I have prayed and deliberated in my mind for some time now on what is the best manner in which to proceed for topics that will follow on this blog. I continue to write about two cities that are tangled together and about two types of truth proceeding from them that are tangled together.

We have rather extensive volumes about both theology and politics. We have very little that seeks to bridge the two without marrying the two. Seeking a synthesis between the city of God and the earthly city “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven”-in more than a few ways, is an oxymoron. As the apostle Paul worded this “For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common?” Or “what fellowship can light have with darkness” (2 Cor. 6:14)? How is the best way to pursue Biblical principles in society when society is itself, an entanglement of this darkness and light?

God has chosen various institutions to govern our lives, and earthly government is how He chose to govern this mix of darkness and light. We are told, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Rom. 12:18). While also “come out from them and be separate” (2 Cor. 6:17), knowing the “days are evil” (Eph. 5:16), and the “whole world lies under the power of the evil one” (1 JN 5:19).

This post is more of an overview than it is anything else. A surface level observation of the many things that are happening all at once in society and not yet an effort dig into them one by one. Even the current length of this post is a bit long for a blog.

There are no guidebooks for what I’m trying to do in the long term. This effort stands apart from pretty much everything in our culture today that tries to tell us simultaneously what’s going on and how we should think about it and react to it. It is also unique compared to many evangelical sources that are encouraging their audience towards one particular party or platform. The setting here is going to have rather continual development. The challenges facing the Church today have their own ongoing nature, and they require an ongoing response. There is endless depth to the Kingdom of God. There is endless entanglement between darkness and light in the civil society.

I have a challenge ahead of me to not make this all about me and my opinions, while trying to communicate my perspective in constructive and edifying ways. I have to aim for the constructive, beneficial, and edifying way to lay out my perspective. I hope to avoid the Proverbs line of “fools delight in airing their own opinions” (Pr. 18:2), a blog gives me endless room for both. I have to aim for the former and not the latter.

I can try to please everyone as I write by varying degrees of careful wording as I get into the weeds, watching my tone carefully, and trying to imagine how everything will come off to everyone. I will try. Inevitably, I will fail for some. This blog is accessible to the public, who will not always like what I have to say. I cannot please everyone either by what I say, or by the one I try to represent as an image bearer, or by what I leave unsaid. Those who I know personally, in particular, are welcome to offer feedback. I don’t think this can be done perfectly, but there are better and worse ways to do it. The poor way that I intentionally do not use is social media. The better way, I think, is where people are welcome to offer feedback and criticism if they wish, either in person or email responses from those receiving this. I want both myself and my readers to have a safe place for any back and forth.

Collective agreement can be it’s own double edged sword, especially when that collective agreement opposes you. My reader needs the dignity of their individual opinion acknowledged, including when their opinion disagrees with mine or collective opinions. It can be a tough pill to swallow, but there is humility in listening more than making sure we are heard and allowing someone who disagrees with us the possibility of being right.

However principled we are according to the Bible, we ought to acknowledge that the Bible is not a book about political theory or methodology. The overarching story that we get from the Bible involves God working in the midst of various governments and cultures. Overlap and dis-overlap abound, but a tangled picture between the city of God and the earthly city remains. We do not have synonymous realities between one and the other. Things will inevitably circle back to the entanglement of two cities that are ultimately nothing alike. “What does light have in common with darkness?” 

I have had to restrain my opinions many times for reasons that should be all too familiar to us. There is normally no such thing as a completely abstract source of information or agenda. We are human beings, and our hearts, our passions, and our visions get mixed into it all as well. This means no matter how abstract and neutral we might try to remain, we have heart strings attached to these things. It can’t be purely abstract and neutral. It’s personal to varying degrees too.

Loving something makes us vulnerable to that thing.  Where our treasure is, there our heart will be also.  Where our heart is, there we are vulnerable. When a person gets cornered regarding something they love, we know how fight or flight goes. There is a third response though. We freeze, not knowing what to do.

We feel the constant pressure emanating from both culture and scripture to take a stand for what is true. But if we say anything, there’s risk, to both ourselves and another person that someone’s going have those heart strings pulled.

Is it wiser to stay quiet? This would be more consistent with many sayings from the book of  Proverbs.

Or do we follow the pain inflicting  words of Dr. King? -“In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

If we say something, inevitably someone we know,  disagrees, or gets hurt. Or still worse, we find ourselves relating with the Psalmnist in chapter 55. If an enemy were insulting us, we could endure it. But if its a close friend, the vulnerability stakes are a lot higher. It hurts a lot more if fallout comes from a close friend.

If we don’t say anything- are we still taking the stand that both culture and scripture want us to take?

If I do take a stand for one thing or another, unavoidable is the perceived connection to other things in this day and age. We are so conditioned to think according to a two party system that if I say one thing that sounds Republican or Democrat, I am lumped and dumped into one side or the other. The default assumption for many is that they know enough about me and my position that they lose interest in acquiring further information.  They proceed to dump me into their pre-existing categories of “good side” or “bad side.” My stand can’t stand alone. It can’t remain abstract. It can’t be free of agenda. It can’t be free of platform. It can’t be free of party attachment to support or oppose. It can’t be free of label or identity. It can’t be free of broader ideology that some are taught to run from and others to fight for.

Simply knowing information is not power in politics. It has to be connected to all these things before momentum toward progress or decline can happen.

Because these issues can’t stand on their own, their importance either exists on one side or the other of party lines. There, the coin that always has two sides is either by default supported or undermined and lumped into perceived lesser of two evils categories of thought. 

As I try to breathe clarity into the tough issues and challenges of the day, I will be pleasing neither side of the policy wars and hopefully challenging both of them at the same time.  Folks will lump and dump my ideas, this is part of the way it goes. I don’t care whether my ideas support a partisan agenda or not, and I believe that this is necessary to giving them as fair and unbiased a treatment as possible. On some issues, I will sound more left of the political spectrum. On others, I will sound further right. I’m very non traditional according to the standards of either side.

I am a firm believer that nuance is a necessary and healthy part of human thought. On the contrary, smashing everything into two buckets and choosing the perceived lesser of two evils regardless of cost is not healthy or natural human thought. You could argue that it is wiser. But I’m doubtful you could find that language in the Bible. The language we do get focuses on “all evil,” not just select portions of it. Degrees of sin and degrees of God’s judgment in the end do matter. A point I want to drive home briefly is that politics incentivizes us to see everything as the greater or lesser evil.

The way many reformers follow the lesser of two evils thinking is rather ironic to me considering the traditional reformed emphasis on sin being sin with no degrees of severity. We hold up James claiming, “whoever stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it” (Jms 2:10). I think it’s worth pointing out that the theological emphasis on “sin is sin” stands in stark contrast to the practical focus on the lesser of two evils thinking that manifests in our politics. Siding with a lesser evil does not make that evil good. I don’t say that to incriminate, I say it to challenge these default patterns of thought in our minds.

I’ll say it again, nuance is a healthy and normal part of human thought.

Smashing everything into two buckets and choosing the lesser of two evils is not natural or healthy human thought.

To the readers credit however, it needs to be validated and acknowledged that many of us feel we have no alternative that better matches the virtues of scripture.

Some awareness of the emotion of the day needs to be addressed, and the lack of clarity that comes with it. The ice is thin for many Americans these days, and this is not aided in the slightest by the polarization of the day. Many folks are understandably shying away from this discussion for fear of unintentionally stepping through the ice to a cold reception.

I wish more of our leaders would follow this wisdom more in line with James 3 and avoid sparking fires in order to energize their voting base. I’m very concerned that leaders on both sides have little trouble sparking great fires they do not understand with their rhetoric. Then they wind up shocked from the damage all the fire causes. Most of us gladly adhere to James regarding taming the tongue so as to not start fires with our mouths and keep the rudder on the ship so it can steer through the storm. Yet somehow, in politics, our leaders get a free pass on this as they try to advance their agenda. All in the name of taking stands and trying to energize their voting bases. Contrary to the pressure of the day, there can be prudence to silence.

I find it very strange that the culture around us assumes they know how to interpret our actions perfectly, and then they tell us we are supporting something when we are not. Silence apparently means an acceptance of defeat. Serving someone we disagree with now means we fully support them with no hesitation. Loving and respecting someone now means we fully agree with them when we otherwise wouldn’t.

No. I’m not letting culture define my actions and my intent for me. I don’t think the Church should either. It’s possible to take a stand without doing so in a way that makes the headlines. It’s quite possible to take a stand with a gentle and quiet spirit that is not advertising our position to everyone around us. There is a place for the public stance. I wish this had been far more prudently used in recent years than it has been.

It would be unwise and naive of me to suggest that I can offer any permanent solutions to the present cultural struggles. That is not the point here. These two cities have been tangled together since- according to Augustine- the initial fall of the angels and then of man.

I care about the Church, and feel a constant burden to help edify it and guide it in the right direction. A task for which I’m not at all alone, but one which seems a monumental task with little safe space for the heart in the midst of difficult discussions that need to happen.

It’s increasingly clear to me that not only are categories that separate important concepts disappearing, but the devil is also at work. Many of us Christians really do not know our enemy that well. This needs its own treatment, and more than one post. But it’s worth being aware of it.

There is no perfectly safe space for the heart in these discussions. We are called to “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” Prov. 4:23 NASB

Here, I call the reader to some vulnerability and a counter cultural willingness to admit that we could be wrong, wherever we find ourselves. I also call the reader to try hard not to make assumptions about the people around them on daily life. For whatever reason, it’s very easy to convince ourselves that a lot of people think the same way that we do. Even within the Church, not everyone agrees with your opinion.

Let’s break out of the comfortable niches and get into some weeds that challenge us. It is quite possible to do this without a single vote being changed or principle being altered. Like I told you, this effort stands apart from everything telling us what is happening and how we should think about it. I want to challenge you, not only to understand your own position better, but to be able to talk with someone you disagree with, and to neither look down on them, or be in the discussion just to win the argument. If God’s truth is indeed self-sufficient, His principles don’t need your defense. They also don’t need for you to win the argument, even though you may get a chance to do those.

To whatever extent this blog and email list creates a safe to be vulnerable space and helps us open up to these discussions, I consider it my responsibility to maintain that safe to be vulnerable space. It is very intentional that I do not use social media, either to distribute this blog, or to discuss controversial topics. I’ll elaborate on this further. Social media has its uses, controversial issues discussion, is not one I will use it for, and I could not care less how that may limit my blogs distribution.

I can’t help but mention the digital nature in which these discussions happen today. The social media platforms that seem to be a default place for these tough discussions are one of the worst possible places for these discussions.

I have to be careful because I can’t even bash these platforms regarding these discussions without contributing to precisely the cesspool that I think they can be, and the most counterintuitive setting to grow or learn something new.

It wasn’t too long ago I watched the 2018 documentary “the Social Dilemma”.  I would argue that even in our private lives, difficult conversations aside, even though we’re more connected than ever before today, many of us are now more lonely, depressed, and stuck in the internet and stuck in our own heads more than is healthy for us.

Social media incentivizes the short and simple. The meme that uses the simplest and most direct way to say something. It used to cause me unceasing frustration in two ways. One, the topic at hand was normally far too complex to be given a fair treatment with a meme or even a lengthy post. Two, it is very easy to manipulate people with images, and propaganda. So I couldn’t be sure of the intent of the person who made it. It’s a lot harder to manipulate people with reason and argument.

It’s the same principle at work where you can’t go after an abstract concept as the enemy these days. You need a label and a bad connotation to get any traction.

Most of the time, the social media setting and the labels undermine the complexity of the topic at hand, and they set up a cesspool of discussion surrounding them. The conversations I’ve experienced normally had more to do with who had the cleverest comeback and the most loaded implications they could fit into a short line. They did not end with both sides having learned something they didn’t know and gaining a new appreciation for the person they disagreed with. Learning something or gaining a new appreciation for this person didn’t matter. Winning the argument did.

When I’m talking with someone in person, particularly about politics, a more healthy dialogue is possible. I don’t come away from these discussions always agreeing with the other person, and I think that is perfectly normal and healthy. However, with this in person manner, even if I don’t agree with the other person- I come away having learned something. Whether I learn more about the subject in mind, or just more about the person who shared the thought with me. I’m now more informed to share what I think is a better approach, if I get the opportunity.

In contrast to social media, a much longer discussion is possible. I have the chance to listen more than to make sure my opinions are heard. I know that 50 or more other people are not listening in, and that no one else normally can randomly jump in to create a pile on of opinions.

If something comes up that offends me or touches on a passion of mine, I might react a bit stronger. I might touch a nerve a bit in response to this person.

More consistently with our wisdom from Proverbs “Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you. Rebuke a wise man and they will love you” (Prov. 9:8). You learn quickly whether your friendship with this person can continue to grow, and whether it’s wise to have these conversations with them in the future.

We usually don’t think about the way in which social media can be a pathway for negative influence to reach us, and we certainly don’t think it’s going to come from someone that we know personally.  We tend to assume people we know have our best interests in mind. It sure does not feel like it when disagreement is revealed, and the heart strings that are pulled prompt a fight or flight response from the hurt. Assumptions run wild and people start to think a certain way about each other that is not true. We all normally agree with the saying that we don’t want to be known according to our failures or stereotyped according to our shortcomings. Yet how quickly do the mind and heart run wild with passions, assumptions, and stereotypes when political discussions happen on the internet?

While I’m mentioning negative influences reaching us, I want to mention briefly, many of us seem very unaware of the spiritual warfare going on. There is absolutely a spiritual battle impacting both our lives and those in government. I would argue though, it’s not necessarily the type some of our politicians would have us believe. Neither is it limited to that which propaganda would have us believe. I am quite convinced the devil is just as pleased by all the ways we tear each other apart in these dissent filled discussions as he is pleased by any vice or evil that is caused by government or party.

We have a calling to be guarding our hearts. We have a calling to not be casting pearls before swine (Mt. 7:6). I found for myself anyway, I spent more time online casting pearls than I did reaching anyone in a productive manner. I spent more time reacting in emotion than I did choosing my words carefully. I spent too much time comparing myself to everyone who disagrees with me rather than embracing who God wants me to be. I spent too much time giving negative influence easy access to my mind and heart on social media. I spent too much time worrying about showing others that I was right and they were wrong.

Worse, but not last, (entering the minefield), many of us who would call ourselves evangelicals in these discussions are so synonymous with a political platform as we are to Christianity, that the non-believing world sees our politics before they before they see our love of God and neighbor. Whether we intend to or not, when we back up our position with scripture, we’re almost trying to evangelize to people through a political theory. Something that never happened in the early church when the gospel was first exploding.

The vocation where we need good leaders the most is precisely one that often brings out the worst in people. If not by the leaders own words, then by the media’s representation of them. When evangelicals align with the side they see closer to Biblical values, the non believing world sees us through the political lens siding with hypocrisy, and using the Bible to justify it. (This, of course, is not a fair all-encompassing statement, but I don’t think it’s totally wrong either, and it is accurate to the way many nonbelievers view evangelicals these days). I don’t think it’s any wiser to completely ignore this perception than it is to fully embrace it- as many of our non believing neighbors do.

Ignoring this perception completely sure doesn’t seem to fit with the rhetoric of the apostle Paul “I have to become all things to all people so that I may by every possible means save some” (1Cor. 9:22).

Talk about Kingdoms in conflict.

Evangelizing through politics is not evangelism. Neither is it legitimate, I would argue, as a sort of “shot in the dark effort” to change someone’s mind before we change the heart, as the gospel does.

A missionary or a pastor would tell us the best way to reach and to minister to people is through a relationship with them. It is not through some shot in the dark effort to change someone’s mind over the internet that a convert is won to Christianity, or that a partisan allegiance will change. Evangelism in person even in the book of Acts had about a 3 percent success rate. I wonder what that turns into over social media and politics debate, then again, I don’t want to know.

I’m not bashing social media in its entirety. I know there are beneficial uses for it yet. It is not a good setting for tough discussions most of the time.

Along with some other trends I won’t go into right now, it does reveal some things that I want to talk about though.

One is that many of us value our own opinions far too highly. What do I mean by that?

We have significantly lost distinctions of how important things actually are. 

I would argue that significant portions of the Church in America have blurred the lines between two cities so much we’ve already tripped over the stumbling block that the Reformers tried to warn us about in the 1500s. We don’t have much concept of twofold government being two completely different things between Church and state. We don’t have much separation in our minds between religious affiliation and political viewpoints. So we also don’t have much separation between how important the City of God is, in comparison to the importance of the earthly city which is everything policy.

We don’t have much concept that political theory is subjective truth compared to objective Biblical truth. We don’t have much concept that the city of God is of infinite importance, while the political theory of the earthly city is subjective truth, and far below the level of importance that the City of God has.

Politics has taken priority to the extent that many Christians know more about their political views than they do about the Bible.

The nonbeliever today is more likely to see our political position than they are to see the friend of sinners manifested in our lives.

Many of us spend more time focusing on politics than we do praying for and serving the Church.

We pursue political ends, often oblivious to the warnings from John Calvin and Martin Luther that the heart is an idol factory. While we think we are producing the fruit of the kingdom of God pursuing political ends, we miss the idol staring us in the face without reaching a single person with the gospel. This is, of course, a generalization of perspective that will vary in accuracy from person to person, and from Church to Church. There are political pursuits and vocations, of course, that are God glorifying and not laden with idolatry. But we normally don’t like to acknowledge the idols in our lives, particularly around election season.

Christian nationalism has got to be distinguished from majority Christian influence. And America has got to be distinguished from being the City of God. America is not the city that Jesus died for. God is not losing the battle because Americans are falling away from Christianity.  Some sort of conservative utopia is not the end goal of Christianity.  Nor was it ours to begin with for all the talk of “taking it back” in our propaganda.

We’ve lost the categories of thought that keep all these things separate. Many of us have our identities wrapped up in a confounded version of all this, and we wind up surprised how weak that foundation is when our chosen hero does not get elected, and our identity gets rattled and shaken in the process.

I know the Christian calling effects every part of our life, every part of our vocations, and every bit of our visions of this world. We absolutely need believers in positions of influence.

The rhetoric of the day needs some attention for this arena.

Politics thrives on vague generalized language often called propaganda. It does not thrive on getting very specific and helping ordinary people understand the law better. Would that our politicians spent time teaching us to understand the law and legal process more than crafting speeches and media bits to rub off well on their intended audience.

This propaganda seems to me a more significant point of weakness than I think most of us realize.

Tell me something, what’s the difference between heresy and bad policy?

What’s the difference between being “woke” and being a legitimate Christian?

Can we define the term “woke” long enough to tell if the above is even a legitimate question for the amount this term is getting thrown around? Is “woke” just another synonym for liberal policy? Or can more than a few of us define it in exactly the same way without consulting each other first?

Is black history actually the enemy subject we need to avoid at all cost? Is it something we need to keep our children from learning about?

What’s the difference between Liberal theology and Liberal politics? Yes, there is a very important distinction there.

Can we define the term appropriately for each so we know which is theological heresy and which the reader might simply call bad policy? You can argue that the two overlap, but the two are still completely different things.

What’s the difference between a false teaching and propaganda?

What precisely does it mean that only God can save America?

America is after all destined for the same ending the rest of the world is, and not every American will be saved in eternity.

No one is defining these things.

What we’re getting instead is a version of conditioning to assume we know everything we need we need to know about these things before we read anything about them. The next conditioning is to assume we know how to react appropriately to each of them before we take the time to understand them.

No, that is not suggesting you haven’t done your homework. I am suggesting though that most of us are not picking up a book to learn about these things, we’re going to the media and social media for it in this day and age. You can start to picture the problems that come from relying only on the media for our information. I won’t go there now to give that a better treatment later.

No one is making distinctions that keep the realm of civil government separate from theology.

No one is teaching us the difference between political progress and a utopian mindset.

No one is clarifying the difference between between Christian nationalism, and Majority Christian influence.

No one is teaching us that this abstract partisan vision for the future does not actually belong to us in the first place for all the talk of “taking it back” from the opposing party.

Those who have tried to define “critical race theory” certainly have not reached most of the people the phrase has reached.

These phrases incentivize us to run from something when we don’t even know what these things mean. Fear is a powerful motivator, and that’s why these parties use it.

I don’t see people out there defining their terms. I don’t see them making these distinctions. Unfortunately, I do not presently see the Church around the world or in America faring well with all these challenges.

There is room to do a lot better. There is a lot of ground to cover. In the end- Believe it or not, it is not through either of these two parties that Jesus is going to make all things new in the end.

This is a post where I’m deviating from previous topics a bit and dedicating this to a friend of mine. He and I bonded a lot over the topic at hand and discussions that don’t normally happen in Reformed Churches.

He had wanted to help me write about this, and now that he can’t anymore, I need to stop putting this topic off in writing efforts.

Luke 20: 34-38 “Jesus replied, the people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of raking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

My best friend David passed away recently, and even as I think about how to mention him I can’t help but remember Luke 20. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.

The Taboo in mind is one he and I talked about a lot. He and I had different understandings of it, but the conversation doesn’t normally happen in Reformed traditions.

Is it strange to you that Reformers today have no problem with the language “felt led”, but have lots of problems with definitively saying “The Lord told me”? Or more bluntly, the “God told me” language we hear more frequently from our friends in the Pentacostal or Assembly of God traditions.

We sing in the Song “He Lives”,  “He walks with me and talks with me along the narrow way”, but if someone is asking questions what that means,  we are often quick to specify- oh, it just means the Bible when we talk of God speaking.

In “This is My Father’s World”, “In rustling grass I hear him pass, he speaks to me everywhere”.

How often do many of us try to discern the Lord’s leading when what we really want is for God smack us over the head with a crystal clear message the way he did for Paul on the Emmaus road?

I am no expert on the history here, others could tell you better than I could there. The language of “The Lord told me” was met with the Reformed Response upholding and mostly limiting the topic to Sola Scriptura. One of the 5 prevailing Sola’s of the Protestant Reformation is held up, and the conversation for the Reformer usually stops there.

Does God continue to speak in our day and age when the original authority of the Apostles in the early Church is no more?

The usual Reformed response needs some credit here. There are many theologians of higher rank than myself who would share this opinion. The more we learn from history the more we learn that many claiming God is speaking through them, have horribly, horribly, misused and abused this concept.

Humans are very good actors when we have an agenda. What better validation than having God on your side if you can convince people that it’s legitimate?

Dr. Michael Horton for instance, has pointed out that these claims have a troubled relationship with orthodoxy and the Reformed tradition. I would argue that he’s not completely wrong here. Some of you know this, or have experienced it. When people go fully toward the “God told me” attitude and start going their own direction with things, bad things happen. Had Joseph Smith not done this, we might not have mormonism today. Had Warren Jeffs not done this, Jim Jones not done this, the examples could go on and on of how horribly this has worked out.

It is plainly a common way for cults to form, and it has happened many times over. Someone believes their communication with God is legitimate, and therefore any attempt to correct them is Illegitimate and doomed to fail. If the effort to correct them succeeds, the person usually buys into a martyr complex of confirmation bias and hero mindset against the odds and powers that be.

I don’t think this is good a black and white picture though. I don’t think the total avoidance that is common to the Reformed tradition is the right approach.

Neither do I think the full unhindered embrace of continuation of the greater gifts is a good thing either. It’s been disappointing to me how few really good sources are actually out there that take a more middle ground approach.

First of all all I should point out, our doctrine is not “Solo” scriptura, meaning scripture only and there’s no other way for God to speak or move. I don’t think that’s what the writers of our confessions intended when they clarified what the sufficiency of scripture means. When I sought clarification on this from a former college professor in the CRCNA, he said it’s more that scripture is the final and highest authority. It is not necessarily that scripture is the only means for the Lord to communicate or move.

As the Belgic confession article 7 tells us regarding the sufficiency of scripture:

“Therefore we must not consider human writings-no matter how holy their authors may have been- equal to the divine writings; nor may we put custom, nor the majority, nor age, nor the passage of time or persons, nor the councils, decrees, or official positions above the truth of God, for truth is above everything else.”

In Louis Berkhofs (Former President of Calvin Seminary) wording:

“It involves a denial that there is alongside of scripture an unwritten word of God of equal or even superior authority” (pg. 49).

Notice the emphasis on the words being treated as “equal” or “above” or “superior” in authority.

The usual stopping point to this discussion for a Reformer, doesn’t actually need to be the stopping point. It is rather a category of authority, more so than it is the stopping it is treated as.

The warning from our catechism is for things claiming equal, or above the authority of what’s in scripture. To Reformers credit, those who believe the’re recieving the voice of God don’t normally make distinctions of how authoritative their word is. It’s not necessarily convincing to add such a disclaimer onto a message supposedly from the Lord.

The disclaimer is out of place in regular discussion, but it’s not out of place in our theology.

The words of Paul himself add a disclaimer of sorts.

1 Corinthians 13: 9-10

“For now we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when compleness comes, what is in part disappears.”

This very different language than our famous “All scripture is God breathed” passage in 2 Timothy 3.

Or Peter saying that “we also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable” 2Pet. 1:19

I should not be considered a textual critic, or a theology authority. It’s pretty clear to me there are two different things going on here when prophecy is mentioned in the New Testament.

One needs to be tested and the other regarded as completely reliable. One is done in part, and the other was done in complete perfection.

It bothers me when I see New Testament prophets trying to behave like Old Testament Prophets did. It bothers me when a New Testament prophet seems to think they have the same authority as an Old Testament Prophet. As it usually happens, you get no disclaimer that the message is not on par with the Bible. You get no disclaimer that as Wayne Grudem would say, the message is subject to flawed human interpretation.

It’s fascinating to me that Peter clarified that “no prophecy of scripture came about by the Prophets own interpretation of things” 2 Pet. 1:20

To me, all of these concepts flow in sync. Sola Scriptura, and the sufficiency thereof does not mean that God has no other way to communicate to us in this day and age. I’m not limiting the topic to Prophets, but they are certainly the most controversial in this topic.

I’ve been on the recieving end of people telling me “God told me” enough times that I’ve lost count. Unfortunately, I did not come away from any of them feeling edified by the discussion. I always came away asking “what the heck does that mean?!” There’s always a vagueness and open to interpretation that annoys me to no end. I would ask them what that means, and they would tell me point blank “I don’t know”. It’s pretty easy to give someone a message that’s open to interpretation, Chinese cookies are a cultural form of this.

It’s a lot harder to be able to uncover the secrets of people’s hearts so that the unbeliever exclaims “God is really among you!” 1Cor. 14:25

Some people get creeped out at the thought that someone knows so much about them before they even met sometimes. It actually does happen though. Graham Cooke has often referred to it in his books like God is revealing something about this person in order to use it to touch the person’s heart. Very often when that happens, the tears run and secrets that have been holding someone back are finally dealt with. Now the person is freed and released into their own deeper relationship with God.

It sounds a lot like 1 Cor. 14:3

“But the one who prophecies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouraging and comfort. Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifices themselves, but the one who who prophesies edifies the Church.”

It sounds a lot narrower than everything the Old Testament Prophets had to do right? It is.

“When completeness comes, what is in part dissappears” 1 Cor. 13:10

Pardon me not being an authoritative theologian by any means.

That’s not a progression from partial to nothing, it’s a progression from partial to completion.

Why do I point this out? Because the broader debate in the Church is called Continuationism vs. Cessationism. Cessationism is where most of the Reformed tradition has landed. This is largely because of the abuses of the greater gifts by many of those who claimed to have them. Reformers said in a sense “we have the scriptures that we know to be authoritative, why do we need this other stuff that’s been so horribly misused? As Michael Horton has said, He’s not ready to die on the Cessationist side, but those who believe in the greater gifts often have a troubled relationship with Orthodoxy.

I don’t think either side has done everything right here.

It’s always been strange to me the number of times I encounter this word “prophet”, or “prophecy” in the New Testament, as it gets glossed over like it’s not there. A lot of this is fair because our teachers often don’t put much weight on this concept today, and it’s met with controversy if they do take a serious look at it.

I don’t like glossing over this word though. I understand why it gets glossed over. I find it all over the place in the New Testament, which to me hints that it’s not over yet.

We refer to passages where Jesus is using the tree and its fruit to help us tell the good followers from the bad. No one seems to notice, when Jesus first mentions this concept at the end of the sermon on the mount:

Mt 7:15-19 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

It’s ironic to me that we normally read this passage as applying to ourselves and others while missing those “prophets” specifically mentioned.

We have no problem today citing John’s famous passage about testing the spirits.  Full passage 1 Jon 4:1-3:

“Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how yiu can recognize the spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”

Again, Ironcally we often read this passage as being about ourselves and others, while missing those who are specifically mentioned here. Not that it can’t apply to ourselves and others, but we gloss over the “prophets” named here.

It might make a Reformed theologian nervous if I started arguing that the “Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and (New Testament) prophets with Christ Jesus as the Chief cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20).

Paul does not specify which type of prophet he’s referring to, so I won’t try to argue that one. I feel that debate could easily go in circles, which it already does  between traditions and I’m not sure it will help to do that. It doesn’t help the point of this post, as a conversation starter, rather than a platform for debate. That passage is cited by many continuationists today, while Reformers would normally say Paul was talking about Old Testament Prophets.

Cessationists would tell us these greater gifts stopped after the time of the apostles in the early Church. If timing is the key to the debate I have problems with this. From four very end times focused passages.

Matthew 24:11 “and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.”

Matthew 24:24 “For many false messiah and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”

2 Thessalonians 2 “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to  become easily unsettled or alarmd by the teaching allegedly from us- whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter- asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Dont let anyone decieve you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exal himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”

The reader could argue that the presence of false prophets doesn’t necessarily imply the presence of true ones. I’ll grant you that. I would argue though, It sounds exactly like the other warnings from Jesus, Paul and John in passages that are not about the end times. It seems to me this sort of thing was rather normal to their minds back then.

Revelation 19:10 “At this I fell at his feet. But he said to me, don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers and sisters who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For it is the Spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus.”

The cessationist is welcome to call me biased. I welcome counter arguments, but I do not currently see the scriptures pointing in their direction. When they cite “Where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away” (1 Cor. 13:8).

Had Paul stopped here, I might be closer to the Cessationist side wondering why Paul spent so much time on this topic in 1 Cor. 12-14. Why is this mentioned so many times in the New Testeament if it has ceased for us today, and is in theory, not something to worry about or take seriously anymore?

Paul continued, “For we know in part and we pophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part dissapears” 1Cor 13:9-10.

Progression from partial to completion. Not a progression from partial to nothing.

I don’t think full Cessationism is how we operate as Christians either. As I said earlier, we have no problem with this language “felt led” until someone says definitively “the lord told me”. We sing “he walks with me and talks with me along the narrow way”. No one is asking about the exact methodology God uses to talk to us when we finish that song.

When trying to discern God’s will, many of us are more Pentecostal basically wanting God to speak crystal clearly to us or smack us over the head with a message like he did for Paul.

I really appreciate Charles Spurgeons thoughts on this, and I’m grateful that I remember sharing this with my friend David before he passed. It’s not specifically about prophecy or the greater gifts. But it goes a lot further than most modern teachers today regarding the voice of God in our own lives based on John chapter 10.

The sermon is called The Sheep and Their Shepherd, from Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit volume 17

“The spiritual ear listens to God. The opening of it is the work of the Holy Spirit, and this is a mark of Christ’s chosen blood-bought people, that they hear not only the hollow sound, but the hidden sense; not the bare letter, but the spiritual lesson; and that too not merely with the outward organ, but with the inward heart…. His voice may speak to us in the street. Silent as to a vocal utterance, but like familiar tones that sometimes greet us in our dreams, the voice of Christ is distinctly audible to the soul. It will come to you in sweet or in bitter providences; yea, there is such a thing as hearing Christ’s voice in the rustling of every leaf upon the tree, in the moaning of the wind, in the rippling of every wave. And there be those that have learned to lean on Christ’s bosom, till they have looked for all the world as though they were a shell that lay in the ocean of Christ’s love, listening forever to the sonorous cadence of that deep, unfathomable, all-mysterious main. The billows of his love never cease to swell. The billowy anthem still peals with solemn grandeur in the ear of the Christian. Oh may we hear Christ’s voice each one of us for ourselves!  I find that language fails me, and metaphors are weak to describe its potent spell….. one point is worth noticing, however. I think our Lord meant here that his sheep, when they hear his voice, know it so well that they can tell it at once from the voice of strangers. The true child of God knows the gospel from the law. It is not by learning catechism, reading theological books, or listening to endless controversies, that he finds this out. There is an instinct of his regenerate nature far more trustworthy than any lessons he has been taught. The voice of Jesus! Why there is no music like it. Once you have heard it, you cannot mistake it for another, or another for it.”

Many have misused this concept, and others have by and large avoided it. As convincing or not convincing as this post may be, it is meant to prompt consideration and discussion. It is not meant to be a decisive document in a broader ongoing debate.

The proper use of this is another post, if the discussion gets that far. I am of firm belief that New Testament prophecy has a much narrower purpose than Old Testament counterparts. There is very little good information out there for this middle ground approach that I take.

One of them is from Wayne Grudem- “The Gift of Prophecy”

The other two are Graham Cooke and Jack Deer with their books on the subject.

https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-sheep-and-their-shepherd/#flipbook/

Michael Hortons disagreement with Wayne Grudem. https://www.drtimwhite.net/blog/2018/3/6/non-cessationism-and-soft-cessationism-no-difference

I’m switching now to a dual focus on the two greatest commandments. I’m going to do it in a way I’ve never seen anyone write or teach on. Since everyone in my initial audience will know pretty well what it means to love our neighbors within the Church, I want to go a harder direction.

I’m going to start this the same way Jesus did, and the implications of where I’m heading after that will start to get pretty clear.

Luke 10:25-37 NIV

"On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. Teacher, he asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law? How do you read it? He answered, Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself. You have answered correctly Jesus replied. Do this and you will live. But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, And who is my neighbor? In reply Jesus said: A man was down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came to where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. Look after him, he said, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have. Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers? The expert in the law replied, the one who had mercy on him. Jesus told him, go and do likewise".

This is one of those passages many of us already know something about.  A well known and taught example of what it means to love ones neighbor. As we read it from a modern western lens, we tend to focus on the fact that a man was horribly beat up and that people simply passed by while someone was in distress.

What we don’t usually pick up on is the fact that three groups of people of the time period are being represented in this story. A Priest in the temple at this time period was the closest thing these people had to a modern Pastor today. He was a religious leader in his day and the figure we would imagine to be the first to show compassion. The Levite in the story would have had a functional role in the temple being from the priestly tribe of Levi.

According to the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible- Following Jewish tradition, ritual impurity would be contracted by touching a dead body, including even if their shadow touched it. This is likely the reason why these two passed on the other side.

The hero we now refer to as the good Samaritan- was the hated foreigner in the context of the day. According to the Jews, he was not included among the people of God. We would refer to him in this day as the highly unliked nonbeliever in the story.

The NIV Chronological study Bible gives us even more context here. “The Samaritan, a mortal enemy of all jews, took pity on the man and offered him an extraordinary degree of assistance. If Jesus’ sole intention had been to say that one’s neighbor includes everyone, there would have been no need to identify the actors as a Levite, a Priest, and a Samaritan. Jesus was also critiquing the heartlessness of those jews who allowed the law to thwart their humanity. With this parable Luke continues a favorable theme: the inclusion of all nations in the people of God. Even a Samaritan can aspire to eternal life.”

Mathew Henry’s commentary quotes Dr. John Lightfoot. “The Jews had a very corrupt notion that Jesus corrected here. Lightfoot quotes their words “Where he saith, thou shalt love thy neighbor, he excepts all Gentiles, for they are not our neighbors, but only those that are of our own nation and religion. They would not put an Israelite to death for killing a Gentile, for he was not his neighbor: they indeed would say they ought not kill a Gentile whom they are not at war with; but if they saw a Gentile in danger of death, they thought themselves under no obligation to help save his life. Such wicked inferences did they draw from that holy covenant of peculiarities by which God had distinguished them, and by abusing it thus they had forfeited it; God justly took the forfeiture, and transferred covenant-favors to the Gentile world, to whom they brutishly denied common favors.”

More context from the Bible itself. LK 9:51-62

"As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and john saw this, they asked, Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them? But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then he and his disciples went to another village."

I’m aware of no other place in the New Testament where even Jesus disciples were quickly willing to both destroy a village and try to do it with the power of God.

When we think about the command to love our neighbor today, what we usually have in mind is some sort of neighborly regard for the strangers around us. In our churches these are those we don’t know very well or at all. In our communities, these are the strangers we pass on a walk, or may have an interaction in passing at the park.

While that mindset is not necessarily wrong, it is not what Jesus meant when He answered the question here “who is my neighbor?”. Most of us would not presume Jesus was talking about trying to manufacture an attitude of neighborly regard toward those we really dislike, or consider to be in the wrong. These groups of people that were represented in the story would have had nothing that could be considered neighborly regard for each other.

As pointed in the “Knowing God” series, love for God has an active component that is necessary for validating-(imperfectly of course) the right kind of faith.

As loving God should be an active love, so loving our neighbor is an active love as well.

(1 JN 3:18)”let us not love with words or speech, but with actions, and in truth.”

Where you’re tracking with me so far saying “ok, I kind of know this already”- let me throw us off track. It seems to me many Christians today have a strong tendency to read the Bible in a way that is favorable toward ourselves.

How do we actively love our neighbor in the Church who disagrees with us?

More specifically- How do we love other Christians who disagree with us on present day culture wars?

How do we actively show love to the nonbeliever who vehemently disagrees with us on culture wars?

Loving our neighbor is of course far broader than just the context of culture wars, but this direction of it is so front and center today, and so controversial. I don’t know what direction of loving our neighbor is more prevalently wrestled with and difficult to figure out as much as navigating the muck and mire of culture wars.

The general wisdom many of us already know is to cite (Eph 4:15) “speak the truth in love”.

While this is not wrong- how do we differentiate cultural truth from Biblical truth?

Even in our Church traditions reformers will sing the Reformation Hymn which says “our traditions sift like sand, but your truth forever stands”.

The Bible is the story of redemptive history. It is not a textbook for any other subject. How do we navigate the truth that does not necessarily come from it, but from culture and other subjects?

All these questions, I won’t to try to get into in this post. The reason for asking these questions is to start bringing to the forefront questions which make all of us wonder and wrestle. I believe a distinction is necessary before I can make any progress writing about the tough issues of the day.

Objective Truth and Subjective/Cultural Truth

Normally these are something we only hear about if the philosophy angle of Christian apologetics is discussed. The distinction is referred to when we sing in the Reformation Hymn “Our traditions sift like sand, but your truth, forever stands.”

When Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (JN 14:6)- let’s focus on “I am the truth”.

Notice he didn’t say “I speak the truth” although he said that too.

What does it mean that he is the truth?

In Christianity, it means that he is the highest source for truth, and the highest authority for truth. Neither of these depend on the “sinking sand” (MT 6:26) of disobedience, or as the song refers to it, our traditions.

If there is such a thing as objective truth- as Christian philosophers would argue there is, it must be unchanging in nature. Not dependent on changing times, changing cultures, or empires rising and falling. It is rather self evident that customs change, both over time, and across territories. If Jesus is the truth- then there is a distinction between these two types of truth.

If there is a distinction between two types of truth, there is also a source and an origin for two types of truth.

The origin of objective truth technically happened in eternity past in Christ. The origin of subjective, cultural, and changing truth happened in Genesis 3 with the fall of man. St. Augustine would claim it started before that with the rebellion of the devil and his demons.

The one source of truth, we would call the head figure of the Kingdom of God. The other source of truth, resulted from the fall of man, and rebellion against God. It is subject to change and the evil and decay of a fallen world. So it is far more prone to error.

These two sources of truth, with the sources they come from- as St. Augustine tells us in “The City of God”- “Those two cities are interwoven and intermixed (Marcus Dodds translation-“entangled”) in this Era, and await separation at the last judgement” (Book 1, ch. 35).

Two types of “truth” are tangled together, as are the cities they come from.

But the devil is the father of lies right? So why are we granting the “truth” label to the side he has most under control? Because the Devil does not normally do his work with obvious lies. He takes the “truth”, or at least the perceived truth, and he twists it, as he did in the first temptation of Adam and eve. In the original temptation the devil twisted the words between (Gn 2:17), and (Gn 3:3). In the temptation of our Lord in (MT 4), the devil tried to use scripture to get Jesus to sin. Our lord out quoted the devil. The truth that’s being twisted is where the lie gets it’s power.

I am now convinced that a better understanding of these two cities will give us not only a better understanding of the world we live in, but will better enable us to show love to someone we strongly disagree with in culture. Cultural struggles are not going anywhere, and they’re not getting any easier to figure out.

It is these two directions this blog is now headed.

Love of God- as primarily focused on the Church and the truths we hold to.

Love of neighbor, for now will be primarily focused on the present day and cultural barriers we constantly wrestle with. I know of no other direction that is more of a challenge to the Church today.

Where cultural struggles are concerned, as subjective and cultural truth is more prone to error, so my thoughts regarding it should not be taken with authority.

Augustines two cities are not something many Christians today seem to know about. I never learned about them despite being raised in the CRC and Christian education. The number of Church history sources that refer to it, if I focused purely on them, would be highly academic in tone. They would likely be a bore to push through, and it would leave the audience wondering what does this mean? Why is this important for today? Does it actually change anything?

Instead of that approach, I’m going to start, as this post does, briefly and repetitively showing you many places where this distinction is attested to in the Bible, Church history, and Reformation era confessions of faith. As we do so, we need to work toward understanding how the gospel works with God’s promise to Abraham- “Through your offspring all the nations on earth will be blessed” (Gn 22:18). We also need to imitate our chief example who is Christ. For that end, we need to work toward understanding Bible stories that show us our Lord stepping through cultural barriers to love others.

For those who may not know, St Augustine is one of the better known Church fathers. He was the Bishop of Hippo in the early 4th century A.D. He is often referred to by theologians today as a pre-Reformed reformer, being one who the Reformers of the 15 century would cite when arguing against the errors of the 15th century Roman Catholic Church. Catholics and Protestants alike revere the legacy he left on Church history.

Works cited

St. Augustine. City of God. Translated by Henry Bettison, Penguin Classics, 1972, p. 46.

Henry, Matthew. Biblestudytools, Salem Web Network, http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-henry-complete/luke/10.html.

Thomas Nelson. The Chronological Study Bible. New International Version ed., Biblica, inc., 2011, pp. 1178-79.

Biblica. NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible. Zondervan, 2011, pp. 1768-69.

I believe the Reformation Hymn is in public domain, I don’t have a hymnal right now for copyright details.

A series about knowing God would be incomplete without touching on this subject. It is one those of us who have been Christians for a long time know about. It can also be a little convicting at the outset for those of us who know that prayer time is a struggle for us and know that we need to spend more time on it. It can also seem daunting for those of us that have never experienced much benefit from it. Those who have a dry and unfruitful prayer life, even if we know we ought to pray more than we do, don’t know how to pray in such a way as to benefit from it. Where there seems no benefit, it’s hard to muster the will to spend time doing it. Some of us end up in a stale prayer life not knowing how to change that for the better.

When Christian’s talk about having a personal relationship with God, this is primarily what is meant, though there’s more to it than that. The emphasis on a “personal relationship” that we talk about is not normally directly spelled out in the New Testament. It is implied throughout the salvation story, but some of us are left wondering where it comes from.

When Jesus said “I don’t know you” To those that thought they would never be turned away by him, He of course did not mean “I don’t know about you.” This a reference to relationship.  Of course this place where it is implied is little consolation to those of us who know we need to work on our prayer lives. Even if we have a strong prayer life, there are always new depths into which that relationship with God takes us.

Keep the word “intimacy” with God in the back of your mind as we go through this. We will touch on things I believe can be holding our prayers back from their potential. If I stop there though, I leave something out. Our prayer lives ought not treat God as a means to an end.  God is an end in himself. It is common to Christian lingo that God doesn’t necessarily want all the things you will do for him, though that is part of our walk. He wants you. We are God’s inheritance, just as He is our inheritance. It goes both ways, and this is the intimacy towards which our prayer lives ought to guide us. We will come back to this at the end  this post.

It seems to me a present staleness of prayer for many of us is complicated by three main contributing factors. One of them is that the Church in America- along with the culture we live in, is very busy all the time, and very individualistic. We do not think collectively so as to rapidly all have the same answer as when the Israelites in the Old Testament told Moses they would obey, and then later decided they would not obey. Everyone has a difference of opinion today, and every difference of opinion has its weight and its merits, but we don’t think collectively like that in a large group today. I don’t think the busyness of American life needs any explanation as to why prayer is frequently moved to the back of our minds knowing that we ought to do it but struggling to get to it.

The second factor is Ironic to me but needs to be considered. I’ve experienced, maybe others haven’t, that we frequently tell others that the power in prayer is not in the emotional effort we put into it. This made it into Lewis’s Screwtape Letters as an example of how the Devil tries to derail our prayer lives. It is true that the power in prayer is not in how much emotional force we can muster behind the prayer. Many of us, myself included, hear that and go “I don’t have to work that hard at prayer for its power to be there.”

The busyness of our lives, combined with the lack of much benefit that many of us experience with prayer, and then hearing that we don’t have to work hard at it for it to still be powerful, makes prayer happen very little for many of us. If anyone is feeling convicted in their poor prayer life as you read this, don’t let the conviction push you to feel down on yourself. Use it as motivation to strive towards a more fruitful and life-giving prayer habit. Let this post not remind you of how bad you are at praying. Let it push your prayer life to new heights whereby you can drink deep of the living water and your portion, who is God himself.

The third factor is that reformers strongly believe in the sovereignty of God over everything. “He makes known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come” (IS, 46). The age old debate of predestination vs free will. If God already has a plan for the future, then why should I pray right? Everything has already been predetermined regardless of my prayer life right? 

Right now, I’m not going in the direction of “everything is already predetermined, so what difference does prayer make?” I might get to this eventually. It should be self-explanatory for now, that the new Testaments most frequent authorship on predestination (Paul), was a man of prayer, and a frequent advocate of prayer.

Allow me to offer a change in perspective on prayer.

I’m going to start with a point of disappointment about the way one of our more direct Bible passages is most often translated.

James 5:16

NIV “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

ESV “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working”

NASB “The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much”

This is not about criticizing the translators, but I wish more versions had captured a nuance I’m going to run with.

KJV “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much”

NKJV “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much”

NLT “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results”

No, the power in your prayer does not hinge on the emotional force you can place behind it. I would argue though, that it will difficult to pray earnestly or fervently without some effort that likely will at times be emotional.

There are several ways of praying, certainly beyond what this post can cover in a short time. What I want to focus on is the work we put into our prayers, and the manner in which we pray. The reader is going like “everyone prays different, that’s how it should be right?” Your still right. These things are not exclusive to each other. Consider this a challenge emanating from the influence of Biblical figures, and Charles Spurgeon on me. Spurgeon is generally widely accepted as a solid puritan teacher, and He has changed my perspective on this. Matthew will also be helpful for this point. I will say before and after citing Spurgeon, he has a way of making things sound very profound. So as you read it, let it make you think, but also credit yourselves as many of you are already doing this, whether you had viewed it in that light or not.

A couple questions to get you thinking:

If you were entering the presence of a highly powerful King would you want to get there and try to think of what to say on the spot?

If you are a small child asking your parent for something, do you stop asking after a simple halfhearted request?

Mt 7:7-12 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone/ or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? if you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

There are degrees of persistence in the way Jesus tells us to ask for things here. In Lukes version- in chapter 11, this persistence is regarding God giving the holy spirit to those who ask him.

If you are suffering, or emotionally despondent, are you half heartedly longing for relief and resolution?

There is a lot of consistency in the book of Psalms related to the rawness of Davids emotions.  I’m not even going to cite them all because many of you will already know what I mean. David is often seen crying out to God in fear for his life because his enemies are pursuing him in battle. We see him crying out for deliverance, praying for God’s judgement to come down on his enemies. We see God in relationship with David frequently credited for rescuing David and lifting him out of his disparity.

The way we pray with little effort and no heart is not how we operate. We are emotional beings with needs, with longings and desires, and many of us need a safe space for the rawness of it all. A rawness that is not necessarily safe to be expressing in all its detail to everyone around us either in fellowship opportunity, or after Church on Sunday morning. Some of us have those blessed influences we can tell anything to without fear of judgement and know that were safe talking to them about it. Making yourself vulnerable like this requires safety, and a confidence knowing that this person is not going to tell others what you’ve shared with them.

Still, this is not about how much emotion we can muster up when we pray.  Some of us are more or less emotional beings. The power is not in the emotion, but it will be harder to pray with heart, with fervency, and persistence, without some emotion going along with it.

Many believers are stuck at the point of what I call the laundry list prayer. We find a bunch of things to ask God for, wrap it up with “in Jesus name Amen” at the end and move on with our day. If this is where you’re at, this is better than nothing for sure.

Where some Christians are saying “I don’t know how to pray”, I defer to Spurgeons counsel- with modernized English. “Prayer itself is an art which only the holy Ghost can teach us. He is the giver of all prayer. Pray for prayer- pray till you can pray; pray to be helped to pray, and do not give up praying because you cannot pray, for it is when you think you cannot pray that you are most praying; and sometimes when you have no sort of comfort in your requests, it is when you are broken and cast down that you are really wrestling and truly prevailing with the most high.

I don’t think many of us realize how much power we actually have in prayer.

The resource I’m about to cite was given to me by a previous CRC Pastor. It was written by the director of Mission India back in 2005.

“Why Pray”- from John Devries

“We are in training now to rule for eternity. Our homes are our classrooms. We are being trained to reign using the scepter of prayer. And we are to pour all our energies into learning how to rule through prayer” (pg 190). This is based on the parable of the talents in Luke 19, full quotation is shortened for copyright purposes.

Reigning? Ruling? Through prayer?

From this point on most of this post will be more from Charles Spurgeon than from me. I simply cannot say this in my own words with the same effect that it had on me when I read it. Here is old English and a profound way of speaking that was natural for Spurgeon. You’ll have to pardon the old English; I’m not going to modernize it here.

Sermon- True Prayer, True Power, August 12, 1860

“Now, my own soul’s conviction is, that prayer is the grandest power in the entire universe; that it has a more omnipotent force than electricity, attraction, gravitation, or any other of those secret forces which men have called by names, but which they do not understand. Prayer hath as palpable, as true, as sure, as invariable and influence over the entire universe as any of the laws of matter. When a man really prays, it is not a question whether God will hear him or not, he must hear him; not because there is any compulsion in the prayer, but there is a sweet and blessed compulsion in the promise. God has promised to hear prayer, and he will perform his promise. As he is the most high and true God, he cannot deny himself. Oh! to think of this; that you a puny man may stand here and speak to God, and through God may move all the worlds. Yet when your prayer is heard, creation will not be disturbed; though the grandest ends be answered, providence will not be disarranged for a single moment. Not a leaf will fall earlier from the tree, not a star will stay in its course, nor one drop of water trickle more slowly from its fount, all will go on the same, and yet your prayer will have affected everything. It will speak to the decrees and purposes of God, as they are being daily fulfilled; and they will all shout to your prayer, and cry, “Thou art our brother; we are decrees, and thou a prayer; but thou art thyself a decree, as old, as sure, as ancient as we are.” Our prayers are God’s decrees in another shape. The prayers of God’s people are but God’s promises breathed out of living hearts, and those promises are the decrees, only put into another form and fashion. Do not say, “How can my prayers affect the decrees?” They cannot, except in so much that your prayers are decrees, and that as they come out, every prayer that is inspired of the Holy Ghost unto your soul is as omnipotent and as eternal as that decree which said, “Let there be light, and there was light;” or as that decree which chose his people, and ordained their redemption by the precious blood of Christ. Thou has power in prayer, and thou standest to-day among the most potent ministers in the universe that God has made. Thou has power over angels, they will fly at thy will. Thou hast power over fire, and water, and the elements of earth. Thou hast power to make thy voice heard beyond the stars; where the thunders die out in silence, thy voice shall wake the echoes of eternity. The ear of God himself shall listen and the hand of God himself shall yield to thy will. He bids thee cry, “Thy will be done,” and thy will shall be done. When thou canst plead his promise then thy will is his will.“

Still Spurgeon…

“There is nothing, I repeat it, there is no force so tremendous, no energy so marvelous, as the energy with which God has endowed every man, who like Jacob can wrestle, like Israel can prevail with him in prayer.”

“Unless I believe my prayer to be effectual it will not be, for on my faith will it to a great extent depend.”

“Nay, I do believe there is as much reality in a Christian’s prayer as in a lightning flash; and the utility and excellency of the prayer of a Christian may be just as sensibly known as the power of the lightning flash when it rends the tree, breaks off its branches, and splits it to the very root. Prayer is not a fancy of fiction; it is a real actual thing, coercing the universe, binding the laws of God themselves in fetters, and constraining the High and Holy One to listen to the will of his poor but favored creature-man.”

Spurgeon uses the analogy from John Bradford about focusing on one thing at a time. The analogy of an archers bow, and prayers being the arrows shot from it.

“To make prayer of any value, there should be definite objects for which to plead.”  

“When I know what I want I always stop on that prayer until I feel that I have pleaded it with God, and until God and I have had dealings with each other upon it. I never go on to another petition till I have gone through the first….. “Oh! Stop at each one till you have really prayed it. Do not try to put two arrows on the string at once, they will both miss…. Do not be satisfied with running the colors of your prayers into one another, till there is no picture to look at but just a hug daub, a smear of colors badly laid on.”

Effective Prayer- From Charles Spurgeon

Based on Job 23:3-4 “Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat! I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments” KJV

Ordering our cause. and filling our mouths with arguments.

“The use of arguments is intended to stir up our fervency. The man who uses one argument with God will get more force in using the next, and will use the next with still greater power, and the next with more force still. The best prayers I have ever heard in our prayer meetings have been those which have been fullest of argument”

“To pray, my brethren, is to cast off your burdens, it is to tear away your rags, it is to shake off your diseases, it is to be filled with spiritual vigor, it is to reach the highest point of Christian health.”

Plead with God according to his attributes.

“So you and I may take hold at any time upon the justice, the mercy, the faithfulness, the wisdom, the long-suffering, the tenderness of God, and we shall find every attribute of the most high to be, as it were, a great battering-ram, with which we may open the gates of heaven.”

Pray with God according to his promises.

When you plead according to his promises, his will is your will.  ” Feeling that the thing we ask for cannot be wrong, and that he himself hath promised it, we have resolved it must be given, and if not given, we will plead the promise, again, and again, till heaven’s gates shall shake before our pleas shall cease.“

Here I say again, as profound as all this sounds, many of you are already doing this. Let it either serve as vindication of what you’re already doing, and/or let it push your prayer life to new depths in relationship with the Lord.

Here I go back to John Devries, with a couple metaphors to help us understand not only the priority of prayer, but what prayer is actually doing. I will have to summarize briefly due to copyright, but the point will be quickly clear.

Day 4 of his book is about filling up the gas tank. If you had an empty gas tank and you are right by the station, you don’t push your car past the station and continue on your way. You fill up your tank and continue on your way. Yet, pushing our car is what we’re doing when we skip prayer time. Prayer is filling up your spiritual gas tank.

Another analogy He uses is a boy trying to fly a kite on a windless day. It is possible, if you don’t stop running. The kite needs wind.

“The wind blows wherever it pleases. you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” JN 3:8

I’m going to cite Luke 11:12″ once more:

“If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

We need to be asking for more of the Spirit in our lives and drinking deep of the living water in prayer. We also need to learn that the Spirit moves when Christ’s people are praying, including when it does not seem like it.

I could go on, but I don’t feel led to. May this post serve to push our prayer lives to new depths, in Intimacy with God. That intimacy in another form is where I’m headed next with the concept of God’s marriage to His people, and Christ’s marriage to His Church. After that, tough topics lay ahead.

Sermon Titled- Effective Prayer https://www.spurgeongems.org/chs_prayer.htm

Sermon Titled- True Prayer, True Power https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/true-prayer-true-power/#flipbook/

Devries, John. Why pray? 40 days- from words to relationship. Grand Rapids Michigan, Mission India, 2005.

If the reader has tracked with me so far, you know some of the ways in which I started this series of posts. Regarding the Justice of God in the last post, some may wonder how God’s justice factors into us knowing him better. The primary way in which it does so, which all his attributes contribute to, is setting God apart from all else that tries to challenge modern conceptions of who God is. J.I. Packer went this same direction in chapter 14 of his book “Knowing God”. For the mature Christian it may seem a strange way to start.  It provided me a way to introduce the gospel for the first time on this blog, and to show the reader the right state of all things made new that is our hope.

This post hit several stumbling blocks as I wrestled with the proper way to write about it. The first half of this post has been completely re-written a few times by now. This has been my hardest piece on the blog so far. Limited ability to write combined with a topic that on its own has filled books and sermons over and over countless times. How do I possibly condense this into one post? I can’t.

What I can try to do is show you some of the ways that Gods love manifests itself throughout the story of the Bible, (not limited to this post of course). It’s impossible to know God without understanding His love. It’s very difficult to demonstrate His love apart from the gospel. When you do understand the gospel, “growing up into your salvation”, and therefore growing in love, follows and ought never to stop.

In following post, I will talk about the love of God as we are called to show it towards him. The book of 1John will be the big one here. There are a million ways God’s love can be seen, both in Him as manifested towards us, and in us as we Christian’s reciprocate love back towards him and others. The only proper way to understand it though, is in a never ending, continually growing fashion on both God’s side and ours. This will take more than one post to do, and when this series on “Knowing God” ends, the reader should know that this path does not have an ending. Our finite minds will never reach the end of the infinite that God is.

It is one thing for the New Testament writers to tell us about the love of God. It’s quite another thing to learn how to see it in the context of a story. Then you can use that story to understand in a new way exactly what the New Testament writers were saying when they talked about these things. There are very few concepts in the New Testament that were not first said in the Old Testament. I will need a separate post eventually for the necessity of reading the Bible cover to cover.

This is one of Gods attributes, and it is woven into the entire story that is the Bible. God, being an infinite being, has an infinite supply of love within himself. Remember, His attributes are not merely something He possesses, they are something that He IS.

In the Bible, knowing God and loving God, are almost interchangeable terms. Not because they necessarily mean the same thing, but because both imply something that cannot be dismissed with either, obedience to Gods commands.

I’m going to get a little repetative on a point here. You need an understanding of the bad news, before you can understand the good news. The reason this series “Knowing God” started with the Justice of God is because it is only through the combination of his Justice and his love that the gospel makes any sense. Only through his Justice and His love can it be that not all will be saved, but that those who repent and believe will be saved.

If you have absolute perfection of justice, there is no mercy.

If you are perfect in being merciful in the midst of trespass, you get no justice because the offense backfires on you….. unless you are continually the one paying the price of the trespass.

With God in Jesus, you get both, not one or the other. You get both in absolute perfection, and in their highest possible fulfillment. In Jesus, you get boundless mercy in the midst of repeated trespass, and He fulfills the requirement of Justice by paying the price of the trespass. Now, let’s do some tracing the point through a few Bible passages.

The Bible clearly talks about God’s endless love.

“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him” PS 103:11

“For great is your love, reaching to the heavens” PS 57:10

“God is love” 1 JN 4:8,16

Now put this in story mode throughout the Old Testament. It’s one thing to talk about it and acknowledge it. It is another entirely to see God’s love in action in history. “All the ways of the lord are loving and faithful toward those who keep the demands of his covenant” (PS 25:10).  All of them? It certainly does not seem like it sometimes.

Psalm 136 puts a completely different twist on this from how we think about God doing something in love.

Vs 10 “to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt his love endures forever”

Vs 15 “But swept pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea; his love endures forever”

Vs 17 ‘to him who struck down great kings, his love endures forever.’

Putting it in context of Psalm 25 makes sense of God showing love to Israel by taking out Israel’s enemies. Psalm 18 also gives us context for God doing something in love that the rest of us are looking at like “how is that loving”? “To the faithful you show yourself faithful to the blameless you show yourself blameless, to the pure you show yourself pure, but to the devious you show yourself shrewd” (Vs 25-26).

Psalm 1 sets this up more pointedly. Verses 1-3 are about the one who delights in God’s law and follows it. Verses 4-6 are about judgement on the wicked, versus the Lords continual watching over the righteous.

God’s love is present through the entire story of the Bible and today. However, it is going to be experienced in completely different ways for someone who follows God than for someone who does not.

The primary way that a nonbeliever can experience God’s love is through what we call common grace. In the wording of Louis Berkhof “It may be defined as that perfection of God which prompts Him to deal bounteously and kindly with all his creatures. It is the affection which the Creator feels toward the sentient creatures as such. As manifested towards his rational creatures, it is sometimes called his love of benevolence or his common grace, to designate that fact that its bounties are underserved” (Berkhof, 66)).

God’s limitless love does not mean that all will be saved. We are told that He “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). He is “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2Pet. 3:9).

Unfortunately, the contrary destiny is true regarding the majority of humanity.

Mt 7:13-14 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate, and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Lk 13:24-27 ‘Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ But he will answer, I don’t know you or where you come from.’ Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will reply, I don’t know you, or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers.

Mt 7: 21-23 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. many will say to me on that day, ‘lord, lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and, in your name, perform many miracles’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

In this Jewish context, repeating something like “Lord, Lord” implied there was more than just a friendship going on. There was, at least a perception from those saying “Lord, Lord” that the Lord would never turn them away. It is completely possible to do good things in the name of Jesus and still not know Jesus.

The nonbeliever is not even capable of responding to the gospel without the Spirit first working in the heart.

2 Cor. 4:4″The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

Jn 6:44 “No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.”

God is not going to drag anyone kicking and screaming into following him.

Good news ahead.

Eph 2:1-5 “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. Al of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following tis desires and thoughts. like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions- it is by grace you have been saved.”

Eph. 2:11-13 “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called; uncircumcised; by those who call themselves; the circumcision: (which is done in the body by human hands)- remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.“

Titus 3:3-7 “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. he saved us through the washing and rebirth and renewal by the holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life”.

The Gospel as a Manifestation of God’s Love in the Old Testament.

Now I want to work my way backwards in time and talk about the covenants of the promise in Ephesians 2. Reformed theology is covenantal, and the covenants are key to following Gods relationship with his people throughout history. I can’t adequately cover them all here, but I can point out the one I consider my favorite.

In the same chapter that our concept of justification by faith depends on, God makes a covenant with Abraham.

Genesis 15:4-10

“Then the word of the lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.; he took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars – if indeed you can count them.; Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.’ Abraham believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. he also said to him, “I am the lord, who brought you out of ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.: But Abram said, ‘Sovereign lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” So the lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half… “

Jump down to VS 17-19

“When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. on that day the lord madea covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates- the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, CAnaanites, Girgashites and jebusites.”

To modern western thought, the significance of this is mostly hidden. Ancient Jewish cultural context reveals the significance of what’s going on here.

This was a way of making a promise or covenant to a friend or neighbor. In effect, normally speaking, both persons involved would make their commitment in promise. Then they would each pass through the animals that had been cut in two. What it meant back then is “if I do not fulfill my end of the promise, may I end up like these cattle that have been cut into pieces. This was a covenant ratification ceremony.

What exactly was the blazing firepot? Translators are sure exactly how to render this. What we do know is that this is the same Hebrew word being used when the Bible describes the pillar of fire that led the Israelites out of Egypt. It’s also the same word used to describe God as a fire descending on mount Sinai when the law was given, and the 10 commandments were given to Moses.

Abram didn’t pass through the pieces while normally both persons involved would, or just the servant would. God didn’t ask Abram to take his turn passing between the pieces.

To modern ears, God said to Abram “I will fulfill my end of the covenant even if you don’t.” “May I be cut off”, “May I suffer death”.

God in Christ did end up like those pieces of cattle when he went to the cross. From start to finish in the salvation story, Gods love for his people has been costly to him.

As God is promising to make Abraham into a great nation, He makes a promise that is from the beginning costly to himself. If you read Genesis 15, and then read Isaiah 53, you can see the fulfillment of the promise that was made to Abraham.

Why did God do this?

“For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).

Jesus had perfection of joy with God in eternity past. What joy is this talking about? What was missing? You, me, His people. As the song from Hillsong goes “He didn’t want heaven without us.” He “wants all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). So, he gave us a way to redemption, at full measure of cost to himself.

That’s the gospel, that’s the good news, that’s the love of God in the gospel. Only in him do you get the highest fulfilment of both justice and love. Only in knowing him do you find eternal life.

Works Cited

https://podcast.gospelinlife.com/e/abraham-and-the-torch/

Berkhof, Louis. Manual of Christian Doctrine. Eerdmans, 1933, p. 66.

Details of future posts in this series, not necessarily in this order:

The nature of saving knowledge and saving Faith.

The Marriage Between God and His People.

The nature of intimacy with God.

The Wedding of the Lamb and the Bride, that is His Church.

When I wrap up this series, I’m going to talk more about some of the problems facing the Church today.