelong commitment to that of a temporary, dispensable, sentimental bond. Yet if we look at this through the lens of Thomas’s distinctions, we can see that no fault divorce presupposes a prior definition of love as primarily passion, not virtue. Thus, it is arguably not the redefinition of marriage but the redefinition of love which is the real problem underlying society’s current moral malaise. And that redefinition has much wider and more sinister implications. Indeed, as Thomas’s taxonomy helps us to see, it strikes at the very heart of what we consider virtue to be.
by HARVEYOPP | Mar 31, 2015 | Scott Henry
Matthew 27:46: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
This Friday, April 3, is the day known on the church calendar as Good Friday. It’s the day when the Church of Jesus Christ specifically remembers the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ for the redemption of sinners. We remember how Christ became a curse for us on the cross so that we might receive the blessings of God. We remember how Jesus suffered during His whole life on earth, and how He endured the reproach of sinful men and suffered the physical torture of being beaten and nailed to the cross. But the greatest of His suffering was when Jesus was forsaken by His Father. On the cross, Jesus Christ experienced the inexpressible pains and terrors of eternal death so that those who believe in Him might receive everlasting life. Matthew 27:46: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Christ was forsaken for a time by the Father because of the sins of all who were given to Him. It was at this time that He became a curse for us and was cast out by the Father for every sinful thought, word, and deed (past, present, and future) of all those given to Him by the Father (John 6:37).
2 Corinthians 5:21: “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Christ was our scapegoat in order that God’s wrath might be turned away from us and we might become favorable in God’s sight (Leviticus 16:21-22). In the same way, Christ’s death was a substitutionary death — a death that atoned for the sins of His people. Do you understand what Christ had to go through to redeem your soul? Do you realize the great horror that He endured so we would not have to? According to Scripture, for sinners to be saved, the precious blood of Jesus had to be shed. “And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). And we read in 1 Peter 1:18-19: “…knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” But Jesus was the innocent Lamb of God — the One who knew no sin; therefore death could not hold Him down. Acts 2:23-24: “Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.”
And since death could not hold Him down Good Friday is not the end of the story. The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” At the very heart of the Christian faith is the doctrine of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which demonstrates both the acceptance of Christ’s work by the Father and that Christ’s atoning work is finished as demonstrated by His sitting down at the Father’s right hand. The priest’s work in the Old Covenant was never finished; they continually offered animal sacrifices and thus never sat down. But Jesus, after the one sacrifice of Himself, sat down because His work was complete. And because Christ was raised from the dead everyone who trusts in Him is guaranteed a blessed resurrection. Romans 6:5: “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection…” However, the question is this — Are you trusting the crucified and risen Christ as the only satisfaction for your sins? Scripture says it plain and clear: “There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Look to Jesus today and live forevermore!!
by HARVEYOPP | Mar 27, 2015 | Scott Henry
The most important thing to see on the Lord’s Day as you gather for Worship is not the fancy organ pipes; not the baby grand piano; not the size of the building; not the number of members; not the beautiful choir loft; not the elegant pews or beautiful carpet or even the fancy oak pulpit … as nice as all these things may be … the ONLY important thing to see as you gather for Worship on the Lord’s Day is JESUS and we see Him only as His Word is faithfully proclaimed. Are you seeing JESUS on the Lord’s Day at your place of Worship? If not, run to a church that faithfully, deliberately, and unashamedly proclaims Jesus Christ as Lord, God, Savior, and King, who came to save the sheep of His pasture, the people of His hand.
“Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (John 12:21).
“Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this Scripture, preached Jesus to him” (Acts 8:35).
“And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ” (Acts 5:42).
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