Repentance

(Tim) These wise words were made as a comment under the recent post, Stats on internet pornography, by Alex McNeilly, a young sax student in Church of the Good Shepherd. Thank you, Alex.

* * *

Regardless of how guarded any home is against sin, particularly the sexual sin of the media, in the world opportunities to indulge in it will abound. But even as we build larger and stronger walls against these sins in the home, worldly access to them becomes ever more available as we see in the stats in this post. As a result, I agree with Kevin that the strongest defense against these things lies in the spiritual battle.

We must teach our children the dangers of sexual sin and pornography, so that when they go into the world (a friend's house, a computer lab, a video store, etc.), where there are no guards, their hearts will already be fortified against these iniquities...

(Tim, w/thanks to Josh Congrove) Peter Hitchens has provided such a good set of reasons for the hope that is within him (and sadly, not in his brother, Christopher) that I abstain from comment and simply post the link. So many wonderfully wise and beautiful things here, I can't bear to mention only one.

Thank you, brother Peter. We will pray for your dear brother, Christopher.

(Peter's book, The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith, will be issued this coming Monday, March 15th.)

CORRECTION: The Rage Against God is now planned for release in early May.

(Tim) Speaking of the weaknesses of godly church officers, Jake Mentzel just passed this on:

* * *

You may have already seen this, but yesterday on his blog, John Piper announced an extended leave of absence (May 1-December 31) from...

(Tim) Under "What is Gospel-centered ministry, really...," there's been a lengthy series of exchanges in the comments concerning whether it's proper to preach evangelistic sermons to established churches. This is an exceedingly important discussion and I want to encourage readers to go down and read those comments in their proper context. But knowing some won't go there, here is my most recent response which can, to some degree, stand on its own. Whatever else you don't read, make sure not to pass over the critically important quote from Luther here recorded.

* * *

Augustine said, "Many sheep without, many wolves within." From the founding of the Church, this has been the universal experience of pastors as we care for our flocks. Yes, the Epistles demonstrate a presumption that letters to believers are letters to believers. It's hard to imagine how they could have been written otherwise. "To those purporting to belong to Christ who are a part of that organization purporting to be a true church in Galatia?" It doesn't work.

But do the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles provide evidence that our Lord and His Apostles called the faith of those marked by the signs of the Covenant into question? The answer to that question is an emphatic, "Yes!" How long shall my list be? Think of those Christ contradicts, telling them their father is not God, but the Devil (John 8:38 & ff.). And if we want to let ourselves off the hook by dismissing Christ as our paradigm for pastoral care today under the rubric of His omniscience, let's move to the Apostolic warning given to Simon Magus in Acts 8. Or on to the many exhortations to baptized believers recorded in the Epistles carefully calculated to warn against and expose presumption--including the Letters to the Seven Churches (eg. Revelation 3:1-6).

So yes, we are to preach to our people normally addressing them as true believers. But we also must test ourselves to see if we are in the faith and call our flock to follow us in this discipline...

(Tim) Listening to one of the ClearNote Conference sermons this past weekend, it came to me that churches that hide the Biblical doctrine of sexuality by putting women forward as officers over men, as small group leaders over men, as directors of the diaconate over men, as advisers sitting in all the session meetings, as worship leaders of men, as teachers of men, as servers of the Lord's Supper to men; in other words, churches that do everything possible to hide the Creation Order God has ordained (without taking the final step of having a woman as a senior pastor) are placing stumbling blocks before women, denying them the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

How so?

Well, if the Law is our schoolmaster to Christ; and if the constant theme of Scripture when it addresses the sins of woman is a clear note calling her to submit to the Creation Order, not teaching or exercising authority over man but submitting to her husband; when this Creation Order is hidden, it is one of the principal sins of woman that we are hiding, and thereby denying woman the call to repentance that would lead her to the Cross.

Put bluntly, churches that hide Scripture's doctrine of sexuality are obscuring the Law and obstructing woman's entry to repentance and faith...

(Tim) In his post below, David is right. We shepherds often sin by healing the sin of the souls under our watch-care superficially. We commend the grace of God without condemning sin. We drone on about forgiveness and never mention repentance. Luther saw the same thing among the shepherds of his day:

In regard to doctrine we observe especially this defect that, while some preach about the faith by which we are to be justified, it is still not clearly enough explained how one shall attain to this faith, and almost all omit one aspect of the Christian faith without which no one can understand what faith is or means. For Christ says in the last chapter of Luke 24:47 that we are to preach in His name repentance and forgiveness of sins.

Many now talk only about the forgiveness of sins and say little or nothing about repentance.

(Tim) At times, it seems best to promote a discussion to the main page. Readers lose track of discussions in the comments under old posts. Here's one such discussion that I'm promoting for reasons I hope are obvious.

It's my conviction that the endless mantra of grace that permeates our Evangelical/Redeemer/Westminster/Campus Crusade/R2K/Covenant world leads to us knowing little of grace because we despise God's Law and repentance.

In the midst of a discussion bearing on this matter, the historian Darryl Hart asked me to clarify what I meant when I spoke of the grace of the Law--that to preach the Law is Gospel preaching and that the Law is our Gospel schoomaster or tutor? Here I respond:

Scripture says:

Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith" (Galatians 3:24).

This is the great failure of Gospel preaching in our time, and the reason for the absence of fruit within our churches. We fail to preach the Law, instead trying to save unregenerate sinners from the indignities of repentance. We preach grace without leading souls there through the Law. We repudiate the Schoolmaster. It's the habit of pastors only to address the regenerate within the Covenant Community while outside that Community we gag preachers, leaving Gospel proclamation and conversion to Campus Crusade...

(Tim) Talented, absolutely. His eponymous breakout album back in 1970 was hauntingly beautiful and you knew he was here to stay. But since then, even more than his music John has taken his public identity from sodomy.

Two months ago out in Hollywood, John serenaded a few hundred $1,000 a plate guests at a fundraiser for the repeal of California's law banning sodomite marriage. Partiers included David Geffen, George W. Bush's Solicitor General Ted Olson, and the immediate past chairman of the Republican Party, Ken Mehlman. In other words, anyone who's made a name for himself and lots of wealth was there. Together they announced their commitment to this sexual rebellion against God that permeates Hollywood, Wall Street, Washington D.C., Las Vegas, and New York City. Also those two peas in a pod--the Democratic and Republican parties.

The entire world is getting along fine with Elton John. AIDS softened us up--it was the justification for the blather about "compassion" that provided cover for executive orders and legislation that normalized in one more area the rebellion against God's Order of Creation that is one of the defining characteristics of our culture.

Pastors too have learned our lesson...

(Tim, w/thanks to David A.)

"The worship of idols is a most ridiculous thing, and it is but justice to represent it so and expose it to scorn. This will, by no means, justify those who ridicule the worshippers of God in Christ because the worship is not performed just in their way. Baal's prophets were so far from being convinced and put to shame by the just reproach Elijah cast upon them that it made them the more violent and led them to act more ridiculously" (Matthew Henry on Elijah's call to repentance in 1Kings 18).

(This is part one of two; here's the second post.)

Anyone who is familiar with Evangelism Explosion's two diagnostic questions...

1. Have you reached the point in your spiritual life where you know for certain that if you were to die tonight you would go to heaven?
2. If you were to die tonight and God were to ask you, "Why should I let you into heaven," how would you answer?

...knows how very effective they can be at revealing a hope of salvation based in good works rather than faith in Jesus.

When D. James Kennedy began Evangelism Explosion in 1962, America's primary Christian influences were mainline Protestantism (whose denominations had reached their numerical peak in the 1950s) and Roman Catholicism. Despite deep sociological differences, these two branches of Christianity were united in teaching a salvation by works: the social gospel in mainline churches; the infused righteousness of Roman Catholicism.

Dr. Kennedy's "Two Questions" provided a powerful tool for addressing the error of both camps.

But Evangelism Explosion (EE) entered the scene at a tipping point in American religious history. For a hundred years America's primary Christian heresy had been the works-based salvation (semi-Pelagianism and Pelagianism) of mainline Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised, simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For those who are circumcised do not even keep the Law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised so that they may boast in your flesh. (Galatians 6:12, 13)

Sin is not what Reformed men do. Everyone knows that. It seems stupid to say it. Reformed men have enough money and class to keep their hands clean. We're scrupulous and the worst we can be accused of is not yet having attained the vocabluary necessary to be proficient at teaching doctors, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists, professors, architects and their husbands in our churches' adult discipleship programs. Maybe occasionally bad doctrine seeps in, but never bad practice and never ever bad motives which led to that bad practice. And don't you ever forget it!

It's not simply David-and-Bathsheba-pregnancy-and-murder public sins which have left the earth on UFOs. We don't even sin privately and we can't remember the last time we had to examine our hearts. All our motives are pure--that one you had better get. Don't ever make the mistake of questioning a Reformed man's motives or you'll pay for it; especially if he's an elder or pastor. "How dare you question my motives! What gives you the right? Who are you to talk? Judge not lest you be judged!"

Then his fellow presbyters chime in...

The fear of the Lord, John Murray explains, has two aspects. Terror and dread of God's holiness is the first aspect. Veneration and honor of God's majesty is the second. We moderns are happy to go along with Murray on the second aspect, but, to our detriment, we have tried to jettison the first. Murray writes,