Acknowledging God as God

Sometime in the last six months I was sitting in a "Bible Church" on a Sunday morning, and it was a disheartening experience. We sang songs where "I" figured prominently, but "Christ" wasn't so prevalent. And we heard a very long sermon that seemed to be all about "community" and "sharing" and "real relationships," but there wasn't a whole lot about the Lord Jesus. And as I sat there I thought to myself, "Roman Catholicism is better than this, at least Roman Catholics have a God."

I was so surprised by what I had thought, that I was taken aback, and spent the rest of the day thinking about it.

Now, I have all sorts of problems with Roman Catholicism. I'm in no danger of converting to Roman Catholicism, because I have no interest in working for what God offers for free (Romans 4:5). And while I could make the argument that Roman Catholicism doesn't explicitly deny the Gospel – because they believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1–8) –; there is an implicit denial of the Gospel, because there is a responsibility to "walk according to the truth of the Gospel" (Galatians 2:14), and Roman Catholicism surely fails that test.

But the fact remains that my experiences in Evangelical churches have begun to make Roman Catholicism look a lot better than it once looked.

When so-called worship music is a lot about "I" and not much about "Him," then I have to ask who is actually the object of worship. When sermons are mainly about "I" and not much about "Him," I have to ask who is really at the center. When I can sit in a church for the better part of an hour and hear nothing about the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord, I have to ask why precisely I'm there.

 

Many years ago, after we decided we could no longer remain in fellowship with a particular "brethren" group, we spent several months visiting a "continuing Anglican" church. 

(I need to pause to give a word of explanation for our non-American friends. The Anglican church in Canada and the Church of England are associated with the Episcopalian church here in the United States. Here, "Anglican" generally signifies a church that has broken away from the Anglican communion. There are something like 16 Anglican denominations in the USA that are explicitly not in fellowship with the Church of England.  I'm oversimplifying a little, but it's important to note that "Anglican" in the USA is carefully chosen to mean "not Episcopalian" and "not in communion with the Church of England.")

Several people acted surprised that we would gravitate to a liturgical church after being so thoroughly "brethren," thinking we'd end up somewhere more Evangelical. But in my mind, liturgical worship is much closer to what we practiced with "brethren" than what I'd find in a Baptist church or a Bible church.

What I value about "brethren" assemblies is exactly what I valued about liturgical worship: the focus is on the Lord, not on me. The "main event" is remembering the Lord, not listening to a sermon. And while I understand there are some dissimilarities between liturgical worship and the Lord's Supper as practiced in most "brethren" circles, I found the similarities much more compelling. For example, liturgical worship is entirely participative (is that even a word?): there's no question that you're not a spectator, watching a show. You're absolutely participating.

I honestly believe "closed brethren" are much more closely related to Anglicanism than they are to the local Baptist church. It makes perfect sense to me that when W. T. Turpin abandoned brethrenism, he returned to the Church of England, rather than joining a Baptist church.  

OK, this wasn't meant to be a defense of Anglicanism. My point is that it made sense to us to step from "brethren" into a liturgical church, because the beneath-the-surface similarities were compelling: we were interested in "church" that was about the Lord, not about us. We were interested in a place where the Lord's Supper was central. We were looking for something where the congregation was actively participating, rather than simply listening to someone speak.

So I'm on an "assembly quest" again, because we're no longer in the city. We didn't intend to leave the assembly so much as we intended to leave the city and come to a place where we have room and it gets dark at night. And I'll hasten to say, when I've been back in the city, I've remembered the Lord at the same assembly where we'd been in fellowship from 2010 through 2019. The assembly there knows very well why we left, and it had nothing to do with them.

But we've been living in the middle of nowhere for more than two years now, and we've visited  a whole lot of churches. In this area in particular, there are too many small non-denominational churches to list. And over the last couple years, I've given a lot of thought to what I'm looking for in a church. 

So here's what I've settled on as a first requirement: they need to acknowledge God as God. I don't need to hear sermons about how to live a better life, and I don't need to sing songs about myself, my own devotion, and my own faithfulness. "Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him" is a catchy song, but when I pay attention to the words, it's obvious it's about me, not about Him. I can do without that sort of thing.

And I'm not saying I'm looking for a liturgical church, by the way. I am saying that liturgical worship gets the most important thing right, and the best of "brethren" has a lot in common with it.

Knowing Christ according to the flesh

A few years ago, I was reading Romans, Verse-by-Verse by William R Newell, and I came across this quote:

I affirm that the present day popular preachers DO NOT KNOW what human guilt, before God, is! DO NOT KNOW that Christ really bore wrath under God’s hand for the sin of the world! DO NOT KNOW that He was forsaken of God, as the whole race, otherwise, must have been! I affirm that they are preaching as if an unrejected, uncrucified Christ were still being offered to the world! They preach the “character” of Jesus, saying “nice things” of Him, and telling people to “follow His example”: while the truly awful fact that Christ “bare our sins in His own body on the tree,” that He was “wounded for our transgressions,” that He was “forsaken of His God”; that “God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up,”—and that “for our trespasses,” is never told to the poor, wretched people! Nor are they warned of that literal lake of fire and brimstone into which “every one not found written in the book of life” will be cast, and that forever. (Romans Verse-by-Verse, p. 37, emphasis added)

When I first read that, it was eye-opening. Whatever offers Christ made to the Jews, or to the Gentiles, He was rejected. Why would we think those offers are still open? Even supposing the offer was still open after the Resurrection, it seems like the book of Acts chronicles the final rejection of Christ and God's acceptance of that rejection.

It's striking to me that Peter effectively offers the millennial kingdom in Acts 3:19–21, but that offer is rejected. Daniel 7:13–14 describes the Son of man descending from Heaven to receive a kingdom, and it seems to me that would have been just as fulfilled at the end of Acts 3 as it would be now. Of course still we expect the Son of man to descend from Heaven to receive a kingdom, but my point is that Peter offered it right then and there, and was arrested instead (Acts 4:1–3).

But Newell's point is that Christ has been rejected (1 Corinthians 15:3–5): 

For I delivered to you, in the first place, what also I had received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he was raised the third day, according to the scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

The gospel of Jesus Christ begins with His death. It presupposes His offers were rejected.

2 Corinthians 5:13–19 pushes that conclusion further with the astonishing statement that we are to know no one – not even Christ – "according to flesh." And immediately after the comment about knowing according to flesh, we have the introduction of New Creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Someone commented to me several years ago that so many churches were trying to know Christ according to flesh. That comment seemed vague at the time, but I have come to appreciate it much more fully over time. It seems to me that Evangelicalism is characterized by trying to know Christ according to flesh. 

I take Romans 7:5–6 to be a two-verse summary of Romans 7:7–8:4.  And in those two verses, we see a transition that we might miss in the longer passage that follows. There is a change from "when we were in the flesh" (Romans 7:5) to "now we are clear from the law" (Romans 7:6).  That transition is mirrored in Romans 7:24–25, but it's not so clear what happened in the latter verses. What happened is this change of position from "in the flesh" to "clear from the law".

If we look at 2 Corinthians 5:14–17, we see there is a New Creation, and it includes those who are in Christ. 

What does it mean to be in Christ? Well, He has died, and we have died with Him (Colossians 3:3). He was buried, and we have been buried with Him (Colossians 2:12). He was raised, and we have been raised with Him (Colossians 3:1). He was seen, and we shall be seen with Him (Colossians 3:4). But perhaps the most direct and striking statement about being "in Christ" is in Philippians 3:9 – it's not having any righteousness of my own.

2 Corinthians 5:14–17 teaches us that trying to know Christ "according to flesh" is remedied by recognizing New Creation. Philippians 3:8–15 teaches us that being "in Christ" means having no righteousness of my own. Romans 7:5–6 teaches us that being "in the flesh" means being subject to law, and that the remedy is to be "clear from the law" by death with Christ. Colossians 3:1–4 teaches us that our death with Christ isn't something we must attain, but something that is already true. Romans 6:1–11 teaches us that even having died with Christ, there is the need to reckon that to be true in order to experience the blessings of it.

2 Corinthians 5:16 tells us, even if we have known Christ according to flesh, we're not to know Him that way anymore. We have no reason to believe Paul ever met Christ before His resurrection, but Peter did. Peter had known Christ according to the flesh, as a man "in the flesh," he had known Christ unrejected and uncrucified. But Peter wasn't to know Christ that way anymore: that's 2 Corinthians 5:16.

Twice in the last year I have been in churches who were preaching through Matthew 5–7. I can't recall either of those sermon series mentioning that this was an uncrucified, unrejected Christ preaching to men in the flesh.

I found it odd that one of the preachers talked about our need for the Spirit of God in order to live out the teachings of Matthew 5–7. That's a particularly subtle form of eisegesis, to try and read Acts 2 into Matthew 7. There could be no indwelling Spirit of adoption, without the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (John 7:39). It was Christ dead, buried, raised, and seated at God's right hand who could pour out that Spirit (Acts 2:32–36). Even if we understand John 20:22 as Him giving the Spirit (which seems difficult in light of Acts 2), we still have to acknowledge that John 20 comes after the resurrection.

I am not, of course, objecting to teaching Matthew 5–7. But if we are to understand the Gospels in light of the whole counsel of God, we need to understand them in relation to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. This is the most important thing that has ever happened, and those events change absolutely everything. 

Closely related to that is the importance of addressing believers not as men and women "in the flesh," but as new creation "in Christ." 

And I'll reiterate what I think is an important practical point: the epistles present our acceptance and acknowledgement of our place "in Christ" as the key to experiencing the blessings for us there. It's true that God sees me as dead, buried, and raised with Christ; but I won't experience freedom from sin without recognizing, reckoning, and counting on what God has said. Objectively it's true because God says it is true, but subjectively it doesn't benefit me unless I believe God.

And this, according to Darby, is the meaning of "in the flesh." It is to be responsible before God:

What is it to be in the flesh? It is to be in relationship with God on the ground of our natural responsibility as men, as children of fallen Adam. It is, as to our moral state — which in itself is true — making the disposition of God towards us to depend on what we are towards Him. Of this the law is the perfect rule. It says, if conscience is awakened, I am such and such: God will be so and so towards me. Grace is on the opposite ground: God has been, and is, through Christ such and such, and I shall be so and so, as the fruit of it. But this changes everything.

"On Sealing with the Holy Ghost", Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, Volume 31, p. 260 

 

It seems to me the leaven of Evangelicalism is attempting to know Christ according to the flesh. We all seem so desperate to be men and women "in the flesh," and I suspect it's because we just can't quite give up on ourselves. I suspect it's because being "in Christ" means having no righteousness of my own (Philippians 3:9), and we can't quite bring ourselves to view ourselves that way.

So having started with a quote from Romans Verse-by-Verse, maybe we'll end the same way. Here's a favorite of mine: "To believe, and to consent to be loved while unworthy, is the great secret" (p 172).

Losing the path

Some of what I have written on this blog is a consequence of real passion. A shocking number of things I have written here were outgrowth of hearing a recorded sermon, or reading an article online or in a magazine – or even watching a video on YouTube – where someone says or writes something I consider both wrong and dangerous. And sometimes the comments section will set me straight, sometimes the comments section reinforces my beliefs, and sometimes it just sits empty.

There are a surprising number of emails I have gotten over the last 14 years (or so) from people who stumbled across this blog. Some of those email exchanges turn into genuine (but remote) friendships, others don't really go very far.

As an aside: I don't try very hard to maintain my anonymity on this blog, but I try "not very hard." I generally don't mention where I work, or where I live, etc. I'm sure anyone who cares can figure those out. I try to extend the same lazy anonymity to the comment section, so I try to avoid giving away too much about people who leave comments. 

I should say, my favorite thing about this blog has been the people I've "met" from it. One or two I was privileged to meet in real life. And of course it goes the other way too: sometimes a real life friend reads my blog and that can set off some conversations too.

When I started this blog, it was more "for me" than "for you." I still read and re-read this blog, because I lose my way a lot. Sometimes I'm like the people in Psalm 107:1–7, who start out on a clear path, but somehow that path gets blurry, or lost, and they find themselves wandering. Well, I find myself wandering a lot, and when I realize I'm sort of wandering, it's helpful to look back at a time when I could see the path. 

The Lord told the Ephesians to remember "from whence ye are fallen" (Revelation 2:5). This blog is one of the things that helps me remember, when I realize I've lost sight of the path.

I was very young when I came to know the Lord. I've been at this "walking with the Lord" thing for probably 45 years. I don't do it very well, but I've been doing it a long time. In that time, I've learned that it's really easy to lose sight. It's hard to believe, when you're caught up in godly zeal, that you'll ever get dragged into the mundane. But you will. 

Don't confuse losing sight with unbelief. There's a huge difference between losing sight and losing faith. 

When you realize you've lost sight – and you will – then it's not time to hide, it's time to cry out to the Lord. He knows us, He remembers that we are dust. He isn't surprised when we lose sight, or when we sin. He's not even surprised when we sin really, really bad. The very best thing you can do when you realize you've lost the path is to stop walking. Your walking is making it worse. Stop and cry out to Him.

Earlier this year I got lost when I was out hunting. It was oddly similar to Psalm 107:1–7.  I kept my bearings very well, but I had forgotten what the map looked like, so I was actually going parallel to the road I was trying to intercept. I had remembered it running east-west, when it actually heads south for a very long way before coming back east. In fact, I only realized what had happened when I popped out of the treeline at a point I'd only ever seen when gazing across a gully. 

Part of the problem was that I was keeping up a good pace: when you're going the wrong way, the faster you go, the more lost you become.

Once I realized what I had done wrong, I took my compass out of my pack for the first time in decades and took some bearings: the sun was going down quickly, and I wanted to be sure I knew where I was going while there was still daylight left. That adventure ended sort of anti-climatically: I had hiked a trail through the bottom of the gully before, and was able to get back to that trail before dark. I was able to get back to my truck just after dark.

The point is, when you lose sight of the path, going quickly doesn't help. If you're not on the path, every step might well be taking you further away. So when you realize you've lost the path, don't keep walking. Stop and ask for help. "Lord, save me!" (Matthew 14:30).

I had something else I was going to write about, but I think it'll have to wait for another time.

Elk season this year was one misadventure after another. One very experienced hunter I know says, "You have to walk 500 miles for each elk you shoot." If I had set out to prove him right, I'm not sure what more I could have done this year.

 

Radicalism (again)

I was watching an interview on YouTube recently with Douglas Wilson about baptism. He makes some interesting comments in passing about systemic theology with respect to his father's personal hermeneutics starting around 1:11 and going until 2:05 or so.

Now, I don't know Douglas Wilson. I've never met him, but I know several people in Reformed circles who know him and think highly of him. He is postmilennialist, I am not. He has said and done many things I wouldn't say or do. But there have been several times –  especially in the craziness of 2020 and 2021 – that I have looked back and realized he was right, even though I thought at the time he was wrong. 

But this isn't about Douglas Wilson. It's about some comments he made in that one-minute digression: those have made me do some really hard thinking.

Wilson describes his father's perspective on scripture like this :

He's the kind of person who believes whatever the verse in front of him is saying, and he doesn't care at all about making systematic sense of it. You know his enemy is systematic theology, because he thinks that systemize... he thinks that systematic theology puts the verse on a Procrustean bed and then cuts the verse to fit the theology... He places a much higher priority on taking the verse in front of you at face value and let it do whatever damage to your systematics that it will. (1:23–2:03)

If you listen to his comments in context, they're quite respectful. It's very clear that he's not attacking his father, but it's also clear that he doesn't [entirely] agree.

The thing is, I can't decide what I think about these comments. I've tried to articulate my thoughts about this clearly, but I keep going around in circles. I finally realized it's OK to put some wild and only-slightly-coherent thoughts onto my blog and let people comment and/or judge me as they will.

So here are my scattered and perhaps contradictory thoughts:

It seems to me that the Protestant Reformation is the result of exactly what he says his father would do: "[take] the verse in front of you at face value and let it do whatever damage to your systematics that it will."  Isn't that just what Martin Luther did with Romans 1:17ff ? He threw away the entire Roman Catholic doctrine of justification because of that one verse. That's a pretty good description of Luther's concept of "one little word," right?

So on the one hand, it seems to me Sola Scriptura entails treating each verse of Scripture as having more weight than all our theological tomes combined. The words that God has spoken must outweigh everything else.

On the other hand, we need to respect the whole counsel of God. If by "systematic theology" we mean our vast libraries of books, then we certainly should be willing to throw them away in the face of just one verse. But if we take "systematic theology" to mean the overarching teachings and themes of the whole of Scripture, then we need to recognize all those other verses are God's words too. 

When Martin Luther read Romans 1:17ff, he wasn't reading just one verse in isolation. Justification by faith alone is spread through all of the New Testament, from the words of the Lord Himself (John 5:24), through Acts (Acts 13:38–39), then through all the epistles (Romans 4:5ff), and all the way into Revelation (Revelation 14:6–7). Martin Luther didn't pick out one "problem verse" and build a contrarian theology on it: he was struck by a single verse that clarified in one sentence a central theme of the New Testament.

The fact is that we're able to build all sorts of crazy ideas on a single verse in isolation. Every cult does exactly that. Regardless of what position you take on any number of questions, you're going to be able to find a "problem verse." And they're not always ripped from context, either. There are any number of difficult verses for every single person who sincerely tries to understand the Word of God.

So on the one hand, each verse is God's own words, and it outweighs all our own thoughts. On other hand, each verse is part of the whole counsel of God, and wasn't ever meant to stand all alone.

OK, that's a reasonably coherent thought.

One of my concerns with the Reformed crowd (of which Douglas Wilson is certainly part) is that when they use the term "systematic theology" they don't mean only "all of Scripture." In my experience, they have in view things like the Westminster Confession, the Creeds, and their vast libraries of theological books. (And don't let's think for a minute that "we" don't do exactly the same thing. We might not have as long a history, but we certainly seem to elevate our books and libraries.  J. N. Darby's writings aren't as universally accepted as they once were, but plenty of others' have taken their place.)

So if we warm up our old metaphor of "a ditch on both sides of the road," we might see on the one side the error of snatching a verse from its context, with no regard to the whole counsel of God, and using it to prop up some error or another. Cults seem really good at doing that, but pretty much every Christian I've ever met has fallen into some sort of error along those lines at one point or another.

The ditch on the other side of the road might be mistaking our theologies for the whole counsel of God. We might not be as formal about it as our Reformed friends, but we all have some sort of systemic theology, even if it's just a rough outline in the backs of our minds about what Scripture teaches. The question is, do we mistake that for the whole counsel of God?

I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but at some point I became very surprised by what Scripture doesn't say. There were all sorts of things I had believed to be "absolutely true" that proved to be not Scripture, but someone's understanding of it. Those things might not have been "traditions" in as formal a sense as the Roman Catholic church has "traditions," but they were traditions nevertheless.

The Lord Jesus told the Sadducees, "Ye err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God" (Matthew 22:29). He told the Pharisees, "ye have made void the commandment of God on account of your traditional teaching" (Matthew 15:6).

So maybe the ditch on the other side of the road is something like allowing our traditions as much weight as the words God has spoken. Do we do that? Have we made void the words of God on account of our traditions? Those aren't Scripture – we know that, right?

Many years ago I was reading an article from a "brethren" teacher of some renown, rebutting some particular teaching. I was struck as I read it that his argument had basically nothing to do with the verses he cited. I mean, they sounded good at first glance, but when I actually looked up the references, they didn't at all say what he had been making them out to say. As far as I could tell, this man was so invested in his tradition, he was looking for any verse sounding more-or-less similar and calling it scriptural support. Only... it wasn't. 

So those are my only slightly coherent thoughts triggered by Douglas Wilson's interview. The interview itself is probably worth a listen, I honestly can't remember a lot of it. I was so absorbed in his tangential comments about "the verse right in front of you" that I remember basically nothing else.

Radicalism

One tension my wife and I discuss frequently is, "If you want a church where people believe something, you're likely to fall into a cult. If you want to avoid a cult, you tend to end up where people don't actually believe anything." I find myself constantly looking for a path between the horns of this dilemma.  

The authors who have most helped me (J. N. Darby, W. Kelly, Watchman Nee, Francis Schaeffer, etc.) have all been "radicals" in the strictest sense of the word. I don't mean they were radicals in the sense of "burn it down" Marxists.  I mean they were were willing to turn their backs on the establishment so that they could follow Christ.

I'm sure I've recounted this story before, but I was in a Bible reading once where we were reading through John 1. One brother commented on John 1:6, "What amazing credentials!" And that was a bit of an epiphany moment for me. I realized that the greatest of the prophets (Matthew 11:11) had no real credentials from a human point of view, but he was given the highest stamp of approval Scripture can give: he was sent from God. And notice this theme carries through the New Testament: John the Baptist (John 1:6), the Lord Himself (John 9:29), Peter and John (Acts 4:13), and sometimes Paul (Galatians 1:1, etc.) were all dismissed because of lack of credentials. But they all came with messages from God, and all had His approval.

Of course we can fall into the ditch on the other side of the road here. There is such a thing as pathological anti-credentialism (which I'm sure isn't a real word) – the veneration of someone precisely because he or she lacks credentials. Notice Scripture doesn't ever do this. Scripture doesn't assume someone who has formal education, or formal training, or human credentials can't bring messages from God. We might point out that Paul and Moses were both highly educated. But we recognized (and they recognized, see Philippians 3:4–7, etc.) that their human credentials really didn't mean a lot when it came to spiritual matters.

So let's recognize that there is a ditch on both sides of the road. But let's also recognize that Scripture uniformly praises those who "live for an audience of One," to quote Os Guinness. The attitude of the believer ought to be neither for or against the establishment, but for Christ and Christ alone. 

We are called to "pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart" (2 Timothy 2:22). Despite preaching I've actually heard on this verse,  it doesn't mean we're to join a party and be faithful to it.  It means we're to be faithful to Christ.

Why would they come here?

Several years ago, my wife and I were speaking to a young(er) guy in the assembly about some then-current trends. I can't recall very much about the conversation. After it was over and we had parted, my wife commented, "If we offer people exactly what they can find everywhere else, why would the come here?"

I'm going to rip her words from their context and ask them as a more general question. Why would someone choose to come to our assembly, or Bible study, or church – or even more generally to the faith itself – if all we offer them is exactly what they can find everywhere else?

Peter told the Lord, "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal" (John 6:66–71). We can sympathize with Peter: the Lord's words were somewhere between incomprehensible and offensive (John 6:52, 60–61), but they were the words of eternal life. It's like Peter has made the choice that it's better to be offended by the words of eternal life than to find inoffensive – but lifeless – teaching somewhere else.

The Lord Jesus offered (and offers) what cannot be found anywhere else: eternal life. There's only one place to get it, there's only one Person who can give it. But if we want eternal life, we need to accept that He might well offend us. 

I suppose the people in John 6 ought to have expected that eternal life would offend them. They were searching the Scriptures to find eternal life (John 5:39–40). When I read about the people the Lord was addressing, I wonder how they didn't find the Scriptures offensive. They clearly had a very high view of their ancestry (John 8:33–37), but the Scriptures themselves tell in clear detail how their fathers had been hard-hearted, stiff-necked, and rebellious (Luke 11:47). "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?" (Acts 7:52). 

And it's interesting the Lord doesn't tell them they searched the Scriptures for eternal life in vain, on the contrary, the Scriptures were leading them to Him, but they weren't willing to come to Him for eternal life (John 5:39–40). It's like they had a map to buried treasure, and they studied it carefully and followed it to its end, where they decided picking up a shovel and digging was just too much work. And even that analogy falls far short, because the Lord wasn't just passively waiting for them, but was actively offering them eternal life.

We see ourselves following the same path, if we're honest with ourselves. The Lord offends us, like He offended them. It's almost cliché to say it, but there's nothing so offensive to us as being told we're not God. We claim we're grateful for the Savior, but deep down, we all want to be the savior. It offends us when we need to turn to Someone Else for salvation. And I say that as someone who has known the Lord for well over 40 years. That rebellion in our hearts doesn't go away, and it won't until He comes for us (Philippians 3:20–21).

One of the dangers when we contemplate eternal life is the idea that we who have been given eternal life don't need it anymore. The Lord calls us to eat (John 6:53) and keep on eating (John 6:56). There is a one-time eating His flesh and drinking His blood to gain eternal life, there is also a repeated eating and drinking. Eternal life isn't the sort of thing that's "one and done." No, we are creatures who need to eat and drink again and again and again. We are creatures who need to feed. That's as true in the spiritual realm as in the physical.

So Peter's question is even more pertinent than we might at first understand: "where shall we go?"  It's not like you can come to the Lord just long enough to get eternal life and then go away. No, it's necessary to come to Him and stay with Him. Maybe that's one of the ideas in 1 John 5:11–12. God gives eternal life, that's true, but He doesn't put it into our hands, so to speak. He gives us life in the Son. And so if we have the Son, we have eternal life. But if we walk away from the Son, then we're effectively walking away from eternal life.

And don't let's think that's not a real thing. No, I don't believe we can lose eternal life, but we sure can walk away from it. It might be "ours" in some objective sense, but if we're neglecting it – if we're walking away from the One in whom it resides – then what good is it doing us? What's the point in having eternal life if we're not living it? I don't want weak, anemic, and wan eternal life. I want to experience eternal life that's well fed, and that means feeding on the flesh of the Son of Man and drinking His blood. That means sticking close to Him, because He – He alone – has eternal life to give us.

But now we come back to where we started: if we're going to be near Christ, then we're going to hear things to offend us. It's not by accident that Christ offending His listeners and His offering eternal life are presented together in Scripture. An inoffensive Christ doesn't offer eternal life.

So let's go back to my wife's question: "why would anyone come here, if we're just offering what everyone else offers?" If people look at us and see that we have Christ, then we might get the odd crowd, but those are the people who are going to leave again pretty soon (John 6:66). But if we're faithful to Christ, if He truly is our center, then we can expect that those who come to us know why they're here.

Now, I must also point this out: if people come to us and are offended, we should be careful to ask if it's really Christ that is offending them. I have been in too many assemblies where their offensiveness is seen as a sort of a badge of honor. They seem to think it's proof of their godliness that people keep leaving. Well... that's one explanation. There are other explanations that are less flattering.

 

Careful speech

For various reasons that don't matter at the moment, I've been much more exposed to mainstream Protestantism over the last few months.  I've recently heard a couple people allude to Hebrews 4:15, and both went off the rails. We've talked about this before, so let's don't cover that ground again. But there are some difficulties we encounter when we're not careful, and maybe those are worth discussing in more detail.

At some point I made the decision that I'd try to express my thoughts about Scripture in the language of Scripture. I decided to use the words and phrases Scripture uses, rather than using my own. I'm not claiming to be very good at that, but I make the effort. I'm not sure where I got that idea, or when I made that decision, but I have some suspicions.

When I was a university student, I was part of an off-campus Bible study run by Kelly, one of the campus chaplains. Kelly led us through a study of 1 John that was life-changing for me, not because of content, but because of technique. We started the study by independently reading 1 John "as many times as you can over the next week." According to Kelly, when you had read a book of the Bible enough times you could quote it, then you were ready for a Bible study on that book.

I suspect it was Kelly who influenced me to try to use Scriptural words and phrases. 

See, when we express a thought in words, the words then begin to reshape the thought. So when we take a Scriptural idea and put it into words, those words begin to change the Scriptural idea in our own mind. If we're not very careful with our choice of words, we end up going wrong not only in how we express our thoughts, but in what our thoughts actually are.

Here's an example: I've heard many "brethren" refer to Satan as "the prince and the power of the air." That's not what Scripture actually says. Scripture calls Satan "the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2, KJV). I'm sure this started out as a simple misquote, but we can see how the ideas aren't at all the same, even if the words sound similar.

Here's another example: just last week I heard someone talking about being "adopted into God's family." You can search all day long, you won't find that verse! Scripture doesn't teach adoption into God's family. It doesn't teach we are children of God by adoption. On the contrary, we are children of God when we have been born [again] of God (John 1:12–13; John 3:3). 

When scripture talks about adoption, it's talking about sonship. Galatians 4:1–5 presents sonship in contrast to childhood (I don't know the right word for that, perhaps childness?). A child might be treated as a servant in his own home, a son cannot be. 

The Spirit of God given to us connects adoption (Romans 8:15) and sonship (Galatians 4:6). 

So the person who talks about being "adopted into God's family" takes two ideas that Scripture presents in contrast and bludgeons them into a single concept. I can't think of a better recipe for spiritual disaster.

There are a great many errors we avoid when we attempt to stick to the actual words of the text.

It's not popular to say it, but the goal of Bible study isn't – or shouldn't be – to ask "how can I apply this to my life?"  A rush to find some sort of application in Scripture seems to be the source of a great many ills. If we could only learn to slow down and savor each word, we might find that God's words carry a great deal more weight and meaning than we might think. We might even find that God's thoughts center not on us at all, but on His Son, Jesus Christ.

Not everything is about us.

I'm afraid we're reaping the harvest of years of carelessness in reading and studying and quoting Scripture. Martin Luther believed the written word of God is so potent that even "one little word will fell [Satan]" We have largely abandoned that respect for the words that God has spoken. We think nothing of putting our own in their place. And I'm not talking about theological liberals, or progressive Christians here! I'm talking about people who believe in "verbal plenary inspiration."

I wrote before about hearing a preacher say, "the wages for sin is death," which is certainly not Scripture. Changing that one preposition from "of" to "for" ruins the argument of Romans 6:15–23. This was a professional preacher, paid to prepare and deliver his sermons. He didn't even seem to notice his mistake.

Well, I'm trying to avoid ranting, but I'm not doing a good job of that. I'm afraid I'm getting pretty close to a full-on rant here. 

So let's wrap this up with an admonition. And make no mistake, I'm saying this as much to myself as to anyone else. Let's act like the Word of God is just that. Let's acknowledge that God has spoken, and has spoken better than we can. Let's make every effort to think and speak in His words, not our own.